Inception {Dreamnotfound}

34 | Ghosts | 34

-Tommy's POV-
(Last one in his POV!)

"It hurts, Tommy..."

My best friend clutches at his wrist, teeth gritted tightly. Another wave sends him to the floor, knees scraping against concrete with a sickening noise. He screams again, body trembling as the pain mercilessly floods through it.

'Tubbo take the band off!' I sign to him, tugging at his wrist despite my hand falling through. Coldly grasping at nothing, my state stopping me from interfering.

I want to do something, to be able to remove the band myself and stop him from enduring this. To wrap my arms around him and have them remain there, able to finally embrace him. I'd give anything to be able to help him, to be able to do something as simple as tell him things will be okay.

"Tom, I'm not taking off the band!" he yells, keeping the band firmly against his skin. "If I take off the band, I lose you. I'm not letting that happen."

"It'll stop soon, just trust me."

I sigh, cringing at the fact it's inaudible before reluctantly admitting Tubbo is too stubborn to listen to me. Too preoccupied to even acknowledge my pleading anymore, and I'm forced to stare back at the reflection of my own eye filled with tears, knowing there's nothing I can do about it.

'You don't know that for certain though,' I try to justify, irritated when Tubbo turns away from me, scrunching up his eyes to block me out completely. "Don't care," he spits, voice raspy through gritted teeth.

"Besides, it's not like I'll have this problem for much longer anyway."

A few responses come to me, filled with insults of how pessimistic he's acting, but I can't bring myself to say any of them aloud in a moment like this. Especially not when a part of me deep down seems to already know he's right, no matter how reluctant I am to truly believe it. Admitting it is even harder when I don't know what it means for me, if I'm better stuck this way forever or gone completely.

Bad doesn't think I'll 'survive' the system reverse.

'Well, I'm not exactly alive currently,' I try to joke, but it seems more solemn than sarcastic when the words actually sink in. Tubbo seems to think as much too, a hollow stare fixed on my uncomfortable demeanour. 'But hey, you won't have to deal with the stinging shit anymore! You can finally find the person that'll give you a band with no consequences attached to it!'

The look he gives me now is unreadable, the best explanation I could offer for it being anger. "You still don't get it, do you?" Tubbo mutters, the words catching under his breath. "I don't want a 'real soulmate' Tommy! I want my best friend!" He puts quotation marks around the phrase 'real soulmate', and I think back to Bad's justification of what our bands mean.

Platonic soulmates. Not romantic, and by the system's logic, not true soulmates. But Tubbo has denied any suggestion of this since the very beginning, and I think a part of me knows that Tubbo gave up on his 'real soulmate' a long time ago.

I just don't want to accept that though, and knowing I'm half the reason the entire second system exists in the first place makes it even harder to justify hurting the person who still insists on keeping you around.

'I don't belong here Tubbo, and you know it.' I signal to the band on his wrist, my band, colourless and effectively, lifeless too. Nothing but milky white stares back at me, representative only of the fact that somehow, in some messed up way, I'm still here. 'Maybe at least if I'm gone, I'll find where I do belong. Even if that means the void is my new home.'

"Your home is here, Tommy."

The way Tubbo tries to tug my sleeve so that I'll meet his eyes only adds to the irony, and I don't think I'll ever forget the pained look on his face when he remembers I'm really nothing more than a ghost.