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So, he doesn’t get to meet God. Bummer. Ghostbur had told him as much, ages ago, but he’s damn pissed that the poltergeist was right about it.
It’s ridiculous – he gets clobbered to death by a root vegetable and doesn’t even get to meet sexy angels as a pity-gift.
He doesn’t get to meet anyone, actually.
Hell – and Tommy knows it is, because Heaven’s roads would be better – manifests itself as an empty bus. If there’s a driver, the bastard’s shut himself up in the front bit of this centipede of a car and hasn’t responded to any of the various threats Tommy’s lobbed at him from his seat in the middle.
“You’re a real bitch,” Tommy calls. “This is kidnapping and I’ll tell you what–when I get a–when I get a ghost lawyer, you’ll be sorry. You don’t want to know what my glawyer can do to you.”
Predictably, there’s no response. It makes him feel a bit better anyway.
Tommy huffs a sigh and gazes out the window. Naturally, there’s nothing outside to even entertain him while he waits to be delivered into the fiery pits of Hell, or whatever. All that’s out there is a pure white expanse - like Techno’s tundra, but with fewer cobblestone towers and general homey-ness. Sometimes, he can spy a little bit of smoke–thick plumes like the kind that should billow from a train’s smokestack.
Hell is ugly .
They hit a pothole. It flings him into the seat-back so hard that his face smushes like dough.
“Bitch,” he repeats, scornfully.
The bus keeps driving.
-
Hell doesn’t have enough bus stops.
Tommy doesn’t know quite how long it’s been, but they’re still driving. He’d tried counting the seconds for a bit and had gotten up to three hundred and fifty before he wasn’t sure if he was on fif-dee or fif-teen and had gotten so pissed at whoever had made those two sound so similar that he’d lost his place.
So, time is a bust.
There’s a digital panel on the front bit of the bus-car, but that’s also garbage. All it does is flash bright numbers and symbols at random. It’s some Hypixel shit. Too fancy for anything on the SMP, aside from Sam’s prison.
Even in there, they hadn’t withheld time . Though the occupant of the one un-vacant cell in the whole thing was a right bitch, he’d at least had a clock.
Tommy leans his head back.
“One,” he calls and hopes someone can hear him. “Two.”
-
Nobody does hear him. Not even when he abandons all social decorum, stands up, and starts driving the toe of his shoe into the compartment at the front of the bus...train...thing.
“Knock knock,” Tommy calls.
Then, when no one responds: “I’m claust-row-phobic, you know. I’ve got diseases in my ‘ead and I don’t like tiny spaces.”
That’s the truth, too.
This space isn’t quite small enough for him to really get spooked, but it’s bland enough that the resulting boredom is killing him.
Hang on. He’s already dead.
It’s ghost-killing him, then. Ghost murder. It’s exorcising him.
“Open up! Op-en. Open.”
He kicks the conductor’s door again for good measure.
“You’ve got to let me out sometime,” he says, shaking out his ankle. “God’s going to be pissed. I’m too–I’m too precious to be stuck on public transport. All the angel ladies are going to miss me so much and you’re going to get fined. By God. And me.”
Clang.
“Open.” Clang. “The.” Clang. “Door.” Clang.
It remains resolutely shut. There’s a noise like gravel spitting from underneath the bus’s tires.
“Be that way,” Tommy mutters. “I’ll tell you, it’s not going to look good on you when I vomit all over your fancy seats. Not at all.”
Silence.
Damn. He’s all out of property value threats.
Surely, they’re just trying to soften him up a bit. Make him a little more compliant, just so he’ll go easy when whatever void-demon comes to whisk him away.
Well, that sucks for them – Tommy’s caught onto their game and he’s done complying with anybody. He’s not gone soft. Nobody gets to boss him around ‘cept Sam Nook and even then, he’s entitled to worker’s compensation.
There’s a little bit of truth to his last jab, anyway. Queasiness really is his Achilles heel and by God, this train has shot a whole quiver of arrows into it.
He goes back to his seat and tips his head against the cool glass of the window. It feels nice, except for the way the bumps in his road vibrate through his skull. But the cold is worth it.
They’re just waiting for him to break. That’s all.
He won’t.
-
(Here’s another, more frightening option: Dream was telling the truth.
There’s supposed to be a ‘revive book’. It’d been Tommy’s disbelief in it that’d pushed Dream to–
Well.
Maybe he’s just waiting to bring him back. He’s punishing him, same as always, for lashing out. For getting angry and not listening.
For fighting back.
No. That’s stupid. He refuses to waste precious brainpower on hypotheticals. Besides–he doesn’t regret that fight one bit. For a final battle, it wasn’t the grandest, but there’s a secret bit of comfort in the knowledge that if Dream really was lying, he’ll never have to fight again.)
-
Every sixty seconds, Tommy smacks a new dent into the bus wall. It’s not a big dent, but it makes him feel accomplished.
-
Once he’s gotten tired of making the wall look like the pinched part of a ravioli, he starts re-examining the bus for any hidden exits. He hadn’t entered through one. Rather, he’d woken up tucked very gently into a soft seat, head tipped awkwardly against his own shoulder.
It’s a familiar feeling; more than anything, it reminds him of when he’d fall asleep slumped next to some half-made, illegal potion and Wil would manoeuvre him onto the Camaravan’s linty couch and maybe, if he was feeling charitable, throw a ratty, gross blanket over him.
It’s been a long time since anything like that has happened. Probably not since Wilbur was still leading the Revolution and using Tommy as a trial child for a library’s worth of parenting tactics. Fundy’d grown up too quick to use most of them. Partly because his mom’s a weird nature spirit or something. Mostly because of all the war. Regardless, Wilbur hadn’t stopped trying them on either of them.
It’d been embarrassing, then. What kind of Vice needs someone to fix his hair and give him hugs?
Still, Tommy’s not been tucked into bed in a long, long while. He’d reckon Fundy hasn’t either.
Thinking on that for too long turns his throat all stuffy, so he shoves the thought away. He’s got research to do.
-
Okay, hypotheticals it is; if Dream does bring him back, these are the orders of business:
One: Get out of the prison. Maybe do a little mauling in the process. Smack the shit out of Sam for letting him stay in there even though he’d been very clear the whole time about wanting out.
Two: Apologise to Sam.
Three: Buy a screwdriver and keep it on his person at every possible moment.
Tommy doesn’t know if he’d’ve been allowed to take it to the afterlife – his pockets were empty when he’d died, anyway – but it certainly couldn’t’ve hurt to try. All of the bus’s seats are screwed in with bolts that look very easy to pull up and then –
He’s not sure what comes then. Some bus-seat jenga. An interior design arc. Escape. Whatever it is, it’s got to be better than just sitting here.
Tommy sighs and runs his hands over the wall.
It’s worthless to speculate about this. He huffs. He doesn’t even have a screwdriver.
-
When he gets bored of making dents, he starts pacing down the aisles. When he gets bored of pacing, he starts talking to himself. When his voice goes all hoarse and scratchy, he lies down on the bench he’s chosen as his own and thinks.
In the end, Wilbur might’ve been a madman, but he was right about one thing: Tommy was never meant to be President. He’s a force of nature, Tommy ‘Danger’ ‘Kraken’ Innit is, but even thunder has to wait for lightning to flash first.
It’s not in him to run things. He’ll complain about Sam Nook’s stupid fetch quests to no end, but secretly, he likes having orders.
He likes having someone to guide him.
-
It ends up being sleep that guides him–right into a lengthy, fitful dream. Bitch move, sleep. He’s run right into its arms and it tries to choke the life out of him while he’s napping? Evil. Straight evil.
Dreams or not, it’s a good nap. He wakes from it with the imprint of the window’s bolts stamped onto his jaw and his head feels all foggy in that warm, huggy way.
-
He’s restless.
Not just now. Tommy’s been restless his whole life – it’s a good adjective for him, one that slots in quite nicely between ‘gorgeous’ and ‘brave’. He bounces between brothers and countries and allies like his life depends on it.
Bounced , actually. His life’s been stomped out. It can’t really depend on much, anymore.
The thought should be terrifying. Freeing, too - he doesn’t have to worry about shit ever again.
All in all, it’s just new.
-
After a few more counting sessions, he stretches his legs out and opts to go re-explore the contents of the half dozen linked-up cars.
Do buses usually have multiple cars? Isn’t that a train thing?
Tommy’s only ridden each once - a bus when Techno finally let him come watch him maul people in a Hypixel arena, then a train the very next week, when Wilbur had packed their bags to set off, just the two of them, to settle in a new server.
He does some stretches, bracing his hands on his knees. His muscles ache, which feels cheap, considering he’s very dead. Walking feels better than sitting, though, so he strolls down the aisles, scanning for anything that might provide a means of escape.
Or, at the very least, provide a little entertainment.
There’s nothing new in any of the cars. They’re entirely devoid of anyone living or dead, right up until Tommy steps into them.
There is a door in the car furthest back, though. Embarrassment prickles at the back of his neck at not noticing it before, but in his defence, he was looking for stray ghosts, not shitty public washrooms.
Rather dumb of God to put one in. Tommy’s pretty sure ghosts don’t need to piss.
He takes a step back. Turning, he strolls back to the seat he’s chosen for himself.
He’s restless, sure, but not enough to open the door. There’s no telling what he’ll see if he looks in the mirror.
-
This is the world’s second shittiest rollercoaster. Right after his reverse one and right above Karl’s awful Party City Llama Ride.
His head spins. Tommy wishes very suddenly that Emily Dickinson was right about death and carriages and all that other poetic shit. A carriage would be great, right now. One with some cool, dark steeds? Yeah. That’s the shit.
Everything considered, Tommy’s pretty alright with horses – he remembers having some, back when he was very small. He’d got on well with Carl, too; when he was still healing up, it’d been his job to go out and make sure the big guy’s pen wasn’t all full of drifted snow.
He’d also been an amazing receptacle for getting rid of the gapples Tommy had stashed in the basement.
So, as far as modes of transportation go, horse riding is fine. Trident surfing’s better, of course, and Tommy’ll even go for a nice minecart spin every once in a while.
But he’s like this with horses. They’re like brothers. It’s some real shit.
Beneath him, where this thing’s wheels ought to be, a shrieky-screamy sound pierces his brain. It’s like a phantom, if phantoms were ten million times bigger and full of pain and loathing.
Horses don’t do that. They spook easy, which is why they’ve got big, big eyes on the sides of their heads that can sense any danger like a radar and Tommy wishes he was on one right now, immediately, because horses don’t hit bumps like this, or fling him into gross pleather seat-backs, or go on forever and ever without stopping.
Ugh. Why is death ruining everything he likes? Bus rides, property damage, shouting–those are his, and death’s not allowed to taint them.
He’s going to wait. To ruin waiting for him, death’d have to make it the opposite of what it is, which is currently very, very boring.
That’s how he’s gonna get ‘em. Reverse psychology. Death wants to ruin waiting for him sooooo bad. So bad.
-
Sherlock Holmes. Nancy Drew. Detective number three. Nobody’s powers of deductive reasoning even come close to Tommy’s, because he’s just come to a brand new conclusion about his ride to Hell:
This is not a bus.
It’s strange. Bus-like , he supposes. It’s what goats are to sheep and what Ranboo is to vertebrates.
He traces a hand down the side of a seat. This one’s cloth, just like the mats on the floor.
Cloth!
And – and – there are windows of different sizes. This seat’s even got a cupholder.
Tommy’s no vehicle expert, but he did spend a great deal of time kickstarting a country in one. Or, well, a pre-country. A very honourable drug lab turned country.
Regardless, he does know this:
These are all the traits of a van.
A van!
Listen. It’s a discovery. He didn’t say it was groundbreaking.
-
Wait, fuck. Vans don’t have multiple cars. Vehicle identification is yet another arm of the Devil into Tommy’s life. He’s gonna be pro-horse and nothing else forever, now.
-
This can’t be it.
-
Surely not, right? There has to be more. Death is supposed to be the next big adventure. He doesn’t know anyone who thinks riding a train is an adventure, except for maybe his eleven-year-old self, and really, that was just because he’d had a sad, sad lack of public transportation in his life. Wilbur says that the only people who think trains are an adventure are oppressed people whose governments don’t give them trains. Does God think Tommy’s an oppressed person? He’s the most liberated guy in the world. So free.
So, so, free. Ideologically and physically. He could bust out of this train right now if he wanted, through the power of fuckin’ solo-friendship. Or something.
Even though it’s not always obvious, Tommy’s not stupid. He’s heard stories. Phil’s the Angel of Death, for fuck’s sake – if anyone should understand the afterlife, it really ought to be the guy’s immediate family.
He’d died prepared for the worst.
He’d done enough for it, yeah? From ruining the server’s peace to rigging an election – burning down George’s little fungus flat. Contesting it would be a waste.
For all the lies Dream told him, Tommy knows damn well he’s done some awful stuff. He should’ve been prepared to do some sort of dance at Hades’s feet, make sure someone had told Persephone what a big fan of women he is, and hope for the best.
But there’s nobody to convince, here. No one to guide, no one to lead. Or to guide or lead him. Nobody.
-
“Boys,” Tommy calls, gesturing to an audience that doesn’t exist. “We need a plan.”
He waits a polite amount of time, just in case some friendly spirits want to offer one up.
They don’t.
“We need,” Tommy continues, finger ticked out importantly, “to find a way to get off this train. Would anyone like to contribute? Any Harry Houdinis listening tonight?”
The quiet is stifling. Tommy cracks his knuckles just to hear a noise.
“Okay, well. Keep me posted, pricks,” he says and drops his hands to his sides.
As much as Techno might complain about them, Tommy’s jealous of the voices that ride alongside his brother’s conscience. They’re a package deal, and right now, Tommy would give anything to not have to brainstorm his rescue plan in pure silence.
Tommy scoffs. “I do everything myself around here, you know. One of these days I’m going to join a union and rage.”
A union of one isn’t really a thing, he knows, but he’s nothing if not an innovator.
So. He’ll make his own plan.
He thinks of Sam and Sam’s robot and the carefully sketched out blueprints they’d smoothed out together on the lawn of the Big Innit Hotel. Surely, he can do something big like that. It wasn’t all Sam’s work. He’d gathered flowers for dye and plotted out rooms for guests.
Certainly, he’s got the time. That’s–well, that’s the problem in the first place. Time is in abundance right now.
The other issue is that he’s got nothing to write down a plan with.
If the whole otherworldly brightness and the totally empty cars weren’t proof enough that he’s dead, good and certain, the fact that this bus is totally devoid of stray writing utensils definitely is. Even though he’s been on exactly one bus trip his whole life, the thing had pencils shoved between every seat and battered pens rolling across the floor, because people are gross.
(This should probably mar his very high opinion of public transportation. It doesn’t.
Half because Wilbur had done a lot of rambling about its benefits, back when they were trying to outfit their own country with the best possible resources, and half because that one Hypixel trip sits very prettily up in his top five favourite moments of living.
It’s a little embarrassing that that’s not even remotely a lie.)
Tommy thinks. If he tries hard enough, he might be able to scratch some orders of business into the back of one of the seats. This one’s pleather and way too smooth. Nobody’s poked holes in it or anything.
He glances at his nails. They’re ragged and bitten to the quick. Little purple flecks glitter under the longer edges.
Good for scratching very little, really.
Well, whatever. Tommy’s never really been a plan-maker anyway - he’s like a cat; quick and clever and always landing on his feet. Though, with three lives rather than nine.
A talented cat, though. Not the type that would let a stranger with calloused hands pat his head and coo over him should he use strange cat magic to teleport somewhere he shouldn’t have.
A strong, scary cat.
“Change of plans, boys,” Tommy says. “No plan. We’re done with plans. We’re going to find a big...bus rock and break out a window.”
He busies himself with that. Ten minutes later and he’s slumped back in his chosen seat with his head tucked between his knees. They hurt , which is weird, because nothing else hurts, but also not weird, because he’s spent the past couple minutes crawling around looking for blunt objects to smash a window with.
There’s nothing. Buses don’t keep a stock of loose bricks lying around, it seems. Amateur move.
He stares out his window. There are no smudges on it, nor the kind of hairline scratches that had accumulated even on Techno’s pristine windows after months of exposure to both Tommy and the elements.
This place is unused.
Fresh build or not, there has to be a way out. It’s an escape room, or a test, or at least some kind of waiting game. Tommy’s not really the best at any of those, but he’s spent an awful lot of time pouring over plans and blueprints of his own. Every building has an exit somewhere.
Or at the very least, a weak point.
He raps his knuckles against the glass.
-
There’s a memory buried deep in his head that wards him off, of a Wilbur who looks barely thirteen with gangly limbs to match and a Tommy who can’t have been more than five.
Keep your hands right in the pillowcase, yeah? Wilbur’d instructed. And just push on the screen, right until it pops out.
Naturally, Tommy angled his shoulder and threw every stone of his weight into their bedroom screen. For his troubles, Wilbur immediately buried his hand in the back of Tommy’s pyjama shirt and held fast.
Careful, he hissed. You’re going to slice yourself open.
Tommy squirmed, but let himself be pulled back.
The screen’s very sharp, Tom. Pillow’s to protect your hands, yeah? And muffle the sound. Just in case.
Tommy doesn’t remember why Wilbur was teaching him to sneak out before he’d even reached year one of primary. His brother always fancied himself some mixture of teacher and sibling. A good bit of the time, that tended to manifest itself in rambly life lessons and ways to evade Phil’s handful of rules.
If even Wilbur, future terrorist, wasn’t too keen on him pushing through a measly little screen without protection…
Well. Tommy can imagine what he’d say about punching through glass.
You can’t die, you know, a little voice reminds him. It sounds like smoke and gunpowder.
(It’s all in his head, of course. But he’s spent an awful lot of time in there over the past few months, so it feels as real as anything else.)
Really. You can’t die. Not again, anyway.
Cool. He’s not going to punch out a window.
What’s the harm - ‘fraid of a little pain?
What if he is? That’s his right. It’s valid , even, if the cheerful little poster with the dog on it in Puffy’s office is anything to go by. He’s allowed to be afraid
Aww, his subconscious coos. Ickle Tommy can’t take a hit.
Well, that isn’t very fair. His conscience is a right bitch – Tommy takes hits all the time. Not any of the drug kind, of course. Even though they’d got their start on illicit potions, god forbid Wilbur’s baby brother ever got his hands on any mari-chu-ana.
Pussy , the voice remarks, matter-of-factly. What’s a little sacrifice, in the name of something great?
Painful. Unfun. Probably worthless, considering this is a ghost van in the afterlife and there’s no telling if the glass will even break.
You’re not meant to be a long-burning fuse, Toms. This isn’t right for you. Apart from it being boring .
Best case scenario, he’s going to end up with a hand stuck full of glass for his troubles and a one-way trip outside the relative safety of the bus. Which, Tommy’d like to remind himself, is very unexplored. And blinding.
Injuring himself just to jump out would just be stupid and reckless and all the other words people tend to assign every action Tommy’s ever taken, really.
You’re as unfit to lead as ever.
Thanks. They don’t call him Tommy “Consistency” Innit for nothing.
They don’t call you that! Nobody calls you–
The symbols on the panel above his head flash rapidly. He thinks he catches a swear amongst the static, like it’s some kind of fucked up spirit box for head-ghosts.
You’re a fool, the voice says. You’re so, so bright and such a damn fool, Tommy. Get off. Get out of here.
Oh, man. He’s cracked, isn’t he? Or, well - cracking . He’s in the process of it; one more hit and the blacksmith’s hammer might shatter him whole.
Why won’t you just try?
“I’m sick of getting hurt,” he says, simply.
It’s too honest. The voice shuts up after that.
-
He paces the aisles.
-
It’s easy to keep track of time when you’re moving. Once, he’d stepped all over some of Tubbo’s spaghetti-style redstone wiring and been met in return with, in the sweetest tone possible: Can I ask you something?
“Sure” , Tommy’d replied, fidgety. “Hit me with it.”
“D’you know how many stairs there are in this room?”
Tommy blinked. Redstone dust sparked and glowed on the ground, making him all dizzy as he tried to estimate.
“Um. No. Do you know? Is Big Law gonna throw me down em?”
“I do know,” Tubbo stated, plainly. “It’s seventeen. We messed up the numbers when making the second floor, remember?”
“Think with me Tubbo. Think with me. Are you sure it’s not eighteen? Or twenty? Twenty’s a damn solid number, you know.”
“No, it’s seventeen. It’s why you’ve got to jump a little when you get to the top.”
“Tubbo. Tubs. Fucking up architecture just doesn’t seem very us. We’re practically the Jesus of interior design, ey?”
Staring at him with those big, blank eyes, Tubbo frowned. He hadn’t even looked mad or annoyed.
“You,” he began, “built a roller coaster that goes backwards.”
Tommy grinned. “Good times.”
“True,” Tubbo agreed. “It really was a bitching coaster.”
“So we can call it a draw? Sixteen and a half stairs?”
“Look, that’s not–that’s not what I meant, yeah? I was trying to prove a point. Even though we’re in here every day you never pay attention to shit."
“To the stairs?”
Even now, Tommy remembers being struck by something odd in the way Tubbo had traced a finger along the splintered wires on the ground. All quiet, but not resigned. Like he'd wanted to fix something different than the mess in front of him.
“I dunno,” he continued, “More than the stairs. Forget it, yeah? Joke didn’t land.”
“You’re a shit comedian,” Tommy offered.
At that, Tubbo rose, all lopsided smiles and creaking joints. Creaking joints! At six-fuckin’-teen! “And you’re a shit builder, bossman. Help me put it back together?”
And Tommy had. Over, and over, and over.
-
Just in case there’s something back there, Tommy knocks on the frame of the bathroom door. It doesn’t swing open and for the first time in human history, somebody has the thought: whoa, I hope this bathroom is occupied.
It definitely isn’t. He’s been on the bus-van-train for at least a few hours and that door hasn’t opened up once.
So, he shakes his shoulders, does not kick the door, and goes back to pacing the aisles. And–and–get this. He hums a little song while he does it. It’s an original. Fuckin watch out, Wilby.
-
I’m paying attention , he thinks. I swear it.
-
Up.
Down.
Up the aisle again.
Down it.
Up again. Sixteen paces from the front of the car to the back.
He has to keep moving. He doesn’t know what else he’ll remember if he stops.
-
When Tommy was still little enough to need watching, but big enough that he didn’t fit in Wilbur’s arms quite right, he’d gotten startled by a wild rabbit and fallen flat on his face in the rough grass of their backyard.
Don’t cry, Wilbur had begged him, as Tommy bawled into his brother’s sweater. Here, here, you’re alright. Talk to me, Toms.
In return, he’d wailed like a dying man and dug his little fists deeper into the soft fabric.
Wilbur didn’t let up, of course. Want to tell me what happened? You’re all scraped, bud. Here, why don’t you–
A hand pet gently at his hair.
Then, teasingly, though Tommy didn’t know it: I bet you were very brave. Bet only something very big and scary could have knocked down the mighty Tommy Craft.
A cheap, dirty trick, preying on his newly minted self-esteem like that.
And it’d worked, of course. Tommy was small, but his ego definitely was not. His tears petered off in a matter of moments as he clutched at his big brother and mumbled a whole story about a monster that didn’t exist.
Begrudgingly, Tommy admits that that trick might still work. When he’s hurt, he talks himself into making up all sorts of monsters; imagines dark glasses hide flinty eyes and presidential laurels crush curling horns.
It’s not that simple.
Only recently has Tommy stopped to think about whether the world is made of more than monsters, siblings, and rabbits.
-
There’s no mystery about what’s under a certain white mask. Tommy saw it once in exile after he’d woken up with saltwater in his lungs and a hand tracing his spine. It’s tough to recall - there’s a haziness to it, blurred by pain and exhaustion and time. This monster is fuzzy in his memory and for that, Tommy is grateful. He can tell no stories about what face it made when it beat his skull into an obsidian wall.
According to Dream, he’d needed watching back then, too. It’s strange, really – it feels like someone’s had an eye on him his entire life, but he keeps getting hurt all the same.
There’s no one here to tell him not to cry, but he stifles a sob against his palm, anyway. Even alone, there’s still one monster left for him to face.
-
Everything is heavy. His eyelids press down in a way that leaves him sore–and pissed. He’s a ghost . Ghosts don’t need sleep. Ghosts don’t need a good cry, either, which is why there definitely isn’t one of those prickling at the back of his head.
A nap. That’s what he needs. No planning. Or thinking. He’s going to have another good rest and then he’s going to get out of here. Someone’s going to come for him. He’ll trash this whole place if he has to. Someone will come. He knows it. He knows it.
-
It’s so quiet.
-
Ignoring the fact that it’s taken hours and hours, he feels like it’s actually pretty crazy that he’s come up with a foolproof clock. Every forty-eight seconds, the bus-van-train hits a particular pothole. So, every forty-eight seconds, he slams a new dent into a fresh wall-section. Tommy knows it’s the same pothole because the wheels go thunk-thunk instead of ba-bump like on the other road holes. The Big’un, he nicknames it, affectionately. This place has to have double-shitty, regulated potholes for this to happen. They’ve made potholes bureaucratic.
This really is Hell.
-
Why does he care so much about time, anyway? It’s not like an angel’s gonna pop out of the bathroom like, whoa, kablooey! Tell me how many seconds you’ve been trapped in bus-purgatory and you’ll solve my Transport Puzzle!
It’s something you have control over, he reminds himself. Pretty much the only control you’ve got out here.
It’s so difficult being so smart and observant all the time.
-
Even as he slumps forward in his seat, he imagines the length of the car. Sixteen steps. Up, down, up the aisle again, down it, up again. His breathing steadies a bit with the imaginary movement.
He’s so, so, angry. Faintly, he registers that it’s the first time he’s really gotten mad since arriving. Got to be some kind of new record for him. Held out a good while.
Angry at what , though? It’s the one feeling that’s followed him his whole life–and, contrary to what Wilbur’d said right before the duel, his anger has gotten him lots of places. They just weren’t all good ones.
He wishes Tubbo were here to balance him–or, barring that, ‘cause sometimes Big T wasn’t much a balancer at all, help him escalate. Feelings pool in his stomach like unravelled threads, yanking and teasing.
But it’s not a good idea to have him here, is it?
For one, ‘cause it’d mean he died and Tommy’d be absolutely damned if he’d tried so hard to keep them both alive only to see his best friend eat shit just a bit after.
And, on another, vaguer hand, it’d mean…something else.
He loves his friends. Not in the way Ranboo does, that sick freak. But he loves them. And he’s got some sort of goodwill towards Wilbur, Techno, and Phil, even if he’s not ready to really think about that in full detail.
But he’s got to make decisions separate from them. He’s a force of nature, Tommy ‘Danger’ ‘Kraken’ Innit is, and it’s high time he takes responsibility for the tidal waves he causes. He’s not gonna drag anyone else into it ‘less they absolutely want to help.
He’s done waiting for people to save him.
-
He lasts another two hours and twenty-seven minutes before he breaks. No estimation needed; he counts every pothole and bump, adding them up in his head the best he can.
It’s not beautiful or righteous. He doesn’t say any grand, earth-shattering lines, or give any good mythological speeches.
He just sobs, harsh breaths cutting at his already worn-down throat.
No one is coming. He can’t bluster his way out of this. Not in any capacity. Anger floods his body with the unnatural power it always brings, but this time, there’s no one to blame. Not Techno for his betrayal, not Tubbo for choosing New L’Manburg over him, not Sam for leaving him in there, not Schlatt for the election, not Wilbur for–
For everything. For nothing. For a lot of things that make his stomach twist to think about and a lot of things that don’t matter at all, because Wilbur’s not here and he’s not coming to rescue him. Tommy is a boy in a piss-yellow box with a rocket launcher in his face and he knows exactly what colour everything is about to be.
Outside, the world gleams white, white, white. It’s blinding and sterile and it makes his eyes sting even harder. Do not go gently, sure, but this isn’t even night. It’s just nothing.
This place is going to swallow him whole.
Thunk-thunk. Forty-eight seconds have passed and he’s still just sitting here with his fist in his mouth.
The only person to blame for this is him. And Dream, he supposes, for killing him, but it’s more than that. Tommy’s a mess-magnet if there ever was one. It’s not fair to blame anyone else for not handling it for him. He’s got to take responsibility. Got to plan. Think without blustering ahead. All that shit.
He can’t keep mourning things that aren’t anymore–like L’Manburg. And his brother.
And himself.
“Okay,” he says. His voice hiccups in a way that makes him want to shrink into his seat, even though no one else is around to hear it. “Okay. I’m ready. I’m ready. Fuck, I’ll stay. I want to stay. I’m done fighting.”
Above him, the digital panel glows blue. Letters and numbers and enchantment table symbols– hey , that one’s Fire Aspect!–flash and flicker like fireworks, their afterimage burning into the screen.
EMERGENCY, it says. The word sits there, flickering, and Tommy savours the look of it on his tongue. It’s the first word to ever stay. And then: MOTOR FAILURE.
Gravity changes in an instant. The bus’s wheels squeal against the road.
The bathroom, he thinks, blinking rapidly. That’s the safest place to be. I’m not gonna get thrown through a fuckin’ window just because I’m afraid of what I’ll see in the mirror. I have to face it. I have to.
Wobbling, he sprints to the back, even as the train shudders and shakes. When his fingers make contact with the handle, he clutches it with everything he’s got.
And there he is.
It’s barely more than a cubby. No toilet–he was right about ghosts not needing to piss. Fuck yes. Put him in charge of the anti-ghost pissing club, or whatever. All it is is a little basin, welded to the wall.
And a mirror.
He looks…
Well. Tommy’s not much of a punch-puller. Except where glass windows are concerned, he supposes.
So. Here goes:
He looks like shit .
His hair is dirty. It’s caked in soot and ash from his old cell’s lava wall. Matted with something dark and sluggish, too. And the shape is…wrong. The crown of his head dips in something awful, cratering like a bowl under his hair. Maybe, if this soupy-white afterlife is generous enough, it’ll grow some kind of spud from whatever potato material is left in it.
Before this all makes him sick to think on, he turns his attention to his eyes, staring himself down in the clean glass. They’re wide–a crayon-colored, streaky grey. They used to be bluer, he notes, faintly. Not like lapis, mind you. But bluer. Though, everything about him looks drained, now. All washed out by the furious red of his undereyes from his earlier cry.
More than that, though. More than all of it:
He just looks like him. Even now, he looks seventeen.
“Okay,” he says, voice wobbling in time with the shaking mirror, “I’m not much a looker anymore, but I can deal. It’s–”
Avant garde? His mind suggests, feebly. Unique?
“Ugly,” he admits. “But that’s okay.”
Then, ghosting his fingers across a washcloth, he dips it under the water. It’s steamy and entirely sootless. Not a single flake.
Though he feels rather silly about it, he squares his shoulders, and says, as self-assured as he can: “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”
Under his feet, the bus continues to rumble and screech. This is bad. It’s very bad. Pitching forward, he grips the cheap metal basin. Water squelches under his fingers.
Then, the lights go out.
-
He’s flying.
-
It’s a crash course in the afterlife.
Literally. His bus…train…thing sits still for the first time in their short afterlives together. Half of it punches a crater into the wall.Mentally, Tommy dredges up a tally of what he’s learned.
Maybe it’ll help him pass the non-existent Angel Quiz. Or at least get his mind off the all-consuming pain in his skull.
One: He’s only not worse off because the bathroom had no windows. Thank you, Frequently Missing Self Preservation Instinct. Top ten bathroom moment if there ever was one.
Two: It’s not actually an endless white expanse out here. It’s a tunnel.
A tunnel. A white, fluorescent-lit tunnel.
Three: Something is terribly wrong.
Green threads pool around the undercarriage of the vehicle. They twist, grabbing and pulling like little snakes. A massive web, and his van-thing has been caught in it.
And, it’s been trying to drag him back. Over and over and over. Rolling him back and forth over the same stretch of road, potholes and all, as his magic train-thing tried to burst forward in space and time.
Dream.
The name sits on the forefront of his mind, even as thin, black liquid drips from his forehead. Which, by the way: pretty fuckin’ cool. He bleeds like, oil now. Or void. Or smog . Ghost blood is so metal.
Dream wants to bring him back. He can bring him back. But this place doesn’t want to let him go. And the second he’d decided to stop fighting it, it’d tossed him out of Dream’s control.
Like he’s done for hours and hours now, Tommy shakes himself off, stands up, and starts walking.
-
This place exists at dusk only. It’s dark, but the kind of dark Hypixel is where the lights have left stains on the sky. The air is cool and calm and smoke stings his throat. There are no houses. No apartment buildings. Just the road, the streetlamps lining it, and whatever the bright thing in the distance is. It’s dim, like a little star.
-
Once, he used to take the dawn patrol. It’d been his favourite–calm and a little cold. Just like this, but with less smoke in the air.
The forest came alive in the morning.
L’Manburg’s walls towered. They stood proud over the nearby trees and sometimes, if the mood was right, he’d swing his legs over the edge and hop down into them. Wilbur never would’ve let him, if he’d known. He’d been so scared, all the time. Over the Declaration, first and then the Revolution. The worries of thousands of citizens piled themselves onto the curve of his spine like stones and he bent under them, desperate to scribble some words that would secure them all for good.
Tommy’d jeopardized that. Done it constantly. Provoked Dream, spat insults at George. Killed beloved animals and fled behind obsidian walls.
And then, there was the duel.
But in the mornings, Wilbur wasn’t there to ‘let’ him do anything. And the forest would sing to him.
It’s quiet, here. He misses the mourning doves.
-
The little star is a train station. Nothing is anything he thinks it is today and it’s really starting to piss him off. It’s dimly lit, swinging lanterns giving off a light that’s soft and glowy.
It sits still. All quiet and calm, like a pool of water. Patient. Someone’s set up some kind of camp nearby: ratty blankets, a deck of cards splayed out along a stone table. The sight fills him with so much joy that he sits right next to them, running his fingers over a thin, paper joker.
“Jesus fuck,” a voice says, mere feet away. It sounds like burnt toast. “You look like garbage.”
Tommy shrieks. It’s very manly.
When he turns, he doesn’t even have to imagine a monster. Thick, umber brown ram horns curl into a spiral from either side of the guy’s head. Schlatt’s pupils are sharp lines; two neat, dark slashes like the ones that Phil left on Wilbur’s chest.
The worst part is: Tommy’s not even a little bit surprised to see him here.
“Well,” he spits, swallowing the joint flares of joy and revulsion that spring forth in his throat. “You’re not exactly hot shit either, yeah? Got that–got an absolutely deflated nose. They’ve been upholstering your whole face with the drink, huh?”
At that, Schlatt cackles. It echoes through Tommy’s brain, even though the breeze chips at the sound the second it leaves his mouth. “Your brother,” he starts and wow , even Tommy’s own afterlife can’t resist speedrunning shoving him into Wilbur’s shadow. “Let me tell you this. When your brother was here, he upholstered my face every nigh–”
“You’re a sick man,” Tommy cuts in. “A sick, sick man.”
Schlatt snorts. “Cheers to that.”
Then, like there’s no history at all between them, he steps over the garbage on the ground and sits next to him. Rusty scissors glint at his side as he picks up a cigarette.
“Scissors?” Tommy asks and it does not come out as a yelp. “You doing–doing arts and crafts, now? Enjoying a good macramé in Hell? Gonna make me into a human quilt if I piss you off?”
“Tell you what–you get some of those threads you were tangled up in? We can absolutely go to macramé town. I will obliterate you. They’ll have to wipe your sad, mangled corpse off the floor.”
He jolts. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth. “How do you know about the–about the threads?”
Joints popping and creaking, Schlatt leans back, rolling his shoulders. “Funniest thing happens. I’m taking a stroll, hot broad on my arm. Having a blast. And you know what I see? A fucking disgrace of a vehicle. Smokes like a train, has the build of a bus, windows like a van. Zipping out of that–” he flourishes, wrist loose, “–tunnel. And every time it pokes out, it just gets yanked right back in.”
“Oh,” Tommy says, eloquently.
“Yeah,” Schlatt drawls. “ Oh.”
The wind rifles through Tommy’s hair. “You were gonna cut me out,” he spits, realising it in the fraction of a moment before the words exit his mouth. “You went to go try and free me.”
A critical look. Unkempt eyebrow raised. “Well, don’t lick my boots too hard. Looks like you got there first.”
Tommy blinks. “Who was the broad?”
“What?”
“You said you were walking with someone else,” he continues, not bothering to keep the accusation out of his voice. “Who else is here?”
A laugh escapes from between Schlatt’s fingers. He flicks his eyes to the side. There’s a familiar amusement in them. “Oh, man. I made that part up.”
“Prick,” Tommy mutters, because there’s nothing left to say.
-
They talk about nothing. For once, the only scent radiating off Schlatt is smoke, and sitting next to him is only nauseating because of his personality.
He doesn’t know how to feel. One way or the other, he’s really tired. Maybe it’s fair to hate Schlatt. Acting on it won’t do him any good.
Besides. He’s got answers.
“You know,” Schlatt begins, grandly, “this place is like a box of holiday chocolates.”
“You reckon? I think it’s like a communism.”
It doesn’t quite get him to laugh, but Schlatt does roll his eyes. Blue sparks flutter into the air as he taps the edge of his third cigarette.
“Yeah, sure,” he continues. “Whatever. I love that. But no, it’s definitely the chocolate thing.”
“Okay,” Tommy says, spreading his hands. “Enlighten me, Big Guy. Sell me on the chocolates or I’ll macramé you. I’ve got that power, you know.”
“It’s disappointing,” Schlatt responds, looking terribly proud of himself, “and half-empty by the time you get to it.”
-
“Well I reckon it’s based on something you’d like in life,” Tommy explains. “And it keeps you there ‘til you’re dead. For real, dead, I mean.”
For a long moment, Schlatt says nothing, so Tommy stumbles onward:
“My sub-conchits knows I liked the Camaravan. And some other stuff. So, yeah. Individual tailoring. Custom order, eh?”
“Yeah,” Schlatt agrees, with a lazy shrug of his shoulders. “That seems about right.”
He shoots him a conspiratorial grin: “Some ghosts carried me in on a litter.”
“Figures. How did Wil get here?”
Schlatt bares his teeth. “Your brother?” he asks. Something colourful stains the inside of his mouth. “Wilbur flew.”
-
“I’m not surprised his soul’s gone back up, really. Wilbur’s always been a bit of mourner, ey? Can’t let anything go. Should be dressed up in all loose flow-y robes. Black ‘uns, like a funeral goer.”
When Schlatt stares back at him, full house reflected in his glassy eyes, Tommy swivels a hand like he’s trying to scoop a reaction right out of him.
“‘Cause L’Manburg’s dead as shit,” he elaborates.
“Black robes? Like the fucking Llorona?” Schlatt crows, sliding their cardboard chips over to his end of the table.
A bit more like Mum, Tommy thinks, and then deposits that concept to some far reaching corner of his mental inventory where he’ll never, ever think it again.
Instead: “Do you think it’s bad to mourn? I reckon it is. Keeps you trapped in the past. Real pussy-like, yeah?”
“Good God,” Schlatt replies. His voice is tinged with something like sunset. “Didn’t take you for a sad drunk.”
It’s not sad. It’s just the way things are. Wilbur mourns, stuck in his own little glue trap of sadness, and Tommy–as of his Train-Van-Bus-Ride Realisation–doesn’t.
Mourning’s not gotten him anything except identity issues and uncomfortable conversations with Miss Puffy.
Before he can dwell on that further, Schlatt scoffs: “Fuck. you’re not even gonna contest that? You sneak some of the good stuff while I wasn’t looking?”
Shrugging, Tommy flicks the edge of a joker. “Just drunk on life, brother. Drunk on life.”
“No,” Schlatt says, “you’re not. Another hand?”
-
Sometimes, Tommy’s detective skills plant thoughts right into his brain. Psychic instinct, or some shit. Got that Class-A Harrier Du Bois method.
“Why are we the only ones here?” he asks Schlatt. And then, scrunching his eyes up at his cards: “I want to split.”
Schlatt frowns. “Look at your fuckin’ hand. No, you don’t.”
“I do,” he grouses and Schlatt blows a plume of dark smoke in his face in return. Tommy scoots his cards into two separate spots–each a new bet. “Is it because we’ve done something wrong in life? Or just like, we can’t move on?”
“Fuck if I know. Probably the latter, yeah? Never seen anybody ‘move on’, except your brother.” After a moment, he deals Tommy another two cards. They’re good ones. “You see him up there?”
“Yeah,” he admits. “But I tried not to. He’s all…ghosty. Couldn’t remember half of what he’d been through. Real eager to bond with Fundy, ‘nd like, live in the sewers and shit.”
“You kidding me? Damn. And I thought he was all airy down here.”
“Stand,” Tommy declares. “And, whatd’ya mean?”
“Kept going foggy. Poor bastard could barely keep it together sometimes, y’know? Like a goddamned goldfish.”
Huh. So before Ghostbur had appeared, Wilbur had been down here, acting all foggy ‘nd shit. Or, he’d been here at the same time Ghostbur was up there and something had made him…pass through.
Or, they were the same. And Tommy’s shitty, awful brother is dead for good and that stupid static baby-ghost has replaced him forever.
After a moment, he remembers that they’re actually playing a game and Schlatt is probably waiting for some kind of commentary. When he turns to offer one, the guy is just sitting there, head tilted up. His eyes cut a beacon into the hazy distance behind Tommy’s head like he’s scanning for something without really looking.
Leaning, Tommy catches his eye. Schlatt shakes his head like a dog, sending whatever thoughts were ping-ponging through his empty old-man brain into the smoke.
“Huh,” he says. He brushes a hand over the deck. “That’s game. How’d you pull off that one? Been counting cards?”
Tommy offers him a noncommittal shrug. “Dunno,” he hedges. “Can’t help it if I am.”
Then, reflexively: “Dickhead. Maybe I’ve just been paying attention, yeah? Ever think about that? Maybe your diseased cor-tex-es can’t keep up, you–“
At that, Schlatt actually does laugh. It’s a short, bark-like thing and it steals the rest of Tommy’s sentence right out of his mouth.
“Sure,” he says. “Sure. Step one of winning, right?”
Tommy sucks in a breath. This feels like a trap–or a test, maybe. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t have much more time to ponder. Schlatt’s already dealing another round. He doesn’t shuffle.
-
It only took two steps to hop into the Camaravan. Tommy remembers that even now–he’d skipped them both when Dream had led them to Schlatt.
Behind him, Tubbo had climbed each with deliberate slowness, lingering on the top one like it took every ounce of effort in the world to step over it.
Maybe it did; Big T, despite the name, is a short bastard. Walking up stairs for him is like…a ghost killing a cat. Yeah . Just like that. ‘Cause that’s like, a really hard thing to do for something so weak and a prick move. Only a prick would–
That’s not it, though. He knows it.
Tubbo had been quiet the whole time. Not uncharacteristic–Tubbo loves his gloomy, awkward silences, he does. But this was Schlatt . The big boss. Just kicking the shit out of Fundy, tearing them and their ideas all up to pieces. And dying.
And Tubbo was silent.
Despite that, he’d been the only one with a bow drawn. It’d been all stuffed up with fireworks and Tommy didn’t know how he could look at the things, much less hold them.
But that’d felt right too, hadn’t it? They balance each other, him and Tubbo. He’d been the one acting like a mad animal after the execution–not his friend fresh off the chopping block. Gone for Techno with everything he had, beating and scraping at him with his fists in the Pit while his friend stood there, still and silent, head tilted in curious acceptance.
He doesn’t like to admit this one, but it slots in too well to ignore:
It’d been him mad at Tubbo for staying with Schlatt. He’d boiled over with indignant rage even though Tubbo was the one risking his life to spy for them.
In the end, it was the shoes that did it. Stuffy, shiny black loafers that looked like they chafed at the ankles. And Tubbo had walked the whole way in them. Gone miles and miles into the forest so they could meet at a spot between middle-of-nowhere ravine and Manburg.
And Tommy’d been so, so angry.
First, Eret. Then, idiot fish-fox boy.
Then, Tubbo. His best friend had stayed behind, and Tommy’d been ready to throw everything away in fury.
When he flips a card over, he sees Tubbo again. He’s in the Jack of Hearts, but only his half-frown, all soft lines and sadness. But not shock. There’s something knowing about them both.
Tommy’s hands shake. There’s more to this memory.
-
If it’s a test, he passes–he wins the next few games. If Schlatt’s mad about the card counting, it’s his fault, ‘cause he should really shuffle better. Or at all.
“D’you think,” Tommy posits, three-quarters through the way of a Kings in the Corner round, “I’m only off the train-bus because I decided to accept my fate? I think so.”
Schlatt snorts. “I thought you got flung into a wall.”
“Well, yeah . But it goes with our other theory. About it giving you a vehicle you like–one real important to you when you were alive, yeah? And when I told it I was ready, it kicked my ass and tried to ghost-kill me.”
Schlatt draws. “You really think that? I’ll tell you what–makes you happy? Believe it. Seems like a bunch of sentimentalist shit to me.”
“Fuck off,” Tommy snarls, a little stung. What right does the guy who spends eternity playing card games have to decide on his theories? Loneliness probably fogged up his already poisoned brain. Soon, it’s gonna send him down the route his liver did. Prick.
Then, he remembers that he’d been the one to ask Schlatt’s opinion in the first place. Ugh. Unbidden embarrassment floods over him and he imagines the train-car so as not to drown in it.
Sixteen steps. Back and forth.
Sheepish, he tacks on a hurried: “You got a better idea?”
“No,” Schlatt replies, easily. His eyes wrinkle at the corners. “I’m just messing with you. Wanted to see if you’d pitch a fit or not.”
“You fucker.”
“Wah-wah,” Schlatt vocalises, and if Tommy had a pillow he’d smother them both with it. “You really want my take? It’s just like you said, except when I say it, it doesn’t sound like it’s come from a whining toddler. Dream tried to bring you back to life and your train wasn’t ready for that. It wanted you at the station like any regular dead guy, so it hit the breaks the second you complied with your miserable little existence.”
Exactly. That’d been exactly it–he’d thought as much, just as he’d left the tunnel, but it feels pretty good to hear someone else say it. Except, Schlatt’d said–
“–Dream. How’d you know it was Dream?”
“What, you think he found the book himself? No, no. I’m an essential part of the supply chain.” He coughs. It sounds wet and when he pulls his palm back, bright and swirly goop stains the back of it. “He could never have procured something like that on his own.”
Huh, Tommy thinks. Huh.
Something clicks into place.
-
While exiled, he’d walked into mobs, forgotten to eat, and just generally let himself get hurt. Sometimes, he’d wake up drowning.
When banished, Tubbo had told him of Schlatt doing the same things–he hacked up bits lung every day but sent Ponk away every chance he got. Found oblivion at the bottom of a bottle even though the shit was collapsing him from within. Escalated conflicts with the people close to him in a way that cut him off forever and damaged every single bond he had.
Couldn’t swim, either. But he walked into the water anyway.
-
This is the other half. It’s not one he’s pieced together until now:
Tubbo had been the first to suggest Schlatt’d died of a heart attack. He’d been loud about it, high-pitched and strung out, but not shocked.
That’s why he’d been so quiet, before. He, like Schlatt, had just known. And neither of them tried to fight it.
-
In a way, Tommy’s done fighting, too. He’s not giving up on himself, mind you. Nor his afterlife. None of it. And he’s not ‘done’ in some pathetic way–the kind where he throws his hands up, says some snappy line about L’Manburg, and tears everyone and everything down with him.
Instead, he’s just going to stop thrashing and clawing his way through life.
He’s going to think. And pay attention. And learn and listen. Going to look at shit for what it is rather than some secret attack. Recognize that being a reactionary isn’t intrinsic to being a revolutionary.
Giving up is for pussies.
But he’s not going to fight anymore.
-
There are only so many games he can play before everything catches up with him. Boredom is chief of those feelings–all king of the hill in his mind.
“I wish there was something else to do,” he mutters, plaintive.
Across the table, Schlatt files his final hand back into a tattered card box. “What, you wanna play Solitaire or some shit? Be my guest.”
“How do you do it?” Tommy interjects, ignoring the question entirely. “How do you spend forever out here, all by yourself?”
“Good God. Did you always ask so many fucking questions?”
“Yes,” Tommy answers, honestly.
“Must’ve tuned them out, then.”
Chest puffed, Tommy kicks at him under the table. “Well, you should start listening and grovelling, my friend. I’m practically a philosopher. Dispensing earthly wisdom all the time, all while you were out here being–”
He waves a hand. “–alone, ‘nd shit.”
Schlatt sighs. A dark smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You know, Tubbo never asked half as many. Damn good secretary, too. Even if he was a spy the entire fucking time. Just like that goddamned fox kit your brother made. Just like my bastard of a husband.”
Then, teeth-glinting in the lantern-light, he taps his chest. Once, twice: slow and persistent, a mob bashing at an oak door.
“I felt it. Did you know that? Heard his cute little song, first. Then you two swinging around my bones. But him. My heart, twitching in his stomach. That’s what’s keeping me here. All of this is thanks to those fucking losers. My entire fucking cabinet. We could’ve had the whole goddamned world together. Had it good, right until–”
Like he’s been shocked back into himself, Schlatt stops, abrupt. Something incomprehensible passes over his face and all at once, Tommy remembers who exactly he’s sitting with.
L’Manburg’s dictator and Tubbo’s executioner sighs, low and heavy. His tone is like ice when he says: “Look at me, pissing out my heart trying to explain things to you. You already know all about this, huh?”
“Leave Tubbo the fuck alone,” Tommy snarls. “He’s the best of all of us. Worth ten of you and me, okay? You don’t know the half of it. He’s been through so much shit because of you.”
Because of me, too, he reminds himself.
Everything in him sharpens; every nerves in his body morphing into crossbow strings drawn firm and tight.
Twitching, he slides his hand towards the scissors on his bench. Just in case.
“Fuck it,” Schlatt mutters, just loud enough that Tommy can hear. “To answer your question,” he continues, measured, deliberately so, “I’m not always alone. There was your brother, for instance. And MD. God, when that guy’s around, this place is a fucking riot.”
This time, when Schlatt smiles, it feels a little more real: “And there’s the cat, too.”
“The cat?” Tommy asks. His heart jumps in his chest. It makes his voice squeak a little.
Nodding, Schlatt stretches and stands. “I’ll go grab her. And bring back something for you to do, too, you insatiable little freak.”
Wind gusts through the station. It flutters the tailored cuffs on his sleeves.
“I don’t forgive you,” Tommy blurts. His fists remain curled at his side.
“Okay,” Schlatt says. He draws the word out in his mouth like Tommy’s some kind of idiot. “Well, that’s just peachy, because I’m not asking you to.”
Tommy blinks. Before he can formulate some kind of response, Schlatt jumps in again: “And I don’t forgive you, either. Even if you think you were right about all that shit. And I’m sure you do.”
He doesn’t even know, anymore. Their coup wasn’t legitimate, sure, but Schlatt was a fucking monster . There’s no denying that. And Tommy’d never known Wilbur’d wanted to blow the place to bits. He’d done it for the people and his friends and himself–not because he wanted power, or to be the hero, or any of that other grandiose bullshit. He’d taken L’Manburg back because it was right.
“This sucks, ” Tommy says, in lieu of anything better.
“Yeah, well,” Schlatt shrugs. Smoke tugs at him like metal to a magnet, crumbling atoms off his shoes. “Welcome to the afterlife.”
-
Her name was Pussboy. Best name ever, really and double-funny because she wasn’t a boy. Unless she was. Transgender cat style and all.
When Schlatt brings her back, she looks just as he remembers–grey and white, with a crooked tail. Selfishly, he’s so, so glad she doesn’t look the other way he remembers, right before the end.
Schlatt drops her on the ground in front of them. She flops lazily over his shoes, rubbing her head against them and purring like the van’s engine.
She doesn’t even glance the other way.
Tommy’s glad. He’s glad she won’t come up to him. True, Schlatt doesn’t deserve her, either, but Miss Pussboy’s well within her rights to not want to get all motor-enginey over the guy who killed her. This is good.
There’s a lump in his throat. This is good.
-
“You gave Dream the book,” Tommy interjects, out of the blue. Or–grey. Everything is gray, here. “Is that why you just stood there and took it? Because you thought Dream would bring you back, so you didn’t even have to try?”
Schlatt scoffs. He’s got a paperback in his hand, courtesy of his brief wander into the endless smoke outside the station. An additional one sits on Tommy’s lap, but really, he hasn’t touched it. He’s not much a reading guy. He’s an auteur. He creates and shit. Doesn’t need to regurgitate…whatever the fuck this worn-out old book is. Yeah.
After a long beat, Schlatt blows out a thick plume of purple smoke. It smells horrid, but Tommy valiantly waits for him to reply instead of hitting him with a pro-bono anti-smoking campaign speech. On account of him being dead already, and all.
Pussboy swings her bent tail, sniffing at the ash in the air.
“Yes,” Schlatt says, sluggish and careful. “But also, to prove a point.”
“Against us,” Tommy elaborates. “That L’Manburg was shit, we were shit and you were gonna go out on your own terms.”
To his credit, Schlatt doesn’t even rise to the jab. All he does is nod, shrugging a little as he leafs past another weathered page. “Sure. Yeah.”
“You were willing to die,” Tommy stresses, “to prove a point. That’s–that’s fucking crazy, even for a guy who thought he could keep coming back. Bonkers. Why?”
Annoyance splinters Schlatt’s face like lightning. He masks it well, but Tommy’s good at picking that shit up. He’s sensitive to the changes in the air and all that psychic stuff.
“Jesus. This some kind of interrogation?”
Then, frowning, he flips another page: “Don’t answer that. Here’s the thing, Tommy: I’ve been willing to die for a long, long, time.”
“Well,” Tommy replies, frowning back at him, “welcome to the afterlife.”
-
They read. It’s silent, except for the breeze. And the purring.
-
It’s official–his ride here stockholm-syndromed him. Pretty evil, he’d say. Class action offence, really; Tommy’s been stockholmed at least twice before and he’s getting awful tired of playing bingo with psychiatric conditions.
But, whatever. Because he’s in the business of not avoiding things now, he can readily admit it: awful or not, he liked that the train-bus let him measure time. Even if it was only really an efficient system for a little bit, right before he got thrown out the door.
Here, there’s nothing. Schlatt doesn’t have a watch and Tommy’s too nervous about entering the fog to search for one.
That’s where they get all their shit, apparently. The fog. Smoke. Whatever. Playing cards, he understands. Those could easily come from Schlatt’s pockets. Scissors–sure, maybe , because the guy was a bit of a freak when alive. Wouldn’t put it past him to have stashed those spooky rusty ones, just for the creep factor.
But there’s no way he carted around paperbacks and wet cat food.
“That’s where I stay, most of the time,” Schlatt tells him, friendly.
“Sounds like shit.”
A huff. Schlatt’s voice is oddly fond, warm and placating like afternoon rain:
“Eh. It’s not so bad. Being scattered across time and space makes everything else…stop.” He rolls his ankle. It clicks unnaturally with the movement. “Plus, you get to browse all the shit back there."
“I don’t think I want everything else to stop,” Tommy retaliates, picking out each word intently, like he’s drawing a needle through skin. “I think I like experiencing everything. Good and bad.”
At that, two pairs of eyes flick to meet his. Schlatt’s hand pauses on the cat’s spine and Tommy does his best not to shirk the thing’s yellow gaze.
“Yeah?”
His voice is neutral. Intentionally so–Tommy knows what it sounds like when someone’s digging for a response.
“Yeah,” Tommy affirms, just as carefully. “I don’t think I’d like it at all.”
-
Once, he’d built a holiday home for a cow. A little spruce and cobble shack on a hilltop, mashed together bit by bit with his own hands.
Henry’s long gone, now. So’s the house–burnt down by the man who plagues every single inch of Tommy’s life.
But the beginning, it was just the two of them. Mid-build, he’d returned with his arms heaped with logs and found himself face to face with two more Henries–big, massive beasts, grazing away at his land. Right away he’d recognized them as being more useful as food than friend. Especially since Sapnap was ready to maul any pet of his, anyway.
But both of them, before he’d gotten the chance to bring down his axe, had simply turned and stared. Soft, massive brown eyes, gazing at him with a gentle fondness unmatched by anything but farm animals.
They didn’t run. Didn’t mewl, or wail, or plead. They just stood there. Looking at him.
And still, Tommy’d found it in him to reach out, touch them with careful, gentle fingers and tuck his axe away.
-
Here’s a secret:
Most of the wailing Tommy’s heard through his whole life has been from Wilbur.
Wil was tough, sure. Didn’t shed a tear when losing his country or his son. Just fell back to some hole in the ground, put on a brave face, and started planning.
That’s why Tommy agrees to keep embarrassing shit like this under wraps–Wil kept his chin held high right until he blew it off his face.
But at night, when he slept, he’d scream.
-
Another secret, then. This one’s less well kept:
Between the three of them, it’d always been Technoblade who Wilbur loved best. It’s the reason Schlatt invited him along to the Festival–he’d known that where one went, inevitably, the other would follow.
The concept applied in reverse, too–on the nights Wilbur’s wailing echoed off the walls of their ravine, Techno tended their garden.
The memories are muddled in Tommy’s mind. No matter the details, they always go like this:
It’s a farm, he’ll tell Tommy. Too big to be anything else. Too much effort’s gone into it for you t’be callin’ it a garden.
And he’ll respond: If it’s only feeding four people, it’s a garden. Effort’s not made Tubbo any taller than 166 cm, has it?
It could feed a hundred.
It could. Rows of quick-growing produce stretch into the dark recesses of Pogtopia. Tubbo’s hooked the whole thing up to some redstone wiring to make the whole thing even faster. Thousands of the things lie bound by thin rope and hastily made crates. Half have gone bad.
This is what Techno doesn’t understand:
It’s not for lack of water that Wilbur doesn’t wash his grime-coated trenchcoat or mangy hair. And it’s not for lack of food that he doesn’t eat.
-
Okay. One last secret:
Even if it’s Techno who Wilbur loved most, it’s Tommy who understood him.
That’s what makes everything so much worse. Phil’s never ‘gotten’ people much to begin with. Time’s all strange where he’s concerned, and Wilbur’d done a bangup job pretending to be a sane person in all his letters.
And Techno–Techno acted on what he thought Wilbur wanted. And what was convenient for his beliefs. Did a damn good job of it too, seeing as L’Manburg’s gone forever, now.
Tommy, though.
He knew. Even if he hadn’t predicted everything, he’d known from the moment Wilbur had looked at him, voice soft as smoke, and said you’re never going to be President, Tommy.
That’s the real wound–one worse than any dealt by wither skull or diamond sword. Tommy understood Wilbur through-and-through and acted on that knowledge just as little.
-
This isn’t a secret so much as it is a realisation–one so fresh and frightening that Tommy’s not yet given it a name.
Epiphany or not, he’s still mourning. It’s more than a glue trap or a leash. It’s everything about him.
About everyone, really. There are cobblestone towers in Technoblade’s yard. A crayon colored uniform, loathed by its owner, sits folded in a drawer. Even though it’s obliterated to bedrock, the rubble of New L’Manburg is covered in glass.
Schlatt’s heart thrums in Quackity’s stomach.
Grief makes you act. It makes you want to do something . Strongest force there is, really.
Action is something Tommy knows. It’s his whole life (and death!) phil-os-o-phy. He refuses to be trapped in the past, but maybe…
Maybe paying attention to grief isn’t so bad. More than anything, it’s made him want to change the future.
-
He’s not eating any fucking hearts, though.
-
This is step two. He’s paid plenty of attention.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy says, plainly.
Heat prickles across his face in an instant. Bitchass breeze has weakened every other sentence the two of them have uttered, but when Tommy’s finally gathered up his guts to say something important, the air falls still and dry.
Every syllable hovers.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, forcing eye-contact, “for hurting you. I don’t want to be that kind of person anymore, and I’m really, really trying not to be. I’m making plans. I’m thinking ahead. Too smart for me to explain to you–Big Men only, and all. But all that sad shit? I’m controlling it. Paying attention to every bit.”
On account of being a cat, Pussboy does not respond. It’s okay. Tommy’s not gonna force her to go all Martha Speaks or anything. All in her own time, of course.
“Feel free to claw the shit out of me,” he offers, extending his palm towards her nose. “My pity gift to you, my friend. Buy one claw mark, get nine–d’ya have ten, total? Is it more fingers for cats, or less?–free. On my honour.”
Pussboy sniffs, hesitant. When her nose brushes his palm it leaves a mark like a little dewdrop.
“Listen,” Tommy continues, fingers flexing involuntarily, “I’m just fuckin’ talking. Your move, Miss Puss. Filling the dead air’s what they’ve got me on contract for. So weird when it’s quiet. Fuckin’ evil, if you ask m–”
“Jesus Christ,” cuts in Schlatt, and oh hey , Pussboy’s sentient cat-tree’s interrupting their moment. “You are the saddest kid in the world.”
“Maybe,” Tommy agrees. “But I’m trying to act on it.”
There’s soot and grime on his fingers. A side effect, likely, of his bus-train-van adventure. All that crawling around wasn’t the cleanest activity to begin with, but then there was the crash, and...
Well. Most of it’s gotten rubbed off on the cards. But now, scraping at his calloused finger pads, Pussboy cleans it away with little sandpaper swipes. Her motor’s started, revving through her chest all engine-like.
“Thank you,” Tommy breathes. Ghosting up her spine, his other hand taps at her head with slow, easy strokes. She bumps against it, eager to mush up against his open palm. “I mean it. Thank you.”
Unblemished skin emerges in the spots she cleans. It’s fresh and bright, like the sunrise, or her little pink tongue.
-
When he sits back, shaking his raw and stinging hands, it only takes one glance from Schlatt to know that he understands.
“Okay,” Tommy says, rolling his shoulders. Right now, nothing holds them back. He’s got to prepare for the feeling of a million-billion of those little threads. Or, more likely, what’s at their spool.
“About fucking time,” Schlatt grouses, but he’s grinning. His teeth are too sharp, and if Tommy looks close enough at his chest–
Ugh. No hot angel ladies could possibly nullify the horror of what’s going on in there.
“Yeah, yeah. C’mon, Miss Puss,” he says, and she gives a biiiig stretch. “I’m ready.”
This time, he understands what he’s getting into for certain. And he means it.
-
There is no dawn, here. There’s just him, and Schlatt, and the cat. Grey engulfs the world, and when Tommy begins whistling to pierce it, he pretends he can hear the doves.
Aside from all that, there’s something very morning-esque about it. The closer they get to the point of return, the warmer the air grows. Instinctively, Tommy glances around for a water bucket, just in the event that some on-fire zombie gets the jump on him.
The second he fully comprehends the motion, he snorts. Pussboy’s the only non-player here, and she’s never, ever catching on fire again.
Still, Tommy glances up. In the distance, the tunnel’s white maw seems to grow brighter. It feels like any second now the sun will rise.
-
Behind the wreckage, where all the thread spools from, sits a portal. No flint and steel required–it glows green, swirling like an endless storm. This time, thunder’s going to strike, first. He’s contemplated long enough.
-
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with?” Tommy asks.
“You don’t want that,” Schlatt replies, evenly.
“Wasn’t offering. Bitch. Just need to make sure you’re not gonna follow behind me and trip me or something while I’m going in. You could do that, I bet, considering you’re rather the worst man in the history of everything ever.”
Pussboy mrrrps. Thoughtful, Tommy acknowledges her commentary by adjusting her in his arms like he’s carrying a people baby and not a knife-handed animal baby.
“And, I’m taking your cat. So I just need to know if you come back–if you make it back, eventually, or whatever–if you’re going to hunt me down.”
Foot tapping, Tommy shuffles in place. “Or,” he says, stressing the word. “You could come now, and save me all the paranoia troubles. Yeah. I think you’d better just come now. I’ll tell you what, Big Man. It’s going to get awful lonely without my annoying questions down here. And Dream’s cell–hoo, boy. If it’s just me and him, I’ll be seeing you in a few minutes anyway, so–”
“Okay, cut that shit out,” Schlatt says, and Tommy shuts up immediately.
Schlatt looks at him, expectant. Frankly, Tommy feels the same way. He also doesn’t know why he’s saying what he’s saying. Or why he wants to talk with Schlatt for even a minute longer than absolutely necessary, knowing the guy drove Wil all crazy and stole their country and hurt Niki and Fundy and Tubbo and –
And it still isn’t right, Tommy reckons.
It’s not fair to just up and abandon Schlatt to this empty soupy afterlife, no matter how much of a prick he is. But he doesn’t know what to say to make any of it better.
“You’re going on a real face journey here,” Schlatt remarks. Something purple drips from between his teeth and sizzles on his suit jacket. “Save all the fucking, uh–self reflection, or whatever–for my sister.”
Maybe he will. And he’ll drag Wilbur along with him, if he can find him. Techno and Phil, too.
“Just wanted to say thanks.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Huh. You’re welcome, I guess.”
“No, really,” Tommy stresses. Even as the words are leaving his mouth he’s not certain why he’s saying them. “This was really good of you, Schlatt. You could’ve really fucked me over, y’know.”
“Christ, kid. Skip the sentimentals, okay? I just didn’t want you stinking up my afterlife.” He sighs, though he looks more amused than anything. “You and your stupid fuckin’ accent.”
Tommy scoffs and takes another step forward. The light swirls in front of them, filching away bits and pieces of his soul.
He casts Schlatt a final look over his shoulder. The portal’s light pools around his feet. “When I get back up there and get out, I’ll–I’ll burn some whey powder for you, or something.”
And then, quieter: “Will it hurt?”
Schlatt frowns at him, a little mystified. “Probably, kid.”
“That - that fucking sucks ,” Tommy replies. His heart stamps a pattern on his ribs.
Pussboy’s heart is slowbut strong; a hoe digging rhythmic hollows into farmland. She’s purring a little.
A hyena’s laugh erupts from Schlatt’s throat. “Yeah, no shit! No shit. Living hurts, man. It‘s all worth it anyway.”
“That’s rich from you, you know.”
“Sure is. Now, are you getting the fuck out of here, or not?” Schlatt asks, taking a step back. Gravel crunches underneath him.
Green engulfs everything. Tommy nods as he steps forward even though he’s not certain anyone can see.
“And keep your idiot brothers safe, okay?” Schlatt calls. His voice sounds like it’s coming from under an ocean. “All three of ‘em.”
-
Before Tommy can make fun of Schlatt for miscounting, he dies for a fourth time.
-
He wakes up in a forest. It’s one he knows on sound and smell alone–birch trees outside what used to be a great big obsidian wall.
Good God. It’s a little funny. Ironic and odd, too. Like an old embassy made out of dirt, or a woodland cottage that housed a polar bear.
For the first time in a long time, his breathing goes soft. All steadylike–the way it’s meant to be. Its beat marches on in time with the gravel melody of the warm, fuzzy thing in his arms.
He can hear the doves. Once he blinks the sleep-dust out of his eyes, he can see the sky, too; deep purple, lightened at the bottom like a half-mixed potion.
That’s it, then. The sun is about to rise.