In Hindsight

Don't Think About It

The admins stopped checking on him.

Tommy had assumed— or at the very least, hoped— that Xisuma wouldn't come around after their fight— but a week passed, then another, and Tommy was beginning to wonder if the server had just resolved to forget about him.

It was better this way, anyways. Tommy slowly began to relax, not shifting every five minutes to listen for rockets in the distance or footsteps through the undergrowth. He continued adding junk to his solitary chest in the clearing, and armour and ores to the chest hidden in the walls of his carefully concealed strip mine.

After another week with no visits, Tommy made a Nether portal. If anyone saw the achievement, they didn't care, because nobody came to tear it down or punish him.

Bloodhound came and went. Most days, he would follow Tommy around the forest, but once the portal was built he would disappear for days on end and return with red dust in his fur and blood around his muzzle. Once, he came walking proudly through the portal with an honest-to-gods wither skull in his mouth.

Tommy tried not to think about it.

During the days, Tommy sewed, first patching and cleaning Ranboo's jacket (though it still looked a mess and made him homesick), then making himself a new backpack out of some leather. He'd also made a loom, but it sat untouched in his little base in the mountain.

He gathered colors— blue, yellow, red, white—

and shoved them in his junk chest and tried not to think about it.

And in the night he had dreams— recurring ones, of darkness and floating and a woman's voice— but when he woke, paralyzed with fear, with too-human eyes staring at him from the other side of the room, he could never remember what she said—

And when the darkness of dappled leaves began moving towards him as he walked by, reaching out to touch his shadow—

He walked on, and tried not to think about it.

The admins didn't come, so he raided a bastion. Bloodhound fought with him, barking whenever a brute was near and attacking the hulking monsters if they got too close. Tommy found a template and soon all his weapons and armour were upgraded to netherite.

He found a disc— Pigstep, and spent his last diamond crafting a jukebox. He played the song every night, sometimes humming along and muttering nonsensical lyrics, sometimes sitting with his forehead pressed against the speaker, crying.

He didn't like thinking about those nights.

The admins didn't come, so he built a pen and began breeding sheep, secretly naming each one in his mind and marking their wool with some dye so he wouldn't forget which one was which.

The admins didn't come, so he stopped hiding his mine and expanded his base outwards, even decorating it with smooth stone and cobble. He tried to remember it was temporary.

The admins didn't come. He talked out loud to himself, even when Bloodhound wasn't there, even when he had no way of summoning his chat. Sometimes, he hummed or sang as he tended to the sheep.

The admins didn't come. He sleepwalked, and woke up chunks from his base. Once he woke in the river, and hyperventilated on shore until he passed out.

He stopped sleeping. Phantoms spawned ceaselessly.

The admins didn't come, and Tommy dug himself a new room, with nothing but a knife and some handmade bandages in a chest. His arms were a canvas, and he wielded pain as a paintbrush. Bloodhound growled and tried to steal the knife when Tommy emerged from the room with cloth wound up and down his arms, so Tommy blocked it off to keep him out.