Ranboo is no stranger to broken bones; pain is a familiar symphony to him, a song ingrained into the deepest part of his head. Give it a few weeks and his ribs will no longer feel like they're being stabbed at every tiny movement, but time doesn't heal mind in the same way it does broken bones - panic consumes Ranboo every time a blur of blue flashes within angle of his vision, wisps of wind akin to a coolness of a knife against his throat.
He didn't tell anybody about Theseus attacking him. Techno asked if he wanted to call for a physician when he gets to the palace, but Ranboo couldn't, not without questions occurring about the secrets patterned as scars across his chest.
"Don't," he strangled out.
The things that the two brothers were yelling at one another over his trembling figure came to him in a blur; he remembered vividly that Techno sounded angry for him... and yet he seemed to be almost relieved at his answer.
"Phil has enough on his plate now... Let's keep it between us for now, alright?" he said, in a restrained, curt tone that Ranboo was too shaken up to decipher or argue against. Techno promised to bring him an ointment for his bruises, but then Theseus disappeared, and people started talking about an assassination attempt... in all the turmoil, the older prince never came to check up on him.
He wants to talk to Tubbo about what happened, but his friend acts quiet the whole morning, picking at the dirt stuck underneath his fingernails and avoiding looking in Ranboo's eyes. Tubbo excuses himself shortly after breakfast, and as Ranboo watches him go, words forming in his throat turn into a heavy lump. For eight years, he had only the darkness to confide in, but never it has hurt this much to be alone.
He knew, deep down, that he shouldn't have gotten used to this: being listened to, to have people talk to him in voices laced with concern, to being cared for. In a single moment of the crown prince's fury, Ranboo was sent back to fearing his own shadow, tiptoeing around with his every word and movement to avoid undeserved wrath. It's like the last four years had never happened at all, and he is the same scared boy, curled up crying over his maimed and bleeding arms. The dream was sweet while it lasted but now it's time to wake up and face the truth: he is nothing, and maybe he's not meant to be anything beyond that.
In a few months since his first arrival, Ranboo learned to call the palace home, but suddenly it feels the same as it did that very first day: eyes watching him from every chipped brick of stone columns, threatening and condemning, and panic multiplying like echoes bouncing off far walls. Ranboo twists the handle of the closest door and all but falls through.
Languishing light of a cloudy day enters the room through half-opened curtains, barely enough to etch a round table out of the dark, along with monochrome figures placed on top of a gridded board - somebody's abandoned game of chess. Blissfully, the room is empty. The ringing in Ranboo's ears, so much alike to the thunder of waves against a rocky shore, dissipates in sizzling seafoam. He slumps against a wall with a shaky sigh.
"Good morning."
Ranboo scrambles to his feet. A dark-haired man reclines in a deep armchair, sitting so still that he seems to be fusing with the darkness around. A pair of tiny round glasses is settled on the hump of his nose; light strikes the lenses in a way that Ranboo ends up staring in his own lost expression.
"Morning-" Ranboo gropes the door for a handle, "I didn't realize that this room is already occupied- I'll leave now. Sorry."
"Wait," the man says. "Ranboo is your name, am I correct?"
Ranboo freezes, shoulders hiking up. He forces them to slump into something less defensive, one hand still ghosting over the handle.
"Who am I talking to, again?" he asks cautiously.
"At the moment I am a man in dire need of an enemy," the stranger nods at the board before him, "but normally people tend to call me George. Do you play chess, Ranboo?"
Ranboo looks at the man up and down, at the impassive expression on his face, at the dark lenses of his glasses, at the way his hand twists a black pawn, weaving it in-between his fingers. Something in his head just clicks.
"George?" he echoes. "As in Duke George of Kinoko Kingdom?"
The best chess player in the world, as Tubbo had called him, not without a tone of admiration and envy, and a wild card by version of Quackity. Duke George follows Prince Dream whenever he goes, trouble and misfortune shadowing their path. Nobody can tell whether they're friends, or if Dream is holding something over George's head that forces the man to stay at his side. I advise that you stay away from him at all costs, Quackity had said about the man that Ranboo is currently trapped in a conversation with.
George puts the pawn down and hums, as if he could read the thoughts sparking behind his eyes.
"What do you know of Kinoko Kingdom, Ranboo?"
"Only that it's the most peaceful country on the continent, and that chess is at a premium there," Ranboo says, arms brought closer to himself defensively. "Tubbo told me that six-year-old children from Kinoko Kingdom compare in skill with adults everywhere else... which means that I don't stand a chance against you."
"It's true that Kinoko haven't participated in a single war for hundreds of years, or doesn't have much of a military force to speak of, but people tend to underestimate the power born from knowledge," George lifts a bishop to his eyes, inspecting it from bottom to the top as if looking for the tiniest of flaws. For some reason, Ranboo feels like he's the target of this scrutinizing gaze. "The Kingdom houses the biggest archive in the world - the Great Library. We're keepers of history, watchers of the present. It comes with its own honors, political immunity and unlimited passage through every other country on the continent... More people should be wary of the day when Kinoko decides that simply watching history isn't enough," the bishop reflects in George's glasses, a ghostly replica of the real piece, "that it wants to make it."
"You're wrong about one thing, though. No matter how skilled is the player on the other end, you can never tell whether you'll win or lose until the checkmate comes." He points Ranboo at a chair. "Sit down."
Reluctantly, Ranboo releases his grip on the door handle and shuffles to the opposite side of the board. George meanwhile takes to rearranging the wooden figures into their starting positions. His movements are fast and practiced, corrections made with a push of knuckle until all thirty-two pieces are placed perfectly in the middle of their respective squares. When Ranboo played chess with Tubbo, his friend would fist two pawns - one white, the other black - and offer him to choose one. George, however, takes the blacks without a single word. A shiver runs down Ranboo's spine; he picks up a white pawn and moves it two steps forward.
For a while it's just the tap of wood placed on wood that ripples the silence. Ranboo's heart no longer hammers like he'd raced with Tubbo across the whole palace; it's different type of fear that acids his stomach now, thick and torturously slow. He isn't a remarkable player in sound health, but it's almost impossible to concentrate when one sloppy movement could make his ribcage feel like it's being ripped open.
While Ranboo bites his lips and wrings his fingers every three seconds, George rests his chin on his tangled hands, his eyes fixed firmly on the chessboard. Not a muscle twitches on his face, neither when Ranboo foolishly puts a rook into his pawn's path nor when a black knight is traded for a white bishop.
It's when almost every piece on the board had moved at least once, and sweat litters Ranboo's forehead that George speaks up for the first time.
"Your injury must be hurting a lot," he says.
Ranboo looks up, startled. "How did you-?"
"The way you breathe," George says, ghosting a hand over his own ribcage. "It's slightly off. Like you're trying to avoid startling an injury - a broken rib, I figured, or particularly bad bruising. You didn't seek the physician's help for it. Maybe you're trying to protect the culprit... or afraid of them going after you again."
Ranboo brushes a tongue over the inside of his teeth. Ignoring the stab of pain in his chest, he clenches his fingers around a knight's head and moves it three steps to the right and one forward.
"I-" Techno's face drifts before his vision. "I fell."
"Another pawn down," George says, swiping his piece off the board. "You're not a good liar, Ranboo... but you might be trying to be a good friend, if it's your servant's fault that you've gotten hurt."
"Wha- no, of course not!" Ranboo nearly knocks his bishop off the board.
"Prince Wilbur," A rook picked up. "Prince Technoblade-"
"They would never-"
"It must have been Prince Theseus, then." George places the rook half a board across Ranboo's king. Check.
Ranboo clamps his mouth closed, moving the king out of the rook's reach. "I never said that Prince Theseus is involved in this."
"By not saying one thing, you make another obvious," George shrugs. "I wonder what kind of old scarring memory it triggered for you to fear him this much."
Cold sweat beads Ranboo's back. His hands start to shake, a tiny quiver that grows at his fingers and soon spikes around the whole length of his palms. "Is this a game, or an interrogation?" he asks, nails digging into the table.
For the first time since the start of the game, George's eyes flicker up to him. Ranboo shivers under his blank stare. It's not the same coolness that he's used to seeing in the youngest prince - Theseus' eyes are glassed over and distant, a facade hiding a raging soul. George's eyes, however... they look like there was never a soul there to begin with.
"A game, of course." George pulls his glasses all the way up. His lips never move beyond what's necessary to form words, but Ranboo swears he could hear a snicker there. "It's all a game, and you're an unwilling player. Perhaps it would be the wisest if you listened to whoever told you to keep quiet about the incident. Prince Theseus is always so outwardly composed and collected, it's hard to imagine him losing his temper enough to attack someone, let alone injure them."
Ranboo remembers how pure unbridled fury had skewed Theseus' face. A shudder wrecks through him. "But I know for a fact that it happened," he says, thinking of the bruises he has to prove it.
"There's a high chance that nobody would believe you even if you decided to be forthcoming about it," George says. "And if they did, the Imperial household would silence the rumors to prevent a scandal from occurring."
"But the Emperor had been standing by my side this far whenever it came down to how Theseus treats me."
"It hasn't done any favors to improve your relationship, I imagine."
Ranboo wrings his hands, eyes flickering around the board. His white pawn stands a lone soldier on the sidelines, cut off by a rook on one side and stalked on the other by a queen. Despite an odd pang in his chest, Ranboo chooses to abandon the pawn and moves the king away.
"It's not like I had started it, or was trying to get Prince Theseus into Phi- His Majesty's bad graces. I was surviving, in the only way I saw how." Ranboo wraps his fingers over the king's head before letting it go. "Is there a sin in that?"
"I suppose one can't be blamed for what they've always been taught to do. The bishop moves diagonally, the rook zooms horizontally and vertically, and royals hide away their mistakes and weaknesses out of prying sight." George picks up the black king. "The Emperor might let a small blunder of his son be let to the public, but in the end his priority is the Empire. He'll sacrifice anything if that means protecting the greatest secret of them all," George leans in closer, clenching the figure in a white-knackled grip, "the king is a piece, and emperors, too, are just humans."
Ranboo watches. His king is the last white piece on the board, in a grim prison of the shadows of his enemies, while his captured army resides woefully to the side of the board. Ranboo tries to recall losing half of those pieces and finds only a sequence of colors in his mind - white, black, white and black again - and yet the game has come to an end, and three of his fingers are locked on the head of the king. Ranboo tips him down to lay on the board.
George stands up. In the silence, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor makes Ranboo want to cover his ears. George takes his glasses off, fishing out a piece of silk cloth as he walks past the still-frozen boy.
"Play the game, Ranboo," he says, rubbing the glasses clean. "Who knows, maybe you're better at it than you realize."
***
Tap tap tap. The Emperor's fingers rap a steady rhythm on the armrest, and every person in the throne room flinches as if they're feeling the touch on their skulls instead. Tap tap tap. Techno's thumb strikes out a rhythm out of the pommel of his sword. Flecks of diamond blue and ruby red overlook a crowd of thousands, picking on every single face with the sharp precision of a soaring eagle and ruthlessness of a hunting shrike. Nobody speaks. Nobody dares to breathe.
Tommy thought that it'd take around a week for Techno to notice the Star missing. Two days after he had hidden the jewel in Ranboo's current chambers the palace staff woke to guards grimly banging on their doors. Cooks barely had the time to move boiling pots off the fire before they were chased out of the kitchens to join the bellowing cattle of servants and maids, gardeners and grooms, butlers, errand boys, footmen, clerks and scribes and hundreds more ripped out of their bed or workplace without as much as a word of explanation.
The throne room could fit a castle of its own in a cage of massive gilded columns - today, it's almost not enough. Step right or left and one would inevitably bump into someone's shoulder or stomp on a foot. Thousands of people are required to keep the palace living and turning every day, but it's when two workers, both in service for over a decade, whisper together not knowing the other's name that the true scale of that statement is felt. A thief in the palace. The maids in charge of cleaning the northern wing, the gardeners taking care of the potted flowers, a clerk who had walked past Techno's chambers once... Everybody understands with blood-curling clarity: in the eyes of the Emperor and his silent white shadow, any of them can be to blame.
"The late Empress had felt her end coming long before death had claimed her." Those are the words that shatter the silence first. The throne room shudders, waiting for the echo of death death death to pass. "She was preparing for it, so as to soften the impact it'd have on the Empire and the ruling family once she was no longer with us. Among the preparations that she had done was writing her will. There were three lines. The Empress of the Antarctic Empire had three lines to leave behind, one of them instructing to give out most of her possessions. Let people remember me by my actions, she said, and left us with scarcely anything to keep her memory alive with."
The Emperor looks like it pains him to talk. It's no longer just wrath that hides in the specks of blue in the man's eyes. For a moment the palace plummets into the same hopelessness it did when the bells had rang to inform of the Empress' passing for the first time.
"Kristin had ruled by my side for over twenty years. She was the love of my love, the mother of my children, and one of the brightest people that the history of the Antarctic Empire has ever known. Her love was with her people, her heart always with the hurt and suffering." The Emperor clenches his hands on the armrest, "What kind of person does it take to dishonor her memory so? Who dared?"
"One desperate person," a boy whispers. "One vengeful son." But over the pounding of their own heartbeats, people hardly catch a single word out of his mouth.
"I give the thief one chance to confess their crime and return the Nether star with no major consequences to occur." The Emperor sinks forward on the throne, propping his forehead on straightened fingers. A tired gaze sweeps over the crowd, concealing a dark promise in its depth. "If they refuse to do so, however... Every person who had access to the northern wing in the past few days will be held responsible."
"Mercy, Your Imperial Majesty!" the head maid cries out, falling to her knees. It's all what it takes for pleas and screaming to start. Once the cacophony of voices reaches a crescendo, a singular figure splits from the rest and saunters to the bottom of the throne. Guards who were already barring their swords reluctantly let them down when the face of the impudent stranger turned to have the mirrror copy of the Emperor's. In shocked silence, Prince Theseus gets to his knees.
"Stand up," he says to the maid softly. "You've done nothing worth apologizing for."
He helps the woman to her feet, and once she hesitantly joins the rest, turns to the Emperor and Techno.
"Your Imperial Majesty," Tommy speaks up. "Those people before you have served the late Empress with the same devotion and loyalty they serve me. Many are here by her mercy and her kindness. I do not believe that any of them is to blame. Rather than basing any assumptions on wrath and the wish of immediate retribution, we should focus our efforts on finding the missing jewel."
"We have people rummaging through the auctions, seeing if there's anybody trying to sell a Nether star," Techno says.
"I doubt that they would try to auction it off in the capital, unless they wish to be caught," Tommy argues. "Rather it's more likely to be still in the palace, hidden away for later."
The Emperor does not speak immediately. It's insolent for the crown prince to speak up against him directly like this, but as gazes of the servants turn from surprised to hopeful and grateful, the Emperor has to make a choice.
"If the Star is still in the palace, we will find it." With those final words, the whole palace releases one giant breath of relief. The doors open, and a permission to leave is unspokenly obvious, one by one people rush out of the throne room and wipe off their sweaty foreheads.
Tommy lowers himself onto the empty throne next to the Emperor's, spine straight and parallel to the back of the seat, hands folded on his knees and chin lifted at an angle of ninety. Though his so-called resting position is anything but comfortable, it serves to make him look formidable in spite of the Emperor next to him. Let people look, and let them regret. Tommy will watch, satisfied, as they seek comfort in the same demeanor that they called him cold for and boil in the pots of their own guilt.
"Theseus, you should be resting now," Techno grunts, speaking up for the first time this morning.
"How can I, when people under my care are unjustly accused?" Tommy says, feeling himself balancing on that thin line between good acting and sounding overly dramatic. "Sick or injured, the service to the Empire is my first and utmost priority."
"Your good health equals the good health of the Antarctic Empire," the Emperor says.
Then the Empire had almost died the other day, Tommy thinks. It's the first time that they've spoken since the assasination attempt on him, and he is yet to be scolded for running off and endangering himself. After all, the Emperor had put a lot of time and effort in him, and wouldn't be happy to see it all wasted.
Maybe the act Tommy pulled in the carriage had more effect on Techno than he realized, and his brother had talked the Emperor out of nitpicking on him for a few days. He tries to sneak a brisk glance at Techno; something in him physically recoils and stops him half-way through. Guilt, perhaps, or conscience; things that were almost as much useless to him throughout the last six years as Techno was.
"I can speak and I can walk," Tommy says, turning back to the Emperor. "I believe it was Your Imperial Majesty who taught me to see that as a notion of good health."
A moment passes. Two, three. A staring contest of blue on blue resolves with Tommy releasing an invisible breath and sadness settling in the Emperor's expression.
"So I did," he agrees.
He lifts his hand, a movement so unexpectedly shy and tender that it whisks Tommy's air away. The Emperor looks at him like he's an illusion weaved out of the morning fog and about to disappear at any moment - frozen, breathless, Tommy almost feels the part too. If he was five years younger, maybe that would have meant something to him. He would have hoped for a thumb gently brushing the line of his jaw, true, genuine fear in his father's eyes and a confession that losing him would've meant more just disappointment of wasted effort. Five years ago, all Tommy wanted was love. He has higher standards now, and none of them are in the concern of his family.
"Your Imperial Majesty, Your Imperial Highnesses, forgive my insolence, if I could have just a moment of your time..."
The voice immediately triggers a finger-tightening instinct in Tommy; were his nails an inch longer they'd leave claw marks on the throne from how fast he recoils away. Ranboo side-steps out of the crowd, arms folded behind him in a poor attempt to keep himself from fiddling. He wears a dark purple jacket over a frilled shirt, tailored to the Empire's classic standards - tight in the shoulders and waist and loosening down from the hips - but with a taller collar than Tommy's own neck would personally tolerate. Gold is used sparsely around the cuffs and the hems, just enough to accent Ranboo's slander figure without making him look overly glittery. Aimsey knows her work well, Tommy can admit that much, but gluing some feathers on a mouse might, too, make it seem distantly a bird.
"You can speak, Ranboo," The Emperor says, not unkindly. "What is it?"
Ranboo looks at the Emperor, then at Techno, and the last look intended for Tommy turns into an open stare. He takes in a breath - his chest puffing up a bit as he does so - as if bracing himself for something.
"Forgive me," he repeats. "It's actually Prince Theseus that I'm here for."
"Me?" Tommy raises his voice incredulously, comes to his senses and says with feigned calmness: "What a surprise, truly... You have my permission to speak."
After what happened earlier, there's no way anybody would believe Ranboo if he brought up the incident from Aimsey's shop. It would be annoying to deal with, yes, but ultimately just one bitter spoon in a bucket of honey of Tommy's current achievements. He chuckles to himself and throws one leg over the other, wholly prepared for Ranboo to make a fool of himself.
"Thank you," Ranboo says, and that-
Tommy did not expect that.
"What?" he mouths.
Ranboo smiles, that shy small type of grin that can come from anything in-between embarrassment and anxious fear of being caught with a blatant lie. If Tommy could, he would rip that smile off his cold unmoving body.
"I received your apology yesterday and was... thoroughly touched by it," he says, clasping his hands together and shifting balance from the toes of his feet to their heels. "I, too, think that we should leave our previous disagreements in the past and try to start anew."
The silence that settles after Ranbo finishes speaking could be weighted on the scales. They who had not yet left the throne room linger at the doors, huddling closer and hushing one another's breaths. People are listening. The Emperor is watching. Suddenly Tommy's tribune of one had turned into a stage of two, and no matter how much the actors loathe one another, the show must go on.
Tommy stands up from the throne with a blank face. His cape trails after him, rustling, while he makes to the bottom of the platform and stops a few feet away from Ranboo. The echo of Tommy's last step rattles through the silence, and this close he can hear the breaths leaving Ranboo's lips in puffs, see droplets of sweat beading his forehead and a spark of in green and red eyes that wasn't there before. Desperation and stubbornness are powerful fuels on their own; together, however, they are prone to cause destruction.
"It was long due," Tommy agrees, blinking slowly. He doesn't need to worry about speaking louder; the echo carries his voice out plenty. "The last few days made me realize how unjustly I have been treating you throughout those months. I was afraid that the gap between us was already too great to mend, so it's a relief that you've found the generosity in yourself to forgive me."
To the shock of everyone present, Tommy takes Ranboo's hand and squeezes it. Ranboo is taken aback for a moment, and then he recollects himself and clears his throat.
"I'm glad too, yes," he says. "As a token of goodwill, may I ask for a favor from you?"
"Very well," Tommy says, smiling with a promise of carnage in his eyes.
***
"I did not apologize to you," Tommy says, as soon as they're both out of the throne room, out of the main building, and standing before a rumbling pond. He had practically dragged Ranboo out here with a curt, "We talk. Now," and for once he wasn't a complete fool and demanded they stay in a more or less crowded area. Tommy wasn't planning on beating up Ranboo for the second time, as attractive as that may have seemed, so a pond with a bridge over it, frequented by ladies of the court, would have to do.
To an outsider's eye, they might seem just two acquaintances - one kneeling to play with the water in the pond, the other simply basking in the afternoon sun, neck craned back. They don't need to know that Tommy is rubbing his hands raw in the cold to get rid of all traces of him ever touching Ranboo, and that Ranboo himself is shifting weight between his legs not out of soreness but sheer danger radiating off Tommy.
"You didn't," Ranboo agrees. "But now everybody thinks you did, so..."
I will have to keep up the nice act from now on, Tommy concludes.
The crown prince stands up against the Emperor to protect palace servants, Prince Theseus humbly apologizes and makes amends with a publicly supported commoner... that will look good on Tommy's image, but it doesn't mean that he's going to enjoy it.
Tommy stands up so suddenly that Ranboo nearly jumps. He wipes his hands with a handkerchief, glaring from the corner of his eye.
"Why?" he asks.
The favor that Ranboo had asked from him in public was to take him to a position of a scribe in the palace archives. It's one of the lowest-ranking clerk positions there are, consisting mostly of hand-making copies of the same papers for storage and running small errands like fetching ink and quills. Tommy could not fathom a reason for why Ranboo would want that.
"It's how I said it, I don't want to be a freeloader anymore," Ranboo replies. "Thanks to the Emperor, I know how to write and read now, so I'm trying to pay back the only way I can."
Ranboo rocks back and forth on his feet as he talks, bridge creaking softly underneath him, leaving an impression that he's ready to dart away at any moment. It seems to take a lot out of him to pretend not to be frightened to death by the crown prince. When Tommy frowns, it draws out a tense expression out of Ranboo too.
"You expect me to believe this nonsense?" Tommy snaps. "If Prince Wilbur is involved in this-"
Ever predictable, Ranboo flinches. Though Tommy expects him to give into that panicky glint in his eyes and recoil, he plants his feet firmly and glares.
"And now you're bringing up Wilbur again, and me plotting with him - like, what? I haven't spoken with your brother for days, except for yesterday when he asking about you. You should talk to him, by the way. He seemed pretty worried..."
With every word Tommy's urge to throw hands grows. "Shut your f-" he spins around, but Ranboo cuts off on his own. Tommy finds the source of the blessed silence in an insect that landed right in the middle of his forehead - as far as he could tell, a simple worker honeybee. She crawls across Ranboo's pale face, over his eyebrow to his nose where she buzzes her wings a couple of times and folds them against her back, seemingly satisfied to rest.
"Huh. She didn't sting you," Tommy say.
Ranboo looks close to fainting. "Was it supposed to?"
Tommy presses his lips together into a taunt line. It would be funny, and give him just a tiny feeling of retribution for the stunt that Ranboo had pulled less than an hour ago. But then the honeybee's stringer would also gets stuck in Ranboo's skin and she'd die a long and gruesome death by trying to get it out. Tommy closes his eyes, pressing down a sigh of indignation. The bee doesn't deserve to meet such a tragic end just because she decided to like the wrong person.
"Bees are defensive, not aggressive," he scoffs. "Don't swat at her and you'll both be fine."
"I'm not fine with a bee sitting on my face!" Ranboo whisper-yells, as if trying to agitate her on purpose. Tommy presses down a sigh.
"Are you allergic to bee venom?"
Ranboo pauses. The bee, too, gives a short thoughtful buzz. "I don't know," he says. "I could be."
Tommy wants to slap Ranboo on the face. Hard. But swinging his limbs around would very likely result in bee stinging either of them, and that's exactly what he's trying to avoid. Just to scratch that small itch, he backhands Ranboo's shoulder lightly.
"Just... follow me."
Ranboo decidedly does not follow him. His eyes stay skewed on the bee, too afraid to move or breathe too strongly. Tommy sighs again and pulls Ranboo by the sleeve of his jacket, ignoring his muffled yelp of protest. Thus they trudge: a prince, a newly appointed scribe and a bee buzzing a happy tune at the tip of his nose.
It's forgotten half-way through that they planned to stay within people's sight. Gardens grow greener, wilder, and where plants reign there is little place for humans. They pass too close to Tommy's greenhouse that he is comfortable with, but even a long searching look does not reveal a glass roof nor outline of a building hiding behind the trees, as if the garden itself had agreed to cast a curtain on the prince's secret. Ranboo tries to follow the target of his gaze, but Tommy skids to the side, yanking him along.
"Where are we go- AH!"
Ranboo slips on damp grass and plummets off his feet. Tommy lets him go just in time to prevent himself from barreling right after. Instinctively, he grabs the back of Ranboo's jacket, suspending him in the air. As soon as he realizes what he has done, Tommy drops Ranboo, letting him land to his elbows with a strangled oof.
The bee peacefully takes the skies. Tommy wipes his hands on his pants with a grimace, while wincing Ranboo straightens his elbows into a push-up and folds his knees. They watch the bee buzzing up a lazy circle over their heads; it's joined by another, then two more and suddenly it's a whole colony, flying between blooming flowers and a hive juttering out of tall grass. Ranboo, who was panicking over the perspective of a single bee sting just mere minutes ago, watches in fascination at the life thriving on a greensward surrounded by a maple grove. For that, Tommy hates him a little, tiny, miniscule part less.
"I didn't know that the palace keeps a bee hive," Ranboo utters quietly, folding his thighs to his ankles.
"It didn't, until not so long ago."
Tommy crosses his legs down in the grass and gently taps his nail into a pink zinnia. A bee busy fumbling with the core looks up, flicking her antennae. Smudged in golden pollen from the belly down, she crawls up his finger and traipses up to the back of his hand. Two transparent wings glitter in the sun like delicate pieces of glass when she whisks them out excitedly. Tommy can almost imagine her asking to hear the tale, and so tell he does, his voice full of fondness and warm nostalgia.
"Tubbo and I had unknowingly rescued a queen bee from a pond once. We were - what, eight, maybe nine years old? - and didn't think any better than to bring her inside to dry. The next morning the entire colony was swarming around the palace and wrecking havoc. Wilbur was stung so many times that he walked around with a swollen face for a whole week," Tommy chuckles, the memory coming up bright before his eyes.
"He demanded that the bees are terminated, but Tubbo was vehement about saving them, so I put in a word with the Empress. She allowed a hive to be put in the gardens, and the colony has been living here ever since. Tubbo's hive, we called it, even though the bees always seemed to like me more."
Butterflies turned out to be not the only insects that Tommy was good with. Tubbo could stomp his feet and pout all he wanted but he couldn't do anything about the honeybees readily sticking to the hands of giggling and grinning prince. They used to spend entire days here, just laying in the grass, heaving breathless after a race of imaginary monsters and wooden swords or braiding crowns of violets, sunburn of kisses pressed all over their flushed cheeks. Holding each other's hands, they walked to the evening palace: sometimes, a prince and his servant. Always, best friends.
"It sounds like you and Tubbo were really close." Ranboo's voice reaches him from afar.
Tommy blows the bee off his hand gently, and it soars away, undistinguishable among the hundreds of others. "He was my friend," he says, standing up. "The only one I ever was allowed to have."
"What... what do you mean, allowed?"
At that moment Tommy remembers who is talking to, and the bubble of his memories, that sweet melody of the past, erupts into an ugly cacophony. The flower crowns have all wilted and violets don't bloom in the gardens anymore, and it's the fault of the very same person who stares at him, wide-eyed, in the corner of his vision.
"I just don't understand." Tommy spins around. The bees suddenly go quiet, ducking closer to flowers and grass. "What did you offer him that I couldn't?! What lies have you told Tubbo to choose a pathetic being like you over his childhood friend?"
"I just wasn't a jerk to him," Ranboo throws back, frowning. "You should try it sometime. Works like a charm for, you know, not turning people against you."
"So you're expressing opinions now, cockroach," Tommy's smile reeks of acid. "Got any other genius conclusions you've made about me?"
"Actually, I do." Ranboo shakes like an autumn leaf - and still stands straight against Tommy, still takes a firm step forward. "I think that you're just a pretentious asshole with anger issues who doesn't appreciate what was given to him for free. Not everybody is given the luxury of a family, and you push away yours at every given opportunity-"
Tommy flounces towards him, hands fisted. "Say another fucking word, I dare you-"
Darkness comes instant and obsolete. Tommy loses his footing and slams into a nearby tree. He scrambles for purchase, refusing to fall down to his knees in Ranboo's presence. His half-assessed attempt to stay standing leaves him breathless and nauseous. One hand pillared into the trunk is the only thing that keeps him from collapsing to the garden floor.
For ten seconds or so, Tommy just breathes. Sweat dribbles down the side of his flashed face and soaks into the tight collar of his shirt. Something warm trickles down from his nose and dribbles along the line of his upper lip. Tommy licks it away, coppery taste clotting his tongue.
"Are you okay-?" Ranboo's voice sounds closer.
Tommy lurches around, clutching his bleeding nose, his eyes striking lightning bolts. Ranboo shrinks away, nearly tripping over his own ankle. For a moment as short as a blink, they cross gazes. Tommy's face is baring it all - his anger, his hurt, and the worst of all, his terrible, traitorous vulnerability.
"Stay the fuck away from me," he hisses. "You waltz into a place you don't belong to and speak of the things you know nothing about. Have a piece of advice from me, Ranboo," he spits blood, showing just how much respect he has to go with it. "Don't trust people. It's a pretty disappointing ordeal."
Wisp catches up to them at this moment. He grabs the crown prince by the arm, murmuring apologies. Tommy breaks eye contact first - jerks away from it - but it's too late now. As Wisp leads him away, he can see Ranboo's stare on him. Tommy hates that, instead of usual fear or resentment, it feels like growing pity.
***
One perk of temporarily moving his office into one of the spare dining rooms is that the kitchens are relatively nearby and he doesn't have to wait ages for his tea. The servants, too, have been acting a lot more considerate of him. Before Tommy can finish one teapot - or the opposite, forget about it until it's already lukewarm and tasteless - there's already another one being set down with a plate of fresh pastries.
Tommy doesn't tolerate anything less than perfection, both in himself and others, but his mind runs short when it comes to people doing more, or in this case, too much. Lemon cakes shaped to look like flowers, strawberry tarts, fruits soaked in white chocolate, oatmeal cookies still warm out of the oven - what was supposed to be a replacement for his office while he is trying to stay away from both Wilbur and Techno had turned into a showcase of a pastry shop. Each new plate that makes its way onto the table makes something twist in Tommy, wordless but tight as it coils around his ribs. Seeing as the palace staff keeps going out of their way to thank him brings him closer to the edge of breaking character and snapping at them to just stop.
The only pastry that Tommy does end up looking at for more than a fraction of a second is a piece of pumpkin pie. Sam has sent that one to wish him a speedy recovery, he learns after picking up a note tied with a very familiar blue ribbon. Tommy hesitantly lifts a fork and nibbles on a piece. It tastes... fine, he decides, and before he knows the pie is gone and he furtively licks up the crumbs from his fingers.
When footsteps sound in the hallway again Tommy is ready to glare daggers but it's Beau who pushes the door open with her back, balancing a teapot - and, oh, the horror - a plate of pistachio eclairs on a silver tray. Tommy watches Beau fill a cup with steaming liquid and reaches for it once the pot is set down, already knowing from a sparkle in her eyes that a show is about to emerge.
"My prince, have you seen the prices of tea this month?" Beau's expression is no less than woeful; she dabs a napkin to the corner of her eyes to complete the display of deep and whole-hearted concern. "If you keep chugging it at this rate, you might strip the treasury barren."
"The treasury would be fine covering my tea expenses, which I cannot say for all those desserts," Tommy says, signing off another document. "If you wish to chase me away from the table, you should try a different approach, Lady Beau."
"Ah, there's the crown prince I know. After hearing all those rumors I was afraid that you had died for real and were replaced by a doppelganger," Beau says, the napkin put away and dramatics forgotten. "You should rest, though. They say that collapsing is not a good sign for one's health, and I'd hate to look for a new job so soon."
There's a clear tone of disapproval here, and it reminds Tommy of all those times that Tubbo punted him for not taking proper care of himself: sometimes figuratively, mostly not.
"I didn't hire you so you would tell me what I should or shouldn't do," he informs.
"You're right," Beau says, leaning her back against the table. She snatches one of the cookies right under Tommy's nose and shoves it into her mouth. "You're not paying me for being your friend."
Tommy pauses the scribbling with his quill and glances up. "My friend?" he raises a brow.
"If I can be so bold, indeed I do consider myself Theseus' friend," Beau says.
"'Your Imperial Highness' or Prince Theseus does the trick just fine."
Beau sighs, pushing herself standing again. "I want to believe that there will come a day where that cold heart of yours appreciates everything that I do for you," she sighs.
Tommy takes a long sip of his tea. "And I want to believe that there's another reason why you're here beyond pestering me about my sleeping habits."
"The lack of thus, you mean, but indeed. You might have forgotten, but Queen Niki is departing from the palace soon. In fact," Beau glances at the window. "Her carriage must be leaving just about now."
For a second Tommy is convinced that Beau is messing with him on purpose - Niki wasn't supposed to depart until tomorrow - but then he counts days mentally, chokes and drops the cup.
The tea spills all over the table. Beau, unperturbed, moves the papers away before a morning's worth of Tommy's work could be soaked and destroyed, and then pats the prince on the back as he coughs. Perhaps she might be right about him needing rest if he started confusing days now... but he'd be dead before he is caught admitting that out loud.
Tommy whirls to his feet, and Beau follows. It occurs to him that this is their first time speaking since their argument a few days before. Rushing through the palace in quick stride, rolling up one sleeve to hide the fresh tea stain is not how he'd imagined this conversation would go. Yet, Tommy stills needs to know, so he asks:
"Did you receive my note yesterday?"
Beau nods. "I passed on a message to Baron Quackity like you asked me to... and was quite baffled at the state of my poor hairpin. I asked myself, what in the world could have happened for it to look so butchered? Then I realized that I already know the answer."
Cautiousness that suddenly whips up between them, the aftermath of their previous argument, can be felt physically clotting the air and stalling Tommy's steps. "You didn't think to bring it to Prince Technoblade, or to the Emperor." Whether it's a question or a statement, he leaves it up for Beau to decide for herself.
"That would've granted me some acknowledgement, and nobody says no to a favor from the Emperor himself," Beau agrees.
"And yet?"
"I fancy myself a devoted servant of the crown prince," Beau smiles. "Though, if my superior is ever in need of an instrument to pick a lock with, he could tell me directly instead of mutilating my jewelry."
"Why would the crown prince need such a thing?" Tommy twists his lips into an ugly smirk. "Ranboo, on the other hand..."
"Ah," Beau hums, understanding settling in her eyes. "We wouldn't want to overwhelm him with the sudden manner of the gift, I imagine. Perhaps if a lockpick found its way into one of the books Ranboo leaves lying around unsupervised, that would be more fitting."
That answer is all what Tommy needs to know that their previous disagreements are long behind, and that Beau is with him - in this, at least. No questions asked, no morals brought up where they've never been called for. To all the similarities of Beau's duties to the ones Tubbo had performed for him previously, this is what will forever make them different. If Tommy announced he wanted to murder somebody, Tubbo would make him question it thrice, and when he does it anyway helplessly watch the consequences rounding the corner. Beau... well, she'd probably fan herself a bit and ask if he wants to wear a different crown for the occasion.
Finally they're outside, and Tommy is not all that late to Niki's departure - she talks to one of her ladies-in-waiting while servants are loading up the last of the luggage into the carriages. Before Tommy could walk away, Beau hands him a small long package with a patch of dried flowers pinned to the top.
"Your gift to the Queen of Drywaters," Beau explains.
Not without a pinch of embarrassment, Tommy accepts it. Just as he is about to walk away, Beau puts a hand on his forearm, her face turning more concentrated and serious than Tommy has ever seen it.
"One more thing, Your Imperial Highness," she says. "I don't share Prince Dream's sentiment for sea travel, but even so, we're on this brig together. If you go down, I do too. And I'd prefer to stay afloat for a while first." Beau pints him a pointed look, and Tommy in turn he grasps a look on the servants lined up along the stairs, watching him with reverent adoration - not a tenth of what Prince Theseus usually gets by being himself... or deserves, truly.
"Well then," his own smile blooms, a little bit spiteful and satisfied in the most twisted of ways, "if this vessel does sink, you have my permission to jump off first."
He passes by without waiting for Beau to respond, and catches Niki's eye just a little further of the grand staircase. She waves her ladies-in-waiting away and greets him alone, elegant as ever, in her traveling clothes - a three quarter length button-up jacket, a skirt of mahogany red to match and a pair of linen gloves. Tommy bows to Niki, and after a subtle nods allowing him to stand up, presents her with the box that Beau gave him earlier.
"For me?" she asks, smiling.
Tommy's chin dives down. "I'm saddened that your visit has to come to an end so soon, Your Majesty, but I hope that this gift will help alleviate the wistfulness of parting."
Whatever this is, he adds internally, feeling a light flush settle on his face as Niki starts to unwrap the package. The dried flowers get tucked behind her ear, and then the box is opened and Niki pulls out a fan - of course it's a fan, Tommy couldn't have expected anything different from Beau.
Niki snaps the fan open. Pink silk is stretched over the needles of a metal carcass, a beautiful display of a golden koi fish. When Niki moves the fan around, the tail looks like it flips and moves. Painting is a common hobby among the ladies of Antarctic Empire, so there's a big chance that Beau had personally spent days squinting over the silks with a brush in hand. Tommy notes to himself that he needs to give her a raise.
"A work of art, truly," Niki says, closing the fan again and passing it the hands of her maid. "Pass my sincere gratitudes onto your aide."
Tommy's shame reaches its boiling point: heat paints his cheeks a bright maroon. He dips his head low before the Queen, pleading guilty.
"My apologies, Your Majesty. Due to certain circumstances this year, I've failed to find a suitable parting gift for you in time."
"Not receiving a gift wouldn't disappoint me as much as being lied to my face," Niki says. "I don't think you'd assume me that credulous, would you?"
Her voice and expression shift subtly - a tiny, miniscule change in the timbre - but its enough to draw out an internal shudder out of Tommy. In those moments he is reminded that the sweeter a rose smells, the sharper her thorns tend to be.
"Never, Your Majesty," Tommy says vehemently. "Even during the tea party... I knew that you'd eventually get to the truth."
The wind rises, rips petals out of peonies and sends them spinning across the skies in a brisk colorful ribbon. People crane their necks to watch the dazzling spectacle. The wind whips up Niki's hair, too, and she pins her hat down with one hand just in time to prevent it from joining the wild airborne dance. Tommy wonders if she's hearing it - the sound of much younger, silver laughter streaming through the air.
"I could speak the voice of the majority," she says, "and ask what happened to the brothers who loved one another more than anything in the world."
Time happened, Tommy thinks with bitterness. "But you won't," he says, either an answer or a plea, "not you."
"I won't," she agrees. "One wise person had said that you can't truly hate somebody unless you loved them first. What we are now hurts much more when compared with what we imagined ourselves to be then." Niki turns to look in his eyes. "I know that my sources are limited both inside and outside of my kingdom, but if there's anything I can ever be helpful to you with..."
You just have to ask, goes without saying, but it would be vile of Tommy to answer I will when Niki had just told him she doesn't enjoy him lying.
Tommy catches a petal from the air, squeezing it between his index finger and his thumb. Niki is tired, he realizes. He noticed a pattern over the years that royals tend to look the most exhausted when it comes down to something out of their control. It's a hard truth to swallow, that even with all the power in the world, monarchs rarely can use it where it truly matters.
"I've been fine on my own, for a long while." Tommy releases the petal, and it flies away, quickly lost out of their fight. Niki takes his now empty hands, cradling them, her eyes heavy with years that the rest of her young face does not bear.
"I'm afraid for you, Theseus," she confesses, with all honesty and kindness of her bleeding heart, "of what will happen if one day you turn around and realize that, on the path of avenging your pain, you've sacrificed everything that you've suffered for in the first place." She squeezes his hands, her eyes filled with infinite worry. "Please take care of yourself, if only for your sister's peace of mind."
Tommy feels something cold on his palm. It's been ages since he had last held a pair of knitting needles, but body remembers where mind doesn't; he recognizes the shape and the weight and clamps his fingers around twin metal rods in the way that Niki had once taught him.
When she opens her arms wordlessly, a silent offer, Tommy can't help it - he gives in. Moving his hand with the needles still clenched around them to the side, he allows Niki to embrace him fully. Once small enough to be tucked into against her shoulder, it's he who looms taller now, his cheek pressed against her soft pink hair. It knits the pit in his chest to know that Niki cares for him, bristling and bitter, in the same way that he cared for a boy of sunlight and star-eyed naivety. If only Tommy had been born her brother, maybe - maybe his life would've turned out differently.
I'm sorry, Niki, he thinks , hugging her tighter in an attempt to seal this moment forever in his memory, but I'm already too far-gone.
***
The crossbow is lifted, and then it shoots.
Tommy has a single moment - one thousandth of a second - to see the steel tip spinning, to feel the terror rilling hrough him, guttural and raw, before his eye bursts like an overripe apple.
He stumbles back, clawing at the arrow lodged deep in his skull. Blood burns hot tracks between his fingers while he stuffs the oozing remains back into the eye socket. Through the delirious fog of pain, Tommy blinks his other eye open: half-blind, bleeding, dying, his only thought is that he needs to see his killer's face.
Across an empty grave, a figure lowers a hand holding an unloaded crossbow. "How could you, Theseus?" Techno-Dream-Punz asks.
Tommy unseals his lips to scream- to plead- to ask for help, but he opens his mouth and his words turn into bloodied butterflies. There are hundreds of them - thousands of fluttering wings pushing past his spamming throat and busting through his lips into a crimson hurricane. Shadows shift into grotesque grimaces - laughing or crying, he can't tell, he's screaming too loudly, and he can't breathe, and there is more blood, there is so much blood-
Tommy wakes up with a gasp. There are eyes staring at him in the darkness, two rings of grassy green, and a shadow pushes his ribs down, preventing him from crying out in surprise. Tommy squeezes his eyes shut and whimpers, the weight in chest cracking and shifting. "F-fuck," he gapes, shaky like in deep boil of a fever, but before he could start to panic again, something soft but firm settles on his cheek.
"Pa-atches?" He swallows through the dryness of his throat.
A confirming meow. Tommy reaches out blindly, touches the cat's head and runs a shaky hand down the fluffy fur. Patches purrs up a storm. With their chests touching, the sound rattles in Tommy's ribcage, deep and calming. Little by little, his heart stops pounding madly and falls back into a normal rhythm.
Patches slides down from his chest; the loss of warmth nearly draws a whine out of him. Tommy pushes himself into a sitting position and presses two fingers to his closed eye, releasing a sigh of relief when he finds it intact and clean of blood. Techno can't- wouldn't hurt him. The arrow can't hurt him, tucked away harmlessly in the bottom of a drawer- not more than it already did, anyway.
There is a reason why Tommy prefers to tire himself into near-unconsciousness before going to sleep. Each night he lowers his head onto a pillow with the grim finality of a man standing before his future grave. Poison paralyzing his mouth in a silent scream, bones and flesh spat out on stone in a bloody puddle, skin boiling and seething as he goes up in the flames of a drowning ship - Tommy's nightmares kill him, in a thousand different ways, each new more gory than the last. The outcome is always the same: he wakes up, flailing in cold sweat and muffling his whimpers into a pillow. It should have been you, his mind tells him, and deep down Tommy knows that they're right.
He pokes his bandages. It hurts, a hiss slipping through his clenched jaw, but the pain reminds him, clearer than anything else does - it's not his time to die. Something pushes his hand away before he could mess with the wound further. Opening his eyes, Tommy sees Patches propping front paws on his chest. Sharp teeth sink into his index finger, not enough to break skin but enough to get his point across - no touching. Tommy drops his hand to scratch at Patches' ear, wondering how it happened that a cat cares about his health more than him.
Tommy flings his legs off the bed and stands up. Patches weaves himself around his wobbling ankles, meowing and yowling a storm. There's urgency in the way the car sounds, a panicked edge of worry. "I'm okay," Tommy whispers, even though his smile is quivering and his eyes burn with unshed tears. "How did you get in here?"
Patches turns to look at an open window, where the moon glimpses through the cloudy dressing of the sky. Tommy shivers as the wind blows him a cold kiss; he was sure he had closed all the windows the evening before, but clearly he had missed one. The pitter-patter of Patches' paws on the floor follows him all the way through the parlor and to the main entrance to his chambers. He opens the door to let Patches out, wiping the remains of sleep out of his eyes. Instead of trotting back to Dream, the cat freezes up with his ears up and whiskers twitching.
Click-scraaape-shuffle. The sound rings sharp and clear in the curtain of the night. A shiver over the candle in a nearby lantern; the flame lies lower, quieter, and light flickers on the walls like if scrambling for a hiding place. Suddenly Tommy remembers an old talk among the palace servants - a tale whispered from one frightened witness to another, about the ghost of the late Emperor that had haunted those floors. He staggered on rotten feet, they say, whistling through every breath, broken neck no longer holding the weight of the crowned head. He begged apologies with feverishly spinning eyes and mournful howls stilling blood in people who were unlucky to be passing by. Tommy used to think that the ghost was a lie made up by maids to keep the young princes from wandering around at nights, but now, when the sound of short, dragging steps reaches his ears, he isn't so sure anymore.
The guards lock fingers around the handles of steel swords. When a figure rounds the corner, Tommy's heart stops in his ribcage; it flutters again once he realizes that it's too small to be the late Emperor, and too alive to be a ghost. Steps slow and clumsy in unlaced shoes, Fundy looks like a fox cub that just climbed out of its den, lacking only a pair of ears to stick out the messy red tresses. A blanket, draped around his shoulders over a long nightgown, gets tangled in Fundy's legs; he stumbles and rolls to Tommy's feet with a surprised yap.
Patches lifts a paw, sniffing the air. The movement catches Fundy's eye. "Kitty!" Two little hands are reaching to scoop Patches up, but the cat darts away, ears pressed flat against his head, and bolts down the corridor.
"K'tty." Fundy waves a hand at Patches sadly.
Tommy pushes past the wall of guards lined up shielding him and sits down on one knee before his nephew.
"Fundy, you should be sleeping now," he says, furrowing his brows.
Fundy blinks at him. Tommy wonders if he's processing any words at all. His attempts to put some firmness to his expression gets utterly demolished by hands stretched out towards him demandingly. Fundy tends to forget that he isn't a toddler anymore, easy to lift and carry around, but Tommy has always been weak to the charm of his sleepy yellow eyes.
"Up we go," he sighs, balancing upright with Fundy in his hold. "How did you escape your guards, pup?"
"M' sn'aky," Fundy snuggles into his neck like a newborn kitten closer to warmth, and it's entirely too much, entirely more than he had ever deserved. Tommy freezes up, and then presses a hand over the nape of his nephew's neck.
"I don't doubt you are," he murmurs. "Let's put you back to bed before someone realizes that you're gone and blares an alarm."
A growl builds up in a tiny chest pressed against his own. Fundy wraps his arms around Tommy's neck with more force than expected from somebody so small, squeezing a puff of surprise out of his strangled ribcage. There's something achingly familiar in the desperation that Fundy's fingers clamber his shirt with that makes Tommy pause.
"Did you have a nightmare?" He gently nudges Fundy with his chin.
The growling stops. Tommy can feel nails digging into his collarbone, Fundy fisting his shirt. "It was you," the boy whimpers.
Tommy stills. "What was me?" he asks.
"In my nightmare," Fundy whispers. "I wanted you to read me a book and you- you told me to leave." Fundy nuzzles into his collarbone, sniffing. "I don't wanna leave. I wanna stay with you."
Tommy pauses with his mouth just a bit shy of open; there's darkness hiding behind his eyelids, ache drilled deep into his head and bones, and pounding, wrenching, writhing desire to put as much distance between them as possible. Before he could make a mistake that he'd regret for the rest of his life, Fundy reluctantly rests his forehead against his. The gesture echoes far into the past, plunges a dagger right through his ribcage, and when it's pulled out the wound bleeds of crusty autumn leaves and dandelions and burns like steaming porcelain on frost-bitten fingers. When Tommy had first confessed his love for Wilbur, he was full of warmth and light he wanted to share with others, but what is left of him now is a shriveled husk, a moth with both wings torn useless and crawling to its inevitable end. What could he possibly give Fundy? How could Tommy ever be enough?
And yet as yellow eyes stare hesitantly into blue, he suddenly understands that none of it truly matters. Wilbur, with all his flaws and rough edges, had been enough for Tommy. When Fundy looks at him the same way, holding his breath as he waits for the answer for the most important question - am I loved? - how in the world could he say no?
"Okay," he gapes, small and strained and brittle, pressing his forehead further into Fundy's and squeezing his eyes against unwilling tears. "We can-" Tommy swallows, hugging his nephew impossibly tighter, "we'll do that."
***
For half a year after Wilbur's return to the palace, Tommy had pretended that Fundy didn't exist at all. Even after organizing a coronation ceremony to declare him officially a prince of the Antarctic Empire, all Tommy had to offer to the two-year-old toddler and his mother were dry congratulations and glowering looks.
He was taught that marriage for a prince is an opportunity unlike any other - to build political alliances, strengthen and expand the ruling family. Sally was nobody compared to hundreds of young women rowed up as candidates for Wilbur's bride: she had no riches nor connections to bring to the Imperial family, she was no use in the matter of governance, and in court she stood out a thorn among the roses, that one particular thorn that dug deep into Tommy's side.
Nobles didn't have much love for Sally either; despite being one prince's wife and another prince's mother, she was forced to swallow all the variety of poison that high society had to offer: humiliation, mockery, harassment... till this day, nobody knows that Tommy was behind half of it. Wilbur had vague assumptions, of course, and that certainly didn't do any good to their relationship. What had been avoidant resignation between two princes turned into open hostility, though Wilbur couldn't act out too much back then, not when Tommy had a person he could always take it out twice as hard on.
Tommy knew that Sally was a musician, but it wasn't until he was stumbling through the hallways one evening that his contempt had quailed for the first time. In his core, Tommy wasn't a creature of quiet; the music had reached its ears first, and then longing was burning fierce in his chest. The palace was a hostage to grieful sopor since Mother's passing, Wilbur's guitar lost somewhere in the years, and yet the door to the music room was cracked open, just enough that he could lean in and spot figures - a woman with sunset in her hair and a boy with eyes the color of sunrise moon - squeezing first timid notes out of a croaky instrument. It was terribly out of order, a staccato of clumsy fingers not yet long or deft enough for the delicate art of piano, but the shackles fell and a delicate breath shuddered through weary lungs. The palace was, once again, awake.
Tommy came to listen to them playing almost every day. No matter how tired he was, he'd always find time to haul himself up on a wide windowsill behind a heavy velvet curtain and eavesdrop on a world he no longer had a place in. With the sound of child's and a mother's laughter weaving together, Tommy was both dying and coming back alive. It was a month after that the routine was disturbed; Fundy wasn't sitting beside his mother, and it was just Sally warming up her fingers with a few quick chords. Half-way through the first melody, she stopped playing. Tommy leaned forward, chasing the music thrumming through the air, and froze like a hare with his ears bulged when Sally turned around and met his gaze.
"Well," she said, patting the empty spot beside her, "are you coming?"
The prince slid from his hiding spot, heart flailing and eyes unblinking. He ghosted up to the bench and sat down at the edge as tension drilled itself up his spine: one wrong movement would make the songbird flutter away, the fish dive into the depth, an opportunity forever lost. Sally wasn't looking at him. When her hands hovered over the bass clef, instinct pushed Tommy to move over to treble. With synchronized thrust of their fingers, two different worlds collapsed into one another, crashing, merging, until everything ceased to exist except for the instrument anchoring them. Together, they unraveled the thread of silence and started weaving the universe anew.
As the melody turned from drips of caramel to heavy pouring, Tommy's breathing burst in shallow puffs. He rocked back and forth, the rapid motion of his fingers akin to sunbeams jumping between puddles while on Sally's side the piano rumbled the wilderness of a mountain river. The symphony lived for until the sound of Wilbur's voice reached Tommy's ears; the lid was slammed shut, their universe shattering into millions of pieces and Tommy running away from a woman symbolizing too much of what he had lost. Sally departed from the capital the next afternoon, and Tommy was left with a heavy anchor of guit sinking into his stomach. Just looking at the piano made the feeling double, and he hasn't touched the keys ever since.
At some point during their journey through the palace, Tommy's arms become too tired of carrying Fundy, and the boy reluctantly agrees to walk on his own two feet. Their fingers bind together, they pass along, quiet and light as a summer breeze, under arched hallways and into the music room. The moon sheds a silver beam on the case of the piano; it shimmers pristine white amidst the darkness, blinding Tommy for a fraction of a second. He hesitates to leave the shadows. The nightmare's hold is still strong on him, claws rooted in his clothes, in his hair, hissing threats into his ear and dragging him back; the tug of Fundy's hand is, however, stronger. He stubbornly pulls Tommy into the circle of light, to where the stars garnish their hair and eyelids in shining jewels like tiny flakes of snow.
Tommy folds himself onto the cushioned bench and lifts the lid of the piano. Fundy crawls under the instrument, the blanket on his shoulders dropped there next to the pedals and shaped into something vaguely resembling a bedding. Fundy curls up, back pressed to the piano, nuzzling his face into his knees.
"Comfortable?" Tommy chuckles.
Fundy butts his ankle. "Play," he demands.
Tommy's fingers hover over the piano. The first key that he presses is uncertain, quivering, rippling through the still air like a pebble on the surface of a lake. If Tommy strained his hearing enough he could hear how it travels far across the palace, up the stairs of high towers, ringing in the ceilings of galleries and humming in the walls; most importantly, it rips through Tommy himself, shifting something in him, gears rusted and unoiled gnashing against one another. He recoils like something had slapped him, hands fisting his pants and teeth painfully sinking into his lower lip. He debates stepping down now, running, hiding, but then Fundy peeks an eye at him expectantly and Tommy- Tommy breathes in deeply and begins to play.
Symphony first shy and stumbling grows stronger with every new key pressed. He had first learned playing music on this very piano, six and eager to follow in his brother's every footstep. Like two old friends they reminisce on the past and speed past the years spent together. Tommy plays for the flowers in the garden, for birds snoring in their nests, for fish padding lazy circles through shimmering ponds, for children stirring in their beds and dead unstirred in their graves, for a man and his wolf taking a walk underneath whispering cedar trees - but first and foremost for the boy lying underneath the piano, cradled in the soft waves of a lullaby.
"Dad was looking for you earlier," Fundy says, his eyes glistering like two full moons. "Said you got hurt... is that true?"
"Nothing that a big man like me can't handle," he pulls up a weak smile, dipping his chin to give Fundy a better look of his bandaged ear. The boy squints, his eyes turning into two shards of amber.
"It's gonna scar ugly," he declares somberly. "No ladies will ever look at you and you'll turn old all sad and alone."
"Oh no," Tommy says.
"Mhm." Fundy nods solemnly. "Don't worry, though. You'll still have me."
Tommy smiles at him with warmth, though the thoughts that whirl up in his mind are far from a laughing matter. Turn old. The new 'grow up' of Tommy's life, but without the childish visions to be shattered later by reality... though in truth, he hasn't thought much of what will happen once he becomes an emperor. His life for the past years has been centered so much around getting him ready to, but not for after that it hasn't occurred to him to plan for when the silver of his crown will be swapped for gold.
Wilbur will have to leave the palace at once, and if he doesn't, Tommy will have the authority to make him. Once he no longer has access to the assets of the Imperial family, Wilbur will have to return to L'manburg, to Sally, and Fundy will walk away with them, and Tommy will be exactly what he said - alone.
Unless...
Unless.
"You mean it, in truth?" Tommy asks. Words suddenly become foreign on his tongue, and his voice doesn't sound quite like it belongs to him.
"'course I do."
"What if I told you that there's a way for us always be together?" Tommy leans in closer. "Not only during the summers when you come from L'manburg, but the whole year round and most time of the day?"
"Really?" Fundy perks up, the shine of his eyes lighting the whole room. "How?"
"I'll be an emperor eventually, and I'll need a heir to make sure that the Empire will be in secure hands after me." Tommy can feel it: the way that Fundy strains to catch his every word, no doubt hearing how his voice quivers around the edges. "I need you, Fundy," he says, hoping that his eyes could convey the honesty and he puts into those words. "What do you... how do you feel about becoming the next crown prince?"
"But what about Dad and Uncle Techno?" Fundy asks, furrowing his brows. "What about mom? She hasn't sent any letters in a while... I dunno if she'd approve, though. Mom call everything about royals a- a pile of bull-"
"What could a commoner possibly know about royalty?" Tommy scoffs, raising his voice. Fundy just looks at him with eyes full of confusion, and he carefully schools his face into something more neutral. "I mean... Lady Sally does know that you're being taken good care of here."
Tommy sighs, his head suddenly feeling too heavy, the conversation too hard to keep up with. He twists away from the piano, bends with his elbows folded over his knees and takes Fundy's smaller hands into his own.
"Just think about it," he says softly. "We'd spend most of the day together, me teaching you instead of all those boring tutors. The whole palace would be yours - the whole Empire, even! Anything you could possibly ever want, you can have." He squeezes Fundy's hands. "You just have to say it."
Fundy quietens as if he could, despite the youth of his mind, feel that his answer could change both their fates forever. He meets Tommy's eyes, burning with desperate devotion, and says, "I want you and Dad to get along."
A cloud drapes over the moon, and where light was shining on two princes now is only a shadow. The fire in Tommy's eyes dims, his hands unclench on their own and drop to his knees lifelessly. This is a child before me, he reminds himself through the tight knot in his chest, and how much do children really understand about what's best for them?
"You know what?" Tommy strangles a smile out. "Me and your father are going to take a trip soon. Tell him that you want to come along. We'll have so much fun together, that by the time that we return to the capital you wouldn't want to return to L'manburg anymore."
I'll make sure of that, a voice from the back of his mind whispers, and he isn't all that off-put by it. Tommy is tired of people abandoning him: Mother, the Emperor, Wilbur, Tubbo, and the last of them, Techno. Tommy sees now that their fallout was necessary for him to finally understand: if his love is simply not enough to keep people from leaving, he can make them stay.
Fundy yawns, weariness heavy on his eyelids. "I can do that," he says, and falls asleep blissfully unaware of the darkness brewing in Tommy's eyes.
***
Early after the sunset, as garden larks start chirping their morning roll calls, Tommy returns to the eastern wing for a change of clothing. When he sees a maid standing before his chambers with a cart with a pot of blooming alliums on it, he wishes he had just gone about his day in a nightgown.
"It's a gift from Ranboo," she says. "He said he hopes that you'll accept it as a sign of his sincere regret for what happened the other day."
By the time that the maid finishes speaking, Tommy's hands are clambered cold, anxiety in him rancheting into shriking panic. Pale and breathing through lump in his throat, he gestures abruptly at a table.
"Leave it here."
The maid looks surprised. Tommy just wants her gone.
He springs into motion as soon as the door closes. Tommy swipes a layer off the soil in the pot, expecting to see the Star right where he had buried it under the surface, but finds nothing. Tommy digs his nails in ferociously, again and again, scooping up handfuls of dirt at a time. He can see the roots popping open out of the pot, and the alliums sag forward pitifully, but there's no telltale purple of the Star's glow. It couldn't have just disappeared into the thin air! Then where is it, where is it-?!
Tommy whirls around at the sound of thumping outside. There, on the railings of the balcony, a figure jumps down from a crouch, something shiny wrapped around his fist. Tommy's spine straightens into a metal rod. Steel captures his face inch by inch.
"Looking for something, Theseus?" Tubbo asks, raising the Nether star.