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There hasn't been much time for holidays since the apocalypse began.
Not that he's complaining or anything. There are certainly more grave concerns at hand than missing fucking Turkey Day--you know, the normal things: scavenging for food, sneaking past hostile survivor camps, and bashing out the brains of the living dead. Life or death things.
Still, Tommy has always thought it would be nice to celebrate them, to maintain that last semblance of normalcy. Even with the civilized world in ruins there are still ways he could make it special, still things he could scavenge--chop down a tree and hang up shiny pieces of scrap metal with wire, or save a few cans of preserved turkey and have himself a feast, or wrap up a dagger in colored paper and place it under the tree.
The only problem is that the last three years haven’t exactly given him a chance for festivities.
The end of the world began in mid-November. By the time Christmas rolled around in that first horrible year, people were still far too busy ensuring their limbs weren't being torn from their bodies to care about gift giving or exchanging frivolities. Tommy himself was frantic, on the run with little more than a backpack and stolen baseball bat to his name--he hadn't even realized Christmas had come and gone until two days later when the newest wave of emergency broadcasts went live.
They were the last. After that, there were no more radio stations, no television channels, no phone lines. The entire world just went dark, and he was alone.
He was still by himself when the second winter came, scrounging through scraps, half-starved, and still endlessly dodging the rotting hands of the dead. He knew when Christmas came this time--a band of travellers had very kindly informed him of the calendar date just hours before they drugged him, robbed him blind, and beat him half to death--but he didn't commemorate it. There hadn't exactly been much to celebrate by the time the holiday rolled around. What was the point? What was there to be thankful for with all his belongings gone and his wounds festering? By then, Tommy knew he was getting weaker. By then, he knew he'd be dead before his sixteenth birthday the next March.
He holed up in some crumbling dump of a shack, threw up some half-hearted barricades against the walking corpses, and waited to die. What was the point of fighting it? It was fucking doomsday. He was already dead.
The February after that was when Techno had found him, half-delirious from a near-lethal fever, curled up in the cupboard of a long-abandoned house as he battled through it.
This year is different. This year he is not alone.
Truth be told, he doesn't even realize it's winter until he sees the first tiny flakes of snow falling outside. Even then, Christmas doesn't cross his mind until hours later when
An explosion rocks the streets somewhere halfway across the city and the sight of the distant, blooming flames reminds Tommy of how his star tree topper used to look. And that's when it hits. The pieces connect. The realization hits.
It's a flash of brilliance that strikes him like lightning. If it's snowing outside, Christmas must be just around the corner, right? He could...he could celebrate it for once this year. He could get Wilbur and Phil and Technoblade gifts.
He sneaks into Phil's office just to be sure.
The man is a total nerd about this sort of shit--always blabbering about how they're going to create 'the legacy of humanity' and 'preserve centuries of culture that would otherwise be lost'--and Tommy knows for a fact he keeps a meticulous calendar hidden somewhere under the stacks and stacks of books he's piled in his room. As he rummages through them, haphazardly throwing some faded novel called The Great Gatsby over his shoulder, shoving aside some leather-bound journal that reads Lord of the Flies on the cover, he briefly considers ‘accidentally’ tossing a few of the books out the window into the snow bank. Phil’s not here, he won’t be back for hours--neither are Techno or Wilbur. There’s no way he would be caught in the act. And really, would Phil even notice if a few of the books disappeared? Honestly, Tommy would be doing them a favor--lugging around all that dead weight from dwelling to dwelling was just plain annoying, and that wasn’t even taking into account how much it slowed them down.
You know how hard it is to carry those books around? They’re already walking dozens of miles at a time when they move locations--you know how much more tiresome it is when you have two dozen hardcover books stuffed into your backpack along with your, you know, actual survival gear?
So Tommy really does consider for a moment just how easy it would be.
And then he remembers that Phil has been reading the very same books to him in the evenings before he goes off to bed. He remembers how each night he curls up next to the man and lets his low, calm voice drain away all the tension of the day.
He puts every book back down right where it belongs.
It isn’t long before he finds the calendar, an ink-stained notebook tucked inside one of Phil’s drawers. There's X's drawn over every date on the first page, and the next, and Tommy flips, flips, flips, until finally he reaches December and--
The next unchecked box is December 22nd. There are three days left before Christmas.
Shit.
He thought he would have more time.
It’s still too soon. He won’t be able to convince them to take him on patrol. There’s no way Phil would allow it. Not after the Incident.
--------
Admittedly, Tommy wasn’t supposed to have been there when they were attacked. Phil and Wilbur are overprotective like that--always trying to convince him to stay holed up in their base, away from all the danger. Even if they went out for solo scavenging runs or scouting missions three times a week, they would hardly allow him to leave their headquarters, and never on his own.
Frankly, Tommy was getting tired of it.
He’s always been more of Techno’s opinion on the matter: the more experience with weapons he gets the better. The more prepared he would be.
Phil disagreed.
Even with Techno on his side, what Phil said went. Always. Tommy was to stay at the base alone. Hidden away.
That simply wouldn’t do.
So one day, when the three of them left to go to a nearby supermarket for supplies, Tommy followed from a distance. He wasn’t planning to do anything. He didn’t want to cause any trouble. He just wanted to do something.
How was he supposed to know that there was a horde of the living dead hiding away in the storage bay of the store?
In the end, it didn’t matter that he shouted out a warning. It didn’t matter that he stabbed clean through the neck of a walker that had been lunging at Wilbur. It didn’t matter that he might very well have saved all of their lives.
All that mattered was that just as he was moving to distance himself from the growlers, a hand closed around his ankle.
Tommy fell.
The growlers were on him in an instant. One clawed at his ankles, another dived towards his thighs, and a third, the closest, lunged at his arm, and they were so fast and heavy, and he was so caught off guard that he could do nothing but shriek.
He was going to die. He was going to die, and it was going to be in front of his family, in front of Techno, and he could do nothing but wait for it to happen, and--
Just as the creature’s teeth went to close around his shoulder a fire axe split clean through the center of its skull, covering Tommy in a spray of thick, black sludge.
For a moment, Tommy could do nothing but gasp as he forced air back into his lungs.
Once he could finally breathe again, he glanced up at his rescuer, a thank you already on the tip of his tongue and then--
He froze. Blinked.
Technoblade was pointing his gun at the center of Tommy’s skull.
“Te--Techno?” Tommy’s voice wavered--the confusion was evident. The hurt, too. The terror, most of all. He moved to push himself off his back, to sit up, and Techno’s entire body flinched, his finger jumping toward the trigger
“Were you bit?” Techno snapped, something frantic in his voice. His hand was trembling.
“What?” Tommy gasped, staring at the barrel of the pistol.
Phil finally appeared then, speckled with the same black blood that covered Tommy, followed closely by Wilbur.
They stared at him in horror, but made no move to help. Tommy’s heart sank.
“Were. You. Bit.” Techno gritted out, and Tommy understood.
He thought Tommy had been infected. He thought he needed to kill him.
Tommy understood the why. He understood it was necessary.
It still hurt.
He shook his head.
Technoblade still didn’t drop the gun from Tommy’s skull. He didn’t drop it when Tommy brushed off the black sludge from his face. He didn’t drop it when he climbed shakily to his feet.
Phil and Wilbur checked him for bites. Only then, only when they had seen his skin wasn’t broken, did Techno put his pistol back into the holster.
This was the Incident, and it had sent fractures down their little family.
Techno has been avoiding him ever since--and at this point ‘ever since’ has been literal months. It’s bad enough that they’ll sometimes go days without seeing each other. In the rare moments when Tommy is able to wrangle a comment out of the man it’s a grunt or a quiet, one-word mumble.
Wilbur is the opposite. Whereas before he would tease Tommy or insult him, now he’s just plain clingy. He spends every second in the apartment at his side. Tommy can barely leave his sight without the man freaking out--even getting him to go out on patrols is a pain in everyone’s ass. The only reason he agrees at all is because he knows Phil and Techno need backup and the apartment complex is probably the safest place Tommy could be.
Still, each night he climbs into Tommy’s pile of ratty blankets and pulls Tommy to his chest like he’s afraid he’ll vanish in the night.
Tommy would be lying if he said it wasn’t nice, but it’s also rather...suffocating, having him always lurking.
Phil is the only one who seems to be trying for some semblance of normalcy, and even that feels forced.
Frankly, it’s gotten to be a little much. Tommy almost begins to enjoy staying behind when they go out on patrols just for some time away from all of them.
Key word: almost.
They’ve settled in a massive apartment complex this time. Nearly ten floors tall. More than a hundred meters wide. Hundreds of apartments.
Which means that Tommy is on clearing duty. Fucking clearing duty.
It’s painfully repetitive. Bust open the door. Check for any lurking growlers. Ransack the room for supplies. Drag everything back to their apartment. Rinse, repeat.
He knows it's important. He knows if they want to stay in the complex they need a good idea of the safest routes to traverse, whether there's any stray growlers hidden away somewhere waiting for the chance to strike. He knows because Phil has explained it to him about a hundred different times, staring at him with that soft, firm expression, telling him that just because he isn't out scavenging with the rest of them doesn't mean he's not contributing just as much. That just because he's holed up in the apartment while they go out to risk their lives--that doesn't mean he's useless. You're doing something very important for us, Phil always says. Tommy just rolls his eyes.
He knows it's important. That doesn't make it any less boring. Or humiliating.
Tommy knocks on yet another apartment door, listening for the telltale growling of the undead, and when he hears nothing he uses the master key on his bracelet to unlock it.
His hand clenches around his baseball bat, just in case. The door swings open into a lifeless gray room.
A rotting corpse is hanging from the ceiling fan.
She’s still moving, desperately clawing at the rope pulled taut around her neck. Her eyes are black pits, her hair stringy. Gray skin is peeling away from half of her face.
At her feet is a cradle, and even from the doorway Tommy can see the dried streams of blood that have rolled down its sides, the puddle of rust that has pooled underneath it.
Tommy slams the door shut.
That's it. No more clearing duty, not today. Tommy Craft has more important things to do.
He has to save Christmas.
--------
He bides his time with it. Asking to take a trip to the mall is obviously off the table--with Phil and Wilbur so clingy and Techno still so unsettled by the Incident, there's absolutely no way they'd let him make the journey, much less give him a few moments to himself to find them some proper gifts.
Still, he’d rather not go behind their back, and it’s not like he has many other options. He asks anyway, that night over dinner.
They're all in their usual positions for this little farce of a normal dinner, like they’re just an ordinary family and the world hasn’t gone to shit. Phil is in the part of firm but gentle father, sitting at the head of the table, head tilted as he listens rapt to the conversation. Wilbur's to his left, playing the protective older brother, splitting his time between rambling about an attempt to steal a guitar from a growler and fucking cooing at Tommy like he’s a kid.
Techno, as always, alternates between stony silence and staring at Tommy as if he's already dead.
There's a lull in the conversation--Wilbur is finally taking a break from his rambling to eat some of his soup and, y'know, actually breathe-- and Tommy sees his chance.
"Phil," he starts, "I was thinking about taking a trip out to that mall tomorrow."
Techno goes stiff. Wilbur's spoon falls from his hand. Phil makes this weird face somewhere between a frown and a grimace.
Techno is the first to speak. "No."
Tommy just scowls at him. "I wasn't asking you, dickhead. Go back to moping."
He turns back towards Phil, doing his best to make those puppy dog eyes that he knows wears at Phil’s resolve. "Phil? Please? I've finished clearing the entire floor!"
"Mate, you know we need someone to stay behind." Phil tries to placate him, "We need someone to carry on humanity's legacy. If something goes wrong, we need you."
Tommy isn't sure whether Phil realizes that this is not, in fact, reassuring.
He crosses his arms. "Okay, Techno can stay behind then. He's smart. He'll do a great job "guarding humanity's knowledge" or whatever the fuck it is, and I'll just take his place out on patrol for the day so he can get some much needed rest."
It’s a perfectly valid point, and Phil knows it. His mouth twists into a frown. His eyes shutter.
It seems Tommy has his answer.
--------
Wilbur inches open his door later that night and climbs into his bed, just as he's done every night since the Incident, and just as he's done every night, Tommy pretends he is asleep.
"No one will ever hurt you." Wilbur whispers into his hair like a vow, "We'll keep you safe. We'll protect you. Nothing will hurt you ever again."
Tommy is pretty sure they both know it's a promise he can't keep.
--------
Phil may have shot down his plan, but that doesn’t mean it's been put to rest. Christmas is happening this year, whether the man likes it or not.
If Phil won’t let him leave to go to the mall, Tommy will just have to sneak out.
The plan he makes is sort of beautiful in its simplicity. All he needs to do is pretend everything is normal, and wait for them to leave again.
So he suffers through clearing duty the entire next day, feigning boredom, while the three of them go out on patrol.
At dinner he asks again about going to the mall, and just as he predicted, there is a firm, unanimous no.
This time, Tommy doesn’t let it slide. He yells a few obscenities, hisses some insults, and storms off to his room, locking the door behind him. He hears Wilbur try his door later that night and retreat when he finds it is still locked.
Perfect.
Phil, Wilbur and Techno will leave at dawn, just like they do every day. Wilbur will try to check on him, of course, to see if his anger has let up, but as long as Tommy feigns sleep they’ll leave him be. The instant they’re out the door he can begin preparing his gear--his backpack of course, a granola bar and water, his bat with the sharpened nails on one end. He’ll watch them go out the kitchen window--he knows their route by heart by now, and he knows when the apartment will be out of sight. Once they turn right down Main Street he’ll be in the clear.
It goes off without a hitch. Tommy’s climbing onto the roof of the apartment complex by the time the first rays of sun pierce the clouds.
The mall is three blocks away, a straight shot down 6th Street, and the journey is entirely uneventful.
Tommy’s claim to fame, so to speak, has always been his climbing. He’d always been a scrappy, agile thing, even before the apocalypse. Afterward, the skill had only become more fine-tuned. As much as the dead could run and hide and follow, they couldn’t climb, and the rooftops quickly became his safe haven.
So although there are dozens of growlers lurking around the streets below him, up on the rooftops he is perfectly fine.
Within the hour he’s made it into the mall, and it’s then he begins his search.
The gifts have to be perfect. The three of them deserve that much for rescuing him, for putting up with him for all these months. He owes it to them.
There’s a tiny antique store in the back corner of the mall, run down in a way that makes Tommy think it wasn’t exactly high class even before the apocalypse. It’s there he goes for Phil. There’s a woman of the dead variety still lingering inside, just standing there in khakis and a faded red t-shirt with ‘Clementine’s Antiques’ written on the back in cheery cursive, staring listlessly at the walls.
Tommy can’t help but think that it’s a little sad, that. Spending your eternity trapped in the gray, dusty remains of a history long-abandoned.
He bashes her skull in with the baseball bat. It crumples against the tile like a rotten melon.
It takes a few hours, but he finally finds something good--some ancient book called Macbeth. Then it’s on to Wilbur.
His gift is the easiest to find--the man really does have a one track mind for music. Tommy is sure he would have been a musician if not for, you know, the apocalypse.
There’s a music store on the second floor and Tommy grabs a few packages of extra strings and a capo for Wilbur’s guitar, a pair of headphones and an old MP3 player that will run on batteries.
Next, he finds some sort of hunting shop on the ground floor just off of the main area of the mall, tucked away behind some massive metal sculpture that’s shaped vaguely like a star. There he searches for Techno’s gift--a sword. The man has been raving about how much more efficiently he could kill growlers with a blade for months. Whenever they move to a new location Techno will grab a branch from the ground, and when he thinks Tommy isn’t looking he’ll swing it around like he’s fifteen instead of twenty four.
It’s a complete breeze. He finds a wicked blade within minutes. His entire plan is going off without a hitch.
“And Techno wasn’t going to let me go.” Tommy scoffs to himself, as he strolls out of the store, “He thought I couldn’t do it. Fucking bitch.”
Of course, it is at that very instant that he spots the horde.
He’s not entirely sure how he didn’t hear them earlier--zombies aren’t exactly quiet. Groans and growls rumble from each unhinged jaw in a horrible, dissonant symphony. Their rotting flesh makes this nasty little squelch with each stumbling step. He should have heard a group of this size--Prime, there really is a lot of them, aren’t there--from half a mile away.
But he didn’t, clearly, if the dozens and dozens of zombies lumbering towards him are any clue.
They notice him almost instantly. Tommy can see the moment the dark pits of their eyes lock on him, and can see as they start stumbling his way.
With a start he realizes that he’s backed himself into a corner of the mall. The hunting store was in the back corner of the building, with no easy exits. The only route out is directly through the group of zombies.
Fuck. Shit, shit, shit, fuck, how did this go wrong so fast?
There’s no way out. No escape. The only way he could possibly go is...up.
He eyes the star sculpture. There’s nowhere to run. No way to fight them all.
So, Tommy does what he does best. He climbs.
--------
Two miles away in the dead of night, Techno knocks on Tommy’s door, more insistently this time.
“Theseus?” he asks, voice uncertain, verging on downright anxious. Tommy’s moods are like the tides of the ocean--they come and they go, always shifting, always changing. He never stays mad for this long.
He understands why the kid is pissed, he really does. They’ve been overprotective, he knows. The kid is more than capable--he wouldn’t have made it this long if he wasn’t--and it’s probably not thrilling him to be holed up in their apartment all hours of the day. He gets it, the anger. He really does.
Techno won't lie--it's difficult to leave Tommy behind in the complex each day.
Techno’s a complete sucker for the kid--something that Wilbur teases him about to no end (as if he himself isn’t wrapped around the kid’s finger too, as if he wouldn’t give the world for Tommy). Techno doesn't even bother trying to deny it. He knows he’s attached. He can’t help it.
Attachments aren’t exactly something he can afford in the middle of an apocalypse, but ever since he found Theseus all those months ago, a slip of a boy just barely clinging to life, he’s become irrationally invested in making sure the kid remains living in the traditional sense.
So when each night Theseus asks if he can come with them on patrols, when each night the desperation in his voice is so real, Techno almost considers it. He considers taking this teenage boy into the death and ruins and carnage they traverse each day just to put food on the table, all because he asks.
And each night he remembers pointing that gun at Tommy’s forehead and not knowing whether he would have to pull the trigger. He remembers the kid staring at him, frozen like a deer in the headlights, and watching the spark of terror flare up in them for the first time in months. Terror, of him.
And he can’t. He can’t do that again.
He can’t say yes, but it kills him to say no to the kid’s pleas, and so Techno just doesn’t say anything at all. Tommy is safer in the apartment anyway. Clearing duty might be mind-numbingly boring, but it’s almost entirely safe. There aren't many growlers still in the building--and Techno may or may not pre-check the rooms for growlers every night when Theseus is asleep, just to be sure. Here, Tommy is safe. Out there, out in the carnage, there’s so many things that could happen, so many things that could go wrong.
No, even if Tommy is angry with him, anger is better than being dead.
Maybe this time, though, they’ve pushed him a little too far.
Techno really, really doesn’t like the deep, empty silence coming from Tommy’s room. Tommy is not empty. He is not quiet. Something is wrong.
“Theseus? This isn’t funny. I know you’re mad, but ignoring us won’t help anything.” Techno's leaning against the door now, wiggling the handle. His foot is tapping anxiously against the floor.
Tommy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say anything at all.
Techno tries the door handle again. As if it might have magically unlocked in the last three seconds.
“I need to make sure you’re alright, kid. Open the door.” Techno is basically pleading at this point, a rare note of desperation entering his tone. “Please, Tommy.”
Tommy still doesn’t answer, and that’s when Techno knows with cruel certainty that something is horribly wrong.
“Okay, you know what? I’m going to kick in this door, kid. Unlock the fucking door, Theseus.” He shouts in case Tommy really is just ignoring them--Prime, if Tommy really is in there and just pissed but still safe, he swears he will never ignore the kid ever again--and when there is no response he rears back and kicks the door in.
The room is dark. Tommy’s bed is empty.
Techno falls to his knees.
--------
He’s an idiot. A complete, total idiot.
Phil was right. Techno was right. He could never have handled this alone.
The first night has come and gone with him perched precariously on the star sculpture. None of the growlers have lost interest in him. They stand below him, staring at him with their soulless black eyes like he’s their next steak dinner. Maybe he will be.
They just wanted to protect him, really. They didn’t go about it in the best way, sure, but they just wanted him to be safe.
And now Tommy is stuck, surrounded by zombies, miles away, and completely, entirely alone again. He made sure of that didn’t he? Locking his door, pretending to be mad so they’d leave him be, it’s all just guaranteed that they won’t notice his absence until it is too late.
They’re not coming for him. They probably don’t even know he’s gone. If he dies now…
They’ll never even find his body.
He can’t count on them. He has to get out of this himself.
--------
Well. He’s fucked.
He’s moved down a level on the star sculpture, balancing on the thin metal platform. He’s low enough now that the rotting hands reaching for him are just inches away from grabbing his feet, swinging his baseball bat down at their heads.
Tommy is picking them off. One. By. One.
It’s not enough. Exhaustion is already wearing at him, bone-deep and heavy, dragging down his every move. For every growler he picks off, two replace it. It’s hopeless.
Eventually, his body will give out. He’ll fall asleep, or miss a step, or swing his bat a little too low, and then he’ll be consumed by the horde.
Hooray.
He’ll stick it out as long as he can. Despite the overwhelming odds, he can’t bear to just give up. Not with his family waiting at the apartment.
As the last rays of sun start to fade, as his second day at the mall comes to a close, Tommy’s knee wobbles. Just once, just a single shake, but it’s still there, a tangible sign that his stamina is beginning to run thin.
He’s running out of time.
--------
He lasts for three more hours. Three hours of grueling, unending killing before he blinks, and it lasts just a moment too long. His ankle twists under his weight, his leg gives out, and then he is falling.
Rotting claws reach for him, skim over his arms. Tommy closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to see his impending death.
There is a sickening, distant squelch, but Tommy can’t feel the claws digging into his stomach. He doesn’t feel anything.
Tommy opens his eyes.
“Theseus--” Techno gasps and then he is being cradled in a pair of strong, solid arms and tears are running down his face, and he is alive. Somehow he is unbitten, somehow he is here with Techno and the floor is covered in corpses, but he doesn’t care because he is alive.
“You’re alright. You’re okay. Fucking Prime, I can’t--” Techno cradles his face, bumping their heads together “You’re alright, Theseus. I’ve got you.”
Tommy clings to him desperately, his hands sinking into the man’s leather coat. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have left I just--”
“It’s okay, Theseus. We shouldn’t have--we shouldn’t have kept you there. You’re smart, and clever, and it wasn’t right to keep you in that apartment, but I just--” Techno swallows, hard. “I’m so scared. After last time, I can’t...I can’t deal with that again, Theseus. You understand what I’m saying?”
From over Techno’s shoulder he sees Wilbur and Phil appear, rushing towards them. Wilbur is sprinting so fast he’s practically skidding across the tile. “Tommy? Tommy, Toms, are you okay? Prime, you--you’re not hurt?”
“No--no, I’m alright.” Tommy whispers. Wilbur crouches down next to them, his hands dancing across Tommy’s arms, his face.
Phil remains standing, his hand on his pistol. He’s still glancing around the mall, looking for any signs of danger. He still spares Tommy a concerned glance from the corner of his eye. “Why were you even out here? Why would you leave without telling us, mate?”
“It’s Christmas,” Tommy says, and it sounds so, so stupid once he says it out loud. “I was getting you gifts. They were lost in the horde. I’m sorry.”
“You--” Wilbur shakes his head, looking down at him sadly, “Tommy, we don’t need gifts, sunshine. We have you. That’s all we could possibly need, is you alive and safe. We would never trade you for gifts, Toms.”
Tommy looks down at his hands. “I’m sorry, it’s just--you’ve done so much for me and I--”
“And you’ve done the same for us, mate.” Phil interrupts, running a hand through his hair. Tommy leans into the touch. “We love you, kid. We don't need gifts.”
“Come on,” Techno grunts, standing up with Tommy still tucked away in his arms, “You must be tired. Let’s go home.”