A Splash Of Paint (MCYT Oneshots)

[R] A God's Protegè (Tommy & Dream)

(A/N: request by Bandit up there. can be seen as either dream being a good brother or dream being a manipulative bastard. I couldn't get all of the aspects of it, but I hope it lives up to your expectations requester!)

Tommy reeled back from the punch, a hand reaching up to gently touched his bruised skin. In front of him, Tubbo stood, fist raised in shock and horror.

"T-Tommy, I didn't mean-"

Tommy didn't wait for Tubbo to say anything else before he spun around and took off running into the forests near L'manburg, tears streaming down his eyes. As he ran, his mind wandered.

He never wanted to be a ram hybrid like Schlatt. All his life, he had believed himself to be just an ordinary human. But when the horns stared coming in, and peeked out over the mess of his hair, he couldn't deny it.

It was a bad time for his horns to finally start coming out. Everyone was still scarred by the impacts of Schlatt's tyranny and dictatorship, and the thing with Wilbur and Technoblade didn't help matters either. For the first few days since the horns grew in, he had to deal with people staring at him suspiciously, even going so far to go in the other direction when he came closer to them.

It hurt. A lot.

And while the suspicion died down after those few days, he still got mistaken for Schlatt more times than he could count. It was easier to spend time around the new people, like Ranboo and Captain Puffy, since they couldn't have known Schlatt when he was here, and thus they wouldn't mistake him for Schlatt. Even with that, there were still times.

Tommy handled it, like he did with every other problem. But then the thing with Dream happened. And he and Tubbo started fighting more and more.

But now, after Tubbo had compared him to Schlatt, had explicitly stated that he was becoming a copy of Schlatt, and punching him in the face like that... he couldn't trust Tubbo anymore.

And oh, wasn't that a scary thought to have?

He collapsed on the ground, out of breath and panting. He couldn't hear any shouts from Tubbo, and he was relieved for it. He crawled over to a nearby tree to lean on his, just trying to steady his breath and clear his thoughts, tears still drying on his face.

"I heard it all, you know?" a familiar voice cut Tommy out of his peace, and he tensed up, but he didn't move from his position on the ground.

"What do you want, Dream?" he asked tiredly.

"I know how it feels like," the man said, instead of answering his question. He sat down next to Tommy, and to his own surprise, Tommy leaned into the embrace that Dream so willingly offered. A hand carded through his hair, and Tommy sighed.

"Oh do you now?" Tommy said, though there was less bite behind it than there would normally be.

"Tubbo's blinded by his presidency," Dream continued calmly. "Everyone's seemed to have betrayed you, and they only think of you as similar to a tyrant. They don't see the real you, not anymore. I know how it feels like, to be only taken at face value."

"Well I'm just like him anyway," Tommy muttered, leaning away from Dream's touch slightly. "They're right, I'm just like Schlatt."

Dream broke away from him. At first, Tommy thought Dream would leave him, like everyone else had done, but then Dream was crouching in front of him, with a familiar white circular thing held in his hands.

Dream handed him a mask. Tommy grasped it in shock. It looked exactly like Dream's mask, but instead of a smile it had a frown on it.

"You're not Schlatt, Tommy," Dream said to him, lifting up his mask so Tommy could, for once, see the wild grin on his face, the pride shining in his green eyes. "You're going to be better than him. I'm gonna make sure you'll be better than them all."