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When Tommy was young, he used to love the water.
Part of him still does even now. If he was more awake, he would appreciate the wide horizon of beautiful, chaotic waters. They crash heavy and hard against the shore and they take and take until there’s nothing left.
Nothing besides Tommy - hardly so.
The ocean is shrouded in a blanket of pitch black. It wraps its holds around Tommy’s shoulders and yanks him deeper into the ground. The water crashes against his bruised and cut legs. Distantly, they cuts sting with the harshness of the salt water. If he was more aware of himself, he would pick his ankle up from the thickening sand and walk back to the house.
Every night without fail Tommy wakes up.
He’s never been able to sleep through the night interrupted. He never walks out into the water intentionally - not of what he’s aware of. All he knows is he goes to bed, straps himself down, and everynight he wakes up with his head under the water.
His lungs burn with the sting of water in his lungs. His brain is slow and foggy from the lack of sleep. The week’s exhaustion is getting worse and worse. By now he would’ve usually walked back inside and dropped himself on the bed, but today he doesn’t budge.
He stands with his feet buried in the sand out of hopes the water’s going to carry him away.
The frigidness of water sends shocks up throughout his body down to fingertips. He can no longer feel his feet enough to lift himself up and go back into the house. Not that he wanted to.
He always loved the water when he was young.
Beautiful stretch of unending blue. The waters stretch into an oblivion. On bad days, and Tommy had those more often than not, the only solace that would keep him from closing his eyes and keeping them closed was the hopes of seeing that beautiful blue again.
He thinks the ocean would be as good as a place to die as any.
“Prime,” he begins, a hopeless plea following off of his lips with a simplistic ease. “I think you owe it to me - this much, at least.”
The ocean is quiet in response. Her waves are unforgiving, a beautiful, tragic power against his ankles.
“Take me away,” he pleads, clasping his hands together in an interlocked hold. “Take me to rest.”
He closes his eyes in a prayer.
If every night he walks himself out into these waters, maybe he should go with it. He’s exhausted, tormented by the ocean’s pull at him. She calls to him every waking hour, even those nights where he curls up under his covers. The siren’s call steals him from his slumber, and in this daze he walks out into the ocean until he wakes up with blue lips.
Instead of waking up, the cold settles in even more. It freezes him to his core until the stinging pain becomes a numb, empty feeling.
“...Thank you,” he says, and thinks his last words should be cooler than this. It fits, he thinks, to have such a boring end for such a sad life.
Tommy’s only ever known this empty house. Long ago he had a family - a father named Sam. He doesn’t know what happened to Sam - Dream was never willing to tell him despite his prodding. He only ever held it against him. Tommy couldn’t tell if Dream even knew Sam or why he was sent to him. Some awkward family tree malfunction. Tommy’s father’s cousin’s son, or something like that. Dream was never in touch with anybody, much less Tommy.
…Despite them living underneath the same roof.
Tonight when the sleep overtakes him and the water buries him down in the sand and he doesn’t return to his messy bed, he wonders if Dream will wake up early for his morning run. He wonders how long it will take for Dream to realize he isn’t there. He wonders how long it’d take for someone to care.
Ever since the beginning, the ocean was all he had.
How fitting it is for it to be his death.
--
Tommy opens his eyes.
For the first time when his baby blue eyes flutter open, they don’t stick together with an uncomfortable crust. They part with an ease, and a beach comes into view.
“You had one fucking job,” he thinks aloud, throwing himself back. “I don’t even get this? Really?”
His heart hangs in his chest, and he can’t find it in him to be happy or upset. The weariness is engraved into his bones, his soul. He’s lived with it so long he’s not sure what he is without it. He’s not sure what he could be if he wasn’t.
“Oh,” a voice says, and it’s distinctly not Dream’s. Tommy rolls his head to the side, but he doesn’t bother wasting what little energy he has left on raising his head. “He’s alive.”
There’s a pink haired man standing in front of him. He’s dressed oddly to be standing on the beach’s shore - not to mention it’s Tommy’s backyard. He has a puffy white blouse tucked into black trousers with a thick red overcoat.
At his side stands a teenager with a trenchcoat.
“If you’re pissed that I’m alive, get in line,” he says before he can stop himself. “I want to warn you my brother owns a gun, so he might shoot you for tresspassing.”
“Heh?”
Tommy waves his hand and huffs as he sits himself up to face the intruder. “My brother, Dream?” He’s never seen this guy before in his life, but to be fair - he’s not allowed out of the house.
“There’s no reason for you to go out if everything you need is in here, right, Tommy? No need for you to bother the townspeople.”
He tastes something bitter.
“Guns aren’t allowed here,” he says curtly. “Neither are humans.”
Tommy realizes two things at once.
Firstly, this guy is very oddly dressed for a murderer. Maybe Prime had a fluke with the ocean’s storm and instead sent out a murderer to grant him his wsh, but do murderers really dress like that? Maybe it was a mistake?
Secondly, however, he realizes there isn’t an intruder in the first place. The sand beneath his fingertips is not the same sand he bled out on over so many nights.
“Oh my god,” Tommy says, “I’ve drifted out to sea?”
The stranger quirks his lips into the beginnings of a small smile. “Again, humans can’t get in on will alone,” he replies. “The ocean’s storm dragged you in. I thought you dead. Kinda… awkward now.”
“Get in where?” Tommy asks, reeling around. He itches to stagger to his feet, but his legs ache with an aching sore. “What the hell happened to my legs?”
“Not like most people use those around here, anyways,” the stranger says, marching towards him.
Tommy raises his hands to defend himself. “Whoa - keep your distance, or I’ll--”
“You’ll what?” he scoffs roughly. “It’ll be easier if you don’t talk.”
Tommy struggles to scramble back in the sand, but his legs don’t cooperate. He rolls over onto his stomach to dig his hands into the sand, but he barely moves an inch. He spares a glance over his shoulder to check up on the approaching stranger only to find him looming over him. “Oh, hell no!” he screams, thrashing against the sand. He spits as some lands in his mouth and he closes his eyes in a wince. “You’ll never take me al--fuck!”
His hands leave the ground without his say so and he’s lifted high up into the air. He lets out a loud squeal and pushes against his chest only for him to fall in defeat pathetically.
“For someone who said they wanted to die, you’re fighting an awful lot,” he says, hoisting him up higher so he can adjust his grip on him. “What’s your name?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to die,” Tommy says numbly. “I just said I was pissed that I wasn’t.”
“Do all humans have flawed logic, or is that just you?”
His head fills with a wave of nausea, and Tommy could no longer be bothered to keep his eyes open. He goes limp in the grasp and lets himself dangle in his hold. He can still hear the comfort of those crashing waves, and it grounds him. Within the chaos of the water, he now hears the sifting of sand, the faint breathing of his captor, and his own punched, broken sounds that escape his trying lungs.
“Humans… compared to what?” Tommy asks.
“I think,” the stranger begins with an amused click of his tongue. There’s a lull of silence as he’s calmly rocked back and forth. He’s being carried away from a distant beach. He could die here. Even worse, he could live.
Whether or not the outcome of the rest of his life is good or bad, he doesn’t care. For the moment he’s alive by the water he loves so dearly, for the moment he’s held.
“Gonna just keep ignoring me?”
Tommy only hums gently.
He thinks this may have been the first time he’s been held in a long, long time.
“I said,” he begins again with a clearing of his voice, “It’s rude to ask what I am before you even know my name. Or my, yours.”
“…Tommy,” he finishes at last. He owes that much to the man who held him for the first time. “Now, you can tell me what you are.”
“Not my name?” he taunts.
“…you can tell me that too,” he adds after a moment of thought. “I’m Tommy, human.”
“Human child, you mean,” he corrects.
He squints up at his face. His feeble hand slowly raises to land against his captor’s face. “You look pretty human to me.”
“I do, do I?”
“Little punk pitch with pink hair—“
“It’s natural,” he interrupts.
Tommy pauses. “You can’t be born with pink hair!”
“Maybe humans can’t,” he sings. They reach the end of a shore where a stone gate stands. It opens upon them walking up. A gust of wind passes through them and Tommy sits himself up as much as he can within his arms.
He rests his head against his chest and looks out onto those waters. They’re calm now, unlike last night.
“I don’t think I need to ask who you are. I think… Prime sent you. For my prayer. I asked for the water to take me away.” To die, to leave, to rest - he didn’t care; it was all the same. “She sent you instead.” He cranes his head to get a better look at his captor - his savior.
“My apologies,” he says, bowing his head. “I don’t much about your human gods, but I am one of my own.”
“A god?”
The waters rise before them, and the water parts way for her love, for Tommy to return in his steady hands. He steps forward into the ocean floor and the water divides then towers over them in one big dome.
“My name is Technoblade, little human,” he introduces; the faintest hint of a smile brews on his face. “And I’m taking you home.”
It sounded nice - a dream of which Tommy had never gotten the fortune of knowing.
The last thing Tommy sees is hope for one last granted wish (his only, his first) in the form of Technoblade’s amused face before water crashes over them, and if all fades to black.
-
When Tommy wakes next, he isn’t alone.
Tommy’s face scrunches up at the loud noise - muffled voices increasingly growing louder as he gradually returns to the land of the living. He blinks open to the face of an unknown room, a giant, tall-ceiling. He cranes his head back and shoots his arm out before finding something there.
His other hand comes to rub at his eyes. With a yawn, he fully wakes up to the familiar face from his dream.
“Oh,” Tommy says, a lazy grin spreading across his face. “It wasn’t a dream.” His hand grabs at the end of his hair and yanks roughly. Tommy’s grin stretches the sides of his face until it hurts, but he can’t get it to fade. “I should’ve known,” he confesses, grinning even wider the longer the realization settles in. “Nobody’s ever here when I wake up!”
“I almost wasn’t,” Techno says awkwardly, adding a dry chuckle.
“That’s really not funny, Techno,” a new voice adds, and Tommy rolls his head to the side.
Behind him stands - oh.
He’s not standing.
He’s floating.
“He’s home in peace - what do you mean?” Techno stresses.
“Are you an angel?” Tommy asks, stretching his hand out to the blond haired floating man. He’s dressed strangely - no odder than Technoblade’s with his eccentric green cloak and-- “Tail!” A jolt sparks through his body, and he tries to roll out of his grip. His legs fail to hold up his weight, and he expects to crash into the ground.
Except, when he lets go, he only floats too.
“What the fuck?” he screams, desperately trying to swim back to the stand. “What kind of angels have tails?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Technoblade complains. “Humans hardly listen. Phil, I say we dump him back where the humans are supposed to be.”
Tommy scoffs. “I’m starting to think it’s a cosmic joke,” he muses. “I pray to Prime to take me out of my Hell, and not even my weird saviors want me. That’s hardly fair, is it?”
The blond man, Phil, only frowns. “I’m afraid it’s not, mate,” he apologizes. “If it’s any consolation, your wish must’ve been granted. If not, you wouldn’t be able to be here.”
“Oh, fuck off!” a new voice chimes in, and a brunette comes swimming in. Tommy has to squint at him and his oddly colored tail. “Put that thing back where it came from!”
“Salmon boy, I didn’t exactly wish to be here, either,” Tommy says, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
His pale face darkens with a red, frustrated tint. “You fucking did?! You just said you prayed for this, dipshit!”
“I wished for the water to take me away!” he exclaims back. “I wished for it to-- oh.” Realization dawned on him. “Oh. That’s…”
“That’s kinda funny,” Techno says dryly. “Careful what you wish for, I guess.”
“No worries, mate, we can just take you back,” Phil says, and Tommy’s heart drops in his chest.
“No--” he says before he can catch himself.
What is he thinking?
“No,” he says, scrunching up his face in his confusion. “I… I think it’d be in your best interest to let me stay. If the gods wished it.”
“Enough god talk in our Kingdom,” Phil cuts in. “Welcome to Mermadia. Techno’s the one that found you on our shore. Wilbur’s, uh… adjusting.” He stage whispers, “He’s not big on humans.” Tommy deadpans at him. He bites back a muffled clearly. “I’m Phil.” He startles, as if a thought just popped into his head. “I’m King, by the way. These are my two princes, my sons.”
“What kinda Barbie bullshit--”
“I’m dumping him back!” Wilbur announces. “He’s stinking up the place already.”
“You’re the one that stinks like fish!” Tommy screams back, beating his fist against Techno’s chest. “Techno, step forward so I can hit him.”
Techno turns to Phil with an exasperated look on his face. “We need to take him back.” Techno says it, and they all nod - but not a single one of them believes it.
“I, uh, have a no-refund policy?” Tommy says, grinning up at Techno. “You really don’t have a choice here.”
He quirks an unamused eyebrow. “I don’t.”
“Nope! My name is Tommy,” he introduces, struggling to try and set his feet down against the palace floor even as he floats away from it. He keeps one hand against Techno’s shoulder to keep himself steady. “Since you kidnapped me, you owe me, like, riches and shit. You’re a king, right?”
“Phil, please do not tell me you’re actually going along with this--”
“Shut up, salmon!”
“I’m a fucking eel!”
Tommy turns his head. “Wait… you guys are mermaids? ”
Wilbur’s fight leaves him before an amused grin makes itself present. “I’d watch your mouth, Tommy.”
“Oh? Whatcha gonna do about it, bitch boy?”
“Nothing,” he replies, shrugging cooly. “I wonder when he figures it out if he’ll blame it on his puny human god, even then.”
“You’re not making any sense,” he says, squinting at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I’d watch what you say about mermaids, is all,” Wilbur says, waving his hand off before swimming out of the room. “What goes around comes around!”
Technoblade’s words sit heavy in his mind.
Phil beats him to it before he can put two and two together himself.
“Well, uh, mate, humans aren’t really… allowed here. Sorry about your legs - if you were attached.”
Tommy would’ve laughed at the pun.
If his feet were where they should’ve been, at least, he would’ve.