#for literally a second

[peninkwrites]

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine (And the machine is bleeding to death)

Tommy was going to break into the prison, he was going to kill Dream, even if he had to crawl in there with nothing but a knife to do it. An alternative to when Tommy and Ghostbur snuck into the prison to kill Dream.

Crossposted to ao3

(CW: claustrophobia, heat exhaustion, fear, panic attacks, ptsd)

~

Tommy will do this alone.

At first, Tubbo and Ranboo had wanted to come with him, but Tommy couldn’t let them do that.  He wasn’t sure why he refused them so adamantly, maybe because he didn't want to put them at risk, maybe because he didn’t want them to see the kind of person that man made him turn into.

Then, he considered Ghostbur.  He didn’t pose a threat to anyone, so surely Sam would let him into the prison, but when it came time to ask, to let him in on the plan, Tommy had taken one look at those pale, vacant eyes, and he just couldn’t.  Ghostbur wasn’t meant to go in the prison.  Something so gentle, so hollow, could not endure the very air that permeated the halls of Pandora’s Vault, let alone what resided in its heart.  Tommy could not endure what resided there.

He would do so nonetheless, and he would do it alone.

Sam’s design is a beautiful, horrid, living thing.  Tommy has seen how it works from the inside, and he explained every mechanism in great detail to Tubbo.

Tubbo, who had wanted so badly to join him, who had said, “really, bossman, do you think I’m gonna let you do this alone?”

And Tommy’s reply had been too simple, too desperate.  “Please.”

It had not been that one word, rather, the way Tommy had looked at him, pleading and needing him to give in and let Tommy do this.  There were some things Tubbo could never refuse, at least never refuse again, and Tommy asking something of him was hard to resist.

Ranboo was easy.  Ranboo, who, like Ghostbur, didn’t remember and didn’t want to do any harm, the difference being, when Tommy told him to stay behind with Tubbo, he had understood, he had been afraid for his friend in a way Ghostbur was incapable of being.

Tubbo, even as he had not been allowed to cross this line with his best friend, would do everything he could to help him.  Tommy, for all his pretenses of fearlessness, he’d told his friends about the prison.  Barely, and through trembling breath and a dizzy head and a face still bruised post resurrection, but he had told Tubbo enough.  Tommy needed this man dead, and he needed to be the one to do it.  So Tubbo listened, he thought out what he believed the plans could look like, and he offered Tommy something terrible and reassuring.

“Look, there needs to be a ton of space for the redstone to operate, not to mention vents to get in fresh air, probably decent-sized ones since he’s gotta be pumping the heat out of the main cell and getting fresh air in.  I’d imagine he doesn’t have the vents into Dream’s cell connected directly outside, he probably has a lot of them to diffuse the heat before he pumps it out, and if I were him, I’d have the ones pumping fresh air in go under the water, just to add to the cooling.” Tubbo tries to focus on the practical, on the analytical, assessing the functionality of a mechanism and nothing more, and not on the fact that soon his friend was dead set on crawling inside of that machine.  “I wish I had those stupid blueprints, if I could see the actual design I could work out a proper flaw no problem, this is just– it’s guesswork.”

“Come on, Tubster, you’re a fuckin’ genius!  I know you can figure something out,” Tommy says, trying to sound enthused instead of desperate.  Every minute he spends, even out, even free, even alive, his skin crawls knowing Dream breathes just across the water.  He has to do this.

Tubbo frowns, doubtful.  “Sam will have made the vents pretty small.  They need to be bigger than typical air ducts, just for the amount of heat he’s generating, but he’d definitely want to make sure, well, make sure nothing like what we’re planning on doing could happen.”

“Okay?” Tommy asks, pacing from foot to foot.

“Tommy… Aren’t you claustrophobic?” Ranboo asks carefully, looking too tall sitting beside the table in Tommy’s war room.  This is where Tommy had taken him after they had first met, this is where he had let Tommy drag him into mischief.  Tommy thinks Ranboo somehow looks smaller than he had then.  Tommy feels smaller too.

“I mean–” Tommy laughs nervously.  “Hardly anymore!  For a little while there I was, but– but I’ll be fine.”

Tubbo and Ranboo look at him and they don’t believe him, so Tommy tries another way, an old reliable method.  “Please.  I– I have to do this.  I already feel like I’m trapped in a little box all the fucking time knowing he’s out there, s-so, I– I have to.”

Tubbo and Ranboo exchange an indirect glance.  Tubbo refocuses on his loose notes, on the haphazard outline of the interior of the prison Tommy had pieced together for him.  He’s trying to work in negative space, to build a safe path out of absence.  “Right.  Well, we’re not sending you in the vent where the heat comes out, so we gotta find where he pulls cool air in.”  Tubbo has a hundred other concerns, the first ones coming to mind being that the actual drop into the cell could be far enough to do some real damage, that there would have to be lots of strong fans to do the actual venting, and how easy it would be for Tommy to die like that.  “A-And the vent should probably let out throughout the building.  He couldn’t let the redstone get too hot, it could fuck up the wiring.  So, if it gets to be too much, Tommy, you can always pop out.”

Tommy laughs, barking and sharp.  “Right, right, and how do I break the vents and shit when I wanna take a little rest, eh?”

Tubbo gives him a look.  “I dunno, Tommy.  Same way you plan on breaking through the fans or the grills that are definitely gonna be blocking up the vent?”

Tommy scowls.  “You’re the clever one, figure it out!”

“Milk?” Ranboo suggests halfheartedly.

“Nah, there’s two elder guardians to like, make sure that doesn’t happen,” Tommy waves him off.

“Not even long enough to break through one iron bar?”

Tommy shrugs.  “Fuck if I know!  I just know every five seconds it was boom! Elder guardian, elder guardian, elder guardian!” Tommy mimics firing a gun like the elder guardians had come at him like bullets.  “With the– with the freaky noise and shit!”

“Got it, no milk,” Ranboo says, eyebrows raised.

“And, Tommy, I don’t think you’ll be able to wear armor.”

“What?” Only now does Tommy falter.

“Well, even with the fresh air coming in, at some point you’ll have to crawl through a vent in a sea of lava, right?”

“I… I guess.”

“Tommy, you’d get fried in there.  I’m not kidding, even in Netherrite, when that stuff gets hot enough, it could literally start to burn you.  You don’t wanna make it that far and get convection baked, do you?”

“Convection ba–” Tommy sputters.  “No, no I do not.”

“So no armor, then,” Ranboo sighs.

“No armor,” Tommy mutters, his stomach in knots.

“Well, we won’t be able to know if any of this is a possibility until we look at the prison and see how big the vent is, right?” Tubbo points out.

It was, surprisingly, not all that difficult to find.  The decorative lines of iron bars on the exterior were not, in fact, all that decorative, and in the bottom of one of the alcoves, there was not blackstone behind the bars, but instead open space.  Just standing there, they could feel the air being tugged in.  Additionally, the size of the vent.  It was small.  Too small for Tubbo to fit, too small for Ranboo, beanpole as he is, but Tommy thinks it’s not too small for him.  He’d never really put on all his weight again after exile.

“Psh,” Tommy rolls back his shoulders with a scoff.  “I can squeeze in there!  No biggie.”

Tubbo and Ranboo once more share that stupid fucking worried look between them.  “It’s… it’s pretty small, Tommy,” Ranboo says carefully.

“And I’m just a little guy!  Come on, look at me, Ranboo,” Tommy says with his usual perfect puppy-dog eyes.  “I’m just a poor wittle guy!”

Tubbo, resigned, once more focuses on logic.  “Still, it’s… it’s small, Tommy.  How are you planning on dragging an axe with you in there?”

Tommy shrugs.  “I’ll figure it out!  I can always kill ‘im with my bare hands!” Tommy squares up, no longer a little guy and once more brave and swaggering.

“We can plan back at the house, I don’t wanna hang around here longer than we have to,” Ranboo murmurs, scanning the surrounding sea warily.

When they return to the house, it seems it is not to plan further, but to dissuade him.

“Tommy, I really don’t think you can manage it.  Like, that vent was tiny.  You won’t be able to crawl all the way on your knees.  Like, even if you can fit at all, you won’t be able to even move enough to reach into your inventory.  You’ll just be able to keep crawling.  Sam designed it so a person couldn’t fit in there.  Are you really expecting us to believe that doesn’t scare you?” Tubbo tries emphatically, a hint of panic evident.

“Nah!  Not gonna get scared by a fuckin’ vent,” Tommy scoffs.  “A-And!”  He scrambles for a bright side.  “No detector shit on the inside of that, so if I break the bars, it won’t tell Sam or nothing!”

“I know you feel like you need to do this, but if you actually like, can’t…” Ranboo trails off, unsure of where to go from there, because there isn’t anywhere to go.  If it’s impossible, Tommy can’t do it.  Convincing Tommy of that is a different matter.

“I can do it!” Tommy sounds more desperate now.  “Why the fuck wouldn’t I?!  I can fit in there, it just probably won’t be much fun,” a panicked laugh.

Another exchange of knowing glances that makes Tommy want to claw his friends’ eyes out.

“Tommy, what if we take a pause, and… reevaluate?” Tubbo offers.  “There’s gotta be a way in, bossman, nothing is unsinkable, as they say.  But I don’t think this is it.  What if… what if you give me a few days to work on it?” Tubbo tries.

“Work on it?” Tommy says doubtfully.

“I’ll see if I can figure out more about the redstone!  Maybe we can… hack the keycard system, or get you inside another way to a spot where you can open the doors using the redstone!” Tubbo hopes he sounds convincing, that Tommy will think it’s at least possible.  Honestly, Tubbo has no idea.

Tommy scuffs his feet on the blackstone floor of the war room.  “Fine, fucking hell, if you can come up with something in a few days, I’m all for it, but otherwise, I am goin’ in the vent!”

Another fucking glance exchanged.

“Alright, that’s the plan for now, then,” Tubbo agrees, but Tommy notes he doesn’t promise.  He doesn’t say that it’s a deal or it’s even the plan, just for now.

“Good,” Tommy says irritably.  He stares at his two friends with the feeble, frustrating realization, that they don’t think he can do this.  They don’t want him to do this, and they seem to think because they’re so worried about him it’s within their rights to stop him.

He doesn’t know why he thought they understood that when he says he has to do this, he’s not exaggerating.  He’d say it’s this or kill himself, but he already knows where being dead leads, and that’s not a way out either.  He has to kill Dream.

So Tommy waits, and once he is alone, once he has convinced his friends he’s agreed to wait, he goes to the prison.  He’s grateful at the start of this process he’d made sure to tell them both how much they meant to him.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was a goodbye of some sort, because it’s obvious to him, maybe it’s even obvious to Tubbo and Ranboo, that he won’t be coming back from this one.  If he manages to crawl all the way to that cell, how the fuck is he going to crawl back out?  No, he’ll do what he came there to do, and then he’ll wait for Sam to check in and let him out.  Or maybe he won’t let him out, maybe he’ll keep him there again, this time for murdering his only prisoner.

Tubbo was right that he couldn’t take an axe with him, it’s too tight, he doesn’t know how he’ll do this as is, let alone dragging that with him, so instead, Tommy has a knife.  It’s small enough he can keep it between his teeth.  He can’t bring a pick either, not that it would do him any good, so he has a few sticks of TNT.  He’s tied it with chord and threaded his flint and steel on it so he can keep it around his neck.  He’s got three sticks of the stuff.  He hopes that’s all he needs, if there’s more than three fans to blow up, he’s fucked.

Tommy waits until it’s well into the night to start walking, glancing around, constantly expecting someone to appear despite the lateness of the hour.  He wishes he hadn’t tied the tnt around his neck right away.  He could’ve made up some excuse for walking around at night, but someone would definitely question his morbid looking suicide collar.  It’s late, and therefore dark, with scant moonlight, but Tommy won’t have to go far once he leaves the light of the server, so he shouldn’t have to worry much about mobs.  Still, entering the blackness lit only by veins of lava threaded between the ramparts, it makes what he’s about to do a lot more tangible.  Tommy stares through the metal grate, already breathing hard.  Surely just from the climb up here.  He’s brought a few more things, things that won’t follow him inside.  A night vision potion, a fire res potion, and a bottle of milk.  Eight minutes on each potion.  He’ll have eight minutes of light, eight minutes of protection from the heat.  Tommy drinks the milk.  He breaks through the iron bars just in time to flinch away from the elder guardian coming down over his eyes.  He tosses aside the pick and the iron bars.  He stares into the dark and downs the potions, first night vision, then the fire res.  Being able to see what awaits him does not make it any less terrifying, but with the potion he can now see a drop off about ten blocks into the prison.  He hopes it’s not far enough of a fall to kill him; that would be a pathetically short attempt at a break in.

Tommy stares into the vent, knowing the clock is already ticking on his potions.  He cannot wait anymore.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck–” Tommy hisses through his teeth before muffling himself by putting a knife between them.  A knife.  That’s all he needs.  Dream is weak and armed only with potatoes.  Now Tommy has the advantage.

He starts to crawl.

The tunnel is so narrow his shoulders scrape against the sides, it’s so low he cannot crawl on his knees and instead must wriggle forward, dragging himself inch by dreaded inch on his elbows.  Tommy feels sick.  He cannot hear his racing heart over the ominous tones of the elder guardian and the distant low hum of the vents, and the sounds make it feel like it’s Pandora’s Vault itself breathing around him, the air still flowing past him, still being pulled in, is its slow, steady inhale.

Tommy could maybe back out at this point, but then he reaches the drop off.  With the night vision, he sees it’s only a drop of about six blocks, more than survivable, but definitely not climbable.  Tommy almost wishes he’d brought ladders before recalling, as Tubbo had said, the vent is too fucking narrow for him to even reach down to his pocket to access his inventory.

Tommy stares down at the point of no return and gets dizzy.  He starts to back up.  The way out is only ten blocks behind him, backing up hurts worse than crawling forward––he keeps hitting his head on the top of the tunnel––but he only backs up maybe a foot before he stops.  He rests his forehead on the floor of the vent and tries to breathe.  He feels the moisture accumulating on the blade with every exhale.

You have to do this.  He cannot still be out there.  He cannot be able to do this to you again.  To do this to anyone else.

You have to do this.

Tommy crawls forward.

He stares down into the dark, now realizing he has no idea how he’s supposed to drop down there.  It will have to be head first.  The vent is too small for him to turn around.  Tommy pulls himself forward, inch by wretched inch, until he dangles over the edge, the corner of the vent digging into his waist painfully.  Tommy stares at his own stark white hands against the black, held out as if to keep something at bay, but he knows they’re there to catch him.  That’s all he’s doing.  He’s not shielding himself from an axe or a fist, he’s just going to catch himself.  Tommy wriggles forward a bit more, and a bit more, and then his center of gravity is over the edge and he falls.  Tommy cries out and drops the knife, it nicking the corner of his lip on its way out, but he catches himself.  His wrists ache sharply, as do his palms, but he hasn’t broken anything.

Tommy pauses only for a moment to ease some of his trembling, but he has to keep going.  He’s currently trapped himself in a very uncomfortable handstand.  Tommy winces, his left arm aching in painful protest as he raises his right to grab the knife and put it back between his teeth.  This corner where the two ducts meet is the only point with enough space where he could have, in theory, accessed his inventory.  He didn’t think to bring anything.  He sort of wishes he’d brought a gapple, just to get some courage.  He knows it’s a bad habit, but that feels so trivial right now.  Tommy, knife back between his teeth, slowly starts to turn around until he is facing the next duct, still upside down, blood is starting to rush to his head, making him feel heavy and strange.  From here, he slowly lowers himself to the ground, pushing his torso into the next tunnel until he sits at an angle, legs pointed upward, resting against the wall of the duct he had fallen down, and laying on his back in the next one.  Tommy also realizes the temperature has dropped.  Tubbo must have been right, these ducts must run over the water to cool the air further, or maybe Sam even has pools of water inside the prison to do so.  As he lies there, the blood begins to redistribute through his body, his legs still up in the air, but his head no longer feels weighted.

He’s not sure if he’ll be able to rotate so he can crawl forward again, but the thought of trying to shuffle down the vent on his back sounds fucking intolerable, so he still has to try.  Tommy pushes himself further into the vent using his legs, and once he’s all straightened out, he tries to turn.  Tommy shuts his eyes tightly, wincing as his shoulders are crammed between the top and bottom of the vent.  It hurts, it hurts shoulders, his collarbones, his muscles as well as his bones protesting with sharpness and aches, as nonetheless, he crushes himself between the rocks, still pushing, still forcing himself to turn.  He muffles a cry as his skin is scraped raw through his shirt as he nonetheless drags his shoulder to the other side until finally, there’s give.  And he’s back where he’d started, laying on his stomach, breathing hard, knife still between his teeth.  The prickling sharpness of the pain on his shoulders tells him he’s bleeding, that what’s dripping there is not just sweat, although he’s definitely sweating too, even in the brisk air from outside, but Tommy ignores it.  It doesn’t matter.  There’s no going back now.

The thought hits him like a ton of bricks––or perhaps a familiar blast of TNT––and he cannot go forward for a moment, consumed by a deep rooted, animalistic terror that he has just buried himself alive.  If he were to try to back up right now, the exit is not waiting ten blocks away, but rather at the top of that little ledge.  Tommy once more presses his forehead to the stone beneath him, elbows tucked into his chest, breathing hard, wheezing and desperate, eyes open wide, staring at the unnaturally visible blackstone beneath him.  You have to do this.  You have to do this you have to do this you have to do this––

If Tommy were facing the other way, maybe he could jump, grab onto the edge, and hoist himself up, but he’s not facing the other way, so there’s nothing he can do except keep going.

That fact is almost calming.  He can only move forward, and that lack of choice, that simplicity, it allows him to function again.  Tommy refuses to think about what lies behind him, about ocean air and moonlight and the ability to stretch out his fucking arms, and only thinks about what lies ahead.  Tommy looks up.  About twenty blocks ahead, there is a turn.

He keeps going.

It’s painfully slow, and it’s painful as well as slow.  Even though the width is a bit greater than the height, his already bloodied shoulders still drag irritatingly along the sides, his knees keep on colliding with the stone painfully, his forearms too do not appreciate being forced to drag all his bodyweight forward inches at a time, but he just keeps his eyes fixed on that bend in the vent, as if trying to convince himself that just around the corner awaits open space and light and freedom and oh, is that carrot cake?  And Henry, good to see you!  How are you, my dearest cow!  Thank you, for the apology, Wilbur, why don’t we all go home to L’Manberg and everything will be fucking perfect!

Tommy lets off a muffled laugh that sounds more like a whimper, his internal monologue a distraction for only a few feet, and then he reaches the bend.  Around the corner is not paradise, rather, another long stretch of blackstone, and at the end, he sees the spinning blades of a fan.  The moment he reaches the corner, the low hum of the fan is doubled into a dull roar in his ears, the steady thrum of the blades whirring along is overwhelming.  Tommy stares at it warily, as if it might suddenly start spinning toward him, one hand going to the bundle of TNT heavy around his neck.  Not yet.  Tommy, somehow the prospect of blowing something up in this tiny tunnel does not terrify him, but rather spurs him on, gives him a tangible goal beyond endless ducts.

Tommy thinks his knees must be bleeding now too, his elbows are stinging as well, but he can at least see his elbows, and while they’re definitely scraped, not enough for bloodied drops just yet.  His brief enthusiasm certainly didn’t help, not that being slow and cautious could save him from any harm.  The echo of the ducts had made the fan loud enough, so being this close isn’t much worse, but it’s certainly not something he can crawl through.  The blades look awfully sharp, spinning too fast for him to see through them clearly, so he does as he’d planned, and slips one stick of TNT loose from the bunch.  His eyebrows furrow, unable to frown with the knife between his teeth.  He’ll have to back up super fast if he doesn’t want the rest of the TNT to blow up in his face.  That is going to be hard and it’s definitely going to hurt like a bitch.

Tommy places the stick of TNT down wedged in the corner between the edge of the fan and the duct and begins to hit steel to flint.  Sparks, the hiss of a fuse, and Tommy has never crawled faster in his fucking life.

He scrapes his head against the stone, busts up already bloody knees, and fucking eviscerates his elbows, dragging himself back through his own now visable trail of blood scattered along the stone, but he makes it almost back to the bend in the tunnel when the TNT goes off.

Tommy should’ve covered his eyes, maybe held up his hands over his face, but he’d been so desperate to get away, to keep an eye on the fuse, he’d stared unblinkingly directly at the blast.  The sound echoes along with the force of the explosion, hitting him hard. Tommy has no sense of what a miracle it is his head wasn’t cleaved in two by shrapnel, instead he’s more preoccupied in an older, more reliable terror.

“Put your armor in the hole.”

“Do you want to be a hero, Tommy?”

“Or I’ll kill you.”

“We had to send a message.”

“How about you get in the hole, Tommy?”

“God help anyone who gets caught in the crossfire!”

“Our story will never be over.”

His life has been ripped apart by explosions too many times and by too many people.

Tommy covers his ears, eyes closed even as the light of the explosion is seared into his eyes.  He’s bit down even harder on the knife, the metal making his teeth ache, his lip bleeding worse, and all he can do is take desperate, wheezing breaths through his nose, tears joining the clammy sweat already covering his face, as his whole body aches with tension.  He’s rigid as a board, wishing he could curl up into a ball, but he can’t fucking move and it feels as if the walls are snaring tighter, like they’re wrapping around his very lungs and oh god I don’t want to die down here.  I don’t want to die here.  I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t–

Tommy doesn’t know how many precious minutes he wastes before he seems to register he’s still alive, he’s still generally unharmed, and there is no one bearing down on him to do him harm.  His eyes are no longer left flooded with white from the explosion, and the night vision is still doing its work for now.  He doesn’t know how it hasn’t been eight minutes yet.  It feels like he’s been down here for fucking hours.  Ahead, Tommy sees the fan has been torn to bits, and he thinks it might have broken a few blocks as well.  Tommy, spurred on by the thought of being able to fucking move scrambles forward with more urgency, all the more careless as his body has already been scraped up, he doesn’t know what more harm he could do.

The stone gets hot underneath him, not painfully so, almost a relief after the chill of the past tunnels, and he can see bits of burnt metal and tries to push it out of his path.  Tommy realizes with a funny turn in his stomach like he’s skipped a step, that he could’ve just drowned himself.  The coolness in the air makes him think he’s now under the water, and he just tried to blow a fucking hole in it.  Tommy registers what had saved him from that fate, feeling deranged and a bit stupid.  There had to be space for the redstone wiring, so this particular section of the duct had more stone around it.  Hopefully that means he won’t drown himself at the next fan either.  At the point where the fan had been, there is enough stone broken apart that Tommy can sit up, and he thinks the relief of it might kill him.  Tommy sits up, body aching, every muscle relieved to be able to do something beside lie flat and shuffle forward.

The relief might actually kill him, because he can’t imagine he has much time left on his potions, and he has no idea how much further there is to go.  Tommy’s whole body hurts, and it is that ache in the quiet, in this moment of rest, that gets him moving again.  He’s been scraped open against stone before; head bashed against obsidian, ribs cracked against stone, over and over until it stopped, until everything stopped, except for the pain.

Tommy crouches down in front of the next stretch, knees aching, swallowing back sickness, he takes a deep breath, returns the knife to between his teeth, and resumes his toil.  Another dozen blocks ahead, another turn.  It is not until he gets closer that he realizes, it is at this point that the duct goes up.

Tommy freezes.

He’d been prepared for a fall, but he must be fucking dense as a brick, because he hadn’t prepared for a climb.

Tommy has no choice but to continue forward.  He’ll at least get to stand up, he supposes.  It is here, that the droning hum of a fan resumes.  Tommy reaches the corner, and looks up at spinning blades far above him.  It must be fifteen blocks at least.

Tommy also realizes, he’s going to have to turn around again.  Thankfully, this way, his shoulders are at the bend in the vent, so there’s enough room he doesn’t destroy them again against the walls of the duct, but his hips certainly don’t appreciate it.  Still, after some wriggling, he’s sitting up at the corner of the duct, legs stretched out, sitting upright.

Now what?  What the fuck are you gonna do?  Sprout some spider legs and scurry on up the sides?!

Tommy takes the knife out of his mouth, leaning back against the stone, taking deep, shaky breaths.  “Fuck…” he sighs, staring up at the spinning blades too high above him.

He tugs out another piece of TNT a little hopelessly.

“Aw, Tommy, did you really think you could kill me?  That you could get to me all on your own?  You’re weak and pathetic.  And you were stupid enough to find another way to die, huh?”

Tommy shudders, Dream’s mocking voice crawling from his subconscious, rage mingling with disgust, until Tommy yet again forces himself to keep going.  He stands up, he slides the TNT back into the length of chord, and puts the blade between his teeth.  Staring up at the fan, he feels a bit like a wingless, burrowing version of Icarus reaching towards the sun.  Tommy plants his hands against one side of the duct, narrow enough he has to bend his elbows, and presses his back against the other side.  He pulls his knees up as much as he can, feet planted against the wall beneath him, so he’s wedged himself between the two sides of the vent.  The grip of his sneakers seems to hold, especially considering how fucking narrow it is.  Okay.  He can do this.

Tommy presses his hands flat against the opposite side, letting the tension between that and his back support him as he pulls his legs up a little higher.  Progress.  He begins to inch-worm up the vent toward the spinning blades.  His shoulders continue to get scraped raw against the stone, and the tunnel is so narrow he can only move up a few inches at a time, but he’s moving .

The sound of the fan is getting louder, he glances up intermittently to see how close he’s gotten, and about halfway up, the lights begin to flicker.

At least, that’s Tommy’s first thought as darkness flashes over his vision, before he recalls that there are no lights.  There’s only his night vision potion, which is currently running out.  And then it does.

“No!” Tommy cries out, panicked, lucky enough to catch his knife not blade first on his legs.  He fumbles for it in the black, hissing as his fingers find the blade instead of the handle, but he holds onto it tightly, gasping for breath.  He cannot relax.  He cannot stop.  He needs to keep pressing against the walls or else he’s definitely going to fall far enough to hurt himself.

He cannot see a fucking thing.

Tommy doesn’t think he’s experienced darkness this consuming since Limbo.  This is the kind of blackness that he cannot comprehend existing in the living world, but nonetheless, it does.

There’s no light forward.  Not for a long time.

There’s no light back there either.

“H-Help me!” Tommy doesn’t know why that pleading slips past his bleeding lips, but he can’t help it.  He doesn’t know what to do.  “Anybody!  Please!  Please, someone help me!  I’m stuck!  I’m fucking stuck down here!  Hello?!”  His own voice echoes back, and he hears his own terror a dozen times over.  Hello?! Hello?! Hello..?!

Tommy wants to cry again, but he has a feeling if he starts sobbing he’ll lose his grip on the wall and tumble down and end up in a heap of broken legs.  Tommy is still breathing hard, he’s still shaking, and he still thinks any moment he’s going to fall, crying or not.

That’ll really give you something to cry about, eh?

Tommy suppresses a shiver.  I’ll give you something to cry about.  Tommy can’t figure out if it’s something Dream ever actually said to him, or if it’s just too fitting so he can still hear it in his voice.

I’m gonna kill him.

Tommy stays aloft, he keeps himself pressed to the walls of the tunnel, and his breathing slows.

I’m gonna kill him.  Those words feel almost like an oath, or perhaps a prayer, whatever it is, it’s enough that he keeps moving upwards, the sound of the fan blades warning him as he gets closer.

The sound is close enough, the pull of the air strong enough, he thinks the fan must be only a few more feet above.

Okay, how are you gonna blow it up?

Tommy once more fumbles to take out the piece of TNT, staring at it––or rather, staring at where he thinks it is––and tries to figure out how the fuck to do this.

It’ll have to be a gamble.  He cannot think of a reliable way around it unless he feels like sacrificing his fingers to the fan blades.  He’ll need to light the TNT, and then chuck it at the fan and pray that it sticks.  If it falls through while already lit…

Maybe he’ll get lucky and manage to put it out before it goes off?

Tommy laughs weakly around his knife, feeling more than a little deranged at this point.  He wedges the TNT between his knees, feeling for the flint and steel around his neck.  Tommy makes one spark, he doesn’t hit the fuse, but that moment of light leaves Tommy almost giddy with relief.

It’s not Limbo.  You can see light.  It’s not Limbo.

Tommy makes it spark again, and he’s so startled that he manages to hit the fuse blind on the second try, he almost panics.  He grabs it, fumbling and desperate, heart racing, and throws it up at the fan blades.  He sees that hissing speck of light disappear through the metal, and then it starts to drop back down.  Tommy’s heart is beating in his throat.  There’s a dull clang! and the light stops there, caught on the other side of the fan.

Tommy cannot pause to relish in the relief, because right now he would be best served being about six blocks lower than he is currently.  Tommy lets out a stream of unintelligible curses from around the knife in his mouth as he lets himself drop, catching himself about ten blocks down with jarring pain that knocks the wind out of him and absolutely fucks up his knees.  Tommy has about a second to brace at that point, with enough sense to cover his head, as soon there are shards of hot metal ricocheting down the vent.  Tommy grits his teeth as something cuts open his arm, burning it too, and another piece of hot stone bounces off of his head before clattering down to the bottom still a good ten blocks below, and then it stops.  No more shrapnel rains, he is not dead, and there is no longer the dangerous drone of the fan threatening to shred him to ribbons if he kept climbing.  Tommy looks up, before remembering he can’t see a fucking thing, rendered worse by the brief flash of light.  He could be shuffling up into exposed blades of hot metal.  He won’t know until he moves.

Tommy’s whole body is in agony, the muscles of his legs are screaming at him as he’s been forcing them to keep him aloft for far too many minutes now, but nonetheless, he makes them go a little further and he’s somehow fortunate enough they don’t give out on him.  Tommy is startled to fall backwards, and that sudden loss of tension almost sends him slipping back down the chute, but at the last second he scrambles to push his legs out straight and keep himself steady.  He’s reached the explosion point, and therefore a ledge.  Tommy sits back further, legs now resting on the other side of the alcove, forced to stoop over as this explosion broke away less stone than the last, but nonetheless, for a moment he can sit and rest.

And once more, that relief reminds him that he doesn’t think he can keep doing this, even as he knows he has no other choice.

The potions have run out.  Maybe you can just rest?  There’s no reason to rush anymore.

Yeah, and you’ll sleep your way to the bottom of this fucking vent and kill yourself.

Tommy needs to move right now, or he’ll pass out before he can even try.  He can’t see.  For all he knows, the next bend is twenty blocks above him.

Or it could be two.

You can make it up two.

Tommy leans forward, one hand feeling for the lip of the alcove so he doesn’t bash his head on it, the other supporting his weight against the bottom ledge.  Tommy rests his feet on the ledge on the opposite side, and uses his hands to shimmy up the tunnel until he’s almost standing up straight.  One leg at a time, he pulls his knees back up to support him.

Inches at a time, he keeps moving.  He feels blood flowing more steadily from the cut across his arm and he realizes how lucky he is that the bit of stone that hit his head wasn’t moving at the speed of a bullet from the explosion and had instead probably bounced off the edge and lost that momentum against the stone instead.  Lucky.  None of this feels especially lucky to him.

Then Tommy’s knees hit open space instead of stone.  The tunnel is narrow enough that at this angle he doesn’t send himself falling back down to what is surely a fatal drop at this point.  Tommy freezes, scared to move and risk losing any of the tension currently stopping him from turning into Tommy mush at the bottom of a hole.  He doesn’t know how to move forward head first.  His knees are currently what’s keeping him anchored into the new section of tunnel, and if he moves them back to actually crawl forward, he’s pretty sure he’ll slip and kill himself.  Tommy slowly, carefully, keeping his back pinned to the wall to support himself, reaches forward with fumbling, blind hands for the ledge of the next section of tunnel.  Tommy will hold on, and pray he can support his own bodyweight with just his skinny fucking arms, and then he will lower his legs and lean forward.

It feels like a teetering balancing act, his palms flat, and the upper half of his body leaning forward just as he allows his legs to drop back down into the tunnel below, but enough of his torso catches on the ledge that he doesn’t kill himself.  Tommy, eager to be away from the drop off, kicks himself forward, wriggling back into the narrow but blissfully horizontal tunnel ahead.

Maybe Tommy is imagining things, or maybe the vertical section of vents had been bigger than the tunnel before, but he swears it’s somehow gotten narrower.  He can barely move his arms, he cannot bend his legs enough for them to be of any help moving him forward, and each painful pull of his forearms pressed to stone, dragging him ahead a few inches, also scrapes his already bloodied and raw shoulders against the stone.  Tommy suppresses every evil and rational thought warning him he’s about to get stuck, that he’s about to wedge himself in here so tightly he won’t be able to get his arms free at all and then he will die here, slowly and painfully.

It’s also warm up here.

After the damp chill, maybe it should have come as a relief, but it’s very warm up here.  He must be in the lava now.  Tommy manages to wipe sweat from his face.  It burns every scrape it touches, which is probably 70% of his body at this point.  Tommy should have saved the fire res.  It ran out down in the cool damp of the last duct, and now he’s going to boil unaided.

Tommy has once more crossed a point of no return, all he can do is go forward and hope he can make it to the end.  That is one solace, even as the stone pressing in around him gets hotter, not quite burning him yet, but something close, he at least knows he’s almost there.  He’s in the lava now, and next is Dream.  Tommy is finding it hard to breathe.  Not only because taking a deep breath is enough he can feel the tunnel wrapping even tighter, but the heat as well.  Tommy knows cool air was being pulled in through the vents, but considering Tommy has been hard at work blowing up every fan that did so, he knows that whatever cool air had been coming in before is definitely hot again.  Without the cool air, is it hot enough in here to actually kill him?

Tommy buries the thought.  He cannot afford to think like that, all he can do is push forward, to drag himself inch by wretched inch, to let his skin sear against stone that is only getting hotter.  There’s no light.  Even as lava must glow brightly only a few blocks away, the tunnel remains pitch-black.  Tommy cannot make out the next bend in the duct, he cannot make out any light, there is only the immediate walls pressing in on him, there is only the heat, and the sound of the lava bubbling, as if mocking him in his efforts, and eventually Tommy just stops.  He needs to keep moving, he knows stopping is all but embracing his death sentence, and he knows death is not going to offer relief.  But he can’t do it anymore.  He just needs to pause, to catch his breath.  The walls pressing in, touching his shoulders, searing the front of his body, all of it reminds him he cannot stay here, but he’s so tired.

You can lay down and die, Tommy.  But not until Dream dies first.

Tommy tugs himself forward, elbows burning, barely keeping his head off the ground, kept from collapse only by the heat, and he tugs himself forward again.  His limbs ache, weak and struggling to move any further.  His mouth is so dry.  He’s scared he’s going to drop the knife.  Tommy takes the knife from his mouth, holding it in his hand tightly, the leather-wrapped handle hot, the metal hotter.  He’s close now.  He’ll need to have his knife ready.  Tommy doesn’t know if the end is in sight, but it has to end somewhere.  It cannot go on forever.

Tommy stops moving, and blearily, frantically, he thinks he’s stuck, his shoulders are burning up, his knees, his arms, his stomach, but the vent hasn’t gotten any smaller, he’s just gotten weaker and moving has gotten harder, hurts worse.

Tommy weakly remembers a different time, the antithesis of this moment in its entirety, he remembers escaping, he remembers talking himself down from suicide and fleeing over snow, the way the cold had burned then too, and he had felt like he was going to live again.

Here he was, trapped, heat closing in, clawing his way back toward Dream, not an open expanse of snow, but blackness and the world closing in on him.  His weakness grows worse as he dares to think, what if Tubbo was gonna come up with a better idea?  What if you did this to yourself for no reason?

He cannot afford such a thought.  It’s not an option.  The only choice is to move forward an inch, and then the only choice to will be to move forward another.  Tommy has been looking down for a while now, his head feels too heavy, so it’s only when he’s close, close enough that he can see the outline of his trembling fingers, see the shine of the knife, does he realize there is light again.

Tommy looks up.  Ahead, shining up from the ground, light.

Tommy crawls more frantically, his breathing coming out in wheezing, whimpering gasps, but he still holds onto his knife.  He buries the more innate, animal need to move and breathe and see, and focuses on what makes him human.  He’s going to make it there, and then he’s going to kill Dream.  Tommy sees one last barrier, one last set of fan blades, rotating more slowly than the last and guarded by iron bars, and he fumbles for the last stick of tnt.  Tommy hesitates for only a second on the thought that a few blocks away is a sea of lava.  He’s hot enough as is, the lava pouring in can’t make him much hotter.

Tommy sees his own hand, outlined from the light below, light a spark, and then the fuse glows.  Tommy had forgotten he had to get the fuck away.  Perhaps too late, he crawls back into the heat and the dark.  He covers his head with already burnt hands, and then it goes off.  Tommy feels the blast, but no shrapnel comes his way, even as he hears the screech of broken metal and crumbled stone.  Tommy looks up and savors one more shred of luck.  The vent was angled down, in a small drop off, so Tommy was shielded from most of the blast.  No lava pours in, but Tommy has exposed something else.  Sensors.  The redstone blinks back in warning and Tommy knows he is once more on the clock.  He crawls forward, despite all his exhaustion, all his pain, he’s determined.  He can do this; he has to do this.

Tommy tumbles head first back into that awful cell, catching himself with already burned palms, clinging to his knife like a lifeline, and then he’s on the ground.  Tommy thinks he must have sprained his left wrist, but his right one, the one with the knife, is doing just fine and that's all that matters.  It’s cooler in here.  Barely, considering Tommy had been blocking up the cooling system, but it is.  It helps that he can move again.  Tommy doesn’t get the chance to stand before there is a figure towering over him.

“Tommy?!”

Tommy flinches back––how can he not?–– as he sees Dream in all his pathetic glory, hair longer and matted, a little bruised, without a mask, and merely baffled by the sight of him.  Then Dream sees the knife, and Tommy starts to stand, he starts to swing, he’s going to gut that man, to shred him to fucking pieces so he can never hurt anyone ever again–

And then Tommy is back on the ground, chest aching, the wind knocked out of him as he struggles to process what happened, to comprehend that after enduring all of that, after fighting his way here through the veins of this awful slice of hell, he could still fail.  His blurred vision focuses back in on Dream, still standing over him, still puzzled rather than afraid, and still holding the knife.

[chloesimaginationthings]

This goes out to poppy playtime pianosaurus enjoyers

[tyrannosarahsrex8]

Welcome to the “whoops! I accidentally started got manipulated into starting the apocalypse!” Club. Members being Jonathan Sims and Mable Pines. They’re both ✨traumatised✨

Bonus comic

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

hey guys

[brightdeadthing]

Come. And Be My Baby, Maya Angelou

[bluegiragi]

there's blood in the water (and on the bathroom tile)

early access + nsfw on patreon

this belated mermay piece was inspired by the most recent chapter of MildLimerence's mermaid!ghost fic, "Where Moonlight Meets the Sea"! (process vid under the cut)

i drew this on a day where I was feeling really frustrated with drawing and just wanted to render, so the method I used for this is very unconventional (for me) and I thought I'd share :)

[espeonkin]

[eggbem]

Post Villain-of-the-Week-Scuffle Nap.

Good morning everyone! (Welcome to my seminar!) Here's some Portal Duo snuggling to start off your day! What's the point of having the ability to draw turtles if you don't indulge in the softest of fluff once in a while?

Just ignore the fact that, with Leo's canon bed setup, there's really no room for Raph to be standing on the other side. How's he doing that? Magic ig.

(I feel like this goes without saying, but you never know: T-cest, do NOT interact; I will punt you to the moon.)

[sophiebaybey]

Not to preach to the choir but I wonder if people generally realize that AI models like ChatGPT aren't, like, sifting through documented information when you ask it particular questions. If you ask it a question, it's not sifting through relevant documentation to find your answer, it is using an intensely inefficient method of guesswork that has just gone through so many repeated cycles that it usually, sometimes, can say the right thing when prompted. It is effectively a program that simulates monkeys on a typewriter at a mass scale until it finds sets of words that the user says "yes, that's right" to enough times. I feel like if it was explained in this less flattering way to investors it wouldn't be nearly as funded as it is lmao. It is objectively an extremely impressive technology given what it has managed to accomplish with such a roundabout and brain-dead method of getting there, but it's also a roundabout, brain-dead method of getting there. It is inefficient, pure and simple.

[midnigtartist]

Undertaker - Coyote Kid

[jomo-is-here]

happy holidays! :D

[birdy-babe]

Oh my god they’re going to be best friends one day aren’t they

[kaiju-krew]

big grumpass cat

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

sentinel cant be a bad person

[an--artistic--autistic]

i am unreasonably proud and excited about this

[theoldkyokodied]

guess which game(s) I've been playing