✏ 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬.

𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

The sun doesn’t rise in the morning without a stinging numbness in his soul.

Tommy wakes up to an intense void that’s already licking his emotional palette clean, leaving no trace of yesterday’s angst or joy. It’s an old friend at this point; the searing, aching and violence of nothing that casts everything in a monotony of grey and white architecture, a boring shadow of green meadows and looming hills.

At first, Tommy used to approach the damn thing with violence. He screamed, kicked things, tried his best to weed it out by intensifying his every exploit with thrills and mischief till right blurs with wrong, but it infected everything with it’s ugly vapidness to the point where even fighting back became tiring and stale, so he co-existed with it.

Of course, it heavily impacted Tommy’s bits but no one noticed because no one ultimately cares about him. Too busy with their responsibilities and what-have-yous. He sits like an abandoned mutt thrown away for his abrasive demeanor and biting, rotting away in every single interaction.

Usually, he’d spend some time with Tubbo to distract himself but he’s knee deep in paperwork and adult responsibilities, and Quackity is too busy being himself. It’s not like he’d want to talk to them. Neither of them trusted Tommy anyways, and the splendor of their friendships have rusted. Phil would be the next best thing if he wasn’t preoccupied with Fundy’s adoption papers.

In his time alone, he got to familiarise himself with his new friend. It's still as much an enigma as it was before, but at least it had some rhyme and reason to it. It didn’t inhibit his emotions, it merely suppressed it. The kicker was that it was actually trying to help him. It kept him safe from the disappointment, but compromised by severely limiting his range of emotions to anger, boredom and pensive. Any complex feelings were just white noise to him, black and white like TV static.

It follows Tommy’s every step. From the hot garbage pile that he sleeps in, to L’Manberg, then to wherever he can best cause as much trouble at, into the pots of hot water he’d find himself in, and back into his hovel, nestling next to him.

The morning light seeps through his windows, marking the dawn of a new day. Another day he’ll most likely forget. He struggles against the siren song that is a crude recreation of a bed, and ascends up his basement stairs. The room he’d prepared for Vikkstar is collecting dust but Tommy refuses to give up on that little chunk of hope left. Connor vandalised his house yet again with Star-Spangled banners.

Dawn fissures the night with the cold crackle of glitching sunlight, remaining as cold as night. Though the moon’s already halfway out the door, it’s still as dark as before and the dying night triumphs through the morning sun, resulting in a haze of purple and red. It’s such a pretty sight it looks fake. Fauna scurry across the boardwalk as it creaks under Tommy’s soles. Yesterday was a quick burst of screaming, fire and a bit of classic robbery. Maybe today might be a little more different than yesterday, and while the look of the thing’s face begs to differ, Tommy likes a bit of hope to get through the day.

Someone calls his name. Luckily, Tommy still remembers his own name. Muscle memory kicks in and he finds himself waving at a distant silhouette, uneducated of both his intentions and identity. The figure grows from a dot, to a blob, to a man.

“It's been ages since we've last talked, man. How've you been?”

His sunglasses seem to shimmer as he readjusts it to fit more snug on his nose with the rest of his face obscured by shadows, which doesn’t help Tommy with the whole identifying who this guy is. The timbre of his voice sounds familiar and it’s probably Eret given the baritone.

“I've heard that you've been up to some wars recently, and though I am sad you didn't think to invite me, I decided to drop by and offer my assistance. Y’know, like the good old days.”