Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.”

— Vincent van Gogh

***

Nebula — Tommy hears it once in class, the word tossed carelessly from the mouth of a girl in the front row with pink cheeks and a too-bright astronaut costume, rattling off stars and planets as if wonder were cheap. He hates the way she says it, all flat and schoolroom proud, reducing the cosmos to a chart on the wall.

But the word lodges itself in him like a splinter.

Nebula.

A vast cloud of dust and gas, yes — but say it again, softer, like a prayer: nebula. The cradle and the grave of stars. A cosmic wound that blooms with light. A pyre for old suns and a womb for the new. Phoenixes in fucked-up cosmic form, born in the same breath they burn.

They call them star nurseries, as if the universe has any tenderness at all. As if humanity can imagine gentleness better for hydrogen and helium than for each other.

Nebula — no oil painting can capture it. No cathedral can hold it. A thing too large for words but small enough to live in the mind of a boy in a superhero costume, scuffed knees and raw palms, six and reckless enough to believe flight is just a choice away.

He thinks — neurons flashing and buzzing so brightly they might as well be stars, they might as well be constellations, fathomed — I am Tommy, but I am meant to be Nebula.

And so, he is — a riot of destruction and creation, a boy on fire with the promise of stars, born from ruin, burning to make light of it all.

Nebula — he chooses the name himself. He writes it over and over until the letters carve ruts in his mind, until his hand knows them better than his own pulse — until it would take a cataclysm, a planet-shattering catastrophe, to erase it from him. It is his. The one thing they have not stripped away.

But no one asks what it means.

No one leans in, gentle-eyed, to wonder why he chose it, to coax the story from between his teeth.

No hero ever did.

Even though he practiced the words in front of a mirror cracked like old ice, rehearsing the explanation as if it were holy scripture — preparing to speak about how it wasn’t just pretty, wasn’t just space, wasn’t some careless aesthetic draped around him like a cheap costume. He tried to make it make sense, to hold out the meaning in trembling palms so they might see.

A nebula, he wanted to say, is where stars are born. It’s the promise that collapse is not the end, that destruction can carry seeds of brilliance. It’s proof that something beautiful can come from breaking.

But they didn’t care.

Humanity rarely does. It carries its lists of needs like commandments etched in stone: a fighter. A hunter. A weapon. Anything that cannot serve those purposes is unnecessary, unworthy, unneeded. Not even worth the brief entertainment of a question.

They wanted someone who could cut villains down where they stood with surgical precision and flash a flawless smile for the billboards that rose like monoliths of worship over the city. Someone who fit neatly into a headline. Someone who obeyed like a dog that didn’t even need a leash. Not a boy with the cosmos ringing in his chest like a bell full of longing, tolling for all he could be. Not someone who hesitated.

Even though, Tommy fears, that’s all he can be. He hears the word in school, remembers it hooking into his ribs. A nursery for stars. A grave for stars. A place of violent, holy birth. That’s what he wanted to be. What he decided to be.

Because his mother used to cup his face in her hands and say: You were made from and for the stars, darling. Sometimes I fear you’ll float away to them, leave us behind.

Because his father would cradle him on his lap, press his big rough palm to Tommy’s thin chest, and tell him: You’ve got them in your bones, my son. Stardust. You’ll make light wherever you go. Don’t let them put it out.

Because they were the only ones who seemed to care how small he was, how young, a baby star — theirs. The only ones who tried to keep him from burning too hot, too fast. Tried to keep him from going out like a match struck too hard.

No one else has, not since they’ve died.

Not since the day Dream draped that heavy arm around his shoulders, all false warmth and oil-slick charm, leaning in to rasp Star power, eh? in a voice that slithered into the marrow of Tommy’s bones, has he felt anything but hollow. Dream’s eyes had been cold as moons, reflecting the grief in Tommy’s own — grief so cavernous it devoured every constellation his mother once claimed she could see swimming in his gaze. We need a star, Dream breathed against his ear, the words heavy as shackles.

Tommy knows — oh, he knows — how stars are truly born. It's the first page of his most treasured book, the spine cracked from love, the pages soft as worn linen. He can still see his mother and father beaming over the cake candles of his seventh birthday, pressing the book into his eager hands and murmuring, Here, love. Now you can learn how you were made.

Stars are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. Gravity draws them inward, a slow, inexorable embrace. The center grows hot — unbearably so — until, at last, the heat cannot be contained. Nuclear fusion ignites. And a star is born.

It was beautiful. It was kind. It was his.

But Dream has his own creation myth. One carved from pain. From fists driving into ribs already tender and blooming with yesterday’s bruises. From the metallic tang of blood pooled behind his teeth like communion wine. From cameras that flash like hungry teeth, demanding smiles that show nothing of the wreckage within. From cold city streets that swallow you whole, so that you disappear even as millions watch you burn.

Training, they call it. As if he is being honed to brilliance, to something worthy of awe.

Tommy knows the truth. He knows the word in his heart:

Breaking.

And some nights — those endless, gasping nights when his breath hitches in his ruined throat, when his body aches with memories it cannot forget — he wants to die.

Wants to crash, spectacular and final, into the dirt and vanish into molecules. Wants to stop holding his breath, stop clenching his fists, stop being useful. He wants to go home. And there’s no home left except the universe itself, what his parents became. The stardust they are now.

He wants to be part of that.

Because his father once swung him around beneath a sky so bright with stars it hurt to look at it, and said: The universe was made of love, lovely. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

But here, on the ground, all Tommy can taste is blood. All he feels is the dirt beneath him, cold and greedy. And it doesn’t want him the way the stars do. Not yet.

Not until he burns out.

He’s still burning. A low, guttering flame, choked on fumes and desperation, fed by half a stale sandwich and a stomach full of Red Bull. He sags into the threadbare couch like it’s a confession booth, eyes bleary as the TV flickers — blotchy watercolors of heroes and villains bleeding into one another, their outlines melting and reforming, righteous and damned by turns. He wonders, with a grim amusement twisted into nausea, why they haven’t shown Dream’s face yet.

And then — of course — the communicator chirps.

Speak of the devil, and the devil arrives in shining brass and neon.

He stares at it. The thing sits heavy in his palm, deceptively innocent — a perfect circle, cool metal of cheap gold glinting in the TV’s light, numbers ghosting neon blue like electric veins. He wants to break it — already woud’ve — if it weren’t for the fact that Tubbo made it for him with so much care he’d screamed. He still polishes it obssesively, fingers smoothing its face until he can his own broken reflection.

He wishes he could smash Dream’s face on it — watch the glass web and crack and collapse in a rain of diamonds. He’d have done it years ago, if it would’ve killed Dream. He probably would’ve sobbed while he did it. Because hating Dream is the only constant left to him besides this longing for death.

He forces himself to pick it up. The metal bites his fingers.

“Insomnia,” he croaks, the word tasting like bile, even though he wants to spit his actual name the way Dream says his — like honey laced with razors.

“Good evening,” Dream says.

It is not evening. It is deep night, the hour when even the city holds its breath, when the shops are shuttered, when Tommy’s favorite pizza place is dark behind its smeared glass. But politeness is a paycheck.

“Tommy,” Dream purrs, rolling the name around his mouth like a cat with a mouse. “I need you on patrol.”

He looks at the costume draped over the chair, accusing and inevitable. He really should stop leaving it there, but he almost wants someone to see it. To see him. To call him out. To stop him.

“Isn’t it 404’s shift?” He keeps his voice light, detached, even as dread pools cold and viscous in his gut.

“It was,” Dream says, voice gleaming with false delight. “But now it’s yours. Isn’t that wonderful? You get a chance to shine. To be a star.”

Dream’s voice drops, turns leaden with threat:

“And tell Tubbo to pick up his communicator. I’d hate to put him in the box.”

Tommy says nothing. Words would break in his throat anyway.

Dream doesn’t wait. He never does. The line goes dead with a cheerful beep, and a theatrical, mocking “Toodaloo!”— like he’s a pantomime villain.

It would be funny. If it weren’t so real. If it weren’t so monstrous that this man can snuff out Tommy’s world with a whim, can decide if he eats, if he has a bed to sleep in, if Tubbo and Ranboo stay safe.

Tommy is still burning. The last of himself curling up like paper in the flames. He aches to collapse, to crumple into nothing, to die and be done with it. Maybe then, he thinks bitterly, he’d finally be the star they want him to be.

But, for now, he is still burning — still burning with spite and rage and a hunger that thrums beneath his skin — so he wears the costume and leaves.

He does not come back.

They drag him in bound and bleeding, a ragdoll in torn armor, mask cracked down one side like a broken moon. The room is cavernous, cold, lit only by the sterile glow of overhead lamps that make the blood on his suit look black.

He’s stopped fighting. Oh, he tried at first. When the Syndicate grabbed him, ambushed the patrol, took the civilian he was supposed to protect — he clawed and bit and burned so hot he thought he’d eat himself alive from the inside. But there’s only so much even a star can burn before it gutters out.

Now he’s all ash and ruin, head lolling on his chest as they toss him to the ground. He stares at the concrete, thinking how beautiful it might be to die. To be unmade, scattered into dust finer than nebula clouds, all the angry hydrogen in him finally given up to the birth of something new. To go the way of every star he’s ever studied.

I want to go home, he thinks, but home is dead. Current home is a shitty one-room apartment with peeling paint, where he can’t even make rent because Dream’s docked his pay again. Home is cold microwave meals and the stink of disinfectant he uses to scrub out bloodstains. He hates that place. He hates that there’s nothing else left. He’d rather go anywhere — the void between galaxies would be kinder.

The Syndicate’s henchmen circle him ike carrion birds. Laughing. Mocking. He resists the urge to remind them about all the times he’s shattered them, whilst shattering. It is pointless now, anyway.

“Look at this fucker,” one drawls. “What’d the newspapers call you, again? The Great Nebula, huh? Spitfire my ass. You’re pathetic.”

“That billboard on 15th Cross. What’d it say? ‘Star power’ — was that the slogan?” someone snickers. “What is it now? Black hole, ‘cause you suck so hard?”

“Careful,” says another, voice oily with glee. “Don’t make him cry. Don’t want him short-circuiting whatever cosmic bullshit he’s got going on.”

Ozymandias stands at the front of them all, cold and regal. He’d recited poetry at Tommy’s first patrol, all theatrical grandeur: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. And Tommy, too green to know better, had laughed at it. Now the man uses that same rolling voice, slow and cruel, to pry him open.

“Come now, Nebula,” he says, tasting the name like poison. “You’re going to tell us everything. We can do this the hard way, or the harder way.”

Tommy shudders. His powers crackle weakly, a dying star’s last gasp. The room smells of ozone and iron. He feels sick.

Ozymandias smiles. “Attaboy. Let it out. Don’t hold back on our account.”

They get what they want from him. He’s too tired to hold it in. Too tired to fight. They want codes, patrol routes, Dream’s half-assed plans. He spits them up like blood.

At last Ozymandias sighs, dusting his gloves. “Well. I suppose that’s it.” He nods to his lieutenants. “Kill him. Make it messy.”

Tommy’s mouth works soundlessly at first. Then he rasps, voice wet and ragged, powers bleeding from him in flickers of starlight.

“Any last words?”

There are multiple — fuck you, I hate you, please kill me. But Ozymandias’ power still holds tight over him, coiling like serpents and sinking their fangs. He is weak to their power. He lifts his head with effort, eyes glassy, glow guttering in the depths of them like a dying sun.

He breathes once. Twice. Then says, voice raw and cracked and holy with ruin: “I hope the universe loves you more than you ever deserved.”

Silence. Not the gentle hush of snow, nor the reverent quiet of prayer — but a silence thick and suffocating, like wet velvet pressed against the mouth, smothering breath and thought alike. It hangs heavy in the air, oppressive, bruising. It is the silence before the fall, the silence of something sacred dying.

And then — it ruptures.

Laughter, or something fouler masquerading as it: a ragged, serrated sound torn from the throat like meat from bone. Not mirth but a mockery of it, something out of a storybook’s worst villain, dripping malice, giddy with cruelty. It bubbles up loud and unrepentant, unable even to pretend at restraint, as if it has no clue how it to be anything else.

Ozymandias cocks his head to one side, the way a vulture might examine fresh roadkill, eyes glittering with cold delight. His voice is soft, almost gleeful. “Well,” he all but croons, tasting the word like something sweet on his tongue. “Now we have to see the face behind that poetry. Don’t you think? Our little spitfire. Our worthless, broken starboy. It’s only fair.”

Somewhere behind the veil of torchlight and shadow, The Blood God answers, voice as grave and final as the toll of a funeral bell. “Debt for debt.” It should be absurd, him lurking in the dark — he is not made for it, not a creature of subtlety — but perhaps Tommy’s lost the thread of sense entirely. Perhaps this is madness at last, come to claim him.

“Yes,” Ozymandias whispers, savoring it. “Only fair. Balancing the universe.”

Tommy wants to laugh, and it nearly chokes him. You don’t know anything about balance, he thinks viciously, the words curdling in his mouth before they can escape. You know nothing of the universe and its impossible grace. The way it expands and births galaxies in its dying throes, the way it holds itself in fragile, breathtaking equilibrium. You know nothing. Nothing at all. But he does not say it. He is too tired, too spent. When has it ever mattered, truth flung at deaf ears?

The hands come for him — rough, unkind, fingers digging like claws into the ruined edges of his mask. He does not fight. Why would he? There’s nothing left worth defending. Nothing but this last shroud to hide his shame, and even that is a mercy they will not allow. Let them see the last thing he has to lose.

The mask comes away with a harsh scrape of cracked ceramic, striking the stone floor with a clatter that ricochets in the hush, impossibly loud. Final.

He lifts his head.

And silence reigns anew — but now it is a stunned, appalled thing, sharp as broken glass underfoot.

There is nothing there to inspire dread. No monster forged in fire and vengeance. No grim, iron-clad hero honed to kill. Just a boy. Only a boy. Small, thin to the point of cruelty, golden hair matted and dull with sweat and grime, cheeks hollowed by exhaustion and hunger. Blood crusts in his lashes like some obscene parody of tears.

He blinks up at them, slow and dazed, eyes wide and unguarded, reflecting the torchlight like the eyes of an animal caught in a snare. His chest flutters with unsteady breaths, frantic and fragile — a bird caught in a fist, beating its broken wings inside the cage of his ribs.

His mouth opens, cracked lips parting as if to speak, to curse them, to beg, to confess something unbearable. But nothing emerges.

There is nothing left to say.

The Syndicate stares.

Someone inhales too sharply.

And Ozymandias — who had mocked him, who had promised him pain — turns slowly, deliberately, to face his crew. His voice is soft, lethal.

“If I hear one of you so much as breathe wrong at him, I’ll carve your tongue out and feed it to you. He’s a child. Do you understand me?”

Another henchman, shaking, dares a whisper. “Boss — he — he stole —”

Ozymandias doesn’t even look at him as he draws his blade. “Say one more word about what he’s done. I dare you.”

And Tommy, small and shaking on the floor, just closes his eyes. Imagines the universe beyond the ceiling. A billion stars being born and dying, cradled in dust.

He was supposed to be one of them.

Maybe he still will be.

Tommy has never felt so ruinously, humiliatingly exposed. It’s as if the world has been peeled open along with him, skin stripped raw to reveal the soft and twitching meat beneath. Every second stretches unbearably, the silence hanging heavy and oppressive after Ozymandias’s declaration. He feels flayed by it, laid out for the gods to see: every trembling breath a confession, every flutter of his pulse an admission of fear — of confusion.

He is bare-faced. Open. His chest jerks and stutters, catching on broken little inhalations that sound like sobs even though he’s trying not to. His eyes are glassy with pain and something worse — shame. When Ozymandias shifts, Tommy flinches hard enough to rattle his teeth, like an animal expecting the killing blow.

But the man only lowers himself to one knee with excruciating slowness, a parody of supplication that makes Tommy want to scream. His gloved hands hover in the space between them — strangely hesitant now, trembling at the edges.

“Don’t—” Tommy rasps, voice shredding in his throat like cloth on barbed wire. He tries to shove at him, weak and unsteady, wrists so pathetically thin they might snap with a child’s careless tug. “Just — finish it. Please. I don’t — just —

But Ozymandias doesn’t even acknowledge the plea. He moves with a terrible patience, peeling the gloves off finger by finger and discarding them, his eyes fixed unblinking on Tommy’s battered face. His bare fingers, so stained with other people’s blood, touch Tommy’s cheek with feather-light caution, as though he’s terrified of breaking what little is left of him.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathes, and it’s no longer the voice of a conqueror, but something ragged and human and horrified, cracking like old marble under weight. “How old are you.”

Tommy tries to sneer, because he’s Nebula, and he’s supposed to be mouthy even when he’s bleeding out. But it’s a ruin of a sneer, cracked lips wet with blood. He tastes iron.

“Old enough,” he wheezes, breath hitching, “to kick your —”

But he can’t finish. He’s too far gone. His eyes flutter back, lashes clumping with sweat and tears, body shivering violently just from the effort of staying awake.

That’s when the Blood God moves. He’s been hovering behind them like some vast, murderous storm cloud, his red eyes burning coals in the dim. Now he steps forward, huge and monstrous and shaking with fury barely held in check. He crashes down to one knee so hard the ground seems to quake, voice rumbling like an earthquake muffled in gravel and something worse — panic.

“He’s a runt, Ozymandias,” he snarls, but there’s no triumph in it. Only horror. His massive hand gestures, helpless. “Look at him.”

“I am looking.” The words crack out of Ozymandias like a death rattle, he sounds liek those creepy, pale waxy dolls in horror movies. He exhales so hard it sounds like being punched in the gut. His hand cups Tommy’s jaw too firmly now, trying to keep him there, alive, present. “How old,” he repeats, shaking him gently. His voice cracks. “Tell me, starboy. Say it.”

Tommy’s lips work uselessly, trembling, and the word comes out in a breaking, childish whimper. “F-fif—fifteen.”

The Blood God chokes. He makes a sound no living thing should make, rearing back and actually turning away to snarl curses at the ground, as if the floorboards could answer for this sin.

“FIFTEEN,” he roars, voice ragged with disbelief and something that sounds suspiciously like grief. “He’s FIFTEEN — Ozymandias, he’s fifteen —”

Ozymandias’s fingers dig into Tommy’s shoulder, hard enough to leave bruises but for once, not intentionally, grounding himself as much as the boy. His eyes are wide and shining with something like sick horror.

“Fuck,” he spits, voice cracking on it. “Fuck. Okay. Okay. It’s fine. We’re not —” He can’t even finish.

The Blood God moves then, fast for something so huge, gathering Tommy’s limp body up with ridiculous care. He practically scoops him like a child with a broken doll, pressing that battered frame to his own massive chest. One giant hand cups the back of Tommy’s skull so delicately it’s absurd.

“No one’s killing him,” he growls, voice shaking like a thundercloud about to break. “Don’t even think it.”

Tommy sags against him, too bewildered to fight, too weak to understand. His head lolls on that broad, armored shoulder, the world swimming in and out of focus.

“Wha’,” he slurs, blinking up at the Blood God’s harsh, contorted face. “You were — s’posed — you were gonna kill me.”

The Blood God makes a strangled, inhuman noise. “Shut up,” he orders, voice breaking, thick with something awful and protective and raw. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it, little star. Never again.”

Ozymandias staggers upright, breathing hard, snapping out orders like gunfire to his men, voice fraying at the edges.

“Pack it up,” he snarls. “We’re done. We’re leaving. Now.”

“Boss —” one of the henchmen tries, voice wary, but he never even finishes.

“Do I need to repeat myself for your rotting ears?” Ozymandias doesn’t turn around. He’s staring at Tommy like he’s some kind of ruin he can’t look away from. His voice drops to something murderous and shaking. “If any of you even think about what we planned to do, I’ll gut you myself. He’s a child. Do you hear me? A child.”

And the Blood God just nods once, curt and final, before hefting Tommy higher in his arms as though he weighs nothing, as though he’s the most precious thing in the world. He moves with agonizing gentleness, every step chosen to keep from jostling the boy, as though Tommy is made of glass on the verge of shattering.

“Hold on tight,” the Blood God murmurs, voice dropping to something unbearably gentle. “Gonna be bumpy.”

And then they’re leaping, bursting from the warehouse window into the night. The city sprawls out beneath them, rooftops silvered with moonlight, sky vast and wild above them. Stars everywhere. Burning. Watching.

Tommy stirs against the Blood God’s chest, barely conscious, eyelids fluttering like moth wings. The wind claws at him, biting through the thin fabric clinging to his skin, and his ribs scream with every jolt and shift. But still, his gaze tilts upward, squinting — past the blur of rooftops, past the cold, and into the vastness beyond. And it is beautiful. It is the kind of beauty that feels like a betrayal. An impossible tarp of black and ink-blue and silver and every pinprick of light from distant suns. A nebula stretched wide and alive. Infinite. Indifferent.

They land hard. A grunt from the Blood God, a skidding thud on gravel, boots hitting the rooftop with the impact of falling gods. The second figure touches down beside them, coat flaring around him like a storm made flesh. Ozymandias.

He turns, crouching low, eyes flaring gold in the moonlight as they scan the boy wrapped in the Blood God’s arms. His jaw clenches.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Look at him.” His voice cracks around the edges. “All bruises and small bones and freckles—” Tommy scowls at him. He lets out something that could’ve been a laugh if it weren’t so full of grief. “—and fucking attitude. Like a goddamn baby phoenix that forgot how to fly.”

Tommy tries to scoff, but it catches, splinters into something closer to a whimper, his throat dry and torn, lips cracked and trembling.

“Your metaphors get worse with each growing day,” The Blood God adjusts his grip, pulling the boy in tighter, as if the mere act of holding him could stitch the brokenness back together. “You’re okay,” he says, turning back to Tommy, voice low and velvet and desperate. “We’ve got you now. Look at me, little star. Look at me.”

Tommy’s voice is a paper-thin rasp. “’M not a star.”

“Wrong,” Ozymandias huffs, crouching down until their eyes meet. The wind tousles his hair, his coat flaring behind him like a monarch’s robe, his expression carved from something older than grief. “You’re nothing but starlight. That’s the whole fucking problem, kid. Burning too bright, too long. Thought you had to do it alone.”

“I — I don’t —” Tommy’s lips tremble. His brow creases. The pain is catching up to him now, soaking through the adrenaline, deeper than the marrow.

“Shhh,” the Blood God interrupts. He’s stroking Tommy’s hair now, actually stroking it, fingers carding gently through the blood-matted strands. “You don’t have to think right now. You don’t have to be anything but here. Just stay awake, yeah? Just stay with me.”

Tommy’s voice breaks on the next breath. “I wanna go home,” he murmurs, the syllables sharp and fragile, his glass heart shattering into pieces, yet again.

The Blood God stills.

“Where is home?” he asks, though there’s no urgency in the question — just something slow and aching and impossibly gentle.

Tommy swallows, but there’s nothing left to say. His eyes close for a second too long. His next words fall out like dying embers. “I don’t know.” And then he sobs. The sound of it catching in his throat like a bird trying to fly from between his ribs.

Ozymandias closes his eyes. His jaw tightens.

Ozymandias presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, jaw clenched. His shoulders shake once.

“That’s okay,” he breathes. “That’s okay, starlight. We’ll find it. We’ll make it. You don’t have to know right now. Just — please — don’t go dark on us. Not yet. Fuck, please, don’t — don’t you dare.”

They start moving again. Rooftop to rooftop, through the freezing night air. The Blood God’s massive frame shields Tommy from the wind, and Ozymandias leads them, eyes cutting through the dark with predatory vigilance.

Every time Tommy whimpers, they shush him gently.

Every time he slumps too far, they jolt him awake with soft curses.

They keep looking at him like they can’t believe what they’re holding. Like he’s a miracle they can’t believe is still breathing. Like they’re terrified he won’t be, if they blink.

Like they’re scared to let go.

And above them the stars burn, ancient and watchful, cradling the city in a cosmic hush, as if the universe itself is listening to this small, broken boy being carried home, or at the very least — maybe, just maybe — the beginnings of it.

He falls asleep at some point — he doesn’t know when or how, just that he did — he wakes slowly, like a star coming back from collapse, like the universe itself is pulling him upright one atom at a time.

His breath is ragged at first, hitching in the dark, chest tight with the memory of pain — but when he really inhales it’s not blood or iron or the rot of the city sewers he’s been forced to crawl through. It’s softness. It’s something warm and human. He blinks, confused, lashes fluttering against his cheek.

He’s lying on sheets so soft they feel obscene, like molten velvet, like the clouds in a painting he’s never dared to touch. The mattress swallows him like a crater, holding him in a gravity well of safety he doesn’t understand. His ribs don’t scream when he shifts — they twinge, sure, but in that polite, well-behaved way pain has after it’s been seen to.

He groans, tries to sit up, and freezes because he’s wearing something. Something that isn’t torn tactical gear or bloody T-shirts. A sweater. Rich red like the heart of a dying giant star, deep and sumptuous as old wine, so soft he wants to weep. Cashmere? Velvet? Something even softer, impossibly so, as if they skinned clouds for it. Gold thread glints in embroidery along the cuffs and hem in swirling, baroque lines like constellations given physical form.

He pulls it up with trembling fingers and stares.

Bandages. Neat. Clean. White as new stars. Peeking between them, skin pale but unbroken. Thin silver scars curling like crescent moons, but fading even as he watches.

He runs a hand over his stomach and hisses, but there’s no real pain. Just a memory of it, like heat from a long-dead fire.

His hair falls in his eyes.

He frowns, grabs a strand. It’s clean. Silky. It smells like something gentle, something green and herbal and soapy and real. He rubs it between thumb and forefinger and makes a wet, confused sound in his throat.

He sniffs at himself like an animal and then pauses, startled. He doesn’t smell like blood or sweat or sticky tiredness, he smells nice — human. He feels fifteen, fifteen and fifty shades of soft. Like someone took him apart piece by piece and rebuilt him with tender, furious care.

He turns his head slowly, the universe groaning on its axis with how hard this is to process.

And there — on the other side of this ridiculously big, god knows where room — is a pile of stuff.

His stuff.

He stares at it.

Henry the Cow is there, floppy and tragic, one ear stitched up with bright red thread like a surgical scar.

Blue Sheepy — named with all the creativity of a child who once thought etymology was too big for him to deserve — is perched on a pillow, tiny black eyes glittering with mute, endless judgement.

A new bee plush has appeared beside them. Plump. Cheerful. Striped in the rich ochre of old library pages. Someone has looped a small tag around its neck that just says Property of Nebula in looping calligraphy.

He drags himself closer with a grunt. Fingers outstretched, shaking.

There’s a sheaf of paper resting beside the bed. Heavy, thick-cut, expensive stock — the kind you'd never waste on nonsense unless you meant every syllable with your whole chest. On the front, in a whirl of looping, swooping letters that unfurl like ivy — For You, Nebula — the same handwriting, he notes, that had been scrawled into the tag of the bee.

Tommy blinks. His eyes sting. His heart, until now a skittering, frantic thing in his ribs, starts to slow. He’d know that spidery script anywhere — stubborn, unmistakable, like the person it belongs to. Tubbo. Of course.

He opens the first page.

For the record, it begins, in big blocky letters and a frowny face, you absolute insufferable, self-immolating, reckless, star-born dickhead, you’re NOT allowed to die. Not until we say so, and we’ll never say so.

Tommy stares at the words. Then, slowly, quietly, he sets the letter down, and a smile ghosts over his face — soft, private, one no one else will see. It nestles somewhere warm in his chest, in that tender place Tubbo always managed to reach. Because Tubbo — who distrusted anything on paper, who once set a twenty-pound note on fire just to make a point — had taken the time to write this for him.

For him.

He lifts the letter again.

Fuck Dream, the letter continues, fuck your boss — yes, I know they’re the same people, I wanted to say FUCK YOU to him twice — fuck your paychecks. We were supposed to break this to you gently, you dickhead, but since your suicidal ass nearly got killed, we might as well break it open now. Ranboo is a spy for the syndicate, we were supposed to intigrate you ourselves.

Tommy blinks. Once. Twice. Rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand to make sure the words aren’t dancing away, and then — despite the way his ribs protest, despite the way everything hurts — he wheezes. A cracked, pathetic noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob and a gasp. The sound of something trying to claw its way out of his chest. He can't stop it.

Ranboo. Ranboo, with his scarecrow limbs and hunched goblin posture, who would stand perfectly still for six hours unless told otherwise — a spy. For the Syndicate. The sheer absurdity of it sends pride blooming through his chest like a sunflare, mingling with joy, with disbelief, with exhausted, breathless laughter. Of course he was. Of course.

To make sure we’re clear, we do not work for the Syndicate. They work for us. Don’t get kidnapped again — unless you want to see us go from “neutral” to “actively murderous.” We’re very good at murder. Be polite and don’t die. Don’t make us prove it.

Tommy rolls his eyes, the movement fond and aching all at once. He can practically hear Tubbo’s voice in his skull, ringing sharp as a thrown wrench. If Tubbo were here, they’d be forehead-to-forehead by now, Tommy’s brain still rattling from the force of it. He glances around the room, paranoid — then sighs in relief.

No Tubbo in sight. Thank the stars.

There’s another note, neatly written beneath the first — smaller, straighter, a little too careful. Ranboo’s handwriting.

PS: The bee is for emotional support. We will know if you don't use it.

In the margins, tiny cartoons blossom like flowers in the white space. Ranboo’s doing. A tiny, furious Tommy with enormous angry eyes and a star sparking over his head like a migraine. Ozymandias, exaggerated into some Saturday morning cartoon villain with a bomb strapped to the Hero Association. The Blood God rendered as a giant red bear cradling plushies like precious loot. And Dream — Dream, drawn as a literal worm in his suit ★YOU SUCK★ written over it in glittery letters.

Tommy stares at it until his eyes burn.

He reaches for Henry. Clutches the cow to his chest like it’s the last atom of oxygen in a suffocating void.

He shakes.

He’s too tired to cry.

But he can shake.

He buries his face in the plush fur and breathes like it’s the first time he’s ever filled his lungs properly.

Absentmindedly, some instinct stirs beneath the skin — not a thought, not quite — more a twitch in the marrow, some muscle memory shaped by flickering VR simulations and cheap, stuttering training tapes that pretended to teach survival. It tells him he could run. That he should.

There’s a window, wide and waiting, glass smudged with the ghosts of other fingers, other chances. There’s no one guarding him. The door hangs ever so slightly ajar, humming with invitation. He could leave. Tommy knows how to vanish when he needs to. Light-footed, thin as a shadow, a breath in motion. It would be easy.

But —

Beyond that window is only black, and cold, and endless. A starless kind of night. A silence that would swallow him whole.

And inside — inside, the room holds its own gentle gravity. It is warm, inexplicably so. The air smells faintly of something human: fabric softener and dust, a cup left half-drunk on a nearby table. The walls don't reach for him, but they don’t push him out either. There is a light on.

The choice is easy, then.

Inside this room, a tiny supernova curls in on himself and tries to remember how to shine without consuming everything he loves.

Inside this room, for the first time in forever, the universe feels like it might be big enough to hold him without letting him burn out alone.

He’s still sitting there, blinking slow and stunned at the note crumpled in his hands, fingers ghosting over the loops of ink like they might rearrange themselves into his heart if he just touched gently enough. Around him, a graveyard of plushies rises like some stationed, ridiculous soliders — soft and sagging and safe, protecting him from whatever it is that seeks to hurt him. A place that, for once, forgets to echo back his loneliness.

And then the door slams open with the grace and subtlety of a goddamn meteor, and he jerks. Legs scrambling and arms flailing, nearly pitching off the mattress entirely. He clutches Henry like a drowning boy with a lifebuoy, shoving the plush bear’s dumb stitched smile into his mouth to muffle the sound clawing its way out of his throat. His heart is tap-dancing its way into arrhythmia.

And in the doorway —

It’s not him. Not the shadow-cloaked specter of Ozymandias that haunted monitors and whispered from rooftops, with his operatic diction and marble sneer, his eyes like ruins and voice like thunder cracking across history.

No. The man in the doorway is —

Well.

Dressed like a mortal. Sweatpants clinging to long legs, and an ancient band shirt so riddled with holes it looks like it’s been through a war, constellations of wear and tear across the fabric like galaxies collapsing. His hair is a glorious mess, strands spiraling like comets escaping orbit, and his face —

His face is bright. Open. Laughing. That too-big grin like sunrise unfurling across battlefield ruins, illuminating every broken thing in gold.

“Wilbur,” he says, and the name lands like honeyed light through stained glass, glowing and colored and too soft to be safe. There’s a cocky lilt to it, yes, but it’s swaddled in warmth so radiant it almost hurts. “That’s my name, you know. Wilbur. Don’t you dare make fun of it. We’re dropping the mask now, right? Figured you should meet the real deal. The full experience, y’know?”

Tommy can only stare at him, frozen, blood roaring like ocean waves in his ears. His tongue feels clumsy in his mouth as he mumbles, “Uh. Mine’s Tommy.” It’s more unfinished than he’d like, weak, a half-built bridge barely held up by nerves. It sounds more like a question than anything.

But Wilbur lights up — actually lights up — like some dorky sun-god who thinks the clouds part just to see him smile. How the fuck did Tommy think he was a fearsome villain. He makes this utterly undignified cooing noise and says, “Aww, you do look like a Tommy! I’m so glad, Techno thought your name was something pretentious, like Preston or something, and I was like, nahhh, Nebula’s cool, he’s got a cool name —”

And then he’s striding into the room like it’s a summer afternoon and nothing’s wrong with the world, arms overflowing with takeout menus — that seem to have appeared out of nowhere — their glossy pages fluttering and crinkling like autumn leaves caught in a breeze. He tosses them in a fan across the foot of the bed, some landing upside down, some sliding off entirely.

Wilbur leans in, close enough that Tommy could count the freckles dusted across Wilbur’s cheekbones if he wasn’t so busy panicking.

“Now,” Wilbur proclaims, with all the gravity of someone announcing a kingdom’s fate, “critical decision time. Italian or Chinese?”

Tommy opens his mouth.

Nothing comes out.

Wilbur’s grin softens into something real and crooked, like the moon with a bite taken out of it. He plucks Henry from Tommy’s death grip and sets him neatly on the pillow beside Blue Sheepy, then flicks Tommy’s forehead with maddening gentleness.

“C’mon, starlight,” he teases. “Gotta feed you. You’re barely bigger than your own attitude.”

Tommy finally sputters. “Wha—I—what the fuck is happening.”

Wilbur clutches his heart like he’s been shot. “Language! In front of Henry? And Blue Sheepy? And—” He picks up the bee plush reverently. “—whatever we’re naming this one. Don’t traumatize the children.”

Tommy drags a hand over his face, scrubbing at the tears he will deny until his dying breath. “You’re insane.”

Wilbur shrugs, dropping onto the edge of the bed like a languid cat. “Occupational hazard. So. Italian or Chinese. Answer carefully. Your fate depends on it.”

Tommy glares. “Chinese,” he mutters.

Wilbur beams, radiant as a supernova. “Excellent choice. Garlic noodles. Dumplings. Very soft. Very easy to chew. Good for children and the dentally impaired.”

“I hate you,” Tommy says without heat, his voice wobbling like an untuned violin.

Wilbur’s eyes crinkle, and for a second Tommy forgets to breathe. He’s never seen anyone look so…fond. Like the night sky smiling down on a lonely planet.

“Oh, I know,” Wilbur says airily. “But you’re stuck with me. Occupational hazard for you, I’m afraid.”

Tommy curls in on himself, sweater swallowing him whole, sleeves too long and plushies tumbling in all directions. He tucks his chin down, eyes flicking up warily.

Then, quietly, hoarse as old paper:

“...why haven’t you killed me yet.”

Wilbur goes very still.

The silence stretches. Expands. Blooms like a cold, dark nebula.

Finally, his voice drops. Quieter than the grave.

“Is that what you think this is?”

Tommy shrugs, but it’s pitiful, a shake of small shoulders drowning in fine red fabric. “Tubbo’s note was…vague. Thought maybe…this was. I dunno. Last mercy. Before you…”

He can’t finish. His voice cracks apart, fragile as old starlight.

Wilbur’s eyes go wide. Then horrified.

He actually recoils, hand to his mouth, like Tommy just sprouted knives.

“Oh my God,” he breathes. “Tommy. Tommy.” He sounds like he’s tasting blood. “You thought — you thought we’d clean you up and feed you before killing you?”

Tommy scowls, hugging Henry so tight the stitches creak. “I dunno. Villains. Dramatic. You are the asshole who read poetry at me whilst I bled.”

Wilbur makes a strangled, unholy noise and dives forward so fast Tommy squeaks. Hands on either side of his face, thumbs brushing the wet beneath his eyes with infuriating gentleness.

“Tommy,” he says, voice breaking like surf on rocks. “Sweet Christ, you baby. You cosmic miracle. We are not going to hurt you.”

Tommy shivers. “But you said — before —”

Wilbur closes his eyes, breathing hard. His fingers press a little tighter, grounding.

“We didn’t know,” he says. “We didn’t know you were this. You. Fifteen. A kid. Look at you. Look at your face.”

He shudders, opening his eyes again. They’re wet too.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispers.

Tommy’s lip wobbles. He tries to sneer. It’s a disaster. “You’re a dickhead.”

Wilbur actually laughs, breathless and cracked. “That’s the spirit.” He sits back enough to brush Tommy’s hair from his forehead, tucking it behind his ear like they’re in some tragic YA novel.

Tommy sniffles. “So. Not gonna kill me?”

Wilbur’s voice goes low. Serious. Cosmic.

“Tommy. If anyone tries to hurt you again,” he says, words molten iron, “I will burn this entire city to the ground and salt the earth. Do you understand me?”

Tommy makes a tiny sound.

Wilbur taps his nose, all dangerous fondness. “Now. Wipe your tears. We’re getting Chinese. You’re gonna eat until you pop. And then you’re gonna pass out on these ridiculous sheets while I sit in the corner and pretend I’m not the world’s biggest sap.”

Tommy glares. But it’s weak. So weak.

“Fine,” he grumbles.

“Good boy,” Wilbur says brightly, standing up. He snatches the menus back and waves them like a flag. “Now let’s decide on dessert. I’m thinking fried bananas. You’re too skinny. Stars need fuel.”

And for a moment — just one — Tommy lets himself lean back into the pillows, breathing slow and deep.

Lets himself be fifteen.

Lets himself be someone’s.

Because the universe is vast and cold, but here, in this stupid safehouse with his plushies and this maddening villain wiping his tears, it feels just a little bit smaller.

Just a little more kind.

Chapter Text

“The stars would be so proud to know that their atoms created someone like you.”

— Anonymous.

***

He is full.

It is such an alien sensation that it borders on vertigo, a kind of quiet madness he has no map for. For so long his stomach has been a graveyard of gnawing emptiness, a hollow space where hunger prowled like a feral animal with teeth of guilt, claws of spite, jaws of grief that never loosened. He has been nothing but hunger — starving and aching and brittle — and now, now there is food in him, warm and heavy and real. It’s such a foreign weight in his belly, that it feels a bit like pain, but the kind that is right, somehow.

It doesn’t make sense to him either, not really, but it’s the only language his mind can grasp—the only way he can explain it to himself, and later, inevitably, to Tubbo, who will demand a meticulous report with the zeal of someone far too addicted to late-night medical dramas. It feels like some long, wasting illness that has finally been driven back—not cured, not banished, but subdued for a while—yet the very medicine meant to heal leaves its own lingering ache behind, a soreness blooming deep in the marrow. Relief and pain braided together, indistinguishable, like a body learning how to live again after years of forgetting how.

On the table, the scatter of cardboard boxes lies in fragrant disarray, each one seeping its perfume into the air—garlic sharp and glistening, ginger warm as fire on the tongue, soy sauce thick and salty, steam curling upward in pale ribbons like incense rising from a shrine built not to gods, but to survival. A profane temple, yes, but one he has knelt at willingly, devout with chopsticks clumsy in hand, devout in the way a drowning man clings to rope.

Now he has slumped back, sinking into pillows far too soft, absurdly soft, so unlike the hardness he has known. They cradle him, swallow him whole, and his sleeves—those long, dangling sleeves—slip over his fingers and pool there like silken water. He plays with them idly, sluggishly, lids heavy as his body folds into the kind of weariness he has never allowed himself to wear openly. His eyes blur, glaze, tremble shut and open again, glassy with exhaustion that is almost decadent in its permission.

Wilbur sits close by, draped in his chair with one long leg hooked over the other, a figure carved from languid arrogance, yet softened now, kingly and unthreatening. He taps chopsticks against the armrest like a scepter against marble, his gaze more curious than commanding. Nearby, lower, on the ground itself, the Blood God rests. Technoblade, he calls himself, as if names are mountains that can be moved at will, though Tommy’s mind balks at it even now. He is colossal—back broad as a barricade, arms folded, face gentled in ways Tommy never would have believed possible, as soft as churned butter, pliant, unthreatening.

The two of them have been impossibly gentle. Gentle in the way one approaches a stray cat, starving and hissing, trying not to spook it. Their silence has not been heavy or expectant but alive, generous—breathing, blooming, stretching like the first universe unfurling itself into creation. He has eaten in peace, and they let him. They let him.

And then Wilbur speaks.

“Say, Toms.” His voice is low, velvet-rough, cutting softly into the quiet. The sound threads warmth into Tommy’s ribs, a heat he cannot name, cannot place, but feels anyway. “Can I ask you something?”

He blinks, dazed, struggling to keep himself tethered. “You’ve already asked all the League secrets,” he mutters, voice blurred, words drooping like a child woken too early from a dream. “M’haven’t got any more.” Petulance coats it, sharp in its smallness, but even that is weary.

Wilbur’s smile tilts, small and crooked, and it is carved out of sadness. His fingers set the chopsticks aside with the care of a man laying flowers on a grave, every motion deliberate, reverent.

“Not asking for that,” he murmurs, unbearably gentle, unbearably human. “I want to know something else.”

And Tommy, so used to battlefields disguised as conversations, stills in his soft nest of pillows. The world narrows until only Wilbur remains, until only the question is alive.

“How,” Wilbur says, voice like the hush of a confessional, like a psalm whispered in some ruined church, “did they allow you to become a hero?”

The words shatter something tender in him.

And Tommy goes still.

Technoblade stirs, leans forward, like a great beast roused, the way Tubbo leans in when the news blares top hero bloopers.

“Yeah, kid. Why?” A pause, a breath. “I mean, it’s definitely illegal. And I don’t think you have decent working hours. Did you lie about your age? Understandable, but — well, it’s unsafe and reckless—” he cuts himself off when Wilbur shoots him a look sharp as a blade (pun, not intended), and Techno mutters something under his breath, guilt flashing before he turns back, apologetic.

Tommy opens his mouth. Closes it. His throat works, dry. His fingers twist in Henry’s worn ear, desperate, like a rosary bead clutched in confession.

“I didn’t really…choose,” he whispers at last. His voice is cracked glass, thin, jagged.

Neither of them move. Instead, they tilt their heads — together, the same puzzled lean he’s so often done himself. The resemblance hurts. The familiarity is a knife. He nearly chokes on it.

Tommy licks his lips. Breathes like it costs him.

“It was this,” he says, and his eyes are too old for his face, eyes of someone who has already burned and been buried. “Or Pandora’s Box.”

Technoblade frowns, the crease deep, disbelieving. “What?”

Tommy laughs, a terrible, splintered sound, sharp edges cutting his throat. “Pandora’s Box — you know it. The worst prison in the world. Buried under rock and steel and secrets. No windows, no sky. You go in, you don’t come out. Ever.”

“We know what Pandora’s Box is, Toms,” Wilbur says, voice careful, gentle, like approaching a cliff edge. “But why—”

Tommy gulps, and then the words come, spilling thick and choking like black oil.

“Dream said…” His breath catches, his voice goes reedy. “He said there wasn’t gonna be an in-between. Not for me. Not with my powers. Either I’m their hero…” His hand trembles around Henry’s ear. “Or I’m a threat. And if I’m a threat, I go in the box. Forever.”

The snap of Technoblade’s chopsticks echoes like a bone breaking. It’s a gunshot crack in the quiet, a signal. Tommy flinches, but the flood won’t stop now. His own voice betrays him, small, vicious, unsteady as he quotes.

“‘It’s for your own good, Tommy,’” he rasps, Dream’s words knifing through his throat as though they were carved there. Tears sting, clump his lashes. “‘You’re dangerous. You lose control once, and we’ll have another supernova. Another crater. Another body count.’”

He gasps, sucking air into lungs that feel too tight.

“‘And then tell me, Tommy, how do you live with blood on your hands? How do you live with ashes on your conscience?’” His mimicry falters, breaks into a sob, but he pushes through. “‘So it’s simple. Be a hero. Be useful. Or rot in the dark.’”

He sucks in a breath, hitching.

“‘People could die, Tommy. You could kill people. It’s this or nothing.’”

Silence.

Crushing. Cosmic. The kind that presses the air out of lungs, the kind that feels like the end of the universe.

Wilbur’s eyes are black holes, vast and terrible, swallowing the room whole with their gravity. They are endless and lightless, hungry with a grief that is not even his to bear, yet he shoulders it all the same, as though he could take Tommy’s sorrow into himself and disappear beneath its weight.

Beside him, Technoblade growls low in his chest, the sound deep as mountains groaning, as tectonic plates grinding together in a collision that reshapes the world. His rage is a living thing, molten and primal, curling in his fists, pressing against his skin as if it wants to erupt and burn the world that made Tommy speak like this.

(It’s strange, really, having people that saw something bad in you, and now can only see the good. Usually, normally, it’s the other way around. He hopes it stays this way, greedy as it is.)

And Tommy — Tommy wipes his nose on his sleeve, sniffling, graceless, unashamed. He doesn’t even pretend to be embarrassed. He is past shame. Past pretending.

“I didn’t wanna be a hero,” he mumbles, and his voice fractures in the middle like a bone snapped clean through. “I wanted to be an astronaut. Or — fuck. A teacher. Or anything else.” His throat closes, but he pushes the words out anyway, broken shards cutting his mouth. “But Dream said it was this or the Box. Said I was too dangerous to be — to be normal. Too bright. Said people don’t like things that burn them.”

That seems to have made Wilbur finally find his voice. And when he does, it’s sharp and devastating in its softness.

“He told you that?”

Tommy sniffs, nods once, tiny, shuddering. His voice is a wilted whisper.

“He’s not wrong,” he admits, the words bleeding out of him with shame. “I—I can’t always control it. Sometimes I get too bright. Too hot. Like — like a star about to go nova.” His lips tremble. “And I don’t wanna hurt anyone. I don’t. But…”

But the sentence dies in his throat. The tears well and break, spilling down his cheeks unchecked, unhidden. He doesn’t bother to wipe them this time. He lets them fall.

Technoblade is shaking now, the tremor of an earthquake held barely in check. His massive hands curl into fists so tight they look carved from stone, knuckles straining, as though he could throttle the entire world, shatter it with his bare hands, just to unmake the cruelty that caged Tommy’s choices.

Wilbur leans forward, his body folding like a supplicant, elbows pressing into his knees. His voice is so soft it trembles in the air, a fragile thing that might shatter if touched.

“Who’s Dream?” he asks.

Tommy’s breath catches. It hooks sharp in his chest, jagged. He stares up at the ceiling, as though the plaster might open and offer absolution. He has kept this secret like a sacrament, like a chain. To speak it feels like treason, like tearing open his own chest with his hands. No coercion presses him now. No command. Just his own breaking heart.

“Insomnia,” he croaks at last, voice raw. “He’s — he’s Dream. He’s my mentor. A leader in the League.” His words tumble in fits and stumbles. “He came up to me when — when my parents—” His voice buckles, cracks, crumbles to dust. “When they were gone. And he — he — my parents were the only ones who didn’t mind I was…this.”

He gestures weakly at himself, at the too-large sweater drowning his frame, at the plushies strewn on the bed, at the faint shimmer of light that leaks unbidden from his skin, betraying his exhaustion. His hands tremble as though he could hide it, as though his own glow shames him.

Wilbur’s voice breaks open like a fault line. “Tommy,” he whispers, anguish and tenderness laced together as easily as their hands. “Oh, Tommy. Baby.”

Technoblade moves before thought, a sudden surge of motion, a quake given flesh, every Physics question on Kinematics that Tommy had hated, as he climbs onto the bed without asking and gathers Tommy into his arms as though he weighs nothing, as though he is something fragile and priceless that must be shielded from every cruelty in existence. Henry is crushed between them, Blue Sheepy tumbles to the floor with a muffled thud—but Tommy doesn’t complain.

The sobs tear out of him raw, unbridled, his whole frame shaking like a star in its death throes, trembling on the edge of collapse.

Wilbur is there in a heartbeat, folding himself into the space they have made. His fingers, steady even in their trembling, press Blue Sheepy back into Tommy’s arms, before brushing the damp hair from his clammy forehead. His touch is reverent, tender, as though smoothing back the pieces of something holy and broken.

“Listen to me,” Wilbur murmurs, and his voice is fierce enough to wound, trembling enough to bleed. “You are not too bright. You are not too much. You are perfect. Do you hear me? Perfect.”

“For once the dipshit’s right,” Technoblade presses his face into Tommy’s hair, his breath harsh and uneven, the great Blood God undone by the quiet devastation of a child’s tears. His words spill guttural, forged in fury. “They don’t get to keep you. Not anymore. They don’t get to use you.”

Tommy hiccups, the sound small, splintered. “But I — I don’t know how to be anything else—”

Wilbur hushes him with the softest touch, hands trailing through Tommy’s mess of curls. “Then we’ll teach you,” he vows, voice raw with love. “We’ll figure it out together. You’ll burn as bright as you want. As you choose. And if anyone tries to box you up, Tommy — if they dare try to dim you — I will burn them to ash myself.”

The Blood God growls low, the sound like stone splitting, like mountains falling into the sea. “No Box,” he swears, voice like thunder dragged from the pit of the earth. “Never. Not while I breathe.”

(But how long will you breathe? Tommy thinks, before it fades bit by bit, a stone sinking into the sea, waiting to be found. How long will you breathe for me until it grows to be too much?)

Tommy sobs again, the sound breaking apart against Techno’s chest, muffled in the shelter of arms that do not let go. His light flickers faint and frantic beneath his skin, but they hold him anyway.

They just hold him.

It is not fleeting, not perfunctory, not some brittle comfort that cracks after a few minutes of silence. It is steadfast, immovable, endless. Their arms remain around him like obsidian walls, like the roots of an ancient tree clutching stubbornly at the soil no matter the storm. They hold him because he is small and breaking, but also because he is vast, too vast, and if they let go the whole fragile world inside him might come apart.

They hold him long after the tears have run their course, leaving his lashes stuck together in damp, spidery clumps. Long after the shuddering sobs have dissolved into the kind of quiet hitching breaths that scrape the lungs raw. Long after the trembling stills, until the fine quivers in his fingers smooth out into limp exhaustion, until his cheek is pressed against Technoblade’s chest as if it belongs there.

Their embrace does not falter. It is patient, inexorable, absolute — as inevitable as gravity. The kind of holding that does not ask anything in return. The kind of holding that says: you are safe, even if you cannot believe it yet. The kind that promises: even if you burn, even if you break, we will not let you fall alone.

Outside, the universe sprawls further and further into itself, galaxies stretching their arms in slow spirals, stars birthing and collapsing in cosmic rhythm, cold infinity unfurling without care for the little grief of one small boy.

But here — here in this single, dim room, time bends strangely. The universe may expand, but it does not matter. The only orbit that counts is the one formed on this bed: Tommy at the center, pulled tight into arms that anchor him as fiercely as they adore him.

And for once, he shrinks instead of explodes. He folds himself small, smaller, until he can fit neatly into the space between Wilbur’s chest and Technoblade’s arms, until he feels like a boy again instead of a weapon, instead of a star doomed to go nova.

For the first time in forever, he does not feel like he is too much — too bright, too dangerous, too consuming for the world around him.

He feels contained. He feels wanted. He feels — miracle of miracles — enough.

Just bright enough.

And if the light that leaks faintly from his skin glimmers against their clothes like starlight spilled across canvas, neither of them complain. They only hold him tighter.

He wakes to warmth, again, which is suspicious. Warmth, as anyone familiar with old apartments, cold hearts, or poor insulation knows, is rarely a natural occurrence. It must be coaxed into being — bribed with blankets, blackmailed by tea kettles, or, in this case, summoned by villains.

Not the icy blue of streetlights slicing through cracked windows, but something softer, like a secret kept too long — amber, honeyed, and trembling on the walls. The light moves like bottled dawn, escaped and delighted to be free.

Candles. Dozens of them. Their flames dance and whisper, tiny pyromaniacs gossiping in the dark, perfuming the air with cinnamon, clove, and the faint thrill of fire hazards. Beneath all that, the smell of food — real food, not the kind that comes in crinkly packets and broken promises.

And then there’s Wilbur.

Wilbur, who looms at the bedside like an affectionate cryptid— tall, cardiganed, and far too pleased with himself. His sweater bears little stitched stars, as though he wrestled the night sky into submission and made it into knitwear. He makes an affronted noise when Tommy tries to leave the bed.

“Absolutely not,” he says, when Tommy stirs. “Stay. Blanket burrito protocol is in full effect.”

And it indeed it is, with rich yellows and blues, silky sheets cool against fever-warmed skin, plushies nestled in beside him like strange, sleepy bodyguards. Henry the Cow gets pride of place tucked under Tommy’s arm, staring at the world with felt eyes that have seen too much.

Wilbur produces a tray out of thin air. Out of all the things he’s done, this is the one that surprises Tommy, for some baffled reason. Silver, heavy, and — judging by Wilbur’s expression — acquired through morally ambiguous means. Tommy’s proud. It bears a feast fit for a fairytale breakfast: pancakes stacked in a way that seems to defy gravity, butter melting into golden rivers, syrup pooling in glass decanters that catch the candlelight like cathedral windows. Strawberries glisten red as freshly confessed sins.

Wilbur sets it before him with the solemn reverence of an ancient rite.

“Eat,” he says, with all the authority of a benevolent tyrant. Then, softer, almost tender, like someone offering the antidote to a poison he regrets administering. “Please.”

Tommy glares. Sniffs. Tears up anyway. And eats.

This is, as most emotionally charged meals tend to be, a declaration of defeat disguised as defiance.

“You’ve got a pretty good safehouse,” he says after a moment, partly to make conversation and partly because it’s true. The place looks suspiciously lived in for something temporary. There are flowers in jars, books with dog-eared pages, and the faint smell of something sweet and butter-soaked lingering in the air.

“Safehouse?” Technoblade asks, appearing in the doorway like a mythological creature. If mythological creatures had a hoard of shopping bags. They bulge with groceries, which is either domestic or ominous, depending on your level of trust.

“Aww, you think our house is safe?” Wilbur coos, leaning down to press a kiss to Tommy’s forehead. “That’s adorable.”

“No, you moron,” Tommy snaps, his voice muffled by pancake, “I meant safehouse, as in, y’know, literal safehouses — where people keep, like, secrets and drugs n’ shit.”

“I know what a safehouse is, child,” Wilbur says, snorting in the affectionate way that makes it sound like a compliment. He ruffles Tommy’s hair.

“M’not a child!” Tommy protests, indignant and syrup-stained.

“You are so. You look like a nine-year-old.”

“You look like a nine-year-old.”

“I’m literally taller than you.”

“Besides the point! You think being lanky makes you more of an adult?”

“But you’re not an adult, that’s the point. Good grief, what you must have been like at nine—”

“Better than you, probably,” Tommy interrupts. “When I was nine, I was twenty-five.”

“That literally makes no sense—”

“Wilbur,” Technoblade drawls, with the weariness of a man who has endured this sort of thing far too long, “please. Can we get back to the point?”

Both of them turn, eyes bright, already mid-retort.

“What were we talking about?” they ask in perfect unison.

“Safehouses,” Technoblade says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Which this is not. This is our house. Our actual house. The place where we live and do—” he gestures vaguely, “—homely things.”

“I think he knows what a house is, Techno,” Wilbur says just as Tommy blurts, “YOU HAVE A HOUSE?”

They both stare at him. Tommy, feeling the conversation slip through his fingers like calculus, raises his voice. “AND WHY AM I IN YOUR HOUSE?”

“Oh, finally a question I can answer!” Wilbur exclaims, far too cheerfully for the situation. “Because you’re family, of course. And what family,” he adds, spreading his arms magnanimously, “would kick out their little brother?”

Tommy blinks.

This, he thinks, is definitely harder than calculus.

Later — because villains have no sense of appropriate boundaries, and Tommy even less — Tommy finds himself bundled like a small, disgruntled sacrifice in Wilbur’s arms.

The sweater he’s wrapped in is yellow, enormous, and smells faintly of soap, smoke, and something indefinably Wilbur. It swallows him whole, the way the sea swallows ships, the way affection swallows reason. From the outside, he must look like a misplaced library book carried off by an overenthusiastic scholar.

They descend the stairs of the so-called safehouse—though Wilbur insists, pedantically, that it’s just a house—in a manner best described as chaotic procession. This phrase, dear reader, refers to the kind of descent where gravity is a suggestion and dignity a myth.

Technoblade, who has the demeanor of someone perpetually on the verge of declaring war, carries an armful of takeout menus. He is arguing, with the calm intensity of a theologian on the edge of madness, about the relative moral virtue of sushi versus pizza.

“Sushi,” he declares, “is discipline.”

“Pizza,” Wilbur replies, “is love.”

Tommy, trapped in Wilbur’s arms, decides both are insanity.

Apparently, they’re going out.

“In public?” Tommy rasps, incredulous, squinting blearily at them. “Like this?” He gestures at himself — or tries to. The sweater’s sleeves extend far beyond his hands, flopping like surrender flags.

Wilbur tuts, bouncing him slightly. “You’re adorable. We’re showing you off. Also, you need fresh air. Don’t argue.”

He does, of course. He argues the entire way down the stairs, out the door, and into the chilled night. His protests are valiant but muffled, like the mews of a kitten attempting civil disobedience.

The wind kisses Tommy’s cheeks, cool and clean, and for a moment — just a moment — it feels like forgiveness.

Their destination turns out to be a donut shop, which is precisely the kind of establishment that thrives after midnight: the lighting too soft, the music too sad, and the clientele too tired to be anything but honest. The shop is run by a reformed ex-villain, which in this context means someone who wears black eyeliner and quotes poetry but now files taxes. Very goth. Tommy approves.

The proprietor takes one look at them—Technoblade and Wilbur and Tommy, bundled like a baby owl—and hisses at the dirt on their shoes before wordlessly pressing a warm, fragrant box into Tommy’s hands.

“These are for you,” the man says solemnly, and Tommy’s starting to piece together where Wilbur’s dramaticness are born from. The box glows faintly with the heat of freshly glazed perfection. The smell — sugar, yeast, salvation — nearly makes Tommy sway.

Technoblade grunts. “All of them.”

Wilbur, never one to let generosity go untheatrical, pretends to tally. “Minus one for me, of course. And one for Big Red here. For tax purposes, you understand.”

Tommy scowls, clutching the box protectively. “Mine.”

Wilbur’s grin blooms wide and bright, a galaxy’s worth of delighted. He looks like a man who has discovered joy where he least expected it and is half afraid it might disappear if he breathes too hard.

Tommy’s too busy munching on a chocolate donut to notice the fond looks that they share over his head. If this is villainy, perhaps he could live with it.

They bring him back to the safehouse—home, Wilbur keeps correcting, as though the word itself were a fragile heirloom that must be handled with care. Tommy is still getting used to it. Home implies permanence, and permanence is a dangerous luxury.

He’s deposited on the old couch, which, despite looking like it has survived several wars and at least one dramatic breakup, is astonishingly soft — like falling asleep inside a sigh. They tuck him in with not one, not two, but three blankets, the kind of overkill that suggests guilt, affection, or both.

The room hums with terrifying domesticity. There are half-read books stacked like architectural experiments, a teapot steaming gently beside an unplugged lamp, and Technoblade stirring something in a pot large enough to drown small regrets in. It is, in short, peaceful. The sort of peace that always feels like it’s waiting for a plot twist.

And then, right on cue, the Angel of Death arrives.

He knocks first, which is considerate. Not all celestial beings do.

Wilbur yells, “Come in!” without checking, which is not considerate, especially when dealing with entities who might carry scythes or unpaid debts.

The door creaks open, and in steps a tall, slim figure draped in a long black coat that smells faintly of rain, grave dirt, and expensive aftershave. His presence is the kind that would make dogs howl and flowers bloom out of fear. Yet, somehow, he seems friendly, almost fatherly — though the ridiculous yellow bucket hat covered in cartoon skulls does make it difficult to take his eldritch menace seriously. Tommy’ll give him an 8/10 for effort, though.

He carries a box of pasteries from a shop so fancy it probably requires an invitation to enter. The box is tied with a black ribbon, the sort of ribbon that either decorates presents or mourners.

“Hello, Tommy,” he says, voice soft and hollow, like wind sighing through a mausoleum — but fond, undeniably fond. “I heard you liked these. Thought I’d bring more.”

Tommy gapes, which is a perfectly reasonable reaction to being directly addressed by Angel of Death, if he does say so himself.

“Is he gonna—” he whispers sideways at Wilbur, “is he gonna kill me?”

Wilbur snorts. “Only with his love.”

The Angel of Death sits carefully on the edge of the couch, as though worried he might accidentally turn it into a memorial. “I don’t kill children,” he says mildly. “Very gauche. Also, Wilbur would fight me in the parking lot.”

Wilbur nods with the solemn conviction of a man who absolutely would commit assault in defense of an enemyy-turned-adopted little brother’s soul. “I would.”

Tommy blinks. At the hat. At the donuts. At the gentle eyes that crinkle when the Angel of Death smiles. The juxtaposition of cosmic terror and paternal fondness is deeply unfair.

He takes the box as if it might explode — or worse, vanish.

“…Thank you?” he manages.

“No problem, mate,” says the Angel of Death, leaning back with a creak of leather and eternity. “I’m Phil, by the way. This lot’s father.”

There is no good way to process that sentence, but Tommy tries anyway.

Phil gestures at the cakes. “Eat them all. Or I’ll be insulted.”

Tommy scowls automatically, which is his way of processing affection without combusting. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Phil asks, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“Like you’re — like — you think I’m a baby!”

“You are,” Technoblade rumbles from the kitchen, without turning around. The pot hisses softly, and Tommy understands its suffering deeply.

In support, Tommy makes a noise like a dying kettle — high-pitched, tragic, and possibly steam-related — and buries his face in Henry, his poor long-suffering stuffed cow who has seen enough of this household to write his own memoir.

Phil chuckles quietly, the sound like a grave being covered gently with flowers. “You’ll fit right in,” he says.

And somehow, horribly, Tommy already has.

That night, the sky loses its temper.

Thunder rolls over the rooftops like a god rearranging furniture, and lightning sketches brief, furious portraits of the city before tearing them up again. Rain drums its thousand-fingered lullaby against the windows, insistent and intimate. It’s the sort of storm that makes even the bravest people remember they are, in fact, made of breakable things.

They don’t make him sleep alone.

Wilbur insists it’s tradition. Technoblade calls it “the nesting room,” which sounds both comforting and faintly terrifying, like something that might involve feathers and ritual chanting. The biggest bed in the house is cleared. A patchwork of quilts, blankets, and the occasional rogue sweater, until it looks like the hoard of a particularly pampered dragon.

Tommy is gathered up without ceremony. Technoblade lifts him easily, the way some people lift kettles or kittens, and tucks him against his chest as if the boy were a fragile secret he intends to keep. One massive hand cradles the back of Tommy’s head with impossible gentleness. Wilbur claims the other side, stretching out like a cat who owns the sun, humming a tune so old it probably remembers him first.

Tommy tries to protest. It comes out as a feeble whine, the sound of someone losing an argument with comfort itself. Wilbur chuckles against his hair. Technoblade hushes him — a deep, seismic sound, like a tectonic plate deciding to stay still for one more century.

“You’re safe here,” Technoblade murmurs, in the voice of mountains.

Wilbur adds, drowsy and warm, “Brightest star in the galaxy, and you’re ours now. No more boxes. No more orders. Just you.”

Tommy blinks slowly, eyes heavy, the thunderstorm echoing somewhere far away in the wide, wet world. The city hums — a soft chorus of distant cars, dripping gutters, and lonely hearts — but here, in this strange sanctuary, there is only breath and heartbeat and the quiet weight of belonging.

Here, there is warmth.

Here, there is breath.

Here, there is the blood-deep promise of people who have seen what he is and chosen him anyway — perhaps because of it.

He curls tighter. Burrows. Breathes.

Lets himself fall asleep.

Lets himself be fifteen.

Lets himself be theirs.

And above them, the universe continues its endless expansion — vast, cold, indifferent. But in Tommy’s dreaming mind, it folds inward instead, curling gently around their little household like a blanket. A hug. A promise.

A word he’s still learning to believe in.

Home.