Chapter Text
Tommy didn’t care that murder was illegal now, it wasn’t in his first life, so it shouldn’t matter now. If Linda Smith opened her mouth one more time to educate him about the consequences of his actions, she deserved it. So what if threatening one of your foster brothers was ‘immature’ and ‘borderline harassment'? The prick shouldn’t have used Tommy’s notebook to demonstrate one of the many reasons why no one in this world would ever adopt him, which was majorly due to his shit art skills.
The notebook was special to Tommy. It was the only thing that stayed with him each rebirth and the pages could never be filled. No matter the amounts of written rants he had about how weak France was for their government to be overthrown by a guy whose name sounded like the ice cream—the 1780s were rough—the pages kept coming.
Even though the book was primarily used for his analysis of Greek myth tragedies and served as a constant reminder of the shitty lives he experienced, he had a sentimental connection to it.
“Tommy, are you even listening to me?” apparently Linda, his social worker, was still going on about the insignificant and little incident he had with another guy. It was just silly and not worth spending this much time talking about.
“Yes, ma’am, absolutely.” Tommy would salute but he didn’t want to be shouted at again. He didn’t want to add any more grey hairs to Linda’s already balding head. “You were just in the middle of dismissing me of needing to be punished because I am the victim in this situation.”
“How comes in every fight you have, you are both the initiator and victim?”
“Personally, I don’t see it that way and the only way to see it is the way I see it.” He was sure what he said made sense, but the glare Linda gave him proved him wrong.
“You held a pencil to Zack's throat.”
“Well…”
“And then threatened to shank him and his whole family, full-well knowing he’s an orphan.”
Tommy laughed. “But it was funny though.”
The look of discontent on Linda’s poorly-ageing face only caused him to laugh harder.
“Look, Tom—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Tom, I know you’re acting out because you’re being relocated soon, but it’s finalised. No amount of death threats can stop the Craft’s from fostering you.”
He took this as a challenge.
“Clearly, I haven't tried hard enough.”
“If this is about what happened at the last house, I promise you that won’t happen again.” The humoured smile on his face fell.
Linda just had to ruin everything. First, it was his life (arguably, a green bastard was more to blame for that), then it was his mood. He thought social workers were supposed to prevent childhood trauma rather than consistently bring it up when unprompted.
“Oh my God, lady can you just…” he gestured for Linda to, as you could say, fuck off so he could focus on something else rather than the shaking in his hands and his heartbeat that decided to act up for some totally unprovoked reason.
“Alright, I get it. Punishment for today’s events still stands though. And no, you can’t steal dessert from the younger children again.”
“They need to respect their elders.”
“Then why don’t you respect me?”
Tommy was tempted to explode on her, not in the literal sense—he wasn’t a victim of rigged explosives this time around—but in a metaphorical way. A way that would hopefully result in Linda crying and realising the weight of her words. He usually had little daydreams of arguments with his social worker, of him finally letting go and releasing the burden that was only physical on his back, shoulders, and torso. But that will never happen because that would require acknowledging his past lives in detail and Tommy preferred to stay in the bliss his ignorance created.
Instead, he resorted to his normal tactics: annoying the shit out people and ignoring everything serious.
“I said elders, not ancients.”
Tommy narrowly avoided a smack across the wrist and grinned at the lady. Nothing said disregarding your anxiety by taking the piss out of old people.
“Go to your room and pack your things. Be ready for later.”
❊❊❊
Contrary to belief, Tommy wasn’t popular in the home. Between terrorising his carers, many ex-social workers and being the oldest amongst the parentless lot, it didn’t result in him having many friends. So when it was time to leave, he didn’t have anyone to say goodbye to. He liked it this way though. He doubted that he’d even return to this shit-hole before his time was up and a new myth continued the cycle.
All he brought with him to the car was two bags, one for school and another for the items he had gathered—stolen—throughout the years.
Tommy hated this part of relocation. Being trapped in a car with Linda Smith as she played the shit music of the 21st century wasn’t something he enjoyed. The only music he tolerated were those bardcore Medieval style covers of modern music he found on YouTube. They reminded him of better times when people believed that disease was caused by God and crime was easier. Maybe not better times, but simpler ones. He’d take surviving the plague again over a two-hour-long car journey with Linda any day.
“You did read the file I gave you about the Craft family, didn’t you?”
Tommy did not.
The last time he read his foster family file, he thought that was going to be his forever home and not a scheme for child labour and exploitation via YouTube vlogging. Don’t ask, it gets more confusing. Just imagine a married couple mixed with a dash of infidelity who foster small, cute children just to vlog their every waking moment without their consent for some ad revenue on a family channel. One hundred percent illegal and one thousand percent fucked up.
Their apology video was pretty funny though.
“—he’s adopted before and has a biological son as well, Wilbur, but unlike the other houses, your foster brothers will be older than you.”
Tommy was used to screaming babies and bratty toddlers, but apparently now he had to get accustomed to depressed college students and unemployed young adults still living with their parents. If there was one thing he appreciated about his curse, it was that he’d never have to get a job or be an adult. Ever. Evading taxes and responsibilities since 1509.
“Phil Craft is an expert with cases like you.” Tommy raised his eyes from his notebook and glared at her. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened and he wondered whether that was because she knew he’d attempt to swerve them off the road. “So hopefully, if you behave, you won’t be my problem anymore.”
As soon as the word 'problem' left her lips, Tommy's interest in keeping a civil and professional conversation with a patronising dickhead faded. In all the shitty people in his life, Linda wasn’t even on the leader board, but her words cut deeper than any blade had. She wasn’t like the others in the past, they didn’t conceal their hatred for him with fake concern or kindness. They were upfront with it, weapon in hand and murder in their eyes.
Tommy preferred that to whatever the fuck this was.
With a glance down to the tattoo—the curse that bound him to nothing but cyclical pain—on his wrist, he sighed. Just like his destiny, the car journey continued with no ounce of free will in sight.
❊❊❊
It surprised him that his normal visitor in his dreams didn’t swing by when he fell asleep in the car.
Normally, before any traumatic event or major change, the fucker would come to gloat. But, ever since what happened in his last life, with Sisyphus, his visitor had left him alone. With this new knowledge, Tommy hoped whoever opened the door to the Craft household wasn’t about to make his life a lot worse.
They had parked in front of a normal middle-class looking house, maybe on the upper-middle-class scale as it screamed ‘Tory’ to him. Baskets of flowers hung next to the door and a bike was parked on the porch, which was just asking to be stolen. As it was the evening, the sun had set, and Tommy had to admit that the little neighbour looked pretty in this light.
“So, where are we exactly?” Tommy asked as he exited the car.
“Snowchester.” Noticing the lack of snow, he frowned at her. “Historic name, it has nothing to do with the weather.”
“Don’t tell me this is another small town with its own lore,” he groaned, not wanting to be recruited into a cult again (his Icarus past life didn’t have fun in Transylvania during the late 1600s).
“I wouldn’t describe a Civil War during the 16th century as ‘lore’ but… yes, this town has an important history.”
“Isn’t that an Avenger’s movie?”
“Tommy stop stalling and come with me to the door.” He muttered very incriminating things under his breath but reluctantly followed Linda to probably his last destination during this lifetime. “Remember, be on your best behaviour.”
She knocked on the brown door and the silence disturbed him. Usually, Linda would carry on with her irritating speech about him not misbehaving, but for once, her mouth remained shut. If only she had been this way from the very beginning.
When the door opened, it took everything in Tommy to not burst out laughing. At first glance, the man behind the door looked like he’d beat the shit out of you if you breathed the wrong way. The dyed pink hair and glasses favoured the ‘I’m an anime antagonist’ vibe Tommy got from him. But the Minecraft pig slippers on the man’s feet destroyed any fear Tommy felt for one second. This wasn’t an anime antagonist, it was just a buff nerd.
“You’re not an Amazon package,” the man said in the most monotone and American voice he had ever heard.
Tommy blinked at him, stumped. “You couldn’t fit me in a box anyway.”
Linda sighed from beside him and he had no idea why. His response was perfectly reasonable. The anime man seemed to agree by how his emotionless and deadpan face changed ever so slightly, maybe in amusement or general annoyance…or both. Tommy had that effect on people.
The man still had his hand on the door, almost unsure if he should let them in or shut it in their faces. Footsteps came from behind the door.
“Is it my package of illegal substances from my favourite shipping company that benefits from low wages in their supply chain and extreme tax avoidance—?” the door widened and an even taller man with curly brown hair entered the frame. “Oh. Hello.”
“Hi, I’m Linda Smith from Kinoko Foster Care.” The taller man had the audacity to look embarrassed now. “I spoke to your father earlier today, is he here?”
Without a second of hesitation, the new guy shouted, “Dad, your child is here!” and walked back into his house.
Tommy failed at concealing the growing smile on his face because he knew Linda was seconds away from bursting a blood vessel at how unprofessional this entire shitfest was.
The other man stood awkwardly and stepped out of the way, opening the door so they could enter.
The inside of the house supported Tommy’s worry that these guys were Tories. No normal house had a kitchen with an island and two separate tables to sit on. Why would you need a dining table and a smaller table? The lack of artificial smell and scented candles from some Dior shop in London confused the Conservative vibe though. No sign saying ‘Live, Love, Laugh’ either. Maybe these guys actually cared about the poor after all. There was a picture frame on the wall of a Minecraft house for some reason. So they’re Minecraft stans as well.
As Tommy slipped his bag off his back and Linda fiddled with her bracelet (something she would only do when contemplating quitting), voices came from around the corner, in the living room.
“Wilbur what did I tell you about saying random shit in front of social workers?” Tommy assumed the voice was Phil, as it was older but also northern. Why did everyone in this household have a different accent? Northern, southern, and fucking American.
“I genuinely thought it was the Amazon guy!”
“Just shut it before she thinks we’re doing illegal shit.”
“But what about the shed-”
“Shut!”
At the sight of Phil, it took everything in Tommy not to rush out of the house. He looked too much like he did. The blonde hair, the familiar blue eyes, straight nose, and light beard. The spitting image of his father. His first father and the only one that meant anything to him. Not that he meant anything good to Tommy.
Instead of snatching the car keys out of Linda’s hand and booking it out of here, he froze. The timid comfortability in this chest died. He couldn’t move.
“Ah, sorry for the confusion Ms Smith. I forgot to tell the boys you were coming today,” Phil glanced at him with a soft smile. “You must be Tommy. I’m Phil, these are my sons Wilbur and Techno.” He was too bothered by Phil to even care about the fact that anime man was named after a music genre.
Tommy nodded. He didn’t risk opening his mouth to answer in case a whimper left it. It had been a while since something like this happened and he never trusted himself when it did. Wilbur and Techno stared at him as if he was one of those little exotic animals in a zoo, with intrigue and disguised judgement. He didn't dare to look Phil in the eyes again.
“Well,” Linda clasped her hands together, making Tommy flinch at the sudden sound, “before I leave Tommy to get himself situated, I need to discuss something with you Phil if that’s alright.”
Linda wasn’t very subtle at hinting to his new foster parent that she needed to bitch about Tommy to him. You’d think she would use a different phrase every time she did this, but nope.
“That’s fine, join me in the kitchen then. Will, Techno can you show Tommy around his new home?”
“I’ll come with you, Techno do the tour,” Wilbur interjected, pushing Techno closer towards Tommy.
There was something comedic in the death stare Wilbur received from Techno. When the three left the room, Tommy stopped tunnelling his hands into his sleeves and crossed his arms.
“All I need to know is where the bathroom and my bedroom is, big man,” Tommy said, sensing that neither of them wanted to do this.
Techno pointed at a door. “Bathroom,” and then pointed at the stairs, “bedrooms are all upstairs, yours is the first door on the right. Mine is next to yours, Wilbur’s opposite, and Phil’s next to his. There’s another bathroom upstairs.”
“Nice tour. Didn’t even need to move.” Techno gave him a look of exasperation, which Tommy frowned at.
“I thought you’d want to hear your social worker talking about you,” Techno said, surprising him. “You haven’t seen the kitchen yet.”
Tommy grinned. “Show me the way anime man.”
“Don’t call me that.”
They stopped at the door to the kitchen, which was left ajar, and Linda’s scratchy and patronising voice was easy to hear from there.
For a solid minute, she was just chatting about general things that aren’t mentioned on his file (for instance, his amazing personality, or perhaps more about his previous home with the YouTube vloggers). But then she got onto the shittier stuff.
“Now, as we warned you before, he’s a flight risk and a problem at that,” Tommy rolled his eyes and bit on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from cussing her out, “We assume he had a rough past in the last fostering agency with the gang tattoo and scars he has. So if this becomes an issue with you in the future, don’t worry, this won’t be the first time it has—”
Her tone left Tommy uncomfortable. The marks of Theseus prickled against the ripped flesh on his back. The same stains that killed the naïve child soldier who would follow his big brother to the ends of the word. And a cliff so happened to be that end.
With his hands shaking, Tommy stared straight ahead and ignored the heavy gaze of Techno, “That’s enough listening.”
He moved away from the door and went into what he assumed was the living room, trying not to collapse on one of the sofas. He was still exhausted from the lack of sleep from last night, the shit car journey here, Linda in general, and now this. A family with two weird brothers and a father whose appearance hit too close to home.
Tommy jumped at Techno as he sat down next to him. He looked as if he were psyching himself up to start a conversation; Tommy knew the signs since he did the same thing.
“So… are you an orphan?” that was not the conversation starter Tommy was expecting, but it sure did knock the exhaustion out of him momentarily.
“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Tommy asked, gasping for air.
“A non-rhetorical one.”
“You smartass.” Techno’s facial expression didn’t change. “You actually want me to answer that? Don’t you know how triggering and insensitive and triggering it is to ask a child your family is about to foster if their parents are dead?”
He tried to hide his amusement with this entire situation and apparently failed due to how Techno didn’t have a shred of guilt or remorse in him.
“See, what you’ve essentially done is answer my non-rhetorical question with another question that I’m going to treat as rhetorical ‘cause I’m not answering it.”
“Yes! I am an orphan, you fucking weirdo.”
“That’s pretty cringe.” Tommy didn’t know how to respond to that.
Despite how Tommy was confused and felt like he should be offended, the conversation fuelled his interest in the pink anime man. He admired anyone who made fun of orphans and used it as their small talk prompt.
He was too focused on his stare-off with Techno to notice the others coming back from the kitchen. Wilbur seemed confused at seeing Tommy and Techno on a sofa together, and he had no idea why. Phil looked delighted. This family was fucking weird.
Linda clasped her hands together again, “Well, I best be off then as everything’s in order. I’ll visit again in a couple of weeks to check up on everything.”
His new foster family said their goodbyes to Linda whilst Tommy stayed silent. He didn’t want to waste any more energy on that prick. When the door slammed shut, the entire situation finally hit him. This was his new house, and if he was still here for at least half a year, then it would be his last. Stuck with anime man, a tall weird guy, and the doppelganger of his father. Fun.
Now, he had no idea what to do. His only other experience with a foster house had screaming toddlers, cameras in every ceiling corner of the room, and creepy adults. He wouldn’t admit that he was nervous, anxious even, at this change, but deep down he was scared. Scared of Phil, what this house meant and his upcoming sixteenth birthday.
“Tommy, have you eaten today?” Phil asked from where he was stood. Phil and Wilbur hadn’t moved since Linda left. Maybe they didn’t know what to do either.
Instead of facing his fears and embracing change, Tommy pussied out.
“Yes, I have.” He had not. “Is it ok if I go to bed early? I know where my room is already.”
“Sure mate, you’ve probably had a busy day. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
He scurried out of the living room at a nonsuspicious pace, picking up his bags with him, and ran up the stairs. He didn’t like how all confidence left his body when Linda went. It should have been the opposite.
The upstairs looked similar to the living room, with light decoration and sparing photographs of the family members on the walls. Still no ‘Live, Love, Laugh’ posters thankfully.
Tommy opened the first door to his right, kept the light switched off and stepped inside. The walls were white and empty, besides the painting of an island nailed above the double bed. The room had some furniture: a desk and a closet with some draws.
He walked towards the window and sighed at the lock. He recognised the brand on the glass anyway. Suicide prevention windows. Nice.
All he needed to do to die was call upon him and say an incorrect name. No window needed. Curtesy of his curse.
Regardless, he threw his bags at the end of the bed and grabbed his notebook and cow plushie, Henry, out of it. The darkness in the room added to his fatigue to the point where he didn’t care about sleeping in his only good t-shirt and uncomfortable jeans. He slipped under the covers and unbolted his notebook, searching for the page he always went to before going to sleep. The only page to have his brother’s—albeit messy—handwriting in it. To his day, Tommy was glad he pestered his older brother enough for him to write a note in it, even before he knew that the notebook would always be reborn with him.
His fingers outlined the message:
Tommy Soot is forcing me to write this. Help me. I will never write that he is the biggest man, he is rather quite small and dainty. A child. Also, his diary book is shite. No idea where he got it, but it’s ugly. Much like him.
– W. Soot.
It was a stupid message, but it brought him comfort. He closed the book and placed it under his pillow. He clutched his cow plushie to his chest and tried to ignore the sounds from downstairs. The Crafts were watching the TV.
Burning came from Tommy’s left wrist, his tattoo, and he flinched. For fuck’s sake. He buried himself under his covers and screwed his eyes shut. There was no point in delaying the inevitable.
As soon as his consciousness withdrew, he was there again. In the void. It was normally just black, filled with nothing. But this time, tall brick walls, adorned with vines of all lengths and green shades, stood around him. Tommy was in some sort of puzzle or maze. He shoved at the walls, hoping they were illusions or hallucinations of his, to no avail. He was trapped. That was until a green pathway materialised beneath his feet, ruining the opaque darkness and claustrophobia.
With his head and heart pounding, he followed it. Regret flooded through him as he reached a dead-end. Not because he was trapped again, but because of who was there waiting for him.
A masked man appeared in front of him. An amulet of the same symbol that burdened his wrist hung around the deity’s neck.
“What the fuck do you want this time, Dream?”
The masked man smiled.