Tommy realizes something, sitting in his newly improved room in Techno's basement, something the piglin hybrid had insisted upon.
Everything came at a price on the Dream SMP. Even love. It was shitty, but it was true.
The cost of peace was exiling him. The cost of Schlatt's run as president was Wilbur. And so forth.
People were used like money here, as were objects, and promises and ores, anything and everything.
To everyone else, the discs were the biggest selling item. They cost the most. Have one, you control almost the whole server. That's what everybody says, with their actions and sometimes their words.
But...
That wasn't true in the slightest.
To Tommy, the biggest currency was the discs.
To everyone else, the biggest currency was Tommy. Tommy was the cost of everything. Peace. L'Manburg. Freedom. Happiness.
He was the biggest currency. And Dream wanted to be the richest person. And then he'd let everyone else live with their false sense of peace and togetherness.
When Dream calls in his favor to Technoblade, and the cost is Tommy, he's not surprised. Not in the slightest. In all actuality, he gives himself up. Let's Dream take him. And tells Technoblade to never look back.
Being with Dream, Tommy learns, is terrible. It's nothing like exile, and yet... it hurts so much. Dream, as it turns out, had a revive book. And if Tommy did something wrong, he'd kill him. And then bring him back. He didn't even get to see Wilbur, or Schlatt, or MD. He was stuck in a white void, all by himself.
It was torture.
Everyone else had no clue the boy was with Dream. They thought he was dead. Besides Technoblade, who was scouring the whole server, and still couldn't find his little brother. He was worried, and he was debating going to the others and telling them what had happened.
But Tommy did tell him to never look back...
In the end, Tommy never got to die. And everyone else was happy, even Technoblade... eventually.