Chapter Text
“Hi,” Tommy squeezes out back, a bleak sort of empty thing where he stands under the attention of people he hardly knows.
Faux Pas, Chronos, Warden and a Slimecicle that isn’t his Slimecicle.
Warden’s hand is wrapped around the handle of his trident, gold shimmering distractedly at the corner of his eyes with a nauseous twist of his stomach that he struggles to ignore.
“I’ve been looking for you!” the Slimecicle peers up at him. “You are Red Chaos, right?”
“I am,” Tommy mutters, unsure what to feel, staring at the being that looks so much like his Slimecicle and yet- off, wrong, not what he wants to see.
Chronos sinks down finally with a push from Faux Pas, sagging with clear exhaustion in the armchair, the Slimecicle landing in a cradle in his lap, fingers trembling and pale, right eye half-white, dazed and out of it.
“I’ll get some water-“
“Cola,” Tommy interrupts and Faux Pas halts, the fox mask settling on him with a sharp look. “He needs- the sugar will be good for him.” Tommy tips his head meaningfully to Karl. “His powers are burning through him faster than he can keep up, yeah? So give him something to burn – cola and, if he can stomach it, get something that’s low effort to swallow down.”
Tommy licks his lips, steeling himself, and then he looks up, staring straight at the dark visor of the Warden.
“There’s should be some mashed potato in the fridge,” he says, mouth curling sharp behind his mask. “Isn’t that right, Warden?”
Warden.
Sam.
Sam who gave him a job and paid him with an envelope of money without questions, who let him sneak Fran cookies beneath the table and who had given him a bag of homemade food for Christmas along with a green beanie pressed down on his head with a fond look.
His Sam.
“There should be,” Warden answers, voice impossible to read, shifting with a quiet rustle of metal, a part of his brain purring distractedly at the goldgoldgold before he ruthlessly pushes it down.
“You should go get some,” Tommy says, something ugly and cold curling through him. “Make yourself useful.”
It’s vitriol and fear, it’s something twisted and wrong, a want to inflict pain that pounds wet with the beating of his heart.
“That’s not very Hero like behaviour,” Siren’s voice ghosts at the back of his mind, a memory of mockery with his hands wet with blood.
There’s a stilling of limbs, a careful straightening of shoulders, chin raising tall, a step taken towards him with fingers that folds tight around the gleaming handle of the trident.
Tommy refuses to move, refuses to hardly breathe, and Warden steps past him, just shy of brushing against his shoulder where he stands tightly pressed against the doorway, where the Villain pauses.
“We’re working together now.” Warden’s voice, if Tommy listens for it- he imagines he can hear the familiar cadence of Sam’s warm voice layered into the metallic hollowness of the voice changer. “What’s in the past, is in the past.”
They both know it’s not as simple as that.
It never is.
“Coworkers?” Tommy cracks out with an irony that tastes acidic on his tongue.
Warden’s head tips just an inch.
“Coworkers.”
Tommy’s body aches in the memory of broken bones, of fear and pleading that leaves his lips uselessly under the ruthless hands of the Villain that shows him no mercy.
“Then you can get it yourself,” the Villain says with dangerous dip of his voice that makes him flinch with a twitch of his fingers.
The humiliation of it burns and anger feasters dark and vicious inside his chest as Warden retreats down the hallway behind him.
-
“I could sense some tension there,” Faux Pas comments in a nervous laugh, Chronos asleep against his shoulder after managing to drain down half a cola with a bubbly little hiccupped burp.
Tommy drags his goggles down over his eyes, hiding his expression as much as possible from the Vigilante as he watches the small Slimecicle on the table.
“I didn’t know you worked with the Syndicate.”
Faux Pas’s right hand tap against his knees, a rhythmic thing of counting, thumb, index, middle, ring, pinkie, round and round, a repeat pattern that he hardly seems to be aware of.
“I don’t, technically. I work- well, for myself, if you want but.” Faux Pas absently adjusts Chronos from slipping down. “There’s only so much I can do on my own and Villains are often far more keen to work with me than any of the Heroes.”
“I can imagine,” Tommy snorts, easing back just an inch, curiosity gnawing on him as he regards the other.
It’s not often he’s had the chance to talk with Vigilantes.
There had been a few, here and there, but- Dream’s status as the Number One Hero hadn’t exactly made him the most approachable and Red Chaos, a bit ironically, made him even less so because people didn’t know what to expect from him.
Dream’s man through and through.
Tommy’s most memorable meeting with a Vigilante had been Chronos and before that, an underground Vigilante who had only called herself Kitten with a wink and a two-fingered salute, a cat eared hoodie pulled over her head with two carrot clips attached to the edge of it.
She’d spent most of the meeting clearly enjoying how flustered she’d managed to get Dream while feeding them information, shifting easily between seriousness and a light-hearted tone that had given Tommy a vague sense of whiplash.
“Oh and tell Mr. Tall Red and Handsome over there to-“ She’d made the sign for a phone, eyes bright and teasing on him.
She’d been gone before Tommy could make a fool out of himself in response, flushed horribly red beneath his mask as Dream laughed, head thrown back in the empty warehouse.
There are times Tommy forgets that he’s actually sixteen- that it matters when he’s spent almost three years as a Hero where he’s treated as an adult, relied on and turned to by fellow Heroes and civilians during tragedies and missions.
He doesn’t feel like a child.
Except- Wilbur had made him feel young, hadn’t he? Like he was allowed to lean against him and shake off responsibilities and just be Tommy.
He stares down at his hands, mismatched, one pink and one pale.
“I’m sorry.” He jerks up, locking eyes with Faux Pas through the holes of the fox mask. “I heard- it’s rare that torture gets involved, even in this business.” It’s impossible to read his face but the Vigilante keeps tap-tap-tapping, the other hand absently tugging at one of Karl’s brown curls. “At least like this.”
“Like what?” Tommy asks flatly.
Faux Pas curls Karl’s lock around his finger. “Well, I mean- everyone knows you don’t kill, it’s not your M.O., and you went as far as to lose your Hero status while protecting Siren, right?” Faux Pas cocks his head. “Anyone can put one and two together, it’s not for anything you would have gone against Dream, something happened that night.”
Tommy’s mouth thins.
“I don’t care that much, as far as I’m concerned you could have let that bastard die and the world would have been better without him.” Dark, bitter, personal. “I’m here for Jester and Nemesis.”
“You hate him.”
“Hate is a strong word,” Faux Pas laughs, sinking back. “I don’t go wishing for his death but I wouldn’t miss him either.” His tapping stops, hand raising in a dismissive wave. “But- anyway, the thing is- everyone knows that Warden’s actions were senseless. You’re one of those people who would sooner die than betray what you stand for, nearly have, several times. Perhaps he could have found a way but- it was never about the information you could give him and I think you know that as well.”
The same questions repeated again and again.
Bones breaking, skin bruising dark, given just enough food to keep his body from failing as Ponk’s body burned through his reserves.
“The picture of you and Nemesis was front page news.” Faux Pas’s voice lowers, pity creeping into it. “You were already ready to work with the Syndicate and all Warden did was complicate things.”
“Complicate things.” Tommy tastes the words slowly. “That’s what you call it.”
Faux Pas shrugs, Karl blinking hazily with a groan, the blood draining from his face-
“Just calling it-“
Tommy doesn’t even contemplate warning him, watching with some sweet satisfaction as Karl turned and puked right into the other Vigilante’s lap, an ugly mess of cola and stomach acid that makes Faux Pas shoot straight up, stumbling away with a noise of horror and a stammer that ends in a gag.
“Nononono-“ Faux Pas disappears out the door and Tommy just catches a glimpse of a fox tail behind him.
He glances towards Karl who sways, mouth tugging up as their eyes meet. “He was talking too much.”
A strange kind of warmth floods through him.
“Thank you,” Tommy says, rubbing a hand against his side a bit tiredly but watching carefully as Karl pushed to his feet.
“Is there a place we can talk privately?” Karl asks, fishing the Slimecicle up and bringing him to his chest with a small wobble before finding his footing, looking far less like a mess than he had only moments before, one eye glowing solidly white.
Tommy’s mouth curls behind his mask.
“I know just the spot.”
-
“Sorry,” Karl whispers in embarrassment as Tommy kneels down, letting the Vigilante loop his arm around his shoulders, pink arm curling back to hoist the Vigilante up on his back. “I’m doing much better but-“
“I get it,” Tommy interrupts. “I really, really do.”
Karl drops his chin on his shoulder. “Did he really torture you?” the Vigilante asks in a quiet voice.
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
Tommy stares straight in front, feeling small hands of the Slimecicle hoisting itself up on his shoulder to a small twitch of his fingers.
“He did,” he forces out, finally after a long stretch of silence.
Karl’s arms tightens around him and it’s almost a hug- the warmth of the other bleeding through his hoodie as he makes his way down the winding corridors towards the training room Techno had taken him to that morning.
He aches for the way Wilbur had folded around him, chin on top of his head, a cocoon of safety from the rest of the world.
“I’m sorry, had I known-“
“You were already practically killing yourself with your powers,” Tommy cuts him off. “There’s nothing you could have done so don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Karl’s arms squeezes tighter. “You’re too young for this.”
“Aren’t we all?” Tommy snorts bitterly. “You’re, what, twenty-three? Not exactly up there you know.”
Karl laughs, a quiet tired thing. “In this business, I am.”
“Live fast, die young,” Tommy grunts and it feels, companionable, almost, as Karl huffs a breath against his neck before slouching down heavily on his back.
“Jesus, we’re a mess.”
“At least I’m not bleeding out of my eyeballs.”
“Don’t think I didn’t see the new arm you’ve got there, Red.”
“I’m not the one puking up cola.”
“Oh come on, we both know I did that on purpose-“
-
“Oh this place is pretty damn sweet,” Karl says with admiration, peering around the training area from his spot on the middle of the floor.
Slimecicle seats neatly in the palm of his hands, tiny hands grasping onto the tip of a folded finger.
“You’ve never been here?”
Karl shrugs. “I’m not a Syndicate member, and neither is Jester, technically, even if he’s just about as good as one. Old history between him and Blood God kinda… anyway, that’s not why we’re here.”
Tommy grabs a bottle of water each from the small fridge against the wall, finding a heap of protein bars and grabbing those as well, stuffing a handful into his pocket after a moment of deliberation and grabbing another one to share before ambling his way over and dropping down with a fold of his legs.
He spreads them out in front of Karl who blinks at him, a small smile tipping at the corner of his mouth as he pulls out a honeynut one before flattening into a more serious one.
“Jester is missing.”
“I’m aware.” Tommy picks one with dry apple bits, peeling it open and biting down. “Siren and Nemesis as well- Schlatt is up to something.”
Karl draws his shoulders tight. “Jester has a past with Schlatt, it’s… messy, to put it kindly. It’s not really my story to tell but- the sooner we get them all out of there, the better.”
“Schlatt gave us a week.”
Tommy breaks off a bit and slips it to the Slimecicle on the table that blinks at him before brightening and pulling it close.
“Six, almost five days now.” Karl rubs a thumb against the protein bar, an anxious tic. “I think- I think Sapnap might be in over his head as well and I’m-“
Hatred, dark and vitriolic, flares through him, wrestling against the hurt, the parts that misses Sapnap so fiercely he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
He had hoped-
“He doesn’t have his powers.”
Condemned so easily in a room filled with his enemies.
“I don’t know what to do,” Karl admits miserably. “I was so sure- it was never supposed to go this far but things are more fucked up than I first thought, apparently.” A brittle laugh. “I heard from Faux Pas that- Sapnap that he told them about your powers and I’m sorry.”
Tommy glances up at the Vigilante, mouth curling behind his mask.
“It was- I know where he was coming from-“
“Do you really?” Tommy interrupts. “Because I sure as fuck don’t feel enlightened.”
Karl shakes his head, dressed in a soft white hoodie that’s far too familiar with the little flame emblem over his heart.
“It’s- Sapnap, he trusts, easier than he wants to admit to and he knows- he knows that the Syndicate doesn’t harm child-“
Tommy lurches forward, slapping his palm over Karl’s mouth with a snarl, eyes burning livid red.
“I’m Red Chaos before I’m a child,” Tommy hisses, black nails digging into the soft skin of the Vigilante’s cheek. “He had nothing that promised my survival and he knows how much fucking trouble Dream would be in if anyone found out about my age!”
Karl’s hand curls around his wrist, not tugging, simply holding it there until Tommy reluctantly eases back with a snap of his teeth.
“I won’t defend it, he can do that on his own.” Karl draws a deep breath, letting it out. “But- he’s not on good terms with Dream at the moment and I believe he was more concerned about your safety than any consequences Dream might face.”
Tommy snorts rudely. “Don’t care, he was being an idiot-“
“He was desperate.” Karl’s voice breaks, a terrible thing of a hitched breath that makes Tommy still in place, peering at the older man. “And he’s right – you don’t belong in this mess like holy shit you were tortured and you’re- we both know you’re too young but the thing is-“ A self-depreciating smile. “Sapnap is the better man out of the two of us because I don’t care.”
A strange feeling settles in his chest, heavy with something he doesn’t want to confront.
“I’m still sorry about it,” Karl rubs a sweater pawed hand over his eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, if there was someway around this that doesn’t mean your involvement, I would take it but-“
“Jester means more to you than I do,” Tommy cuts him off and Karl winces. “Yeah, I get that, don’t- I don’t think that makes you a bad person.”
There are lengths he’d go for both Wilbur and Dream that he wouldn’t go for anyone else, after all.
“I love them, I just want them safe and home with me. Both of them.”
“Not easy when one is a Hero and one is a Villain,” Tommy says with a curl of bitter irony.
The Vigilante twists the ends of his sweater paws together anxiously in his lap, brown curls falling down his face, and Tommy realizes, for the first time, that he’s staring at the Vigilante out of his costume.
He looks softer like this, in Sapnap’s hoodie and not dressed up for an interview in sharp colourful suits. Younger, perhaps, just a year younger than Wilbur, his hair unstyled and half-flattened beneath the hood pulled up but resting far back on his head.
His right eye glows soft white, mouth twisting up.
“If you’re using your powers,” Tommy says quietly and Karl jerks, eyes settling on him. “You should eat the bar.”
They regard each other, former Hero and Vigilante.
“Faux Pas didn’t pick up on it, thought it was an after effect of using my powers” Karl says finally, reaching to grab the bar and peeling it back. “Is it that obvious?”
Tommy shrugs. “You seem like the self-sacrificial type.”
“Takes one to know one.” Karl takes a cautious bite, chewing it carefully with a grimace. “Charlie?” The small Slimecicle peers up attentively at the Vigilante. “You can tell him now, there’s no-one else to hear.”
The Slimecicle turns its head to Tommy, eyes locking onto him with a small tilt of its head, studying him curiously.
“Hello Mr Red Chaos. I’m not really meant to be here but- he was very insistent so we’re making an exception.” Its small arms folds across its chest, eyes squinting suspiciously at him. “So just this one time-”
“Is he alive?” Tommy interrupts, heart pounding in his chest. “My slime, is he alive?”
There’s a blink, a pause, and then-
“He’s alive,” the Slimecicle says and Tommy sags with the relief that floods through him, hands bunching up tight.
“He didn’t die.”
I didn’t fail him.
The Slimecicle regards him curiously.
“He says he’s sorry for leaving you when you were sleeping but he wanted to help.”
“That’s- help?” Tommy repeats distractedly.
The Slimecicle on the table shifts into a kneeling position, brow furrowing in concentration and then-
“I found him!” The excitement bleeds in a hushed whisper from the Slimecicle staring up at him with bright earnestness. “The man you were looking for- I found him!”
Tommy gapes.
“You’re- wait who are you-“
“The Green Man!” Slimecicle interrupts him. “He took your scarf so I hitched a ride!” the slime proclaims proudly.
“He-“ Tommy’s hand darts up to his bare throat, where the neon green scarf he’d made for Dream had gone missing from. “He took it?” he repeats, fingers curling into the blue fabric. “Dream- he took the scarf?” Desperation bleeds into his voice, a naked kind of vulnerability he can’t find himself to hide as he stares down at the slime.
The Slimecicle bobs its small head, mouth in a bright grin and brown eyes warm.
“It seems like not everything is lost,” Karl says, voice soft, cautious, and Tommy’s eyes snaps towards him, a swirl of emotions bleeding heavy inside of him, chest rising and falling with harsh heavy breaths. “Not everything is at it seems.”
“Think about what you did.”
Dream’s parting words.
Carefully Tommy reaches out and the Slimecicle doesn’t protest as he carefully folds his mismatched hands around it to lift it up in the cradle of his palms.
“Thank you,” Tommy chokes out to it, lowering his head in a bow.
“I broke my promise,” Slime says solemnly to him. “I wanted to make it right.”
Tommy draws a sharp breath.
“You more than enough made up for it,” he swears feverishly, drawing back to peer down at the small creature. “You- you’re not in any danger are you?”
Its lips wobbles a bit unsurely. “I don’t like ram man, he’s mean, so I hide from him.”
“You see him a lot?” Tommy asks with a frown, stomach twisting. “Is he there with Dream?”
“Sometimes,” the Slime admits to him, small hands clasping together. “Most of the time he’s with the En-forders?”
“Enforcers?” Tommy lifts him closer to his face, urgency threading through him. “The uh- they have golden masks and are all dressed in blue.”
His slime perks up. “Yes, those!”
“That’s-“ He doesn’t quite know what to make of that- there’s no way Dream would feel threatened by Enforcers but the fact that he’s being monitored by them? That’s… “That’s not good,” he says and it doesn’t begin to touch the surface of his feelings but- fuck.
He sucks a harsh breath, holds it, lets it out.
Focus, he reminds himself. Ask the important questions first.
“Is he-“ Tommy licks his lips. “Is he okay? Dream- is he- does he look okay?”
His slime stares up at him, green goopy body shifting and moving, brown eyes wide and attentive and-
Vulnerability and weakness, a jumble of emotions from childhood, from growing-up at Dream’s side.
Admiration and love, the overwhelming pride he’d felt when he stepped up at Dream’s side as Red Chaos, a willingness to give everything for his mentor.
It still burns inside of him, spreading through his veins, pounding with the wet beat of his heart.
“When I saw him, before I hid back in the ventilation shaft,” the Slime says gently, “he was petting a cat on the couch and wearing your scarf.”
Tommy sucks a breath, eyes closing shut.
He’s okay. The knowledge thrums through his veins. He still cares.
“Of course he is.” His voice is thick, a quiver of his lips caught by teeth and stilled, twisting into a rough snort. “Of course he’s- he’s petting a fucking cat.”
It’s so easy to picture- Dream with his ruffled blond hair, Tommy’s ugly hand-knitted scarf wrapped around his neck and curled up with a cat in his lap, the creature well-fed and pleased and no doubt purring up a storm because his mentor had always had a soft spot for strays.
And yet-
His stomach knots tight because he can’t picture Dream’s face, instead there’s the mask, familiar with the dark dots and smiling mouth stares back at him from the depths of his mind.
He shakes it away roughly.
“Is there- is there anything more you can tell me?” he fumbles out. “Anything you think might help?”
Slimecicle tips his small head.
“Are you going to help Jester?”
Tommy blinks at him, glancing slowly up at the Vigilante who sits across him with his right eye glowing eerie white, a drop of blood curling down to drip from his chin onto hands clasped tight in his lap.
“I am,” Tommy responds, resolve settling tight in his chest.
Slimecicle lifts a finger up to him, eyes serious.
“Pinky promise?”
Tommy draws a breath, shifting the slime into his left hand and solemnly pressing the pad of his right pinky against the other’s.
“Pinky promise.”
-
“Here.” Tommy jerks as a bag of blood slaps down on the table in front of him, slowly glancing up at Techno. “We’re heading into the Pit tomorrow, and you’re coming along, so you have a few hours to get a handle on it.”
“… Do I want to know where you got it from?” Tommy asks dubiously as he stretches his fork forward to give it a poke.
“Willingly donated,” the Villain tells him with a curling grin of sharp tusks. “I’m sure Nemesis won’t mind too much that we found an alternate use for her donated blood.”
His eyes widens, stilling where he sits.
“Isn’t she like a mermaid hybrid or something?” he asks cautiously.
“Distantly, should be fine.” The red cape sweeps behind him, golden crown catching with a distracting gleam from the lamp lit up above them. “Angel has offered to help you out with it so you can go have fun with that.”
Offered is laughable. They both know he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.
“Are we really going into the Pit?” Tommy asks wearily, excitement bubbling cautiously beneath it. “They’re not exactly a fan of Heroes down there.”
“And why is that I wonder?” Techno asks wryly, reaching into the cupboards and grabbing a cup, pouring generously from the coffee Tommy had made a bit absently while mulling over the words of Slimecicle and Karl.
The Villain takes a sip, pausing visibly where he stands.
“You made this?”
“Yeah,” Tommy answers distractedly as he paws the bag of blood a bit awkwardly into his lap. “Why?”
“It’s good.”
“Don’t sound so fucking surprised,” Tommy snorts, tucking the bag beneath his arm. “I don’t drink the stuff but I know how to make a mean cup of coffee.”
Techno turns to lean back against the counter, red eyes lingering on him.
"I heard Chronos is here."
"What about it?"
"You two have a fun conversation?"
Tommy throws him a look. "He's half out of it and threw up all over Faux Pas before falling asleep."
Techno's eyes gleams knowingly. "And the slime told you nothing, of course."
"Of course," Tommy says and they both know that he's lying.
Surprisingly, the Villain doesn't call him out on it.
“You’re about Siren’s height,” Techno says instead, lowering the cup down.
“Yeah?” Tommy grumps. “What about it?”
“You can’t go into the Pit as Red Chaos.”
Tommy pauses.
“You’re joking.”
Techno’s grin is sharp and foreboding and Tommy gives him a horrified look.
-
“Whose fucking idea what it to dress me up as Siren?” Tommy kicks the door to the training room shut behind him, bag of blood dropped down on the floor. “Because no one is gonna fucking buy it you know.”
Phil shifts, black rings rustling on his back and eerie blue eyes settling on him with a bird like tilt of the man’s head.
“You can’t-“
“Go into the pit as Red Chaos,” Tommy interrupts rudely. “I fucking know that.”
Phil raises a brow at him, emerald caught in a gentle net of gold where it hangs from his ear.
“You’re gonna stand out no matter what you do, mate,” the Villain comments with an easy step taken towards him, dark amusement visible in the coil of his voice and mantling of his wings. “The Pit is our playground, Heroes don’t belong in it.”
Tommy bares his teeth behind his mask, nose flaring.
“Everyone knows that Siren is-“
“How do you think the people of L’Manberg are going to react when someone dressed as Siren, wielding Nemesis’ powers, appears?” Phil interrupts him, head tilting the other way with a rustle of dark feathers.
Tommy folds his arms, skin prickling uncomfortable as the other steps closer but refusing to move.
“They’ll be confused.”
“And?” Phil presses, eyes bright and impossible to look away from.
“They- they won’t know what to think,” Tommy ventures cautiously as Phil halts in front of him, wings casting their shadow upon him where he stands. “People will start to doubt Schlatt and-“
The realization dawns with a sharp inhalation.
“You’re aiming to lure Schlatt out,” he breathes. “With me as the bait.”
“Oh little Sparrow, you’re much more than just bait,” Phil assures him, crow feet visible with the curving grin behind the Villain’s mask. “You’ll be the chaos in which we act.”
“’In the midst of chaos-‘“ Tommy starts.
“’There is also opportunity,’” Phil finishes with a gleam of his eyes. “I see we understand each other.”
“Yeah,” Tommy says with a grin that slowly bares teeth behind his mask. “I think we understand each other perfectly.”