Chapter 1: Waiting is a losing game (and usually you don't even know you're playing)

Chapter Text

TRIGGER WARNING: anxiety, panic attacks, child neglect, swearing, mild blood, self harm(?), (lots of things, better not to read if you're uncertain or you can ask in the comments)

Tommy sighed as he watched yet another family pass by from his place on the porch steps, the kids cheerfully welcoming their parents home after a long day at work. As their warm smiles and laughter slowly receded into their own home, Tommy's gut twisted.

Today was the 9th of April, his birthday, and his parents had promised him weeks prior that even with their busy schedule they wouldn't dare to miss out on yet another one of his birthdays. They had told him that they would get off work early to give him the birthday celebration he deserved.

They had planned it perfectly. It wasn't going to be big or elaborate, but Tommy didn't mind because he had never really liked those kinds of parties anyway. It would be just him and his parents finally being able to have some time together, and truthfully, that was all he really wanted.

And so the day came and he had woken up excited, energy running through his veins as he got ready for the celebrations, checking and rechecking if everything was in place for when his parents returned after lunch.

The first time that the thought that things wouldn't go exactly as planned surfaced in his mind, was about ten minutes before his parent's expected arrival. Prior to that point, Tommy hadn't thought twice about whether they'd be able to be home on time or not.

After all, they'd made a promise and like their company slogan said 'promises are meant to be kept' or some sort of shit like that, not that he could fully remember anyway.

It had been so long since they last allowed him to follow them to their workplace, saying something about him being way too old to need someone to look after him every second of the day, that he could barely remember much about it.

But as the time ticked closer to when they were supposed to arrive home, Tommy became nervous. It wasn't like he cared if they were a little late. He was a big man after all, not some bitch who couldn't deal with his parents being a couple of minutes late to his 16th birthday party, but surely they'd at least text him to say that they're running a bit late.

Those ten minutes to Tommy felt like an eternity as he went back and forth from anxiously checking the clock on the wall for the time, to glancing at the front door from where he sat on the kitchen counter, dread continued to pool at the bottom of his gut each time he was met with no signs of the door opening.

His movements got more and more frantic as time passed by, and he dug his nails into the palms of his hands absentmindedly as the anxiety swelled and threatened to overwhelm him. He looked on detachedly as blood welled up under his nails, watching it drip onto the tiled kitchen floor. He'd have to clean that up later.

Subconsciously, Tommy noted that his parents wouldn't be very happy with that development, the two having told him from a very young age to always seek out something like a soft toy to latch onto if he ever felt like his hands needed something to do (a few weeks after that discussion they had gifted him Henry the cow, his most prized possession, best friend and most loyal wingman) but at that point, his brain had stopped registering everything fully as he slipped further into a hazed panic.

All the fears, doubts and insecurities that had been ever-present for as long as he could remember, which he had fought tooth and nail to keep suppressed and at bay, came rushing back at him full force, leaving him gasping and struggling to breathe.

Tommy clutched the corner of the kitchen counter, staggering as his mind grew hazy, thoughts turning into a jumbled mess. Everything around him spun, blurring into blotches of colour.

He gasped like a fish out of water, drowning in a sea of desolation with no rescue in sight. He felt himself falling, falling into the abyss…

Until suddenly, he hit rock bottom. The panic cleared, leaving Tommy exhausted from the emotional turmoil. He tried to push himself up from where he had ended up on the kitchen's tiled floor but was quickly dissuaded by a jolt of sharp pain from the back of his head. He groaned and laid back down on the cold floor, waiting for it, and the nausea that came with his blurry vision, to pass.

Staring up at the ceiling, Tommy sighed. He knew that he should be trying to work through the problems that had caused the panic attack but he was so tired. All he wanted to do was fall asleep and let the day be over and done with.

Unfortunately for him, laying on the floor was not the best move. His back was starting to hurt and after his vision cleared a couple of minutes later, he knew he couldn't continue to lay on the kitchen floor the whole day, despite how much he yearned to do so.

With a large groan, Tommy grabbed the corner of the kitchen counter and hauled himself up to lean against it. He stared blankly at the clock that hung on the wall across the room, listening to it slowly ticking away at a steady pace.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Slowly, he became resentful of its consistency. No matter what happened or how much he wished it would slow down for a damn second, it continues on relentlessly.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Tommy clenched his now bandaged hand as he tried to contain and smother his slowly growing anger, pressing an ice pack onto his bruised head (and apparently he'd only snapped out of his panic attack because he'd smacked his head).

He glanced at the clock again. Three hours. It had been three bloody hours since the time his parents had promised they'd be home by, and there had been no message, no call, no anything.

And sure, deep down Tommy had known that this had been the most likely outcome, seeing that things like this weren't a rare occurrence with his parents, but he had hoped that at least his birthday of all days would be different, but once again, he had put his fragile faith into his parents only to set himself up for disappointment.

Still, despite the fact that it had become a norm for him, Tommy felt hurt. He suddenly felt the urge to get out, away from the empty house, silent apart from the continuous ticking of the wall clock.

And so, that's how he ended up on the front-porch shivering from the lack of a jumper and staring miserably into the distance, watching happy families reunite as he clung tightly to Henry like a lifeline.

Tommy wrapped his arms around his legs, trying to keep warm without having to go back into the house, his chin resting on his knees. Suddenly, his phone buzzed to life. A couple of seconds passed before he finally picked up his phone and looked at the message.

He stared blankly at the text as his brain processed what he was reading. On his phone screen written with his mother's perfect punctuation were the words: There was an urgent matter me and your father had to attend to at work. Dinner's in the fridge so make sure not to put it to waste. We may be able to reschedule today's activities for another weekend.

His mind screeched to a halt as Tommy felt his anger slowly bubble until it finally reached its boiling point.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why are they always like this? They knew that today was special to me, they knew and yet they still…' Tommy thought, clenching his teeth as he tried to refrain from shouting in anger and drawing attention to himself.

Tommy practically flung himself back inside, the door slamming loudly behind him. Pausing only to gently set Henry down, he ran through the hallway and entered the living room, his anger only growing as he saw all the little decorations and things he'd put out in anticipation of his parents' arrival.

He tore the streamers from the wall with a muffled shout. All those hours he'd spent worriedly checking and double-checking everything thinking that it wasn't good enough had been for nothing.

'Well, fuck them!' Tommy thought furiously. 'Fuck them and their important meeting that just couldn't be pushed aside! They're the ones that are going to miss out, I'm gonna have so much fun without them that they'll come and beg for my forgiveness.'

He stomped back to the back door, slamming his fist onto the table with a muffled shout. Henry fell over with the force of the hit and Tommy stared at him angrily. Then, he sighed, picking Henry up and patting his head.

"Sorry, Henry. I know it's not your fault. You're always on my side, aren't you?" Tommy looked down into Henry's button eyes and he smiled, hugging him tightly before tucking him under his arm and storming out the door.

Tommy's anger had been slightly calmed by the time he had made his way to the middle of his backyard, but he was still quite furious, his body shaking with rage and nails digging into the palms of his hands as he tried to hold back from just screaming out his frustration.

'Fuck this shit, fuck trusting them, what have they ever done for me anyway, what have I ever done to warrant having to put up with their fucking bullcrap!' Tommy fumed.

'Well screw them! One day, I'm gonna get outta here and never look back. I'll find my own place in this screwed up shit-hole of a world and I'll never have to experience that bull shit again! That'll teach them not to mess with me!' he thought spitefully.

As he stood under the stars silently cursing out everyone who'd screwed him over he made a promise to himself.

When he finally leaves this cold and lonely house, he'd never look back, never wonder about what he could have had if his parents had cared just a little bit more about him and most importantly, he'd not just waste away working his ass off at a 9 to 5 job.

He'd actually get out there and experience everything he possibly could and have adventures that his boring, workaholic parents could never have imagined, not even in their wildest dreams.

However, unbeknownst to Tommy, his silent promise had been heard by others, and they seemed quite interested in him.

"Don, Drista, I know what you two are thinking and my answer is no," a figure said as they glided through the air over to the two beings huddled over a screen showing a young blond-haired boy.

"Oh, come on XD, just this once, pleeeease!" the youngest of three begged, bounding over and latching herself around the older's neck, feet barely touching the ground as XD continued to float, hardly bothered by the younger's pleas.

"You know the rules Drista. No interfering with human matters, no making decisions for your personal gain and most importantly, never mess with the Fates. You know they do not take kindly to those who mess with their domain." XD said sternly.

At the mention of the Fates, Drista's face scrunched up as she made a disgruntled noise and pushed away from XD, flipping onto her back as she hovered next to them.

"Ugh, why do we even have to put up with those old hags, they always ruin my fun." Drista groaned, pouting as she crossed her arms petulantly.

XD sighed as they gave their usual response to Drista's whining. "Without those 'old hags' as you call them ("and those insults are so unoriginal, do better," he added), the humans' reality would fall to ruins and you'd have even less time to try and mess with them as we'd be too busy making sure humanity doesn't crumble to ashes."

Obviously, this wasn't the first time Drista had spoken of her annoyance with the three beings. Actually, there had been constant complaints from the Chaos goddess about the aforementioned Fates and, in all honesty, XD understood where Drista was coming from.

There were many times XD would have liked to step in and interfere with the Fates' decisions in human history but he also understood that the Fates make everything happen for a reason and that they should not doubt their judgement.

"What about you, Don? You've been awfully quiet throughout this conversation and it's, how do the humans say it, kinda sus. Care to share your opinion?" Drista asked, turning towards the horned god who was still crouched over the screen that showed the boy.

Don's expressions were hard to read, considering that for the majority of the time he wore a steampunk mask over the lower half of his face, but there was definitely some hesitancy in his eyes as he tried to collect his thoughts before speaking.

"I'm usually not one to agree with Drista, but in this instance, I think she may have a point." Don acquiesced.

"Oh?" XD asked, curiosity in his voice. "How so?" Don stretched, falling onto his back and looking up at the other two gods from his spot on the crystal floor.

"Well, haven't we all been complaining about how difficult checking on all the dimensions is? There may be more gods than just the three of us but that doesn't mean we are any less busy, and since everyone else has their own duties to attend to, it's not like we can just push those responsibilities onto anyone else. Besides, ensuring the stability of the dimensions is our job anyway." he stated.

"You can't seriously be suggesting that we give that responsibility to a human, especially one that hasn't yet lived two decades? The boy would be crippled under the weight of that responsibility, let alone be able to do anything to help us. We'd probably have an even greater workload trying to fix everything when he inevitably messes up." XD snapped back, their wings bristling.

Drista edged subtly away from XD, sitting up straighter in the air as she sensed that the conversation was heading in a more serious direction.

Sighing, Don stood up from where he was sprawled out and walked over to XD. He bounded through the air as if climbing an invisible staircase and slung his arm around the older god's shoulders, which had quite a comedic effect as XD was at least 8'2 and Don had a 7-foot frame at best.

"Oh, come off the high horse XD, he's the perfect candidate for the job. Haven't you heard his wishes calling out across the void to you? Besides, considering his ancestry, I'm pretty sure he can handle the godly power without combusting." he cajoled, using his other hand to gesture wildly at the glowing screen.

"This has nothing to do with that Don, even though it would be preferable if we didn't accidentally kill a mortal with our divine power," XD said, shrugging Don's arm off and moving back a couple of steps with a flap of their spectral wings.

"And even if he's the 'perfect candidate' and doesn't explode, this won't change the fact that we can't interfere with the Fates' work," XD stated, their decision firm.

"XD, we all know that the fates wouldn't care if we interfered just this once. It's not like he's some great hero that has some sort of destiny to fulfil, he's just a kid who's destined to die 'tragically' at the age of 19 after only a year of exploring the world." Don said pointedly.

Drista saw XD's resolve start to waver and she made her move. "Yeah! We can at least let him live his life a bit before he dies. We could make him experience a little happiness, you know?" she said, twiddling her thumbs.

XD was torn. On one hand, they knew that the other two had brought up extremely good points that they agreed with, but on the other, if they decided to give them the go-ahead to their little plan, who knew how much trouble they'd end up in.

XD sighed in frustration before they spoke again. "Fine, but when the Fates come looking for the heads of those who dared to mess with their work-" Don cut in, satisfaction clear in his tone. "No worries, we'll be the ones to take that responsibility."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Drista shouted happily, landing on the floor and jumping up and down in excitement.

"Come on, come on! We've got some work to do! This is gonna be great!" she cheered as she dragged both her brothers back towards the screen that was still displaying the young boy the gods had been arguing over.

"I can't wait to start!"

After a while of standing out in the middle of his back garden, Tommy had moved back to sitting on the steps of his back porch.

He'd quickly come to the realisation that saying he'd do something and actually making progress to achieve his goal were two completely different things, and so for now he could do nothing but fiddle with his fingers and try to come up with a plan of action.

Tommy heaved a big sigh. After some thinking, he'd come to acknowledge the fact that before he could do anything, he needed money. 'But how am I supposed to get money?' he thought. He looked down at Henry. "What do you think, Henry?" he asked the plush cow. Henry stared back, and Tommy imagined he saw a confused glint in his eyes, as if Henry was saying that he had as much of an idea as Tommy did.

'Whatever, I'm a big man, I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll rob a bank. Ooh, if I get lucky I could end up joining an underground super thief organisation that travels around the world stealing precious jewels for money!'

'Or maybe I'll meet a crew of pirates and we can sail the seven seas together, running away from the authorities!' He grinned, childish glee written all over his face.

He paused. "Wait, fuck that wouldn't work, I'm nowhere near an ocean and anyway, aren't the pirates today just a bunch of wronguns who kidnap and smuggle women and children for profit? No way, I can't do that. I'm a big man and big men would never be wronguns." Tommy muttered before ruffling his hair in frustration and looking up from where he'd been glaring at the floor.

He did a double-take. 'Something's different,' his mind helpfully supplied. 'Yeah, no shit, something's different. The last time I checked, my backyard didn't have a bloody random-ass door standing in the middle of it,' he retorted inwardly.

Tommy stared at the door. Apart from the fact that it had shown up from absolutely nowhere, it looked just like any other insignificant door he'd ever seen.

Well, at least it did where he looked at it from far away.

The closer he got to it, the more strange it appeared. The door shimmered ever so slightly, the glow a deep purple hue. Curious, Tommy reached out to brush against the door, but he quickly withdrew his hand when instead of touching the slightly rough wooden texture he had expected, he was met with the feeling of a cold metal surface that hummed gently under his touch.

"What the actual fuck?" Tommy muttered. Squashing down on the confused thoughts that welled up in his mind, Tommy took a step forward to get a closer look at the door.

He quickly noticed what seemed to be small and intricate words etched all the way around the exterior of the door, although unfortunately, it didn't look like any language he had ever seen, let alone knew how to read, so he gave up pretty fast on trying to understand what it said. Instead, Tommy's eyes were drawn to the golden doorknob displayed proudly on the right of the door.

Obviously, his first reaction upon seeing the doorknob was to try and steal it. Screw the weird-ass magical door, Tommy would be so rich if he sold off a solid gold doorknob, but those plans were quickly destroyed when he realised the doorknob wouldn't come off, no matter how many times he hit it or tried to bite it off.

Finally, after he was absolutely certain that he couldn't pull the doorknob off, he decided to throw caution to the wind and open the strange door.

Grabbing the doorknob again, Tommy paused for a second, waiting for something to happen. When a moment had passed and nothing seemed to go wrong, Tommy twisted the knob and pushed it open in one smooth swing.

He stuck his head through, curious and wanting to know what was on the other side, but all he could see was a white void. Suddenly, the words on the door flashed and started sparkling with light. Tommy startled before letting go of the doorknob and leaning forward to see better. "Are those…runes?"

He remembered the term from a fantasy story he had read before. It had been used to describe a magical language and Tommy had been fascinated. He'd even written down the word in a little notebook of cool phrases he'd had at the time, though he didn't know where it was now.

Cautiously, he reached out and touched one of the glowing runes. It flared brighter and Tommy gasped as he felt an unseen force grab him and started pulling him towards the open door.

He shouted and put up a valiant fight, but he wasn't able to stop himself from being hauled unceremoniously through the door, with Henry in tow.

The invisible ropes around him disappeared suddenly and Tommy stumbled forward, trying desperately to stabilise himself.

All of sudden, the floor vanished from underneath him and he plummeted. He instinctively squeezed his eyes shut as he screamed in fear, voice going high-pitched and shrill in his terror.

The mixed feeling of weightlessness and heaviness of falling in water surprised him enough that he opened his eyes, blinking in confusion at the dark expanse that he was met with. "Where…am I?"

He tried to move, but it turned out walking was quite difficult to do when you don't know what's up and what's down. Panic slowly started to rise and he hugged Henry closer to his chest. In order to calm himself, Tommy attempted to think properly about the strange happenings around him.

'Well, if it's magic…Maybe it's about willpower? Most of the fantasy books I've read talk about how magic relies on the mind. Either that, or magic words, but I don't know any.' he thought.

He desperately tried to will himself to return home and, for a brief moment, he really thought it worked as he felt himself get pulled in a random direction.

Yet, Tommy wavered. Did he really want to go back to his cold family, lonely house and even lonelier life? He didn't know. And that moment of indecision changed everything.

The direction he was getting tugged towards changed suddenly, and he was hurled through the void so fast he had to close his eyes again. Finally, he felt everything snap back into place, like a rubber band and he swayed slightly as he reorientated himself.

He looked around. He was back in the white void, and the magic door was standing wide open next to him. Hesitantly, he walked towards the door, making sure to look through it more carefully this time, but for some reason, he was unable to see what was on the other side.

He drew back, not wanting to make the same mistake twice. Just then, he felt a pressure on his back and he was shoved towards the door, tripping through it to the other side.

The first thing Tommy noticed as he stumbled through the door was how blindingly bright it had become. When he'd gone through the door, night had already fallen, but here, the sun was high in the sky and the clouds were floating lazily along to a gentle breeze.

He hurriedly sheltered his eyes behind his arm as they slowly adjusted to the light, blinking quickly to clear them. The second thing he'd noticed was that he was now standing on the top of a hill, with meadows and woodland spread out as far as he could see, and a place obviously nowhere near his house.

Tommy was snapped abruptly out of his daze by the sound of the door slamming shut behind him. Quickly turning around, he felt his stomach drop as he came face to face with thin air. The door, his only way back home, was gone.

"Fuck!"