something that i'm not | sbi au

8 | feels like a good night to die

tw hospital setting, emotional manipulation

the end. it might've took me three weeks to write the last chapter. it might've also taken me less than a day to write this one. but who really knows

They're gone. They're gone.

They took Tommy's brothers away. At first, they'd taken everyone; Ranboo and Tubbo went to the hospital while the other three were taken to the police station. Tommy was questioned, and he figured that the twins were, too.

In one breath, out another. In a second breath, out again.

They asked him all sorts of things about the situation. Whether or not the gunfire was intentional. Whether or not it was to kill.

He hopes to the darkest reaches of the sky that it wasn't to kill, and he tells the officer as much. She only shook her head, scratched it into her notes, and kept inquiring.

What was the situation at his foster home? Did he want to run away? Did Wilbur or Techno or Phil ever hit him? Did he want to go with his brothers?

He'd lied. Good graces, if that fucking psych and that fucking cop could see him now, lying his ass off just like his brothers taught him to. Hell, it was even in the wake of what's probably the most traumatic thing he'll ever experience.

No, he didn't want to go with his brothers. Yes, he wanted to run. Phil was mean. He was mean and he said bad things to him and his brothers and while he didn't hit, he did treat them as others and less than and like they were dangerous.

(Maybe he was trying to convince himself more than the poor officer who happened to be working at that sickening hour of the night.)

But, he'd added softly, ruefully, Phil did it for his kids. He did care, but just maybe not about Tommy. He-- (it came out in choked whispers, half-shrouded in sobs--) he was a sickeningly good father. He must've done everything right, because look what happened as soon as his sons were alone with Tommy and the twins. He was right not to care.

Echoing it again-- that Phil, his at-the-time guardian, was right not to care-- the officer had to look away. Tommy saw the faint mist in her eyes, the same one he felt in his own head, crushing, awful, and sad.

For all the lying he didn't do at the beginning of the day, he was still good at it. Words spun and reverberated in his head of Wilbur wanting him to have a life, to leave his brothers behind and make his own success. He could daydream and waste away listening to his brother's voice as he talked about how much he cared(-- like Phil did not).

"And I'm scared," he'd told the officer, fiddling with his thumbs and avoiding looking at her. For once, such actions would more likely be taken as indications of truth than of lie. "I didn't know. I didn't know, swear, that they'd ever do something like that. I didn't know Tech could shoot a gun at all. I'd really thought that they'd never do anything that bad, and especially not to my best friends."

Tommy had gotten a smile of mixed comfort and pity in return, and through his shaky inhale, was assured that he could wait before he continued.

When told that his brothers were also the prime suspects of a kidnapping case whose approximate date he recognized, Tommy began to hyperventilate and insist that he hadn't known. He hammered it in, shouting and demanding that the officer take it back and tell him the truth, but she kept calm when Tommy did not.

She believed him when Tommy didn't believe himself.

After calming down, he was allowed to leave. A different officer had taken him in his car to the hospital. During the ride, he was told that Wilbur and Techno were being held in jail until their trials, and that he'd likely need to testify. The man had tilted his rearview mirror so that he could attempt to meet Tommy's eyes when he'd assured him that Wilbur and Techno would not be getting out of prison any time soon.