Chapter Text
The first time Tommy ever sees the Angel of Death in person, he knows the Heroes are fucked before anyone even bothers drawing weapons. It’s early in March and the Heroes are already ten minutes late to the scene, sent on an emergency all-call after an explosion rocked the underground levels of the Bank of L’Manberg so badly that reports cite that the pillars holding up the lobby cracked on impact. Two hundred people or more had already fled the premises, Dream had informed Tommy, on their way over; law enforcement was setting a perimeter, but the responsible party was likely still inside.
Now, the assembled heroes are a motley crew of whichever patrollers had been near enough to make it. Pyro is visibly sweating from the run over, flanked by Nocturne in the big-ass white goggles that Tommy would be mocking him for, in any other circumstance. Near the front of the huddle, Ranboo is standing in a crackle of purple particles, fists clenched and shoulders drawn. Dream is carrying the same ax he brings on patrol. Tommy can read the anger in how he’s standing, even with his mask shielding his facial expression behind that placid, irritating white smile.
They don’t have time to gather forces, or set a perimeter, or advance. They’ve been there for all of ten seconds when, at the back of the lobby, the massive doors flanking the elevator shaft down to the underground complex blow open in a flash of white and broken metal. Tommy shifts back, instinctually, blinking while his eyes adjust. There’s a flapping noise, like rustling feathers.
When Tommy’s eyes adjust, there’s a man silhouetted in the doorway.
The Angel of Death steps forward from the smoke. After enough years of having to weigh his options in the face of danger, Tommy’s gotten pretty damn good at reading people, and Angel observes the clustered row of top-level heroes with his shoulders loose, wings casually folded behind him. His hand is resting on the hilt of his sword. The only emotion written in his body language is total unbothered confidence, a level of grave self-assuredness in the face of combat that Tommy’s only seen a fraction of in the most veteran of heroes.
We’re fucked, Tommy thinks, and some small part of him has the bizarre urge to laugh.
He’s standing in a shadowed corner of the bank, where he’s unlikely to end up in the way of any combat. Dream had told him to stay out of the way, stay invisible - not that Tommy’s actually goes invisible, but in a rare moment of discipline he’d bit his tongue and let it slide - and not get involved unless absolutely necessary. He’s backup, and on the front lines, he’d only be a liability.
That’s great and all, Tommy thinks, but from the almost condescending way this Angel of Death is looking at the assorted heroes, he bets on Dream lasting five, maybe ten minutes without ‘backup.’
There’s a clunking noise behind the Angel, and a figure pulls itself over the edge of the elevator shaft. It hunches there for a moment, panting, while a third figure follows and clambers to its feet. All three are empty handed but for the weapons at their belts.
Odd. There must be a fourth in charge of stealing the money - if they were even here to steal money, which Tommy suddenly doubts. There are quicker ways of robbing banks, if that’s what they’d been after. Frankly, an explosion like this speaks more to showmanship than anything.
Perhaps this was an example. The Syndicate is fond of those. Tommy’s blood runs cold at the thought - he remembers a half-dozen heroes dead, exploded or strung up or killed in combat, all in the name of example. God, what a way to go.
Over to Tommy’s right, Ranboo’s particles flicker quietly. A nervous tic, though most wouldn’t know it. He must be thinking the same thing.
The Angel of Death murmurs something to his counterparts. As the two draw further into the light, Tommy just barely has time to recognize the figures of Orpheus and the Blood God, before everything explodes into motion. Dream charges forward, ax at the ready. Ranboo disappears with a quiet thwip and appears behind the Blood God just long enough to throw a punch, then vanish just as quickly. Pyro is spreading fire through the hall in jolts and bursts, enough to keep the Angel of Death busy while throwing everything into a flashing light and disorienting tones of firelit red.
Tommy lingers there, backup, for all of ten minutes before they lose the upper hand. Nocturne is taken out by a blow to the head, and Ranboo scrambles to teleport him back to safety. Pyro is forced to 1v2 the Blood God and the Angel at once, his fire becoming increasingly clumsy, frantic, and weakened by exhaustion.
Dream makes a move for Orpheus - striding forward like a beast on the hunt, a stampede in the form of one man, a force to be reckoned with - and Opheus holds a hand out and catches him mid-stride with a quiet, carrying order to Stop.
Stop. That’s all it takes to freeze Dream in his tracks. A full-fledged hero, a council member, Tommy’s mentor - who has so easily flung him to the mat in training time and time again, with the effort it would take to pin a teething puppy. All it takes from Orpheus is a single command, quietly delivered yet so loud the sound carries all the way to where Tommy hides in the far shadowed corner. Dream freezes so thoroughly he almost falls, muscles straining, wobbling unsteadily.
Tommy can’t help but be in awe. Not that Orpheus has to know that.
He slips forward easily, boots barely clicking against the marble floor. His powers have been easy to sustain so far, but now, as he draws a weapon and slips nearer to the scene of the battle, it’s harder to keep up his defenses. Orpheus is all combat-mode, attention wired to the highest gear, and Tommy has to guard his mind carefully to keep from being noticed.
He’s called Blindspot for a reason. He’s not invisible, as he’s reminded Dream time and time again - people can definitely see him, when he’s using his powers. They just don’t notice. He blends into plain sight, diverting all attention like water off of oil. Tubbo tells him it’s like seeing something horrible happen on the news; you know it’s there, you just don’t want to look at it or think about it. Your mind pushes itself away.
Except something is wrong. Orpheus doesn’t notice Tommy drawing in front of him, but he stiffens, a little, as Tommy comes nearer. He starts glancing around, as if struck by sudden paranoia. Tommy draws up in front of him, staff clenched in one hand, and he starts spinning around as if to check behind him.
“What’s that,” Orpheus mutters. “Who’s there-“
Tommy pulls his staff back and slams it into Orpheus’s stomach, hard.
Orpheus stumbles back. He wheezes, choking, and behind Tommy, Dream snaps free of the enchantment and starts wheezing for breath, audibly shaking movement back into his limbs. Orpheus looks up at Tommy and fixes him with a burning glare.
“Who the fuck are you,” Orpheus says, eyes wild and, oddly, almost delighted. “Where were you hiding?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, bitch,” Tommy says, gleeful and a little lightheaded. He dances backwards, adrenaline rushing to his head.
Orpheus gathers a deep breath as if to spell him. Dream is too fast, catching him with a narrowly dodged ax-throw before he can gather his powers, and the two are off again, squabbling like wolves over a fresh kill.
Two weeks later, Ranboo is taken off patrol duty and moved into permanent holding in the Laboratory. Tommy doesn’t find out until the next morning, when Tubbo bursts into his room at five in the morning, eyes wild and face flushed in sheer panic.
“They’re going to kill him down there, Tommy,” Tubbo is saying, and more desperate than Tommy’s ever seen him. Tommy is shushing him, desperate, trying to seize his hands to keep him from tearing his own hair out. “You know, you know what it’s like down there - what they’ll do-“
“Tubbo,” Tommy is saying, and Tubbo isn’t hearing him.
“I can’t let it happen,” Tubbo says. He looks at Tommy and his eyes are blanked out with fear. “I can’t. They’re torturing him down there. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Tommy grabs his hands and holds them tightly, almost bruising. “Please,” Tommy says, and he’s so quiet that Tubbo finally stops to look at him - really look at him. “Tubbo. Please.”
That’s all he says. But Tubbo understands, because he knows Tommy better than Tommy knows himself. He knows that Tommy is a coward and a failure and a dog trained to heel. He knows that Tommy is nothing but what the Guild made of him. He knows all this and forgives him anyway, because he is kinder than anyone else Tommy has ever known. He’s kind enough to spend all these years at Tommy’s side, and now - now that the time has come, and the other shoe has dropped, and push has come to shove - he’s kind enough to leave him.
Tommy starts seeing Orpheus more and more often. Orpheus stops by his patrol route a few times, catching Tommy on rooftops or dirty alleys. He learns Tommy’s alias and throws it at him like a weapon - Blindspot - always said quietly, but with the odd effect of being loud regardless, as if said through a paper tube.
It isn’t like the Syndicate to target patrol-level heroes. They aren’t important enough to pose a real threat, and targeting them only would open the Syndicate up for further retribution from the Heroes.
Orpheus doesn’t seem to care. On the days when Tommy sees him coming, he chases Tommy around the city on wild goose chases, fights that consist mainly of Tommy shouting insults - in hope of blocking out Orpheus’s spells over the sound of his own voice - and ultimately escaping for just long enough to hide in trash cans until the danger blows over.
He treats it like a game. He seems to find Tommy equally amusing and infuriating. Tommy spits at him and berates him and gives him the usual treatment - loudness and brashness, a force of habit that, for Tommy, is like a balancing act. If Tommy shouts at Orpheus enough, he out-talks his own fear. If he insults Orpheus enough, he convinces himself that he’s got an upper hand. It’s bullshit, of course, but talking, for Tommy, is a kind of self-soothing behavior, gathered through years of going ignored and unnoticed by virtue of what the Hero Guild ironically called a “gift.” The power of being ignored is a double-edged sword.
Over time he’s learned if he shouts enough, people will remember he’s there. People will notice him . Except sometimes he can’t turn it off - like the times when he’s staring Orpheus down from the end of an alley, withered under a glare of total rage, and he just can’t seem to get himself to shut up.
There’s one day where Tommy doesn’t see Orpheus coming - doesn’t get any warning over his comm, or catch a glimpse of him in time to start running. He’s eating a sandwich during break on a South End rooftop and Orpheus appears in his peripheral vision so quickly, so silently, that Tommy only has time to drop his sandwich and scramble for his staff before Orpheus is knocking it from his hands.
“Mm, I don’t think so,” Orpheus says, amused and gleeful.
Tommy flinches and tries to bolt, but - “Stay there,” Orpheus commands. “No, get up. Stand. And don’t use your power.”
Tommy stands, movements robotic. He’s so close to the edge of the rooftop that one of his heels hangs over the corner.
“Bitch,” he grits out, heart racing. “Too afraid to fight me in an even match? Know I’d rock your shit, huh?”
Orpheus grins. “No. But this is much more fun.”
“Your mom was much more fun,” Tommy says, though the joke is overused and he knows it. “Last night, that is.”
Orpheus stops smiling. He steps closer, irritation glinting in his eyes, then raises a hand and pressed it, gentle, against the fabric armor of Tommy’s supersuit. One push, and Tommy will be dead, crushed against the sidewalk below.
“What is it with you,” he says, voice hushed, frustration at the edges of his tone. Tommy feels like an ant under a magnifying glass, scorched and helpless. “I’ve got you an inch from certain death and all you can do is joke?”
What else am I supposed to do? Tommy doesn’t say. Beg for mercy? Where has that ever gotten me? With you, or Dream, or anyone? Or should I whimper and show you my belly like a beaten dog?
Tommy’s a lot of things, but he refuses to be that. A beaten dog. Everything else is out of his control - his life, his home, his job, his friends, even his own actions, so far as Orpheus is concerned - but he refuses to let them reduce him to begging. He’ll talk til his voice runs out rather than let them take that last bit of who he is.
“Alright,” Orpheus says. Sirens are howling in the distance, and Tommy hears the distant rumbling of helicopters. He wonders what Orpheus had done before coming here. If he’d killed anyone. “You want to make this a game, it can be a game. I’m very good at playing with my food, Blindspot.”
And then he slips away. Tommy has a horrible feeling that he’s going to keep his word.
The last few weeks of October have Tommy feeling like the pallbearer at an uphill funeral. There’s this grim silence everywhere he goes - the sort of grim silence he can’t fill, no matter how loudly he talks. People look at him in the lunchrooms. There are wary glances when he passes the medbay on patrol. He trudges on as always, but the casket’s starting to dig at his shoulders.
Increasingly, he gets the sense that he’s somewhere new. He’s been at the Guild all his life, but these days the crowd of familiar faces seems to shrink by every moment. Everyone he grew up with, flunked out or demoted. The Heroes who used to wave at him in the halls or on his medbay patrols, retired or swapped divisions. No one knows him anymore except as the loaded fuse.
And that’s the funny thing - is they think it’ll be him who finally snaps. He’s the loud one, the one who gets written up or punished about once a week. The others at the Hero’s Guild have been waiting for him to fail since the first time he opened his mouth . He eats with Tubbo in the cafeteria and the side-eyes that dog their heels point at him. Ironically, it’s Tubbo who walks the halls almost entirely unnoticed.
Tommy knows their days are numbered. Anywhere else, the thought would burrow in his gut and bring on that thick, hollow feeling of his chest caving in - the feeling he gets when he imagines long empty hallways and silent lunch periods and a world - the world, the only one he’s known for years - without Tubbo there to face it at his side. Anywhere else, that thought would be enough to ruin his goddamn day.
But Tubbo is still here, so it’s easy to pretend none of it is real. Tubbo and him have always been escape masters, together. Experts at avoidance.
Years ago, when they first were assigned as roommates in the claustrophobic closets that the Guild passed off as Novice dorms, they developed a kind of routine. Every day after grueling training and dull hours spent on hallway patrol, Tommy would come back to his dorm and scrub at his face in the built-in sink and Tubbo would sit up from a nap and ask, hey, Tommy, how was your day?
And Tommy would say oh, you wouldn’t believe. And then he’d lie. It started as a kind of bitter rebuke - it was just frustrating for Tubbo to ask him that every day when he already knew the answer. So Tommy started bullshitting. He’d say, oh, you wouldn’t believe - I won the goddamn Nobel Prize, Tubbo. I single handedly stopped a bank robbery. I actually got promoted, would you believe - I’m your boss now, Big T, and I command you to cover all my patrols for the next week.
And yet Tubbo kept asking. So it became a routine. Tubbo would ask, and Tommy would lie, and then he’d keep lying, and eventually it just became this casual, lazy thing of them laying in bed past lights-out and watching shadows dance on the ceilings of their bunks, telling each other bedtime stories.
After their year as Novices had passed, and they’d been moved to single Apprentice dorms, Tommy would sometimes catch himself thinking up stories to tell in the hours before lights-out. Not that there is anyone to tell except the dark shadows swimming across the corners of his room.
So now, Tommy imagines that this all is just a story he’s been telling himself. A nightmare swimming in the darkened corners of his dorm. It doesn’t help much, but it helps him sleep a little easier.
The beginning of the end comes three days to the end of October. Tubbo slides into a bench across from him one day at lunch - and they’re alone, as alone as they can ever be or probably ever will be again - but there are still eyes watching them. Tubbo knows this, and he’s careful in how he frames himself as he delivers this, the final blow.
He smiles up at Tommy. Picks up a fork, movements all casual. “Hey Tommy,” he says. “How was your day?”
Tommy had guard duty in the Labs today. Tubbo knows this, or he wouldn’t be calling on this childhood ritual. Tommy knows that Tubbo knows, too; knows that by answering he is signing the papers for his own personal end times. He is sealing the envelope and stamping the seal.
Still, he tells Tubbo anyway. He’d had patrol in the Labs, Tommy says, and had started early. He’d been tired, Tommy says, and he was exhausted all shift - training all morning, and it was the new cardio Dream had put him on. But Christ, was he glad to get off patrol. He’d been properly Pavlov’d, for fucks sake. The 10:30 bell for the changing of the guard had him fucking drooling.
Tubbo nods and takes another bite of his salad. The subject changes. The damage is done.
Tommy knows it’s over two weeks later, when he’s returning from the locker rooms for his Medbay guard shift and the two navy-vested security officers at the end of the hallway stick out their staffs to keep him from leaving. Suddenly one of them has a hand on his shoulder, and he’s being led down to high security holding like a bad dog, tail tucked between his legs.
The interrogation doesn’t take very long. He’s got his story straight, by which he means he’s got no story: he knows nothing, saw nothing, did nothing. He doesn’t even know why he’s in for questioning.
It’s a lie, but only half. He’d thought, sure, that this would happen. He’d considered it at length in the swelling darkness of his dorm or his half-empty apartment. But he hadn’t really known Tubbo would jump ship, not for sure .
In the end, after about five hours of questioning in a gray mirrored room with a hard-backed chair, they give up and stick him with dorm confinement pending a verdict from the Council. On the way back to his dorm, one of the guards finally admits what happened: At 10:30 that morning, Tubbo had snuck into an unguarded Lab department right at the shift change and used a sonic blast to disable every electronic device on the entire sub-basement level of the building. He had then set loose and promptly captured a valuable Laboratory asset and used a valuable teleportation methodry to escape. The damage was estimated to be at least a million dollars, including the captured Lab asset.
Tommy hides his smile, but he can’t help but love the dramatics of it. Tubbo waltzing into an unguarded Lab and escaping in a cloud of smoke and broken machinery. Ranboo’s cell door probably exploded at the initial blast, fractured into plastic pieces and broken glass, and from there, the rest would be easy. Ranboo and Tubbo could be anywhere, and know one would know the difference.
They’d always underestimated Tubbo. That was intentional. Tubbo had spent the last year and a half purposefully falling behind in training exercises. He’d been testing in the 40th percentile - not low enough for demotion, but low enough that they probably had him down as a lower-level apprentice and a mild threat at best.
Hilarious. Tubbo’s soundwave manipulation could level fucking buildings, if he really tried. He’s probably tied with Tommy as the single most powerful apprentice on the Guild payroll. Or was, anyway.
Tommy spends a good few days in dorm confinement - a fancy word for solitary, when his dorm is just a one-man box in the wall. By the time Dream comes to get him he’s practically bouncing off the walls - talking at the lightswitches, lecturing the bedsheets. Dream announces his presence with a sharp rapping at the door.
Tommy opens the door and almost wishes he could go back into solitary.
Dream doesn’t look angry, per say. He’s standing there with his hands folded, shoulders loose. There’s nothing betraying anger. He looks almost at ease.
Tommy goes on red alert. He’s had days to think about the Council’s verdict and wonder what sort of consequences they’d be able to dole out for a crime with practically negative proof of guilt. He’d been making mental spreadsheets of potential punishments and frankly, he wasn’t very scared.
Dream, though. Dream’s a red card. There’s no spreadsheet to plan for him, not when Dream’s whole method is total unpredictability. Tommy never sees him coming. He can’t plan for him or brace for him or do anything, really, but try to keep his damn mouth shut and not make things worse.
Which is not his strong suit.
"Hey big D,” Tommy says, and immediately cringes and tacks on a somewhat out-of-place “-Sir.”
“Hello Tommy,” Dream says, sounding so calm he almost seems bored. He turns to walk away and beckons Tommy, who hastily closes the door and follows to the elevator at the end of the hall.
He watches Dream push the elevator button out of the corner of his eye and tries to get a good read. Tommy’s pretty damn good at reading people - has to be, after a life like his - but Dream is frustratingly impassive behind that horrible white mask. Tommy looks back at the elevator doors and tries not to fidget.
From the council, he’d counted three potential consequences.
Firstly, they could demote him. He’d be down to guard work, sentry work, removed from the field entirely. Patrol handed over to a more capable apprentice. Purpled, maybe. Or maybe an established hero would expand to take over his street-route, and meanwhile they’d throw some fresh-meat new apprentice onto street cleanup duty - he’s right on the edge of Nocturne’s northern edge, so maybe Dream will have Nocturne take over.
The idea irks Tommy. Nocturne’s powers are great and all for handling bigshots or wannabe villains, but he’s not gonna bother to really fine-tune his patrols. Neither will any fresh-meat street cleaner apprentice. Under Nocturne, the route Tommy has spent carefully whipping into shape will fall into disrepair again. It was always a shit part of town, and it still is, but since Tommy was assigned to fieldwork a year ago, he’s managed to decrease violent crime by a solid percentage. He’s also managed to gain some reluctant appreciation from the locals, who had at first viewed him with the harsh, suspicious distrust that people outside of the higher-end parts of town reserve aplenty for Guild Heroes and Apprentices alike. Store owners have started recognizing him. He gets a discount on bandages at the pharmacy.
Not that the Guild cares about that. They’re big-picture, as they have to be, to guard a place as big as L’Manberg. From their perspective his measly little 12-street route looks like little more than an ant’s nest.
The elevator doors slide open. As he steps inside, Tommy eyes Dream and wonders if this is one of those things where Dream acts all calm and blows up later, like a bottle of coke that Tommy can’t stop shaking. That happens pretty often, but here, it seems out of place. This can’t be of those things where Tommy’s supposed to figure out if he’s in trouble, and why. He just spent half a week in solitary. He already fucking knows.
So Dream should be angry. Should be livid. But he’s not.
Tommy tries to think of what to say to make this better. He should have handled this days ago, tried to mitigate damage by getting in the way of things directly so Dream didn’t have time to stew about it. But he’d been snatched up before he got the chance, and now it’s out of his hands.
The silence is quelling. Dream’s not looking at him, not acknowledging him, just staring, mask blank, at the elevator doors. Tommy kind of feels like he’s going to implode.
“So where are we going,” Tommy blurts, before he can really stop himself. “Are we going to the council? Sir?”
“No,” Dream says. “The Council’s already made a decision.”
“Oh,” Tommy says. “Really? It’s just, they never let me, er, explain. Like, they asked me questions and shit. But it was very, like yes-or-no. Didn’t really let me breathe, you know? I was thinking maybe the Council’d want to hear my end of th-“
“They don’t,” Dream interrupts.
Tommy stops dead. He takes a breath in and then takes a breath out. Blinks rapidly.
“Okay,” he says. “Yeah that’s, like, fair, I guess. Like, there’s not much to hear, I guess, because I mean, my whole thing is like, I didn’t see anything, right?”
Dream doesn’t respond. The doors click open.
As far as Tommy can tell, the Council had three options. Their choices were limited; Tommy’s only real provable crime was being friends with a defector, and happening to have the same patrol schedule that Tubbo had taken advantage of for his great escape.
Tommy has ranked said potential consequences on a scale of better evils to end times.
Option One is that they demote him back to guard duty, obviously. It would be unfortunate. The thought of Nocturne or some other slimy higher-up waltzing around his patrol route makes his stomach turn a little. Tommy’s powerful, though, and the Council knows it - or else he’d never have gotten this far. He’s one of their greatest assets. With a few more years and some hard work, he could put this behind him and make his back on track to full Hero status.
Option Two is unofficial, and more conjecture than anything. Tubbo and him used to joke about calling it Hardcore Mode - like their usual jobs, but with the difficulty set to high.
Tubbo and he had noticed Hardcore Mode around their eighth month as rookies. They’d been mostly spending their time as guards at Guild HQ, filling sentry duties between training. During the long hours standing watching they’d picked up on little bits of office politics - who was on good terms with the Council, who was under probation, who’d fucked up and gotten their patrol routes cut back.
Tubbo got onto Medbay rotation, helping the healers change bedsheets and mop the floors, and he’d noticed something odd about the recurring patients. The people who were in the worst straits with the Council got the most important missions. Apprentices would get captured by villains, leak important information, then get assigned to villain surveillance missions the next week. Heroes would misspeak to a reporter, drop in popularity with the press, and within days be put on missions targeting villains on caliber with Nihachu.
They’d usually come back from their missions gored, or maimed, sometimes missing limbs. Most injuries were permanent. Many of them would never fight again.
As far as Tommy could tell, Hardcore Mode was both a test and a reminder. If a Hero slipped up or made a mistake, the Council measured whether they were worth keeping around by pushing them until they snapped and seeing who got back up after. The ones who went down for the count were out of the picture, no longer a liability to the Guild. The stronger ones, the ones who recovered, did so with a harsh reminder of their own vulnerability to the decisions of the Council.
The Hardcore Mode injury Tommy remembers most vividly is Poker’s. Poker had been an Apprentice two years ago when the Butcher Army had brought the Blood God in for execution. He was always in the deep end with the Council - his bizarre relationship with his mentor, Schlatt, had left him constantly waiting for another shoe to drop.
And then the Butcher’s Army was sent out to bring the Blood God in for execution, and Poker had been assigned as field support.
Field support. Against the Blood God. For an apprentice, it was a suicide mission. It was a death sentence walking and everyone knew it. Schlatt had looked smug about it for a week leading up to the final confrontation. And then the Butcher’s Army had brought the Blood God in, and Poker had lived . He’d barely even been wounded.
Good odds. That was Poker’s power. He always had good luck when things came down to numbers and sheer chance. Stabs in the dark would always miss him. His guesses were always good.
After they brought the Blood God in there was a moment where Tommy really, truly thought he’d make it. He’d liked Poker. Poker was friendly, and sometimes while on bedrest in the medbay he’d teach Tommy card games when the healers were looking away. He could be irritating - a bully, even, if he set his mind to it - but he wasn’t much older than Tommy himself, and some part of Tommy had pictured them working together, someday, once Tommy got promoted to Hero.
But then they brought the Blood God in, and Schlatt - still unsatisfied - had assigned Poker guard duty. Of the Blood God.
Poker was wheeled into the medbay hours later with his left eye nothing but a bloody crater. Tommy had just been glad to see him alive.
Poker has moved divisions since then. Last Tommy heard he was out of the city, working supervision at a corner faction. Tommy hasn’t seen him a year, maybe more, but when he hears the Blood God’s name he still thinks about Poker being rolled into the medbay that day with his head half-split, like rotting fruit.
The armory is quiet and mostly empty. There are a few regulars milling around - Antfrost is quietly polishing a sword, and Bad is doing something weird with a dartboard and some arrows - but Dream ignores them in favor of leading Tommy towards the storage units at the very back. The units are claustrophobic and high-tech, assembled in tight rows of gray metal like some kind of filing system.
Dream finds Tommy’s locker at the very back and uses his key-card to unlock it. It clicks open with a quiet whirr, mechanical door sliding up to reveal Tommy’s crumpled supersuit stuffed haphazardly in a duffel bag.
Tommy’s hands are sweaty. He itches to talk, to fill the silence. The lack of conversation sets off his fight-or-flight.
“So, am I back on patrol?” Tommy asks. He tries not to sound too hopeful.
He really fucking wants to go on patrol. Solitary has him feeling like a damn balloon on the verge of popping. Patrol, though - patrol is good. He knows patrol. Even if they’re gonna put him on Hardcore, at least he’d have his route back. He can go back to feeling like he’s doing some kind of good in the world, instead of rotting around Headquarters.
But Dream shakes his head. Tommy’s stomach drops, but then - “Three days probation from patrol,” Dream says, as he grabs the duffel with the supersuit. Tommy breaks into a smile.
Three days. That’s nothing. He’d gotten grounded for a month, one time. Three days was easy.
After a moment, though, his smile starts to fade. Something in his gut tells him this isn’t right. Dream looks too calm, too appeased, for there not to be something waiting around the nearest corner. Dream would only be satisfied if he knew Tommy was going to be punished.
Which makes sense, really. Even from the Council’s perspective, Tommy had befriended a traitor. Two, if you count Ranboo. Beyond the question of his having helped Tubbo learn the patrol schedules, he’d still fucked up.
“...And what else?” Tommy asks, uncertain, eying Dream’s hold on his duffel bag.
“You’ll see,” Dream says, and swings the locker door closed.
Hardcore Mode doesn’t scare Tommy as much as it should. He’s already been going up against dangerous villains for months. Nothing the Council throws him at can top the experience of having Orpheus himself personally tell Tommy, on multiple occasions, that Tommy is going to die a slow and painful death if Tommy makes one more joke about Orpheus’s stupid ass shit coloured coat, to which Tommy had obviously reacted by making another joke about Orpheus’s stupid ass shit coloured coat.
So Tommy’s already fucked, really.
What actually scares him is option three. Getting fired.
Dream brings him to an empty training room. He says almost nothing the whole way, responding with single-syllables as Tommy babbles and rambles at him. It’s horrible. Tommy’s nervous, which makes him talk more, and Dream ignoring him makes him want to claw his own skin off.
Dream closes the door behind them. The room is plain, with black walls and a soft sparring mat. Dream drops the equipment in the middle of the mat and takes a step backwards, folding his arms.
Tommy stands frozen, for a second, not sure how to react. He wonders if Dream’s going to hit him. Except Dream usually doesn’t bother with that sort of triviality, not when he knows how little it gets to Tommy.
Tommy can handle getting beat up. Hell, Tubbo and him beat each other up for fun. It’s the other shit that really gets him - Dream’s little mind games.
“Take a seat, Tommy,” Dream says.
Tommy sits cross-legged in front of the duffle bag. He stares at the gray fabric to avoid having to look at Dream’s horrible white mask.
“There’s been some alterations to your equipment, Tommy,” Dream says.
“Alterations?” Tommy repeats, confused. “My equipment was fine.”
“Yes,” Dream replies. He crouches so he’s on eye level with Tommy, forcing Tommy to look him head-on.
“I want you to understand, before I show you the alterations, what this is about,” Dream says. “It’s not a punishment. I don’t believe in punishment.”
Yeah you do, you lying green bitch, Tommy wants to say, but he bites his tongue. “Yes, sir.”
“But I do believe in helping,” Dream continues, voice so reasonable he almost sounds kind. “Tommy, when apprentices are struggling, it’s the council’s job to guide them. The same way that all powered children are our responsibility. I’m sure you, of all people, understand the gravity of the Council’s responsibility.”
Tommy kinds of wants to kick at him and kind of wants to cry. Dream is right. Tommy, of all people, should respect what the Council does. He’d been wandering the streets like an abandoned puppy before the Council picked him up. Before the Guild trained him, his powers had been so out of control he could barely get store clerks to look at him for long enough to let him buy groceries.
Before the Guild taught him to control his abilities, Tommy’s only real connection to the waking, living world had been the moments when he was able to talk loud enough, and angry enough, to get people’s attention. When his powers first started to present, before he really understood what was happening, he would purposefully start loud, angry arguments with his parents just to get them to look at him for longer than a few seconds. Just to try and pull back the attention that his powers were pushing away.
Thinking about it fills Tommy with a powerful rush of guilt. He hates the Guild and he hates Dream and he hates his guard shifts and long hours training, but if not for the Guild, he’d still be a living ghost. The loneliest, loudest little boy on Earth.
“I understand,” Tommy says. His heart rate is kicking up again. He’s afraid without meaning to be.
“Your friend didn’t,” Dream says softly.
Tommy blinks repeatedly. “No, sir.”
“I warned you this would happen, Tommy,” Dream continues. “I know it’s hard to hear, but I want you to understand that I’ve always had the best for you in mind. I warned you against attachments for this very reason. I want the best for you, Tommy, but Tubbo clearly didn’t. Why do you think he left you here to face the consequences for his actions?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Tommy says, guessing that’s what Dream wants to hear.
Dream shook his head. “Of course not. You wouldn’t know. I know you’d have told me, if you did suspect what Tubbo was planning.”
“Of course I would,” Tommy says immediately.
“I believe you,” Dream responds quietly, and Tommy’s shoulders slump, slightly, with relief. “I do. But Tommy. Tommy.”
He heaves out of the crouch and sits fully on the floor.
“Let me lay this out for you, Tommy,” Dream says. “We’ve just had the worst security breach since the Blood God broke out of a high-security cell the day before his de facto execution. We’ve just lost millions in equipment, supplies, and laboratory assets. All at the hands of one of our own Apprentices. Not only are you extremely close - closer than I approved, if you recall - with the traitor in question, but you had secure information on the patrol scheduling that he ultimately used during the break-in. The Council, Tommy, is… concerned.”
A pause. Tommy nods.
“I talked them down as much as I could,” Dream says. “In the end, they know you’re valuable. You’re powerful and you do good work for the Guild, as long as you have good supervision. So the Council decided to let you continue your work as my Apprentice.”
Tommy lets out a breath of relief so heavily his vision spots at the edges.
“Under certain conditions,” Dream adds. He goes silent for a moment, tilting his head like a cat zoning in on a mouse. “Why don’t you get out your mask, Tommy?”
Tommy, uncertain, reaches forward and rummages through the duffel until his fingers brush the hard exterior of his mask. His mask is black, with dark red and gold highlights. It spans the lower half of his face starting right below his eyes, and dips into a snout-like point that reminds Tommy of a jaguar or cat.
Except today, it’s heavier than normal, and oddly misshapen. Tommy stares at it. There’s an extra piece of metal, a long piece of black-painted metal that reaches around where his neck would be. The catlike nose is thicker, framed by two small, gold-ringed circles that look like the cylinders on a gas mask.
He glances up at Dream, bewildered.
“A modification on the security protocol ‘Catbag,’” Dream explains. It sounds like he’s smiling slightly. “To mitigate potential security threats against the Guild, your mask has been lined with noise-canceling technology restricting your speech to those linked into your comm unit. Totally inaudible from the outside. Non-removable except with permission from me or another Council member.”
Tommy’s hands go cold. He stares back at the mask, horror crawling down his spine.
“That’s a muzzle,” he says, feeling sick. “Dream, this is a muzzle, it’s you can’t stick this shit on me. Fuck no. It’s not - it’s not-“
“Don’t be dramatic,” Dream says sharply.
Tommy stops short, desperately staring up at Dream. The truth is nothing the Guild does can ever be illegal. The Guild supersedes the law. The worst the Guild can do is get bad press, and, well - it’s not like Tommy will be giving interviews in this thing.
“That’s not all,” Dream says. The gentleness from before is gone, and now his tone is flat and vaguely irritated. “Frankly, Tommy, the Council doesn’t trust you. This is the best option you’ve got.”
“What do you mean, that’s not all,” Tommy says slowly. “Dream, what do you m-“
“Truth gas, Tommy,” Dream cuts in, impatient. “They’ve installed truth gas canisters into the mask.”
Tommy blinks. It takes him a few moments to process what Dream’s just said and when he does understand it, he’s too numb to really feel anything - the world is passing through a bit of a hazy fog, like an airplane hitting a cloud.
“Truth gas,” he repeats, and the words are small and almost scared.
“A new technology,” Dream elaborates. “Rather state of the art, but still in development. It’ll take a few hours of steady breathing to properly sink in. Understand it’s not an inducer of any sort. You’ll have control over your words. You’ll just find yourself… blocked, somewhat, from intentional deception.”
He leans forward slightly. “You do understand,” he says slowly, “why the Council chose this, correct? This isn’t a punishment. Your friendship with Tubbo was a mistake. You’re young, and grew up without proper guidance. You’re going to make mistakes. We understand that. That’s why we’re being so lenient, Tommy. Our job is to guide you into a productive, cooperative career with the Guild as an adult. Think of this as a course-corrector. Or insurance. Do you understand?”
There’s a moment of silence.
“You can’t,” Tommy manages, although stringing words into sentences is beginning to be difficult. “You can’t. Dream, this is - I’m an active duty agent. You can’t say I don’t have a choice-”
He stops, unable to continue. There’s a horrible, familiar feeling sinking through him - like the walls could swallow him up and no one would notice. Like the ground is curling up to meet him.
“You always have a choice, Tommy,” Dream says. He gets to his feet, but his head stays tilted down to watch Tommy. “You’re an employee, not an indentured servant. Just know I’d be very sad to see you go - you have great potential.”
It takes a moment for Tommy to understand that this is the other shoe dropping.
“So you’d fire me,” Tommy says.
“Fire you? I’m not going to fire you, Tommy. You’re a tremendously talented person if one sets aside your behavioral…complications.” Dream shrugs one shoulder. “But if you want to walk away, you know I can’t stop you.”
What he’s suggesting - option three, getting fired - is the worst option on Tommy’s mental spreadsheet. In essence, it’s a walking death sentence.
Heroes who ‘walk away’ - who are fired, or quit - don’t get to pass go or collect two hundred dollars. They’re just gone. One day Tommy is passing them in the halls every day, laughing with them during lunch, arguing with them over comms during boring missions; and the next they’re gone without so much as a goodbye party.
For people like Tommy - only 17, without a high school degree or single worldly skill applicable outside of the Guild, that means being abandoned to the streets without any kind of safety net, or a backup plan. Everyone he used to know from the Guild would be blocked from contacting him on pain of demotion.
In other words, he’d be homeless again for the first time in seven years, this time with half of L’Manburg’s worst villains on his scent like sharks. He’d be left with nothing guarding his information or his safety, no weapons, no armor, no equipment.
He’d be blood in the water. A dead man walking.
“It’s up to you, Tommy,” Dream says. “This is a second chance. An opportunity. Will you take it?”
Tommy runs his hands over the metal of the mask and feels nothing but numbness. “Yes, sir.”
Tommy first puts the modified mask on in the confines of his dorm. His hands are cold against the metal of the respirators, and he has to fight to keep the anxiety down to a faint tingling in his fingers rather than a full-blown panic. In future, the mask would be locked into place, he recalls Dream saying, fingers brushing against the hard mechanics of the lock. It’s built with a kind of loop for around his neck. He doesn't dare test it, but he examines it closely, fingers lightly testing for weakness and finding none.
He fits it, gentle, against his face. The truth serum activates as soon as the mask has settled against his skin. It’s almost tasteless, but for a faint and oddly sweet scent of copper, like sugary blood. He takes a deep breath in. It won’t do anything, not yet, not until it’s setted. A few hours.
Tommy taps the side of the mask. It echoes. He tries making noise - first by humming - and no sound makes it through the tight metal. He hums a little louder, then he shouts - and there’s nothing, nothing but the quiet noise of his own heartbeat in his ears.
The panic is coming faster, now. The tingling in his hands is climbing up his arms and he can’t breathe but to smell the sugar-copper-blood-metal truth serum trickling down his throat, syrup-sweet. He wrings his hands and bites his tongue and puts his head in his hands, doubled over, and screams.
All he can hear is the whistling of the radiator.
Tommy’s first patrol with the new mask is lonely. He heads out early, barely catching the sunrise, and leaps from roof to roof with nothing but the scraping of his metal grappling hooks for company. Below, the city starts to rise. Cars hum on the streets, and the faint mist clears into crisp morning air.
The neighborhood is quiet. Some of the locals wave at him as he passes and he salutes them in turn, jumping away before they can try to start conversations. The truth serum is still settling in, and he feels the pressure all day building slowly at the back of his mind, like a ringing in his ears he barely notices unless he really focuses.
He starts to get hungry sometime after noon. The mask only allows him to drink liquids, through a somewhat nasty tube mechanism, so he chugs a protein shake and then doubles over, stomach churning at the horrible taste. Overhead, the sun is starting to wear at him, blinding him and burning at the back of his neck. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs.
God, he’d kill for a lemonade or something. If he’s quick, Tommy reasons, no one will wonder. They’ll just think - they’ll think something, anything, but not the truth.
He debates with himself for a good five minutes before the lingering taste of protein shake nips at his heels, and he finds himself making his way down the city streets, through side-alleys and backroads, until he’s pushing through the doors of his favorite bakery.
It’s a somewhat run-down place, cozy if you squint and don’t pay too much attention to the rat-traps unsubtly hidden under the radiator. The food there is the best Tommy’s ever tasted. He doesn’t make a habit of coming here in costume - he prefers to visit out-of-mask, and frequenting it both in and out of the mask is a liability he can’t afford. Still, though - a visit or two can’t hurt, he reasons. It’s not like Dream knows what he does on his off-days. If he did, Tommy’s life would be very different and much, much worse.
The store is empty, register unmanned. As soon as Tommy enters, there’s a sound of pots and pans clinking loudly behind the closed doors of the kitchen, and after a moment the owner - Niki, a generally upbeat woman with pinkish hair - pokes her head out of the kitchen door, looking incredibly harried.
“With you in a mo - oh! Blindspot,” she says, demeanor lightening as soon as she sees Tommy. She’s always had a soft spot for him - a lot of locals do, but Niki in particular. “Oh my god! How have you been?”
Dammit. He’d been trying to avoid this sort of thing. Tommy does a funny little shuffle to indicate that he’s been fine, really, don’t worry about it.
Niki steps fully out of the kitchen, door swinging shut behind her. She blinks at him. “What’s - Blindspot?”
“Nothing much,” Tommy says weakly, uselessly - she doesn’t hear him at all, just stares at him with faint confusion. He tries again, this time pointing at the menu on the wall.
She frowns and glances behind her. “You want - you want an Apple Danish?”
He shakes his head and gestures to the side.
“Oh,” she says. “A double-sugar mint lemonade?”
He nods emphatically.
She gives him a long look and then steps up to the row of drink vats that rests beside the cash register. “What’s up with the charades, Blindspot? You’re usually more talkative.”
There’s concern in her voice, but something more, too. Tommy feels uncomfortably probed at, like he’s being inspected under a microscope. He shrugs, watching her retrieve a clean glass from under the counter. She stops mid-motion and leans forward, staring at him with her head tilted like she’s searching for something on his face.
He steps back instinctually. Only force of will keeps his hand from going to the staff folded up at his belt. Not for the first time, he gets an odd sense of danger from Niki - a sharpness in her movements that perhaps indicates something more to her than what he’s seen. A threat, nicely packaged; sharp-edged paper with the corners tucked into an origami crane.
She looks away, after a moment, something indistinguishable on her face. She’s gripping the glass like she wants to break it, but her grip softens when she sees him looking.
“Is there some sort of protocol?” she asks, quieter than before, as she hands him the glass of lemonade. “A new rule about apprentices not speaking on patrol? Is that it?”
He stares at her. He feels oddly guilty at the concern on her face - she doesn’t realize what this is. She thinks it’s some bureaucratic nonsense, brought on by scheming, unsympathetic Guild overlords. If she knew the truth - that he’d intentionally allowed his best friend to betray the Guild and free a potentially dangerous Laboratory asset - she wouldn’t be looking at him that way, with that odd mix of bitterness and empathy. She’d probably toss him onto the street.
Tommy fiddles with the water hose on his mask to avoid answering her. It’s an odd contraption that requires him to press several buttons and then pour the liquid into a straw-like apparatus on the top of the mask, nestled between the respirators.
Niki leans forward slightly, bracing her elbows on the counter, and gives him an intense look. “If you need anything, I’m always here, alright? You know that, right?”
His gaze must betray his confusion, because she straightens and turns away. Tommy takes the opportunity to slide a five dollar bill onto the counter. For a long moment Niki busies herself with wiping the opposite counter, and when she spins back around, the odd expression is replaced with a thin, blank smile.
“Good of you to stop by, then, Blindspot,” she says. “Have a safe patrol, yeah?”
Tommy, knowing the clock is ticking for when she notices - and subsequently refuses - the five dollar bill, decides to hit the road.
A week goes by. Outside of meals, off days, or after-hours, all of Tommy’s conversations quickly become one-sided. Rumor spreads, trickling down from the Council to the regular Heroes to their Apprentices and even rookies; people start giving him odd looks in the hallways, or cutting off whispers when he turns the corner. He cusses them out for it and hears only unforgiving silence in return.
The few times he’s hooked into a comm, he learns to keep his words curt and short. The less he can say under the truth serum, the less he can give away.
The Heroes he used to be friends with seem sorry for it; they clap him on the shoulder in the hallway, or high-five him as they pass in some halfhearted attempt at showing support. The rest of them - the ones who’d found Tommy annoying more than endearing - seem to take a schoolyard bully kind of glee from the whole thing. He finds it doesn’t matter much when either way he’s still going unheard.
The worst of it comes two weeks in: he’s doing guard patrol in the hallway outside the Council meeting room and Poker walks by, almost unrecognizable in a expensive looking black-and-white suit and a nasty, but healed scar where his right eye should be. He sees Tommy and does a double take, heels squeaking against the shiny floor as he spins to face Tommy.
“Holy shiiiit!” He says, grinning like he’s won the lottery. “Holy fuck, Blindspot! It’s been so long, dude!”
He extends a hand as if he’s gonna shake Tommy’s hand, and instead daps him up and pulls him into a quick hug. Tommy, too startled to do anything but let him, sort of pats him awkwardly on the shoulder as he pulls back.
“How have you been, Blindspot?” Poker says, searching Tommy’s face with his good eye.
There’s a long, awkward silence. Tommy scowls at Poker, wondering if Poker is trying to taunt him - but as the seconds stretch out Poker’s face is dropping into a frown, and the confusion looks genuine.
Hannah pauses a few paces behind Poker and decides to take pity on Tommy. She claps Poker on the shoulder as she passes by - causing Poker to flinch badly, which only Tommy seems to notice.
“No point, Gambit,” she says, in a sympathetic undertone. “He can’t talk.”
Poker - Gambit, apparently - gives her a quizzical look.
“They got him on Catbag protocol,” she explains, before slipping away down the hall.
Gambit watches her go with dawning understanding blossoming across his face. There’s a moment where some unreadable emotion seems to overcome him, and then he carefully slips back into his previous composure.
There’s still some faint look behind his eye when he turns back to Tommy - bitterness, maybe, or even anger - but it’s there and gone so fast Tommy isn’t sure he’d really seen it.
“Good to see you, Blindspot,” he says, finally. “Shoot me a message sometime, huh? Gets lonely out in the desert.” He snorts, like he’s just made some inside joke Tommy wouldn't get. “Las Nevadas gets real quiet this time of year. Quiet like you wouldn’t believe.”
Gambit sighs and slaps his hand on Tommy’s shoulder again. “See you round,” he says, and a moment later he’s vanished into the crowd.
The day after his encounter with Gambit, Dream shows up halfway through Tommy’s patrol. Tommy never much liked his company, but the truth serum makes everything worse. It feels like someone is mowing the lawn of his thoughts or something. Horrific. He’s scared to talk around Dream, scared to trip over his words and say something he shouldn’t.
Dream taps at his ear and there’s a quiet buzz as his comm connects with Tommy’s mask.
“You have a good patrol?” Dream asks. The two of them are in an empty side-street, and Tommy has to force the tension to drain from his shoulders at being interrupted. He can’t afford to look stand-offish.
Tommy goes to say Yes, sir but the truth serum catches him like a bad dog and yanks him back, pulling the words back down. The sensation is uncomfortable, like something’s crawling around his throat.
There’s a long, uncomfortable silence.
“Morning, Dream,” Tommy finally says, deciding a misplaced response is better than no response at all.
Dream laughs. “Right. Can’t say I blame you. The weather is just awful, right?”
He gestures up at the overcast skies. Tommy wants to be angry, but there’s an odd, sickly sort of relief at being heard. Even Dream laughing at him makes him breathe a little easier.
“Hey, so, I’ve got a job for us,” Dream says, strolling a little closer. “There’s been some criminal activities reported in a warehouse off of Eastwood Boulevard. They’ve set me up with Pyro, Nocturne and Manifest to go check it out. I want you to do the initial sweep - you know, blinked out, go invisible and see if you can catch anyone off guard.”
IT’S NOT INVISIBILITY, BITCH, Tommy thinks, very loudly, and cleverly does not say.
Manifest, Nocturne and Pyro are waiting in a parked car outside of the warehouse. Pyro and Manifest both tumble out of the car when they see Dream approaching, Manifest awkwardly smoothing out the wrinkles in his uniform with the backs of his hands and Pyro blinking hard against the sunlight.
“Heya Blindspot,” Manifest says, goggles glinting Christmas colors.
“Fuck you,” Tommy sighs pointlessly; the noise-cancelling mask swallows his words. He has an odd back-and-forth relationship with Manifest. They’d been friends during the brief window, years ago, when both of them had been rookies; then Manifest got promoted to Apprentice, and he and Nihachu developed personal grudges against Tommy and took to glaring him down in the hallways or skipping him in the lunch line. Ever since Nihachu vanished into thin air two years ago, only a few months after her promotion to Hero, Manifest has mellowed out. Tommy would almost consider him a friend again, to the extent that anyone who spends half his time cussing Tommy out can be Tommy’s friend.
Now, though, Manifest doesn’t look angry at him. He and Pyro are both giving Tommy quick, almost guilty looks, like he’s some kind of puppy they kicked.
Good to know the news about my mask is making the rounds, Tommy thinks, bitter.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Tommy hisses at Pyro and Manifest, and when that doesn’t get across, he flips them off when Dream isn’t looking. They both startle a little. Pyro just looks even sadder (infuriating), but Manifest starts to look irritated, which is a refreshing change.
Dream opens the car door and leans in. He groans, audibly, and turns to Pyro - Tommy tucks his middle finger away hastily and folds his arms across his chest.
“How long’s he been out?” Dream asks.
“Since we got here. Maybe thirty minutes.”
Dream sighs and pokes his head back into the car. There’s a brief scuffling, and then he’s tugging a bleary looking Nocturne out by the arm.
“Ugh,” Nocturne whines. “It’s so bright.”
Dream kicks his ankle. “You’re in night goggles, dipshit.”
“Still,” Nocturne mutters. “I can feel it.”
Dream starts clicking at the controller at his wrist, and after a moment, Tommy hears the quiet buzz of something connecting with his comm. The five of them in unison all reach for their ears to adjust the volume. Dream’s voice filters into Tommy’s earbuds as he reviews the plan - Tommy would head in first and scout it out, then Pyro and Manifest would do a sweep, and Dream would fall in at the rear.
Manifest’s comm starts beeping, cutting Dream off mid-sentence. He pulls it out and taps it, looking confused, then looks up at them in blank surprise.
“There’s been an explosion,” he says, shocked. “Someone’s bombed the dome of the Power Registration Center.”