Mon dieu!

“I don’t believe you for a second,” the villager said with a scoff. “Reviving the dead? You, a god? That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve heard in all my years.”

“Oh? You don’t believe me?” Dream smiled. “That’s okay, I’m more than willing to give you all a demonstration. Tommy,” he called, gesturing to the blonde.

Tommy knew exactly what was going to happen, and he knew that there was no point in resisting, for it’d be over quicker if he gave up and went along with it (and if he struggled he’d really just be making a fool of himself). So he walked over to Dream, quietly, obediently, and stood facing the crowd. At least his death would be quick this time, he thought, as he shut his eyes and felt the cool of metal against his neck. One slash, and the world went dark.

_______________________________

i will be putting warnings in here at the beginning of every chapter cus this is gonna get dark.

TWS:

suicide

mentioned abuse

i now present to you…. The Mon Dieu AU!!! :D

_______________________________

The wind felt nice.

A rough cold breeze, buffeting Tommy’s matted hair and wings and whipping his torn, bloodied shirt back and forth whilst the torrential downpour washed the dirt and blood from his skin. It was winter, after all, and Tommy figured it might snow soon. He liked the snow (it reminded him of Techno).

Shame I won’t be around to feel it anymore, he thought dully.

He stared numbly at the ground from his sky-high perch on his tower. A rickety, fragile thing, built only of the spare materials he could scrounge up after his friend (what?) blew his temporary campsite (not home, never home) to hell. Craters adorned the ground like paint splatters on a canvas or arrow holes through a target, still sizzling with the smoke wafting out from the bottoms even despite the rain. He could point out which structure used to stand where each crater marred the ground, though no amount of focusing could allow him to pretend they could still be there.

It was his fault they were gone, anyway. He had hidden items from Dream — he broke the most heavily enforced rule (he wasn’t allowed to have any possessions, whatever he had belonged to Dream, right?), and therefore he had suffered the consequences of his actions. It was only fair. (He wished that Mushroom Henry didn’t have to die, though. The cow did nothing wrong.)

But what truly upset him about this whole situation was that he’d let his friend down. In his stupidity, he’d broken Dream’s trust, and that hurt the most. Dream had stared at him with nothing but disappointment in his eyes and told him he wasn’t allowed any visitors and wasn’t allowed in the Nether. That was fine. He didn’t need anybody but Dream anyways. Then, Dream had told him that he’d be leaving him alone for a bit. And Tommy shattered.

So here he stood, atop a tower almost as frail as himself, with no way to the ground but the inevitable. He had no possessions to his name, no attachments, and worst of all, he was alone. Even if he thought it worth it to start over from the ground up again, he wouldn’t be able to go on without Dream, and the man had clearly wanted nothing to do with him. (Tommy didn’t think he was good enough for Dream anyways.)

He apathetically kicked one of his legs, sending a couple rocks tumbling down the tower to the ground. He could’ve counted the seconds until the rocks hit the bottom, but it was too much effort. Everything was too much effort.

He knew his wings wouldn’t stop him. How could they when one of them was broken anyways?

So he took one last look at the rainy, dreary sky, the stormy clouds which matched the ones that swirled in his grey eyes, spread his arms wide, and took a breath.

Then, he let himself fall.

•••

Death didn’t hurt as much as he’d anticipated it to. Not that he’d wanted the pain, of course, but it was more that he was surprised at how fast it was. He figured he’d died upon impact with the ground, which was a pretty fortunate way to go, in his opinion.

He opened his eyes, not sure what he expected to see, only to find nothing. The ground he stood upon seemed to be a mirror, reflecting only himself. The rest of his surroundings were void, infinite darkness stretching in all directions. There were no walls, nor was there a ceiling. Just Tommy, and the mirror floor, and the void.

“So this is death, hm?” He mused quietly. His voice echoed as if he’d spoken a normal volume, and he winced.

(Dream didn’t really like it when he spoke loudly. It was annoying.)

Taking a glance at his left wrist, he examined his life count. All three of the hearts were broken and greyed out, showcasing to whoever wanted to take a look that he had, in fact, died permanently.

Good.

He began to walk, and realised that he was not standing on a mirror, but rather water, as each step sent a ripple across the clear surface. He wasn’t sure how long he’d walked for until he grew sick of the repetitive motion and sat down.

“Tommy?”

All at once, the reflection in the water turned into something different. Instead of a world of darkness he found himself staring into what appeared to be a train station, a couple benches scattered around the room, posters in an unreadable language on the walls, and empty rails where a train would normally await its passengers.

And instead of him being reflected, he saw none other than his brother.

“Wilbur,” Tommy greeted. “It’s been a while.”

He should feel nothing but contempt for Wilbur, after all, the man was a traitor who blew up his own country to fulfil his maddened desires of never finishing his symphony. Yet all Tommy could bring himself to feel was a calm neutrality, and maybe deep down a little longing. Maybe it was the emptiness of the abyss rubbing off on him, or maybe it was simply the fact that Tommy couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.

Wilbur stared at him, caramel eyes shining with guilt and sadness. “Tommy… why are you here? How are you here?”

Tommy considered the man for a moment. He looked the same as he did the day he’d died — maroon beanie covering his brown hair, stained white shirt, scuffed combat boots, and his signature brown trench coat so lovingly spritzed with gunpowder and soot stains. The only difference was the stab wound in the centre of his chest, perpetually dripping blood.

(Tommy wondered if that’s why his legs were bent at such odd angles. He hadn’t noticed at first, considering he could walk perfectly fine, but upon observing them he realised logically that no living person would even be able to move them, much less walk on them.)

“I built a tower and jumped off of it.” Tommy said simply, clasping his hands in his lap.

Wilbur’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

“If I was kidding, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.” Tommy leaned forward. “Anyways, how has death been treating you? What should I expect?”

Wilbur sat stupefied, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water for a handful of minutes, before snapping out of his trance. “Ah, well, it’s certainly boring…” he finally said, lacking all of the signature Wilbur eloquence his speech usually held.

“Is anyone else here, or just us two?” Tommy asked.

“Well, anyone who’s died is here, obviously, but I really have no idea how Death or whoever decides who you get to see or when. Like it’s usually pretty empty here, right? But I’ve seen Schlatt sometimes, though all he ever does is sleep. A bunch of random people come and go from the train, but I don’t know them so we don’t even speak. And some guy named Mexican Dream — stupid name if you ask me. A real life of the party, he is.”

Tommy chuckled, pain stabbing through him at the thought of the cheerful man. “He’s definitely something. Good man.”

“I suppose. Anyhow, I’ve been theorising that the train just sort of drops people off whenever it damn well pleases.” Wilbur explained, shrugging.

“Train? I don’t have one of those.” Tommy looked around.

“Well, from what I’ve been told, everybody has different limbos. Mine is a train station,” Wilbur paused, then groaned.

“Why the fuck is it a train station?”

“Shut up. But could you stop dodging the big problem? Like I was just sitting here, minding my business, and then you show up out of fuckin’ nowhere and tell me you’re dead now! What kind of bullshit is that?!” he cried, shaking his hands out in front of him aggressively.

“Cycle of life,” Tommy shrugged.

Wilbur let out a snort, then lightly covered his mouth with his hand. “That isn’t funny. You killed yourself. You wanna talk about that?”

“Don’t therapy me, Mr. ’I asked my father to stab me’. Your death was just an assisted suicide, you’re no better than me.”

“I think being stabbed is a way cooler death than falling,” Wilbur scoffed playfully, though the sadness didn’t leave his eyes.

“At least I didn’t feel my death!” Tommy shot back with a grin.

“Gremlin.”

“Bald man.”

“Oh come one! What kind of retort is that?” Wilbur pulled his beanie further over his hair with a groan.

Tommy laughed, feeling something swell in his chest that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Hope.

Maybe limbo wouldn’t be so bad?

•••

So maybe he’d miscalculated a bit. It wasn’t that limbo was bad, because really, it wasn’t awful. But his communication with other people being left up to random chance wasn’t exactly his idea of fair. As it turned out, Wilbur was right about the whole seeing people occasionally thing. He’d discovered that he could be in mid-conversation with Wilbur when the water would ripple and clear, and he’d have to wait an uncertain amount of time until the void allowed him to see Wilbur again.

It was definitely stupid, and there wasn’t much to do in limbo, anyways. When he wasn’t speaking to Wilbur, which was sadly quite often, he’d walk aimlessly across the void, hoping maybe he’d find something. It was pitifully lonely and boring, and though he wasn’t actively phased by it, he could feel himself drifting further the more time he spent there. When he was able to speak to Wilbur, the two would chatter about anything and everything, just like they used to (before Wilbur went insane). Wilbur was really the only good thing about limbo, in fact, and Tommy was certain that if the man weren’t there he would’ve lost himself by now.

That was another thing, though. Wilbur.

Tommy liked to think the two had grown close again in their time being together in limbo, but as luck would have it, that meant that Wilbur would not stop asking Tommy questions about why he jumped.

“But seriously,” Wilbur said, tapping his chin dejectedly. “Why did you do it? What made you feel like that was your only option?”

Tommy sighed. No matter how much he tried to avoid the topic, Wilbur didn’t seem to understand how to take a hint. “He was going to kill me eventually, I’m sure,” he began slowly, “so I wanted to kill myself first. Make one last decision for myself.”

Wilbur stared at him, a sombre expression on his face. “What do you mean? Who’s he? You—”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Tommy shook his head and glanced away.

“But Tommy,” Wilbur pressed, leaning forward as if to grab the blonde’s hands (though Tommy couldn’t feel it), “you do realise you need to talk about this eventually, right? You can’t just bottle it up and expect everything to be fine.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Wilbur. Drop it.” Tommy narrowed his eyes.

Wilbur looked as if he was going to object or make another comment, when the faint sounds of a train squealing to a stop against the tracks echoed through the void. The water began to ripple.

“Ah, shit,” Wilbur muttered. “Don’t think this conversation is over,” he added pointedly, standing up slightly to presumably squint at the train.

“Sure,” Tommy agreed half-heartedly, and then Wilbur disappeared and he was alone again.

•••

“Fuck! What do you mean I lost?!” Wilbur cried, slamming his cards aggressively onto the floor.

“I think you just need to get good.” Tommy replied with a smug smirk, reorganising his own cards into a neat pile.

“What do you mean, get good? I’ve been practising competitive solitaire for years!”

“Maybe you just suck ass, Wil.”

By now Tommy had learned that time in limbo seemed to work differently than the living world. Time would move much faster, Wilbur having scrawled multiple years worth of tally marks on the walls of his train station. He said that since Tommy had arrived, it’d been about two months. Tommy wasn’t sure how long that meant in the living world, but he didn’t have any particular reason to care.

“Another round. I’ll whoop your ass this time.” Wilbur declared, already separating his cards into their appropriate piles.

Tommy went to do the same, but found his cards were gone. Oh, maybe his time was up. Shame. He supposed they’d pick up where they left off whenever they met again next.

He looked down, expecting to see his own reflection, and to his surprise saw nothing. No train station, not himself, not even ripples as he stood.

“Wilbur?” he called, feeling a panic begin to set in.

He was about to call again when he felt something wrap around his left wrist. He held his wrist in front of him to see what it was and felt the panic rise further. Thin green strings were looped around his wrist, almost glowing.

(He didn’t notice, but the three broken hearts on his wrist were beginning to glitch and scribble out.)

He felt the strings wrap around his other wrist, then, his legs. In his sudden panic, he tried to run, and let out a cry as the strings yanked backwards, tripping him. He slammed forward onto the ground with a cry, feeling the strings wrap around his neck, suffocating him even though he hadn’t breathed since he’d entered limbo. As a last resort he clawed desperately at the ground, his chewed off nails finding no purchase on its smooth surface. With one final, painful yank, Tommy was dragged back into… something, and everything went white.

•••

Tommy let out a groan. Everything hurt. His head felt like it had been bashed repeatedly into a wall, his legs like they’d been broken multiple times over, his back like someone snapped his spine as if it were a twig. Even flitting his eyes under his closed eyelids sent lightning bolts of pain into his head, adding to the throbbing headache he had.

Despite his better judgement, he forced his eyes to flutter open, and upon doing so found himself staring at a sickeningly familiar smiley face mask.

Dream.

“Good morning, Tommy!” Dream smiled, tilting his head. “Welcome back to the land of the living!”