Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tommy is standing on top of a cliff.

His wings are tucked tightly behind his back. They want to spread but something harshly pushes them back in and he only ends up messing up the feathers.

This isn’t right, Tommy thinks.

He unwraps his hand and, as if on command, a small, roughly shaped key appears on top of his palm.

It took some twisting and a lot of struggle to reach for the lock on the clamps – right, his wings were kept folded by the clamps – but he manages to get the key inside, and it only turns a couple of times before clicking satisfyingly.

Tommy throws both the clamps and the key from the cliff. They fall with a loud splash and soon start sinking down, the water so clear he can see the exact moment they hit the bottom, disturbing a couple of fishes swimming by.

A pair of wings spread behind Tommy’s back and shines in its full gold and white glory. In the sunset light, the edges of his feathers flare red and orange. Tommy expects himself to feel relieved and excited, but for somewhat reason, shame and regret are pinning him down instead.

He sees a shape gliding above the tides – a bird. A beautiful one, all white and grey with huge, narrow wings. She is waiting for him. She will take him away from this place, if he dares to leave. Tommy knows he wants to. His wings pulse with a desire, with a purpose - to get into the sky. And yet he can’t bring himself to make the last step.

The bird suddenly starts falling. An arrow is sticking out from its wing. Tommy turns around and sees Dream, hand still clenching a bow.

“Were you going to escape, Tommy?” he tilts his head to the side.

Tommy wants to get away, even harder than before. Dream sees right through him and clicks his tongue in disappointment, "Maybe I didn't cut your wings short enough last time."

Tommy doesn’t understand, what do you mean, last time?

His wings feel lighter than before. They feel short, they feel wrong, they feel violated. Tommy suddenly understands the crimson on his wings is not the dying sunlight anymore. He steps back and finds he can't move - his back is pinned to the rough surface of a tree and both his wings are spread against his will. Tommy struggles and pushes; his wrists are tied, and they are bleeding from how hard he was pulling the rope apart.

There is a shuffling sound as Dream drags his axe across the grass. The netherite shines silver, picking up the stray gleams of moonlight. Tommy can't make himself look away until it stops only mere feet away from his leg. He doesn't even dare to glance at the white mask and the idea sends him trembling and shutting his eyes. Something moves close to his face and all he can do is to try to focus on the pounding in his chest and not on the terrifying whistle of the blade slicing the air, and brace himself for the blow. No one can prepare for the pain do it fast and he cannot wait anymore and he thinks he had died already -

Tommy's eyes snap open and meet the ceiling of his room.

Cold sweat is running down his face and his shirt sticks to his back uncomfortably, but Tommy barely notices, struggling not to choke on air on each breath. He can almost hear the cracking sound as his heart crashes into his ribs. His throat vibrates with a scream that never turns real, and the only thing that can break through is a pathetic whine of fear and pain.

Last thing he remembers, he had been sorting items from the trash chest. Tommy is not a particular fan of reorganizing, but his eyelids were slipping again, and he needed to do something to keep himself awake. He failed, clearly. Tommy is still struggling to calm himself down from the nightmare. He knows he is at Sam's base and Dream is in the prison, miles and miles away, and yet - the fear is real. His presence feels too real. Tommy attempts to push himself up. Dream's hands are touching his wings, ruffling the feathers, pressing on the flesh. His fingers wrap around the bones and -

Tommy’s foot gives up on him and the boy is sent flying to the floor. The resulting ache in his shoulder is nothing compared to the pain in his wings: agonizing, burning, slicing all at the same time. It’s not supposed to hurt like that. The pain doesn’t come from his shoulder blades or the base or literally any part of the limbs; it pulses from higher than where his wings end abruptly. Tommy clenches his teeth to suppress the rapturing cries in his throat as he forces one of them to bend. And he can see that there is nothing above the ugly stump and his brain still insists there is, and the pain is too much for him to handle. Tommy wants nothing but to curl up in the closest corner and lay there until it goes away. He doesn’t obey the temptation; he had tried it enough times to understand the pain isn't going to back off that easily, so he pushes himself up on elbows and knees and slowly exhales as his vision swims violently.

The bathroom door seems infinitely far away. Nobody is there to see Tommy crawling his way inside, only standing up once he reached the shower. He turns it on and forced himself to stay still as the icy water pours on him from above. The pain flares a little more, but his entire body soon goes numb from the cold and it settles down into a manageable throb. Tommy bumps his head against the glass wall.

Phantom pain is something Tommy had to deal with ever since the incident happened. A mere sting for most of the time, it could suddenly start tearing him apart like this. Cold is the only thing that really could put it down. Golden apples helped, too. Tommy distinctly remembers few of them should be laying around the chests in his room. He finally turns the water off and gets out of the shower, only then noticing the fact his clothes are wet and dripping on the floor. Tommy wasn’t really in the state to think about that beforehand, but he almost regrets it now; at least his feathers are waterproof and there is one less nuisance to deal with.

Tommy’s reflection in the mirror resembles a ghost rather than a living person, with his lips a dark shade of blue and his skin deadly pale. He turns away from it while he strips his clothes off, not wanting to see the scars littering his body. Each of them had enough history and memories and he does not want to be forced to remember anything else right now.

By the time he puts dry clothes on and gets a golden apple from his stash, his head manages to get a bit blurry again. And here Tommy is, naively assuming that the nightmare and the cold shower will be enough to delay the next blackout for the rest of the night. Judging by the clock on his desk, Tommy had been asleep for a slightly more than two hours. Whatever. If the choice is between struggling to keep himself awake and slipping into one of his nightmares again, he easily prefers the first option.

Tommy’s gaze falls on the Axe of Peace. Hopefully he will be able to exhaust himself enough not to see any dreams at all.

Every day, when Sam gets up, he finds a fresh cup of coffee already awaiting him at the kitchen table. No matter how early he comes, he never manages to catch Tommy preparing it. Sam thanks him every time and the boy doesn't respond, but the corner of his lip's twitches slightly.

Recently, however, a second mug had appeared in the kitchen sink. It is always slightly warm by the time Sam finishes his breakfast and the big pack of coffee beans he brought a week ago is already almost empty. Whether he was staying up late or going to the bathroom, there was always light in the narrow slit under the shut door of Tommy’s room, regardless of how high the moon had been floating in the sky outside.

Several times Sam returns home and finds Tommy taking a nap, back leaned against a crafting table or an anvil in poses that physically couldn’t be comfortable, wings barely a replacement for a pillow and a blanket. He picks up the boy carefully and tucks him in the bed, only to find Tommy opening the main entrance a couple of hours later, muttering a quiet “going for a walk” before disappearing into the twilight darkness. Sam brings Fran from the basement and she doesn’t need a command to immediately follow. He then sits at the open entrance, legs crossed on the floor. Sam brings papers and blueprints to work with while he waits.

Tommy doesn’t seem to have any troubles with falling asleep; it is rather like there is something he is trying to avoid by staying awake. And while Sam never was woken up to the sound of muffled screams in the middle of the night, it didn’t take to be a genius to guess Tommy is suffering from nightmares. They started somewhat after his last visit to Dream and troubled him, from what Sam had observed, ever since then. He had attempted to bring up the problem; both times the topic was brushed off in the flow of Tommy’s unusually energetic chattering. Sam doesn’t like pushing his boundaries at all, but after the boy had almost fainted out of exhaustion the other day, he feels like they can’t avoid talking any longer.

Tommy and Fran had left a while ago now. Just as he is about to reach for his communicator, blurry silhouettes of a tall boy and a wolf step out of the forest line. Tommy’s hand is wrapped around Fran’s neck, skin deeply buried in long fur. He half-leans on her on every step and she does her best to adjust to his staggering walk. An old pair of goggles Sam had gifted to Tommy for the redstone work couldn’t mask the dark bags under the boy’s eyes.

He steps under the roof of the base, a short nod the only greeting Sam receives. The Axe of Peace was clenched in his hand, stained in greenish, almost black blood of undead mobs. As Tommy goes past Sam, he is focused on cleaning the weapon with a small piece of cloth, fingers mindlessly tracing the sharp edges of the blade.

“I guess there will be no mobs around to interrupt our sleep today,” Sam notes as he closes the entrance, and the rattle of the pistons finally goes quiet. He lets it out as an unostentatious praise rather than an accusation: it seems to work, because the initial tension in Tommy’s stance breaks and melts as the ice on a spring river. He puts the axe away, lips curling into a grin, and hands reaching to pull the goggles down to his neck.

“Yeah, we sliced a dozen of them on the way,” he says, ruffling the scruff of Fran’s neck. She lets out a series of chirps, rubbing her face into the boy’s hand. Fran is perfectly capable of knocking down Sam himself, let alone a thin teenager heavily unsteady on his legs, yet she is as gentle as a giant of her sizes could be, and about twice that amount of playful whenever she is around the boy. Tommy stops petting Fran and chuckles when the wolf whines in disappointment.

“Don’t be upset, I will be taking you for a walk in the morning,” he promises.

He gently takes Fran by the yellow collar around her neck and leads her towards the basement.

“Tommy, I want to discuss something with you.” Sam carefully says.

Tommy stops in his tracks. If he had attempted to hide the tension in his movements, any secrecy was destroyed by the stiffening motion of his wings. Fran pokes her nose into Tommy’s stomach and there is an almost human-looking accusation in her ember eyes when she looks at Sam. With the sensitiveness of emotions she shows, she is pretty much a therapy dog now. Sam considers letting Fran stay for the conversation, but before he can suggest, Tommy already unfreezes and, surprisingly, gives him a hesitant nod.

“Yeah. Sure. I will be in a minute.”

He shuts up on that, and an awkward silence settles, interrupted only by the noise of the elevator coming down. Sam goes into the kitchen and prepares two mugs of hot chocolate in the meantime. When he gets to Tommy’s room, the boy is already inside. Despite the entrance being left wide open, he still knocks lightly on the wall next to it.

“Come in,” he hears from inside.

“Hey,” he says.

Tommy is eyeing Sam with an expression of suppressed wary, legs crossed on the very edge of his bed. It is a mess of blankets and pillows heaped into a something distinctly resembling a bird’s nest. Sam is not sure whether it is an avian hybrid instinct or is it just more comfortable for someone with wings to sleep on, but Quackity does that too, when he stays at the base, at least, which doesn’t happen often now that he is busy with Las Nevadas. There are going to talk in a few days, though, to discuss the construction work on Sam’s behalf. Big Q have been a close friend of Tommy for a while, but Sam still gives himself a mental note to warn the boy beforehand.

Tommy’s expression shifts into one of curiosity when he notices the mugs and a roll of blueprints tucked under Sam's armpit. He accepts the hot chocolate, wrapping his fingers around the warm handle, eyes snapping up with a confused look.

“You are not going to lecture me or anything?”

“Will lecturing help to persuade you to take some sleep?” Sam genuinely asks.

Tommy hesitates, which is an answer on its own, so Sam huffs, “Exactly. So, since you are not going to sleep either way, I figured you might as well help me with my project,” he drops himself on the floor next to the bed.

Tommy’s face stretches in surprise and he hurriedly takes a sip from the mug to hide his embarrassment, “What project are we talking about?”

“I had this amazing idea for a while,” Sam starts. He straightens the blueprint, but it stubbornly strives to roll back in, “Mind grabbing something for me to-?”

“Oh, sure,” Tommy jumps from his place and mindlessly grabs the closest objects he can find: a lamp, the Axe of Piece, a cereal bowl and one of his shoes, stained with dirt and what looks suspiciously like remnants of a zombie. Sam eyes the last item with a particular horror, and it is almost painful to watch Tommy pinning the corner of the blueprint with it.

“...Okay.” It is the only thing he says.

Tommy wheezes, “It works, doesn’t it?”

He then grabs a couple of pillows from the bed and throws one of them at Sam. He catches it mid-flight and settles it temporarily on his knees. Tommy drops himself on the floor next to him, leaning his own pillow next to the wall to use as a backrest.

“So, there is one thing that we are currently missing on the SMP,” Sam says.

“More women?”

“A bank.”

“A bank?” Tommy leans forward, frowning. “Why would we need a bank of all things?”

Sam raises a finger, “Here me out. There is not much trade around the server, no exchange of goods. Imagine if people could translate their diamonds and gold and iron for cash and then use it to pay for things and services, mine included. The farms make so much excess products it would be a waste not to make profit from them.”

Tommy nods to the last statement – Sam still remembers how impressed he was by the mechanisms in his base when he first visited all those months ago, during the Pogtopia and Manburg war. A few more recent farms, including the wool farm, had been constructed largely with the boy’s help.

“Everyone just steels each other’s stuff though,” Tommy interrupts, “I doubt anyone would bother going to the bank when they just can snatch the resources from their neighbor's chests.”

Sam cringes internally from the thought that yes, it makes a lot of sense for the boy to think like that. He doesn’t judge Tommy for that in the slightest nor he wants to put the blame on anyone specific.

“But it doesn’t always need to be like this, does it? Stealing is risky, the conflicts rise, besides, one can’t always find everything they need from other’s chests, so the bank will be useful either way.”

Tommy seems to fall into deep thought for a minute. There is something flashing behind his eyes, “So, no brawls and conflicts from stealing would arise anymore and you would also become crazy rich?”

“We would become crazy rich, “Sam corrects. “You are my business partner by default.”

Tommy snorted, gesturing to him with the mug, “Don’t make yourself regret that. I am going to rob your bank.”

“You don’t need to rob a bank if you own it.”

There is a short silence.

“...but can I?”

Sam chuckles, “I guess I could let you do that. A couple of times, maybe.”

Tommy’s face brightens. Sam thinks that he probably could afford the bank getting robbed daily if it made the boy happy.

“We need to build it first, though,” he notes, “Can I count you in?”

“Absolutely,” Tommy grins.

They shake their hands just for the proper atmosphere. Next half an hour is spent by Sam describing the general plan on the building, breaking down the complicated structure plans and the redstone schemes, and Tommy listening to him surprisingly carefully. They argue a bit on the type of wood to be used – the boy insists on oak, Sam likes the spruce more – until finally compromising on the dark oak.

“We will start flattening the construction site tomorrow, then,” Sam says, scribbling in a notebook, “and, hopefully, we will finish the foundations by the end of the week.”

In the corner of his eyes, Tommy is barely holding himself awake: his eyelids fall, and he forces them open again half-way through and he digs his nails into his palm when he thinks Sam’s not looking.

The builder signs quietly and puts the notebook away, “How bad are they?”

Tommy looks at him through the veil of drowsiness, yawning, “What do you mean?”

“Your nightmares. I know it's something serious from the way you avoid them, but is it worth to exhaust yourself like that?”

“’m fine,” Tommy automatically protests, but then the empty mug in his hand slips from his fingers and falls with a thud, luckily staying in one piece. He looks simultaneously more awake and more tired as he lets out a hopeless sign.

“It’s nothing you can help me with, Sam.”

Tommy doesn’t explain further, and Sam feels like he is not supposed to pry. The boy curls up on himself and attempts to hide his face as if regretting telling him anything in the first place. Sam then takes the biggest risk he had from the start of the conversation - leans forward and braces Tommy into a hug. The boy stiffens for a moment and, to his great relief, returns it back.

“I appreciate it, really,” Sam hears Tommy’s weak voice and he feels the boy’s cheek on his shoulder, “but I genuinely don’t think there is anything you can do.”

“How about I work here today while you sleep?” Sam suggests, “If I notice you having a nightmare, I will wake you up immediately.”

Tommy pushes away and stares at him wide-eyed.

“But... Don’t you need to sleep yourself?” he asks. There is hope in his voice and if Sam had any doubts whether Tommy likes the suggestion, he certainly doesn’t have any now.

“As I said, I was going to work either way. Tomorrow is my off-prison day, remember?”

Tommy glances at the calendar on the wall and nods, “Yeah... Forgot about that.”

“I can grab a mattress and sleep on the floor if you want me to stay with you for the night.”

A hesitant smile makes its way on Tommy’s face.

“Yeah. I think I would like that.”