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Techno had been... concerned, after since Tommy had shown up at his cabin.
Stumbling back into the cabin, exhausted and with a pounding headache from Chat’s screaming throughout the chaos of the day, only to find his little brother burrowed into his floorboards was almost enough to make him pick up and move all over again to get some damn peace. That thought left quickly after seeing his brother’s state— burns and bruises like paint spatter across him, a gash across his forehead dripping into his eyes, and a bare foot so frostbit he’d lost the damn thing. It was hard to feel much other than frantic worry, at that point.
And yet now, the chill in his bones defrosted and mind unclouded by pain and sickness, Techno honestly struggled to recognize his little brother. The light had left his eyes, the constant yell in his lungs had run out of steam, his energy consumed itself before he could become a missile of gangly teen bouncing around the place.
Yet the thing that kept catching in his brain, the thing that made his stomach twist and his voice join the screaming, raving masses of Chat was his appetite.
Ever since he’d woken up a week ago, Tommy had been refusing food at every opportunity, acting like it was poisoned. The only thing he’d eaten, besides small bites of bread and the odd piece of a meal Techno made, was golden apples. He’d had to put a stop to that pretty quickly— the magic inherent to them could be rough on a regular, healthy person, with its insane adrenaline high and magic flooding the system. With how Tommy was right now… well, Techno was half-sure the gapples could kill him, so he’d had to hide them all out in the barn where Tommy couldn’t reach them.
He'd instead been focusing on making Tommy meals that would be easy on his stomach, even with the clear effects of starvation he was under. And yet no matter his attempts—
With Tommy finally awake for the first time after the amputation, Techno was desperate to get some food into him, and the soup he’d kept warm in the kitchen was perfect. Returning to the room with a bowl and a bit of bread, he’d kept eyes on the bed, avoiding meeting Tommy’s. “Figured you’d be hungry, after a week-long coma—”
Tommy had gotten sick of the bedroom, now sitting on the couch in a pile of furs and blankets while Techno finished toast and rice, his most recent attempt at a simple meal that wouldn’t be too harsh on Tommy’s recovering stomach. “Soups up, Theseus.”
“I’m back, Toms,” Techno called, dipping through the door with a dusting of snow falling from his cape. Drawing a basket from underneath the damp fabric, he set it on the end table beside Tommy, drawing back the cloth protecting his prize buy from the village. The cream-filled pastries may not be as perfectly fresh as before, but he’d hoped to tempt Tommy to eat, regardless of how easy it would be on his stomach. “Figured you might like something sweet.”
—he always got the same answer.
Tommy’s face paled, his already sallow, gaunt face going white, lips drawn in a tight line. His eyes flickered frantically, as if his offer was a crossbow pointed between his little brother’s eyes. His hands twitched before he tangled his fingers together, as if to keep himself from reaching for the food.
“It’s fine, I’m not hungry anyway.”
It made something angry and pained and wrathful wrap his heart in a vice grip, every time. Tommy had been starved and abused, forgotten to the rest of the server to his suffering alone in Exile. Every wound on Tommy had been another blow to his soul, and they didn’t stop coming even after he’d gotten him safely under his wing in the cabin. Even he had failed his brother. And now that he finally had a chance to do better, do more, he was failing again. It wouldn’t matter that he managed to patch up his little brother’s wounds or build a prosthetic for his leg if Tommy just kept wasting away quietly under his watch.
He didn’t know what had happened in Exile, to bring him to this point, but that had to come second. Techno had a job to do, and it was to take care of his baby brother.
He wasn’t about to fail again.
Feet are shit, Tommy decided.
Sitting on Techno’s couch, he considered yet again, the prosthetic he’d been given, and the many ways in which it was even more shit than a normal foot. The ankle joint wobbled oddly, making a strange clicking sound with every move; if he shook it hard enough, the foot would just flap like a flag in high wind. It also would make Techno pause whatever he was fucking with in the kitchen to loom over the counter and glower at him until he stopped. (He had to stop after the fourth time when Techno threatened to take it away— he stopped. He couldn’t lose it. He wouldn’t have something else taken away from him, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, Dream, please, I worked so hard—)
The ankle was weird enough, but the toes didn’t move, and that was even weirder, just carved wood without flexibility. The leather straps that wrapped around the knee and the pieces linking it to the socket were just as weird, too many buckles and too bulky too wrong to replace a piece of him—
The shit-est part was how he wasn’t even allowed to wear it yet. Needing to “rest” and “heal” and “allow his body time to adjust” and “not tear open the brand-new wound of the stump.” Bullshit, all of it.
The heel was cool, at least. The swirling pattern in the wood coalesced into a perfect spiral there, like a wooden whirlpool, sanded smooth and rounded off. He’d give Techno that, the fucking perfectionist.
“Hey.”
Speaking of.
Glancing up from his stupid wooden appendage, was his worst enemy: Technoblade, The Blood God, the Warrior of Hypixel, with another tray of food and a trying-really-hard-to-be-Phil’s-kind-of-stern stare.
“You need to eat.”
Like he hadn’t heard that before. Hell, like he hadn’t—
Sitting in the Camarvan, cramped between all the others in the Revolution, shoulder to shoulder. Wilbur, strain in his every move, exhaustion in his eyes, holding out a piece of too-old, too-hard bread. “You need to eat,” he’d say, like he said every time food ran short, while handing what he had to him. And every time, with a smile, he’d pass it off to Tubbo and say—
The too still, too quiet, too echo-y walls of Pogtopia towered over him, whenever he ate with Wilbur— the ravine always felt a little smaller, a little less overwhelming, eating with Tubbo or Techno. The walls got taller, the more his brother ignored the meal he’d brought, staring at the walls and murmuring to himself. It killed his appetite, to say the least, every time he saw Wilbur slipping, and able to do nothing about it. Even when he went back down to the twisting halls, back to the others asking if he was hungry, he’d wave them off with an easy lie and a quick—
—always had an answer. It was a damn good answer, too. No one needed to worry, he didn’t need to eat when his stomach was tied in knots and food sounded like literal torture. And it worked, too! Sure, Wilbur had seen through it in the Revolution, but they’d had too much else to worry about most days. And with him dead and gone, the only person who still knew his trick was Tubbo, and—
“Dream, please detain and escort Tommy out of my country.”
… he didn’t have to worry about him snitching, to say the least. It’s not like Techno would’ve known his habit from Pogtopia either, he’d always just said he ate with Wilbur (he tried to, at least, desperately tried to sit with his brother and eat and see his brother in that husk again it didn’t work).
It was a good, easy lie. Tommy was comfortable with his tight meals, with that familiar, gnawing pain at his gut. It was stabilizing, in a way, to know how much he could survive, to know that he took so little to survive. Where others would shut down like this, he thrived, lived every day with the one full meal he ate.
It was part of being a survivor, a soldier. It was part of being Tommy.
That didn’t change in Exile, even if the trick’s effectiveness did.
Dream’s mask, as impartial as always, tilted as if a curious bird. He still held out the bread he’d offered, but there was an odd sense of tension around it now; like the bait to a trap. “You have to eat, Tommy.” His voice was steeped in that odd kind of condescension he had whenever Tommy disappointed him now. Worry, he assured himself, it’s just how Dream shows he’s worried.
Like clockwork, he answered. He was a robot with a preprogrammed response, if someone talked about this sort of thing. “It’s fine, I’m not hungry anyway.”
And for having no face to express, he was damn good at making the air feel sharp around him, like a step closer would be impalement and a step back might prompt them to launch forward.
“Tommy. You should really—”
“—have something to eat, y’know?”
A sharp shake of his head, and Tommy was staring at a plate: buttered toast and mashed potatoes, a bowl of soup brimming with vegetables steaming beside it. He felt his stomach lurch at the sight, the need to escape heightening in time with his tightening throat.
“I’m not hungry.”
Techno wasn’t just frowning now. He was outright glowering, the stubborn line of his mouth in a near scowl, eyebrows creeping closer to one another. The air felt tighter, hard to breathe, too thick to drag into his lungs. “Tommy—”
“It looks good, big man,” Tommy quickly amended, desperately trying to snag a bit more air, a bit more breath to protest and plead and beg his case, because this wasn’t something he could compromise on. “Don’t get me wrong, you make a good housewife— heh, TechnoWife— but I’m just not hungry and I really don’t want to take food away from ya, you clearly need a lot of food to keep up being a fuckin’ tank, so you should really just eat it instead—”
“Tommy.” He jolted as a hand, thick and calloused and far stronger than his, slowly and gently settled on his knee. Techno was on one knee in front of him now, tray set on the table, the strained look to his face replaced with worry. “Breathe.”
… Fuck. Techno took a too-loud, obviously overdone breath for Tommy to mimic, which he did. Tried, at least. It hurt, every time, to think of how simple a task breathing was and how shaky it was, how weak he was that he needed help with it, in moments like this.
In, hold, out; in, hold, out; in, hold, out— until Techno gave a nod of approval and Tommy felt like the air wasn’t trying to escape from around him anymore.
“So, care to tell me why you refuse to eat?”
It would be easy to tell him, in theory. The words weren’t difficult to say, nothing hard to pronounce or any he didn’t know the meaning of. The hard part would be Techno. Anyone knowing would hurt and burn and ache like a wound, but Technoblade— that would be a final blow. His brother already hated him and was taking care of him out of some pity or honor or whatever bullshit reason he had besides family because their family was a fractured mess of bloodied diamond swords and you want to be a hero’s, but this?
Techno would know exactly how worthless he was.
“Not particularly.”
Techno sighed, and Tommy couldn’t help a pang of guilt at the anxiety that clung to his face. How selfish was he, making Techno do all of this for him, and refusing him the one thing he’d asked of Tommy? How terrible a person did he have to be to take advantage of the last vestiges of their brotherhood for this?
“Tommy, I don’t know what happened in Exile—”
The hiss of TNT—
Gasping and clinging to bruised ribs—
“Why don’t you ever listen, Tommy—”
“Nothing happened in Exile!” He snapped, too quick and too raw.
Techno regarded him with the same level of belief as if Tommy had told him he’d just had a tea party with George and Sapnap. “… We’re really still goin’ with that?”
“Yes,” Tommy bluntly declared. He was sticking with this until he had no other choice.
“Fine. Well, I don’t know what happened to cause this then, but you need to eat. I can’t let you just starve.”
“You could always just give me a gapple.”
“Not gonna happen.”
Tommy leaned back, arms crossed with the same stubborn flame lighting his face. “Then I s’pose I’ll just starve, then.”
“Also not gonna happen.” Techno seemed to consider for a moment, before he was settling into a cross-legged position on the floor in front of Tommy.
“… What’re you doing?”
“Sittin’ here with you until you eat,” Techno stated, like that was a normal thing to do.
Tommy scowled, arms tightening instinctively where they crossed his chest. “That’s fuckin’ stupid.”
“Maybe,” Techno shrugged. “But I’m willing to try.”
Tommy… didn’t know how to respond to that. I mean, what the fuck?! The fucking Blade was sitting crisscross-applesauce like a child waiting for a story, staring expectantly at him like eating would be a gods-damned performance! So, he just huffed, leaning back against the arm of the couch, settling in for the battle of wills. He could outlast Techno, no problem. He’d waited out long, cold nights in the Revolution, hours of mining alone in the ravine, the endless days of too-much-quiet in Exile around Dream’s visits.
… Fuck, the quiet hurt his ears. Plan B, then: Annoy, like he was best at.
“You’re stupid.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And smell like shit.”
“Sure.”
“And not a single woman likes you.”
“Fine.”
“Fuck you!”
“Alright.”
A furious groan pulled from his throat, leaning forward to glare at his brother. “Can you stop being such a fucking dick?”
“I don’t think this is particularly dick behavior,” Techno said, the edge of a smile in his voice.
“Well, it is! Complete dick behavior, Tech-no-blade!”
“Damn. If the child says so—”
“I’m not a child!”
“You’re quite literally a child, by every metric.”
“And you’re a bitch in the metric system!”
“That literally doesn’t make sense.”
“Not to a lower intellect than that of Tomathy Innit.”
“We should all aspire to such heights of acumen.”
“That’s a made-up word.”
“Literally isn’t.”
“You’re lying. You’re just lying to yourself now, Tech.”
“I’ve never lied once in my life.”
And the gentle jab accidentally shook Tommy straight out of their back-and-forth, a conversation that could’ve been taken straight from their childhoods, straight into—
“You’re such a liar, Tommy.”
Dream’s hand locked around his throat, Tommy gasping and clinging to his wrists— he didn’t pull or scratch like he used to, just held on like a prayer. The had been bread dropped in the wet sand.
“I’m trying to be generous, and you lie just for fun? Are you just trying to trick me?”
“N-No, Dr-eam,” he choked, frantically shaking his head as best he could with his neck in a vice grip. Every finger was like a screw, pressing tighter around his neck like a collar, constricting around his airway.
“Still lying,” the elder hissed, looming higher, taller, larger than him. He was small, after all. A small, gangly liar, thief, manipulator. Dream was right. He always was.
Dream dropped him then, sudden as lightning, and he was facedown in the sand, sucking in breath after breath like they’d never come again.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, Tommy. Hopefully, some time alone will let you reflect on how to treat your friends.” He paused, tilting his head to consider. “Well, friend.”
There was the flicker of a portal, the humming of stepping through, and Tommy was alone again, holding his throat and coughing as bruises blossomed.
He crawled across the sand, grabbing the half-loaf, dusted in sand. He ate it, slowly, forcing every damn bite, because he wasn’t ungrateful. He’d take the gift, no matter how his stomach revolted, how the food tasted like rust and the sand was hot gunpowder in his mouth.
He threw it all up less than an hour later, but he’d tried. He had to, for Dream.
“You’re in my cabin, Tommy. You’re with me, you’re safe.”
His breath had gone fast again, his eyes refocusing in the present, locking onto the geometric pattern of the rug, the interlocking squares made by the threads.
“Yeah. Yeah, I… I know.”
He did. He wasn’t lying, right? He was a liar, after all. He certainly knew he was in the cabin, yeah, but— how safe was he? How safe could he ever be?
“I’m not lying,” he said lamely, looking at the tray of food, still steaming like a threat. “I’m not hungry.”
He needed this. He needed the choice he’d had, at every other opportunity of his life, where he was able to lie about the tightness of his stomach in peace. Where his friend— fuck, not friend— where Dream wasn’t able to force him or turn this on him.
He needed this lie so badly.
“I know you weren’t.” Techno slowly got up, settling onto the couch beside Tommy, shoulders brushing slightly. It was nice, the feeling of contact, knowing he could pull away. It made him lean a little closer.
“I was lyin’, just now though.” Tommy glanced up, eyes catching on Techno, who was looking far too intently at his hand beside Tommy’s knee. “I lied to cover for Wil once, when he took one of Phil’s maps. Lied and said I wasn’t cold when I was cold, like, two days ago.”
A deep breath. Tommy shared in it.
“Lied about my little brother bein’ a hero with a doomed fate.”
Tommy jolted, heart pounding in his ears, fingers twitching for grip on his shirt. “W-What?”
“’s true,” Techno said, solemn and quiet. Slowly turning towards him, he could see him now. His big brother, all head pats and big hugs and wry wit, looking at him. “We lie when we’re hurt, or hurting. Say things we don’t mean. But the hurt’s still there.”
Tommy felt like he was about to explode, from the heat in his chest that crept up to his face, pressing against the chains of his ribcage.
“I don’t want to eat.”
Techno nodded, simple and slow. Accepting and kind, like it was that easy. And Tommy had to make a choice. Keep the hurt behind a lie, or finally just say something. Even if not the truth.
A deep breath, and he reached out for the tray, grabbing a piece of toast. It was still warm, the golden-brown crust crunching under his fingers. He took a bite, and it tasted like food, even if ash was on the back of his throat. Techno looked like he’d just handed him a stack of enchanted gapples.
“I’ll try.”