Every year, on the same exact day, the palace falls into a deep slumber. Paperwork is put away, guests stay in their rooms where the laughter and sound of their voices couldn’t stir the Empire’s gloomy grief. Even the birds in gardens seem to trill quieter, their songs whispery and short. It’s not the serenity of peaceful sleep but an artificial, suffocating abyss.
Tommy spends the whole day glued to his bed, stomach churning and hurting as if it was filled with stones and sewn shut again. At that moment it feels nothing short of a prison; pillows are the soil of a fresh-dug grave, canopy pressing down on him from overhead. Thinking about it makes it sound ridiculous, but there’s nothing amusing about the feeling of being buried alive. Tomorrow, Tommy will find a reason to exist. Today, let him pretend that he doesn’t have to.
The evening comes around, and Tommy forces himself to stand up – or more like he crashes, ankle twisting underneath him, to the floor. For some time, he contemplates not standing up at all, lying there mangled for Beau or some servant to find the next morning, but now he’s conscious enough now that he feels the pain of throbbing muscles and the beginning of a headache ravaging through his skull. Tommy drags himself up on the nightstand, gulps down a glass of water and with his forehead against the wall decides that’s enough self-care for him today.
Playing the role of a ghost has never been easier. The servants avoid looking at him, wrapping up the end of their shifts, or maybe Tommy’s just that quiet that nobody notices a sauntering figure with a face shadowed into a misty blurr. He prefers it that way, really. Nobody there to irk him with their pity.
Outside, the sunset hits and carves him into a rose gold statue atop of marble stairs. The Emperor and Techno are just about ready to leave now, checking their saddles one last time and pulling their mounts towards the opening gate. Empress Kristin had found her last resolve in the Imperial cemetery, one grave among many others climbing high upon the rickety mountain road – a walk of four hours from the palace and a horse-ride of one, closer to the sky avian emperors had loved so dearly, and their wingless descendants would never reach.
The horse Techno climbs onto isn’t his chestnut steed. He hadn’t left the stables since yesterday, chasing servants away to tend to Carl’s wounds himself. Tommy had been on his way to see Dream when something made him change direction and sneak inside. Techno didn’t notice him, leaning against the stall door with his eyes closed, Carl’s head in his lap, his hand petting the horse’s neck up and down each time a swallow breath labored itself out of a heavy ribcage. In the borderline silence of sleeping animals and singing crickets, under the moon peeking in through the cracks in wood, Techno’s murmured tales came to life: spring blooming where winged Zephyrus flew, the tip of Nemesis’ sword spreading the ember blaze of her wrath, Protesilaus and his courage in a battle he wasn’t destined to win.
Tommy stood there listening until his hands had gone cold and his legs began to hurt, and then he listened some more. Techno’s voice seldom rose above a whisper, turning almost wispy the longer he went on. Tommy wondered how much of him was present at that point, and what there was in the myths that brought him, exhausted down to every muscle in his body, comfort.
“As the planks of Theseus’ ship needed repair, it was replaced part by part, up to a point where not a single part from the original ship remained in it, anymore,” Techno said, his forehead sinking to rest against Carl’s, and as Tommy’s blue eyes met the cloudy haze of the horse’s, he suddenly felt the urge to leave. “Is it, then, still the same ship? If all the discarded parts were used to build another ship, which of the two, if either, is the real Ship of Theseus…”
Tommy sped up and almost stumbled over his own foot. The stall door he had leaned on creaked, the mare inside neighed, woken up from her slumber; still, Tommy ran until he almost crashed into someone.
Dream would be unrecognizable in the dark if it weren’t for the glowing green of his eyes.
“Where have you-?” he began, but Tommy shook his head. Shoulder to shoulder, they went out into the open night, where Techno’s voice could no longer reach him and the taunting myth, if only by a little, released its clutches on his chest.
Tommy searched for an excuse to apologize to Dream with, and he realized with a damning sort of resignation that if he tried to speak that instant he would either cry or scream.
Something must have flashed in his face, carved out sunken in moonlight, which made Dream shift his expression and drop the words he had carried all the way here to say.
“I'm glad you're alright,” he settled on instead, fixing the coat back up on Tommy’s shoulder from where it had slipped down in a hurry.
There was a bandage across Dream's nose; Tommy was fairly certain that it wasn't there yesterday, and it rubbed at him the wrong way, brewing a feeling of familiarity that he couldn't quite name the source of.
"What happened?" he asked.
“Don't worry about it," Dream looked away, dodging the question. "It's late, you should get inside before you catch a cold." When the prince did not stir, Dream gently wrapped two hands around his one, as if trying to warm his stiffened fingers. "Come on, I’ll walk with you."
Tommy comes back into awareness as he stands in front of the Emperor and Techno, not recalling how he made it to the bottom of the stairs or why Philza is looking at him like he’s waiting for an answer for some question.
“Pardon?” Tommy rasps, mentally scrambling for a memory that isn’t there.
“Father asked if you’re sure that you don’t want to go with us,” Techno repeats patiently.
“I’m sure,” Tommy’s words don’t sound like his own, but he forces them through anyway, meeting the Emperor’s gaze, “Safe travels.”
They both see it in the mirror of each other’s eyes: blue-tainted reflection of a boy, twelve and watering his father’s shoulder with tears. The Emperor hadn’t had the right words then, and he doesn’t have them now beyond the quiet murmur of, “she would prefer to see you smiling.” When it becomes clear that Tommy has no intentions of doing so, Philza turns away from him and kicks his horse into a trot.
“We’ll be back before sunrise,” Techno says, and joins the Emperor shortly. Tommy watches them for a minute or two, and the moment they’re out of the gates his chest twists into something tight and panicked: he wants to run after, wants to ask them to stay, don't leave him alone please-
The feeling is so strong that it catches Tommy off-guard in the middle of a step, a wounded noise escaping his throat before he chokes and nets it back behind gritted teeth. He doesn’t need anybody, the Emperor least of them all. Tommy repeats it, in his thoughts and under his breath, as he makes his way through the gardens. The more he says it, the louder shadows seem to be laughing, and he breaks into a sprint.
Tommy reaches the orangery, running like the Minotaur itself is on his heels. He slams the door closed to the thump thump thump of his heart. Shadows are no longer laughing at him, here. Sun bleeds into the whispering fountain water; all around Tommy are the calming hues of blue morphos, yellow phoebis and emerald swallowtails, resting their wings in diminishing light.
He is safe.
He is okay.
Swallowing thickly, Tommy detaches himself from the door, and lags closer to the fountain. He drops to his knees there, tiredly resting his cheek against white marble. Chills spread like shockwaves through his body, but the cold is grounding; comforting, even, as much as something unalive can be.
On the inside of the fountain ring is a circle of symbols. They're hard to see with the running water, but Tommy had dipped his hand enough times that he can imagine the phantom print of the indents on his skin. As a child he mistook the lettering for some error made by the master in the process of making, and never thought of asking his mother whether they meant anything. It was only a couple of years later that he noted how the shape of symbols seemed similar to Ender calligraphy.
Ender is not a language meant for speaking, with sounds all low-pitched and warbly like it had been created by someone with vocal cords and hearing far different from humans. If dictionaries for it had ever existed they didn't make it in one piece to Tommy’s time. His only hope were ancient books and scrolls that crumpled to dust if one as much looked at them funny. Still, he hasn't given up, comparing the texts to one another until finally, painstakingly, twisted squiggles turned to letters and then to words and full on sentences.
He must have made a mistake at some point. Didn't look into something scrutinizingly enough, because he hadn't seen the symbols mentioned once in any existing records, or maybe they didn't belong to Ender at all. It has to be that, or else that would mean that Tommy’s idea, belief, hope, obsession– was nothing more than a particularly devastating case of wishful thinking.
After over a year of fruitless search the perspective of giving up on solving the mystery seems equal to letting her die a second time. No, Tommy bites on his tongue, straightening once more, it can't be. Mother had left some message for him; if he just solved this puzzle he would get the answer to one question that had been torturing him all those years -- why.
Why it was him that the garden was given to and not his brothers, why did she hide it from the rest of the family, why she had to leave him alone, why him, why her, why, why, why…
A sob crawls up his throat. Tommy swallows it back into the cage of his lungs, tugging at the roots of his hairs so hard that it makes him whimper. He’s not going to cry – he refuses to let himself break like that again. He’s past this, past caring about what his family does, past the guilt and a dozen of other useless feelings that have been holding him back all those years– but then why does it hurt so much?
Tommy inspects his reflection in water, hot tears slowly cooling into ice. Once a prince wailing over a broken hand, shaking with tears after a few words spat by the Emperor in a fit of rage, now Tommy imagines a boy folded over the fountain with growing disgust.
His hair is matted, his clothes crumpled and bloody. His jaw is dappled with purple bruises, looking too much like traces of someone’s fingers, and he curls around an object in his palm that has Tommy’s heart plummeting one second and hammering with fury next. If the boy was real, Tommy would kick him in the stomach, ignoring how their eyes match down to the same shade of dying blue, and laugh darkly at a startled scream of his pain.
“You’re pathetic,” Tommy spits into a face flooded by tears, “and I am not.”
I refuse to be, goes unsaid, a promise and a threat all the same.
Tommy turns his attention to a pink flower. As he locks two fingers beneath the dull bud, nails digging just deep enough to make the stem bleed, what he feels for himself is not pity but bubbling anger.
Tommy yanks on the stem, and the flower comes plucked clean out of soil together with the roots. He tosses it aside and stomps on the bud, twisting his foot until the petals are grinded into nothing. It’s not enough; just a small flare smothered when he himself is a wildfire, wild and blazing and vengeful. Tommy’s eyes search around, his hands itching and shaking, until he sees a small shed tucked in a corner.
The metal of gardening tools glints sharply when he bares them to light. Tommy grabs a pair of scissors.
The garden’s cries and screeches fall on a deaf ear. Dozens of butterflies, disturbed from their evening rest, scatter away from Tommy in panic. He doesn’t see it. He doesn’t care when he stabs a shovel into soil and destroys the weed along with the newly peeking out sprouts of orchids.
Tommy refuses to turn around even when a heavy gaze prickles the back of his neck. Pangs of guilt that have been lost in rage grow strong enough that he hears its pleading voice. This isn’t right. He had promised to take good care of the garden, and instead the butterflies are scuttling away from him as if one touch would burn them to ashes. As if they were scared of him.
Breaking a branch, slicing his fingers on the bark as he did so, Tommy hisses and squeezes his eyes. It doesn’t make any difference. If he wasn’t cutting through vines and flattening grass with his shoes, then he’d surely pluck his own hair or bang his head on the floor until he saw stars. The garden is his to love and cherish, and if the circumstances call for it – to destroy.
“It’s mine,” he mumbles, staining the pristine white shirt with blood where he had gripped it right over his madly beating heart. “It’s mine!” he repeats, straightening up. His voice borders on a shout, daring somebody to disagree.
Nobody does.
Satisfied, Tommy picks up the tool again, and his frantic movements turn into a methodic sound of snip-snip-snip.
By the time that Tommy is done, the sky has dived into twilight, and most of the garden lies in ruins. Once again, he looks at the result of his rage, chest heaving, sweat coating his eyes- and his knees give out from exhaustion. He throws a hand forward to prevent himself from bashing his forehead on hard tiles. His chin droops out of his control, hair loosened out of ponytail, falling over his face.
The fluttering grows louder. If butterflies have been restless before, now they’ve turned into a hurricane, circling overhead, darting around and never landing on one spot for more than a fraction of a second. The patterns on their wings are hundreds of eyes blinking, watching, judging, driving him to madness. Tommy shrinks away from them, when, like a flicker of hope – a monarch butterfly, bright orange, lands on his gently cupped hands.
Tommy hunches over, curling up into himself to protect her light from the darkness casted by a heavy cloud.
"Mom, what do I do?" his voice cracks.
Empress Kristin doesn't answer, like she hasn't been for the last six years.
When Tommy opens his palms, it's to a still and dead butterfly.
——————————
In the end it’s a chance that leads him to finding the wine.
One Emperor’s secretary was supposed to bring him a batch of letters to look over tomorrow, but Tommy decides to do it tonight – anything to distract himself from the oppressive weight on his chest and the tapering rhythm of his heartbeat.
He doesn’t find the letters. But there, abandoned on the desk, are three wine bottles.
Two of them had been opened, poured a glass or two from but mostly full – unforgivable wastefulness, knowing how expensives beverages from the palace cellars tend to be. Tommy purses his lips, leaning away. He’s ought to find a servant to reseal the bottles for dinner sometime soon, but–
But.
Slowly, Tommy turns his head to look back at the desk. As soon as his eyes fall on the bottles again, the moon peeks from out of the clouds, and he’s unable to tear his gaze off from the shining glass, regardless of how much he chews on his lip or rolls his shoulders.
It’s just that- no. No, no, no.
You can’t, his inner voice hisses. Drinking, Theseus, really? That’s a new low for you. Tommy staggers back, filled with disgust for considering it even for a fraction of a second – but one step and it’s as if his feet are glued to the floor.
Tommy swallows thickly through a lump quickly forming in his throat. He knows what drunk looks like: boisterous voices, faces splattered in feverish red and people guffawing at the stupidest of things. It made him grimace how easy foolish words – destructive, honest words – can spill from a tongue loosened in alcoholic frenzy. Careless, loud, Tommy had seen drunk people as, but also… oddly free.
Iron control rattles off everything that the crown prince does and values in life. Wine achieves the exact opposite of that. Tommy was taught to be always calm and collected, cool-minded even when his heart feels like it’s going to burst – throwing it all out of the window in one instant would’ve been such a grimly sweet, satisfying fuck you spit right into the Emperor’s face.
When was the last time Tommy didn’t feel anxious or worried? Why can’t he, just this once, release the clutches of control and judgment and let himself just be? Like under a spell, he wraps a hand around a bottle’s neck, fumbles with the cork pushed in half-way through and pops it open. The smell is too sweet, saccharine like flowers spewed over a rotting corpse, but it promises reprieve, a short-living oblivion of losing himself to nothingness.
And Tommy wants that so much. He wants to stop thinking, wants to stop existing, stop feeling anything at all. Blissful nothingness whispers reassurances, it beckons him closer, it cards fingers through his hair, untangles the strings stretched between his ribs like on the frame of a loom until finally, finally, it gets to the heart – floundering and shuddering and desperate to keep him alive from another second to the next.
“You’re tired, child,” it says. Death isn’t supposed to sound so kind.
Tommy drags the bottle closer. His hands are shaking; dark liquid sloshes and spills over the top, staining his fingers crimson and sticky. Tommy tips the bottle and lets fire pour into his mouth, down his throat, down down down where it’s burning his abdomen through, boiling into searing, ripping, tearing agony.
Entirely too soon, way more than he can handle, and Tommy chokes, staggers forward, palm planted to the edge of the desk for some semblance of balance; the bottle slips right past his fingers and shatters against the floor.
Tommy drags his gaze through the expanding vermillion carnage, lungs squeezing and shuddering with painful spasms, ripping his throat raw on each painful cough. Nauseating sweetness crawls up from his stomach, gurgling, boiling, wanting to burst and spit out every bit of acid poison and bitter saliva; Tommy forces them back down through a surge of pained tears.
The aftertaste at the back of his throat is bordering on the most disgusting feelings had ever known – he is disgusting, he is burning, he is drowning, but most importantly, he needs more.
Tommy grabs the second bottle with shaking hands and a growing haze of mind. After all, a man dying from thirst doesn't care whether the pouch is full of water or poison.
——————————
Alcohol takes effect faster than Tommy had expected. After a few minutes since he had taken the first sip, pressure anchors at the back of his head, while the rest of it buzzes and hums with clouds. At least he thinks it’s been a few minutes- it’s hard to tell how much time has passed when his next blink сould last a second or five.
The bottle is almost empty. It has been for a while. Another bottle is still closed – but he finds a corkscrew right here on the desk, and after a lot of curses, more spilled crimson and a new cut across his pinky finger the cork pops free.
All the spasming and wrenching and dizziness must be his stomach trying to protest out as more liquid starts pouring in. He hasn’t drunk this much water in two days as he had wine in the last half-an-hour-maybe-less, but Tommy’s not a quitter. He swallows every last drop and cradles the bottle as a new wave of nausea hits him.
His reflection – shifting and in shape and color slightly depending on the angle – suddenly seems very entertaining. Turning it this way makes his nose unnaturally big, and with his chin tilted up his head looks shrunken, and if he holds the bottle straight, so that moonlight showers his hair in silvery gray and gives a lively blue tint to his eyes, he will look like- he is exactly like–
Tommy scrambles up and throws the bottle into a wall. His fingers slip mid-swing, and it thuds on the carpet, making a series of chimes and clinks as it rolls up into what remained from the other one and then into someone’s shoe.
Tommy tips his head back, blowing a strand of hair out of his face. It falls back right down, but he merely squints and doesn’t pay it any mind – not with something much more important trembling into focus with wildfire for eyes and paleness that can’t be just a sheen casted by the moon.
“Theseus, are you… Are you fucking drunk?” Oh, and that voice, that tone- that’s Wilbur for you, alright.
That grasp of control Tommy keeps on himself, careful picking of every word that he says, it all cracks and melts out of existence. Anger takes its place. A lot of anger.
“Could you pass me that bottle, Wil?” he tilts his head at an angle that makes Wilbur look funny, so he giggles, “I want to break it against your face.”
Wilbur, who just a moment ago looked like he was about to stomp over and grab him – stills in his steps and Tommy realizes, with the clarity of a person watching the scene unfold from the sidelines, that he’s scared.
“You don’t mean that,” Wilbur says, taking a tentative step forward.
Tommy shifts into a clumsy stance and balls his hands into fists. His mouth stretches into a toothy, animalistic snarl.
“Come closer and see how much I fucking do.”
The moment hangs heavy and stretches for what feels like infinity. Tommy almost thinks that Wilbur will turn tail and run, like he always does, and readies himself to chase and spit insults into his back – but when the man moves it happens within the span of a blink:
Just moments before he was standing right in front of Tommy, and now someone’s breath crawls up the back of his neck, arms trapping him from behind, pinning his arms to his body. Tommy lurches, kicks, screams like ten wild animals at once, and when everything else proves useless, sinks his teeth into Wilbur’s hand.
Wilbur cries out, but doesn’t let go. Struggling and fighting, they slam into a massive bookcase. It careens dangerously to the side, nearly burying them under three hundred pounds of splitting wood and avalanching books. Wilbur throws them out of the way at the last moment, bits of glass crunching under their feet as they spin in an adrenaline-frenzied dance.
“Dammit– Theseus, fucking– stop!” Tommy keeps going, even as disgusting coppery taste floods his mouth and his teeth grind against bone, “Calm the fuck down-!”
But even with the world all slow and spinning twice as much as it should be, the moment Wilbur loosens his hold just a bit Tommy wrenches free and delivers one precise blow square in his brother’s face.
Wilbur’s head snaps sideways from the force of the punch. Tommy retreats to catch his breath, gasping for air with his mouth open, and sees the full realization unravel start to finish: painted by the path of a tear over a forming bruise and a final stroke in bloody saliva spit to the side.
Looking at the drops of crimson splattered over the knuckles of his still raised fist, Tommy fails to make the connection between that and the shock on Wilbur’s face. In contrast to blood still furling and pounding in his ears, his head turns suddenly stiff and quiet. He imagined his moment in his head many times and wanted of it many more, but he never thought that he would actually l–
“Why?” Wilbur hitches out, and Tommy’s doubt, weaving reluctantly into something akin to coherence, explodes to smithereens.
“Why- fucking why, really?” and then he’s lurching forward, snarling and growling and shrieking, “You’re asking me why you fucking bastard!?”
Wilbur sees the next punches coming and throws his arms up criss-crossed, but where he blocks one blow there’s always showering five more – clumsy and uncharged but heavy with the weight of desperate, angry years.
“You’ve ruined my life!” Tommy screams. “You manipulated me, you humiliated me, you destroyed me over and over again for your own sick entertainment–”
“I wasn't–” Wilbur protests, and Tommy grabs him by the front of his shirt. It would’ve looked comical because of the height difference if Wilbur didn’t sound so weak and Tommy wasn’t so damn furious.
“Look me in the eyes when I talk to you, you fucking piece of shit,” he hisses. “Do you have the slightest idea what I’ve been through? How do you fail so much at the basic level of compassion that you don’t even take a moment to think how it was for me when you left?!”
Wilbur wraps hands around Tommy’s wrist as he stiffens. Steel and ice spark in his eyes, startlingly familiar and grimly reaffirming – after all, Wilbur is, too, Philza’s son.
“Then tell me,” he whispers, angry and bitter yet so desperate, “tell me what the three of you are so bloody stubborn about hiding."
No matter how far Wilbur runs, he can’t change the fact that he, too, is Philza’s son. And no matter how much Tommy hates Wilbur, he can’t change the same cursed blood that flows in them as brothers.
"It isn't fair - don’t talk to me like you have the fucking right to demand anything,” Tommy's voice breaks, and then it spikes again, “I had to clean up your fucking mess Wilbur, I filled yours and Mom’s places in the Empire, I glued the family together!" He rips his hand out of Wilbur’s grip and shoves him away, so that they look into each other’s eyes as they break. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? You weren’t here to see me dying, and you sure as fuck weren’t here when I tried to put an end to myself!”
That’s where Tommy’s voice finally betrays him, grinded raw from all the shouting, his throat spasming into a series of violent coughs – loud and echoey in the thunderstuck silence of the room as he jabs his forearm into a wall for balance. And that silence– it’s wrong, stricken by some irreversible tragedy even though nothing had happened between the previous second and the next apart from Tommy wheezing and spitting his lungs out.
Finally, the violent wrenches of his windpipe cease to a weak ache. Tommy throws a jerky look at Wilbur. Something weird is happening with his brother’s face. It’s just… blank, which shouldn’t be possible at all. Wilbur is an actor with ten different masks on his face and hundreds more ready in storage, a wordsmith and a conductor of his own twisted theater play. Wilbur doesn’t just freeze.
It’s then that it catches up to Tommy: the horrifying realization of what he had said. He, standing on a stage of crimson, in the spotlight of the moon, had spilled one of the greatest secrets to the one person who was never supposed to look behind the scenes.
Tommy wants to throw up.
"Theseus." Tommy sees it, how hard it is for Wilbur to form his lips around that name; how it ruptures his lungs akin to a bleeding breath taken fifty feet under the sea.
"Theseus-" he repeats, and it doesn't seem less painful the second time, just more desperate,"tell me that it isn’t true. That can’t- that’s a fucking sick way to joke, don’t joke like that. Theseus?" His voice borders on hysterical, breaking suddenly into a cry of a snapping guitar string.“Please.”
But Tommy doesn't devolve into a string of grand lies, doesn’t scramble to catch the secret and secure it behind iron locks for another eternity – why would he give Wilbur that mercy, if Wilbur had spared him none? He doesn't even speak for a while, sobered up, if only a little, by the weight of the words he just dropped.
“I think about it almost every day.” With his voice so quiet, Tommy can almost hear as the last nail is hammered into Wilbur’s coffin.
He hadn’t thought it possible to see a man break like a piece of rotting wood, but that’s the closest he can describe what happens next – Wilbur cracks.
Little tiny indents on the instrument’s case webbing together and forming into a single abysmal ravine, and suddenly it all breaks down in the middle in a staccato of explosions, screams and withering death- and for some indecipherable reason the center of the whole horrific composition is Tommy.
Three years ago, Wilbur came back a different person, and he loved a different Theseus – a kind, naïve, easily manipulated boy – everything that new him was decidedly not. Tommy knows he is despised, knows he is hated, and he’s fine with that because it takes his mind off the possibility that there could be something else.
No person would look so brittle to hear that their enemy was on the verge of death, much less frightful of finding out that they wanted to be. Tommy knows Wilbur’s selfish nature. Wilbur wouldn’t look so damn pained for someone that he doesn’t care about, for someone that even after everything, after all those years, he didn't see as a brother.
“All this time that- I didn't notice- Phil and Techno, they don't..?"
Tommy tips his head up, the last bits of dwindling bitterness rolling together on his tongue into a single drop of poison. “I’ve carried this burden alone for three years, Wilbur.” His breath hitches, tasting of wine and flower acid, and hot tears surge down his cheeks, uninvited and uncontrollable. Tommy wipes at them furiously, but they keep coming, like some seemingly limitless storage had finally run out of space. “Because you-" he chokes and pitches up into a screech that immediately plummets in volume, “you!- chased away the only person who knew what happened.”
Wilbur’s eyes widen, and something besides pure terror brews in them. “Quackity–”
“Is the reason that I’m alive,” Tommy finishes for him. "And if the word brother has ever meant anything to you, you will carry this conversation to your grave."
He sways on his feet, stumbles over a heap of books and nearly collapses into a wall.
"Theseus, you can't just leave like this-" Wilbur dashes to catch him – Tommy swivels away and bares his bloody teeth.
"Don't fucking touch me!" he hollers, with not nearly as much fire as before – it sounds bristling at best and frightened at the worst – but it succeeds in shepherding Wilbur away. "You've done enough," he croaks. "Now leave me alone."
But Wilbur doesn't move – Tommy isn't sure that he's capable of anything, at that moment, but drowning the aftermath of horrifying realizations storming on him all at once.
Tommy dips his head down, fishes for the handle blindly and throws himself out of the doors.
——————————
Tommy comes to awareness with his head in some bushes and a fountain bursting from his mouth: bile, wine and fuck knows what else burning a lava track through his insides and spilling out, out, out.
He nearly blacks out again from the shortage of air when the wave is finally over and he crumbles next to a puddle of his own vomit, gasping like a beached fish, curling up into himself in a feeble attempt to ease the aftershock pain rolling from his stomach.
It hurts so much. As if somebody had bashed his head against a rock and then ripped his guts open with a pickaxe, pain searing and nerves sparking alight even in far parts of his body.
Tommy’s groan hitches into a whimper; he shoves his face into cold soil and grass, trying to remember how he ended up in the garden in the first place. Last thing he can recall vividly, he was drinking alone. Then there was Wilbur, they were screaming, and, and they started fighting and there was a flash of red and green somewhere–
Tommy gets half-way through that thought before another wave of agony seizes him and he throws up all over himself. The very effort of lifting his back leaves him trembling and exhausted, and he crashes, head lolling to the side as he gags. There isn’t even anything left in him at this point, he’s just spitting acid and saliva, and is- is that fucking blood?
It smells like blood. Tommy feels sick. If he needs to vomit again, he isn’t sure he will have the strength to roll over and not just choke himself to death. Even lying down like this, the world won't stop spinning, churning and twisting and doing a thousand different movements that he's too exhausted to trap to definition.
Exhausted- that's the right word. Tommy was exhausted and he didn't want to be anymore, except the wine didn't fix it. It got him to where he is now, heaving his guts out. Again.
Once an occurrence, twice a pattern, thrice a rule. Maybe there won't be a third in Tommy's case – this might actually kill him. He might die. He might die alone.
“Quackity,” he rasps, tears welling in his eyes, “Niki, Tubbo, Techno…”
He dissolves into bubbling a string of names, saying each one like a prayer. Maybe if he called for one person with enough desperation, they will feel that something is wrong and come seeking him. But is it worth it? Him living with the knowledge that somebody had seen him mortally vulnerable, saw him in this miserable state– isn’t it better if he just dies now and never sees how utter disappointment and scorn would look on the faces of people so dear to him?
Tommy shoves his hand in his mouth, but can’t stifle his cries completely. He’s just- just so fucking scared that this is going to be how he goes. Stupid, foolish, unintentional. Tommy blinks and the stars blink back, and he finds The North star, right overhead, shining both the dimmest and the brightest of them all.
He needs his brother.
He needs–
“Dream,” Tommy whispers. “Dream, help.”
Grass rustles nearby, like someone is walking rapidly in his direction. And, then, like a miracle, "Thes?"
Tommy nearly sobs. "Dream." No, too quiet, he’s never gonna find Tommy this way. "Dream, I’m h-here!"
Somebody crashes to their knees next to him, and an arm slides underneath his shoulder blades. The warmth and gentleness almost makes Tommy burst into tears again.
"Thes! What are you- what happened?"
Dream looks terrified yet so utterly relieved. It doesn’t come any close to the weight of fear dropping from Tommy’s stomach when he’s lifted up and pinned to someone’s chest. His hands claw at Dream’s shirt, fisting and clinging like a falling man scrambling for purchase.
"I can't-” Tommy gasps, “Dream I can't remember anything. I don't remember-"
And then he’s throwing up again, but this time there’s somebody holding him as he heaves, keeping his hair out of his face and brushing sweaty curls out of his eyes when he sags backwards into the man’s hold.
"Shhh.” There is a high edge to Dream’s voice. “Thes, Thes, Theseus- please. Just keep breathing, okay? Keep breathing – fuck – I’ve got you.”
“Dream,” Tommy keens, blinking through the blurry fog in his eyes. “It h-hurts.”
“I know,” Dream murmurs, rubbing his hand up and down Tommy’s back. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay, I fucking swear it, you hear me?”
Someone whistles nearby. "Kid's fucking trashed." Sapnap’s voice.
"Shut the fuck up and get over here,” Dream sounds furious, but it’s not directed at him. “We need to get him to a physician.”
Tommy wriggles in Dream’s hold, feeling of betrayal giving him the energy to fight. “No- you can’t.” he cries out.
Dream places one hand on Tommy’s cheek, lifting his face up to look in his eyes. “Thes- this is important. You might've drunk yourself to poisoning- have you eaten anything before you-?”
Tommy remembers the quick dinner he scarfed down after the hunt yesterday.
That was over twenty hours ago.
He shakes his head. “N-no physicians,” he repeats. “They’re gonna know- and then the Emperor will, and then I-I’m- ” Tommy gathers all his strength to straighten up and glare right in Dream’s eyes. "Fuckin'- listen. If you call for somebody, I won't forgive you. I- I won't ever look in your face again, you understand?"
"Thes…" Dream's expression twists into hesitancy, but when Tommy collapses forward, forehead thudding against the man's chest, he wraps his arms around him gingerly in a way that tells him he's too afraid to let go.
"Help," Tommy whimpers. "Please. Just you."
"Dammit," Dream curses. "Sapnap, I'm gonna need your help."
——————————
Tommy might've blacked out once or twice along the way. Each time he floats up to awareness is full of pain and confusion; there are voices, whispering reassurances until control slips from his fingers once more.
When some semblance of consciousness returns to Tommy, it's on the floor among a sea of cushions. He's on his side, knees bent and pulled up half-way to his stomach. Someone's fingers are combing through his hair. It feels nice, Tommy almost wants to just lie there and float some more, but then it occurs to him, with a frown and a grimace, that it's not a thing that just happens to him.
"Where-" Tommy tries to lift his head, but someone's warm hand nudges him back down.
"Big Q?" he mumbles.
"Dream," the person corrects, in a patient tone that makes Tommy think it's not the first time that he's doing it. "You're fine, Thes. We're in my room. Remember?"
Tommy does not remember, but he still lowers his chin in some weak imitation of a nod.
"Do you think you can try and have some water right now?"
Tommy makes an indefinite sound. The hand in his hair disappears, and before he could mourn the loss, he's being lifted up into a sitting position, with his back propped up against something solid and warm. Tommy's headache, previously lurking somewhere in the background, hammers right through the middle of his skull. He groans.
"I know, this sucks," Tommy thinks that is one great fucking understatement, "but you really need to drink."
His throat does feel dry, each breath agitating the walls ruptured raw. Tommy blinks, and another person appears within the line of his vision – Sapnap, his mind helpfully supplies – with a glass full of water. He sits down cross-legged and passes it to Dream, who brings it closer to Tommy's lips and helps him lean forward.
Water feels heavenly cool on his tongue. Swallowing hurts, but Tommy hardly notices it as he latches onto the glass, wrapping his weak hands around it.
"Slow," Dream says. Tommy does his best to follow the command, but still ends up gulping way too much in too little time – he chokes, and then a wave of nausea wrecks through him.
Two sets of arms move Tommy in a practiced routine: there is a bucket that he spits the water into, a handkerchief offered into his trembling hands. They try to get him to drink again, but he doesn't stomach more than a few sips before he's pulling away with a whimper.
He's shaking, he realizes. Everything is way too hot and too cold at the same time, and sweat coats the back of his shirt. Dream notices and frowns; fumbling to check the pulse on Tommy's wrist, he pulls out a blanket from somewhere and maneuvers it around his shoulders.
The motion is tender, caring. Another thing that happens with Tommy, like, never. Maybe he's still sleeping, having a wishful hallucination– yes, that has to be it, because when Tommy presses closer to Dream’s side, the older prince snakes an arm around him and lets it happen. None of this is real, so Tommy might as well enjoy it.
He still feels like shit, though.
"How long was I out?" Tommy unseals his lips.
Sapnap and Dream share a look. "Eh, seven hours, give it or take," the knight answers. "Pretty lucky, all things considered. If you plan on getting plastered again, let me tag along." Sapnap adds, half-sympathetic, half-teasing when Tommy squeezes his eyes and slips into an invisible fight against his headache. "I'll do the damage control and carry your drunk ass to sleep."
"There won't be a next time-" Dream's voice pitches up, and he pins Sapnap a shark glare, "What is wrong with you?"
"Overprotective much?" Sapnap grumbles and turns to Tommy. "Look what you did to him, man. He can't even take a joke anymore."
Tommy wonders how exactly it is his fault, but still cracks a small, wobbly smile. Dream's hold on him stiffens and tightens a bit.
"This is not a joking matter," he snaps. "He could've been alone for this. He could've fucking died!"
Dream raises his voice, but it floats over Tommy, insignificant – instead he focuses on the shadows sheltering underneath his eyes. It doesn’t go past him unnoticed how Dream rubs the bridge of his nose, seemingly in exasperation, to stifle a yawn.
He is tired, Tommy realizes dimly. Not the years-worth, making-you-seem-like-an-old-man type of exhaustion, but like something had been keeping him awake and running for far longer than he usually is. Then it dawns on Tommy that he is that something, if the fact that he is in Dream’s room, in his embrace, is anything to go by.
"What, were you worried about me, Dream?" Tommy mumbles teasingly, peering one eye up at Dream and expecting a vehement denial or a sarcastic quip in return.
Dream, however, clamps his lips together and breathes in deeply. "You were collapsed in the gardens, Thes, alone and covered in blood. Why would I not be worried?"
He sounds patient, and that's what throws Tommy off. "Nobody else would," he shrugs and looks away.
He must have said something wrong, because Dream looks like one wrong movement or word could make him explode, or stab someone, or both but in the opposite succession. It occurs to Tommy that he had never seen Dream properly angry – slightly agitated, at most – and wouldn't even know what to say to calm him down.
Thankfully, Sapnap steps in first.
"Hey Dream, do you remember that one time we went on the beach together with your siblings?" he asks nonchalantly, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his thighs.
"Of course I do." Tension seemingly melts out of Dream's arms, his chest seizing with sparks of quiet laughter. “We betted who can dive from the highest cliff… You chickened out, I cheated, Foolish won, so we buried him in the sand and left him there for an hour."
Tommy imagines the mighty king of the Esempi, stuck neck-deep in sand and begging Dream to come back and dig him out.
"That's mean," he scrounges up his nose.
"No, that was funny," Dream insists.
"Your face is funny." And it is, though maybe because Tommy is looking at it from below and what he mostly sees is Dream’s chin, shadowed by the beginning of a light stubble. He bumps his head into the man's shoulder and adds, "Now go die."
Dream tucks a strand of Tommy's hair behind his ear. "Sure, Thes," he hums, amused.
"And you're ugly too," Tommy continues with passion, his tongue running on the loose now. "Like really really ugly. I bet you wear that mask of yours because you don't want to scare children away. Do you even get any maidens, Dream-y?"
The crown prince in question sputters, and Sapnap behind him flashes Tommy an approving grin. "Well, he has Gogy-"
Dream hides his face into his hands with an exasperated groan. "I'm going to actually strangle you both right now."
Sapnap winks at Tommy, clears his throat and asks, "Hey, Theseus, who is better, me or Dream?"
Seeing how hopefully Dream’s eyes glint when he looks up, Tommy sees only one acceptable answer.
"Sapnap," he declares without a stutter.
"What?"
"Hear that, Dream?" Sapnap slides an arm across Tommy’s shoulders, beckoning him closer. "I'm the kid's favorite."
Dream frowns and pins his knight with a cold look. "Sapnap, why don't you step out for a minute?" he says. "I can hear Theseus' guard pacing miles from here. Let him know that his crown prince is doing fine before he bursts in through the doors."
Sapnap begrudgingly rises to his feet. "Posessive fucker," they hear him grumbling before he walks out.
Tommy uses that opportunity to draw his gaze across his surroundings. They hadn’t lied, this is certainly Dream’s room, and Tommy’s sitting on the bed, surrounded on all sides with pillows and blankets, his back partially propped up against the headboard. It’s dark outside, a proper deep-night sort of dark that comes right before the sunset, and Tommy really wishes he could fall asleep and wake up again to a world that makes sense.
At some point Dream’s hand snakes to weave around his, first barely noticeable pressure but gradually growing into a tight, almost desperate vice. Tommy tolerates it until his fingers feel like they might snap.
“Dream,” he mutters, “you’re crushing my hand.”
Dream releases him instantly, and he looks guilty. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just-"
"A bad memory?"
Dream shifts and releases a tired sigh. "You could put it like that."
Tommy leans in closer with a questioning hum.
"I'm not gonna burden you with my talk,” Dream pins him with a look. “You're barely conscious, Thes."
"I'm very con-sci-ous and I'm feeling shitty. At least you talking gives me something to focus on. For example… what were you like in your childhood years?"
"Difficult," Dream says after some thinking. "I, um, was a problem child, always running off and flinging myself into trouble. My family had to be constantly on the move to avoid King Schlatt’s people, never staying in one place for too long. I didn’t like that, and I made it abundantly clear to everybody around me.”
“What changed?” Tommy asks.
“One day my parents woke me up in the middle of the night. There were people outside our home… Mom gave our newborn sister to Foolish and told us to run. I was eight, he was barely fifteen, neither of us knew what was going on, where we were going, only that there was fire and screams and death where he had left our parents behind.”
Smoke and fire seemingly billow in Dream’s eyes; Tommy listens, feeling guilty of his own interest. Not much is known about the royal family of Esempi, especially not those early years before a rebel princess Caroline had overthrown her tyrant brother and became a queen. Memories are stories of one’s weaknesses and strengths – that’s what Dream was making himself right now. Weak, vulnerable, human. Tommy’s in equal degrees cautioned and fascinated by it.
“The island burned until sunrise, and as we hid in the dark of a cave all I could think of, this is it. It’s just us, now. And for some reason, apart from that realization being horrifying in itself, I felt how scared my brother was that he would have to raise two children all on his own in a nation that wanted our heads on spikes. More so… he came to terms with that possibility. And that- that shifted something in both of us, and that something didn’t reverse even as the morning came and our mother stepped out alone from the still smoldering forest.”
“You felt helpless,” Tommy says.
“And I can’t stand that feeling ever since,” Dream admits, tipping his head back to rest against the headboard. “It puts me on edge when I’m not fully in control of a situation, pushes me to make rash decisions where I'd normally contemplate every single one carefully. There is one question that keeps bothering me ever since that conversation we had near the river… What did you mean when you said, ‘that’s what I’m for’?"
Tommy squirms in place, suddenly on edge, but against his own expectations and years threading the edges of that topic – he considers it. Maybe it’s the effect of Dream’s words, the instinctive urge to reciprocate his trust – for once he wants to tug on the string of a tight clew, let it unravel and see what it’s going to knit.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Dream says, sensing his hesitance. Tommy shakes his head.
“I’ll tell if you’re willing to listen,” he says, and it feels like the truth, but when Dream nods, he takes a deep breath to brace himself anyway.
“Being the youngest among the Emperor’s offspring, there wasn't as much pressure on me as there was on my older brothers,” he says. Forcing each word feels like torture, but he's doing it, and Dream looks proud. “I didn’t have to be as ambitious and smart as Wilbur, or strong and disciplined like Techno. My role was to simply keep people happy, make them smile, do silly things so that they can forget their worries and just laugh… and for the longest while, it was enough. I was simply enough, until I no longer were.”
"When the Empress passed away, I saw my father crying for the first time,” he says after a moment of somber silence. “And it was such a scary realization, you know, that your parents aren't as indestructible and unshakable as you think they are. Like a mountain had fallen down, the ground and the sky had swapped places... we were all falling apart and I was helplessly watching, because for the first time funny or kind wasn’t going to help."
Tommy seizes his knees to his chest, unconsciously wanting to make himself smaller. This part is always the hardest to think of– his throat grows tighter, words threatening choke on the barrier of hesitance and fear. Silently, Dream’s hand squeezes his shoulder, reminding that I’m here, you’re not alone for this.
“I think I could feel, deep down, that Wilbur wasn't gone,” Tommy continues, much quieter now, but words tumble out of his mouth with a newfound sense of urgency: if he stops now, he won’t be able to make himself speak of it again. “And I knew how much he hated his position, too... So I thought, if I became the crown prince, surely that would be enough to bring him back. Wilbur would be home, Techno wouldn't be so damn guilty every time he looked at me, and- and my father would see that he still has family left.” Tommy’s chest spasms painfully, but he has no more tears to shed, not for this. “I- I thought, if I were to take all the pain, all the hardships, all the misery on myself – then they all would finally be happy.”
And that's how it is. There are no great stories of altruistic determination, a sense of great responsibility for millions under the Imperial throne's care, just a heavy crown and a boy who’d do anything for people he loves, even if it means giving up everything that made him Tommy.
Dream keeps looking into the distance. His gaze feels heavy and his thoughts billow invisibly, like he is solving a puzzle and the final picture is turning out much different from what he had expected.
“You still care for them, don’t you?” Dream murmurs.
Tommy laughs wetly, because otherwise the pressure on his heart might’ve made it burst.
“By everything in this world, do I wish I didn’t.” Because when Tommy had given them everything, when there was nothing left in him unchanged and unbroken for their sake – his family turned around and chose Ranboo.
“You ought to be dissapointed now,” Tommy says to Dream. “I’m not a story of talent and ambitions, of confidence or determination. Just a naive stupid child who wished on a falling star and hadn’t realized he’s looking in his reflection.”
Dream shakes his head.
“Selfless,” he says. “Never stupid, or naive, or whatever else you were made believe you are.”
“Who am I, if not a fool, for loving people who have hurt me the most?” Tommy asks, but his heart seizes. Nobody had called him selfless before, especially not with so much sadness and understanding in their eyes. It’s not true, but it still feels warm.
“Human,” Dream says. He speaks like it’s a tragedy.
A window, not closed tightly enough, bursts open under the force of the wind. Cold air blows all the candles out; moonlight forces its way in like a silver sword slicing the darkness in half. Dream swivels to shield Tommy in a movement so fast that it can’t be anything but instinctual. Unwillingly, Tommy closes his eyes, expecting it all to disappear – the understanding, the warmth, Dream.
He opens his eyes.
Dream is still here, and he’s looking at Tommy with concern. Real concern, because all of this is real, and suddenly Tommy doesn’t understand anything at all.
“I… I need to use the bathroom.” Abruptly, he tries to stand up – fails miserably and almost flings himself off the bed. Luckily, Dream catches him and helps him to hobble over to the bathroom door.
“Wait,” Dream says, grabbing a piece of cloth from the bed stand and pushing it in Tommy’s arms. “For you to change into. Call me if you need help, okay?”
Tommy nods abruptly and accepts it, if only to close the door sooner. As soon as there’s a wall between them, his heart starts pounding against his ribs full-force. Mechanically, Tommy walks himself through the motions: wash his face with some cold water left in a basin, peel away his dirty clothes, all of it agonizingly slow and careful so as not to trigger another wave of skull-hammering headache.
The roll that Dream had given him turns out to be a long tunic, loose-fitting on Tommy’s noticeably thinner form, with a pair of pants lacing around the waist and ankles, all soft fabrics meant for comfort of one’s own home. Dream’s clothes smell of the sea – not that weak imitation that Tommy manages to scramble up with oils and salt baths but the true whiff of foaming shores and morning breezes. He has half a mind to put on his old clothes again and climb out of the window – but there are no windows in the bathroom, so that plan falls short of implementation.
Does Tommy want to face Dream now? No, not ever. And maybe he thinks against it too strongly, or simply moves too suddenly, because on his way to the door he trips.
“Thes, you’re okay?!” Dream’s distressed voice reaches Tommy on the floor, face shielded with his hands, folding his card-house of a body into a sitting position.
“No,” Tommy answers honestly. His voice rings of emotions that he doesn’t have the names nor definitions for – Dream does, and instead of bursting in, turns quiet and waits for him to speak first.
Tommy presses his back to the door, and hears Dream do the same on the other side.
For a while, they sit and listen to the sound of their own breathing.
"Dream," Tommy says, "I think I might be going crazy."
He looks at his hands, at the palm that he vividly remembers slicing on a branch earlier that day. There's not even a trace of a wound left in there, just some dead skin and clotted blood that peels away easily when he prods at it with a fingernail – same deal with the cuts and bruises he had gotten on the hunt yesterday. All simply gone.
"What makes you say that?" Dream asks.
Everything, Tommy thinks, but he settles on the one that currently bothers him the most.
"You stayed," he says. Dream has seen him, his weaknesses, his vulnerability, and for some twisted cruel reason – Tommy is still here. In Dream’s room, dressed in Dream’s clothes, already longing for the warmth and comfort of the conversation that happened between them minutes ago. Wanting, so selfishly and needily, for it to last.
That doesn’t happen. There is always something more important than him, there is always someone easier to love, and the bare truth is that people are never willing to change their comfortable ways of living, never for Tommy.
It’s not like he has any rights to demand it, either. Prince before a son, before a friend, before a human.
“Can you do me a favor, Dream?” Tommy asks.
“I have a feeling I’m not going to like it,” Dream says. It isn’t an outward no, and Tommy clings to that hope tightly.
“Let’s imagine that none of this has happened,” he says. “Forget everything that we had said, and never mention it to anybody out loud. I'll go back to my chambers, pull myself together, and tomorrow we will go back to how we used to be. And when I will inevitably shatter again – you’ll look away and pretend you don’t see it.”
“You’re shutting off, again.”
Dream is worried. Worried for him.
One part of Tommy wants to relish in that fact, and the other just feels guilty.
“That's what will be the best, for both of us,” Tommy says. “Once you realize how rotten and broken I am, you won't want me anymore. I will be too much or not enough, or my problems will be far too many – and you will leave.” The back of Tommy’s head thuds against the door quietly. “That might kill me, I think.”
“Thes–”
“Swear it,” Tommy says.
The silence on Dream’s side is so long that Tommy starts to question whether he had said anything at all.
"I swear,” Dream speaks up finally, his voice thick with trepidation, “on my title and on my life, that I will never not care about you.”
It’s Tommy’s turn for his mouth to turn dry and for his stomach to flutter with fret. He turns to face the door now, putting his head and both hands against it, and imagining Dream doing the same. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“But I am,” Dream stresses. “I can’t lie, so I don’t lie when I say that I’m never going to think you’re too much to handle. You're not an object to be used and thrown away when no longer needed- you're my friend, Thes.” Dream pauses, and his next words are delivered fragilely, gently, as if it’s the most precious of gifts, “My brother.”
It takes some time for Tommy to realize that he heard it right.
It takes even more for him to be able to speak.
“What?” Tommy asks, or he thinks he does. He might have whimpered it out instead.
“I know,” Dream laughs easily, as if he hadn’t turned Tommy’s whole world upside down with a single word. “It took me time to realize it, but I’ve seen you as my younger brother for a long while now.”
Tommy’s on his feet before he thinks of it, ripping the door open and squeezing his hands into fists.
“No you don’t,” he says furiously, “you can’t.”
Emotions, first lost to numbness, spike to red-hot anger: because surely this had to be some cruel joke, trickery, a betrayal in the making.
Dream rises to his feet, but even as he stands there, a bit awkward around the edges of his smile, rocking back and forth on his feet slightly, there’s not a trace of insincerity or doubt to be found. Only arms, spread in an offering of a hug, waiting for Tommy.
Water or poison?
Does it even matter?
Brother, Dream said, and he means it.
And Tommy’s crying again, and it seems as though that’s all he’s capable of doing now, but for the first time tears are streaming freely down his face and he’s not trying to hold them in. He steps forward, shaky and hesitant, giving Dream one last chance – pleading him, perhaps – to take his words back and push Tommy away before his attachment becomes a burden.
But Dream catches Tommy as he falls over the threshold, tucking him underneath his chin.
“Thes, I love you,” he whispers. “I will say it every day if I have to, every minute of every hour, until you believe that it’s true.” He holds Tommy tighter, drawing him in with a hand on the back of his head. “Trust me, and let yourself be loved.”
Protests die in Tommy's throat, suddenly too weak and insignificant in comparison with fierce honesty blazing in Dream’s eyes.
He lets his chin droop back down, resting his forehead against Dream’s collarbone.
“I don’t know how," Tommy admits in a quiet, fragile whisper. and that's what truly breaks him: the realization that even when someone wants to love him, he doesn't know how to handle this feeling – greater than the sea, broader than the night sky, and more precious than the world itself.
In the face of something so grand and unfamiliar, Tommy's a ship drifting without an anchor or a purpose, but maybe that's alright, because when Dream hugs him tighter and says, “We’re going to figure it out, together," it sounds like a promise.
Behind the tinted windows, the sky grows brighter.
The long night has come to an end, and the sun begins to rise.