Inception {Dreamnotfound}

10 | New Discoveries | 10

-George's POV-

It's a strange thing to watch.

The black band seems to spark when Tubbo wears it, glowing white specks illuminating the faint cracks between the broken pieces. It stays like that for a few minutes, doing nothing to the person that wears it. Then suddenly, it snaps again, crumbling into all the little pieces that it did before.

I collect them up, making sure not to lose any for fear of what it may cause the band to do. Tubbo hisses in pain, rubbing the wrist where Tommy's band rests. The band slowly begins to flood with white again, and Tubbo scrunches his eyes up against the pain that returns with it. He suffocates a scream, biting marks into his hands until they begin to bleed.

"Hey, it's okay..." I whisper, slowly caressing the teen's back in hopes it'll provide some comfort. He slowly begins to calm down, breathing steadily evening out to a point where he can force his eyes open again. Blood continues to trickle from the gashes in his palm, and Tubbo watches the droplets fall in a comfortable state of misery, as if he's seen this happen a million times before.

"No, I'm fine, seriously..." he mutters to his side, and I realise Tommy must've reappeared. "Yes! Tom, I'm fine. How was it this time?" The ghost of a smile tugs at Tubbo's lips upon seeing his best friend again, and it makes my heart melt a little.

I mutter something about going to get bandages to Tubbo before heading back to mine and Clay's room, not quite understanding what I just witnessed. Clay shoots me a questioning glance when I walk in, and I offer him a confused shrug before rummaging through our medical supplies.

I grab some disinfectant and bandages out of a bag, cursing the way my hands tremble too much to grip the bottle. It falls through my fingers, thankfully fastened tight enough not to spill, and Clay cringes at the dull clunk when it hits the floor.

"Do you want some help with that?" he offers, and I shake my head, realising how suspicious this must look without context. I told him I was going to see Tubbo, there's a flash of light, a scream, and then I return minutes later looking for medical supplies. I'm sure Clay has already connected a few dots, and is watching me now, trying to connect the rest.

I'm quick to leave before he can question anything, returning to the now eerily quiet room I just left full of yelling. Tubbo's eyes are glued to the spot where I know Tommy appeared, filled with concern. "George..." Tubbo mumbles upon hearing me return. "There's something wrong with Tommy. He's got this..." he stops, turning to his left. "Yes Tommy I'm telling him!"

The two argue for a minute or two, and it's weird to listen to when you can only hear half of it. I pretend to look busy, rolling and unrolling the bandages while trying to depict what they're talking about. "Right, thank you. It's important, alright," Tubbo smiles to Tommy before turning to me.

"Tommy has this cut on his hand, which he says wasn't there when he was in the other world, so it's appeared only when he came back here. His other scar that he had from when he..." Tubbo cuts himself off, shooting Tommy an apologetic glance. "-The one he had before matches the greyscale, but this one is pure black."

"Like the soulmate band?" I suggest innocently as a colour comparison before realising that may have actually been the cause of it. Tubbo wears a black band, a black mark appears on Tommy. That doesn't seem like a coincidence, especially when those scars have never appeared before.

"Yeah, like the soulmate band." I watch the same realisation register in Tubbo, and he glances at the broken band pieces I sorted into a neat pile. "Wait, it is like the band! Maybe it's because I wore Tommy's first, so the system mistook it for my soulmate band and did that as a sort of punishment for me trying to wear two."

The guilt in Tubbo's eyes upon realising he could've caused the mark on Tommy is sickening to see, and I feel a pang of guilt at showing him the band in the first place. "Well, Tommy said we have to keep the band," Tubbo shrugs quietly. "He said that this person appeared, and he could actually talk to them. A pre-Outcast that called themself Shadow."

Tubbo relays what Tommy tells him to me, explaining what 'Shadow' told him and what he thinks it means. Apparently Tommy is one of only two, which is both comforting and terrifying at the same time. It's good to know he isn't the first or only case of these 'Lost Souls', but also horrifying to think there's suspected to be so few of them. Which makes even less sense as to how he exists in the first place.

"I bet whoever that was is the person attached to this band, and that's why you could see them this time, but not all the others," I tell Tubbo, who then recites it to Tommy. A world where Tommy can talk is strange enough, let alone to people who are supposed to be unreachable and in the process of dying.

"They must be! But hey, isn't that great?" Tubbo asks with sudden excitement, a bright smile on his face. "I can do that again, and you can see him again, and we can get more answers! We might finally be able to work out what all of this means!"

"You only have a month maximum," I tell Tubbo, and the way the positivity disappears so soon after makes me feel awful about reminding him. "Not to be pessimistic, but today may have been his last day."

Tubbo glances to Tommy, looking for a possible indication as to how long the person attached to this band has left. "Six days..." he repeats solemnly, sighing deeply. "George, do you have any idea whose soulmate this is?" I think back to where I found the band, in that carriage beside the broken tracks. To the empty place, where nobody was around.

Nobody, except...

"I have a suspicion," I think aloud, trying to remember what happened. The boy with that eye, the one he's had ever since he was rumoured to have run away. The one he had when he was there, right in front of me, warning me about them and what they'd threatened to do to his soulmate.

To his soulmate, who...

"I think this is Skeppy's band."

"Skeppy? You mean that elite assassin that ran away?" Tubbo questions, eyes wide in wonder.

"Yes," I confirm. "Except he didn't."

"I met Skeppy, about a week ago now, right beside where I found this band. He disappeared about three weeks ago, and was rumoured to have removed his soulmate band. He had this black eye, and I think that's why. Which means the pre-Outcast you met was his soulmate, Darryl. Would make sense, considering I killed him about a month ago now."

"That sounds likely! It must be!" Tubbo exclaims, signalling to the band. There's a sudden amount of determination in his tone, one that makes me both excited and terrified at the same time. The sort of thing that turns your stomach over, both in anticipation and dread.

"George, we need to find Skeppy!"