Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Once he went home for the day, six year old Thomas D. Watkins lived in a constant state of peril. His dad always decided to pick his son up at a time that went far past mere “lateness” for kindergarten carpooling, but the small reprieve from his homelife was a gift he refused to downplay.

Even if he’d just get yelled at the minute he stepped into the car.
The ride home today had thankfully been silent however.

It was amicable, even!

Meaning, the bare minimum of no screaming or ranting about how Tommy was such a terrible kid. Which was absolutely poggers in Tommy’s opinion! I mean, obviously not the ranting, but the silence that is.

Well, okay, maybe the air became a bit more tense when Tommy crawled into the backseat with Henry, the minecraft plushie he’d just been gifted for his birthday by his teacher Miss Puffy. His parents seriously hated the sheep hybrid, who always glared at them just a bit when they came to pick Tommy up.

To be perfectly honest the silence was really getting uncomfortable.

But as his wide and terrified blue eyes stared back up at his father from the carseat he’d nervously fumbled to buckle himself into, his Dad had simply scoffed under his breath and didn't say anything about it. He barely even looked at Tommy. He’d just started driving as soon as he’d gotten into the car, which left Tommy to smack the back of his head on the carseat.

His unruly blond curls had caught slightly on the plastic edge of the seat, pulling away a few strands. He swallowed the pained chirp that nearly escaped his throat, not wanting to upset his father.

So when his Dad ignored him again and continued driving away from the school parking lot, Tommy had breathed a sigh of relief in his head and hugged his cow a little tighter.

He still flinched whenever his gaze caught his Dad’s stern eyes in the mirror though. The sting of the bruises underneath his red and white baseball T-shirt still ached as a reminder of what his parents were capable of. He was very informed about that matter.

But still, it wasn’t like most people knew about what his parents did to him or each other whenever no one but Tommy was around to try and break up their fights.

They would smile at other parents and the teachers in the hallways of his school whenever they had to go inside and pick him up.

Only Miss Puffy was really all that suspicious of his parents. Though she had a degree in child psych-o-lo-gy, so maybe that’s why she caught the small flinches and distressed chirps that everyone else failed to notice.

If they ever managed to really hear anything violent, the neighbors next door never said a word about it. The shouting and fights went unrecognized. They would bring over peach cobbler every now and then.

Tommy’s parents were perfectly good.

He kind of wished he’d gotten a “happy birthday!” when he’d gotten in the car, but it was a naive thing to hope for.
Instead of vocalizing his thoughts, he pressed his wings tighter around himself, and nervously kept his hands busy with the small paper birthday boy crown his classmates had made for him.

It had shitty plastic emeralds and rubies taped and glued onto it.
There was way too much glitter and crayon scribbled onto it.

He hated it, truthfully.
It was really, really, ugly.

But it was still one of the best birthday presents he’d ever gotten from anyone (besides the cow Miss Puffy had given him).

Until the fighting broke out in the apartment at home, Tommy would readily consider the lack of yelling on his birthday a win for now. Henry the Cow and Big Man Tommy’s royal birthday crown were his treasured wins.

He didn’t consider this a “win” anymore though.
As his rotten luck would have it, the quiet car ride home was only a small mercy.

Pogtopia - district 36-40

Lmanburg - district 21-35

Manburg - district 1-20

Tommy didn’t want to be scared of his parents, but maybe he needed to be for his own safety.

L’manburg - otherwise known as District 21-35 of the Essempi was a cramped and sorely overcrowded district. It was much better off than Pogtopia was in districts 36-40, where crime was as rampant as housing violations, poverty, homelessness, and murder, but it certainly wasn’t a gigantic walk in the park either. Sure, middle class families like Tommy’s were allowed to live in nicer areas because the rent for most apartments and the houses found in the more suburban areas of the district were more than affordable for their wage ranges, but that’s not to say that crime and poverty wasn’t still an issue overall. It just wasn’t anywhere close to being as bad as it was in Pogtopia.

Nothing was ever as bad as Pogtopia though, so that point doesn’t really mean much.

Still, L’manburg and Pogtopia are the twin regions of poverty within the greater Essempi as a country. Upper class families, heroes, political elites, and so on, all lived in the greater districts 1-20 of Manburg. More heroes were on patrol there than they ever were in the other districts.

But the districts and issues thereof found in both Pogtopia and L’manburg far outnumbered any others found amongst the different regions of the Essempi.
Because of this, the quality of life in Essempi as a whole visibly degrades as the district numbers increase and their lines blur into one another. The higher the number, the lower the average income within that district drops.

Albeit, Pogtopia was much worse off than L’manburg.

Even back then, Tommy noticed the way that abandoned shopping carts littered the streets outside the car windows. He recognized the way that kids close to his age huddled throughout the streets in packed groups, searching through rubble, forced to abandon their pride for the sake of survival.

He thought of how Philza Minecraft never came to L’manburg, how his favorite hero never really patrolled in the higher districts. How he could never seem to fully shake off the bad unsure feeling in his gut that arrived whenever he thought about it.

But oh well.
A thought for another time.

After about half an hour of driving through districts 40-36 in Pogtopia’s cramped and overcrowded district in order to get back to district 27 where Tommy lived in L’manburg, Tommy and his father finally arrived at their home at their shitty apartment complex downtown.

When they reached the elevator, Tommy watched his next door neighbors duck out of view behind the safety of their own doors. A part of him felt angry that they had the luxury of being able to ignore and avoid the abuse going on inside his apartment. Not that he really knew what that word meant, but Miss Puffy seemed pretty certain that that’s what was happening to Tommy.

And Mrs. Puffy was a really poggers teacher.

..Which meant that his neighbors had been ignoring the fights, the screams, the sounds of shattering glass, in favor of letting Tommy suffer. Miss Puffy said that he should never have to suffer like that.

Tommy trusted Miss Puffy enough to let it slip today that his parents usually argued whenever they got home. She seemed concerned by that statement, bit her lip in reply, and slipped off to go talk to another teacher in a hushed whisper after a bit more talking.

She’d come back afterwards and gave him Henry the Cow before he left that day.

Said something about how the little button behind Henry’s right ear would send someone special to help him if Tommy pressed it. Said Henry would protect him if something bad happened, and that she’d enchanted the stuffed animal with special magic that would send him a hero if he needed one.

She’d smiled at Tommy as he hugged Henry tight to his chest in wonder, his soft baby owl wings fluttering behind him in delight.

He’d never had a toy that could protect him, much less a magic one!

A harsh tug by his father snapped Tommy back to reality. They were standing in front of their apartment and his mom was waiting right in front of them. She was impatiently waiting in the doorway with a scowl on her face.

His mom was tapping her foot, adult wings twitching angrily behind her. She was waiting inside to rip into the both of them and let off her steam for the day by screaming at Tommy and his Dad. Her large wings were ruffled with annoyance despite being preened to perfection as always.

Petty as always, she turned on her heel and closed the door behind her with a slam. His dad said nothing.

Tommy looked more like his mom than he did his Dad.
He wonders if looking like either one of them is a good thing.

Bright blue eyes that shared their aquamarine color with her own had nervously watched her reactions that morning when he’d reminded her quietly that it was his birthday today. Her fingers had clenched with pale knuckles tightening around the steering wheel and her beautiful cream colored barn owl wings had fluffed up with agitation.

A stormy look had settled over her features.

She’d told him to shut up, a strange tone filling her voice. It sounded like a mix between calm hatred and something else. He couldn’t really understand what it was though.

Surely Tommy’s mom loved him, right?

After that, Tommy had quickly retreated to his room to finish getting ready for school, not wanting to further incur her wrath any further.

But that was this morning. It was the afternoon now, and Tommy was preparing himself to walk back into the frying pan.

He’d been clutching his cow tightly in both arms when he opened the door tensely, feeling frigid and demure even with the fun thought of experiments and science homework still haphazardly shoved into his ratty old Philza Minecraft backpack.

With his head hanging low he’d quickly shuffled his way in the apartment before either one of them could yell at him.

Thomas had been praying to all things Prime that his parents could just sing happy birthday to him like his classmates had and then leave him alone for just today. Mom and Dad never celebrated his birthday anymore, but he hoped that all his efforts of being good this week would pay off.

He’s done all his homework. He’d gotten three gold stars too! Miss Copernickus had congratulated him on his science experiment with the marshmallows and smarties.

So for once, Tommy allowed himself to hope that his parents would appreciate his efforts to be good.

Then a wine glass slammed into the wall near his head, glass rained down onto his undeveloped owlet wings, and Tommy had felt the slow stinging trickle of blood gushing from his forehead where a large shard of glass had embedded itself into the skin.

He hissed in pain, chirping loudly in distress before he could stop himself. Tears bubbled up in the corners of his eyes as his heart fell into his stomach.

“MOM STOP IT--” Tommy screamed as he ducked under the targeting of yet another glass projectile.

A screech ripped through his mouth and his small wings defensively covered his arms as more shards rained down onto him.

Tommy’s head hurt.
It really, really hurt.

He had raced to the bathroom shortly afterwards, dodging another wineglass- but not his Dad’s fist- as he slammed the door behind himself and hurried to lock it. The sound of his parents shouting at one another quickly crescendoed in response, but he’d held the door shut all the same when either his mom or his dad had stomped over to the door and slammed up against it loudly with their fists.

“JUST GO AWAY!!”
He yelled back at them, tears streaming down his face.

Tommy had screamed at them to go away, and had barricaded the door with a folding chair he’d kept inside the bathroom for this exact reason. A series of distressed chirps had filled the bathroom shortly thereafter, only interrupted by his sporadic sobs here and there.

It must be his fault.

He hiccuped every now and then as he felt the warm trickle of blood pour down his forehead.

Whatever shitty stupid thing his parents are arguing about must be Tommy’s fault, because if he hadn’t been born (“a mistake” his mom made in high school) then his parents wouldn’t be fighting.

Why is it always Tommy’s fault?

Whoever it was had left quickly enough though and returned to shouting all the same, as Tommy’s point-tipped avian ears had concurred.

It had been an hour since he’d locked himself in, and they were still fighting.

The fluffy grey downy feathers that composed much of Thomas’ baby wings and flight feathers had fallen to the aquamarine blue of the ceramic tiled bathroom floors in small clumps and handfuls. The hideous blue tiles were covered in thin, glinting, shards of glass and tiny specks of blood, from where he’d pulled the shards off and out of his skin and wings.

The overhead light flickered incessantly as his parents continued to shout at one another from behind the bathroom door.

Every time the light went out for just a few seconds too long due to faulty wiring in the family apartment, Tommy would hug himself a little tighter and shove his face deeper into Henry, his beloved new minecraft cow plushie.

His dad didn’t really mean to hit him, surely he “just got mad at Tommy” for getting in his parents’ way “while the adults were talking.”

But the bruise over his left eye said otherwise.

His poor wings had been stress-preened to an excessive amount, and there were tiny patches of bald spots where his feathers had been ripped out unintentionally when he’d startled during another big crash of dishware hitting some surface or another, or when there were more loud smacks.

What feathers hadn’t been plucked and pulled out in a nervous fit as his parents screamed distantly at one another outside the thankfully locked door were messy and littered with small shards of glass. Just a bit of lingering damage from one of his mother’s many attempts to throw a wine glass at his father and Tommy himself respectively in yet another fit of rage.

Tommy’s small hands trembled with every small shard he plucked from his feathers. The blinding pain in his eye and forehead was enough to make him feel sick and dizzy.

He’d done his best to shake off the bigger shards onto the floor before crawling into the bathtub and burying his face into the cow he’d gotten as a birthday present from Mrs. Puffy, his favorite teacher. She always looked so worried about the little scrapes and bruises that Tommy came into daycare with. Always made sure to gently ask if things were okay at home.

He liked Mrs. Puffy, who would dress up like a pirate during storytime and sing soft lullabies during naptime. Tommy liked the teacher whose “fluffy like a cloud” sheep hair haloed around her soft face in big cotton balls of fluff, whose strong curled ram horns could surely take down any villain who dared enter the classroom to try and hurt the kindergarteners that were totting about and squealing loudly at all hours of the day!

Sometimes Thomas really wanted to tell her the truth about his parents when the hand-shaped bruises that wrapped around his arms stung just a little too much when grazed by an unsuspecting friend who clapped him on the shoulders, or the tiny scratches, scrapes, and occasional gashes that he did so well to hide under excessive amounts of Philza Minecraft bandaids ached a little too deeply for him to ignore.

But Tommy was a good boy.
Or at least he tried to be one.

He did exactly what his parents told him to do whenever she asked if someone was hurting him, or whenever her pretty blue eyes crinkled up at the edges with all kinds of sad, or whenever she wearily pressed on with a gentle voice to ask why he sometimes burst into random fits of tears at the smallest offenses and raised voices.

Miss Puffy was always so nice to Tommy, but still.

Tommy usually just told her that everything was fine, and that Mommy and Daddy were just tired some days, that he was just having “family problems” (whatever that means, really), and that no one was hurting him. He was simply “clumsy”, as his mom tirelessly explained through gritted teeth at every parent teacher conference in existence while Mrs. Puffy stared at her with a strange look crossing her face, her usually smiling mouth downturned in a hard-pressed frown.

He hadn’t done that today though, and that’s why he had his special friend Henry now.

“We never should’ve kept him! This is all your goddamn fault Miranda.”

“You’re the one who got me fucking pregnant you lazy piece of shit! Don’t you dare blame me for your dumbass mistakes, I was a dumb highschool kid just like you.”

Thomas misses Miss Puffy now.
Maybe he should’ve told her the truth earlier this week after she pulled him aside during recess to ask again.

Maybe he would’ve gotten Henry a bit sooner.
Maybe his parents wouldn’t be so angry right now.

Was that wishful thinking?

His mother threw something at the ground, and the sound of shattering glass echoed loudly through the thin walls.

“You fucking bitch. I hate you, I hate you, and I wish we never fucked!”

“Good! Maybe then we wouldn’t have this stupid little brat- who YOU begged me to keep, mind you- eating up all our food money.”

“Please just stop fighting already..”
Tommy whispered hoarsely, a messy stream of snot running down his nose as he covered his ears with small hands, scrunching up his nose in pain as the sting of the gash in his forehead pulsed angrily.

He’d taken the box of Mr. Minecraft bandaids that Miss Puffy had snuck into his backpack and had used it to cover some of the wounds and cuts made by the glass, but this one hurt more than all the others. Tommy knew that Miss Puffy been the one to do it because she always did stuff like that for Tommy when he wasn’t looking.

Wrappers from the bandaids littered the floors now, but as Tommy cowered in the tub he couldn’t push himself to care.

Tiny four year old hands had already obsessively plucked and over-preened his undeveloped owlet wings, plucking feathers from their places here and there until each feather he pulled left a sharp sting behind in its wake. His wings already ached all over, and he was scared to face his parents once they finally stopped arguing with one another and started going after him again.

Tommy pulled at his blond curls in silent agony, messy tears streaming down his face as he cowered in the bathtub and pressed his wings tight around himself. They were only big enough to wrap over his arms, but it was enough to make him feel slightly safer all the same.

The bathroom light continued to flicker.
If it went out then Tommy would be all alone in the dark.

The thought terrified him.

Their voices rose up at odd intervals, and he flinched into himself every time a loud bang or smack tore through the periodic screams and shouts of Thomas’ mother.

He could feel his mother sneering terribly at his father, even though he couldn’t see her face from behind the safety of the bathroom door. A deep pit of fear settled into his stomach though at the thought of his mother’s face.

Not that she called herself his mother anyways, much less tried to be a good parent.
Mommy didn’t like being called anything but her real name (“Miranda L. Watkins”) because as she once told Toms,

“I’m not your mother, so don’t try to call me ‘Mom’ and pretend like I wanted you. I never did.”

His dad had argued with her about that last night as soon as Tommy had explained why he no longer called her anything but Miranda anymore.

Privately, Tommy still called her “mom.” Never to her face though.

This train of thought was cut off finally when a sharp clatter of metal hit the floor outside the bathroom. A heavy thud and the sound of gurgling sobs met Tommy’s pointed ears.

And the sounds of screams stopped, finally.

His mom had gone silent. No more crashes of dishwear came from the kitchen.

Tommy vaguely remembered opening the door, the sound of quiet sobs from his dad, the smell of iron strong in the air, pressing the button on Henry the Cow’s ear, and then- nothing.

Tommy shot awake in his dingy apartment, sitting up in a flash from the mattress on the floor, hyperventilating and unable to stop.

His hands pressed against his chest as he tried to track the rise and fall of his lungs, trying to distract himself as he fell apart.

He was no longer six years old and helpless.

So, Tommy shouldn’t still be so weak in the face of his nightmares.

But he was. And he was absolutely falling apart. His unbound wings were fluttering all over the place, soft feathers coming loose as he stressfully chirped.

“Not- fuck, not, not again..” He gasped, fingernails digging bright red crescents into his arms.

Something- something was keeping his legs constricted as he panicked. He looked down. It was the thin blankets that he’d draped over the two mattresses that Tubbo and Ranboo had pushed together on the floor so that they could all huddle up together in a protective sleeping arrangement.

His cream colored barn owl wings fluttered soundlessly, ruffled under the light of a nearby billboard that glowered down at Tommy from the nearby window. Dusty as it was, thick streams of yellow orange light shone down from above right into Tommy’s big rounded blue eyes, which seemed to sparkle dully under the lighting.

Tommy’s feathers were all ruffled and out of place, downy feathers floating in the air all around him from where his panic had sent the loose feathers up into the air.

Four facts.
Four things to focus on.
Remember what Tubbo told you to do.

Clear your head Tommy, ignore the voices of those that were used to create a disgusting monster like you and breathe. Just breathe.

Even if you don’t deserve to, just do it anyways.

Despite the dryness creeping along his throat, and the way the blanket feels scratchy against the cold sweat prickling against his skin, Tommy manages to draw a few tired whispers from his throat.

“My name is Tommy and I’m seventeen years old.”

“I’m a vigilante named Carnation from the Pogtopia region, district 40.”

“My best and only friends are Ranboo and Tubbo.”

“I hate that stupid orange billboard of the Mayor S-- somethin’ that stands outside our apartment, directly in front of our window.”

He has an irrational underlying hatred of the unfamiliar politician’s face on the billboard, and how it looks so smug. Some “S” guy or whatever. The mayor of the Manburg region.

In the back of his mind, Birdbox Chatter whispered soft threats of violence.
He ignored them, reaching out for Tubbo and Ranboo for a source of brotherly comfort.

Ranboo curled up along his side, his long split tail wrapping around Tommy and Ranboo protectively as he lay asleep. Tubbo and his satyr legs curled up along the two mattresses pressed together, sitting on Tommy’s other side.

Everything was fine.
His Dad was in prison, his mom was dead, and he, Ranboo, and Tubbo were all safe and hidden away.

Originally 3472 words, 10 pgs.

(Changes + improvements have been made during edits)

Chapter Text

Tommy really needed to get better at not getting stabbed.
But for now, he was just going to have to lay on the trios shitty greenish yellow couch with bandages covering his stomach in thick wraps.

Prime knows it had taken half an hour alone to get the bleeding to stop so that Tubbo could actually get back to work on his job. Which he chose to do from home using their only computer due to the nature of his own hybrid features. He didn’t see a point in getting harassed every time he left the apartment for having satyr legs and curled goat (maybe ram?) horns by street goers and anti-hybrid rights protestors.

Not that Ranboo could blame him for that sentiment in the least, nor could Tommy. Sure, the protestors were rare to see and even less likely to come down to the 40th district of all places, but they were irritating regardless.

Most people were okay with hybrids, but mere tolerance isn’t the same as respect.

Ranboo sighed, shelving the thought and turning away from the passive clicks of Tubbo’s plastic keyboard that sounded off loudly in the corner of the three room apartment. He shut the shaky wooden sliding door to the kitchen with a soft hum of content as he made his way across the stale yellow-white tiles of linoleum layered onto the cracked kitchen floors, stepping carefully around random bits of scrap metal and oversized fabric rolls as he navigated his way through to the stove.

Which was missing an oven door and most of the dial knobs it needed to also have a functional oven, but that was besides the point.

Faded lime green paint was peeling off of the kitchen walls in chunky bits here and there, creating small piles of discarded paint below the walls where it had come to rest with the occasional roach here and there.

Ranboo did his best to keep things clean whenever he found the freetime to actually get out their shitty old broom and vacuum. He wasn’t very good at cleaning though, so it didn’t really do much.

The black bushy end of his thin tail thwacked against some of Tubbo’s semi-questionable inventions here and there, such as the “Nukinator-9000 (model B)”; a joke project Tubbo had started long before Tommy and Ranboo had ever stumbled their ways into the goat hybrid’s life.

It was a microwave from 1989 that he’d apparently found one day whilst digging through the trash bins of Pogtopia during a routine dumpster dive for scrap metal. Said microwave was now a dangerous example of what the goat-legged hybrid was capable of creating using just thirty-three lithium and cadmium batteries, a rusted metal spatula, and a microwave that had now been outfitted to explode on command via remote control. It was basically a miniature nuclear bomb.

Why did Tubbo even have a mini nuke?

This was a question Ranboo would never seem to get an answer for.

The swinging baskets of plants hanging from the ceiling dipped just low enough towards the floor that the enderman hybrid found himself knocking his head against the sides of the planters as he tried to move around the cramped kitchen. Specks of dirt fell onto his split toned hair here and there as he gently shoved the overgrown fronds of fern out of his face.

He grimaced, brushed them from his hair, and stepped around a nearby shoebox which was emitting a strange red glow. Not that he was going to question it. That box could hold the key to Narnia and Ranboo still wouldn’t question it.

In making his way around boxes of random junk and carefully stepping over the Nukinator, Ranboo tip-toed his long legs over other experiments like it. Here and there were projects being worked on for Tubbo’s internship with Awesamdude, the infamous inventor that both freelanced and did special project requests for the H.E.R.O. organization, or the “Helpers (of) Essempi Requesting Order.”

No one called it by its full name anymore because it was far too wordy to effectively cram into casual conversations about political corruption and the fudged elitism of Manburg officials.

Pogtopia was a bitter region, and her people were all but isolated from the far left half of the country. Maybe that’s just Ranboo being one of the many other salty Burgundy ranked reporters in a district that needed at least a few dozen Orange level reporters, but what would he know? It’s not like he’s the famed blogger “Robber Baron” or anything.

At least, he did that job on the side of his normal reporter job as a food critic.

Surely Ranboo didn’t hate the government enough to make an entire blog criticizing their every move, calling out heroes on Tommy’s behalf, and for so many other reasons, right?

Right?

He snorted at the thought with a funny gleam lighting up his heterochromatic green and red eyes.

Ranboo’s upper lips twitched into a smile at the secret inside joke he had with himself as he carefully brushed aside a tall fern branch hanging over his head in the kitchen from it’s swinging ceiling planter, having escaped the valley of boxes, scraps, experiments, and so forth. The floors were never clean in the kitchen, hardly ever visible, but there were spots here and there where you could just barely set your feet down.

So now he found himself standing in the corner of the room, surveying the mountains of junk piled up in the room.

Just an oddly tall hybrid standing awkwardly in the middle of several mountains of piled up junk.

Having finally made his way over to the doorless cabinet where they kept their meager food supplies and their three different pots and pans, Ranboo cleared his throat in the empty kitchen to rid himself of the cough threatening to bubble up within it.

A quick glance at the stale box of Minecraft Munchies cereal in the corner of the cabinet, the three cans of chicken soup--ironic that despite Tommy’s avian traits, he absolutely loved eating chicken--and the dry Frozen themed macaroni noodles off to the side, it was clear to Ranboo what they’d be having for lunch today.

Noodles again tonight.

Gotta love Disney.

Ya know, until you remembered that they’re horribly exploitative towards their sweatshop employees and definitely catered more so to their capitalist consumers and backers than they did actual charities and people who needed the massive amounts of money that could’ve instead been used to help deal with actual poverty.

Whatever.

It isn’t like Ranboo can actually legally publish his thoughts on the matter.
Good thing he doesn’t do it legally then.

On paper, working at Saltmills News and Co. didn’t grant Ranboo the official authorization needed as a senior journalist to actually talk about the devastations of poverty found in both Pogtopia and (to some level) even L’manburg.

Burgundy reporters, who most of the population’s journalist pool was composed of, were only really able to do small time reporting on miniscule issues such as food criticisms, writing positive stories about heroes, and so on and so forth.

The ranking system offered to journalists officially registered by the government was shit at best.

Those that were actually authorized to speak directly to government officials, heroes, and other high-ranking persons in charge of (but falling to care for) these districts spent most of their time in Manburg instead of working in Pogtopia and L’manburg where their work was most critical.

Freedom of the Press didn’t exist in the Essempi beyond the false reassurances given out to the public, which never heard the voices of journalists who were tired of being lied to. It was a well guarded secret for most, but there were enough warning signs that the people of Pogtopia had been made aware of the truth. That’s why most informed persons were anonymous bloggers like Ranboo who put their safety on the line in order to really question and hold the rest of the Essempi accountable for its blatant censorship of public information.

Most reporters didn’t have the Orange level authorization needed to report on the actual undertakings of classism in Pogtopia and how it was a large issue in the Essempi as a whole.

What little Pogtopian reporters were Orange ranked were also too old and jaded to actually try and use their privileges to report on something that mattered, far too content with their slightly higher pay grade to truly risk it all for the sake of change. They were just as expendable as everyone else after all, able to be stripped of their titles at any point in time for any number of small offenses.

But Prime knows that he, Tommy, and Tubbo were all well acquainted with the poverty that had long ago taken root in the district they called home.

Their living room was their bedroom, their workspace, and their “couch” room.

Speaking of which.

Crawling vines and lush green plants like bountiful wild ferns dug up from the outer forests surrounding the city, aloe shrubs, basil, rosemary, and thyme, all hung from ceiling planters that Tubbo had insisted upon stealing for the sake of extra food and home-grown herbal medical supplies. In hanging overhead baskets they swung lightly with every soft breath of fresh breeze that came billowing in the open window near the half-rusted fire escape.

Tommy lay splayed out on their shoddy green couch with one arm draped across his bruised face. He sighed loudly, grumbling incoherently as his soft wings tipped towards the floors and ruffled slightly in the barely-there draft of cool air humming above his head from the air vent above him.

A burst of pain washed over Tommy as he snuggled deeper into the couch. His thumb curled around the edge of his bandages, picking at a few stray threads here and there as he gently lifted up his shirt to peer at his stitches.

They looked raw and irritated.
Hopefully they wouldn’t come loose later today when he went out again.

Which of course Tommy would be doing.

Tubbo wouldn’t like him doing it of course, nor Ranboo at that, but he really didn’t want to stay at home doing nothing for the rest of the day and night. He could of course just take a nap, but he still felt like that wouldn’t be enough to tide him over.

But Pogtopia comes first in Tommy’s eyes every time.
He’s Carnation for a reason after all.
The heroes won’t help anyways, and he has to protect his districts.

((this autocorrected to “the heteroes”))
His white under sweater, short sleeved red baseball-T with a sewn on red hood, grey sweatpants, and knee / shoulder pads made up a pretty shit vigilante costume, but that’s fine.

And yeah, it had tons of holes from stab wounds, bullet grazes, and the like, but who cares?

He let his shirt go again, chirping with exhaustion as he sniffed the air for the scent of macaroni. Tommy closed his eyes lazily and immediately went back to preening his wings with one hand, removing some bent feathers here and there just to gently drop them into a pile beside the couch.

His wings were strained from flying around the city all day, and the graze of a bullet that had almost taken out his ankle earlier that week was bruised and sore once more where the cut had been smacked with a baseball bat today.

“I wish we had more money.”
He said tiredly, thinking about how hungry he felt.

All of a sudden the clicks of Tubbo’s keyboard stopped all together.

His hooves ground into the thick carpet by the desk as he clicked his tongue in mild annoyance. Something flashed in his grey blue eyes, a strange guilt and simultaneous frustration fading into them.

“...I’m sorry?” He said slowly, turning around in his swivel chair to face Tommy.

This was an old conversation between the trio of roommates, but it never failed to upset Tubbo whenever it got brought up again.

Tommy of course was simply saying it as a passing thought, indelicately scraping against a sore spot for all of them without really thinking about what he’d been saying.

“Tommy, you know I spend most of my time working, right?”

Tubbo said slowly, ignoring the sounds of Ranboo off in the kitchen. He was probably listening in anyways, just waiting for a fight to break out in case he needed to step in, like he always did whenever this argument came up.

Tommy froze, wings tensing up around him as he stopped messing with his feathers and slowly sat up on the couch with a wince. Out of habit, he began messing around with his fingers. His palms upon closer inspection had several scars, calluses, and tiny gashes in them.

He raised his head to look at his friend apologetically. Tommy and Tubbo usually didn’t argue like this, but whenever the subject of money came up things would get tense rather quickly.

Tommy was technically classified as a missing person, so he didn’t have a job outside of daily and nightly vigilante duties. Which left him horribly injured most of the time anyways.

Ranboo was a shitty food critic / questionably legal (completely illegal) blogger who had somehow gained an enormous amount of respect and prestige in the food industry despite his horrible taste buds.

Most of their money came from Tubbo’s internship though, as well as the small side jobs he did to make gear for Pogtopian vigilantes like Tommy. But they still had to cut a lot of corners to make due on rent money, and even then they still occasionally came up short for things like their electrical bill.

Really, Tommy did appreciate all the things they were doing.

“Tubs, you know that’s not what I meant, I was just saying that-”

Tubbo raised a hand up, gave Tommy a hard look, and stood up from his chair to fold his arms across his chest. He glared back at Tommy, who shrunk back into the couch at first before his feathers fluffed up and he too got up off the couch despite the pain still bleeding into his stomach.

“Yeah, no Tommy, I get what you were trying to say. I completely understand.”
It was a sarcastic quip to say the least.

The sounds of cooking in the kitchen had long since stopped.

Inside, Ranboo was dissociating from reality as he stirred the pot of Elsa macaroni with a wooden spoon. The boiling pot of water was bubbling up dangerously, hissing as he tried to pay attention to the argument and the level of intensity within it.

“All the money I get goes either to your vigilante, medical supplies, food, or things for the apartment.”
Tubbo wasn’t without his indignancies. This was one of the few conversations that really upset him.

“Yeah, all of it, sure.”
Tommy quipped angrily, a spark of pettiness flickering to life inside of him.

Who was Tubbo trying to fool here? It wasn’t like he was telling the whole truth either.

The pot was beginning to boil over, and try as Ranboo might to keep it from spilling onto the stovetop it seemed incapable of being consoled. He turned down the heat, but the bubbles popped up and stung his skin where the water flicked up onto it.

“Frick.” He muttered, trying to rub it off without burning his skin more.

Meanwhile the argument continued in the other room, escalating quickly.

Maybe they would have more money to throw around if Tubbo didn’t spend so much of his internship money from Awesamdude on projects for Tommy and his vigilante counterpart Carnation. Maybe they would have more money if Tubbo didn’t already send 50% of what he earned to some random person he refused to tell Ranboo and Tommy anything about, citing “personal reasons” that almost always ended in abrupt arguments whenever Tommy tried to press his friend for more information on the subject.

“What the fuck- Tommy we talked about this!” Tubbo shouted, his entire body trembling with rage at the implied jab at the aforementioned forbidden subject.

Shit.
Tommy said that last bit out loud.

Tubbo’s face darkened, the glossy sheen of his curled horns glinting dangerously in the soft afternoon sunlight.

Tubbo took a single step forward, maybe just a bit more harshly than he’d intended to, and Tommy’s entire body went rigid. A fearful peep escaped his friend, who was no longer completely there in the moment and began instead reacting on impulse alone.

There was a sharp intake of breath on the curly haired vigilante’s side as he immediately pulled himself into a position for self defense. One of his less injured arms was quick to shield the weak point created by the stab wound wrapped in bandages on his stomach.

The avian immediately lurched away from his best friend with a silent flinch and his bruised fists clenched at his side tersely. His free hand balled up into a fist and was raised away from his face in front of him, non-dominant foot shifted backwards, and his entire body seemed to be ready to defend himself at a moment’s notice.

All of this made little noise- Tommy was extremely good at making sure he didn’t make any noise when terrified- but the volumes of fear hidden within the small actions echoed loudly in the small apartment, shattering the tense atmosphere with an intense and instantaneous feeling of sudden regret. His crystalline blue eyes were full of betrayal. Tubbo’s were filled with remorse.

He looked back up at Tubbo once more, a look of defeat and pain plastered all over his torn expression as his wings drooped around him like a shield.

Tubbo’s anger immediately washed away at the sight.
Whatever this petty little argument had spawned from in the first place, Tommy was much more important to him than winning it.

He immediately went to apologize, but it was clearly too late.

“Oh Prime! Tommy, no, you know I didn’t mean to-”

“Save it Tubbo. I don’t- I don’t want to hear it right now”

Tommy interrupted harshly, arms wrapping around himself protectively. So Tubbo clamped his own mouth shut and let his friend speak, feeling like he’d already done more than enough damage here.

“You know what? Fuck you Tubbo.”
Tubbo winced, but remained quiet.

“You know exactly how that kind of shit makes me feel.”

Whispered one of Tubbo’s best and only friends in the entire world.

Tommy was absolutely right about that.
Tubbo didn’t know much about his roommates and their pasts.

He knew far more about Ranboo than he did Tommy anyways, because Ranboo was far more forthcoming about what little he did wish to speak about. But one of their few clear agreements was that neither Tommy or Ranboo would tolerate any kind of genuine threat to physical and or bodily harm towards one another.

Since they’d met last year and began rooming together, the reasoning behind making such a huge point about it during late night discussions had become rather obvious to the goat hybrid.

Tubbo didn’t know much about Tommy’s history, but he knew that he flinched every time someone moved a little too quickly, or yelled a little bit too loudly.

He knew that Tommy was more likely to fight than flee at the first sign of danger, and looked as though he’d been trained to do so. Maybe he’d learned to do it for the sake of survival. Maybe he’d been forced to learn it. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because it was clear that Tommy had been abused in some way or another.

Tubbo had easily gathered that much of that abuse had been physical in nature.

So while still incredibly pissed off about the issue at hand, Tubbo immediately opened his mouth to apologize when he saw the fear and anger painted all over Tommy’s face.

He backed off immediately, took a step back, and put his hands up “palms flat” in the air where Tommy could clearly see them. Tubbo dropped the hostility as quickly as he could change his stance.

But it didn’t matter in the end.
The second Tubbo had been perceived as hostile, Tommy had been fully prepared to bolt out the window.

Chapter Text

“Fuuuuck.. why did I do that?”

Tubbo keened in anguish, shaking his head slowly as a cool afternoon wind billowed out from the now wide opened window to the apartment. His floppy ears swung side to side as he did so. A faint headache was slowly beginning to pulse along his temple, the pain in his skull making him feel somewhat nauseous as yellow orange light streamed down into the apartment.

His friend had jumped out of the window to get away from yet another petty argument over money. Tubbo’s arms curled around his torso in a shit attempt at self-soothing.

Just how badly had he messed up with Tommy just now?

He stared numbly at the scattered pile of cream colored feathers littering the floor from where Tommy had leapt out of the open window. Tommy had hastily grabbed his vigilante gear just before leaving, Tubbo being too shocked to stop him as self-deprecative murmurs echoed inside his head after he’d seen Tommy’s stormy expression.

Fuck.

Tommy was still injured from getting stabbed and knocked around earlier on today during his routine morning patrols. His stitches could easily come undone again from being overworked.

It would be all Tubbo’s fault too. Per usual.

On the flip side of his now utterly shitty mood, the goat hybrid didn’t really like to think about his self-hatred, didn’t like to talk about it, and didn’t like to confront it either. Especially not after hurting someone else. They - Tommy and Ranboo - were his only friends.

They were so much more important to him than his own feelings.

His hooves stamped against the dirty carpet nervously as he distantly registered the sound of Ranboo turning off the stove and setting the boiling pot of cooked Elsa macaroni off to the side of the countertop.

The green planters swinging overhead in the living room turned office turned shared bedroom swayed in the breeze. Sounds of the 40th district echoed in from below their apartment. Late day rush hour traffic, children whining to their parents, cop cars and sirens wailing through the streets.

Everything is fine.
Tubbo just needs to make things right again with Tommy, and apologize for his mistakes.

Maybe eventually he’ll be able to tell Ranboo and Tommy the truth about the money.
Just not today. Not yet.

The feeling of Ranboo’s clawed hand gently tapping Tubbo on the shoulder shifted him away from his thoughts as Tubbo turned away from the open window to stare at Ranboo.

Oh. Damn. He looked kinda pissed.

Ranboo, to be honest, was getting tired of playing the peacemaker during arguments about money. His tail twacked against a nearby box full of scraps as he stood tall in the doorway to the kitchen, the sliding door pushed off to the side so that he could lean against the door frame with his arms crossed.

A part of him really wanted to be angry with Tubbo right now.
A part of him certainly felt angry.

But there was a growing sense of concern bubbling up from within his chest that almost begged the half-enderman to console a now slightly teared up Tubbo rather than fire off at him angrily for hurting his friend. It twitched anxiously within his chest. Ranboo wanted to show compassion the second he saw the anxiety eating away at Tubbo bleeding into the despairing hunch of his shoulders as he stared out the window almost longingly.

But he’d already failed Tommy once before.

Ranboo refused to be the same as he was back then, to be the same coward who’d stood by and silently watched his friend get hurt because he was too afraid to step in even when he felt something deep inside that was screaming about the wrongness and injustice of it all.

So when he opened his mouth to speak, teeth glinting in the light as a sort of mild threat or warning, he kept his voice in a stern and authoritative tone to hide the stressed fidgeting of his hands as he kept them tucked in around his torso carefully.

“The first thing you’re going to do when he gets back is apologize. And Tubbo? I mean really, really apologize.”

Tubbo flinched back slightly as he visibly deflated upon hearing Ranboo’s scolding tone. His shoulders were drooping as his ears flicked back and twitched. Ranboo’s heterochromatic eyes didn’t fail to catch the guilt practically dripping off of his friend in the small motion.

“Yeah, I know big man. That’s the plan.”

Hearing the soft but genuine sentiment of regret in Tubbo’s voice gave Ranboo something to calm down over at least. He sighed, uncrossing his arms to comb through his split dyed hair with one hand. Ranboo glanced at the stained yellow carpet floor where Tubbo had been staring briefly beforehand and instantly felt himself melt further at the sight of Tommy’s feathers.

Tubbo and Tommy really needed to get better at communicating their butt-hurt feelings in a healthy way with one another. Seriously, at least Ranboo doesn’t respond to tension by raising his hackles and getting aggressive. Most of their problems came from ⅔ roommates having multiple jobs and still not enough money to burn on food, and that always kept tensions high.

They either need to get better at dealing with this as their reality or-

Or...

An idea popped into Ranboos head at the thought, something that might help table the money issue for the time being.

“We can compromise. Tommy can get a job - you just need to forge some documents - and we’ll leave the issue of your mystery person alone for now.”

The tension in the room rose once more at the mere mention of the money issue, but Tubbo once again deflated and quickly let it go. He hesitated at first but then nodded slightly in agreement, the glossy end of his horns catching in the soft amber of the afternoon sunlight.

“Fine. We’ll talk about it when Tommy comes home, I’ll apologize, and- and I’ll check his stitchings for any loose or snapped threads.”

Ranboo hummed appreciatively while the bushy end of his split tail happily thumped against the box of scraps beside his leg. Finally, he can get back to prepping the macaroni.

Somewhere deep in the 40th district, Tommy’s hands were still trembling as he soared across dirty rooftops and narrowly swerved around broken lamp posts here and there. The cut in his side ached, and the stitches Tubbo had carefully sewn him up with tugged painfully with every snap of his huge wings as he rushed to flap them again to gain more airtime.

The red part of his hood was whipping around his head violently in the wind, but luckily he’d pinned it to his hair using a couple of old bobby pins he’d taken from Ranboo.

Ranboo was probably going to kick Tubbo’s ass for this one.
Not that Tommy needs him to.

He huffed slightly at the thought, a loud exhale breathing through him in tired annoyance.

He really doesn’t want to think about what just happened at the house.
I mean, Tommy forgives his buddy and all, but that was SO not poggers.

He still feels like shit after everything that happened. Still hates the way he’d flinched away when Tubbo stepped too close, just a hair too aggressively for Tommy’s own comfort.

Fuck Tubbo.
TUBBO IS AMAZING SHUT UP.
You shut up!!!
;-;
You’re a fucking monster Tommy.
YEAH BITCH. I WIN!
fuck you
PRICK YOU WANNA GO???
He doesn’t deserve love.

Something inside him was stuck on what one of the voices had said- something about how either Tommy or Tubbo “didn’t deserve love”. They definitely weren’t talking about Tubbo there though.

Unlike Tommy, Tubbo actually deserved love.
Tommy would beat the ass of anyone who dared to suggest otherwise. Respectfully, of course.
He passed across apartment complexes with ease, the shadow of his winged figure falling heavy across the battered concrete roofs like a vulture of some sorts. Someone always on the verge of hurting other people, bringing nothing but death and destruction in his wake.

Maybe he really didn’t deserve love after everything he’d done back at that place.

It would make sense if he didn’t, given all the lives he’d taken while imprisoned there. Sometimes he didn’t have a choice in the matter if he wanted to live, and had definitely had a few close calls where he’d been shown just how serious the threat of death was there.

But how could anyone say for sure that he wasn’t just as horrible as his abusers were when he himself gave in to their demands?

Whatever.

At least the voices were still stuck on thinking about Tubbo.

All my homies hate the goat boy.
E.
Vigilante pog???
I hate everything about you
Owl boy™ is about to go and get arrested
Are we being nice right now?>>>>????
YES, UNTIL WE ACTUALLY START FIGHTING AGAIN.
You’re a monster
/rainbowchat
ENTRAILS FOR THE BIRDBOX CHAT>>>>!!!
fuck nevermind i guess we crave violence
You ruined our lives Tommy
TOMMMMMMYYYYYY HIIIIIIIIII!!
>:D
Monster.

Nevermind, Tommy jinxed himself.

The voices were fond of calling Tommy a monster.

His captors had been humans, but nothing about their actions had portrayed any semblance of humanity. Tommy was human initially, but after all the things they’d done to him and his body he felt detached from the idea of ever reclaiming a sense of personal humanity and personhood beyond that of a mere plaything someone else had cut open for whatever reasons they’d deemed necessary.

He felt more like a ‘thing’ than a ‘being’.
More of a weapon than an actual living, breathing, human being.

The voices might be right to call him a monster.

He sighed and pushed that train of thought far away from his mind as he stared up towards the sunset falling in golden waves over Pogtopia.

The buildings around him were old and absolutely in shambles, concrete busted up and half spread out all over the sidewalks below as a consequence of old villain attacks that never got cleaned up. Thick, heavy, vines crawled along the overwhelming expanse of rooftops above, and dandelions broke up around the sidewalk wherever there were cracks and chips coming up to reveal the soil.

Pogtopia was his most beloved mess.

Tommy cared about her and her people far more than he cared for his own safety.
The bar was on the floor regarding himself though, so maybe that wasn’t saying much.

But still!

He cared immensely about Pogtopia.

And maybe he shouldn’t use vigilante-ing as an extreme form of stress relief whenever he has a panic attack, nightmares, flashbacks, gets scared, etc., but it wasn’t like there was anyone out there who could actually keep Carnation off of the streets and fighting crime during yet another bad mental breakdown.

Except for maybe Ranboob and Tubbo, but they’d long since learned to just give him his space during moments like these.

Humming and buzzing away, loudly in the far reaches of Tommy’s mind, were the voices that never failed to see him as anything but a monster regardless of his attempts to prove himself otherwise. It was the price of a power that he had never asked for; a power he refused to ever use, anyways.

Whatever.
You don’t deserve anything Tommy.
BLOOD POG!
Just another monster just like the rest of us, get used to it.
Give us blood.
EEEEEEE!!!!

He grumbled slightly, drifting off mid-air as he tilted his wings and angled himself towards an old storage facility he’d become more than acquainted with by now.

“Fuck off Chatter, ‘m not in the mood right now for your antics.”

Not that the voices cared in the slightest. They liked the way Tommy felt sick to his stomach every time he looked in a mirror anyways, whenever they weren’t demanding that he kill the criminals he spent all his time kicking ass against. He’s got a “no-kill” policy for a reason now.

Yeah but bitch boy over here is perfectly fine with maiming hoes
ONLY THE ONES THAT FUCKIN DESERVE IT THOUGH
Liar Tommy
WAIT HE’S LIAMMY!!!
Liammy???
WHAT THE FUCK IS LIAMMY?!
;o

The gust of wind slapping against his forehead pushed Tommy’s warm blond curls away from his tear streaked face as he brushed his arm across his eyes to make it easier to see.

His white mask stuck to his skin like glue, the thin white film covering his eyes obscuring the bright blue color of his eyes just enough to hide their true color. It worked like a perfect one way mirror; Tommy could see out of it just fine, but other people were unable to see his actual eye color.

Tommy was having a horrible time, but soaring proudly over the streets of Pogtopia made him feel less anxious. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly while his feathers ruffled gently in the breeze as he drifted over the streets, passing by people walking down below with ease. Many looked up with relieved smiles as his shadow passed over their heads.

As long as none of them were criminals, they had nothing to fear from Carnation.

But a quick scan over the skyline, a few poke arounds in random alleyways, and the rare absence of sirens wailing into the now cool night sky told Tommy that there wouldn’t be much crime out tonight.

His wings were getting sore from flying around everywhere too.
Honestly, he didn’t like flying for too long unless there was an actual reason to do it.

It just hadn’t felt as safe to be out there right in the open air anymore like it used to as of late.

A wave of irritation washed over him as the voices began to chant about entrails and something about punching the nearest taxi driver (not that taxis even bothered coming down to the lower districts of Pogtopia anyways due to some absolute bullshit about “safety concerns”).

OKAY BUT SOMEONE SHUT UP AND TELL ME WHAT LIAMMY MEANS!!!
liar + tommy = liammy
EAT MY ASS AND CHOKE ON GRASS
E>?????
SHHHHH BABY BIRD IS FUCKIN TIRED LIKE DAMN
quiet mortal
WE WERE HUMAN ONCE TOO YOU SHITHEAD
Fuck off just let them be edgy

“Fuuuuck, alright! Fuck all of you!! Whatever!”

He screeched suddenly as a headache began to grow. It hurt to scream, but the voices were quieter now at least.

For a few seconds, anyways.

NO ENTRAILS FOR BIRDBOX CHAT>>>>???
Fuck you tommy
no blood for the blood god???
WRONG CHAT LOSER!
F.
e.
Fuck off rude voices, we’re trying to provide comic relief!
L.

Tommy groaned loudly in dismay, launching himself down onto an old rooftop closer to the invisible boundary line between the 40th and the 39th districts. Landing with a harsh thud, he quickly tapered his wings back to his sides and rushed to smooth out his feathers.

“I don’t care if you want blood, or entrails, or- or, whatever!”

Tommy was starting to scare off the birds sitting on a nearby telephone pole. Their black wings faded into near invisibility as they took off into the night, cawing loudly to voice their displeasure as they flew away.

If yOu DidNT WaNT tO SPILl BLOod
Feed us
THEN WHY DID YOU SPILL OURS?
:)
pay back what you owe us tommy
ENTRAILS FOR THE BIRDBOX CHAT
L.
This is your BLOOD DEBT after all

“Shut up. I didn’t have a choice.”

Tommy was going to keep ignoring the voices, no matter how much they had to say about him. Even if they were probably right.

The one night he really needs to let off some steam and do something helpful, there’s no one around in need of help. But he could always just.. not do that? The wound in his stomach still ached terribly, and he really didn’t want to come home bleeding and shit only to piss off Tubbo again.

The voices were getting louder.
Tommy was so over it.

“Fuck it.”

Tommy trilled out aggressively, a menacing hum rumbling in his chest. The voices quieted down slightly in their confusion as they simmered down from their distorted roar to a soft blur of questioning.

Good, he thought. Tommy could actually work with that.

“I’m going to take a nap here on the roof,”

Tommy stated calmly, pointing to himself as he sat down in a cushy tangle of vines that had gathered along the side of the roof. The only entryway to this abandoned building’s rooftop was inaccessible due to rust damage around the doorknob and hinges, so he didn’t feel too concerned about resting here.

“And you’re all going to shut up!”

He clapped his hands together affirmatively, staring intently at the sky as if daring the Gods to push their luck with him.

Immediately, the protests began pouring in.

WHAT???
does Tommy really think he can just-
SHUT US UP LIKE WE’RE NOTHING>>>??
Apparently he does.
FUUUCCCKK THAT!!!!

“HONESTLY Birdbox, I think I forgot the part where I told you that you had a say in any of this!”

Tommy fired back with a cackle, flipping off the stars twinkling above him as he curled up in the unfeeling embrace of the vines.

“But! I’ll compromise with you!”

He added quickly as the voices began to roar loudly once more, likely in a coordinated attempt to intentionally worsen his already stupidly painful headache.

Like a bunch of demented toddlers (with the attention span of a group of fucking flies), they immediatly ceased once more and began to listen intently. A quiet murmur continued to buzz angrily in the back of his skull though.

“Once I wake up, I’ll go kick some ass again. I can’t promise you blood if the crime doesn’t fit that kind of punishment, but I’ll figure something out.”

He clocked out of awakeness shortly after a hum of pleased agreement echoed through his mind. He faded off into the land of sleep whilst nestled in the arms of a rusted city and a handful of vines.

Chapter Text

Hi there!

I’m a senior in high school so there’s a lot on my plate right now, and that definitely impacts my ability to write a new update in a timely manner.

As a consequence, it would be impossible for me to make a clear update schedule in the meantime.

It may be a while for me to post new chapters in between updates.

Not to mention, my co-editor / beta reader has her own schoolwork and scheduling conflicts to deal with.

However, I am always working on the notes and outlines for the next chapters.

I’ve been doing that slowly over time since before the last update really.

I’m actually about halfway done with the actual chapter plans for the first half of the rough outline so far, but I’m coming up on multiple major deadlines and ACT / SAT stuff.

Thank you so much for your gracious patience!!!

- Red_Ghostie

Edit: This “chapter” was published on Oct 14th, the one before it is new.
Idk how but AO3 somehow switched the order around???

Chapter Text

The smell of blood hung putrid in the air, suffocating Tommy as he breathed in shakily. 

He’d killed the one she loved. 

His selfish desire to live had left the one she cared for most to be little more than a now slowly cooling body that she’d begun to cradle in her arms. 

That dull realization failed to fully register in his mind as he tried to distance himself from the red that seemed to cover his skin like an unwanted blanket. The very color meant to symbolize life and health had sluggishly seeped out of its fleshy casing, now invisibly tattooing Tommy’s body with its burning mark. 

That woman. 

That angry, horrified, disgusted woman. 

Her face was fuzzy, blurry, and had no discernible features that Tommy was able to note clearly except for those judgement filled green eyes. Tommy wasn’t sure if the Gods were still alive, but she had their wrath expertly pinned down within her enraged vermilion hues. Her cries were inhuman and had been filled with a grief filled rage that Tommy could never seem to know how to confront. 

There’d been flashes of blood stained hands, his white and brown feathers harshly dyed in sticky clumps of the iron-scented liquid, and visions of his own panicked blue eyes staring back at Tommy in the reflection of the unfamiliar woman’s piercing green irises. White tiles that were covered- no, positively drenched -- in the blood of whoever the woman was wailing for had drifted in and out of focus throughout the foggy dream (memory?) as he stood before her with undeniably stained hands. 

“Monster.” 

She whispered hoarsely, repeating herself once more as her reflection stared back at her from behind the bloodstained thing standing stupefied before her as if confused by the events that had just played out.

Her dark skin was covered in bruises, splattered with blood that was likely a mix of her own and the corpse she was now hovering over like a desperate nurse attempting to revive a flatlined patient. She ran her hands over the person’s chest, trying to do something. Trying to heal him somehow, even though she couldn’t. Her hands glowed every now and then like dying green fireflies blinking in and out of existence as her frustration began to mount.

Eventually her hands were covered in caked layers of blood.
Tommy stood there, wings flexing slightly as he watched in silent horror. 

Blood was splattered all over the walls and he could feel the rusty stench of it covering his hands as he stared at her continued efforts, unable to turn away.

No matter how hard she tried to reverse the effects of death, they continued to persist within her loved one. Their eyes were quickly going glassy. Their heartbeat was gone. 

Her words came out in hoarse whispers initially but quickly devolved into deranged shouts.

“Get up, get up, please, ----- don’t leave me here alone with this thing! ”

The effort was proving to be futile however. 

Her begging cries couldn’t breathe life back into the disemboweled figure she was clinging to. There were too many ruptured organs, too much blood on the outside of the veins meant to carry it, and too many twisted limbs bent at horribly unnatural angles. It was pooling below the body and slipping down her ankles as it smeared along the tiles. Every shaky movement she made spread around more crimson smears. 

Stains of the putrid liquid seemed to be everywhere. 

The person, who Tommy couldn’t identify at all, had only been dead for a few minutes.

But the smell of death hung rotten in the air. The last hushed breath that had bubbled out of their lips amidst the choked gag of blood and vomit was still ringing in his ears like a bad record.

It was like the body had somehow been dead for months instead, and the smell flooded the room. 

It looked like all the blood in the now quietly cooling body had somehow twisted itself into a weapon against its host, spurting out of gaping holes near the neck and major arteries where bloodflow would’ve been heaviest. The limbs seemed to have warped of their own volition, bending to the whims of an unseen puppeteering force.

The lady’s now glowing absinth eyes catch his and the world slows as a burning hatred dries up her feverish tears.

Her hands are glowing the same toxic green color, and there’s a strange muted buzzing feeling in the back of his head. It tells him ever so loudly to fly away, little birdy .

Everything felt so distant and foggy. It didn’t feel like it was simply because of the dreamy state that the boy was somehow trapped in. 

He’d done this, clearly. Hadn’t he?

It was as though that one idea was the center of this dream. No, this nightmare. 

Was this just another horrific reminder that Tommy was a horrible human being, unworthy of love and incapable of redemption?

It was the shrill agony of the long-since dead woman’s screams that had shaken Tommy from his already admittedly fitful slumber, thrusting him into the world of the awakened living with all the grace and charity of a freight train. 

Monster. 

Her lips parted to reveal a nothingness, an empty and all consuming void as Tommy’s already unreliable dream vision began to spiral. 

“I’m sorry--!” 

Before he’d even opened his eyes, Tommy’s wings were puffing up to shield him as he lurched forward in horror of himself. The vines he’d nestled into the night before tightened around him as he tried to claw his way out of their no longer comforting entanglement. 

The blazing light of morning sunlight greeted him with an almost painful level of clarity as his brilliant blue eyes shot open with unshed tears. 

Vines that had once seemed like a gentle rooftop sanctuary, a cradle to rest his head in, were now a vice set on constricting every panicked rise and fall of his ribcage. They were far too green, uncomfortably vermillion just like the strange lady’s eyes.

Tommy felt like he couldn’t breathe, his chest too wracked with tired sobs to make sense of the sudden failures of his own traitorous respiratory system. 

“I’m- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--!” The words fell from his mouth in half-jumbled waves, slurring together at times with the rushed state of his words. 

Atonement that would never come, atonement for crimes that a part of him would rather bury deep in the world of his dreams. There were so many memories that he’d forgotten, and so many others that Tommy had left half-digested in his mind to appear in the middle of the day. Sometimes his mind intentionally sealed them off. Other times it simply couldn’t. 

He guessed that this would be yet another one of them.

Clammy fingers pressed harsh, bright red half-moons into the skin of his arms. 

Tommy still can’t breathe. His fingernails are stained red as they dig into his skin. 

Suddenly all the air rushes out of him and the spots of black staining his vision envelope his vision completely. His entire world is eclipsed within darkness amidst scalding rays of sunlight. 

He passes out after a few more horrible minutes of labored breathing, only to awake again about three hours later with no recollection of either the dream, nor the incident that occured. He wouldn’t remember anything.

Tommy’s mind wouldn’t allow him the chance to remember the memories he’d tried so hard to forget.

The stains covering those white walls were probably still there too.

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I know it’s been a while since I’ve made a formal update to this book. Rest assured: I have never stopped working on it in the background.

Up until yesterday, I had the next three chapters planned out and was working myself up to writing them.

I’m sure many of you already know what this is about, but for those who don’t know about it yet I’m sorry to be the bearer of some very hard to hear news.

Last night a video was uploaded to Technoblade’s channel, entitled “so long losers.” Within it, Technoblade’s father explained that his son had had stage 4 cancer.

The unfortunate key word here is “had.”

Technoblade died yesterday on June 30th, 2022.

In the wake of this tragedy I think many of us would appreciate time to grieve and deal with our disbelief at what has happened. I know that I myself am still waiting for a video to come up saying that he isn’t dead, but I know in my heart that that isn’t going to happen.

We’ve lost a uniquely wonderful person and I can’t begin to think of how the people Techno loved and cared for are feeling right now.

Originally, I’d planned to introduce Technoblade’s character within the next few chapters. In light of recent events, I feel it would be a bit tone deaf to continue on with my original plan as if nothing has happened.

So, until further notice (that being, until I can deal with my own grief and feel it to be an appropriate time to formally introduce Techno as a character), I’ll be reworking some of the plot to accommodate for the situation.

Techno will be going on a big mission in the background. I won’t pretend like he doesn’t exist, but I don’t think I could handle writing about him in a joking and comical way when he just died.

On a final note, please note that future updates will all be at my own leisure with no particularly planned schedule.

- Red

Chapter Text

Long story short I won’t be updating this anymore but that’s only because since around August I’ve been working on turning this into an original story because I really wanted to make this something good and original.

For anyone who wanted to know how this fanfic would’ve ended..

My plan at the time of the last updated chapter was to have Tommy become an intern at SBI’s hero agency as a way of getting a job like he wanted to. He hides his wings from them during the day (and Phil freaks about this bc he can see that Tommy has avian ears like him but.. no wings?? Who hurt the chick? Who stole his wings? He will commit a murder over this, #1 hero or not.)

Also they think Tommy is being abused bc of all the bruises he gets from his vigilante life. So, extra angst there and major misunderstandings!

He gets cared for by SBI as their intern who they slowly become more attached to and start trying to absorb into their little mismatched family (and Tommy struggles with the idea that he’s betraying them and their affection for him by hiding his real identity and the fact that he’s a vigilante, which makes it difficult for him to accept their affection bc he feels like a liar and yes, he still sees himself as a monster undeserving of love.)

Once I finally got him to be an intern this story would start to turn into a slow burn. I wanted to focus on Tommy’s feelings and him dealing with them and trying to unpack them WHILE he was still being forced to deal with everything else in his life.

Eventually Tommy would meet Technoblade, who acts as a sort of unofficial hero mentor for Tommy (Phil and Wilbur get worried that Tommy can’t defend himself well, haha, so they peer pressure Techno into giving him fighting lessons once he comes back from a really long trip that he’d been on for a while which the media was worried was his retirement).

He is also comically suspicious that Tommy is not who he says he is. And no one believes him, which he finds utterly infuriating. Please listen to him, he has a cork board of theories about all of Tommy’s suspicious behavior and all the holes in his backstory that Phil and Wilbur are intentionally ignoring at this point because they’re in too deep. Tommy is incredibly worried the entire time that big pig man is onto him (he is) and is scared that he’ll uncover the truth (he will, and the temporary fallout will be so angsty and filled with hurt).

Also, big reveal!

Tommy is actually a rudimentary version of what Technoblade was created to be!

Technoblade was rescued by Phil as a teenager from a facility created by the same people that made Tommy into a weapon and experimented on him genetically and otherwise. The voices that they both have are a product of them being given powers that they take from other people by killing them, which is why the voices are usually so mean. The nightmare scene from that one chapter is a distorted memory of Tommy killing a woman for her powers after having killed her friend because he was being forced to do so.

Anywho: the facility lost their best weapon (and the closest thing they had to a completed project) when Techno was rescued, so they restarted the project using Tommy.

Tommy is incomplete though, and this was going to start causing some issues for him later on. (Ex: him being somewhat unstable genetically, his powers potentially rejecting him, etc) Also, he refused to use his other powers because he didn’t want to be the weapon they’d made of him.

Also, Tommy and Techno have a shared power which was meant to be one of the main products of the program: blood manipulation!

Techno uses his blood manipulation freely as his primary power and it’s what he’s best known for as a hero, outside of him being well remembered for an incident in which he lost control of the voices and attacked everyone during a big event with a bunch of heroes and civilians there. He was put on probation as a hero for this for about a year while the legal issues and media uproar was being dealt with. This was formally regarded as a “mission,” since the hero agency needs Techno too much to get rid of him and Phil + Wilbur threatened to walk if they tried.

Also, Dream is a top hero in this whose family got killed due to an accident that I hadn’t fully worked out the details of, but the result of that was that he got taken in by the government and was groomed to be a hero in the same way that Tommy was groomed to be a weapon and there was going to be some unexpected good guy dream (who is a bit morally questionable because he’s still a government weapon no matter how nice he is) who wants to help vigilante Tommy not be a vigilante anymore but an actual hero. So that’s fun!

Oh, and Sapnap and George were both planned to be chaotic criminals who give everyone constant hell. They were really more meant to stay as a background plot that occasionally shows up through like, reports on the news and stuff in mentions throughout the story. They also served as a way to get Dream and other heroes introduced non-formally so that every time y’all met a new hero I wouldn’t have to spend a paragraph explaining who they are.

I can’t remember fully at the moment but Quackity has a vet clinic that also doubles as a vigilante clinic and Karl is a time hero. He, Sapnap, and Karl are all dating. There was also an implied plotline of none of them knowing that Sapnap is a villain, Karl is a hero, and Quackity is a sort of neutral aid to vigilantes.

Since Tommy was hurt in the last chapter and ran off he was going to pop his stitches again while fighting in the next chapter and need to rush to Quackity’s clinic. Then, there was going to be a fun little scene of Quackity hiding Tommy in the back room of the clinic while his nosy boyfriends Sapnap and Karl try to investigate.

The mystery person was Tubbo’s mom who is in the hospital, who he is sending money to to help keep her alive (she eventually dies anyways, causing him tons of grief.) He was the son of Schlatt, who was meant to be the major antagonist of all this. He’s basically a corrupt politician whose family has a long legacy of running the political life of the country in many ways. Until he had an affair with Tubbo’s mom (who had no idea Schlatt was married bc this happened just before he announced his engagement to his actual wife) and got her pregnant, none of his blood line had included hybrids.

Tubbo was born from that incident and since he was born a hybrid Schlatt basically paid off Tubbo and his mom to disappear so that they wouldn’t affect his political career. (Schlatt isn’t really anti-hybrid but his supporters are and he knows that.)

^Also, to discuss that a bit more, Schlatt as the major antagonist of this book is arguing for nation wide restrictions on hybrid rights and is largely responsible for the present state of the lower districts. He’s also tied in financially with the facility that produced Tommy and Techno, and Tommy was meant to learn more about this eventually as the fic developed.

When Tubbo got older he argued for money from Schlatt using himself as blackmail which worked until his mom got sick with an unknown illness which I was going to work on making as a mini plotline. When his mom got sick she got really vulnerable and Tubbo had to keep moving her around to dif hospitals to keep Schlatt from finding her, bc he’s worried that Schlatt will try to murder her to prevent her from talking. (And yeah, he probably would.)

The money Tubbo gets and sends away goes towards her treatments and trying to find a cure for her. He’s really stressed about it and that’s why he snapped at Tommy so badly when he poked at the issue unknowingly. Also, Tubbo’s hacking job and other stuff keeps HIM from being discovered too and he rarely goes outside in order to prevent himself from being caught on camera too often.

Idk if I mentioned this in the story yet or not but Ranboo was also in the lab with Tommy!

He was an accidental creation by two of the researchers who were goofing around with genetics and cloning devices that resulted in a small ender-ghast hybrid teenager (who then promptly ran off and found Tommy’s cell by accident when he teleported into a random area out of fright.)

Ranboo was subjected to minor amounts of experimentation but he was mostly kept alive as a way of keeping Tommy in line since they became friends that day, giving the researchers an ability to finally hold something over a very temperamental and not very willing to do anything Tommy. (Tommy and Ranboo were both young teens when they met, though Ranboo had the mind of a small child at first since he was born as a teenager due to issues with the cloning process.)

And no, Tubbo isn’t really all too aware of Tommy and Ranboo’s history. He has his own secrets though and respects that they have theirs. It’s a mutual unspoken agreement between all of them to never ask about one another’s pasts unless given permission first.

Eventually they escaped together, met Tubbo, and started living with each other in a very shitty apartment.

As Tommy continues to live a double life in the story eventually he as a vigilante starts uncovering more details about what he is, why he was created, etc. He learns about why the government is the way that it is, etc, and starts fighting against it directly rather than simply trying to look out for the little guy as a local vigilante.

That’s the major plotline of the story, outside of the angst + learning self love + found family. Or, was, anyways.

I’ll update this again later when I get the time to fill in more details about everything that was planned out!

For now, if you have questions please comment them.