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

acquaintances can be old friends, if you look close enough

Tommy found Sam rather quickly, a miracle in itself. The man was typically not around a lot, disappearing from the SMP for extended intervals of time and only returning shortly before vanishing once more. He thought of it as a nomad who returned to his home base every once in a while to recoup and reconnect before wandering off again, onto another adventure and new day.

(He thought of the bench, of trading scarves with Tubbo and promises to only trust each other. What if they'd run like Tubbo wanted? What if Tommy had decided to be selfish and run from everyone's expectations? It ached, the emptiness of not knowing, and only for that did he wish they'd have both died if they'd taken that path.)

Tommy didn't quite know where Sam went, if he was exploring distant lands or traveling to other servers. Tommy himself had never been whitelisted anywhere else, though he had had SMPEarth for a brief time.

(Once upon a time, history repeated, Techno and Tommy had been on opposite sides; even still, it had never been in more than jest.)

Other servers, public ones, were not meant to live in. They were not homes; they were like amusement parks, where people from all over could play games and compete in challenges, but never could they stay.

Tommy didn't normally mind, but sometimes he wondered if ending up anywhere other than the SMP could have led to something far less desolate than this. He was treading a sea of unpredictabilities; the moment he'd arrived here, he'd caused ripples in the world big enough to caution reckless risks. He'd have to make moves carefully, play his cards right.

Tommy was not stupid or naive, not so much as others claimed. He'd led wars, after all, and war did not wait for its soldiers to catch up.

He painfully recalled being left behind, back in Logstedshire, not by war but by his brothers and sisters in arms. It hurt, and Tommy subconsciously clutched at the compass looped around his neck, touched the emerald hanging from his ear that Techno had handed him one dark day when he'd found Tommy down beneath his house again, in a hole the hybrid thought long forgotten, rubbing the burn scars along his arms raw against the stone walls as he cried, wanting to peel his own flesh off layer by layer until every touch Dream had bestowed upon him, through flesh and steel and dynamite, was gone.

Techno had offered him new clothes only a few days into his stay, to replace the ones that were torn from arrows and branches, singed by explosions of fire, and dotted in blood from leaking wounds and panic attacks in the snow. Tommy had accepted the outfit that matched his father and brother, and it became a symbol of comfort the longer he stayed rather than simply something to keep the cold from seeping in.

(He appreciated it more after his episode in the hole beneath Techno's base, the long sleeves of the outfit covering the disfigured flesh that he'd created in an effort to rid himself of the manipulation Dream had tainted him with.)

He found Sam at the community house, ironically enough (the bodies, red in dark green, nobody was waking up but Tommy didn't notice—), and he watched through the windows, questioning whether opening any doors would backfire. He planned to wait for the man to leave before approaching him, but with a second thought, he glanced around the SMP, noticing nobody about. Other than Sam, no one else occupied the community house either.

It would have to do.

He slipped through the door as quickly as possible, ducking away from it just in case when Sam turned to see who'd entered. He acknowledged the brief confusion on Sam's brow before the man shook it off and returned to his crafting, and Tommy took the moment to strike, sidling up just behind Sam so he could pull his (Techno's) axe against the flesh of the unsuspecting victim's throat.