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They are both already legends when they meet. Maybe that’s part of what pulls them together, like two magnets. In the end, it was always going to be Philza and Technoblade, the angel of death and his blood god.
Phil meets a man (not quite human) who should still be a boy, with voices in his head, and chaos in his soul, and he took him under his wings, and never let him go. And Techno finds a man (not quite human) with a blade drenched in blood and kindness in his eyes, and he vowed to offer him the world if that’s what he wanted.
They rotate around one another, a dangerous double-sided weapon, as they conquer countries and bring kings to their knees and move on and you can only fight so many battles side by side with another person before you are more than allies. And you can only save one another’s lives so many times before you are more than friends.
By the time the Antarctic Empire is a name that inspires terror, hatred, and awe Phil and Techno are something more indeed.
**********
Phil is the first person Techno tells about the voices.
Phil finds him, late one night, when they both should be asleep, slumped against an icy corridor wall, eyes too wide, staring out into nothing, breath shallow, trembling like a leaf.
Blood for the blood god. Blood for the blood god. Blood for the blood god----
“Techno? Mate?”
Blood for the blood god. Blood for the blood god. Blood for the blood god----
Techno’s nails are digging into his arm, breaking skin and drawing blood as he tries to ground himself back into the present, and he can barely hear Phil’s concerned voice over the ringing chorus in his ears. It’s too much and Blood for the blood god. Blood for the blood god. Blood for the blood god----
Gentle hands slip into his and restrain his clawing fingers, and he clutches them gratefully, tethered by the touch, gripping so tightly he feels certain he must be hurting Phil. But his friend doesn’t flinch.
“Techno,” he says in a voice as soft and quiet as snowfall just outside, “Techno what is it?”
He crumbles, and the words come pouring out of him, telling Phil everything, about the voices, the way they scream into his ears and eat him from the inside, and how they push him and pull him, how he feels trapped in a tug of war with himself and the voices fighting control of that space between his ears, how he can’t remember what silence sounds like--
Somehow the act of saying it calms him, and he’s no longer panicked. Now he’s simply afraid, afraid of what Phil will think. He peers out from behind tangled pink hair falling over his face, trying to read his friend’s face. Phil is looking at him, into his eyes, like he’s trying to see something on the other side.
“Phil?”
“Hey,” the older man says, “I don’t know if you lot can hear me, but if you can, give my friend a little peace.”
Oh.
Is it his imagination or do the voices quiet, just a bit?
**********
And when, a month later, Philza awakens to find Techno at his door, he recognizes that look in his eyes.
They spend the night in silence, but he braids Technoblade’s hair, working through the tangles with a comb, and weaving it into complicated patterns, and at some point the hybrid falls asleep slumped against his shoulder, and Phil suddenly feels whole.
************
The voices like Phil. That’s one thing they and Techno can agree on.
*********
Their names echo across worlds, and if people turn to Techno’s blade in war, and Philza’s kind eyes in peace, they don’t seem to mind.
And when Philza says “you’re like one of my sons,” Techno does not say you are a father and a brother and the only family I’ve ever had, and I would bring the world to your feet if you wanted it, and I would do anything for you because he knows Philza understands. So he just nods and they keep on walking across the barren snowy expanse, snowflakes caught in their hair, and a thousand stars spinning above them, bright as lanterns.
*************
Eventually, the Empire ends. It’s not exactly planned. But Techno says one day, “I think I’m ready to keep moving,” and the next morning he’s gone.
Phil isn’t worried. He makes his arrangements and packs away the beautiful blue cloak and goes home to his sons.
There’s a bit of emptiness there, but Phil isn’t worried. He and Techno are something more, two twin soldiers, two halves of a whole, two kings of an empire. Phil isn’t worried, because he knows he’ll see his friend again.
*******************
The next time Techno meets Phil, at a tournament, he’s with his sons. They’re like their father, children of chaos, and Techno likes them for it. When, at the end of a long day, dizzy with the euphoria of triumphant victory, Wilbur lets slip that he thinks of Techno as another brother, he’s flattered, and his heart lights up like a smoldering ember in his chest.
Phil didn’t quite realize how barely-more-than-a-child-he’s-Wilbur’s-age-oh-god his ally was until he sees him next to his oldest son, and they’re laughing together. Suddenly he’s thinking back to all those battles, to those torturous nights back in their frozen fortress when the voices were too much, and he resolves to be something more for this young warrior who has grown up far too fast.
**********
Techno likes Philza’s children, and so it’s for their sake as well as his old friend’s that he comes to their aid when the local government needs some of his signature anarchist chaos.
(“How does one go from an Emperor to an anarchist?” Wilbur asks, late one night, as they sit around the fire in Pogtopia, eating baked potatoes)
(How does the son of an Emperor become an exiled ex-president who just wants to watch the world burn? Techno wonders)
***********
He does not speak to Phil again, until that terrible, beautiful morning, the sun rising across a very different snowy plain when Phil knocks on the door of the little cabin. He looks different than Techno remembers, shattered. It’s not just the wings, feathers burned into crumbling ash by explosions, it’s the broken expression in his eyes that Techno doesn’t recognize.
“Come in,” he says.
And Phil does not say I saw my son again today, and I didn’t know him anymore, and I killed my son, I killed my son, Wilbur is gone--
And Techno does not say They used me, they used me, I was nothing but a weapon to them all, in the end, I didn’t matter, and he doesn’t speak the bitter taste of betrayal on his tongue.
They don’t need to say it. They know.
But Techno holds Phil tightly in his arms when his friend breaks into fractured sobs, and later that night they sit by the fire, and Phil re-braids Techno’s hair, gently smoothing about the tangles, and the voices quiet.
And they do not point out that their tangle of allegiances means that technically they are enemies. Because, when the lines and swords are drawn, they know exactly where they stand.
“I think I’m going to retire.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
They are two soldiers, twin blades, and they know they never really rest.
But it’s nice to pretend they have a chance at peace.
Phil leaves with a compass in one pocket and an emerald in the other, and though he’s going back to L’manburg, his heart’s home is a small cottage in a snowy field.
They know where they stand. Phil and Techno will stand with one another.
After all, dual blades should be wielded together.