Archive of Our Own ^beta

tommy wanted to go home.

he could feel everyone's eyes on him the moment he crossed the archway and stepped unsure, stained shoes into the courtroom. they weren't even trying to hide it, invasive stares following him as he walked to take a seat near the back with shaky legs and his skin crawling. he was one of the last to arrive, he could tell, since there were very few seats remaining. tommy was just glad he'd managed to take the last seat in the back row, since he didn't think he could handle sitting so close to the front, not when he knew that dream, once he decided to show up, would be sitting on the stand.

there were more people there than he'd seen in a while, given how the entire server was required to attend the trial. he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen alyssa, who was sat somewhere within the crowd with her blond hair tied back, and her face blank. it almost hurt, to think there were so many people who lived on the same server as him, and he hadn't seen the majority in far too long. hell, even callahan was there, head hung low, hands in his lap. 

new members had arrived, too, some unfamiliar faces scattered within the crowd who he didn't quite recognise. tommy didn't know that new people had joined, but there were certainly individuals he'd never seen before. it only served to make his heart race faster, knowing that he, soon, would be on the stand himself, forced to admit all that dream had done to him in front of a crowd larger than he'd seen in a long, long while, not since the election, and that hadn't ended well. nausea made his head spin, and the acidic taste of vomit sat heavily on his tongue.

tommy picked at the red raw skin around his nails, ignoring the way his fingernails were already slick with dried, crusted blood that clung to his pale skin. it distracted him enough, and that was all that he cared about. the person next to him, one he hadn't seen before, with warm eyes crinkled in concern and long auburn hair spilling out from beneath a bunny hat and over their pale blue shirt, sent him a worried look, but didn't say anything. 

despite him being sat down, tommy wondered if he'd ever felt so dizzy before, room spinning and warping in his gaze. light-headedness clung to his mind, leaving him feeling faint and exhausted, though all he'd done was take a seat.

he wanted to go home already.

"the first to take the stand is tommy innit."

tommy jolted in his seat, eyes widening unconsciously, scanning across the room frantically as it set in that everyone, everyone, was staring at him expectantly. he could feel his skin crawling and his stomach sinking as he rose to his feet unsteadily, black spots dizzying his vision as he shuffled his way towards the front, hunched in on himself as if that would stop the hundreds of eyes locked onto him. sam, dressed in a suit far too similar to the wardens' attire, sat behind the desk angled to the left of the stand, arm outstretched, holding out a small vial of silvery liquid.

it wasn't something he'd ever said out loud, but tommy fucking hated sam. he didn't think he could ever forgive him for leaving him in a confined cell with no one but dream. he knew it was a horrible thing to admit, something bitter and cruel that made him clench his teeth and bite back the truth. if he drank the truth serum, the one being held towards him expectantly, he knew that he would end up blurting it out, and everyone would see the monster he really was.

swallowing thickly, tommy cast a shaky glance towards the seated crowd behind him. he had no choice. squeezing his eye shut, he inhaled sharply before lifting it to his cracked lips and drinking it in one.

"please take a seat at the stand, tommy."

without hesitating, tommy sat in the rickety wooden chair placed behind the stand, small microphone resting just below his chin. his eyes stayed locked on his hands, picking absentmindedly at his skin, focusing on anything but the entire server watching him, watching his every move.

"just to make sure the serum is working, can you confirm that your name is tommy innit, you are one of the founding fathers' of l'manberg, and you are seventeen-"

before sam could finish, tommy found his mouth moving before he could stop himself, words feeling as if they were being torn from his throat, "eighteen," he corrected instantly. he snapped his gaze up to meet sam's, eyes wide and confused. he hadn't said that. the words had just... spoken themselves, and his mouth had moved, but it was as if he couldn't control them.

"so it does work," sam hummed, and, oh god, if that didn't make tommy feel sick.

maybe he'd been right. he'd always wondered, distantly, not that he'd ever voice it aloud, if sam had only enclosed him within that inhumane cell with dream as some sick sort of test to see how long it would take for dream to snap, to see if dream really would resort to using the revive book, if dream actually held the knowledge of revival. tommy knew it was a horrible thought, he knew he'd sound like a monster if he'd ever spoken it to anyone else, but perhaps he'd been right, because the uncertainty and relief in sam's voice made his stomach turn. he'd been nothing but a test subject when he'd screamed his throat raw and sobbed and pleaded to be let out of the cell, and he was no more than a test subject when he was sat at the stand, trembling hands in his lap.

tommy could almost imagine hitting sam, there and then, frustration thrumming through his veins. he could almost feel the blood on his knuckles, the crack beneath his hand.

"for the sake of this trial, can you state how you know dream?"

he felt nothing short of ill as his mouth moved on its own, unable to control what he was revealing to the entire server, some of whom he hadn't spoken to in years, most of whom despised him. "i met him the day i joined this server. he used to be a friend. then he made it his life's goal to take hold of my discs' because he knew what they meant to me. he spent months with me in exile, of his own accord. he murdered me a week after my seventeenth birthday."

it wasn't a conscious choice to shift his gaze to the crowd, but tommy found he couldn't look away once he did. there were far more people than it had first seemed, bordering on forty, and, for a moment, tommy was back on the podium, wilbur at his side, bouncing on his heels and beaming toothily down at the gathering beneath them. then, in a single blink, he was looking through straggly white curls at a sea of horrified faces, and he wanted nothing more than to go back to the election, before things had really started going wrong.

sam cut in before his mind could wander any further, before he could really focus in on the disturbed expression on technoblades' face, as if he hadn't known, "and why do you believe dream deserves to be imprisoned?"

"dream has taken more from me than i can ever say," tommy's words, though they were not his own, sounded shaky, and his eyes widened as it set in that everything, everything, was going to be known, by everyone. tommy didn't want that. he didn't want their pity, didn't want them looking at him as if he was a victim, treating him as if he was fragile, though, in a way, he was. "even before exile, dream was a monster. the independence war that he fought was against child soldiers, in a country that wanted nothing but independence. he fought it just to prove his control over us. over everyone. when i was fifteen, right after l'manberg was established officially, i found tunnels around my house."

"i would wake up every day, and i would feel like i was being watched. i was paranoid, according to everyone else, i was a kid shaken up by war, making up stories because i went into 'survival mode'. then i found them. ones in my walls, floors, behind a bookshelf, all leading to dream's base. he was watching me. i would walk outside, and i would see him hiding behind bushes, trees, anything, just so he could feel some sort of power over me. i was fifteen, "tommy could feel his eyes burning in shame, humiliation flushing his face red. he gritted his teeth, biting back words, tongue held harshly between sharpened molars. 

they all knew.

every single face looking back at him held pity, or disbelief. and not in the shocked way, no, tommy could tell in some of their expressions that they would only ever see him as a liar, and, really, he couldn't blame them. boy who cried wolf, right? he brought this onto himself. still, it made his chest ache.

"what about after that? exile? what did dream do there?" sam prompted, and tommy could taste the acidic sting of vomit in his throat. he knew sam knew. he'd told sam, and sam had told him right back that he'd already heard it all from dream. he'd confessed, to everything. sam knew all that he went through there, knew how he'd gotten to a point where he was trying to kill himself even in his sleep, and he'd wake up in the ocean with salt in his lungs and tears in his eyes. sam knew tommy had given himself deadly frostbite, ran through a tundra with third-degree-burns already coating his body and lost the lower half of his left leg all in a desperate attempt to flee dream. sam knew.

and sam was forcing him to reveal everything he'd told him in confidence to the entire server.

he took in a shuddering breath, looking anywhere but the crowd. suddenly, the carpeted floor became incredibly interesting as the words began pouring out. "exile was the worst thing i've ever been through."

tommy had never been sure about that, he'd always been confused about exile, it made his head hurt, but hearing the certainty in his own voice made his eyes well up. "i was exiled for burning down georges' house in an accidental fire, only a week after my house had been destroyed and set alight too. they received no punishment. i was exiled. dream came with me, just to watch, to get back the control he'd been losing. he took me to an island so far away that i thought it was out of server bounds. it was completely dead. the grass was brown, the caves were empty, and the trees were dead. he gave me a tent, a flimsy woollen thing that blew into the sea in the first day."

"i hated it there. i fought back as much as i could, i argued back before i realised that my words did nothing to him. no matter what i said, what i did, dream wouldn't change his mind about exile. every single bit of progress i made, every stick and rock i tied together with thread and called a tool was exploded. every day, without fail, dream would visit, and he would destroy everything i'd made. if i didn't give it up, dream would make me stand so close to the explosion that i'd be bleeding for hours after," unconsciously, tommy slipped his fingers under his sleeves, brushing against raised scars, some self-inflicted, some burn wounds. both equally painful to think of. "i told him once that i didn't think i had much long left. he laughed in my face."

"he started hitting me a week in. it didn't take long for him to snap," at that, tommy glanced towards sam, because, even if he couldn't control the bitter truth he was revealing, he would get some sort of satisfaction seeing the guilt on sam's face after he realised that tommy knew. the satisfaction shrivelled up once tommy realised sams' face was completely blank. cold. "if i talked back, i'd be hit. if i didn't give up my armour, i'd be hit. he let me in the nether after that, though, and he'd tell me stories about how everyone was doing back home. he even brought me a picture of the christmas tree in l'manberg that year. dream tried to convince me he was my friend, and, for a long time, i thought he was. even now, i don't really know. he'd tell me that no one else visited because everyone hated me, and it didn't take much for me to believe him."

dizziness took hold in his faint mind as he realised where they were going. "i used to wake up every morning in the ocean, not far from shore, but just far enough that, for a moment, i couldn't feel the sea floor under my feet, and i would think that i'd really died this time. dream used to tell me that i'd tried to drown myself in my sleep, that i'd gotten so desperate that i would sleepwalk into the sea and hold myself under. i still don't know if that's true. i started hallucinating about then, where i'd see tubbo walking out of the portal, and i'd see my family sat on the beach and ignoring me. dream always made me feel insane fort that. once, i went to the nether with dream and sapnap," though tommy was zoning out, forcing himself to detatch from the moment as if that would make it any less real, he saw sapnap jolt at the mention of his name. "they went off, and dream only returned just in time to stop me throwing myself into the lava. he made fun of me. then it was never brought up again."

sam had apparently taken pity on him, thank fucking prime, because tommy was convinced that, any longer, and he would've forced himself to hold his breath and pass out just to get the words to stop. "and how did you get out of exile if dream was treating you that way?"

"dream told me that if i ever tried to escape, he would kill me before i could even start running. i had a book hidden under a pile of rocks in the nether that i used to talk with ranboo, and he'd found it. he also found that i'd been hiding a stash of items beneath the shelter that dream had built for me, only a few photographs of family and friends, just to remind me what i was living for, and he'd snapped. i don't remember it clearly, because i stood too close to the first explosion and my ears were ringing so badly i thought i'd never hear again. i remember everything hurting, and, when i checked after, the burns i'd gotten were so bad that my clothes had melted into the flesh. i think he screamed at me for a while, and he hit me a few times too. he slit the throat of the cow i'd been taking care of, and he'd thrown her corpse into the crater, and exploded it again. he said he'd leave for a week, and if he returned and i hadn't bettered myself by then, he'd never come back."

"the first thing i did was try and kill myself again. i didn't see any way out of dream's treatment, and i didn't think anyone would believe me. so i built a tower, just a flimsy thing that i could barely climb up on, and i threw myself off. i didn't leave a note, or anything, i honestly didn't think. it was only when i was half-way down that i realised if i died, dream would just bring me back, and then he'd win. so i aimed for the water," tommy shifted in the seat, uncomfortably aware of all of the eyes watching him, eyes who now knew everything he'd tried to desperately to hide for so long. "i broke my wrists landing in it, because i knew that if i went head-first, i would've broken my neck. and then i just...ran."

the court room had fallen into silence, silence so quiet that tommy felt as if his breathing was the only noise.

he could distantly make out technoblade in the audience, somewhere to the left, and he looked nothing short of hurt. tommy, in all the time he'd stayed in techno's cabin, hadn't told him any of it. he knew the basics- that he'd been in exile, and dream was shitty, and that was it.

it made tommy sick to think of how long he'd spent lying to everyone, all for it to go to waste. because everyone knew now.

and he could see how differently they were looking at him already.

"where did you go after you'd escaped? did dream come after you?" sam continued, as if he couldn't even give tommy a second to breathe before his mouth would take control again and his words would be torn from his throat.

"i ran blindly. i still couldn't hear, and my vision in my right eye was completely gone," tommy knew that didn't mean much now, not after both of his eyes had stayed a milky white after his revival. "both of my wrists were shattered, but the bone was sticking out of this one, and i got desperate," tommy lifted his right hand onto the stand, where the jagged scar over his wristbone still stood bright against his skin. "i ended up in the tundra, with one shoe and no socks. i don't know why i went that way, but i just needed to get away from him. i remember seeing a light somewhere in the snow, and i just...ran. the snow was so thick that it went up to my knees, and i think i passed out a few times, but i'd managed to find technoblades' cabin, and, after stealing a few golden apples, i hid in his basement."

"i already knew dream would be after me. he will always be after me, as long as he is free. technoblade found me after a few days, because of his stupid chat," the distant, almost fond smile that cracked technoblades' steely expression was not lost on tommy, and warmth spread throughout his chest. "he helped me, and i don't think he'll ever know how grateful i am for that. i think if i hadn't gotten to his cabin, i would've ended up killing myself and giving up. but he helped, and he didn't have to. i had such bad frostbite from my desperate escape that he had to amputate part of my leg, and he made the prosthetic for me that same day."

"i never told him what happened in exile, and he still hid me when dream showed up at his door and demanded he told him where i was. even though i had barely told techno anything, he gave me an invisibility potion, and somewhere to hide. and, when we were in l'manberg, dream caught us, and techno stepped in. he told dream that i was with him, and i think that was the safest i've ever felt."

fuck, tommy had almost forgotten that the entire server was in the room with him, looking past the faces and into techno's eyes. all at once, his face flushed with shame, and he stared intently at the floor as if it was the most interesting thing there.

sam's expression didn't falter, though tommy could've sworn there was some sort of bitterness in his eyes, and he was suddenly reminded of the times spent with sam, in ill-fitting construction gear and a chattering robot voice, building a hotel with smiles on their faces. then tommy glanced back up, through his white curls, and was abruptly reminded that sam had let him die for an experiment. "and did dream do anything after that? "

"there was doomsday, the second one," tommy quickly clarified, "where he said his normal stuff, did a whole speech about power, all those things. i'd gotten tired of it by then, i'd heard it so many times. and then it was the final disc battle, where he fought me and tubbo, all for the discs that he said gave him control. he had this whole underground bunker, with shrines for each disc, and cages for one loved thing for each server member. there were cages for people, pets, and items. dream held an axe to tubbos' throat, and told me that i had to choose between the discs, and my best friends life," tommy took in a sharp breath, "i gave him the discs. then everyone showed up, lead by punz, and caught him half-way through one of his manic speeches. he was imprisoned right after that."

"nothing else really happened until right after my seventeenth birthday. it was the first birthday in years that i didn't spend it terrified for my life, and i thought i'd celebrate by visiting dream to get closure. i thought it'd be a good present to myself to know that i'd never have to see him again. then the sirens went off, and i was locked in there with him for a week. the only food we got were potatoes, raw, and occasional cups of water. paper, of course. even living in the same conditions, though i hadn't committed any prison-worthy crimes, i never felt bad for him. he deserves it. then, dream mentioned the revival book, and it felt like old times. like when the server was still new, and dream himself was only a kid, and we'd bicker harmlessly. i started teasing him, because he'd acted so friendly to me in prison, and he'd said he'd changed."

"dream didn't take it well. i spent hours being beaten to death, having my head slammed against the cold obsidian floors, and my hands stuck beneath the pouring lava fence. i died, barely seventeen, beaten to death in a prison after being locked in unrightfully. i saw the afterlife, limbo, i got to speak with wilbur, and schlatt, and they showed me how to see through back into the living world. i saw my own dead body. i was so disfigured i didn't even register it as me until i heard schlatt gag next to me, and i saw wilbur look away. i was revived soon after, but limbo works differently. it had felt like months, and it was no more than a few days. everyone knew i'd died, sam had told them all, but, when i came back, most people thought i'd pulled a prank, they didn't even believe i'd died."

sam blinked harshly, but tommy felt no pity. he'd given tommy the truth serum, a potion he didn't even know if it was safe, he knew what was coming. tommy didn't want to admit it, any of it, but he knew that there was a chance of dream escaping punishment if he didn't. he knew he couldn't handle that. not again.

"is there anything else dream did to you that you believe makes him worthy of punishment?"

"the first thing he did after he escaped was hunt me down. i went back to my exile, because i thought that would be the last place he would look for me, because he knew how much i'd rather be anywhere else. he found me the same hour he escaped. he held the axe of peace to my throat, a gift to me from techno, one that dream had stolen, and started counting down and told me to run. he hunted me like an animal. he slashed through my shoulder with the axe, and he followed me as i ran back through the tundra, screaming for techno, phil, or anyone else to help me. the moment i'd gotten inside the fencing around techno and phil's cabins, and phil came outside after hearing all the screaming that dream backed away."

"dream gets his power from thinking he can watch people, and that he can scare them. dream took my childhood away from me. some days, i wake up, and it isn't until someone talks me down that i genuinely know where i am. sometimes when i see the same shade of green as dream's cloak, i stop breathing until i pass out, because i'm so terrified that if i let out a single breath, dream will hear me, and hunt me down, just like he's done time and time before, and has proven that he can do. i don't recognise myself. after revival, my hair went white. my eyes make me look like i can't see. i'm practically fucking blue," tommy glanced down at his sickly pale skin. "dream has taken everything he can from me. everything. i think the least he deserves is a life sentence."

the faces that stared back at him looked ill, some even tinged green. there was so much pity, so much, that it made tommy's stomach turn. he knew they'd never see him the same way again, they'd never see him as 'tommy', no, they'd always think back to him admitting, on trial, that he'd almost killed himself countless times and had lost a leg trying to get away from dream. they would never see tommy again, no, all they would see is dreams victim. 

just the thought of that made tommy dizzy.

the moment that tommy was let off the stand, he fled the courtroom.

he didn't stick around to hear the end of the trial, or the verdict, or to watch any other testimonies on the stands. all he knew was that he'd just spilled absolutely everything unwillingly to the entire server, and nothing would ever be the same.