Chapter Text
“Mama... can you tell me a story? Your story? Your place?” he asked, climbing into bed next to her. Her head turned towards him slowly, smiling tiredly and opening up her warm arms to him.
“You want to hear about my place?” she asked, pulling him close.
“Yes please,” he said, resting on her shoulder as she hummed and worked through her clouded thoughts. (Her words and stories came more difficultly than usual. He knew this. He understood. She’s told him over and over that she wasn’t feeling well, and he could see it... he was still grateful for this time with her.) She took a deep breath in and Technoblade quieted his thoughts down to listen.
“I come from a place different from this. My home is bright-“
“Like lava?” he jumped in before he even recognized the words coming out of his mouth. She only glanced at him and smiled.
“Well... sort of, but it’s warm without the danger, not hot like lava,” she said, pausing only momentarily before she answered. He interrupted again.
“Like glow stone?”
“Techno, why don’t you let me tell the story?” she said gently, tapping on his nose and he nodded into her shoulder. She took a deep, raspy breath in before she continued.
“It’s bright. The sun casts light over everything, and when night comes, it’s lit bright with the moon and the stars,” she looked up, face lost in memory.
Technoblade liked seeing her like this. He wants to see her in her bright, sunny world.
“The grass is green, and soft. Lush. With meadows full of flowers of every color. There are people like me there. People who trade emeralds for important items, just like how we trade and stockpile gold.”
“Is the sun gold?” he asked, she smiled gently, eyes moistening right before she closed her eyes.
“Like pure gold. Warm like a blanket and bright like a thousand torches.”
“Mama, can you tell me about the oceans again?” he asked.
“The oceans are cold. And salty. Thousands of creatures live in them. It’s scary sometimes, because the water goes so deep and you can only swim for so long but... it’s the most beautiful blue you could ever imagine.”
“Blue,” he whispered, and she opened her eyes to smile at him, her hand shaking as she pushed his hair away from his face.
“Blue. There’s nothing quite like it here,” she said, voice getting sadder as her explanations continued.
“I want to go there one day,” he whispered, and her eyes darted towards the door briefly before she smiled again, her eyes still... sad.
“I want you to go there. Oh Techno...” she choked on her words, eyes growing wet. “I want you to experience everything. I want you to go into that world and see the forests and the ocean and meet people who are like you,” she gasped sharply at the end of her sentence, coughing twice before she smile at him again.
“Mama? Why don’t we go back then?”
“Your father wouldn’t like that,” her voice quickly turned quieter, sadder.
“But... we could go. Together, we just have to leave,” he said, staring up at her and she just looked at him for a moment.
“Techno. My darling. I can’t come with you,” she said, turning away, her thin hair falling in front of her face.
“But... why?” he asked. She sighed, turning back to him, licking her dry lips.
“I was never supposed to spend this much time in this world, I’m... I’m sick now... I could never make the trip with you,” she said sadly, smoothing his hair again.
“But... I want to see it,” he said, nibbling on his lip. She gently tapped his chin with her pale hand.
“You will. If I have anything to say in it, you will.”
“I want to see it with you,” he said, looking down and she sighed, pulling him closer.
“I know... I know.”
He was half asleep when he heard her speak up again.
“I left a portal somewhere. I’m sure you could find it my little adventurer.”
Her words were soft above him, growing quieter as she went on, “You’ll go back for me. You can see the sky and the stars and the ocean... you’ll see them for me.”
She coughed repeatedly, back shaking, rousing Technoblade a little more. He almost opened his eyes. But... he didn’t want to lose this moment with his mother, sleeping in her lap.
“I want to see you experience them... but I can’t. Techno?” he shifted a little and he could hear her smile.
“My sleepy little adventurer. Promise me that you’ll always remember that I love you. Forever and ever.”
Her hand continued to stroke through his hair and he fell asleep in his mother’s arms
He woke up to his fathers voice. The bed cold and lonely as he stretched and tried to rouse himself.
“Technoblade. Wake up. We’re going on a trip.”
His father was carrying his mother, who was wrapped in the only blanket that was on the bed, appearing to be still asleep.
“Where are we going?” he asked and his father stared at him for a second before giving him a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“On an adventure kiddo,” he said and Technoblade sat up straighter, tugging on his boots and hurrying after his father who was already beginning to leave out the front door, trusting Technoblade to follow.
“When are we arriving?” he asked and his father ignored him, for the most part, glancing at him and hefting his mother up a little more, as she continued to sleep. Technoblade swallowed, glancing at his shoes briefly before looking back up.
“Are we going to mom’s place?” he asked and his father stopped in his tracks.
“Do you want to go?” he asked and Technoblade hopped up.
“Yes please!”
Technoblade didn’t know how far he had walked. He didn’t know how far away from his home he was. He tried to keep track of the lava pools they passed. Tried to memorize the unique outcroppings of netherrack (none of them were truly unique though. Everything looked the same). In the distance he saw a color he had only heard about. He saw purple for the first time. Actual purple. Not like the nether brick that his mother had used as an example. It was bright. Beautiful and swirly gently, dust drifting down from it, landing on the ground before fizzling out.
“Through there is where your mom came from,” his father said, snapping Technoblade out of his thoughts.
“Are we going through it?” he asked and his father was silent. “Dad?” Technoblade asked, and his father looked down on him.
“I will not be going with you,” he said and Technoblade blinked.
“What?”
“You either stay with me, here, help us prosper and grow, or you can do to the place your mother tells you. The golden and the blue. But know that you will always be alone. No one wants a hybrid child. No one cares about children who are alone. Especially not in that world.”
Technoblade could barely comprehend the words coming out of his mouth.
“What? But mom said people looked out for each other,” he said and his father scoffed.
“Humans look after other humans. You’re not human. You’re different. And people will hurt you for that. Make your choice,” he said, voice harsh and unforgiving. Hesitantly, Technoblade stepped towards the purple. As much as he wanted to stay, stay inside what he knew... he wanted to see the world his mother had described so lovingly. He wanted to leave. To explore and meet people. She had told him he would... and now he wanted to do it.
“You’re leaving then?” his father asked and Technoblade didn’t want to choose. He didn’t want to pick one world or another- he wanted to be in both but…
He wanted to see it all.
“Yes?”
“Is that a question or a statement?” his father asked and Technoblade twiddled with his finger tips. “Answer me.”
“Yes. I want to go.”
“Then go. You’ll have your mother with you there,” his father said, hefting his sleeping mother up and chucking her through the purple.
“Mom!” The cry escaped his throat before he could contain it and his father fixed him with a look.
“Well. Go after her boy.”
Technoblade took one long look at his father. His father who wasn’t nearly as warm and soothing as his mother. Who never bothered protecting him or aiding him when Technoblade needed him...
The purple had his mother. He stepped towards it and hopped in.
Technoblade didn’t really know what he had expected when he went through the purple. He did know that he expected to see all of the wonders his mother talked of, all at once. To see a forest on one side and an ocean on the other. To be welcomed by people who looked like him and to feel a warmth akin to his mother holding him when he was supposed to be sleeping, kept awake by the ghast’s crying in the distance.
He hit the ground hard. Tumbling over his limbs onto something soft and lifeless.
It was dark, looking up. The sky was solid black, none of the stars or moons that his mother had described were visible. He can’t see. He can’t see anything and it made him want to curl up into a ball and wait until he could wake up and hear the lava pop outside his room.
But there was nothing. Just the same silence and the same darkness and it was cold. Cold on the solid ground, causing him to begin shivering already. He sat up, feeling like his entire rib cage was shaking in his chest, and shuffled towards whatever he had landed on, arms out and reaching only to connect with a person. A person who must be his mother.
“Mom?” he said softly, shaking her shoulder. He leaned forward as he did, eyes very slowly adjusting. Her head lolled to the side, eyelids opening a little. His breath caught in his throat.
“Mom?!”
Gingerly, Technoblade placed his head on her shoulder, pulling her limp arm around him, desperate for her warmth and comfort.
She was cold, just like the hard rough ground pressing into his knees as he knelt beside her. He placed his ear near her mouth, listening for anything. Any sort of sound.
She wasn’t breathing.
“Mom? I can’t do this without you,” he said into her ear, breaths coming quicker and quicker as he had the realization that she wasn’t going to answer.
She didn’t respond.
He didn’t think she would.
But he curled up next to her, her presence calming him, under the flimsy blanket and hoped and prayed against all odds that she would be alive and able to help him when he woke up.
She wasn’t.
He woke up to the freezing cold, skin and hair moist from sleeping on the ground, and a fly creeping across his mother’s cold and unseeing face.
It was so much brighter now. It was dark and he couldn’t see before but now it was impossibly bright.
Was this the sun his mother had spoke of? Was this searing heat and painful brightness all part of the sun she had described lovingly, comparing it to the gleaming gold he had left in his home?
How could it be so bright but still so cold?
Everything became static.
Numbly, he laid on the ground next to his mother, eyes closed as tight as he could in an effort to keep the sun out.
He was barely relaxed. Barely beginning to feel safe when a loud yell disrupted the calm.
“God what the hell is that smell?” a voice that sounded far away piped up, in the same language that his mother sang him lullabies in, the same language that his father had told him he was never to speak but that his mother had taught Technoblade behind his father’s back.
He curled up tighter in the blanket, chills going up and down his spine. Would they help him? His mother said they would but his father was insistent that they wouldn’t.
“Is that a person? Shit man...” the voice said, much closer now. His mother’s body jerked suddenly, and someone gaged.
“What the- is that a mob?” the voice said, yanking the blanket off suddenly. He cried out, grasping faintly at the blanket that was chucked into the corner, bright lights invading his vision unlike anything he had seen before.
“What the hell is that?!”
Technoblade looked up, his eyes aching in the bright sunlight, desperately trying to get a good look at the invaders.
“It looks like a... one of those weird-ass hybrid things. When hookers get overly attached to a mob and they spawn together. Disgusting.”
The brightness went dark only for a moment as someone kicked him, sending him into that wall. Tears were dripping down his face, both from the brightness searing into his eyes and the pain in his side.
Technoblade scrambled up to his feet.
“Probably killed his own mother, we should dispose of him quickly.”
Dispose? Why... he hadn’t done anything wrong. He wouldn’t kill his mother... they didn’t even know him.
They didn’t even know him, but they were ready to kill him.
Technoblade sprinted down the alleyway, just trying to get away from the two men before he realized that he ran away from the purple- his only way home.
“The little shit is running!”
Technoblade turned briefly, just to see if there was some way to get back to the purple, but one of the blurry people had a crossbow and it was being aimed at Technoblade, while the other began an attempt at cornering him.
If there was one thing Technoblade was good at, it was running. He had been a runner since he was a little kid (his mother always told him stories about how she would see him racing over the tops of the netherrack, leaping from pillar to pillar with reckless abandon).
He was running away. He was alone, and he was running away from the only thing he remembered as home.
He needed to get back. He needed to get home. To his room and to his dad who would teach him how to fight with his wooden sword and he wanted to go back to the warmth and the lava and netherrack.
He wasn’t meant to be here. He could tell. He could feel it in the air.
An arrow hit the stone wall beside him and Technoblade scrambled further away.
He couldn’t go back. His father was right.
He wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared for this brightness and darkness and freezing cold and pain.
He ran as fast as he could down another alleyway, footsteps fading away behind him as he ran.
Technoblade’s breaths were coming in hot pants, the only sound in his ears being his beating heart as it pounded in his throat.
He paused for a moment, sliding in between two large metal things and just... sat. And waited.
Waited for any sort of noise. Waited to figure out if he was safe or not or if people were going to kill him.
The brightness was still there, even while he was hidden, but his vision was slowly, sluggishly allowing him to see clearer.
This place was nothing like the place his mother had so lovingly described in her last moments.
Nothing like it at all.