Tommy couldn't remember when he started.
It could have been any day. Rainy, sunny, cloudy. For the sake of it, he preferred to think of it as a gloomy day.
That's how it had felt.
How it always felt.
It was during his exile. He was sure of that.
Not when though. Just that... Ranboo had come to visit him. To 'update' him on what was happening in New L'manburg.
With Tubbo.
Tommy didn't remember what his companion had said. He never really listened, just tried to enjoy the company. It felt almost foreign to him.
Their reports always ended the same, anyways. With a goodbye laced with false sympathy, with pity.
It was awful.
It was after Ranboo hopped right on through the portal that Tommy had begun to think about the events that had led him... to this... to this place. This island in exile. A well deserved one, he had thought at the time. Tommy sometimes still thought like that on the days where his mind was cloudiest.
His friendship with the odd ender-hybrid had started with a question about his age and his favorite flower.
It had led to one of his oldest friends on the server giving into evil and exiling him, just as his predecessors, the former presidents, had both done. The torch had been passed from Eret to Wilbur to Tommy. And now, he held it in his cold, bruised, weathered hands, unsure how to let it fall.
In his reminiscence, without realizing it, he plucked a flower from the coarse grass. A peony, he would later learn it was called.
If Tommy had a good memory for anything, it would be the name, shape, and variants of flowers.
That and of his... deaths.
But he tried not to dwell on it.
Like a ripe set of apples from a tree, he delicately began to pick the flower's petals, one by one.
He hummed a song from a commercial he'd heard often playing in the city orphanage.
He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me...
He loves me not.
Tommy whispered the last part out loud to himself. A painful reminder of the truth. A confirmation of his doubts and anxieties.
No one cares for him.
"Hello Tommy. You've been well?"
The strong voice behind him startled the boy. He dropped the petal-less stem and looked behind him.
Tommy started to pick at the skin on his hands and arms, rough from hours of mining for materials.
"Yeah." He replied in a small voice.
At least he had Dream.
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444 words
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Flower Picker || c!Tommy Angst
FanfictionA character study on Tommy, his desperation to be loved, and his fears that he'll never deserve it, tied to the flower-picking game of "He Loves Me (Not)". Based on Shmekdoesstuff's headcanon. All love mentioned here is PLATONIC!!! If you ship any...
