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The cottage is decently built, made of gray cobble and dark wood, a solitary light in the snow. When the storm comes, it will be reduced to a flickering shape, whites and greys and the pitch black of night. The rain will turn into icicles hanging off the overhead of their roof. Phil’s head is ringing with the shallow hysteria of a warped memory, but at least the bathwater was clean. Cave systems, burrowed underground, are the only way to wash without burning in the ice; he smells like lavender, and Techno's absence is pointedly felt.
Not even in his attic room- Phil's checked, chat, he has.
The perfunctory bed is empty. Techno has always slept for long, long periods, but there are moments of blood that tire him out, where he will drop into his bed and disappear for days, weeks. When they were both younger, new around each other, Techno would sleep with the months, until there are lone chatters picking feebly at his skin, asking where Techno is, when he will wake again. The voices are absurdly fond of Techno, but that isn't a new development -
Phil wouldn't say he is... absurdly fond, he is as fond as is deserved.
Phil guides the stumbling fawn of the voices with the cover of his wings, keeps a firm hand around the scruff of the things he hears, of the things they say.
He isn't like Technoblade. He is built on ghosts who yearn for the sweet summer taste of golden apples, who live in rattan baskets and pluck at his feathers. Phil had already settled into himself when they caught him; they grew up listening to him, and if they don't, he makes them. The force of their crying during his house arrest had been kinda hard to bear, he's had to silence them a couple'a times. His escape had been followed by a swarm, a thousand, half-slurred celebrations, heaving, wailing cheers, converging onto him, they wanted to see Techno, Phil didn't blame them.
He wanted to see Techno too.
Get outta this hellpit of a country, the precious angles of their emerald cutting into the meat of his palm. Sentimentality, sentimentality, given one to Wilbur, given one to Tommy, lost in the sewers of a nation gone, muddy glimmers sunken at the bottom of broken sewer pipes. It's a little silly now, thinking about how he had given them away, to a traitor, to the assemblage of plotpoints wearing his son's face.
Very cool.
“-Uh,"
"Jesus,"
Ranboo bends by the waist to stay at eye-level, even when standing a few rungs down the stairs, concern bared on his grotesque little face. Phil, his back pressed against the railings, wheezes with laughter, clutching at his chest. His heart is gonna give out one day, and then what will he do? The cottage door thuds shut behind him, he hadn't even pulled on his gloves, the tips of his fingers are turning numb. "Stop!"
"Oop- sorry, sorry, it's just, do you… know where Technoblade is?”
Phil turns amicably to slide the latch of the door in place, takes breaths to steady his terrible heart. “He’s resting.”
“Right, right.” Ranboo goes, and then just- kinda stands there, that Phil has to duck around him, taking care to keep firm footing on ice-slick stairs. His nose is starting to clog, dammit. “Do you know when… I can maybe talk to him? About living..." Ranboo moves his body to watch him jog away, "... here."
His hand raises absently to curl around a lantern handle, eyes shifting away from the brief flicker of a summoned item. The thin metal creaks when he swings it in the opposite direction of the house, “Don’t follow me,” he calls, and Ranboo does a full 180 turn to stare at the bee farm.
He cackles.
The snow is thin around the Wither vault, the ground softened by the workings and reworkings of a redstone contraption. The land remembers, even if it pretends not to. Phil steps gingerly around the loose dirt, his toes are cold again. The vault seems to stand as a threshold beyond the real world, so heavily compressed into the bare face of the mountain. When he presses the button, the stone whirs its slime block mechanics, and it feels as if he is turning his back on the world, to shut it off.
Moonlight crawls across blackstone, to touch at the tip of red cloth behind the soulsand pillars.
His hands curls around the edge of the door, “Hey mate,”
A small sliver of unnatural light peeks from the floors behind the half-built Wither, a black, glimmering iris behind rectangular glasses. The long shadow of a sloping figure lying curled beneath a red fur cape, Techno has wedged his spindly body behind the soul sand pillar, and Phil's entrance doesn't push himself to sitting. The wind screams when Phil hits the button with a lurch of his elbow, devouring the crevices of the small chamber. He tugs at the rim of his hat, dropping down. The ground surges to crush him, and he's just barely by his protesting knees.
The stone grinds against the ceiling, pulling an abrupt curtain of warmth over the vault. His body breaks out in a brief sweat.
“You’re still here.” Techno rumbles, too low to properly hear, his words rounded and smeared together.
The light of the shrooms cast the room in a pulsing orange glow, they make quiet burps of contentment when he steps over them. “You weren’t in the house," he says, "So I thought I’d check here.”
“Oh yeah,” Techno says, slow, “I- the house is like, everyone knows about the house now Phil, it’s not safe there. At least only Tommy and Dream know about the vault, and I’d hear them come in.”
Techno becomes different when he coasts on the cusp of sleep. There is a tension that he carries with himself, that becomes noticeable only when it's gone, how he curls into himself like even his winter coat cannot keep him warm. Fatigue follows him like a specter, weighs his long limbs down with lead, bows the bend of his neck, that he only ever leaves them when he sleeps.
Phil squints, “There’s no bed here.”
Techno stares back at him, his glasses visibly smudged with prints. He slept in them, goddammit. “… it’s warm on the floors, Phil.”
He crouches on one knee. Techno had put his thick winter cloak down like a rug, spread to cover the length of the corner he's inhabited, and Phil lifts the end of it for a quick peek, his knuckles curled, about to knock gently on the metal. Before he's even placed his hands down, the wave of blasting heat radiating from the floors, unsmothered, has him keeping his hands to himself. “You used- furnaces,” he laughs, "That... is fucking lethal,"
There’s potatoes in the furnaces, smelting away.
Techno makes an approving noise, trickled from the back of his throat.
Smile tugging insistently at the corner of his mouth, Phil pushes his back to the wall. The space is small enough for the both of them, that his arm skirts against Techno's head, wedged in by the chest and the wall. He reaches his arm out to pluck the glasses by their legs, Techno stills himself, half poised to lie back down, blinking hard at Phil as he pulls them over his head. “You didn't get hurt, did you Phil?” he asks.
His eyes track Phil’s hand, squinting.
The quiet clack of metal on wood makes his ears flick, and satisfied, he shifts to lie curled on his side. “I mean, you seem fine."
"No, yeah I'm fine," It is... hours past Doomsday. “I'm fine.”
He left New L’Manberg chest aching with black smoke and laughter.
Technoblade had looked at him on his first day, and his face was bright, his eyes were alight with a soulfire pit. “You just got here,” he'd said, “And you’re already at full Netherite! You’re so good at the game!”
And of course Phil had laughed. His hands were cold, crusted over with someone else’s blood, and Wilbur his son, his son, had said Technoblade’s a traitor, but he had laughed because Techno was looking at him like that. There is the constant, the thing that stays the same when everything else withers, the nausea gone away.
The hole that he'd made in its solid earth feels intimate, an all-consuming gorge he’s spent... what is it, a month, two, healing, building. The cajoling of a cabinet and their twice cursed monitor, how could it have been that his son was right? L'Manberg should have died with Wilbur, all of them had to go, and it took him too long to see it. Standing on the obsidian grid, his hands tucked in the deep well of his jinbei, he listens to the pump of the TNT distributor and mourns the time he wasted trying to understand the sandbox he’d been trapped in.
It was savagery.
And now it’s gone.
Soot clings to Techno’s cheek, stains his hair.
He watches Techno press his back more firmly against the wall. The long cut of his nails scrape at the fraying threads of his haori, eyes sunken in his face like caverns. He is molded by the voices in his head, that he lets himself be drowned under their applause. In his moments alone, he gets to parse through the things he’s done, the things he’s said, and he must’ve decided he needed to ask after Phil.
Phil thinks the same.
He gently bumps his head against the wall. “You sounded..." Techno opens his eyes a sliver, “Pretty upset at Tommy, earlier.”
Techno closes his eyes.
“Yeah,” he says, sotto voice.
Phil listens to the quiet cracking of coal underneath them.
It’s easy to write in a book about blood bonds. Techno lives by unblemished honesty, if not in his speech, then his action. He will beguile and misdirect, and he will do all the things a child born in brightly-lit blood tournaments will do. Stumbling awkwardly into his tweens, Technoblade had been a lurking blot among the impassioned bodies of his fellow players, behind the rusted bars that cage the gladiator’s ring. The leading man had spindly arms, stood at height of his opponent’s belly, not so much older than Wilbur, not so much taller.
The winking sword he had dragged behind him was just as big, the skin of his palms split open with the force behind his swing. The tournament was a hunt, and Artemis lived in the body of a wild boy.
Phil has amassed a small scattering of somber moments Techno had shared with him along the course of their time together, he guards each one of them close. If Techno doesn’t want to talk, he will make a joke, and Phil will laugh.
“Do you... want to talk about it?”
Ah, Techno looks uncomfortable already. "What is this," he says, slow, nervous laughter tumbling out of him, becoming muffled where the mink of his coat rests against his cheek.
Phil makes sure to keep his face turned away, but with his body, he sways to nudge into his friend, “It’s me trying to say something to my best friend, what do you think?”
Techno makes a dubious, nasally noise, like a villager.
For so long, it had just been the two of them- for the many, tumbling, winding years that will continue to come, if it will just be the two of them left, Phil wouldn’t be surprised. He feels, in the dark hours where Techno binds his wounds with spider silk, chattering about fresh blood, that the one life he has left is Techno’s too.
And he will listen, even when Techno speaks to someone else, about the things that hurt him.
How does he say, you are the only person that matters to me, the way that Techno does? How does he say, even if you are no person to anyone else, you are mine, without reminding him that they stand alone?
“Talkin' about Tommy makes the chat angry.” Techno says slowly, like a curious comment about the weather. Sleep threads through the rasping baritone of his voice, under his coat, there is the gentle knock of bony knees against the side of his thigh, his vitriol lost by the wax and wane of the shroomlights. “But Phil... I'm... too tired to be angry right now, y'know,”
Phil feeds coal into the furnaces beneath them, looking amicably through his inventory. The things he must’ve picked up running by dead bodies, a startling amount of dirt, a diamond helmet flecked with mud. He turns it over in his hands, careful to keep his elbows lifted just slightly, away from Techno's head.
“I don’t get betrayed,” Techno murmurs, so quietly that Phil barely hears him. The blackstone swallows his words up in its yawning shadows before it can settle between them, “I- and the reason,” there is a tug on the edge of his haori, Techno is pulling at it again, in indulgent patterns, “Why I don’t get betrayed, Phil, is because betrayin’ kinda implies that I’m emotionally invested in... things, and I'm not really, emotionally invested, in a lot of things.”
And Phil knows this.
Techno wields betrayal like a particularly amusing set piece. There have been things that Phil- that Phil would fight for him, only for Techno to turn ‘round, to say that he was never really that interested, that it was fine to not be involved, fine that there were things he had not been told, because there was simply nothing that could have been changed. Techno harangues him into waking just to tell him that he prefers being alone.
And there are the betrayals that Techno doesn't talk about, the things that he will laugh and play sham at, just to keep away.
Phil can do both, if Techno would just tell him.
Techno presses closer, closing his eyes, when he says, “I’m emotionally invested in you, obviously,” He rolls his eyes beneath his lids, thin skin flickering, at Phil’s quiet aww, mate. They haven't fought together for so long. Phil picks and chooses what to leave behind, Techno is someone he keeps always, but every time, Techno's wild simplicity, the surge of a fight that had been smothered, knocks him breathless. The Totem's weight in his hands, he can still feel it. And he knows how valuable Techno takes power, hoards and hoards, that the Totem makes him soft on the inside.
“For... almost, for a little bit, I-" Techno stops, takes a breath, and says, in a low, bitter regret, “I gave him my axe."
Phil is too old to be feeling heartache, he would rather raze the ground to hell instead.
“That’s fucked up.”
Techno lets out a burst of laughter, and burrows his face into the covers, curling inwards again. Phil hadn't noticed that he'd begin lying so still, he reaches over in apology. Kneading his fingers against the broad plane of Techno's back. "The chat's spammin' the cryin' emoji- it's in shambles,”
He wheezes, moving back to tug the coat over his knees. “Chat,” he says, flattening his palm against the curve of Techno’s temple, smoothening his hair back. “Leave Techno alone.”
Techno sighs a long, mournful breath, and he’s warmer than Phil is. He has always given off enough heat on his own that Phil could sit next to him in the cold. He cups the soft curve between Techno's neck and his head, tracing at the knotted hair he can’t be bothered to work out.
“You’re so good with them,” Techno murmurs tiredly, “It’s disgustin’.”
He chuckles.
“I was bein’ dramatic, Phil,” Techno’s voice blend into the quiet humming of the furnace, his ears flicking as he presses himself closer. The same wry smile haunts his expression, “I’ve never yelled at anyone like that before,” a smile curls at the corner of his mouth, his irises are dark and glimmering when he peers at Phil with one eye, “It felt... good,"
“I’m very proud of you,” he whispers, close enough, he hopes, that Techno will be able to see him better. “I’m sorry he didn’t listen.”
Techno shrugs a loose shoulder.
There is a line of silver along the rim of his eyes, but the room is dark, and Phil is tired. “I guess it was good for uh, audience retention,” he replies, “1v30, the voices really liked that, you have no idea.”
Phil pulls the cloak over their shoulders; Techno looks down at himself, before he wordlessly begins to even out the crumpled covers, smoothing it out to share with him. It feels juvenile, but it’s an old thing they used to do, in barren places. They used to sit in a dark, overhanging cave of curiosities, cursing the fire for things they cannot change. It’s the Technoheater, keeps you warm in the most terrible of places. Techno hooks his foot around Phil's ankle thoughtlessly, tugging him closer. There is only a block separation between them and everybody else.
“Techno,”
The potatoes are crisping over, a little further along to go.
“It wasn’t a 1v30,” he says, the end of his words lifting like pretending to contemplate. The ceiling is black in the din, there are dark spots that he can’t blink away.
“Yeah,” Techno mutters, abash. “It was a 1v20… 1v10, you could say it was really only Sapnap, what does that man eat,”
“I was there,” his voice echoes hushed across the long, broad walls, seeps into the strong lines of stone, to be held secret when they leave this place, when it becomes a relic and the mountain crumbles under snow and rain.
Those long years ago, Technoblade had stood taller by a head. His expression had been placid when he introduced himself. The sunken rings under his eyes negate the youth that came with his round cheeks, made his face longer, sallow. Doused in faux opulence, dried, bloody flakes caught on the thick cloth of his royal coat, he hadn't looked quite so intimidating when he greeted Phil in that six-by-six common room, a boy playing dress-up.
Everything must go, one way or the other. Phil has lived… too long to dwell on things he cannot change. The creeping satisfaction that used to envelope him on his own server become the wrangled arms of a thousand anonymous faces, in this new place. How peculiar this small, imprisoned server is, gunpowder but no guns, and volatile borders, fighting for institutions founded on brittle bones. When he thinks about Wilbur, and the things that happened to Techno in Pogtopia caves, and his feet stuck in New L’Manberg, his anger slices past his skin. He feels like mulling, lapping lava, besieging black, empty shores, waiting.
He feels like waiting.
Coal pops in the furnace.
“Oh,” Techno says, inaudible.
Phil's eyes are definitely going, that's really the explanation here. The shroomlights are barely giving him anything to work with. He presses his thumb against Techno's cheek, wipes away the soot and the ash and the water that must've come from the leak in the ceiling.
2v30s aren't so hard to win.