The forest flies by in a stream of green leaves and yellow sunlight, every instinct screaming to just keep moving, just keep going, because if he stops, they're going to die.
Wilbur keeps moving forward ahead of him, coat tails whipping behind him, leaning heavily on his left side. Dark red blood seeps through his coat and pants, thin stick arrows sticking straight out of his flesh.
He would never ordinarily admit it, but he's scared. They have no place to go, no place to be, sprinting for their lives in the middle of fucking nowhere, injured and alone. Tommy's strong, but even the toughest person on the planet can find themselves in the world's most eternally fucked up situations.
The footsteps fall back, the previously hair-raising thudding of chasing assailants behind them fading off as tree limbs and bushes close behind them, deeper and deeper into the woods, further and further away from L'manburg, from Tubbo and Rose, from everyone and everything he knows.
And when the only sounds are the leaves, and two pairs of uneven footsteps, and ragged breaths that fall in sync with his own, Tommy realises that they are well and truly alone.
Wilbur thuds to a stop, a tiny clearing beside a river. Unremarkable in every sense of the word. He wants to tell him, that they should find somewhere better, that this place is pure shit and that he just wants to go back home. Instead, a wave of nauseating sickness and unbearable pain bring him down to his knees.
Wilbur falls down next to him with a strangled groan, but Tommy never does find out if he is okay or not, because the grass comes rushing up to his face and he's out before his head can properly slam into the ground.
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His shoulder fucking hurts. His neck is stiff. His right hand is numb. Wherever he's sitting is damp and cold, and the chill cuts deep, right through the dirty blue coat and white breeches, more so a chilling combination of dark brown and burgundy.
"Tommy?" Wilbur's voice reaches his ears. Tommy looks around, squinting into the darkness. His left hand presses against something cold and smooth, and it only takes an impressive twenty seconds, if he does say so himself, for Tommy to realise that their in a ravine, encased stone and towering rock walls, crevices and crannies winding through out the deep slit in the Earth itself.
Rose would hate it. Tommy would never admit that the lack of open air makes his chest tighten, so he'll push through it.
Wilbur appears from the deep shadowy end of the ravine, pale and muddy, wobbling unsteadily as he moves to crouch down next to Tommy.
"I patched up your shoulder." He says gently. Tommy looks down at the loosely wrapped white cloth, suspiciously similar to the shirt Wilbur is wearing.
"You didn't do a very good job."
"Well I'm not a healer so be grateful you didn't bleed out and die."
"You be grateful that I didn't die, because I'm going to be the one that's keeping us al-"
"Enough Tommy!" Wilbur thunders, and it doesn't make Tommy shut his mouth, he chose to, but he falls silent anyway. "We have been- we have been betrayed, no one is on our side."
That's not true, that can't be true. Tubbo, his best friend, he would never pick Schlatt over Tommy, he couldn't. And Rose? She promised, she promised that she's always be there, Niki too. Wilbur was wrong, but Wilbur was never wrong, but then again L'manburg was theirs, built from the ground up and still that had been ripped away. Life had been flipped upside down in the worst way possible.
"No, no Wilbur, what about Tubbo? And Rose and Niki? And Jack? They're still on our side, it's just Schlatt Wilbur-"
"They let it happen! Tubbo is working with Schlatt, you heard him Tommy, we can't trust anyone anymore. We lost the election." He pauses, eyes wide, shaking hands burying themselves, white knuckled in his hair. "We lost. We lost everything Tommy, Schlatt won."
They had. They had lost everything and it fucking sucked. Tommy was miserable and hurt, and he just really missed a nice bed and a warm room and clean clothes and his best friends. He just wants to go home, and surely, surely his home wants him back too.
"We can trust Tubbo! And we can definitely trust Rose and Niki, none of them would betray us." He keeps protesting, because what Wilbur says is insane, and they can't have lost everything, they still have time to go home and get it back.
Wilbur is hunched over, quivering against a wall, hands protectively encased over his head as if the thoughts of the loss they had just suffered where going to come out and attack him.
Wilbur is rarely like this, always stoic, and calm and knows what to do. Not that Tommy isn't perfectly capable of being a leader himself, not that he relies on Wilbur or anything, but it's always nice to have backup, someone at your side.
It would be really nice now.
Tommy never knew his parents. It's weird, now, that the time to think about pasts and parents and old, long forgotten moments is in the aftermath of the world shattering around him, when there is a million other productive things to do. Minds work in funny ways.
There was no family dinners, or roadtrips, or village beginnings, or pillager raids, or anything remarkable at all. No tragic hero backstory, or compelling tragic tale. It was just Tommy, in a field, alone in the grass.
It's probably the most unremarkable, remarkable backstory anyone could have, a stand out from the more common family being scorched to ash in their homes kind of backstory, so Tommy'll run with it. They could jazz it up a little when they write the history books, add a bear or two for excitement, show his manliness a bit more.
Wilbur is the closest thing he ever had to a Dad, now crumbling into a wide eyed, shell of his former self, muttering nonsensical words frantically under his breath. Tommy misses Rose. She'd know what to do.
She'd patch up his shoulder, properly, make sure it wouldn't hurt so bloody much. She'd ruffle his hair, even though he isn't a little kid anymore, he just lets her because she likes to do it. She'd force him into a tight hug that he doesn't need but always relents too, smelling like a bakery and soap, almost strangling out his airflow with her arms.
She's not his Mum by any means, because come on, she's only like three years older than him, more like an annoying big sister that's not really even that much bigger, because of course he's so tall. But anyway, he'd still really like her to be here.
"What are we going to do Tommy?" Wilbur's desperate question snaps him out of his brain, back to the cold, damp ravine and the two exiled leaders alone in the dark.
"We have to get L'manburg back Wil, we have to get rid of Schlatt." He says confidently, like a strong leader, proud in front of his country. Wilbur barely seems to register what he's actually saying.
"We have to get it back, Schlatt will ruin it, we have to save L'manburg." He mutters, same quick paced tone that makes him sound like a lunatic on copious amounts of illegal drugs.
At the end of the day, full of senseless wondering and heart wrenching rage, and a shoulder that doesn't stop fucking hurting, he realises the facts of the situation, like a good Vice President should.
First, they don't have a home.
Second, they need to take L'manburg back.
So when Wilbur finally snaps out of the trance he worked himself up in, the curses under his breath, twitching fingers and hunched shoulders, Tommy proudly tells him his plan, like a good leader. And, like a good older brother/father figure/president, Wilbur lets him talk gleefully and agrees to the plan.
"We'll name it Pogtopia." Tommy says proudly, looking out over the cave, a place so foreign and harsh it's impossible to imagine it being a home.
But they'll make it one together, and hey, it'll do until they can make it back to L'manburg.
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A/N My State just went into lockdown for the fifth time :) Scomo watch your fucking back.
Tommy and Wilbur are alive! Pogtopia is being created! I won't be flashing back to Tommy and Wilbur too often, but I thought this would be an easy way to introduce this element initially and we've never done a Tommy POV so I thought we'd spice things up.
Next chapter will be Rose and her plight under Schlatt's horrible regime. I've got a fun little twist that you guys will probably hate me for within the next couple of chapters and well...you'll see <3.
Thank you for all of your support and I hope you enjoyed!!
Oopsies x