WARNING!
This chapter contains themes that could be potentially upsetting for some readers. From this chapter on it CAN and WILL get worse. For spoiler reasons I will not be putting individual tags before each chapter.
***
Last time Tommy remembers, Ranboo's hair was as black as a raven's wing, but now there are strands of white spewn across his forehead, presumably dyed in that color. Somehow it serves to make Ranboo’s expression all the more lost. Somehow, Tommy doesn’t believe it.
Aimsey makes her presence known by a pointed cough. When Tommy’s attention splits from Ranboo, she curtsies, picking up the skirt of her black dress. Brown hair spills freely from under a coif of pearls on red embroidery, and a ruby necklace the size of a nail resides on her collarbone. Modest but fine-tasted, Aimsey dictates the fashion of the capital with every new outfit that she appears in. Tommy is sure that, within a few weeks, even the palace ladies are going to switch to ebony silks and crimson jewelry – tailored and sewed in Aimsey’s workshop for a tidy sum.
“Your Imperial Highness, I haven't anticipated your visit,” Aimsey says. “But it’s a pleasant surprise, of course.”
Aimsey draws the corner of her lips apart. She has a face made for smiling, whether with her lips or eyes or just her gaze alone – polite and good at listening, always having some witty reply of her own, she is a treasure for any bored noble seeking company while they shop. The amount of rumors and secrets that she hears in a single day could be used as a weapon to break fates and ruin entire noble lineages, if only Aimsey hadn’t steered away from the court intrigue like a ship from shallow waters.
Duchess Clara called it a folly. Tommy is more inclined to believe that Aimsey had taken a look at the weapon in her hands and willingly molded it into sewing needles. It’s a wise choice, perhaps, but none that was ever available to him. If he turns around and leaves now people would know that it’s because of Ranboo.
Had I known who I was going to run into, this visit wouldn’t happen at all. If Tommy’s expression does ripple a little, it’s back to normal so fast that anybody who had seen the change would question their own eyes.
“No more than I did,” he replies politely. “I assume that you're not yet familiar with Prince Dream, brother of King Foolish and heir to the throne of Esempi."
Dream nods a greeting, and Aimsey curtsies again. “It must be a lucky day for my establishment, to be graced by the presence of not one but three princes. I’ve been recommending our new collection of jewelry to every customer who came in today but I’m afraid that it will be dim in comparison to what you are used to in your home kingdom, Prince Dream.”
“I’m sure that I will find something to my liking,” Dream hums. “Feel free to take your leave. We wouldn’t want to distract you from your other customers.”
“Very well,” Aimsey says. “My assistants will be around. Please let them know if there is anything you need.”
She claps her hands and it’s as though the entire boutique unfreezes at once. Conversations between a group of ladies that halted the moment that Tommy and Dream had entered starts up again, a low rumble of voices, and while they had gathered around a dress that one of Aimsey’s assistants presents them, Tommy’s instincts tell him that the discussion is far from the topic of clothes and fashion.
Aimsey approaches the table that Techno and Ranboo sit at. She says something, so quietly that Tommy only makes out the word ‘measurements’. Ranboo glances at him once and quickly looks away when their eyes meet; he stands up and scurries after Aimsey, and they both disappear upstairs. Tommy is ought to be relieved, but whether it be from experience or simply a gut feeling, uneasiness rolls behind his sternum, building up in his stomach thickly. It reminds him of those times when the Emperor wants to see him without a prior notice or Wilbur goes quiet for a long time – an invisible danger, a wave building up behind a dam, one he won't see until it breaks. There was a time where Tommy preferred to hide low and hope that the tide would pass by, but the days of cowering are long behind him.
"You should go ahead and continue without me,” he tells Dream. “I need to speak with my brother first.”
Dream frowns with a whiff of uncertainty, as if he isn’t so sure about leaving him alone with Techno, but in the end, he nods. "Alright." He puts a hand on the front of Tommy’s shoulder as he goes by. “And Thes… I’m right around if you need me.”
A feeling of warmth rushes through Tommy; gone as fast as it appeared when he falls under the mercy of Techno’s chilled purple eyes. Tommy takes a long exhale; thoughts crawl into his mind against his will, all in Beau’s voice… It’s just his brother who he’s going to talk to, so why does he feel so on edge?
Techno's expression is unreadable as Tommy takes the seat next to him. He lifts a cup from a silver tray, sips out of it, and opts to stay silent, eyes trained on the rich red liquid as if it holds all the secrets of the universe. Neither of them says anything until one of Aimsey's assistants pipes in, “Would you like something to freshen up with, Your Highness?”
“I’ll have the same of what my brother is having,” Tommy says.
That makes Techno pay attention. “You’re not drinking wine,” he pins Tommy a hard look.
Tommy isn’t sure what a more appropriate question is: why is Techno drinking, or why in a tea cup.
“If you’re having some I don’t see why can’t I,” he says instead. It’s not like it would be the first time he tried alcohol. As a child, he was allowed a small glass of cider on a celebratory occasion, or some wine diluted in water to ease the pain like that one time that he fell off a tree and broke his arm.
Tommy reaches out to snatch Techno’s cup from under his nose and barely brushes his finger against the handle when his wrist is caught in a tight grip. Tommy looks up to Techno staring into his eyes.
“I said no,” Techno repeats.
He tries to free his hand, but he’d have better success breaking out of a metal shackle.
“Feeling overbearing today, I see,” Tommy states dryly. Techno’s grip tightens, and only when he hisses in pain that he feels it loosen and disappear. Tommy glares daggers at his brother while rubbing his wrist soothingly. “Fine. Fetch me some black tea instead," he says if only to get rid of the watching eyes.
“What are you doing here, Theseus?” Techno grunts as soon as the woman is out of earshot distance.
"I could ask you the same thing," Tommy says. "Are you here to try on the dresses? Because don't take it as an offense, but I doubt that you would fit into any of them."
“Ranboo wanted to get his hair dyed, so I tagged along for company.” Techno’s deadpan look prickles Tommy from the corner of his eye. “Nice hairpins, by the way.”
Tommy involuntarily touches tiny glass flowers at the end of the hairpins, needling the longest strands to keep them from falling to his face and neck. “I got them from my aide, Marchioness Beau,” he says, his tone akin to the dagger resting next to his heart – sharp but not dangerous, not while it's sheathed. “You know, the lady that you had offended a few days back.”
Techno draws out another sip of wine; Tommy knows that, behind the nonchalance, he is being observed with attentiveness of a smith inspecting a weapon.
“To my memory, it was the lady who offended Ranboo first,” Techno shrugs. “Picking on him without a reason, using his lack of knowledge and experience to insult him… it was lowly. I had more than a fair reason to reprimand her.”
“Fair?” The word feels weird on his tongue, foreign – an empty sound in a society where unspoken rules are that you praise the powerful and slander the weak. Tommy grimaces. Techno really has little experience maneuvering in court intricacies, and it shows. “It isn’t about fairness, Techno. Marchioness Beau is of higher birth and standings, a good-reputed socialite, and one of my own servants on top of that. You shouldn’t insult her because of a misplaced feeling of justice.”
“Is it my feeling of justice that’s misplaced, or your anger?” Techno asks.
Heat rushes to Tommy’s face; a reply crawls up his throat, all poison and acid, but the weight of the glances thrown out at him from different parts of the boutique make him swallow it back down. He summons a small smile to his face, a movement that comes to him as natural as breathing, and the only real thing that remains in his expression are his eyes. Tommy isn’t meaning to call Dream over, but the moment the white mask catches his diamond-glazed gaze, he starts making his way towards the Antarctic princes.
“Prince Technoblade, I am in dire need of your assistance,” he declares, slapping two objects on the table. “Which hat is better, the blue one or the pink one?
Techno’s unimpressed look could rival the way that the Emperor stares at Tommy when he manages to mess up particularly badly. He presses the cup to his lips, realizes that he’s out of wine, and releases a deep sigh. “I’m the head military commander of the most powerful nation on the entire continent,” he says. “Do I look like I know a thing about hats?”
“Pink it is, then,” Dream hums. “I must say, you have a very good taste… You should keep this one to yourself, and help me pick another twenty.”
Techno accepts the hat automatically, but when Dream’s words sink in, pure despair flashes on his face. “Wait- why in the world would you need twenty hats?”
Tommy tries to hold back a snicker. Something tells him that behind his mask, Dream is doing the same.
“I’ll leave you to that, then,” Tommy says, standing up – which is just another way of saying, have fun! – and slips away before Techno could stop him.
***
The second floor of the building is used as a tailoring workshop, and is much less crowded than the main boutique. In the corridors, Tommy runs into another person just once – the seamstress curtsies, eyes on her shoes, as he walks past. One of the perks of being the crown prince; nobody can question or tell him off if he is somewhere he isn’t supposed to be.
Tommy hadn’t visited the boutique in a long while, but he remembers where the exit is for a wide balcony that rings half of the building. Turned away from the street and hanging over the roof of a nearby inn, it shields him from stray glances as he quietly pushes the door closed and stalks along the vein-covered wall. Tommy tells himself that he had come for some fresh fair, but even if that was true in the beginning, his intentions change when he suddenly hears someone saying his name.
He could’ve easily ignored it. The crown prince, after all, is bound to be in people’s mouths. But when he hears in again, frozen and listening in carefully, the familiarity of the voice sends specks of irritation through his body. His steps turn slow and cautious, his breathing – quieter than the whisper of wind in leaves. Lowering himself into a crouch, he leans as close to the balcony doors, veins tangling in his hair and brushing his neck.
“– do you mean?” Ranboo’s voice grinds Tommy’s eardrums like a flint against metal. He closes his eyes and opens them again to keep himself from huffing.
“Thirty nine. Forty two and a half…“ Sounds like Aimsey. A low murmur is followed by a swish of something unfurled – if Tommy had to guess, a measuring tape – and a snip of steel scissors. “You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to.”
“No, I just- I didn’t know that rumors from the palace could reach that far.” Ranboo quietens.
“Raise your arm please.” Aimsey writes something down; the desk must be standing close to the balcony, because Tommy can clearly hear the scrape of a quill on paper. He presses himself further into the wall, flattening his back against the scratchy side of the bricks and hoping that the pounding of his heart isn’t as loud to Aimsey’s ears as it is to his own.
“Gossip is a disease that spreads in noble and commoner circles alike, but people have been especially curious about you,” Aimsey says. “It’s rare that a commoner is invited to the palace as a guest, yet gets a privilege of being acquitted with the Imperial family. Not even the members of the wealthiest merchant families in the country make it further than the reception rooms.” Just as it’s supposed to be, Tommy thinks. The palace is not a passage yard to let anybody into it.
“In a way, you’ve become our representative among royalty. When the rumors have spread that Prince Theseus sets nobles to harass you and treats you poorly, people were understandably perturbed,” Aimsey continues. “Because of his past and marriage, Prince Wilbur is often seen as the point of connection between the imperial family and common folk, so it only further spurred people’s disdain when Prince Theseus made an appearance today instead of his brother...”
Aimsey speaks on, and Ranboo replies something, but it gets drowned for Tommy in the sound of ringing in his ears. His fingers clench the vines, harder and harder, squeezing the life out of green stems until he can feel them snap and shrivel. Suddenly it makes sense why people were giving him all those hard looks. Tommy wonders whether it would have been better if he never learned the truth at all. Why , after everything that he has done, after every sacrifice he had made, they preferred the traitor to their rightful crown prince...?
“Ah.” Ranboo’s voice hitches through the fog in his ears, “well it’s not a lie, but I’m not really a commoner, right?”
“In the eyes of the most you might as well be. You certainly don’t resemble one, with their snobby attitude and sense of self-importance twice the size of their wallets.” They both laugh lightly, and then Aimsey turns serious again. “Sorry for bringing it up. One can never know which rumors are true and which are not. I wanted to make sure that no harmful misinformation is spread within the walls of my establishment.”
“That’s good- yeah, I’d like it not to,” Ranboo takes in a deep breath. “Prince Theseus is honestly terrifying, and I’d rather try and stay out of anything that can anger him any further.”
Fury boils under Tommy’s skin, melting muscle and bones into one mass of unbridled fury. He snarls soundlessly, too fucking late.
“I’m sorry to hear that you had to be in this situation,” Aimsey says, clueless of the storm gathering at the horizon. “The doors of the boutique are always open if you need somebody to talk to.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it,” Ranboo shuffles in place. “Are we, um, done?”
“Almost. Here, take a look at the fabric. I’d suggest this shade instead, but if you want to go with your previous choice, we can work with that.”
“No, it’s fine. I like it.”
“Alright, then. Your order should be done in a week or two. We’ll have it delivered directly to the palace. You can rest here for a while if you’d like so, and come back down whenever you feel ready.”
The hinges of a door creak softly, and Aimsey is gone. Tommy sets his crown down quietly, counts half a minute under his breath before he emerges, slick as a shadow, through the balcony door. He slams it closed behind himself, and Ranboo, who had sat to Tommy with his back turned, leaps up from a cushioned chair.
“WHAA-”
Tommy’s arm colliding with his neck cuts Ranboo’s scream short instantly. He makes a gurgling sound deep in his throat, and quietens when Tommy pins him into a wall, rolls of fabrics scattering and turning the floor into a crisscross of colorful patterns.
"Who do you think you are?" Tommy growls.
Ranboo tries to say something, but only gapes wordlessly until Tommy slackens his hold and allows him to take a full gulp of air. "Well, I-I am me,” he strangles out. “I mean, I thought I’m with the memory issues here-"
Anger takes over Tommy; pure rage slipping itself into his hands and taking full control of his movement. The dagger in his fingers before he can register ever reaching for it, the tip whisking dangerously close to slicing Ranboo's cheek open.
"I could kill you," The words murmured on Tommy’s lips are almost as threatening as the weapon hovering over Ranboo’s face, and pure, animalistic fear visibly shudders through his entire lanky form. "Put a knife straight through your fucking eye, right now."
Even the worst of Tommy’s rages couldn’t fully drown out the calculating part of his mind; while the rest of his body fumes with wrath, it splashes in a cold ocean, telling him that he can’t kill Ranboo without tightening a noose around his own neck. It doesn’t stop him from imagining how satisfying it would be to slice the blue vein flailing underneath his arm.
"Not that I claim to be an expert, but wouldn't a scene that gory mess with the whole perfect reputation thing you got going on?" Ranboo pitches out meekly, and Tommy’s vision flashes red.
“Shut the fuck up!” he roars. If Ranboo wants to play with fire, Tommy is going to give him fucking fireworks. He tosses Ranboo to the floor, among the scattered fabric. When the boy tries to roll away, Tommy kicks him back down to his side. “You are nothing.” Ranboo screams out as Tommy presses a boot over his ribcage, a little short of cracking the bones in. “You are just a cockroach under my feet, disgusting and useless. Have as many favors from the Emperor as you want, plot with Wilbur against me, but nobody will ever see you as anything more than an ugly freak."
A hand wraps around Tommy’s upper arm and yanks him away with enough force to send him flying across the room. He stumbles into something and crashes to the floor. A headless mannequin falls on top of him and strikes all air out of his abdomen. Through the explosions of color in his eyes, Tommy kicks it away and leaps to his feet, wielding his dagger protectively – only for it to stagger and drop an inch when a pair of rage-fogged maroon eyes meet his abashed blue.
“T-Techno?” he croaks, all his rage suddenly shriveling.
Ranboo whimpers from where he is curled up on the floor. His entire body trembles akin to a string that has been stretched to its limit and let go, chest rising and falling fast and every second breath coming out gasping. I caused this, Tommy thinks, and his sweat turns cold. A feeling crashes through him and twists his ribcage in a hard wrench, but before he could even begin to comprehend it, Techno turns away from him and kneels in front of Ranboo.
“Techno,” Tommy calls, slotting the dagger back into its sheath. When his brother doesn’t do as much as twitch, his anger unfurls akin to a phoenix burning anew from its ashes. “Look at me,” he demands, sailing a determined step forward.
“Ranboo, can you hear me?” Techno mutters, carefully placing a hand on his back. Ranboo cries out and scoots away from them blindly until he finds a corner to shove himself into, knees pulled up, face hidden in his thighs and hands placed over the back of his head.
“Techno!” Tommy raises his voice. Techno’s head snaps to look at him and Tommy almost wishes that he didn’t; he had never seen so much unbridled wrath in a person’s eyes before.
"What is wrong with you?" Techno growls.
"Wha- what is wrong with me?” Tommy sputters, throwing his arms up. “Look at yourself! Why are you wasting your time on him?”
Techno’s eyes narrow, searching for something in Tommy’s lightning-sparking eyes and clenched jaw, and when he doesn’t find it, shock flickers through his expression. “Theseus, this was an assault.”
“So what?” Tommy snarls, sharply aware of how the handle of his dagger burns lines into a scarred palm. “Call it what you want, Ranboo deserved it.”
“Deserved how?”
He appeared in my life, Tommy thinks, and it was enough to ruin it.
“Do you mean to tell me, in all seriousness, that you're choosing to support him over me?" Tommy bristles.
“Shut up, Theseus.” Against every instinct that tells him that Techno is supposed to mean safety, when his brother speaks to him with that tone, a simpler, animalistic part of him wrenches in fear and forces his lips to glue together. "Maybe instead of blaming other people, try for once to consider that you might be the problem?"
Tommy staggers back, eyes blown wide. “Wha-what?” But that slap wasn’t enough for Techno, because he presses on, sounding as if it was his world that was crushing down and not Tommy’s.
“I tried to be patient with you, but you’ve crossed every line. Now I see that the Emperor and Wilbur were right. You're just a spoiled vicious princeling who abuses power in favor of his own temper."
Techno’s words rain like knives on Tommy, and oh, real knives would’ve hurt a lot less than this. His brother’s face splits into a display of despair and regret, but Tommy is already retreating backwards, his vision swimming. He trips on the overturned mannequin and catches himself at the last moment, nails scraping and breaking on a wooden shelf.
“Theseus…” Techno trails off, unsure, but Tommy doesn’t want to hear what Techno has to say. Doesn’t need to hear to know that this is a point of no return for them. It was bound to happen one day: trees centuries old wither from inside out until they can stand no more, mountains are meant to crumble under the whipping winds and relentless rains, and brothers, sooner or later, will turn against you. Tommy had dreaded this moment, but he hadn’t imagined it to hurt this much.
When Tommy regains the ability to speak, there is twice as much grief in his voice as there is anger. “ Fuck you, Techno,” he spits. “You, of all people, were supposed to understand.”
Tommy storms out to the balcony faster than Techno could see the traitorous sparkle of tears behind his eyelashes. He hates how brittle he feels – how little would it take to sway his anger into regret. He waits for a voice calling out his name, a sound of footsteps, arms catching him from behind – any sign of his brother still caring would be enough to snap the threads of wrath and reveal the bleeding, rotting wound of hurt that he desperately wants to grasp it with. But Techno never comes; when Tommy glances over his shoulder, he can see him lifting passed out Ranboo into his arms and carrying him away.
Foolish boy, the universe seems to laugh at Tommy. I thought I had taught you better than to hope. The wrath pulls tighter, harder, bringing the edges of the wound together in shapes of crimson butterflies, and Tommy swears that he’ll never allow anybody to reopen it again.
The anger is not as easy to squelch. It’s as though somebody had put a candle into a field of dry grass; catching fire, it blazes wild and hungry, and the wind only serves to fan it more. Tommy’s temper was a source of problem for him in the past, but he was taught better than that. Good princes aren’t impulsive or irritable. They can control their own emotions. Tommy repeats it like a mantra, settling against a wall and squeezing his eyes shut, I’m in control in control in control-
Tommy pulls back and slams his forehead into the wall. And before the shock settles in, he does it again, and again, and again -
It’s after the fifth time that stars spring in front of his eyes, and Tommy pulls back with a groan, one hand tugging at the roots of his hair, dropping his head so low that it nearly touches his lap. The anger and the hurt are here, still, but while the pain is thundering in the forefront of his mind, the cacophony of his thoughts dips into blissful silence. Tommy runs a tongue over his chapped lips and lets out a wet laugh when the next portion of air fills his lungs without a shudder. At last, he can breathe.
The absence of fear or second thoughts doesn’t surprise him at all. He isn’t twelve anymore, sobbing in horror and choking back tears when he had touched his forehead and his fingers came back sticky and wet with blood. He is smarter now, old enough to know how much force he can put in the strike so that it doesn’t bruise too badly. Tommy is in control .
Are you really? His inner voice asks him dryly, in a way that is too akin to Techno’s monotone. Tommy sinks his teeth into his lip and grits out, “Shut up,” but it only retreats with a sigh. He would’ve banged his head again, just to silence it, if it wasn’t for his hearing straining at a sound of someone’s steps. Tommy springs upright just in time to face Dream standing on two feet.
“It’s you,” he says, relieved. And then again, arms wrapped around himself in a rib-cracking hold, “…it’s you.”
“Why did you disappear so suddenly? I almost started to think that you had left without me,” Dream says, brows knitted in concern, and Tommy’s nails dig painfully in-between his ribs. It had been a close call. If Dream had walked in on him a minute earlier... Tommy didn’t know how he would explain, no, I wasn’t trying to crack my skull open, it’s just the way I contain myself.
"Dream, I'm really not in the mood,” he said, deciding that honesty is better than accidentally snapping at his only friend. “I might not be- not very pleasant to interact with right now."
Tommy’s words have the opposite effect of what he wants. Instead of leaving him alone, Dream inspects him with a gaze, the ever-bright look in his eyes dimming a shade or two. “Talk to me about it. What happened?”
The offer leaves his mouth so easily as if he actually expects Tommy to answer, and that’s worse than if Dream had punched him in the gut. I’m weak, words pinch Tommy’s tongue, and afraid of what you would think of me if you knew that.
“No need to concern yourself,” Tommy turns away as if Dream would somehow read the thoughts swirling behind his eyes. “I’m feeling better now.”
“So you admit to not feeling well in the first place.”
Tommy clenches his hands in the air. “Can you just-” Tommy spins around, pulling his lips back in a snarl, but freezes when he sees Dream kneeling to pick up something from the floor. Tommy had completely forgotten about his crown, discarded prior to his confrontation with Ranboo. Dream examines it curiously, and sunlight bounces between the edges of a silver disk. Something changes about his expression under the mask; a miniscule shift that Tommy doesn’t see as much as he feels it in his shrinking abdomen.
“You shouldn’t just leave your crown lying around,” Dream tells him, the crown’s jewels projecting a misty glow of green on his mask, “lest somebody else might claim it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tommy says, frowning. “You can hand it over now.” He takes a step forward, and Dream takes one back. “...Dream?”
“Try asking nicely,” Dream hums.
Cold dread consumes Tommy’s insides. “This isn’t amusing,” he spits, reaching forward. The crown slides mere inches away from his fingers as Dream slides one foot away and shifts his weight. “Dream!”
“What’s the matter, Thes? Not so composed now?”
"Oh you fucki-" he cuts off before he finishes, and Dream – Tommy can practically hear it – grins underneath his mask.
"Say it."
The mockery in his voice is the last straw for Tommy. He lunges, and the man leaps back, over the railings. In less time that it takes Tommy to open his mouth and shout, Dream spins in the air once and lands on the roof of a building underneath: whole, unharmed and smug as a cat in a birdhouse.
“You want your crown back, you have to take it.” And then Dream runs.
Tommy throws one leg over the railings before it dawns on him what he’s about to do. He glances frantically behind his shoulder, as if somebody would appear there to tell him that this is a stupid, impulsive idea... But Techno is with Ranboo, and Wisp with the rest of his security are waiting at the front of the boutique to escort him back to the palace.
Before Tommy knows it, he’s jumping off the balcony. Dream’s fucking crazy, he thinks, clay tiles scraping his arms as he lands on two feet and ducks into a roll. And maybe I am too.
One of the main things that Techno had aimed to improve with Tommy’s training is his speed. I am already fast, he whined. To prove him wrong, Techno told Tommy to catch a crow in a courtyard. It took days of sneaking and pouncing and failing, both knees and elbows scraped bloody, for him to even brush a finger against the bird’s tail. Dream might not have wings to soar into the air with, but he hops from roof to roof like it was all he did his entire life.
Screw him, Tommy isn’t so simple either. Techno’s guidance is in the way he runs and breathes, Tubbo’s – in hands groping for purchase and pulling him up slim walls of a belltower, but the stubbornness in spite of the wildfire in his ribcage and panting breaths – that is utterly and completely Tommy. Dream makes a noise of surprise when he glances over his shoulder and finds Tommy a dozen feet below him. Distracted, the older prince nearly rams into a giant copper bell.
Tommy grins and uses that hitch to cut the distance between them. First one and then the other, they leap off the tower and into the terrace of a flower shop. Tommy lands with one foot on the top of a railing, hurdles over the edge and ducks under a hanging flower pot, only to nearly trip over a stool that Dream kicks his way. A woman screeches at them – the owner of the shop, she must be – wielding a watering can. Dream swings out of the way, but Tommy bowls straight into her. The can is sent flying and spraying the street below. Yelling out an apology, Tommy runs full out.
The lack of stamina soon starts catching up to Tommy as gaps between the buildings grow wider. Dream moves left and then right. Tommy darts right, not quick enough to cut his path short. The older prince pounces like a cat to an angled roof, Tommy tries to follow – his jacket gets caught on something and yanks him back. The roof ledge flashes inches away from his outstretched hand, and then Tommy is falling, a scream dying in his throat.
His arm nearly pops out of its socket – and his heart from his chest, for all that matter – when Dream catches him at the last moment . A vein bulging on his forehead, he tries to pull Tommy up but instead swings him at a wild curve in the air, and then they’re both barreling with momentum into the side of the roof and rolling off of it like a wheel of cheese. When Tommy feels freefall a second time in a span of three seconds he is very certain that they are both gonna break their necks. Something does break with a deafening crack, but instead of a very personal and very deadly acquaintance with a cobbled road Tommy and Dream land into something soft and prickly.
Tommy’s hand emerges out of the hay first, clenching the jeweled crown, and the rest of his body follows with a gasp and a strangled, “Fuck.” Dream eyes him from feet to head. Seemingly satisfied at the lack of obvious injuries on both of them, he sags forward, legs pulled up under him.
“I owe Sapnap a hundred golds,” he informs Tommy casually, as if they hadn’t just dropped from the top of a two-story building.
“What?” Tommy strangles out, too confused to ask anything else.
“We placed a bet on whether you ever swear,” Dream says. “Sapnap was sure that you do. I assumed that you don’t.”
A punch flies into Dream’s face. It seems as though running and jumping like a mad squirrel isn’t his only hidden talent: he blocks Tommy’s fist and easily dodges the consecutive attacks. If they were on solid footing, Tommy might have landed a punch or two, but rolling in a stack of hay and disoriented from the fall, he is as threatening as a newborn calf.
“Careful, my mask is somewhere here,” Dream says when a shard cracks underneath his shoe, “or, well, what is left of it.”
“What the fuck!” Tommy screeches. “You almost killed me!”
"Did I really?” Dream says. “I think you look more alive than I’ve ever seen you before."
This time Dream makes no movement to dodge his fist; it drops on itself, too short of its mark. Tommy’s heart is still pounding like crazy, his face and hair slick with sweat, but energy thrums in his veins, wild and intoxicating, boiling out all the worries that lay heavy in his heart until it feels like it’s stuffed with clouds. When he thinks back of their race, of the rooftops and the flower shop and the belltower, a traitorous laugh bubbles on Tommy’s lips. Lies tend to be acidic and bitter, but when he murmurs, “I feel alive, too,” for once it tastes sweet.
Dream clearly tries to hold back a smile. Tommy's cheeks blaze anew, but he can’t let his near-murderer feel too happy about himself. “Fuck you,” he says, ”Bitch. Prick. Dickhead-”
Tommy dusts off his old vocabulary of vulgar language; Dream’s brows climb higher and higher on his forehead. “Feeling better?” he asks when Tommy runs out of swears to spit his way.
“Let’s just get going,” Tommy grumbles, first shifting into a crouch and then to his feet, shaking dry straw out of his hair and clothes.
They had landed in some sort of enclosed area – if Tommy had to guess, the courtyard of a tavern or an inn. Shaggy wooden building of stables rises nearby, horses neighing and snorting. Tommy and Dream climb the wall – or more like Dream dashes to the top and helps Tommy up, because one of his hands is occupied with the crown – and then they’re on the other side.
A quiet rumble that Tommy hadn’t paid attention to before now turns out to be coming from the river. The sun hovers over the very horizon now, painting the stream in dandelion yellow and lily purples, shining like millions of tiny gems. A short wooden fence surrounds the river on two sides and flames dance inside the glass lanterns hanging from arching posts every few dozen feet. Shops line the shore, bakeries and shoemaker’s and jeweler’s, breathing warmth and blinking welcomingly with open doors and windows.
Instinctively, Tommy retreats closer to the shadows. People are walking both directions, talking and laughing and hurrying along; somebody is bound to recognize the two crown princes, or so he thinks until he sneaks a glimpse at their reflection in a window. Dream’s without his mask, and Tommy, with delicate fabric of his clothes battered and dirtied in the race, jade jacket abandoned altogether on a roof of some building, barely recognizes himself at all. For as long as he keeps his head down and his crown out of curious sight, Tommy isn’t a prince.
Before he knows it, he’s bending over the fence, dipping his hand in the stream’s way. Curiosity gets the better of Dream. He follows Tommy’s example and immediately regrets it when icy water spits all over his fingers.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he complains, shoving his hand underneath his armpit. “It’s simply cold, like everything in this damn empire.”
“Cold,” Tommy agrees. In a puddle of water that had gathered underneath the fence, he can see a grin full of awe on a face he barely recognizes as his own. “Which means that it’s real.”
Tommy’s smile suddenly falters, at once remembering that all his problems are real too. Last time he ran off like this, Wilbur and half of the city guards had turned the city upside-down searching for him. It would be wise if he returned before Techno notices him missing and blares an alarm…
The palace looms over the rooftops, piercing the belly of the sky with the comb of sharp towers; to Tommy it seems more of a prison than a home. He pulls his hand back, leaning on the fence with his elbows. I’m not ready to lock myself up just yet, he realizes, hugging his crown to his chest
Dream climbs the upper bar of the fence, back turned to the river, propping one heel on the lower one for balance. With silence as the third companion, two princes watch the sky shed bright oranges and put on a coat of twilight. Tommy can’t truly appreciate the sunset knowing that both the sun and the moon are against him, counting down the little time he had left of self-proclaimed freedom. A minute could pass or an hour; in the end it could never be enough.
“I pity you, northerners,” Dream suddenly says, shivering. “You don’t know what a proper summer is like.”
"Scalding hot? Swarming with mosquitoes?" Tommy pins Dream with a side-eyed look. "Thank you, but I'd much rather dress warmer than sweat waterfalls all the time."
"It's not just the heat," Dream argues. "Golden beaches strewn with seashells that blink in all colors of the rainbow, the bubbling of waves as they crash into sand shores, the smell of fish smoked on coals, the flap of storm-worn sails and creak of wooden decks, wind whipping your face on a cliff at the edge of the world… You haven’t really lived until you experience that.”
“You like to brag about your kingdom, I get,” Tommy rolls his eyes, just to mess with Dream a little, and the prince laughs.
“In the east, the isles are so close to one another that it takes forever to find where aquamarine atolls turn into the true blue of the deep ocean,” he says. “We like to have our vacations there, just me and my siblings. Foolish and I take turns navigating and steering the ship, and Drista… well, Drista is herself.”
Dream snickers to some inner thoughts of his own. An odd feeling swells in Tommy’s chest, one that isn’t just from the knowledge that he won’t ever experience anything like this himself. Maybe it’s envy in him speaking or old memories lurking in shady corners, maybe it’s how Dream mouths the names of his siblings with undertone warmth that murmurs of love and family, but it hurts to think about it too much.
“You can navigate a ship?” he asks, leaning closer.
“It’s not that hard if you know your skies well. Here, look.” Dream waves a hand across the night; a scatter of stars, brighter by every minute, blink and shine like gems sewn to a lady’s gown. “If you find the constellation of Ursa Major-”
“Ursa… What?”
Dream looks at Tommy like he had grown not one, but three extra heads. "The Great bear?" he tries, which doesn’t ring any bells either. A long ago, Techno had tried to teach Tommy about constellations – particularly because of the myths associated with them – but he got quickly bored of the whole ordeal. “Stars are stars,” Tommy had declared. “And you, Techno, need a new hobby.”
Dream must realize that Tommy is utterly helpless; hands appear to the sides of his head, and before he could protest, turn him to look a little higher off the horizon. "A group of stars that together look like a giant ladle thing. That's Ursa Major."
After an embarrassing minute of squinting his eyes and feeling like a total idiot, Tommy finally sees it. "Whoever named it the Great Bear was most definitely blind."
"They wouldn't name it the Great Ladle, would they? Can’t exactly make up many stories about a cooking utensil. If you look a little bit higher and to the right, there’s the second constellation that looks almost the same, Ursa Minor–”
"A stupid name-"
"Ursa Minor," Dream insists. "If you connect the head of the Great Bear and the Little Bear, like this,” he slowly moves his hand, drawing an arrow between two constellations, “you'll find that the tail of the Little Bear is Polaris, the North star. It's the most stationary star in the entire night sky, and one of the brightest. Throughout the year, stars and constellations rotate around the sky, but the North star barely moves at all. If you know how to find it, you’re never going to get lost.”
“Except if it’s during the day,” Tommy points out. “Or if it’s too cloudy, or raining.” The Bears wink, one star after another, and suddenly they no longer seem just lifeless specks of light. The mystery behind name-giving, Tommy supposes. Even a rock or a flower seems soulless no longer if it possesses a name. I’m Tommy, nice to meet you, he thinks to himself. The exhaustion of the race earlier must be catching up to him; when his eyelids droop a little, he sees the North star flare a radiant, lazuli blue.
"Was it King Foolish who taught you all that?" he asks, turning to his friend, and Dream does what Tommy least expects him to do: he freezes. Countless times he had seen Wilbur burst in flames, and Tommy himself had been burned pulling him out of the ashes; it was like the mountains had collapsed when he first had seen Techno cry. Yet it shocks him like nothing else before when Prince Dream, the heir of the Royal throne, his mentor and his friend, the most remarkable person that Tommy had the honor of meeting – glooms.
"King Foolish… Eleven years, and I still can't quite get used to calling him that," he says. "My brother was barely an adult when he was crowned. I wanted to grow up faster and help him bear the weight of the crown. Foolish wouldn't let me. He made sure that I had a normal childhood, as much one was possible for somebody like me."
The mask had been there for a reason, Tommy understands. It's Dream’s world, his sorrow, and Tommy is a stranger who happened to stumble upon him in a moment of weakness. He tries to look away and pretend that he had never seen anything – the crown princes are not weak, never in front of other people – but it’s Dream who stops him, and just as if it was another star in the night sky, lets Tommy peek into his soul.
"My brother has given me more than I can ever thank him for," he says, "but the skies… That I owe to my mother."
Tommy breathes in a lungful of salt and summer. The stars overhead dim and flare again, pulsating in tact with the slow rhythm of their hearts, and the grief of one turns to two. Tommy squeezes Dream’s hand, weakly, feebly, and he grips it back with the despair of a drowning man flailing for the surface, as if that shy touch is the only thing still keeping them both from falling apart. And then something just clicks inside Tommy; he drops his crown and wraps his arms around Dream.
One second stretches into infinity of Tommy dreading what Dream is going to do. There is a moment where he is simply made of stone – and then he asks, cautiously, as if he’s afraid to frighten away the miracle that happened before his eyes, “Thes, are you hugging me?”
It’s the most awkward hug that Tommy had ever had in his life – Dream is already taller than him, and with the additional height of the fence his arms barely reach the man’s torso – yet a hug all the same. "That's what I am for,” he says quietly, half-hoping that the murmur of the river will carry his words away. Dream, however, hears.
"Hugging people?" he clarifies.
“You looked like you needed it."
Dream laughs; Tommy hadn't known, until now, that laughter could sound this heartbroken. "You think that after everything- I'm the one who needs...?"
Tommy waits for him to continue, peeking from where he had reluctantly hid his face in the older’s arm; light shifts in Dream’s eyes, and next moment he feels a hand at the back of his neck. “Yeah. Yeah I guess I do.”
Tommy freezes, his mind stuck on a bridge between pulling away or leaning closer. Everything about this feels foreign and familiar, freezing and burning, both too little and too much. For a second Tommy believes himself lying underneath blankets with a high fever, but then a gust of wind caresses his forehead, and he knows for sure that he isn’t dreaming.
"You might have driven me to tears for real," Dream presses his hand to his face. "I detest it."
Hearing him say that, with just a tiny strain to his voice, ebbs Tommy's embarrassment. "Now we're even in the power of destroying one another's reputation," he says, pulling away. "I do not comfort people, you do not weep. Do we have a deal?"
"Fair enough," Dream says. "You know… I think Esempi could use a little winter. Circumstances don't allow me to bring the entirety of the Empire to the south, so a certain northern prince would do."
Dream reaches to pick a piece of straw out of his hair, and Tommy breathes out deeply to keep himself from chasing the touch. "I'd love to, I really would," he says. "But I don't think I can."
“Why not?” Dream asks. “Two weeks of journey there, two weeks back, and a month or two in the Kingdom. Emperor Philza would not say a word of protest if the invitation came from the King of Esempi himself, especially if it’s made to sound like a diplomatic mission."
"Wherefore your brother would do something for a prince that he doesn't even know?"
"He trusts me,” Dream says with such confidence that Tommy doesn't doubt him further. He closes his eyes, thinking it all over. A few months in the Esempi is a couple months of him absent from the Empire, his throne and duties and the court. It might be a long-term loss, especially now, when he’s trying to assert and strengthen his position as the crown prince. Every logical reason tells him that he must stay, but…
In the Esempi, there is no Wilbur. There are no brothers that he needs to be wary of and fathers that would rather not look at him at all, nobody to poison his life whether it be on purpose or not. Tommy doesn’t want a miracle, just a short reprieve. A couple of months, a week, a day… is it really too much to ask for?
He cracks an eye open to look at the crown that he had dropped earlier, and that’s when he sees them: a figure on the other shore of the river. Moonlight silvers a black cloak, touches the tip of the person’s nose and trails to the object they’re raising in one hand.
Tommy shoves Dream away.
The crossbow shoots.
Pain erupts in the side of Tommy's head, a mangled cry erupting from his lips. He is on the ground all of a sudden, his ear burning like somebody had dipped it in liquid fire. A tornado of images swirls before Tommy’s eyes – the cloaked figure, people shouting and running. He’d think that an earthquake had started because of how badly everything shakes, but then he’s put to rest against something solid and his vision focuses on Dream's face hovering over him.
"You saved my life,” he says.
"Or endangered you by proximity, depending on which one of us they were aiming for,” Tommy hisses through gritted teeth, reaching for his ear. "Fuck, hurts like a bitch,” he mumbles. “How bad is it?”
“Like ear piercing done with an arrow,” Dream says. “Here, save it for a trophy.”
Dream puts something in Tommy’s hand, and he clenches it automatically. A glance down reveals a crossbow arrow, short and thin, with a blood-stained tip. Few inches to the side and it would’ve pierced him straight in the forehead, crushing bone and sinking into flesh…
A full-body shudder has Tommy lurching and gagging violently. He would’ve thrown up, if there was anything in his stomach to begin with. Swallowing a mix of water and bile back down and wiping his lips, he ignores the burning in his throat and, without much thinking, shoves the arrow into his pocket. Where did Dream go…?
Someone yelps and curses, steel screeches; Tommy tilts his chin up, one hand grasped around the handle of his dagger. The riverside, empty just mere seconds ago, is flooded with armored men: blue of his own guards dazzles among the rusty gold of city watch. In the middle of it all, Techno points a sword at Dream. Despite the tip pressing dangerously close to the pulsing vein on his neck, his face is akin to a stone sculpture. Sapnap reaches for his sword, snarling; Dream gestures him down before a fight could emerge.
"We don't want to start a war here, Sapnap. This is all but a terrible misunderstanding," he says, his eyes flickering to Tommy. "Thes, could you please ask your brother to put his weapon away?"
“You’re a bit late to the party, Techno.” Tommy staggers to his feet and hides the dagger again. “They were shooting from the other shore. Black hood, crossbow, around my height, I think, a bit taller, perhaps. Most certainly not Dream.”
“Forgive me for not knowing where the crown prince had run off to on his own accord,” Techno says dryly, but sheaths his sword with a clack. Others follow his example with a second hitch. Wisp tries to approach, plucking out a roll of bandages; Techno’s glance stops him dead in his tracks. If Tommy feels guilty for his escape then it’s only for getting his guards in trouble with the General, but he doesn’t have much time to gather sympathy when the scalded-red eyes snap to him next.
“We’re going back to the palace.” That’s a command, not an offer. Tommy sags and allows Techno to guide him away, to a home or to a prison or to the gallows, he isn't sure. Images and sounds barely brush him, flowing around like a river might around a stone. Techno wouldn't look at him no matter how many times he glimpses up, and the hand on his shoulder grows cold.
Awareness jolts back into Tommy with one foot inside the carriage and Dream's voice calling out his name. He turns, and sees the prince strolling up to them, sliding a new mask to his face. Sapnap follows in his footsteps, one hand at a sword and looking ready to slash their way through the crowd of guards.
“I’m here for my brother only.” Techno says, tearing into Dream with a look.
“What a coincidence, we're here for your brother too," Sapnap quips, and Dream lifts a jeweled disk. In the midst of everything, Tommy had completely forgotten about his crown. He accepts it, and Dream sneaks a moment to squeeze his hand reassuringly.
"It's yours," he says. "Don't let anybody treat you less than it calls for."
A faint white scar stretches like a lightning along the crease of Tommy's palm, but what is invisible to the eye is not as easy to erase from memory. "I would die before I did," Tommy says, meaning every word.
Dream steps away, giving him one last smile before the door closes and shuts Tommy away.
***
Assassination attempts are a regular part of the Imperial household’s life, though less for Tommy than any of his family members, thanks to his good relationship with nobles – but it wasn’t always this way. First time that an attempt on his life was made, he was twelve, and as far as the majority was aware, utterly unfit to be the crown prince. Dusk of the dynasty, people used to whisper, but Tommy hadn’t understood the true danger behind those words until a venomous snake came crawling from under his dish lid.
“Good relationships with people means that fewer of them want you dead,” a black-haired man said, approaching when everybody else in the room was too afraid to breathe. The snake whisked its tongue out experimentally, distracted from hissing at Tommy, and when the man hadn’t moved, started slithering up his hand. With a snake coiled around his arm, he turned back to the crown prince. “I, for one, like being alive. What about you, Your Imperial Highness?” the man had asked, and that was how Tommy first met Quackity.
Throughout six years Tommy’s life was threatened a few more times. About some he only learned from other people’s words, danger taken care of before it could come any close to harming him. Sometimes it was because of a security issue not timely resolved or some madman who cared about the prince’s death more than about their own life. This time, though, Tommy had honestly and genuinely fucked up.
It’s dark in and out, with the city long behind them, and a single lantern inside the carriage to cast ghostly yellow glow on their faces. It turns into a competition of who is going to speak up last, if it could be called a competition; to Tommy, the silence feels closer to torture. He would prefer Techno to shout, to reprimand him, scowl, at the very least – but save for one time that he exchanges words with guards outside, Techno doesn’t so much as look at him.
“Are you not going to ask what I was thinking of?” Tommy snaps when the silence becomes too much to bear.
“Why would I?” Techno asks. “At this point I’m doubting if you possess that ability at all.”
Tommy suppresses a flinch. He kicks his shoes off and brings his knees to his chest, tucking himself into a corner and wishing that he could just sink through. A few minutes later, the bench creaks underneath him. Tommy peels an eye open, and finds Techno sitted on the same side as him, a wet rag and bandages in tow.
Techno, although not unnecessarily harsh, doesn't try to be gentle either. He holds Tommy’s head with one hand while the other works on cleaning the wound. Tommy grits his teeth tighter, squaring his shoulders, but hisses all the same when a needle stabs his skin without a warning.
“You’re angry, I get it,” he tries to slap his brother’s hand away, only for his wrist to be caught in a firm grip.
“I’m not playing games with you, Theseus,” Techno warns. “Stay still, or it’s not going to heal right.”
Tommy reluctantly drops his arm, allowing Techno to continue working. The needle pierces his ear a few more times, well-practiced stitches bringing the edges of ruined flesh together. Tommy bites his lips to keep himself from crying out, but there is only so much pain that pride can swallow. Techno pauses when he hears him whimper. His movements turn gentler; a cloth soaked in something cool presses against his ear, the final layer of bandages fixing it in place.
"I'm not letting you out of my sight," Techno sighs, wiping the blood off his hands and tossing the rug aside.
“Pretty hard to do that from a hundred miles away,” Tommy mumbles, dropping his head to rest against the window. He’s so tired, and would fall asleep right away if not for the sting and ache bringing him back to wakefulness every few seconds.
“I’m not leaving,” Techno brushes Tommy’s blood-coated hair out the way, careful not to disturb the wound. “Not after this.”
The words that Tommy dreamed of hearing all these years don’t come from a brother but a warden. Are you staying to guard me, or to herd me? Tommy thinks dully, watching the lantern tremble with the movement of the carriage.
“I should've practiced this near-dying thing more often then,” he says, shrugging Techno’s hand off. “Would’ve saved me a lot of trouble if I knew that’s what it takes to crack your indifference.”
“Whatever you might think or believe, I do care, Theseus,” Techno’s brows draw together, and he pulls his hand back.
Tommy straightens and shifts with his back to the window so he could give his brother a proper glare. “I’m thoroughly touched by your attempt at being comforting,” he spits words like venom, “but unfortunately, I’m allergic to bullshit.”
“Strange,” Techno drawls, arms crossed. “You seemed to be doing fine around Dream.”
The entire day had been showering Tommy in gunpowder, but the accusation in Techno’s voice – aimed at Dream – strikes the match that blows the remains of his self-control to smithereens. “Why- just why?” he shouts, springing to his feet. “For six years – six fucking years! – you avoided being part of my life, but now that I finally found a person who understands me and doesn’t treat me like shit- you have the audacity to tell me that Dream is the one I should avoid? At least with fucking Wilbur it makes sense…” Tommy clenches his fists, “but you, Techno? What does you give you the fucking rights!?”
His flailing has the carriage trembling, and the lantern swings dangerously from side to side, light and shadows like changing masks on Techno’s face. “I’m your family.” Techno straightens up. “That gives me plenty of rights.”
“Don’t you dare to start that crap now!” Tommy reels back, as far as he could in the tight space. “You’re only my brother when it’s easy for you, when it doesn’t oppose your views or challenge your opinions. If tomorrow the Emperor told you to kill me, wouldn’t you put an axe through my back without a word of hesitation?”
His every word strikes Techno – the indifferent, impenetrable Techno – like it hurts to hear. Good, Tommy thinks. Let the roles be reversed this one time.
"When you chose to be the crown prince, I swore to serve as your shield and sword,” Tommy moves closer to him, and now there isn’t just anger in his voice: his tone is turning desperate, too. “ You told me you want Wilbur back so I spent years looking for your brother. What more could you possibly want me to do?"
"Be there!" Tommy cries out.
A wheel gets caught on a hubble, and the whole carriage jumps, lantern shattering against a wall, both of them thrown off their feet. Tommy tears the curtains off in an attempt to retain his balance, and a silver dusk of moonlight spills through the window. A candle rolls up to silent Techno’s feet, wick black and shriveled, and for the first time that day – or ever, perhaps – Tommy takes a moment to look at his brother, at the dark circles nestled under the eyes so much alike to his own dull blue. He is listening, Tommy thinks. For once he is trying to understand.
“You were an adult when everything that we thought was constant in our lives had disappeared in an instant.” Tommy knuckles his eyes for a moment, and when he looks up at Techno again, they are full of smoldering grief. “I was eleven, Techno, and what did you do?”
“I left,” he says, a confession of truth, of blame and of remorse.
“You left.” Techno’s face becomes a blur through Tommy’s watery eyes; he stumbles in place, stutters and sobs. “Again and again, when I needed you the most.” Tommy clasps the roots of his hair, choking. “A-and each time I wondered- what am I doing wrong? Why am I not enough to make people stay?”
Glass cracks underneath Techno’s feet – and then warm hands are taking Tommy’s wrists and carefully moving them away from his tear-stricken face. Such a simple motion, but Tommy’s knees give out, and he slumps forward – Techno catches him before he could hit the bottom.
“You were supposed to be better,” Tommy whimpers.
“I know,” Techno murmurs, pressing his chin to the top of Tommy’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
Tommy shakes through a breath, Techno's smell enveloping him equally tight as his arms. The last time Techno held him like this, they both lamented the loss of a brother, but the whiff of roses wasn't trailing Techno’s each step. The same warmth that Tommy had craved for years is here, now, but Tommy himself – his mind and his tears – are cold. If Techno had thought to glance down, he would see the crown firmly grasped in one of Tommy’s hands.
“The anniversary is coming up soon,” Techno says. “Father and I are going to visit her grave. Do you want to-?”
A shudder wrecks Tommy’s entire form. “I can’t.” He chokes on a word, trying both to hide his face in Techno’s chest and shake his head furiously. Techno shushes him, the slow rise and fall of his chest reminding him how to breathe.
“It’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure she would understand.”
By the time that they had reached the palace, the tears had already dried on Tommy’s face, but he allows Techno to lead them both into the entrance and through the corridors to the northern wing, only briefly stopping in the gardens for something that he doesn’t bother squinting his eyes at. The wound had opened up again, blood warm and sticky. The first thing that Techno does in his chambers is apply new bandages while Tommy patiently sits on his bed, and then they both find some clothes for him to change into.
Tommy has to roll up the pants three times before he could begin to walk, and exits drowning in one of Techno’s shirts. The light from the windows etch his brother’s figure into a mere shadow, but when Techno turns around, a sun is grasped between his fingers – a tender, blooming yellow rose.
"Why did you take it?" Tommy asks, and Techno blinks, as if for a moment he had lost the awareness of where they are.
"It feels familiar," he says, tucking the rose behind Tommy’s other ear. He leans into the touch until his cheek rests in Techno's big and warm palm. A scarred thumb brushing his eyelids, tracing the line of his jaw – Tommy understands.
“It feels like home,” he murmurs, and when Techno steals a glance at the door, asks, “Stay with me?”
Techo hesitates, but Tommy adds, “Just until I fall asleep,” and he gives in.
They settle together, among the pillows and blankets, with Techno sitting cross-legged against the headboard and Tommy’s head pressed next to his thigh. Tommy battles sleep for as long as he can, but darkness is a patient fighter; it absorbs his vision inch by inch. The last thing that Tommy remembers before it overpowers him completely is Techno, a ragged white cloak on his shoulder, walking out of the door.
***
I will be there for your birthday, Techno said, and then he was not.
The broken promise didn’t sting as much as the sight of a cape on his desk that smelled of ashes and roses and soil. In the folds of softest fabric, among the seams of fixed tears, in the white furs of phantom warmth, was tucked a newly forged, shiny dagger. It was an apology, and like the nature of apologies is, useless.
Tommy clenched the sheathed dagger with two hands, so tightly that it left raw red traces where metal had dug into soft skin. He wanted to fling the stupid gift at the wall. He wanted to scream and tear and destroy, but instead he left the palace drowning in a cape too big for his skinny shoulders. Each step that he took up a hill was impossible labor, and by the time that he had reached the top, his lungs were burning and he dropped to his knees from exhaustion.
They used to have picnics here. The memory sprung up like a distant lullaby, his parents’ laughter and the voices of his brothers quarreling akin to fragmented cords. Sometimes Tommy thought those memories weren’t his at all. They must have come from some other world, where mothers were immortal and brothers kept their promises, where raised in his father’s a boy could imagine himself flying. A distant world, an impossible world; a world that most knew by the name of childhood.
You are a child, still, the world had whispered. Grass gently tangled itself between his fingers, the ground cold but softer than any carpet. Tommy sat back, legs crossed, and whistled out a long, high-pitched tune. It swept through the treetops, whipped in the grass where it reached mountain ravines and echoed deep within. He whistled through the night, again and again, weaker each time until his throat was too hoarse to make another sound. The voiceless stars sparkled above, and flowers murmured their sorrow, yet there was nobody to answer a wingless songbird keening for his flock.
Tommy hadn’t noticed when exhaustion had pulled him under, only that one moment he was floating and the next he dropped the dagger with a strangled gasp. It lay in the grass, next to the steel sheathes; they must have slipped off through his numb fingers in his sleep. Tommy whimpered and hunched on himself, cradling his injured hand. The sight of blood made him sick, but curiosity – some twisted, morbid version of it – wrenched his leaking eyes open anyway.
Steel had peeled skin almost horrifyingly easily. The blade had slashed an inch perfectly along the diagonal crease of his palm. Tommy could’ve missed it if it was not for red quickly beading the edges of the cut. He watched in daze as the crimson seeds sizzled their path through cold skin, and veined stems grew into grotesque flowers.
It was beautiful.
It was blood.
The sight should have scared Tommy, but as a sob rattled out of his lungs, he lifted the dagger and pressed it to the edge of the wound. Tomorrow, I'll be strong, he promised. But today Tommy was angry, he was petty and lonely and everything was too much. Emotions welled in him, they poisoned his heart, and with every drop of crimson that trickled in-between his fingers, he turned just a little bit number. Today Tommy turned thirteen, and the best birthday gift would be not to feel anything at all.
Two thirds the length of his palm had been cut and oozing crimson when an owl hooted in the distance. Tommy paused, lowering the blade, and listened. Even though the only sound in the simmering night was his own labored breathing, he knew that he wasn’t alone anymore.
“Tsk, tsk.” Clara stepped out of the shadows, her wings uncurling and momentarily cutting away the moonlight spilling over Tommy’s shoulders. "You have precious blood running in your veins, little crow. Don’t spill it for nothing.”
Tommy hunched on himself further, but it was pointless: Clara already had seen everything that she needed to see. He didn’t protest when she had gently pried his fingers open and took the dagger away. Suddenly she swiped the weapon down; Tommy squeezed his eyes shut on instinct, and opened them again when he heard the sound of fabric tearing. Clara reached to him with a handful of stripes cut out of the upper skirt of her own dress.
It was a pretty dress, all deep blues and silvery lace. If Tommy had any strength to spare, he would have apologized that she had to ruin it. As it was, he stared motionlessly ahead and obediently allowed Clara to take his injured palm into her own. She pressed a roll of fabric to the cut and wrapped it with makeshift bandages. By then the pain had numbed down to weak stinging, and there was only one thing that Tommy cared about.
“Will Father hear about this?” he asked meekly.
Clara paused, and looked up to him, unblinking, with pupils that took up most of her eyes. “It depends,” she said simply. “Do you want to die?”
Horror seized Tommy; he shrank into himself with a strangled, “No…” Clara held his hand as he waited for him to speak, and the disappointment that Tommy was so afraid of never came. There was too much patience and understanding in them; far more than he deserved and more than enough to make him break.
“I saw Wilbur doing it once,” Tommy confessed, eyes screwed shut. “I snuck into his room, wanting to surprise him, and there he stood, with a- a paper knife and a bleeding cut on his arm. It- it was the first time he had done something like that, I- I think. He freaked out a lot, gasping and sobbing and all. Made me promise that I would not tell anybody.”
Tommy whispered to avoid straining his voice, but there was no secrecy in the way he barely moved his lips; only tiredness, infinite exhaustion carved in granite. Numbness had tolled on him once more, as if with every word that he uttered, he lost a part of himself. “Back then… back then I didn’t understand what happened, or why he was doing it. I just knew that Wilbur wasn’t doing as well as he wanted others to think… so I kept at his side, never leaving him alone. I was there for him, and he had said that he will always be there for me.”
Clara’s lips were sealed. She was listening carefully, and as Tommy looked up into her eyes, the realization came to him. Wilbur lied.
“My brother had abandoned me, didn’t he?” The question that Tommy was so afraid of for two years had left his mouth, and there was something finalizing and desperately pleading in them in a way that a dying man’s last words would be. The sun had glimpsed over the horizon and striked a reflection across the blade of the dropped dagger, and the answer came to Tommy in the form of a boy of wilted flowers and eyes full of shattered glass.
It finally crushed Tommy then. Not his mother’s breathless body swallowed by the jaws of a grave, not the empty rooms with ghosts of his brothers, but the realization that this stranger was him. He could convince himself that Mother was reading a book in the library or Wilbur was about to burst through the doors any moment now, but he couldn’t get rid of his own face. Every mirror and every reflection would remind him that nothing would be back to being like it was before.
“I don’t want to die,” Tommy whimpered. “I just don’t know how to live.”
The tears didn’t seem to stop. Tommy cried and wept like a newborn babe in Clara’s arms, his body too small to contain his grief. Sharp talons brushed his scalp gently, and spotted brown feathers blanketed his shuddering form. Tommy was little more than a pile of bones and blood: breathing, with a heart pounding weakly and tearing apart on itself, but not entirely alive.
He felt so much colder when Clara eventually pulled away. Like a puppet with its strings cut, he sagged forward and propped himself weakly on his elbows. Tommy didn’t want to rise again, but a hand slid underneath his chin and tilted it up until he was forced to look into Clara’s face. He had seen all sorts of expressions in her eyes, from pity to sympathy and anger, but never something so simultaneously sinister and dazing.
“You can never be hurt if there wasn’t love in the first place,” she said. “Without trust there is no betrayal and without hope there will never be disappointment,” she paused. “Without guilt, there will be no remorse to stand in your way.”
Clara let go of his chin. Sunrise burned Tommy’s eyes through the crusty glue of dried tears, dull diamonds fluttering open when something cold was pressed into his fingers. The weight and the shape were too familiar for it to be anything other than his crown.
“You can rise, Theseus, or you can fall,” Clara said, clamping her hands over his, so tightly that a sharp angle stabbed into the bandaged cut and reopened it. “This is all you have now. Protect it, no matter the cost.”
Tommy listened and allowed Clara’s words to grave themselves into the back of his mind. When she pulled away, he was still holding the crown. Life had taken away everything that he cared about, and in exchange tossed him a piece of jeweled metal. Tommy loathed to look at it; he thought of it as mockery, the universe’s cruel joke… but as the cut had bled through the bandages and patterned silver in crimson, he asked himself how come he never understood that it was a gift.
Now Tommy knew the truth. His love for Wilbur, tucked next to his heart, with time had begun to rot, pumping poison into his bloodstream. He needed to get it out, carve it out with a simmering knife if he wanted to live. Today was the day he finally became Prince Theseus. Today was the day he killed Wilbur.
They returned to the palace together: Tommy first, Clara so close behind that for a moment, her wings looked like they were his. Sunset generously showered the throne room in gold, but where Tommy walked there were only shadows. A crown on his head, a dagger at his belt, and a new gape in his heart, Tommy took his rightful place on the crown prince’s throne.
***
The balcony doors open with a soft croak. Polished marble is seething cold underneath his bare feet, but Tommy curls his toes and walks forward anyway. He stands leaning on the handrails while the sun rises; from all the way up here, the servants and guards rushing through the courtyard look no bigger than scurrying ants. By now everybody must have heard the news about the assasination attempt on the crown prince yesterday. The air buzzes with anxious haste; Tommy’s ear stings underneath the bandage, still, but his breathing comes out as even and slow. He has no reason to be worried, not when he had close calls far more than this. Let Techno handle the aftermath of yesterday while Tommy… Tommy will build tomorrow.
A light of doubt shimmers in Tommy when he tugs a flower off his hair. The yellow rose had wilted overnight; sun-nurtured petals shriveled and turned blue. Tommy fists them slowly, as gentle as the death's goodbye kiss. When he unwraps his fingers, and the wind sweeps away the dust, he knows what must be done.
Tommy gets on his knees in front of the jewelry box, the dagger in one hand, Beau’s hairpin in the other. Both the blade and the needle are thin enough that he can maneuver them into the lock together. Tommy owes his lockpicking skills to Tubbo and their shared boredom; the deft movement of his fingers – to Niki’s knitting lessons. After a few minutes of fiddling, a characteristic click notifies him of success.
He pushes the lid open, and for a second the bright glistening of jewels blinds him. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires and pearls all go unnoticed while he searches through the contents of the box. At last, weak warmth pulsates on his fingertips. Grabbing the chain, he pulls out the Star.
There is no jewel in this world rarer than Nether stars. One of those shiny stones is worth the same as a good chunk of the palace. While the rest of the gems were all gifts to the Empress from the Emperor and nobles, The Star came as her only dowry. Stealing it would be a crime prosecuted with all the harshness of the law… if there was anything to prosecute after Techno was done with the thief.
Tommy isn’t worried about being seen. Nobody is allowed in this part of the palace, let alone near Techno’s chambers. With Techno himself out and about it won’t be soon that the gems' disappearance is noticed, but Tommy had waited three months, he can muster enough patience for another week. Before he knows it, his feet are carrying him to the other end of the corridor, to a door of birch wood and carved butterflies.
He almost doesn’t recognize his old chambers. The walls had been repainted, erasing younger Tommy’s clumsy attempts at drawing, shoe stains from where he had propped his legs upside-down. His childhood toys are gone, his clothes, his blankets, pillows, bouquets of dried flowers, pretty stones he found in a lake and all the small trinkets he used to have on the shelves or lying around… It was like Tommy had never existed at all.
Abandoned. Forgotten. Replaced. A chorus sings in Tommy’s ears. He spots a pot of flowers standing on a table. A breath of chilly air sneaks in through a window left ajar, alliums bobbing up and down as he approaches. Dropping the Star from a scarred palm into the pot, he swipes some soil over to hide the purple glow and adds another word to the chorus, vengeful.
“Ranboo, how could you?” Tommy whispers into the empty room.