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It was quiet in the house.
Moonlight came through the windows, providing the only light. Tommy walked through the kitchen, being as quiet as possible. He didn’t want to wake up Techno or Phil, who were both sleeping upstairs.
Tommy’s hands shook as he reached out, his hand wrapping tightly around the handle of a drawer that he knew contained Phil’s set of cooking knives.
The handle felt cold underneath his hands, the kind of cold that burned like a warning, something telling him not to go through with this.
But he couldn’t turn back now. If he stopped here, he knew he’d never manage to get any farther than this. Because he was a fucking coward. Tommy knew he was stupid and he was greedy and he was a horrible person.
Part of him screamed that those thoughts weren’t true, but he didn’t believe it. Those were just facts. They had to be. They were all anyone outside his family and friends had told him he was.
Tommy had been tired, he’d been tired for a very long time now. He didn’t know how much more he could take.
His mind was constantly plagued with worries about the future, about the pressures of deciding what he wanted to do with his life, what college he wanted to go to, and what job he wanted. Everyone expected him to know but he didn’t.
And his homework kept piling up, he kept falling behind in school. And none of his teachers had noticed, nobody had given it a glance.
Tommy knew he was a failure.
Everyone around him was happy with where they were. They all seemed to know where they were going and what they wanted. Meanwhile, Tommy had no idea what he even wanted to do tomorrow, let alone the next few years.
Although, if everything worked out right tonight, Tommy wouldn’t even be alive tomorrow.
There’d be no more planning needed, not ever again.
His body would be lifted into a grave, following a funeral that he knew wouldn’t be what he wished it was. He didn’t expect anyone to cry. He expected them to celebrate, he expected Phil and Techno to be relieved that they were finally rid of the foster care rat they’d mistakenly taken in. He expected Tubbo and Ranboo to feel excited at not being forced to hang out with him anymore.
Tommy knew it would be best for everyone, even himself, if he left this world behind.
With that thought, he pulled open the drawer and took a knife from it at random. Then, he slammed it shut, not caring for being quiet now that he had everything he needed.
He walked over to the back door, trying to keep his mind blank. Tommy reached it and pulled it open. The cold breeze blew through his hair as he stepped outside, becoming part of the darkness of the night.
As soon as he let go of the door, it clicked shut with a sudden finality, like a death sentence only momentarily to come.
Moonlight gleamed on the knife’s blade as Tommy held it in his trembling right hand. He kept it low, at his side, so he wouldn’t have to look at it for too long.
He reached the fields beyond their backyard, easily hopping over the fence. A few years ago, when he’d first arrived, the jump would’ve scared him and Tommy wouldn’t have dared to go into these fields. But now, he held no fear of the fields.
He only held the fear of himself and what would happen if he failed tonight.
His footsteps led to the center of the meadow. Stalks of lavender and long grasses brushed his legs gently, rustling against each other as he shifted his footing.
The night was silent aside from the distant noise of crickets chirping and the wind blowing through the air. Tommy shivered, almost wishing he’d taken his jacket.
But he supposed if he had, it would’ve only been more fabric to cut through when he stabbed himself.
Tommy gritted his teeth as he felt his breathing pick up speed. With a trembling, white-knuckle grip, he held the knife up, positioned right above his heart.
Tears began to run down his cheeks and he felt angry at himself for hurting so much. This needed to be quick, it needed to be easy. Tommy needed to end this quick.
Just as the sun began to move over the horizon, Tommy took a deep breath and brought the knife forward, into his flesh and into his heart.
He immediately collapsed, landing harshly on his knees. Blood covered his shirt, one that he knew used to be his favorite. Crimson stained his hands as he frantically, in a haze of confusion, tried to cover the wound.
The knife was stuck cleanly out of his chest and with heaving breaths, Tommy grabbed the handle and held back a scream as he pulled it out.
Blood splattered on the lavender stalks surrounding him. The bleeding increased, coating everything near it.
And then, he closed his eyes right as the sun finally began to warm his bloodstained skin.
Tommy felt his body sluggishly slump to the side. And then he felt no more.
All he knew was darkness.
———
Stems of lavender waved gently in the breeze, the edges of the delicate stems were blurred in the golden morning light. The air was coated in their thick, yet still ever-gentle scent. The sunrise was picture-perfect, the kind that most people would be quick to take a picture of if they were to see it. Birdsong echoed through the meadow, whimsical and cheery.
But despite the gentleness of the atmosphere, there was still an ever-present weight of sadness to the people who stood gathered in this meadow.
They stood, shoulders hunched and with grief in their eyes, around a body. A dead body. The body of someone who had died too soon, someone who had given up before they were even an adult.
Tommy hadn’t expected this to be what happened when he died. Truthfully, he hadn’t even expected anyone to find his body this soon.
It had only been one day. He’d thought it would’ve been at least two weeks until they’d cared enough to look for his body.
It turns out he’d been wrong.
Tommy floated around, examining the faces of his family and friends as they stood around his bloodied corpse. None of them could see him, he knew that now after he’d tried to get their attention and nothing had come of it.
His heart ached as he watched their grief stricken faces take it all in and he could do nothing to comfort them. Tommy wanted so desperately to make it stop. But he couldn’t.
He watched as Phil sat shakily on his knees, sobbing into Techno’s shoulder. Techno stared unblinkingly at Tommy’s empty, glazed-over eyes, his face full of raw grief. Tubbo and Ranboo sat a bit away and they both looked devastated. Ranboo was shaking and shivering with a cold nobody else felt and Tubbo looked like he was in a horrible, twisted nightmare with the fear that coated his expression.
Tommy hadn’t wanted them to hurt this bad. He had thought he was making things better. Turns out, he’d only made them worse.
“I’m sorry.” Tommy whispered, knowing nobody would hear him. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Maybe he should’ve tried a little harder to stick around longer. Maybe Tommy should’ve written a note, something to ease the pain. Maybe he should’ve told them how much everything always hurt. Maybe if he’d just done a couple things differently, it wouldn’t have led to this.
But it was too late now. And the only reply to his words was a crow cawing off in the distance.
———
They held his funeral on a rainy morning in mid-March.
His coffin was wooden, silver and gold accented. It had surely cost a fortune, an amount of money that Tommy hadn’t ever known anybody would be willing to spend on him.
At least half of the people from there tiny, cozy little town were there. They were dressed in black suits, fancy shirts, and dresses. Nobody complained about the water drenching their nice clothes, the air was too heavy with grief for it to even be a thought they had.
Phil gave a speech, one that Tommy couldn’t make himself listen to the full length of. It hurt too much to hear himself be called a son, a person that was loved so horribly dearly and would be missed so much more than they could ever know. It hurt to have it all be referred to in the past tense.
Tommy could hear Techno, Tubbo, and Ranboo all speak at some point too but he didn’t hear their words. He tuned it all painfully out. It ached too much for him to possibly handle.
Then, he watched as his coffin was lowered into a grave. Tommy never thought he’d have a proper grave if he died before. Back in the foster system, if a kid died they didn’t usually get anything fancy for their resting place or their funeral.
But here he was, not even adopted, and getting a nice coffin, a heartbreaking funeral, and a grave next to Phil’s wife, who he knew the man had cared a lot about before she died three years prior to Tommy’s arrival.
The rain made the dirt slippery and mud coated the shoes of the people who carried his coffin. The wood quickly became covered in it as it was placed in the hole.
Tommy floated above it all, watching as people cried and spoke to each other in quiet, hushed whispers. The gravestones in the cemetery felt like terrifying, looming landmarks of what Tommy’s legacy was soon going to become.
All he would be was a gravestone now. Within a few years, he’d be forgotten.
Tommy’s family and friends would move on, he knew. His bedroom would be cleared out, and maybe Phil and Techno would foster some other stupid teenager for a couple years. Tubbo and Ranboo would graduate high school without him and maybe they’d find some other kid to complete their broken trio.
Those thoughts hurt more than Tommy cared to admit. They weighed heavy on his heart, aching like someone had shot a bullet through it. Maybe they had. He wasn’t alive to feel it anymore anyway.
———
Months passed, each one feeling more and more painful than the last.
Phil and Techno still hadn’t done anything with his bedroom. The door had been left shut tight, Tommy’s stuff already beginning to collect dust.
Phil didn’t leave the house much anymore, his smiles became tight and forced. He stopped wearing that dumb striped bucket hat that Tommy used to make fun of. He stopped taking his camera with him on the rare occasions he did go out, even though Tommy knew that he loved taking pictures of even the smallest things.
Techno started spending more time at the gym, fighting for so long that his knuckles were bloody more often than not. He spent his time at home doing research, so much research, on ways to somehow bring Tommy back, even though it was hopeless. Nobody’s ever come back from the dead and Tommy wished that Techno would understand that.
Tubbo and Ranboo had been pulled out of school for a week after Tommy’s death. When they’d eventually gone back, sadness had hung over them like storm clouds, boiling over when the two of them began to fight and argue near constantly.
Tubbo’s grades dropped, he stopped sitting next to Ranboo in class, even going as far as asking his teachers to move them away from each other in their seating charts. He quit the robotics club, something that Tommy knew Tubbo used to love. But it was clear that Tubbo didn’t have the motivation for anything anymore.
Ranboo became more panicked. His hands always shook and he mumbled to himself a lot. His grades in school also fell, plummeting to near failing. He took notes all the time, trying to remember even the smallest things both in and outside of class, but he’d always still forget them anyway.
Tommy couldn’t help but feel horribly at fault for what was happening. He was helpless to do anything to help the people who cared about him most.
Because he was dead. He killed himself. Tommy was a ghost and he’d made a horrible mistake and it was too late to fix it.
———
One day, after almost a year had passed, Tommy found himself back in the lavender meadows behind the house.
The stalks rustled against each other, creating whispers in the breeze. The moon was high in the sky. A hazy sort of darkness covered the air and silence coated the atmosphere.
It was then, in the middle of that meadow that Tommy begged for any higher power there was to let him live again.
Because nothing had gotten better after he died. He had thought that it would. He had thought that he was helping everyone who cared about him by leaving. But as time had passed, he’d known more and more that nothing was improving.
Everything was getting worse and Tommy just wanted it to stop.
So even if he still wanted to hate himself, he just wished to have another chance. He at least wanted a tiny chance to make things better. And if that meant he had to be alive and he had to deal with all the horrible thoughts he’d had before, then he’d make himself do it.
“Please.” Tommy whispered, staring up at the color-streaked sky. “Please just let me try again. I never wanted them to hurt like this. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Somewhere, distantly in the stars, someone must’ve heard him.
For a few moments, all he felt was pain. He collapsed onto his knees, his transparent form falling through the ground beneath him.
Everything in him ached. He could feel it in his heart the most, feeling like flames were consuming the empty cavern in his chest. The pain echoed outward from his heart in waves, filling every inch of his nonexistent body.
Then, as he blinked down at his arms with tear filled eyes, Tommy saw the transparency slowly fade away, becoming the skin, flesh, and bone that they had been before that fateful night.
With a gasp, he felt his form solidify into a real, breathing body again. It hurt, to feel air filtering through lungs that shouldn’t exist. To use eyes and ears that weren’t meant to be functioning anymore.
As black spots began to fill his senses, Tommy heard one last thing.
The sound of a faint, fluttering heartbeat.
———
When he woke up, the world was quiet.
Tommy was half convinced everything that had happened before was only a dream and nothing more. But as he felt his lungs flare, felt faint aches appear on his arms and legs, and felt his heart beat steadily, he knew it was real.
He was here. He was alive, when all common logic said that his suicide should’ve been the end
When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with the sight of his dust covered bedroom. Trinkets laying out across his shelves just as he’d left them, messy sheets lingering underneath him, and a door shut tightly.
With a shaky breath, Tommy got to his feet. He had no idea how he’d gotten to his bedroom, when it certainly wasn’t where he’d been before. But he didn’t have the time to question it.
He left his room and entered the living room quickly, but found it empty. The kitchen and the other bedrooms were the same.
Tommy had no idea where his family and friends had gone. But at the very least, he could make a guess.
He didn’t like going out to the fields anymore. Not after he’d died. But he’d made himself go before his revival, in the hope that it would help.
The fields had helped him then. Who’s to say they wouldn’t now?
Tommy had no idea why anyone would go to the place where they’d found his corpse. But his gut was urging him forward, towards the back door. And he followed it without hesitation.
He slipped outside and shivered at the sharp feeling of the wind brushing over his skin. He could admit that he wasn’t quite used to feeling things anymore, after having spent nearly a year dead. But that wasn’t something he chose to focus on.
Tommy only had one task right now. And he was determined to stick to it.
With shockingly steady hands, he heaved himself over the backyard fence. The lavender stems welcomed him easily. The wind was gentler here, almost calming.
Moving on nothing but autopilot, Tommy walked through the stalks of lavender. The air, as usual, was coated thickly in their scent.
And as he walked, he spotted figures standing on the horizon. Their forms were blurred, but familiar all the same.
Not letting any whispers of thought linger, Tommy broke into a run. Stems crunched underneath his shoes but he had no care for them. All that mattered was moving as fast as he could.
And then, the forms began to take clearer shape.
Phil’s flowing coat, Techno’s thick jacket, Tubbo’s windswept hair, and Ranboo’s half-colored boots. They were there, standing with their backs facing Tommy.
Tommy ran faster, feeling the air roaring in his ears as it rushed past him. His legs ached with every step, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His lungs felt like they were rattling harshly in his chest with every quick intake of purple-stained oxygen.
All of the sudden, Phil turned around, as if some magical power had made him aware of the person racing towards him. Phil’s blue eyes immediately met Tommy’s and they widened in shock.
Phil said something that Tommy couldn’t hear and then the others were turning with him, four pairs of surprised eyes landing on Tommy.
Within one beat and the next, Tommy made impact.
Without hesitation he wrapped his arms around Phil. His father hugged him back, although shakily, as if he couldn’t believe what was right in front of him.
Tommy couldn’t blame him. He didn’t know if he believed this was real either.
“Y-You’re really here?” Phil’s trembling voice whispered in Tommy’s ear. “I’m not dreaming again?”
Tommy took a deep breath. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, not ever again.” He replied, loud enough for the others to hear.
He turned his head to look over Phil’s shoulder at Techno, Tubbo, and Ranboo. All three of them seemed lost, unsure of what to do.
“What are you guys doing? Get the fuck over here!” Tommy demanded, smiling even as tears began to sting his eyes.
Another beat passed, where they were still frozen in shock. Then, as soon as the ice shattered away, three more people joined the embrace.
It was warm, steady in a way that Tommy was surprised by. Surprise and disbelief still lingered, but it was tossed aside for the overwhelming feeling of relief that they all felt.
In that moment, all that Tommy could feel was a sort of love and calmness, that he knew was illogical but at the same time was. The relief of seeing his family and his friends again, and knowing that they could see him too was enough for his heartbeat to remain steady.
He heard Techno take a deep breath. “Please never leave us like that again.” Techno whispered.
“I’m gonna fucking vandalize your grave if you ever let yourself die again.” Tubbo threatened, although his voice was tainted with tears.
Ranboo shifted and Tommy felt his arms tighten for a moment. “I can’t believe you’re here.” Ranboo stated, the words full of a conflicting mixture of disbelief and relief.
“I’m so sorry that you ever felt like you… needed to do that.” Phil murmured.
“It’s okay. I’m here now, I promise. And that’s all that matters.” Tommy hesitated for a moment before continuing. “I love you guys too.”
None of them had said it directly, that they loved him. But just with their words, Tommy knew that they meant it. For the first time in a long time, he couldn’t make himself doubt it.
Tommy knew there would be questions later. He knew there’d be conversations, he knew they’d want explanations he couldn’t give, and he knew that disbelief would remain for awhile.
But for the time being, everything was perfect. It was all how it should be.
And Tommy knew, even after everything that was to come later, it would be perfect again.
With the scent of lavender in the breeze and purple surrounding him, Tommy couldn’t help but finally feel like he was loved, unshakably and unquestionably.
As the sun began to set, gold covered them too, swirling into the purple, and becoming one in harmony.
It was the most beautiful sunset that Tommy had ever seen. And for once, he knew there’d be many more to come afterward.
He felt warmer than the sun itself. Tommy had never felt more alive.