Annihilate

Tommy wakes up.

That’s already pretty surprising, to be honest.

For a couple of moments, he’s completely sure that he’s dead. Like, he has to be. The wounds from his fight with the goblin and the lizard and then the frickin’ gunshot and fall from their roof must’ve killed him. There’s no way in hell he has that much endurance.

But then he opens his eyes and is hit with reality, which is that he’s not dead in the slightest.

And that he’s lying on the couch of their living room, surrounded by the people he’s been pushing away for the last two weeks.

Ranboo and Tubbo are fast asleep, curled up on two chairs in positions that look utmost uncomfortable. Techno and Wilbur are camping out on the floor, sharing a mattress and softly snoring. The only one that’s missing is Phil – and as Tommy remembers that he literally shot him point-blank, he doesn’t know if he shouldn’t feel glad that he’s not here.

What the fuck. Phil’s never shot a random person before. That’s not very Phil-like. Tommy glances down at himself. He’s wearing normal pajamas, but when he pulls up his shirt, he sees that someone bandaged him up pretty good. He barely feels pain either. Did they give him painkillers or is he just healed up already?

He gets up and tip-toes into the kitchen, where the clock reads two AM on a Saturday. He was out for a day, basically. Again.

Anxiety bubbles in his stomach suddenly. Fuck, they know who he is. They all know he’s a vigilante. And considering that they didn’t try to stitch him up this time, they know about his freaky healing. He slings his arms around himself, trying to fight the sudden urge to burst into tears. When he looks out of the window, it’s still snowing outside.

He’s home again.

A sob breaks out of Tommy’s throat, and then the dam just breaks.

Everything – everything since Deo’s death just comes crashing down on him at once. He feels like he did that night again, when he broke down in Deo’s arms and cried on his shoulder after the lizard attacked him in the subway tunnels. He feels like a scared kid, and he’s so lonely that it hurts even though he’s standing in the apartment of his family.

His family, who surely must hate him. Who surely are just waiting until he’s in a better condition so they can stick him back in the damn system where he belongs. How couldn’t they hate him, anyway? He’s a fucking freak of nature and a failed science experiment himself, a danger to everything and everyone around him.

Electricity prickles along his fingertips, and Tommy balls his hands into fists and collapses on the floor of their kitchen, burying his face in his knees. He can’t make it through the system a second time. Not without Deo. He won’t fucking survive it. He’ll have to go back to some random High School for troubled kids instead of the academy, and he’ll suffer in every family they put him in, and he’ll break under it, he knows it. Especially when he’s like this. Especially now that he’s a fucking–

“Tommy?”

This time, it’s no wonder that he flinches at the sound of Phil’s voice. He’s up in a moment, backing away, but then his back hits the kitchen counter and he just stays standing there, so tense that it almost hurts. Phil is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, also in his pajamas.

Grief harrows his foster father’s face, as if Tommy is dead and not standing right across him. He stays where he is, but shifts his weight. “Hey, mate,” he quietly says. “It’s good to have you home.”

Tommy chokes out an indescribable noise. “H-home?” he asks, voice breaking. He hates how weak he sounds. And how weak he feels, too.

Phil leans against the doorframe. “I… we missed you.”

“You missed me,” he croaks out, “is that why you shot me?”

Very slightly, Phil flinches. Tommy doesn’t know why, but the reaction pisses him off suddenly. He pushes himself away from the counter and towards Phil even though his instincts scream that the man shot him and that he needs to stay away from him.

“I’m sorry,” Phil whispers. “I never meant to hurt you. I was just so… you were just gone suddenly, and I thought…”

“Are you fucking serious?” Tommy angrily asks. “You’re a grown fucking adult. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that you let your feelings about your charity case running away get the fucking better of you. Only you had a gun in your hand and took it out on me.”

“Charity case?” Phil repeats. “What– that’s not– you’re my kid, Tommy.”

“I am not,” Tommy bites out, “get your head out of the clouds. You’re a cop, a cop like any other fucking cop, as you nicely demonstrated when you shot me for no fucking reason. And I’m a vigilante.”

Phil closes his eyes. “You’re still my kid,” he says quietly. “And I still love you.”

“How does that work?” Tommy snaps, “I’m a– I’m a weird science experiment gone wrong. I’m not– fuck, I’m not even sure if I’m human anymore. How can you stand there, and– and say you love something like me?”

“Because I quit my job,” Phil says.

Tommy blinks at him, and then he realizes that he’s crying. He touches the warm tears running down his cheeks and wipes them off.

Phil steps closer to him. “You’re right. I let my emotions get the better of me after you ran away, because I didn’t understand why you were gone. I was scared for you and angry at myself for not being a better parent, because I thought that if I’d been better, maybe you would’ve stayed. And Spider-Man was an unknown vigilante that was on top of our apartment and I was so angry at everything that I didn’t even think twice before pulling the trigger. When I realized that after I shot you, when I unmasked you and realized what I’d done, I got you inside. Wilbur told me and Techno about everything and showed me the USB drive you left for him. Then Tubbo and Ranboo showed up half out of their minds with worry and filled us in on why you were drenched in chemical sewage and why half your organs where confetti. We bandaged you up and… yeah. When you made it through the night, I went to work in the morning, gave up my badge and my gun and quit.”

Tommy gapes at him.

Phil steps even closer and settles his hands on his shoulders. He didn’t even realize the growth spurt he went through in the last two weeks, but he has to look down on him now, and Phil still looks at him with that same old adoration he looked at him with already when he was barely fourteen.

“Tommy, you’re not a charity case or a science experiment gone wrong. You’re my kid, my son, spider powers or not. None of us, not Ranboo, Tubbo, Techno or Wilbur and certainly not me, blame you for the vigilantism you’ve been doing for the last two weeks – and while I definitely don’t approve of you doing any of what you’ve done and putting yourself in insurmountable amounts of danger completely on your own, I understand why you did what you did. You were looking for the truth, and then you were looking to rectify a mistake you blamed yourself for, and all the while, you kept away from us because you thought that we’d hate you for it.”

Tommy is starting to feel like an owl with how he’s blinking at Phil. Then what he just said actually gets through to him.

It’s the last straw when Phil quietly says, “I love you, Tommy, and I have loved you ever since I met you for the first time, and nothing– nothing will ever change that.”

Tommy bursts into tears again, and this time, he has someone to hold him. Phil slings his arms around him securely and even though they end up on the floor, he’s never felt more comfortable crying in his entire life. He’s dimly aware that at some point, his loud sobs must wake up the rest of his family, because then Wilbur is suddenly by his side warm and as familiar as ever, and he clings to him even more than he does to Phil.

Techno comes in last, but he’s no less hesitant than Wilbur is, slinging his arms around the three of them and leaning his head on Tommy’s right shoulder. He doesn’t think he’s ever cried harder than he is right now, but he also couldn’t care less.

He’s home. He’s home again, and his family doesn’t hate him. This is like… maybe the best day of his entire life.

When he finally halfway calms down, Phil and Techno leave him to Wilbur, which he actually very much appreciates. Him and Wilbur stay curled up on the kitchen floor while the two others get up. Tommy is pretty sure Techno is making tea and Phil is softly talking to Ranboo and Tubbo about going home, but he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore. He’s in Wilbur’s arms, and his brother is talking into his ear about some new song he wrote because Tommy’s absence was driving him up the walls with boredom, and he feels himself drifting back to sleep slowly.

Everything’s gonna be okay.

Then someone knocks on their door and everything except the water boiler stops.

Tommy comes back to himself with a start. Tubbo and Ranboo are right in front of him, Phil leaving for the door, and Techno is leaning against the kitchen counter. Tommy listens, his ears picking up on muttering behind the door. Very familiar voices.

He’s up in the blink of an eye, and then everything goes really fast.

He more or less sprints into the corridor to the door, where Phil is in the business of opening it. Tommy doesn’t hesitate before more or less throwing himself at his dad, and not even a second too late.

The people on the other side of the door kick it open violently, and Tommy tackles Phil to the ground just as they start shooting.

It’s the motherfuckers that killed Deo. Tommy knows it’s them, he’d recognize their voices anywhere. He’s moving before he knows what the hell he’s even doing, getting up on his feet. He knows he’s fast enough to dodge the bullets with adrenaline coursing through his veins like that, and he’s going to fuck them up.

Someone throws a smoke bomb and Tommy can barely think oh, they learned before everything vanishes in thick white smoke. He finds Phil’s hand and pulls him back into the kitchen, stumbling away from a second smoke bomb that he promptly kicks back into the corridor. He shuts the door and locks it. Everything is going way too fast, there’s bullet holes in the walls, and Phil coughs, but he’s not hurt.

All five of them duck behind something right as they start to shoot again. Tommy curses and turns to Ranboo and Tubbo. “Where are my web-shooters?” he asks over the noise, trying to keep his calm.

Ranboo sticks a hand into his pocket and fishes them out, throwing them to him. Tommy checks – he’s nearly out of webbing, but he’ll make it. “Get upstairs,” he says. “I’ll settle this.”

Tubbo snorts and shakes his head. “Fuck you,” he says. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Those are hitmen,” Tommy says.

“And we’re vigilantes,” Tubbo says, something dangerous shining in his eyes. “We’ve been doing this longer than you have, you know.”

Tommy glances at Ranboo, who raises his eyebrows at him. He looks back at Tubbo and shakes his head.

“I can walk off getting shot,” he says. “You can’t.”

Before Tubbo can reply, he jumps to his feet and aims at the door’s handle, pulling it open with a web. Instantly, another smoke bomb gets thrown into the room, and Tommy shuts his eyes and dives into the fight.

It all goes very fast. His spider-sense narrows on his opponents. He can smell the metal of their guns and the sweat on their brows, he can feel their hits coming before they land. He kicks out someone’s legs, shoots two webs and sends two people crashing into each other, hears a window opening (probably Techno thinking fast), lands a punch, then another, then another. Before he knows it, his eyes fly open and he’s in front of one last man standing.

And wouldn’t you know it – brown eyes meet blue ones, and Tommy very narrowly manages not to smile when the guy’s eyes go wide with fear.

He rips up his gun, aiming straight at Tommy’s face, but he’s too fast. In a second, he grabs his arm and twists it, bone snapping, and the guy cries out in pain. Tommy takes the gun from him and lets go.

The last bits of smoke clear out through the open window. Tommy holds the gun out so the guy can see it as he scrambles to get back up on his feet, and before wide brown eyes, he crushes it, the metal of the barrel crumpling beneath his fingers like paper. The guy flinches when he drops the gun to the floor.

A moment of silence ensues.

Then the guy clears his throat. He has reddish hair, streaked with white, and a little goat-like beard. “Ahem. This is kinda awkward.”

Tommy has to giggle. It’s adrenaline-induced and not quite as dry or even as serious as he wanted it to be – he sounds giddy. Honestly, this is kind of fun. “Yeah. Sure is. How’s it going?”

“Good, good,” the hitman absently says. “Really good. Just really wish I would stop getting put on jobs by Schlatt Osborn.”

Tubbo pipes up. “Schlatt Osborn? He… what, placed a hit on us?”

The hitman shrugs and points at Tommy. “Him, specifically. Sorry. If I would’ve known that you’re the same kid that beat the everliving shit out of me when I killed Deo, I would’ve thought twice about busting in here.”

Wilbur hollers from across the room, “Holy shit, Fundy, is that you?”

Tommy turns around, completely dumbfounded, and finds everyone looking at Wilbur with similar levels of shock as he waves at the hitman. Tommy turns back and the guy squints at Wilbur before waving back. “Hey, Wil. It’s been a hot minute. Sorry I killed Deo and tried to kill your brother just now.”

“Hey,” Wilbur says, “let’s not pretend like I haven’t done my fair share of dumb shit in my day, son. Just do it like me and reflect a little before getting adopted by a respectable police offer and eventually become an almost equally as respectable citizen.”

“Please stop calling me son,” Fundy mumbles. “But ey. Thanks for the advice. Uh, do you, er, mind if I go now?”

“Nah,” Wilbur cheekily smiles, “just never come back. I’m pretty sure Tommy wouldn’t hesitate to kill you and eat your dead body if you did.”

Fundy’s face drains of its color. He glances at Tommy, pure terror in his eyes.

Tommy says, “I don’t do that. He’s an idiot.”

Fundy relaxes a bit. “Oh. Thank god. I was worried for a second–”

“But if you ever come back here, and if you try to go after anyone I care about, ever again, I’m gonna find you and rearrange your bones in alphabetical order. Slowly. Do we understand each other?”

Fundy nods. “Yup,” he manages out. “Perfectly fine. I’m gonna. Uhm. If you don’t mind.”

He slowly gets up and tip-toes around the unconscious bodies. Then he turns around and starts dragging one out with him with his good arm.

“Let me help you, son.”

“Stop calling me that.”