Doll-sized (TomTord)

Sympathy is such a weird thing

If someone had told Tom that Tord would return once again, he would have prepared to end this once and for all. The answer had been easy the few times Edd hesitantly brought it up. There was just no peaceful way to solve things, not anymore, when murder and attempted murder were involved in the equation. Tord had crossed a line that none of them had ever dared to cross. Tom would never understand how Edd could still care about the person that betrayed all of them, when Eduardo and Mark had continously asked why they hadn't seen the signs that something was wrong with him. While Tom hadn't been blamed as much as his friends, he did notice the glances they shot at him every once in a while, when they crossed paths.

But now... now he wasn't sure what he would have done if he met Tord again under different circumstances. It was one thing to find him when he was so tiny and helpless, but at his normal size, with all the injuries Tom was responsible for? He wasn't sure. He felt guilty for the permanent scars he had caused him, yes. And that was the problem. He wasn't supposed to feel sorry for this bastard! Not when Tord had deserved everything he got. Not when Tord could have easily received the same injuries if the robot was just a faulty piece of machinery. This was so stupid! If anything, Tord was supposed to be the one to feel sorry. Yes, he had apologised, but he wasn't, not really. Not when he seemed to think the injuries he received due to karma made up for everything somehow. Tord was a selfish dick, he had always been, but luckily Tom had noticed it immediately when he first met him. What Tord did hadn't been as much of a surprise to him as it had been for Edd. So why the hell did he feel guilt for doing the right thing?

Emotions, Tom decided, were just annoying and too much to deal with anyway. Who even needed them? He should just ignore everything for now until his mind was ready to deal with this bullshit properly. So he just sat on his sofa and watched TV for a while, zapping through the channels to find something even mildly entertaining. But there was just so much junk on right now. Films that he had watched hundreds of times before until he could recite over half of the script if he wanted to. Series that had started great but had ended in absolute disaster, making even the first few episodes hard to watch, knowing what came after. It left a sour taste in his mouth even when he just watched a few seconds of it.

Yeah, maybe watching TV wasn't the best decision right now. He would just get a book from his room and distract himself with that. Tom wasn't that big of a reader and had probably only bothered looking at two of the books he owned at the moment. Perhaps it was time to finally change that. As dumb as they had been as last minute birthday and Christmas presents by Edd and Matt, he could finally see if they were any good at all. They probably weren't considering at least three of them were some Christmas story bullshit, but he could always pick up a pen and edit it to his liking. Scrooge would get his wish if he had anything to say about it.

With a grunt, he slowly got up from his seat and began to scuffle to his bedroom, crossing the kitchen on the way there. Tom shot a quick glance in through the opened door and immediately froze. He had expected Tord to have fallen asleep or be glaring at him, not start building... whatever this was. Groaning, Tom abandoned his plan to read, probably remaining a hobby he'd never pick up, and stepped into the kitchen.

When his shadow fell over Tord, the little bastard immediately threw himself in front of whatever he was building. And he was doing a terrible job at it, too. To his credit, it was hard to hide something from someone able to watch things from different angles. Ones he couldn't cover due to his new, unfortunate height. Tom was honestly more amazed how Tord even managed to build anything at all. That guy was missing an arm already and had trouble standing with his bruised leg, let alone carry stuff around. Where had he even found most of this? Some toothpicks, a fork, a few unused tissues... and he doubted Tord had ever even left  the tabletop.