Chapter Text
Kristin sat at the head of the table as it had become custom in their household.
Phil was next to her, Techno next to Phil, Ranboo next to Techno, Ghostbur would sit opposite of her (whenever he was around, at last. He had a habit of vanishing from one day to another and suddenly returning, she found.).
The other side of the table was with Tommy closest to her, then Fundy, and Tubbo opposite to Ranboo.
In front of everyone stood a more or less empty plate, and not a single one of her boys dared to look up from the table, plate, or napkin they were playing with.
… this was going to turn out as painful and complicated as pulling teeth, wasn't it?
She sighed, clapping her hands to gain attention, making some of them flinch and the soft noise. She grimaced seeing such a bad reaction to something small.
But they had to do this, like ripping off a bandaid, or it would only get worse.
"I am well aware that none of you want to have this talk.", she started, making most of them shrink even more, which was impressive considering how fucking tall half of the table's occupants were,
"But it's really important."
She held her voice soft, calming and apologetic with a smile that felt pained pulling at the corners of her mouth.
"I'd like to start with an apology.",
Kristin swallowed with a click in her throat, staring up at the chandelier hanging above their dining table.
This better work or we're so fucked . prayed the mother to her counterpart, getting a silent feeling of reassurance in return. She took a deep breath.
"I need to apologize for not coming for you all sooner. I knew you wouldn't be fine without me, but I decided to comply with the other Gods' wishes instead of looking for an escape the very instant they forced me away from you."
Everyone around the table startled at her words, confused and spluttering protests falling from their lips in the most endearing way, but she held up her hand, making them stutter to a stop.
"No. That one is on me. I only started fighting against their orders after you all died the first time in your revolution.", she directed her gaze to Fundy, Tommy and Tubbo.
"And I'm so sorry it took me so long to shake my shackles and escape, I am your mother. I should have been here, but I wasn't. And I apologize for that."
She took a deep breath. The first part of her lie was now offically out there, and there was no turning back.
Her eyes found Phil, who looked almost scared.
She gave him a pained smile, reaching for her kinda-husband's hand.
"The truth is: I'm nothing but a mother and wife anymore."
Breathe, breathe, breathe .
She closed her eyes, feeling grief flood her through the connection to her other-self, clenching her teeth at the fake-real emotion.
"I… had to give up a lot to free myself. I don't know how much of my powers remain. I'm scared to try.
I'm just so happy to finally be with my family without the threat of getting separated again."
She felt tears that weren't her's spill over, a sob of pain and happiness stuck in her throat as she spoke the words her Godly self longed so badly to be the truth.
It felt cruel, in a way. She got everything this mighty deity longed for, and she hated it – she still wanted to return to her own family, her own home. She wanted to sit on a blanket in their garden with Wilbur's back leaning against her's as he played his guitar. Techno's head on her lap as she mindlessly braided his hair while he was reading one of his greek mythology books or the Art of War for the hundredth time. She wanted to see her husband with his stupid striped bucket hat that he always wore while gardening, leaning over one of his glorious rose bushes and carefully tending to the prickly flowers. She wanted to hear tumbeling and screaming from inside the house as Tommy, Tubbo and Ranboo tried out some other stupid mod that made beating the game ten times harder or easier than it was supposed to be.
She wanted her fucking life back!
Just like the Kristin that was stuck in the back of her head and a cruel Void.
In the end nobody can have what they want . Both, Gods and Mankind strive for what is beyond their grasp. All of them suffering at the hands of Fate equally.
The thought was bitter and vicious. New tears poured from her eyes, black dripping onto the table silently.
"I'm – sorry. So sorry. I-",
she started wiping away her tears with vigour,
"I thought I should actually tell you why I'm here now . I wanted to answer Techno's question, I'm sorry I didn't do it any sooner."
Everyone looked at her, horrified at the implications she just made.
Lady Death was no longer a Goddess.
For all they knew she was a totally normal human – could age, get injured and die .
"I left my realm behind to get to you because I knew you needed me and woke up to my family trying to kill each other and nothing but a vague intuition telling me that something terrible was about to happen! And I wanna know why!"
Tommy cleared his throat, tapping the table in front of him with a nervous gesture.
"I… out of everyone, I've been here the longest.",
stated her son with his eyes ever shifting, looking at no one in particular, rather trying to see around them,
"So… I guess I could start."
She smiled encouragingly.
"That's very brave of you, sunspot.", she folded her hands and placed them on the table, looking in the face of each member of her other-family.
"Now. The rules for this:
Only one person talks. They tell everything that happened from their perspective. No interrupting. No discussing. Every single one of you has a perspective and reasons – we do this to figure out what actually happened and where the miscommunication in this clusterfuck stems from.
Once everyone told their part, we're going to go to our rooms for the night and sleep on it. No talking about it with each other, that'll be done tomorrow once we all had the chance to work through what we found out. Okay?"
She waited for everyone to nod before looking at Tommy encouragingly,
"Go on, love."
He took a deep breath, closing bluish-grey eyes and gritting perfectly straight but yellowed, chipped teeth as boney fingers clenched into worn and washed out fabric of a well loved shirt.
And he started talking.
And he didn't stop even as his voice grew brittle and rough and started cracking with over-use.
Even when his face twisted every so slightly, with how painful every next syllable seemed.
Even when he reached for his glass of water more and more often, wetting his lips every other second with a quick swipe of his tongue.
Tommy kept talking. Stuttering and stumbling his way through a heart wrenching tale.
Sometimes stopping to mutter to himself about how something went down exactly, recapitulating before continuing, sometimes taking a turn or following a twist of thought to a whole other part of his life – but it all led back to the actual tale.
He told how their family fell apart after Kristin was forced to leave.
Words of how Wilbur raised him more than Phil did, at times, fell from pale and scarred lips like oil.
Remembrance of how Technoblade grew more and more distant and volatile as the Voices gained power clouding grey eyes like a stormy sea.
The memory of how Phil and Techno packed up, leaving a home as a house vacant of half its life whispered as if it was sacrilegious to even think about it; eyes cast down to the table firmly but even a too-loud breath making the boy flinch violently.
A voice intoning with a tremble how a wooden shell once loved was left behind when it became too obvious that the empty promise of return would never be fulfilled.
A journey of two kids and a teenager trying to raise them, with nothing but their backpacks and a beaten up guitar to call their own.
Tommy painted a picture of a restless life, spent like ghosts haunting the lands; three kids begging and starving and stealing; Wilbur performing at street corners and in shady, smoke filled bars; intricate plays and scams pulled off by young minds to gain that few coins and emeralds that might make their survival worth living.
Until they found somewhere to stay and couldn't part from their already learned ways.
A man and two teenagers arriving at a Server that could be called home if they were generous and stayed long enough.
The most beautiful picture of how they started to build and settle and create was put into words.
And then it all fell apart over a playful skirmish turned-serious.
Wistful tones turned dark as Tommy remembered how Wilbur rushed to put together a new plan that would get his little brother away from the Admin's wrath.
A Drug-Van created with the somewhat desperate hope of making the two of them irreplaceable for the Server's integrity with the help of Potions.
It backfired terribly, recounted her kinda-son with a far-away look in his eyes – both brothers finding themself arrested and put on trial before getting broken out by Eret and Tubbo, all of them fleeing back to the Van and declaring the car together with the surrounding land a country of its own, small walls erected hastily to mark down their own little sanctuary.
And people followed them. So many who had felt threatened by Dream in some way, so many people who simply liked them a bit more than the Admin.
And when they declared their independence, assured by their company, Dream retaliated by declaring war.
And a simple joke turned into a nightmare.
Tommy's voice grows static and cold as he talks about the fights, how he found himself assisting Wilbur in rallying troops and leading men.
Tommy wasn't smart like Fundy and Tubbo, he couldn't look at the cards and war zone like a chess board and simply predict the turn of the fight and the movement of troops – but he knew men . And he knew fighting. Tommy was likable and charismatic and that was all that he needed to have people following him through a battlefield and into death.
Younger than most, he still held that slight edge that many didn't and that was all that he needed to claim his place as Wilbur's right-hand-man; brothers or not.
And for a while it honestly looked like they would be able to win, what they couldn't make up in numbers and material, they countered with passion and vengeance.
And then they were betrayed.
Her-kinda-son's, this kid who looked almost like her youngest, breath grew short and he started trembling, curling in on himself with a choked voice as he explained how Eret , the person who had been with them from the very start, the person who made the revolution possible , turned against their comrades, her sibling's in arms, and sold the entire L'Manburg command out to Dream in exchange for Kingship.
In the end, it was Tommy who butted his head into the meeting Wilbur had called for to admit defeat and disband the Revolution.
It was Tommy who called for a bow-duel he lost miserably together with his second life.
Kristin cried when – as if it was an afterthought – Tommy pulled the horribly worn, green bandana around his neck to the side, revealing a silvery white scar where the arrow had torn through his throat.
At his "mother's" searching look the teen stood up with a grimace, pulling up his shirt to reveal where he had been stabbed during the betrayal, exposing a nasty looking scar that was of similar coloration as the one at his throat.
There was a humorless laugh on Tommy's lips when he admitted that none of them really returned from the battlefield as he rushed to let his shirt fall and sat down again. They were changed by what they saw, what happened to them, what they had been forced to do.
Wilbur grew paranoid during the Revolution, constantly awaiting the next attack and never truly getting rest —
— and it didn't get better once the war was won. (Which happened on Tommy's behalf, who turned over the objects the entire conflict had been started about.)
Wilbur saw the next Revolution, the Uprising, Calamity around every corner. Every word that wasn't obeyed like a command on the battlefield was perceived as the start of a new betrayal, and it led to the man calling for an election, to either strengthen his grip or jumpstart his downfall.
And fall he did.
Losing control over the election in his attempt to rig it. Losing handle over his very own son who decides to follow his father's footsteps into politics and the manipulation of their outcome – and getting found out while attempting to influence their chance. And losing to the competing party by a hair's-breadth which leads to both brothers losing their home, being thrown into a conflict once more, which brings them to a ravine where the oldest brother doesn't bend anymore, but instead decides to take his stand and break.
Tommy looks nervous when he talks about contacting Technoblade in his desperation, the elation when his brother actually arrived, and how Wilbur was far from happy about it, but decided to "make the best of it" acting as if Techno never had been their sibling in the first place.
Tommy's voice cracks when he admits that, after a while of Techno missing on Wilbur's orders and his brother constantly insisting that it was just them , he wasn't quite sure if Techno actually was part of their family.
That utterance seemed to startle both Phil and Techno horribly, the Piglin Hybrid rumbling up a storm and chuffing like an old steam-engine in an attempt to soothe Tommy.
(Because even if Kristin didn't know the truth,
Technoblade
did
. And Tommy had been genuine. The uncertainty in grey eyes was all that the warrior needed to know that his baby brother had spoken the
truth
.)
Tommy talked of Tubbo spying for them, Wilbur descending into madness and Techno being away on gathering missions more often than staying around.
He chokes as he mentions how some days Wilbur's temper was just… slightly worse than usual, not even allies, friends or family being trustworthy.
An apologetic glace is directed at Tubbo when Tommy murmurs about burises coloring his friend's skin and how it made him feel utterly useless . About how they thought about running and leaving everything behind , and how much Tommy regrets not leaving, taking full blame for the worst decision in his life.
Tommy talks about TNT and dragging Wilbur from a barely lit cave with blood stained scratches on the walls and a button that would haunt his worst nightmares.
He talks about the uncertainty as there were rumors about a new traitor .
It sounds a bit like the start of a sick joke, and it goes like this:
"An Anarchist, a Tyrant, and a Spy stand on a stage…"
It's not funny.
Technoblade had been willing to hand his weapon over to a drunk, abusive dictator in order to harm a kid on his side.
They win the Revolution but both of Tommy's older brothers decide to turn it to ash.
Wilbur, the Traitor , snuck away, detonating the Bomb just as Phil finally arrives. And Technoblade, heartless Pig he was, set off two Withers in the smoking rubble of a devastated country.
Tommy lost his father the same day, when the man decided to assist Wilbur in his crazed suicide-attempt, running his oldest son through with Benehime.
Tommy stayed with Tubbo, with L'Manburg, with the reminders of the brother who loved him, with Ghostbur and Fundy, and they rebuilt .
But Tommy is spiraling, slipping, angry . And the same day Ranboo arrives, Tommy lashes out.
He burns down the house of the one person who seemingly got away from every conflict that happened so far unscathed and effortlessly.
But the destruction of George's house brought back Dream's wrath – and this time there was no Wilbur to keep Tommy safe.
Tommy found himself booted from his country faster than he could say "L'Manburg" and a second Exile came upon him.
This was the part where Tommy… stopped. Words dieing on him as he seemed to struggle, before giving up and sighing.
"After seven months, I ran away. I was… in a bad shape. And I kept running until everything was… cold 'n white and I… there was a cabin. An' I went inside an' I took some shit and went down to the basement, found a loose board 'n dug deeper. … and then I stayed there ."
Tommy described how Techno found him to the best of his ability, somewhat reluctantly admitting that he'd been delirious with sickness and fever.
He sounded fond when he came to them living together, wistfully explaining how they joked around and how they worked together to gather the things that had been taken from Techno before the failed execution.
And then they finally reached the part where everything fell apart.
The two of them sneaking back into the Country once more, only to find smoldering remains of the Community House which had been blown up sky high before their arrival. Almost every single important political figure and a bunch of bystanders gathered around the ruins, Dream screaming about how "Tommy did this" , and Tommy ran in to defend himself, his brother rushing to join.
But when forced to decide between Tubbo, who'd been there for most of Tommy's life, who sent him away under great pressure and heavy threat; and Technoblade , who hadn't been there for most of Tommy's life, just recently returned and sided with an insane Wilbur more than a sane Tommy – even if they got along right now, it wasn't as safe of a decision, rather than the country Tommy already died twice for and wouldn't mourn if it killed him the third and last time as well.
So Tommy picked Tubbo, and Technoblade and Philza didn't even hesitate to turn around and side with Dream – who'd been nothing but hostile towards their youngest since the very first moment they met.
They chose war and they chose to destroy homes , and they chose to eradicate what little good Wilbur left behind.
Throughout the entire story of his life, Tommy hadn't cried a single time.