this world we have built is burning down around us | Dream SMP Time Travel Fic

we move forward with hope that death does not await us too soon

Tommy found it a little funny, admittedly, that he was being blamed for the odd scenarios that had been occurring lately.

It wasn't to say he wouldn't take the chance to yell at the idiots accusing him—after all, he could be more creative than that!—but the intimate knowledge that someone else was being a reckless child was somewhat amusing to him; the accusations of being one himself were like a double-edged sword, and if he ever figured out who was doing it, he'd never let it die—nevermind if they were only doing it to frame Tommy (still a bitch move), he would milk it for all it was worth.

"Framing me? A minor? Not childish, aye?"

Intimate knowledge it was. Nobody seemed to believe Tommy's insistence upon his own claimed innocence, although he'd silently admit—never aloud—that it wasn't an unwarranted mistrust. It pricked the boy's heart a bit, but he could laugh it off. He was a business man, after all! A Big Man who could handle some ignorance from a handful of idiots!

(A child wearing a soldier's uniform that was too big for him, wielding a sword not crafted to his grip and a shield too cracked to be useful, possessing a heart dangerously big, its threat imminent as it slowly swallowed him from the inside out until he was nothing more than as whom others saw him, dependent on the trust that would one day hurt him, a fear he himself never dared to think about.)

He adjusted his hat, humming to himself as he waited beside Jack's bedside, a cool rag draped over the unconscious man's bruised forehead. He was a bit concerned for the headache his friend would have, though he'd rather laugh as the man had his leg chopped off than say it, but he wasn't worried; after all, Tommy had dealt heavier blows to others and adorned crueler wounds himself, so Jack would no doubt be only mildly irritated by the impending migraine than any permanent inconvenience.

(When did silent nightmares forever haunting him with the Control Room's screams and the taste of blood on his tongue as his throat was pierced by the tip of a carefully sharpened arrow become an inconvenience? Perhaps when Tommy had decided it didn't matter, that it couldn't for his own sake.)

"You're tapping your foot an awful lot there, Toms," Wilbur's voice pushed through the cloud of Tommy's thoughts, and he blinked, lifting his head to stare at his brother and then at his bouncing leg.

Scowling, the blond pressed his heel into the floor with a thump of iron on wood, glancing back up to cast Wilbur a sour glare with the extra dramatics of a huff of air from his nose. "The hell's wrong with that?"

"I don't know," Wilbur said, but his lips were curled up, not inconspicuous at all, and his tone was light and teasing. "Are you nervous you'll be ratted out when Jack wakes?"

"I didn't do shit," Tommy refuted, deliberately firm as he stared his sibling down daringly, a dash of smug assurance on his expression, only to be explained by his childish arrogance that persevered with the will that he couldn't die. "I'm just thinking, is all. Ever heard of it? I know you don't do it often."

Wilbur scoffed, but the smile remained on his lips as he rummaged through their potion bottles, piling the empty ones in the sink and neatly setting aside the fuller ones. "Honestly, I do wonder why you're so dead set on this innocence of yours."

"I am, bitch!"

Wilbur chuckled, casting a real smile over at his younger brother, the mocking glint of tease fading into a fuzzy fondness. "If you are, I do wonder who seems to be screwing with you. You have to admit, though, Tommy, that you are the type to do something like this."

"I was with you guys nearly the whole time! How could I have knocked him out, anyway?!"

"I'm not saying it was on purpose!" Wilbur's voice lifted as he shot his brother a gently stern look, a reassurance that urged the blond to hear him out. "All I'm saying is that you get yourself into so much trouble, it would be no surprise if you somehow managed to do this on accident in the midst of some hair-brained scheme you'd set up, or if some effect that you bare the cause of came back to bite you and hit Jack instead."