Chapter Text
It happens almost silently.
Almost without any indication,
But, by the Gods it did happen,
And Tommy could tell.
He could tell in the way that when a howling wind blew into the small space between his and Tubbo’s house it didn’t sound like a train whistle,
It just sounded like wind.
He could tell when he saw Michael had drawn a picture of his fathers with his little box of crayons,
And Tubbo no longer burst into tears at the sight of his deceased husband.
He could tell when he wandered for hours in the snow, always eventually stumbling upon Techno’s house,
And on the wind, so slightly, the voices would whisper encouragements to him.
And the crows were just crows.
And the sheep were just sheep.
And blue dye didn’t make his fists clench.
And he wasn’t angry anymore, no, he could never be angry, not anymore.
He knew, here, as he sat on the doorstep of his house, almost the exact same design as the embassy, watching the clouds drift by, not even smoking (he’d picked that habit up in Pogtopia, but gave it up after the prison) that the war was over. Not the war for independence, not the war for L’manberg, not the final little dregs of war still clinging to the bottom of a bottle of sorrow he and Dream had been made to drink from, but the war in his mind. The war he never thought he’d win. From exile to the end of the world he’d been fighting himself, fighting against healing, because healing meant change, and he’d only been such a young boy the last time he wasn’t in pain. How does one move on from dying so many times? How does one live without the familiar burden of pain? But here he was, he knew he had. Mareep was bleating in the field, Tommy hopped the fence, following the noise to where the lamb was crying, and he saw it. In among the grasses was growing a single wither rose,
And it reminded him of his brothers.
And he wept.
That’s when he knew it was time.
He packed everything for a week's journey, in case he got held up. It should only have taken a day, but with these kinds of trips, anything can happen.
He set his eyes southwest of his little house.
He set his eyes on his home.