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Tommy sat on his pillar, above the clouds.
"When I died,"
He held a photograph in his hands.
"there was nothing."
The moonlight shone on the worn parchment, the faces of two boys smiling into the camera.
"There was no god, no devil, no heavan or hell."
The blond boy leaned back to lay down on the stripped oak, the remnants of the small home his brother built.
"The only thing I knew in that void, was myself."
He threw an arm over his eyes and sighed. He really missed his friend.
If they even were friends.
"By myself, I mean just that. There was me. I was fronted with the image of myself, my raw, unfiltered self, who stared at me and offered me another chance."
He had no one.
"Other me said to me this:"
His brother was gone, his other brother was dead and missing, and his best friend whom he thought of as family had banished him.
He really was selfish, wasn't he?
"'Your ties here are strong. The bonds you made are dragging you back, but without a body you will be different.'"
He stepped down as vice to go after his discs, and then when he thought he had the upper hand, his sense of self was snatched out from under him like a snake would it's prey.
He was alone.
"'tell me, what do you think makes up a ghost?'"
He was toyed with, manipulated, lied to and tortured.
Dream never cared.
He was foolish for hoping he did.
"'What makes up a ghost? Isn't it your regrets?' I had answered."
His shoe was missing. His clothes were in tatters. The only people in this god-forsaken world had banished him from both existing servers.
He was sixteen and had nowhere to go.
"'Not quite.' I had replied. 'It's your memories. The memories you die with are a ghosts driving force. You were lucky. You died in your father's arms, free from a plague that had poisoned your mind.'"
He thought of how his family either left or betrayed him.
"'Others aren't so lucky.'"
He thought of everyone who he trusted, only for them to turn around and stab him in the back.
"'They die angry,'"
He thought of Eret, then Schlatt, then Wilbur, Fundy, Tubbo, Ranboo, Dream.
"'They die sad.'"
He sat up, tear stains highlighting the dark, shadowy bruises under his eyes.
"'They then roam their lands angry and sad, burning away anyone who goes near.'"
He clutched the photograph to his chest and let out a heartbroken wail, one that carried across the sea for two kilometers.
The compass was still clipped to his pants pocket, tucked into the little watch pocket of his tattered jeans.
"'What happens to those ghosts, them' I had asked myself. 'Will they always be angry and sad?'
'Yes.' I answered back. 'They will burn red and blue and the colors of their anger will stain them forever.'
'What if they stop being angry?'
'Then the ghost has to exist with the stains of their anger on their skin until they pass.'
'Will I pass one day?'
'When you are no longer needed.'
Tommy cried, he gripped the photo and he gripped his hair and he hunched over and cried.
"So I gave me some very clear blue, and told me that my colors were for peace."
He cried until the moon set to his west, and the light of dawn creeped over the edge of the forest to his east.
"I told me that my existence was tied to my inner peace, the peace I had when I died, so I won't remember the chaos of my plague."
He pictures Tubbo's face, as he was escorted out of his home for a second time.
"And then, I was here. So if my existence is tied to my peace, I want others to be peaceful. That's why I give you blue."
And with one last breath, he falls.
He wakes up red.