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When it’s all over and the dust has begun to settle, Technoblade turns and walks away from the crater that remains of L’Manberg.
He should feel triumphant, he knows. He won, after all. The nation is utterly destroyed, the dictator dead, and the fledgling government that dared to try to establish itself while wearing his gear, betraying him after all his work supplying and supporting their entire petty revolution, is in shambles. Of all parties involved today, it’s safe to say that Technoblade came out on top.
Technoblade never dies, after all.
The same can’t be said for his twin.
(Across a ruin of destruction wrought by Wilbur’s TNT, the ragtag band of revolutionaries and foes all stop and look up in horror as a man too far past his breaking point throws down a sword—not in surrender, but in supplication.
Most of Wilbur’s words are a jumble of sounds, lost in the echoes of explosions and falling rubble, but Techno can make out three words sharp enough to cut even through the layers of netherite and apathy he has erected to protect himself over years of fighting too many battles.
“Phil, kill me.”
This wasn’t the plan.)
In the armory, when their tiny, already-doomed revolution is suiting up, staring in awe at the gear and resources he has amassed, Techno sees Tommy tug Wilbur to the side. His ears prick up, and thanks to his sharp hearing, he can pick their murmuring out from beneath the excited chattering of Pogtopia’s force.
“At least put on armor, Wil,” Tommy says, sounding more desperate than he has all day. “Techno’s got plenty, please—”
“No,” Wilbur replies firmly, twisting his wrist out of Tommy’s grasp. There’s a glint in his eyes that makes Techno shift uneasily.
It’s dim, in his vault. Maybe that’s it. It’s probably nothing.
“Wilbur—”
“No, Tommy,” Wilbur hisses, and Tommy recoils.
Just then, Tubbo nearly drops a splash potion, and Techno has to look away, jerking his head around to reprimand the kid for wasting resources. He misses whatever Tommy might have said in return.
(He misses the way Wilbur takes in a deep breath and holds it, savors it, as though he thinks it will be his last.)
You’re my son, Phil shouts, shocked and grief-stricken, as every citizen of the SMP stares on in horror.
Wilbur steps forward, aligning his chest with the tip of the blade. Runs a finger along the edge almost lovingly.
Why does Techno feel like he’s the one at swordpoint?
Everyone else has finished gearing up and climbed up the ladder to the surface, Techno lays a hand on Wilbur’s arm.
“Wilbur,” he says, and tries to ignore the way Wilbur flinches at his touch.
“Yes, Technoblade?” his twin asks brightly. Something about it all grates at Techno. His tone, maybe, or the way his eye just barely twitches as his smile that hides a silver tongue flickers just so. Something is very, very wrong.
Techno thinks of all the things he could ask, should ask, but doesn’t have the time or the words for. “Is there a reason you aren’t wearin' armor?” is what he settles on instead.
Wilbur laughs—a brittle, nervous sound. He runs a shaking hand through his hair, ruffling it up and making it stand on end. He looks fragile.
(He looks like he's already broken.)
“L’Manberg rules, of course,” he answers glibly. “No armor. What kind of leader would I be if I didn’t abide by my own laws?”
Techno thinks of elections and locked ballots and revolutions, exiles and democratically elected leaders they plan to overthrow today. He hasn’t heard the full story, he knows, and what he does know is tainted by bias, yet it still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, as bitter as the lines of Wilbur’s face.
They promised a long time ago that they wouldn’t keep secrets, wouldn’t tell lies. Not to each other, not ever. Twins stick together, Wilbur had told him, eyes wide and earnest. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t twins by birth. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, and all that. Wilbur is his family.
But Wilbur also lies.
Unfortunately, they have a government to overthrow, and Technoblade is already too tired for this conversation. He’ll let the armor issue go, but not without a final word.
“A damn fool one, not wearin' armor to the war you proposed,” Techno sighs, and Wilbur is already halfway up the ladder.
(A damn fool indeed, is all he can think, hours later, watching helplessly as Phil swings a diamond blade towards Wilbur’s unprotected torso.)
Wilbur isn’t the only musical child in the family. Far from it, actually; Tommy can play piano, though not as well as Fundy, and Techno himself used to play violin. Over the years, he practices less with a violin bow and more with a sword, an axe, a trident. The twang of a bowstring now brings callouses to his fingertips, rather than the familiar catgut of a violin.
Over time, the music in the house loses the sound of Techno’s mournful violin practice, instead replaced by Wilbur’s constant tinkering on the guitar. Techno fights mobs in the woods and Wilbur toys with composing his own music. Eventually, Phil brings Tommy into their family, and with him the soft strains of music discs join Wilbur’s quiet strumming.
The violin gathers dust in its case.
Music has always been something he loved but felt he wasn’t suited for. Best to leave it to Wilbur, who is everything Techno is not. The softness to smooth Techno’s rough edges. Wilbur is gentle and warm; Techno cannot be touched without cutting. Wilbur is silver-tongued words and songs threaded with heart and soul the way the sky is studded with stars. Techno is swords and scars and the overwhelming tang of blood clogging senses. They couldn’t be more different—and yet, they know each other better than they know themselves.
Wilbur knows when Techno is uncomfortable with a conversation, and Techno can tell when Wilbur only needs a touch to the elbow to reassure him and calm his anxiety. Sometimes it feels as though they live in a world together, just the two of them, speaking their own language that no one else can understand.
It makes Phil smile.
(It makes Tommy jealous.)
Wilbur sees this, and he makes an effort to reach out to their younger brother. They go on adventures together, and Wilbur helps him hunt for music discs when Phil isn’t home to stop their shenanigans. Techno feels distinctly disconnected.
Don’t get him wrong, he cares for Tommy. That’s his baby brother, after all. Maybe he won’t ever admit it in so many words, but Tommy is family. That doesn’t mean Techno isn’t far more comfortable around Phil, though.
(In the end, he supposes it makes sense, that Wilbur would follow Tommy to the DreamSMP, while Techno and Phil pursue their own exploits and accomplishments. Phil wants to build things that will endure. Technoblade wants glory, the thrill of winning. The voices want blood. Wilbur and Tommy? Maybe they just wanted a family.)
When they call him for help, no matter how long it’s been, Techno comes.
He’s not sure why, but he brings the violin, still in its battered, dusty case, with him. It stays as silent as Wilbur’s guitar, tucked away in a dark but slightly-less damp corner of the ravine his brothers insist upon calling Pogtopia.
It stays silent through the revolution, the sixteenth of November, and the long, dark days afterwards. There is no music to mourn the loss of two presidents, a dictator and a madman. The bow does not glide across the strings in remembrance of a visionary, a friend, a son, a father.
A brother. A twin in more than something so humble as a womb.
Techno rages in silence broken only by the howling arctic wind.
Music reminds him too much of what he has lost. He will play no requiems.
(Nor will he admit that his hands shake too violently to do more than sit for hours, holding the old instrument and shuddering with sobs in the half-finished shell of a home upon the snowy plains of the north.)
Wilbur falls, and he takes with him any last traces that might have remained of L’Manberg. Any last shreds of innocence and childhood that clung to Tubbo, to Fundy, to Tommy. He takes a piece of Techno with him as he goes.
Techno watches Phil sink to his knees with Wilbur in his arms, hears him scream, and that takes something from Techno, too.
Everyone seems to want to steal from him, these days.
When Phil first takes him in, Techno is distrustful. He’s spent far too long surviving on his own to stop now, to let down his guard and open himself up to this odd little family.
Phil is warm and kind, and every fiber of Techno’s being wants to lean into the man’s touch, allow himself to be embraced and bandaged and shielded. He wants to trust him.
But trust doesn’t come easily to someone like Technoblade.
Wilbur, on the other hand? Phil’s son chatters like a bird, and he sings like one too, voice clear and pleasing. Wilbur is soft and bright and gentle, and Techno feels clumsy and thick-tongued beside him. They don’t get along, at first. There are fights and squabbles and assorted misadventures, bruises and scrapes and a great many times when Phil sends them off to do chores together in reprimand.
“How old are you?” Wilbur asks him curiously during one such banishment to the stable to muck and lay fresh straw. He sits atop a hay bale, swinging his skinny legs. He looks thoughtful, and Techno is too tired to start another fight.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Dunno.”
Wilbur cocks his head. “How many birthdays have you had?”
Birthday. Here is something he’s heard precious little of, only in snippets of conversations and offhand mentions. It makes his chest tighten and his cheeks burn, just a little, to think of admitting he doesn’t know quite what it is, let alone if he has one.
Techno stares determinedly at the stall he’s mucking, scooping up a pitchfork full of sodden straw.
“Don’t have one.”
Wilbur is silent, in what Techno assumes is horror, or maybe disgust, but when he dares to look up again, he sees a thoughtful sparkle in the other boy’s eyes.
“You can share mine, if you’d like!” he suggests, leaning forwards. “We could be brothers—twins!”
Brothers. Another word Techno still can’t quite grasp the meaning of. He doesn’t know if family is something that is meant for people like him, if he can be a son or a brother.
He thinks back on something he read about, once.
“We can’t be twins,” he says airily, in his best Wilbur impression. “We aren’t related.”
“Phil adopted you,” Wilbur points out, stubborn and unfortunately correct. Techno huffs.
“We’d have to do a blood oath.”
Wilbur’s face scrunches up in confusion, like he’s staring at the sun and trying to understand its glow. “A what?”
A blood oath. Something the voices have whispered of, something he has never spoken of aloud, only held the words heavy and solemn like a denarius on his tongue. Why has he brought it up now?
“You cut yourselves and let your blood mingle,” Techno says gruffly, trying to sound important and serious, like Phil when they’ve done something terribly troublesome, “and it forms a bond stronger than anything between you.”
Wilbur’s eyes are wide and shining. “Can we do one?”
“Maybe when we’re old enough,” Techno says, and he’s surprised to find he means it. Somewhere, in all of their bickering and petty squabbles, he finds he doesn’t mind Wilbur so much. Maybe he doesn’t understand the meaning of what it is to be a brother just yet, but he thinks, perhaps, he can at least be a friend.
(When Wilbur drags him by the hand into the house later, both of them covered head to toe in bits of straw from the stable, and loudly announces that he’s sharing his birthday with Techno now, Phil only smiles fondly, and Techno feels something settle in contentment behind his ribs.)
He leaves the base and everything in it. He’s sure Tommy and the rest of his friends will return at some point to pillage it. They know where it is now, and it’s too much for him to bother moving before they get to it. Techno simply turns his back on L’Manberg’s corpse and walks away.
He stops only once, in front of an oak tree surrounded by half-finished walls of obsidian. Through the gaps in the hastily-made barrier, he can see boughs of green foliage, defiantly alive, a stark contrast to the desolate landscape behind him.
Nevertheless, life persists. Isn’t that what they say? The brave little sprout pushing up from the ashes.
He has no doubt L’Manberg will rebuild.
But as he stands before that tree, hands smelling of fireworks, encrusted with ashes and soul sand and blood that is not his own, Techno finds that he can’t bring himself to care.
This nation, this server, has taken enough from him.
(Too much.)
He wants to set it alight, watch the flames crawl across the bark and the twigs and every hopeful green bud preparing to unfurl into new leaves in spite of the oncoming winter. He wants this symbol of disillusioned freedom and independence to die like Wilbur did. He wants to take this last thing from the revolution that has stolen so much of what little he had here.
But he thinks of Tommy’s determination as he mined obsidian, insisting they protect this one remnant of the original L’Manberg. The dream he and Wilbur shared.
My L’Manberg, Phil. My unfinished symphony, forever unfinished!
It reminds him of Wilbur, and some tiny, traitorous part of him loves the tree for it. Perhaps it can do what Wilbur could not. It can keep living in spite of the desolation.
Techno walks onwards.
On their thirteenth birthday, Phil gives Wilbur a guitar and Techno his first real sword. The gold one he carried with him for so long was battered and beaten, the edges dull and chipped. This one is made of iron (until you can show me you’re ready to care for diamond, Phil tells him) lovingly crafted, sharp and deadly.
It’s not diamond or netherite, but it means the world to Techno, because in giving it to him, Phil is saying he believes in him. Phil is saying I trust you.
Wilbur catches his eye from the sofa, fingers clumsily struggling to press strings against frets, and Techno can detect the meaning in the spark behind his gaze. He nods once, firm, and returns to examining the blade in his hands.
That night, long after they’re sure Phil is asleep (and then, even longer, to be sure) they creep outside the house, Techno with sword in hand. They’re careful not to stray past the torchlit area within the fenced-in yard, and Techno keeps an eye out nonetheless.
“How are we doing this?” Wilbur whispers, plopping down cross-legged in the grass. Techno follows, balancing the sword across his lap.
“I think we just…” he trails off awkwardly, hefting the weapon.
He doesn’t even have to finish. Wilbur nods and holds out his arm. Carefully, almost slow enough to be hesitantly, Techno brings the edge to graze Wilbur’s forearm. The blade is keen, honed by Phil’s own attentive hands, and blood quickly wells from the shallow cut it makes. Wilbur barely winces.
It takes a bit more maneuvering to make a matching wound on his own arm, but Techno manages. He sets the sword aside, unflinching, and reaches out to grasp Wilbur’s arm, pressing their bleeding forearms together. The blood is slick and warm against his skin, and Techno feels the pulsing murmur of the voices stir within the depths of his mind.
It’s a moment years in the making, and yet neither of them feels a need to say much of anything. No fancy speeches, no pithy lines. Just two boys and the blood they choose to share, sitting silently in the torchlit night.
“Brothers?” Wilbur whispers at long last, dark gaze finally lifting from their arms.
A little bit of blood drips onto the grass.
Inside his mind, the voices whisper of kinship and protection, blood oaths and unbreakable bonds. Covenant, they chant. Brotherhood.
Techno looks up, and he doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing.
“Twins,” he answers.
(It takes him a while to realize, but the voices are quieter when Wilbur is around.)
“Why,” Techno asks, the second time Phil comes to visit him in his isolated arctic base, “do you have that.”
It’s phrased as a question, but his voice comes out flatter, tighter than he intended. He can’t help it, though, unable to look away from the carefully-wrapped bundle Phil brought, no doubt carried on his back all the way from where scaffolding and rubble rises over New L’Manberg. Even though the distinct silhouette is somewhat muddled by the cloth, even without the case Wilbur always kept it in, Techno knows it. He thinks he might know it blind and deaf. (He knows Wilbur did.)
Wilbur’s guitar.
The guitar he hasn’t heard played since long before Pogtopia’s lantern-lit ravines. Even when his twin’s broken humming of his nation’s anthem rebounded against walls of stone and empty air, the guitar stayed silent. Techno wouldn’t have even known Wilbur had it with him had he not gone for a late-night walk to clear his head and returned to find Wilbur sitting outside the hidden entrance to the ravine, limned in moonlight, holding his precious instrument.
(He wasn’t playing it. His hands had looked so wrong, simply cradling the body to his chest rather than fingers dancing over the steel strings, plucking forth a melody from their childhood or from his own thoughts.)
Wilbur had never brought it out where Techno could see it again, after that.
Gently, ever so gently, Phil unslings the guitar from his back, holding it in trembling hands. Others might not notice the slight shaking, but Techno’s eyes are sharp and he knows Phil too well to miss it.
“I found it in the ravine,” Phil says quietly, laying the instrument on the crafting table, brushing aside wood shavings and iron filings to make room. He handles it carefully, as though breathing on it might shatter it, snap the neck and the strings and rend the body to pieces.
Techno wonders if he was that gentle with Wilbur’s body.
“And you brought it here.” He can’t do anything more than state obvious facts and stare at the shining wood of the guitar. Wilbur had clearly been taking care of it, even in the end. It looks almost the same as the last time he saw it before Pogtopia, though there are a few nicks in the body he doesn’t remember being there. (Somehow, that makes his chest even tighter.)
“I thought you might want it,” says Phil.
I can’t stand to look at it, is what Techno hears.
He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want it here, where it will do nothing but sit in his line of sight and hollow out that shuddering space behind his ribs with vicious claws. He wants to break it into dozens of pieces, wrap the strings round his hands until he can’t feel his fingers, can’t feel anything, because he’s tired of feeling too much. He wants to snatch it up and cradle it to his chest and pretend, for a desperate moment, that the guitar is any kind of substitute for having his brother in his arms.
Techno clears his throat.
“Would you like to see the bees?” he asks, because he can’t stand to be near it any longer.
It’s an easy out, and both of them know it. Phil doesn’t want to talk about it, and Techno doesn’t want to think about it, and together, neither of them are going to address this horrible lingering loss (betrayal?) they share, and Techno is just fine with that for now. He’ll take his easy outs where he can get them.
Phil nods, seeming relieved, and Techno gestures him outside, trying to ignore the phantom pain twinging in the faintest white scar on his forearm.
(He may not want it, but he can’t stand the idea of Wilbur’s guitar collecting dust either. In the dead of night, under the light of the moon, Techno takes the instrument in hands which seem far too rough and scarred for its strings.
He weighs it in his hands, lets the body fit against his torso comfortably, cool and smooth, rubs a thumb over the six familiar letters of his brother’s name, etched into the back of the neck with a wild, joyous carelessness.
In the darkness and silence of his retirement home, Technoblade places the fingers of his left hand against the frets, falling into the familiar shape of the G chord Wilbur once taught him. Gently, he tries to strum it. A discordant twang rings out in the stillness.
The guitar is out of tune.
Somehow, this is what breaks him.
In the darkness, in the silence, all alone, Technoblade curls protectively around Wilbur’s guitar and wails soundlessly.)
He doesn’t mean to cut his hair.
It’s on one of the bad days, when the voices are seething at his chosen peaceful lifestyle, demanding blood and rage and death, and it hurts. His head pounds, and all he’s trying to do is braid his hair to keep it out of his face, but his fingers keep slipping and the half-finished braid is so, so heavy, pulling at his scalp and making everything hurt worse.
It doesn’t help that every time he tiredly fumbles with the strands, Techno involuntarily remembers the way Wilbur used to do his braid for him, hands sure and steady, weaving the strands as surely as he plucked the strings of his guitar. Wilbur never had trouble with his hair.
(But Wilbur is gone, now, and his hair is tangled and his head is aching almost as much as his traitorous heart.)
Before he realizes what he’s doing, Techno has angrily yanked his sword off the wall by the fireplace and chopped through the pathetic excuse for a braid. It falls to the floor, wispy pink strands pulling free and drifting slowly in its wake, and he stares at it in a kind of numb disbelief.
His head feels the same, until he turns it to look at the sword in his hand and there is no heavy, comforting weight of hair moving with it.
Everything feels normal until he tries to move, to do anything, and then everything is wrong. A single thing, lost in a moment of emotion, and yet the second he tries to do anything without it, Techno can feel its loss as keenly as a knife between the ribs.
(A single person, killed in a moment of emotion, and yet every moment he does anything, a Wilbur-shaped hole in his life steals his equilibrium time and again.)
His hair is on the floor, and his twin is dead, and Techno’s head may be light but his heart is heavy.
L’Manberg rebuilds—of course it does. So long as there is such a wretched, feathered thing as hope, they will always claw their way back from the brink of brimstone and death. Techno has done his research—he knows how the scrappy little revolution rebuilt itself from smithereens once before.
(It’s the why he can’t quite understand.)
Phil keeps him updated on the nation, sounding surprisingly hopeful.
Tubbo’s a good kid, one of his messages reads. I think he’s trying his best.
Techno shakes his head and decides it’s high time he paid so-called New L’Manberg a visit.
He and Phil agree on a date in a week’s time for Phil to help him sneak in undetected, and then Techno fastens his cloak over his shoulders and sets out for his nether portal. It’s a terrible idea, going in blind, but he’s pulled off plenty of bad ideas before, and he can’t stay away any longer.
Dusk is just fading into twilight when he steps through the portal to the main server hub, the air chilling his face in sharp contrast to the heat of the Nether.
He downs an invis pot and wanders the wooden streets of the fledgling city, the planks of the boardwalks smelling of fresh split oak, steady and strong without a single creak beneath his careful feet. There’s one specific thing he came here for, so he scopes out the construction sites and half-built piers, the abandoned square and the freshly completed walls around the L’Mantree.
There is only a single grave in the graveyard surrounded by blackstone walls and tucked into the craggy rock of the crater. The name Jschlatt is carved none-too-gently into the black headstone, but someone has tried to scratch it off.
(When he runs his fingers over the letters, Techno thinks it feels like tyrant.)
There is no grave for Wilbur.
Techno can’t even begin to think what that says.
Technoblade is more than a simple warrior; he’s the Blood God, the Blade, a champion across a dozen servers. People know his name and speak of him in hushed reverence.
Technoblade never dies.
He is intimately familiar with the idea of being a hero, the heart of a narrative. That is why it pains him to watch Wilbur’s own story unfold.
He sits in a ravine and thinks of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. He gathers supplies and he thinks of Atlas, breaking under the weight of the world.
(He watches a nation rent to shreds by the single press of a button, his brother’s life ripped away by two strokes of a sword, and he tells the story of a hero exiled and dying in disgrace.
It was never Tommy who was Theseus, in the beginning.)
The people tried to make him a hero, a legend. They tried to follow in his footsteps and praise his name, adorn him with laurels and hail him as an emperor and lord. But Technoblade knows how history treats heroes, and he wants no part of its cruelty.
He wishes he could have spared his brothers the same fate.
“Why doesn’t Wilbur have a grave?” he asks bluntly, and Phil freezes in the middle of the boardwalk.
L’Manberg looks more complete than the first time he was here. There are more buildings and less scaffolding, stalls erected in the market square, the night lit up by the soft glow of dozens of paper lanterns.
It’s hard to tell under the cloak, but Techno watches the lines of Phil’s shoulders grow taut and sharp.
“How do you know about that?” he asks.
“Might’ve poked around,” Techno says, shrugging. They can’t afford to stay still for too long, even with potions on hand, so he catches up to Phil in two quick strides and taps his elbow, gently coaxing him forwards.
Phil sighs, allowing Techno to guide him behind one of the market stalls.
“He didn’t get a funeral.”
“And Schlatt did? What, did they just leave his body to—to rot? Let the vultures have at it?”
“No,” Phil says fiercely, and Techno almost recoils. Then, softer, “No. That’s not it.”
“Then tell me, Phil, what’s stoppin’ ‘em from givin’ Wil a proper grave?”
Phil mumbles something, pushing his bucket hat back messily on his hair and rubbing his eyes. Techno frowns.
“Heh? What was that?”
A sigh. “He doesn’t exactly need a grave, now does he.”
Techno only blinks, utterly confused. “Phil, why the hell wouldn’t he need a grave?”
A cold breeze brushes across the back of his neck, a flash of yellow fills the corner of his vision, and Techno whips around to see, of all people, Wilbur standing before him.
Except, his skin and hair are a washed out grey, eyes black and weeping inky tears.
Except, his feet hover about three inches off the planks of the boardwalk.
Except, there’s a stitched-together hole in his sweater that drips blue dye down his form.
Except, Techno can see right through him to the wood planks of the building behind.
“Hello,” this Wilbur says cheerily, and his voice is reedy and hollow, nothing like Techno’s twin’s.
Oh.
That’s why.
In truth, no amount of gear or grinding or even Techno’s assistance could have fixed Wilbur. He couldn’t save his twin from his self-induced spiral.
Wilbur tried too hard to play the hero, and in the end, it was far easier to become a villain. (In the end, it hurt Techno less to follow him.)
“You cut your hair,” hums Ghostbur, observing the way the ends of it now brush against the tops of Techno’s shoulders.
Before, his braid had almost reached his waist. It’s far easier to take care of, now. Techno’s not sure he likes that.
He grunts, sharpening his sword in the quiet of Phil’s home, waiting for nightfall so he can sneak back out of the city easily. It doesn’t necessarily need sharpening, but Phil’s out, and Techno will lose his mind without something to do.
“I think I liked it longer,” his twin says sadly. “I used to love braiding it.”
“But you can’t, anymore,” Techno replies, not looking up. He doesn’t trust himself to look at this…thing. This remnant. This fragment of a memory.
“It’s not too short,” Ghostbur says hopefully, and suddenly there’s the feeling of an ice-cold hand running through his hair, but the strands slip right through dead grey fingers.
“Oh.”
It’s an odd curse of Ghostbur’s not-quite-dead but not-quite-alive state that he can interact with objects and even animals just fine, but any part of a living person goes straight through him.
He’s right in front of Technoblade, and yet oh so impossibly far.
“I have your guitar,” he blurts, desperate for something to distract him from his brother’s disappointed silence, and the ache in his own chest.
Ghostbur freezes, black eyes wide, the faint white points of his irises shrinking to faraway dots. Fresh rivulets of dark tears flow down his cheeks, staining the neckline of his worn sweater.
“Do you want it back?” Techno asks.
The ghost shudders, form fuzzing and fading, bits of him seeming to run like melting wax.
“No,” he whispers. “I can’t—I don’t—no.”
Then, suddenly, he snaps back into corporeality and smiles brightly.
“Oh, Technoblade,” he says. “You cut your hair!”
Techno turns back to his sword.
Whatever this lingering shard of memory is, it is not his brother.
(“That’s not him, Phil,” Techno says, barely able to raise his voice above a rumbling whisper as they stand at the limits of New L’Manberg, just past the L’Mantree. “That’s not Wilbur anymore.”
Phil refuses to look at him, twisting his hands in his robe and staring out at the paper lanterns that speckle the skies.
“I know, Tech.”
They stand there in silence for a time, and Phil draws in a shuddering breath.
“I have to bring him back. I’m going to bring him back.”
Techno hadn’t expected anything less.)
It’s surprisingly easy, helping Phil get the totems and finish the necessary research, traveling far and wide across the SMP lands to talk to village elders and clerics. Techno had honestly expected it to be more of a challenge.
Perhaps he ought to look into adding a few totems of undying to his own gear, just to be safe.
The night before the planned resurrection, Techno clasps Phil’s forearms in a wish of good fortune and sets off making his way home. He’s been away from Carl and Edward too long to stay here any longer, and Phil won’t need help in the ritual anyway.
He’s just reached the water’s edge, preparing to climb into his boat and start his journey home, when a soft voice comes from behind him.
“Techno?”
It’s Ghostbur (somehow, he can’t bring himself to look at the ghost and think of vibrant, lively Wilbur), twisting his hands in his sweater and looking more out of focus than normal.
“Somethin’ wrong, Ghostbur?” Techno asks, careful to keep his voice down.
Ghostbur opens his mouth. Closes it again. Repeats it a few times, gripping his sweater until his ashy knuckles have gone completely white.
“I don’t,” he says, finally. “Techno. I don’t think I want to be resurrected.”
“Why not?”
Why would anyone want to stay dead?
“People like Ghostbur better.” The ghost’s voice is small. “They didn’t like — they didn’t like Alivebur much at all. He was terrible. I don’t want to be terrible. I want to be nice, and happy, and write books and make lanterns and bully Tommy because he’s a child.”
(Except, Techno thinks Tommy might have stopped being a child far too long ago.)
He snorts, trying to think of a way to say it gently, but Techno’s never had much tact.
Ah, hell, someone’s got to tell him.
“Ghostbur,” begins Techno, then thinks better of it. “Wilbur.”
“I’m not Wilbur,” the ghost protests, and Techno rolls his eyes.
“Like hell you aren’t. You can’t just hide in your ignorance, Wilbur. You can’t say you’re a totally different person from when you were alive. You still did all those things you claim not to remember, that everyone hates you for. You’re still Wilbur. Part of him, anyway." (And he is, Techno sees that now. He's Wilbur, just hiding from his problems behind his fears, just full of holes.) "You’re still my brother. And I’d much rather have a livin’ brother than a dead one.”
The ghost flickers, feet touching down on the pier with a soft creak. Ghostbur looks more solid than he has in days.
“Thank you, Techno,” he whispers.
Techno nods awkwardly, raising an oar in salute. “I’ll see you on the other side, I guess.”
Wilbur smiles wryly. His lips are blue. “I hope not. It’s not very nice over there.”
Leave it to Wilbur to make jokes about his own damn death.
It’s not until a few days after the ritual that Wilbur is strong enough for Techno to come visit.
Phil’s built a rough little cabin in a dark oak forest, half a day’s trek outside of L’Manberg and the main SMP lands. It’s small and rustic and reminds Techno a great deal of their first home, back when it was just him and Phil and Wilbur, before Tommy came along and Phil moved them to their larger house, nestled in a valley ringed by mountains.
(He wonders how that house is doing, sometimes. If it is the same as when he left, standing as an unchanged relic of their childhoods, or if it has fallen into neglect and disrepair without anyone to care for it.)
Wilbur is sitting up in bed when Phil lets Techno inside and slips out the door behind him, giving them a bit of privacy. He looks pale and thin but oh so alive, and Techno has never been the hugging type but he’d almost be tempted, if not for the bundle in his arms.
“Is that…?” Wilbur begins, eyes fixed on his burden and glistening with unshed tears.
Techno nods. “I don’t have the case, but I figured you might want it. Don’t want you goin’ crazy again, cooped up in this place.”
It’s a joke made in poor taste, but Wilbur doesn’t seem to mind, just watches reverently as Techno sets the cloth-wrapped guitar gently atop the quilts on the bed. He rests a single hand on the neck, but otherwise doesn’t move.
Techno draws up a chair at the bedside, and twins sit in a silence neither quite knows how to breach.
Wordlessly, Wilbur offers his free wrist to Techno, who gently places two fingers against his pulse point, feeling undeniable proof that his brother’s heart is beating strong and sure. Then his hand slides up to clasp Wilbur’s elbow, pressing their matching white scars, scars from an oath made so long ago, together.
Wilbur breathes in.
Techno breathes out.
Their hearts beat in tandem, brothers in blood and fire and inseparable even in death.
They are alive.
No words are necessary for them to understand this moment.
(Weeks later, when Dream pushes too far and L’Manberg spirals once again, when Tommy is cast out like a hero of old and Phil presses a compass into his hands in the wreckage of a hopeless, darkened room, Techno is prepared.
He swings open his door at Tommy’s knock with perhaps too much flair—sue him, he enjoys the drama—and gestures his little brother inside, the practiced greeting of Welcome home, Theseus, already on his lips.
Tommy looks up at him, shivering wet and tired, eyes dulled from exhaustion and loss, and says, I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I never wanted to be a fuckin’ hero. I just wanted a home.
Techno thinks of the story of Theseus, thinks of all the heroes cast out by their people, rejected the second their usefulness ran out. He recalls each and every tragedy, and looking down at Tommy’s hunched frame, he decides that this is the end of this hero’s journey. History will not repeat itself, nor will it curl into a rhyme that echoes of past pains and sorrows.
This is no place for heroes.
This is a place for family.
He feels a smile tug at his lips, and says, Welcome home, Tommy.
And that is that.)