Archive of Our Own

~Two weeks prior

“Purpled— stop, stop fucking squirming— Purpled.” His voice spits sharp, sharper than he intends, but he needs the boy to listen. He needs control, and control feels like a far-off land right now. He presses Purpled’s thigh harder into the ground, pinning him with a grip that tries to be steady.

“You need to stay still. I know it hurts, but I have to stitch it.”

Purpled’s face twists, breath stuttering like a broken engine. Blood slicks the torn fabric of his pants, staining Tommy’s hands with a warmth that feels too alive. Purpled lets out a hiss — half fury, half agony. For a terrifying second, Tommy thinks he’s going to yank his leg back and ruin everything— but then Purpled’s head thunks back against the bunker wall and he nods, once. Tight. Shaking.

Tommy scans his face — searching for doubt, for fear, for the moment Purpled changes his mind — and then he unbuckles his belt with jerky movements. The leather whispers as he pulls it free, slick with dust and panic. He slides the belt between Purpled’s teeth, fingers ghosting the boy’s jaw. A wordless apology, fleeting and familiar, because Tommy has given too many of those lately.

“Bite down,” he mutters.

Then he begins to stitch.

Tommy had learned a long time ago that stitching up skin is nothing like stitching up clothes.

Not like the neat puzzles Mama used to set before him, the gentle hum of her voice guiding him through loops and folds and the soft pull of thread. He remembers being small — so small — tucked into her lap as sunbeams filtered through the holes of their porch roof, painting everything gold. The wind would sing low through the wheat fields, brushing their home like a lover reluctant to leave.

A needle, a steady hand, a story for every stitch.

Mama used to speak of the Arctic with glittering eyes — like she held the whole frozen world in her chest. She would spin tales of the Emperor, her voice laden with devotion, and of the sons who ruled by his side. She dreamed in tapestries and thick furs, crafted clothing she promised they’d one day present together once she finally returned home.

One day, she’d say. Even an exile can find their way back.

Tommy’s needle slips just a fraction, and Purpled tenses, a muffled groan crunching around leather. Tommy forces his thoughts into silence. He can’t afford a distraction. Not when his friend’s blood is soaking into his skin.

He wonders — bitterly, cruelly — whether Mama would still cherish the people she adored so fiercely, if she could see what they had done. If she’d recognise the empire that burned their home to ash, the Emperor’s soldiers who tore apart everything she'd grown to love.

Would she still praise them?

Would she still weep longing tears for that frozen castle?

Would she forgive Tommy for the things he’s had to do?

But Mama isn’t here to question. She isn’t anywhere but beneath the charred remains of their past, her bones laying under the willow tree by his father’s grave. The tree she used to rest against when laughter came easy and war felt like a fable told far, far away.

Tommy’s chest aches.

He pulls another stitch tight and Purpled jerks, knuckles white around fistfuls of dirt. Tears gather in the corners of his eyes — but he doesn’t scream. He refuses to. Stubborn little star-chaser.

Tommy’s proud of him. Angry with him. Terrified for him.

Because Purpled shouldn’t be here — shouldn’t be with someone like Tommy — trapped in a leaking bunker that smells like old fire and regret.

Purpled should be safe.

Hell, Tommy should be safe.

The thread bites through torn flesh, looping and cinching with callous precision. Tommy’s throat is tight, compressed like someone’s got their fist wrapped around it. Not now, he tells the memories — but memories don’t listen, do they?

They claw and cling and demand to be known.

Once upon a time, Tommy stitched flowers onto tunics and hems — bright blossoms for a mother who loved things that grew. Now he’s stitching jagged skin, holding a life together with nothing but thread and hope that’s running dangerously thin.

Purpled’s breath rasps hot against the belt. He’s shaking, shoulders pressed flat into the clay wall behind him. Tommy can feel the tremor running through the leg under his hands — a wildfire trying to break free.

“Just— hold on,” Tommy whispers, though he doesn’t know who he’s saying it to anymore.

The bunker hums a low, suffocating silence around them. Lantern light flickers, throwing their shadows like giants on the wall — or monsters. Tommy isn’t sure which they resemble more these days.

There’s only one more stitch.

It’s ugly. It’s rushed. It’s not his Mama’s handiwork — nothing graceful, nothing perfect. But it will hold.

It has to.

Tommy pulls the final knot tight. Purpled grunts a sound that is not quite human — pain turned into something primal. Tommy releases the leg quickly, like he’s afraid of what he’s done. Afraid of what he does — over and over — in the name of survival.

He wipes the blood on his shirt, smearing red stains that will never wash out. His hands won’t stop shaking. His heart won’t either.

“Alright.” The word doesn’t leave him so much as fall out, broken and exhausted. He leans back, bones clattering inside skin as relief sags his shoulders. A shuddering sigh tears from his lungs and he lets himself collapse backward onto the dirt. “Alright. That’s— ...That's it. It's done.”

He stares up at the bunker ceiling — cracked stone, cobwebs, the weight of the world pressing down on him directly. His pulse thunders in his ears.

“You good?” he asks, though he's sure he knows the answer.

Purpled’s head lolls, the belt slipping from his mouth. His voice is a groan — raw, hoarse, barely stitched together like the skin on his leg. He leans into the wall like it’s the only thing holding him upright.

Tommy snorts. The sound is a little hysterical.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “That sounds about right.”

Purpled doesn’t speak — but his eyes find Tommy’s, muddied with pain and something heavy and loyal beneath it.

Trust.

That’s the most terrifying part.

Tommy drags a hand through his hair, smudging dirt into already-dirty curls. “Next time,” he mutters, pointing a shaky finger at Purpled, “don’t fucking get stabbed, alright? I’m running out of belt buckles and sanity.”

A ghost of laughter huffs from Purpled’s bruised chest.

Tommy pretends the sound doesn’t make his heart swell painfully.

Silence falls again — but it’s softer now. Less suffocating. They’re alive.

Together.

And in a world that wants to see them buried beneath another burning willow tree — that means something.

It has to.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

~Three years prior

Night used to be gentle.

When Mama was alive, night-time meant a fire crackling in the stove and her humming songs from a land made of winter and wonder — stories of ice-crowned mountains and emperors who were kind and powerful and ever-watching.

Night held peace then. Safety. The softness of wool blankets and the steady sound of her hand brushing his hair.

But that was before the world cracked open. Before soldiers buried home beneath smoke and gunmetal. Before Mama’s body lay cold under the willow tree and silence became a cruelty, not a comfort.

Now, night is when the screams usually come.

Not tonight, though.

A stalemate hanging over the battlefield like a blade left hovering at a throat. Outside, beyond the canvas walls of the barracks and the distant ridges of jagged trenches, cannons sleep like monsters too tired to snarl. Even the sky holds its breath, clouds dark and swollen, guarding the moon like a secret.

Tommy sits hunched on his scratchy, rickety bunk bed — top bunk, because no one wanted the one with the boards that creak like dying birds when breathed on too heavily. He curls into himself, boots hanging off the edge, his satchel pulled into his lap like a shield.

It’s a messenger’s satchel. Standard issue. Meant for letters and orders, maps and commands that decide who lives and who becomes a number recorded by someone who won’t even remember spelling the name.

His job is simple: run until his lungs burn, deliver the messages, and hope the bullets miss.

Simple.

Short.

Disposable.

But the satchel — that’s his. Not in any way that matters to the army, but in the way stitching a memory into cloth can turn necessity into something sacred.

He fingers the rough fabric, finding the pattern he left earlier — small white wings of a moth he saw trapped under lantern glass at dusk. Tiny petals of a dandelion he saw half-mangled by boot prints. A crooked line that was supposed to be Mama’s favourite lily until his vision blurred too much to finish.

Tommy threads his needle with shaking fingers.

Stitch. Pull. Knot. Breathe. Repeat.

The bunk beneath him creaks as someone shifts — Jack, probably, tall and restless even in sleep, dreams gnawing his ribs like rats. Others fill the rows of beds too — boys no older than he is. Some younger. Drifters turned soldiers. Children turned corpses-in-waiting.

Tommy doesn’t let his gaze fall on any of them. He doesn’t want to see how their faces resemble boys he grew up with. He doesn’t want to wonder whose mother is waiting at home for letters that will never come.

He presses the needle through the canvas. The thread drags — rough, stubborn. He breathes. Focuses. The small resistance of cloth meets him, grounding him just enough.

Stitch. Pull. Knot. Breathe. Repeat.

A cricket chirps outside, the foolish little thing, unaware that singing is dangerous here. Tommy almost envies it. To have so little fear that one can sing through a war — what a luxury of ignorance.

He swallows, throat tight.

He doesn’t want to remember. But memories thread themselves into him anyway.

Mama’s lap. Warm sun. The soft flick of her finger guiding his. Laughter like bells. Hair that smelled like fresh bread. Kisses that left soft imprints of pink on his forehead.

The needle slips; he pricks his finger.

Tommy hisses under his breath — not in pain, but anger. Frustration. He shoves the finger into his mouth and tastes copper. The world has been tasting like iron and grief for months.

Mama isn’t going home.

Neither is he.

The war began, and the fantasy died not long before she did.

He presses on — pushing the thread into a pattern of a leaf he memorized once. A silly little fern that grew between cracks of the old stable. He can see it perfectly — the curl at the end, as though reaching for the sun.

When he was younger, he’d touch its soft green and imagine the leaf waving back.

Stitch. Knot. Breathe.

His eyes sting. No. No crying. Not again. Tears are loud — even silent, they scream inside your head.

And Tommy’s had enough screaming.

The wind outside shifts — a low whistle squeezing through the thin cracks of the wooden walls. It sounds like Mama calling his name softly through the fields —

His needle trembles mid-air. He drops his head, curls in tighter, clenches the satchel until his knuckles go bloodless.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers — barely sound, more exhale. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m trying. I promise I’m trying.”

His chest tightens like his ribs are trying to crush his heart before the war can.

He wishes she could be here — even just long enough to smooth his hair once more. To tell him it’s okay. That he’s not alone. That he’s still a little boy, not whatever the war is carving him into.

Outside, someone shouts orders — urgent but distant. Boots pound the earth. A horse snorts. The temporary peace trembles on a knife-edge.

Tommy stitches faster.

A crooked beetle he remembers from the trenches — blue and shiny like armor. A bird seen only as a shadow overhead. The moon from yesterday, less full but somehow braver than tonight.

He embroiders the world he wants to remember — a world that isn’t just smoke and bone. A world Mama believed in.

His breathing settles. The rhythm holds him together like the threads hold cloth. It’s what keeps him from breaking.

The lantern hanging from the centre beam flickers — the flame so tired it might gutter out any second. Shadows stretch across the barracks, long arms reaching to steal warmth.

Tommy pulls his thin blanket tighter around his shoulders. The wool scratches his neck and wrists, but he doesn’t complain. Comfort is a luxury soldiers don’t keep for long.

He listens carefully to the outside world. The clang of metal far away. The occasional thud of a shovel. The soft muttering of men who fear sleep as much as death.

He stitches a star.

Just a pointy one — a child’s drawing of a star really — uneven and messy. He doesn’t have the skill Mama did. He never will, now that she can longer teach him.

But as the thread pulls through, making that tiny shape shine faintly against the satchel.

He imagines she can see it.

That she knows he’s trying to keep a piece of her alive.

The war hasn’t yet taken everything.

Not while he still remembers how to sew.

Not while he still remembers her.

Tommy rests the needle on his knee and presses his forehead against the bag. His breath warms the fabric.

Tomorrow, he will run through gunfire again.

Tomorrow, he may not come back.

But tonight — tonight he is just a boy stitching pieces of the world into a thing he can carry.

Just in case everything else falls apart.

Just in case someday, someone finds the satchel and sees that he lived. That even in war and bloodshed, something else existed, tiny and stubborn.

He opens his eyes.

And he stitches.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

He had always imagined dying would be loud.

Explosions cracking open the sky. Soldiers screaming names that would never again be answered. Steel biting bone. That final moment drenched in nothing but absolute chaos.

But here he is, crumpled at the base of a twisted tree, the war drifting away into a distant hum, and everything feels muted. Soft. A dark comfort creeping closer, closer, closer.

It’s funny, he thinks — or maybe terrifying — how peaceful dying can pretend to be.

His leg is a ruined thing. A jagged nightmare sculpted from blood and torn flesh. His foot — gone. Taken clean off by a shell that didn’t care how young he was, how desperate he was to keep running, how much he still wanted to live.

Only the bone remains, jutting from the ragged stump like a pale needle shoved through a blood-soaked pincushion.

It should hurt more.

Should burn and throb and tear screams straight from his lungs — but the pain has bled away with his blood, replaced by a numbness that creeps higher and higher, like frost claiming a window one slow inch at a time.

Purpled is gone. Dragged off by the squad as gunfire rained down, their faces set in grim determination as they pulled back. And Purpled — oh, Purpled — he looked at Tommy like he was already a ghost. Like the battlefield had swallowed him whole before he even fell.

A lost cause.

Tommy laughed, a broken sound that felt like his ribs caving.

He has been a lost cause before. A boy without a home. A messenger without a future. A soldier with more thread in his satchel than ammunition.

But he never thought the war would actually… win.

His breathing shudders through him, cold air slicing his throat raw. His head rings, each heartbeat a muted drum, fading beneath cotton and fog. His blood pools under him, warm against the earth — a comfort he clings to until even that warmth begins to slip away.

He’s fifteen.

Fifteen.

He isn’t supposed to die yet.

War should break him in many ways — but not this final one. Not this soon. Not before he’s had a chance to grow into something more than a boy sewn together from scraps of hope and thread.

He presses his hands weakly against the dirt — as though anchoring himself to the world will somehow keep him here. But his fingers slide through mud slick with his own life, useless, shaking, drenched in red.

“I don’t—” The words dissolve in a sob that rips from deep inside him. “I-I don’t wanna—”

He wants his Mama.

He wants her steady hands guiding his needle. Her voice explaining the stars above. Her lullabies made of a language he never learned but understood with every piece of his heart.

He curls into himself, trembling, forehead pressed into the moss-covered bark. Tears streak down his cheeks — hot, desperate, humiliating. His chest heaves like his ribs are cracking from the inside.

He thinks of his satchel, lying somewhere in the mud, lost like he is. He'd had to leave it months ago, but he would've liked it have it now. All his stitches — his memories — were left to rot under rain and blood.

He wanted someone to find it someday. To see the moths and the stars and the stupid little fern and know he tried. That he cared enough to remember the small things.

Mama would’ve understood that.

A gust of wind sweeps through the trees above him — a whisper through dead branches that sounds almost like a familiar voice.

His heart stutters painfully.

He knows it isn’t real. He knows she isn’t here.

But oh, how he wishes—

The tears come harder. His palms press into his eyes, like squashing the tears back inside will make him stronger — but he can’t stop it. He is unravelling, thread slipping loose from every seam.

“I’m not— I’m not ready,” he chokes, voice cracking. “Mama, I—I’m not ready.”

The world around him tilts, swaying in and out of darkness. Fireflies dance in his vision — or maybe stars. Maybe hallucination. Maybe death knocking politely, waiting for him to answer.

His breaths shorten into little gasps. Panic digs claws into his spine, feeble though it is.

He forces his eyes open, staring out across a battlefield turning into shadow. Smoke curls where villages once stood. Crows hop through the grass, picking at silhouettes that used to be soldiers.

Everything is dying.

Everything is ending.

“Please,” he whispers, not sure who he’s begging — God, the Emperor, the sky, the soil. “Please don’t let me go yet.”

His head slumps against the tree. The ringing in his ears grows louder — drowning out the distant gunfire, the pounding boots, the screams. His fingertips go numb. The warmth from his blood seeps away.

He is sinking.

He is slipping.

He is scared.

He curls tighter, small as he can be, as though being a little boy again might convince the world to spare him. His breath hits the bark in shuddering bursts.

Darkness yawns wide.

Tommy’s eyelids droop, and he lets them fall. The world narrows to a single point of soft black comfort, like sinking into a blanket Mama might have wrapped around him long ago.

His last conscious thought is simple, childlike, desperate.

Don’t leave me alone.

Everything goes quiet.

The battlefield fades.

His body loosens.

Death approaches like a lullaby.

Warmth slips under him. Not the earth. Not blood. Hands. Strong hands. They lift him — one arm beneath his knees, the other supporting his back, careful not to jostle the mangled leg.

He does not feel the pain anymore.

He does not wake when a chest presses against his cheek, when footsteps carry him away from the tree, when a voice, low and steady, murmurs something he cannot hear.

His head lolls into the crook of a warm neck.

His fingers twitch, barely brushing the coat of the person holding him.

Tommy allows the darkness to take him completely — soft as sleep, deep as oceans — unaware that he is no longer alone beneath the war-torn sky.

🪡