Archive of Our Own

It’s dark outside.

That’s not unusual these days. Smoke and dust chokes the sky, dimming the light of the sun’s struggling rays and casting the whole world in shadow. Outside the cities, the heavy pollution and raging wildfires aren't regulated at all. Factories pump thick smoke into the atmosphere, and fires burn through dead, drought-stricken forests like they’re nothing. 

Technoblade roughly shoves his scarf back up over his nose. It’s always slipping down when he’s wearing his armor, and there aren’t enough respirators to go around. Not that one would fit on him anyway; his modded tusks get in the way. Nor does he need one, thanks to his modded nose. It doesn’t look any different—just modded with filters built for getting him through the worst conditions outside the city walls. 

He shouldn’t be out here for too long - that way, despite all his modifications, lies malfunction, and breathing this in without some sort of filter is a death warrant. (If not immediately - from literally choking, on the debris in the air - then later, when it eats away at you from the lungs out.) But he has a task to do, for Wilbur’s hide - well, they say it’s for Wilbur’s hide, for Wilbur’s crew, Wilbur’s dreams, but all of them know it’s for Tommy. Tommy and his wide eyes almost hidden behind his oxygen mask; Tommy and his stupid, stupid hope. Techno’s been saying they should just break the news to him for years. Wilbur doesn’t let them. And so the coded messages keep coming, and Techno keeps rolling his eyes and reaching for his scarves, and making his excuses to his COs so that he can come out here and find exactly nothing.

One day, Tommy’s convinced he'll stumble upon some sort of oasis of a promised land. Greenplace, all the cityfolk call the archetype. Techno doesn’t know, exactly, why he keeps coming out here to try to prove the existence of something he knows he’ll never find; his eyes sting, and the occasional tirades of tiny whirlwinds threaten to uproot his own balance along with the rest of the shit in the air, and he’s pretty sure it takes a few years off the lifespan of his mods each time he puts them to the test, but still, here he is. Eyes fixed on the wastes before him, the very air scorched, the earth stripped bare. The colour green is a myth, everyone knows that, but Tommy has his heart set on seeing it. Just once.

(Tommy’s shit lungs mean that, even if there were some kind of special greenplace - out here, in the dust and the wind and the stupid fucking smoke - he’d never be able to make it. His respirator struggles to cope with the comparatively mild conditions inside the city. Techno thinks, a little bitterly, that if he ever found the slightest hint of a mythical Eden out here, he might lie - say, as usual, that there was nothing. He couldn’t stand to see Tommy kill himself trying to reach it.)

Techno shouldn’t stay out here much longer, he knows. But some stupid, sentimental part of him thinks of Tommy - hacking up his own goddamn lungs, hopefully metaphorically, back in Wilbur’s underground hide - and he rolls his eyes. He’ll stay out a couple minutes more. Just to be sure. He won’t find anything, but - just to be sure.

(Just to be sure. He’ll go out again tomorrow, just to be sure. He’s been combing the perimeter of the city for months, just to be sure. At some point, Techno’s gonna have to admit he’s just as naive as the rest of them: trussed along on a string, dragged after a will-o-the-wisp of a too-optimistic dream. Like the kids who chase those wisps along the alleyways, thinking they’re fairies when they’re a symptom of the too-contaminated air, what happens when a stray spark meets a clump of flammable gas. Techno’s never been one of those kids, but he’s no better than them. Just to be sure, he tells himself. It’s a goddamn lie.)

He grits his teeth and presses onwards, checking his compass to make sure he doesn’t lose his way - it’s aligned to his barracks in the city guard-campus, because having anything to point the way back to Wilbur’s hide would be foolish at best and a death warrant at worst. The wind has picked up, whipping debris against the few centimetres of exposed skin he was dumb enough to leave uncovered; he’ll have some nasty wind-rash when he gets back, and anyone who looks twice at him will know he was out in the wastes beyond the city walls from the strip of reddened flesh in the gap between his eyes and the top of his scarf. That’s okay. He’s military; he is, technically, allowed to be out here. His feet fall, rhythmic, one after the other. They warn all the new recruits about journey trance: if you get lost too long in your own slow pace, soon you won’t be able to stop. It might be a myth. Sure, there have been cases of people walking and walking into the desert until the air choked them, not stopping until they were physically unable to keep moving, but - who could blame them? Techno doesn’t need a trance to explain those deaths away, as much as the military doesn’t like to consider suicide. If they weren’t in journey trance, they were deserters, Techno was told; what a polarity.

One foot after the other, steady into the windstorm. Techno should really turn around. He’ll turn around in a moment. This is - he checks his compass, squinting to make out the display upon its surface - the furthest out he’s ever been, and it’s never wise to stay out here for too long.

Just as he’s adjusting his scarf one last time, though - he spots something. 

It could be a mirage. It could be a trick of the light, fata morgana or what have you. But it’s not anything straight out of a dream - there’s no mythical green, no fabled font of clear, untainted water - and, oddly, that makes Techno want to believe in it more. Because the chance of something real being this far out -

It’s probably wreckage. He’s a little too far away to see what it is properly, can only make out the dim, hulking shape of something silver half-buried in the sand.

He should turn back. It’s probably nothing.

Techno presses on.

One step, two steps, and he’s close enough to see the shape more clearly: some kind of building, maybe, because he thinks he can make out the shipping-crate-style wall that makes up most of the still-standing houses in the city. Boxes packed on boxes. Another step, and he revises his assumption: this is pure metal, of damn impressive quality, too. Another step, and Techno thinks, inanely, This could really be something.

Another two, and he’s upon it; he falls to his knees to scrape away some of the sand. From this height, too, it’s easier to see - there’s less wind closer to the ground, and so the dust is less disturbed. There’s some writing on the metal, in a script he doesn’t recognise - this must be old. He’s no idea how no one’s ever found it before now.

It’s some kind of - speeder.

Curiosity drives Techno on, and he draws out a shovel from his pack, begins working in earnest to excavate the relic - sure enough, it is ridiculously old, but strangely well-preserved. Once he is able to unearth the supports, the wind helps him drag the rest out of the ground by tipping it over to stand upright - and then, mercilessly, strips the sand from its metal bones, the dust in the air as efficient as carrion creatures. Sure enough, it’s a goddamn speeder - like the skinny ones that litter the alleyways, but oversized, and with shields up around the sides to protect potential passengers from the screaming winds. It’s stunning that it survived out here for what must be incredibly long - and that no one found it. The metal must be reinforced. And maybe the city’s inhabitants just don’t care enough to search the wastelands, not like Techno - well, not like Tommy cares, and not like Techno searches. Or - Techno could so easily have walked past this in the dust storm, could have come five paces from it and never noticed - maybe it’s luck. Maybe it’s some kind of intervention, some kind of higher power.

God, he sounds like Wilbur. 

Hesitantly, Techno tugs open the gate to the speeder’s internal platform and takes a slow step forwards. The metal doesn’t give under his boots; it doesn’t even creak. Once he’s behind the shields, breathing’s suddenly easier - he hadn’t even noticed how damn difficult it was getting, but even this respite from the wind-driven dust makes it easier not to choke. There’s just as much toxic gas, but - a little less debris. Pogchamp, as Tommy’d say. (Techno doesn’t know where the hell the kid got that from.) The platform is covered in sand, of course, but - stepping onto it feels strangely haunted. There’s an air of ghostliness to this little pocket of quiet - the shields muffle the sound of the wind, mute its screaming to a distant wail, and it feels like another planet. Or like Techno’s stepped into the past.

Strangely reverently, he crosses the platform, half-expecting each step to be the one where the metal collapses from underneath him. It holds. 

At the front of the speeder, the console is, miraculously, still intact. It’s not powered on, but - Techno notices, when he crouches, the exposed battery slot. The previous battery’s long since rotted, made from half-organic material as it is, but he knows its size and shape. Happens to carry a spare one in his pack, as per military regulation.

It seems too perfect. Techno doesn’t believe in fate, or divine intervention, but - he’s certainly been very lucky today. He reaches for his pack, considers powering on the speeder. But what would he even find? What would be the point?

Best case scenario, there’s something interesting in the navigation logs. He might be able to find who lost this speeder, where it came from, why it was abandoned. Worst case scenario, Techno burns his only battery and leaves with nothing. Actually, no - worst case scenario, it explodes beneath him. Technoboom, and all that.

He shouldn’t. He really, really shouldn’t. What would be the -?

Techno unslings his pack. It makes a dull thud as it hits the metal of the platform beneath him, and he tugs the battery from its depths. He shouldn’t, but it fits, nigh-perfectly. He holds himself perfectly still as he feels the click of it falling neatly into place - he refuses, after all, to flinch - but there is no explosion. No - he chances a smile to himself, thinking of Tommy and his stupid portmanteaus - no Technoboom. Only the hum of an engine beneath him, dull and old with the faintest rattle to it, and then - the gentle song of different-shaped beeps and chirps as the console wakes itself up.

What the hell.

Slowly, Techno stands, leaving the pack sitting on the floor. Before him, the screen has come to life - unrealistic, maybe, after all these years. He could be hallucinating. Wouldn’t put it past himself, especially after hanging out with Wilbur and Phil and their, uh, creativity-inducing substances always saturating certain rooms of the hide. (They’ve gotta be careful, though, keeping that thick smoke away from Tommy. It’d wreak havoc on him, in more ways than one.

… Admittedly, the idea of a high Tommy is very amusing to consider, and brings a faint smile to Techno’s face. Maybe if the kid ever brings it up himself, they’ll look into procuring some sort of alternative that doesn’t involve killing his respiratory system. Should be Tommy’s decision if he ever feels like trying, after all.)

The speeder doesn’t even require a login, so it can’t have belonged to anybody too important - only hums further to life at Techno’s gentle, gloved touch on its control panel. He selects a button, and a digital map sprawls before him. God, this really is old - from what he can tell, the borders of the city have shifted since. The city might not even have walls on this map, though they could just be using different symbols to demarcate them. The speeder, this impossible living relic, is a little blue icon blinking cheerily at the centre of the map, not far from the city walls - further away, as Techno zooms out, idly wondering if he can get a view of the coastline and use that to date this thing, is a myriad of different icons. Some red, in known hazardous areas - Techno recognises an irradiated ravine whose warnings still persist on modern maps, where they take cadets to harvest the radiation and its data if they feel like giving the kids a scare. There’s warnings of a landslide on a path Techno’s walked a couple times, where he’s only ever seen flat earth. Some amber, with little messages - Techno presses on one, and it’s signed by a crewmember calling themself Karl, and it reads stopped for lunch here 12/08, dream made stupid joke :). Another is unsigned, but reads george last song, so context-reliant that Techno’s got zero idea what it could mean. The orange icons litter the city and the surrounding landscape: memoirs of a crew, likely long-dead, and the small things they wanted to remember.

There’s one icon, too, that’s a sort of - pale yellow, tinged with blue? Techno presses it, and the icon reads only Paradise. At his touch, a half-completed route pops up - the nav data, then. This speeder - came from somewhere far away, on the coast. (Techno’s pretty sure that area’s flooded now, anyway.) And they had almost reached the Paradise marker, before - something happened.

For some reason, they stopped, all those years ago. But the route to Paradise - two or three days away by speeder, fourty or fifty on foot, according to the nav systems - still bleeps pleasantly, in a strange shade of yellow, almost complete. 

Techno imagines walking past this speeder in the dust-storm. Imagines the winds burying it, leaving it here for years on years, somehow still functional. Imagines being just another person to pass it unwittingly by.

Paradise.

Sounds like something Wilbur would say.

It can’t - be anything. Nothing could last that long, anyway, and something that close would have been discovered by now, surely - although admittedly the city governments aren’t big on authorising use of speeders, not even by the military, and no one would survive a trek on foot through the desert, not one that took more than a month, not even with proper gear. There would be no point attempting it. It would be foolish, and naive, and -

Hells, Techno’s gonna tell them, isn’t he?

He gives a huff that could be irritation or acceptance and crouches down again, to extract his own battery from below the dashboard - no use letting this thing run down to nothing, after all, especially not if they want to (hells forbid) take it somewhere. As he twists it, clicks it out of place, wrenches it from the clutch of the speeder, the faint engine hum disappears - and within the shields, it’s almost silent. The wind must have died, if briefly, because he can barely hear it. It feels like the entire speeder is holding its breath.

Techno rolls his eyes, adjusts his scarf, and crosses the deck again towards the gate off the speeder, making sure to program its coordinates into his communicator. It’ll be a few hours’ trek back to the cities, after all, and he doesn’t want to be out past dark for any longer than he has to.

He makes it back to the city and, once he’s within the walls, unwraps his scarf to let his mods take care of breathing for him. He talks to his CO. He details his journey through the expanses of fuck-all, gets an eyeroll and a dismissal for his trouble, and does not smile as he walks away.

He doesn’t.

He heads, then, through the gridiron undercity, making his way through the street corners all at right angles and ducking every so often through a shortcut to make sure he isn’t followed. It would only be mildly disastrous if someone found him visiting Wilbur’s hide, after all, let alone if he was discovered to be a member. Technically, Wilbur’s got grand aspirations of taking down the government, and even though he’s the only member of the hide who thinks they’ve got even a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, his few public demonstrations did result in him and his band of undergrounders being branded enemies of the state. Techno, known affiliate of said state, can’t really afford to be associated with the same. 

Doesn’t stop him from knowing the way like the back of his hand, though. But, well. Those idiots that hang around Wilbur are, if not Techno’s family, the closest thing he’s got, and so he’ll put up with the danger for the sake of seeing them.

Once he’s taken the thirty requisite alleyways and shuffled his way through the catacombs they lead to, once he’s made it to the unassuming service door hidden in a dark corner of those catacombs, once he’s done Tommy’s stupid secret knock, there’s the sound of an old-fashioned gun cocking and Techno has to fight not to roll his eyes as the door opens. “It’s me,” he says, shouldering his way past Wilbur, who must think the ridiculously antiquated weaponry is fashionable, or something. “Unless you’re gonna shoot me. With your gunpowder.”

“Fuck you,” Wilbur says good-naturedly. “How’s the enemy?”

“About the same as always?” 

“Could be worse, I suppose. What about you, Technoblade, done anything interesting?”

This is definitely the point at which Techno should say he might have found the mythical Eden Tommy’s been so adamant exists. If not that, he should really at least mention the abandoned speeder, given its technology could probably be a help. Besides, it’s unusual to find anything in the wastes, so even if it were completely useless Techno would still do well to mention it.

“Uhhh,” he says, stalling, because how the hell do you say ‘I found a route to something that some long-dead refugees called Paradise’ without sounding nutty? 

“That’s nice,” Wilbur says, tossing the gun into a corner - Techno winces, but nothing explodes, thankfully - and clapping Techno on the back. There’s no one else in the first room of the hide, but Techno can hear a couple of them laughing behind one of the doors - maybe Fundy’s got out the single pack of cards, or something. “Techno, I, uh - I wanted to talk to you about something. Before you head in there with the rest of them.”

“Well, you know how desperate I am to socialise,” Techno says. “Relentlessly social. You know me.” And he’s missed the convenient opening. Damn him. The sarcasm flows easily, although he is admittedly not as opposed to the idea of socialising with these people in particular as the heavy dryness to his tone might imply - Wilbur’s crew know him well enough to know when he doesn’t feel like talking, after all, and they never pressure him to do shit he doesn’t want to, are content to let him sit in the corner if he feels like it, equally happy to welcome him into their fold if he’s got the energy. He won’t lie, it’s kinda nice. Still, he’s - got something to say (understatement of the millennium), so he probably shouldn’t head in there just yet.

“Tommy’s, uh,” Wilbur says, and he draws himself closer to Techno, bumps their shoulders together. They’re pretty much of a height, the two of them, although Techno’s built a little like a brick shithouse and Wilbur’s built like someone grabbed his feet and head in the womb and stretched them as far apart as possible. “Tommy’s been getting worse. I dunno if something in the city’s been setting him off, or maybe the tech we’ve got is breaking down, or it could just be the natural progression - I don’t fucking know what to do, I was hoping you’d have something.”

“Oh,” Techno says. Worry clutches at his stomach, though he’ll never admit to it. “How - how much is worse?”

“He was on the tanks on Tuesday,” Wilbur says, “couldn’t breathe without them. He’s better today. Just on the respirator.”

“Oh,” Techno repeats, and, despite himself, sucks in a breath through his teeth. The image of Tommy on oxygen tanks is one he’s been trying to rid himself of for years, ever since the last time the kid’s lungs got really, really bad - they can’t afford the good tanks, or the good oxygen, so Tommy’s got to lug around the great fucking things when he should be resting and even the cleanest air they can get him isn’t entirely clean. It’s - it’s shit. They’ve been looking into getting him mods like Techno’s for years, but he doesn’t qualify for any of the welfare programs, and there’s no way any of them are going to afford them out of pocket, and Tommy’s not exactly fit to join the military and get them as part of the package. “Is - I mean, he’s improving, if he’s not on the tanks now?”

“Yeah, a bit,” Wilbur says, in the tone that means not fucking much. “I sent Niki to buy refills. I was -” A bitter, slightly self-deprecating laugh. “I was kinda hoping you’d have some good news, Techno, not gonna lie. But - life goes on, eh?”

“I - I do,” Techno says. Impulsive. It’s stupid, is what it is - there’s no reason to bring it up now, not if Tommy’s not well enough to even make the journey to the speeder, because it would have been difficult in his normal condition but it’d be damn near impossible now. He shouldn’t bring it up. He shouldn’t mention it. “Have good news, I mean.”

Wilbur snorts. “What, you get a promotion?”

“Nah,” Techno says, “no, I, uh.” It comes easily, then, like he’s a prophet delivering words already sculpted by some ancient higher power. “I found the way to Paradise. Like Tommy always, uh - Like in the stories.”

He watches, then, as Wilbur gets it. Techno has never been a great one for reading expressions, but Wilbur has always made a little more sense, for some reason, than most others Techno interacts with, and so he can make out the various different realisations crossing over Wilbur’s face: first confusion, then an awful, undampened hope, then oh, but Tommy would never make it, and none of us will be able to bring ourselves to leave him. “That’s,” Wilbur says, pausing, like he’s sure some latter half of the sentence will impress itself upon him - but the next words never come.

“Yeah,” Techno says, and sucks in a deep breath. “Do we - do we even - would it be cruel? To tell him, I mean?”

Wilbur turns away. He buries his hands in his own hair, and Techno knows that look - he wants to pace. (He’s long suspected Wilbur’s urge to pace is the same kind of antsy need-to-sneeze feeling as when Techno drums his fingers on tables or hums idly to feel the vibration low in his own chest, but hells forbid he bring that up.) “That’s a good fucking question,” Wilbur says. “Uh. Fuck, we’ve got to, right?”

“We could - always go when he’s better,” Techno says, then remembers, abruptly, that they are not supposed to be going. “Honestly, Wilbur, I don’t think we should -”

“You want to not think we should,” Wilbur corrects, raising his head, just a little, to shoot a knowing smile Techno’s way. “I know that tone, Technoblade. You’re just as hopelessly naive as the rest of us.”

“Shoot me,” Techno says, with great trepidation, and Wilbur snickers. It’s nothing full-bellied like Techno’s heard him laugh in the past, but - it’s more than he’s heard from Wilbur in a very long time. It’s a start. 

Paradise, Techno thinks foolishly, nonsensically, is in the air.

They tell Tommy, in the end. Or, well, Wilbur does. Techno’s there in the corner of the room, trying not to fidget, hands shoved in his pockets, as Wilbur stumbles his way through an explanation; every so often, Techno will pipe up with elaboration or correction. Tommy doesn’t actually look too bad - only a little paler than usual, and Techno can see he’s got the good respirator on, which they save for when he really needs it because none of them want to kill the filter any faster than necessary. Other than that, though - well, he’s actually lying down, which is more alarming than it should be. At WIlbur’s words, however, he sits bolt upright in the bed.

“We have to fucking -”

“No,” Wilbur says, “we’re gonna wait, okay? Until your lungs are a little less, uh -”

“Shit, you can say shit - they’re fine, Wil, honestly.” Tommy’s voice has taken on that whiny quality that Techno will never admit he’s been known to fold for. “I can - I can make it. You said the air’s good in the speeder, right, Techno?”

“It … wasn’t too awful, yeah,” Techno admits. It was better than a lot of the city, honestly, even within the walls. “But Tommy, you -”

“You have to let me come,” Tommy says. His eyes are bright as if lit from within; some kind of passionate flame has ignited inside him, and Techno looks at him, at the way his hands are fisted in the blankets, at the determined set of his jaw, still smoothed with teenage fat, and realises that there is no way they will not be making the journey to that speeder. Something about this kid has got the hide wrapped around his little finger - maybe not every one of them, but, well. Techno knows he’d kill for Tommy. What’s one two-hour journey, in comparison?

“Tommy,” Wilbur says, and there’s an awful wobble to his voice, “you - you know what it’s like, out there. This’d involve going outside the city walls -”

“I can make it,” Tommy insists. “I’ve - I have to make it, right?” He pauses, cracking a grin. “Gotta see Pogtopia.”

“The hell is Pogtopia,” Techno deadpans, because he knows damn well the kid wants to be asked. It’s written plain and clear across his face.

“Paradise,” Tommy says, “it’s a bit of a shit name, innit? I gave it a better one. A safe place’d be pretty pog, right? So -”

“You are such a fucking idiot,” Wilbur says, “you’re terrible,” and he’s smiling. “That’s - kinda good, though. Pogtopia it is.”

“I thought you’d like Paradise,” Techno says. “Sounded like something you’d say, Wilbur.”

“Well, I’m saying Pogtopia,” Tommy sniffs, and Techno mutters something about how that word will never leave his mouth, but, well -

The next morning, they announce to the rest of the hide that they’ll be heading - much to Techno’s chagrin - to Pogtopia. He’d really thought Paradise would stick, but.

Maybe if they’d kept to Paradise, more of the hide’s inhabitants would feel like staking their lives on Techno’s word, he thinks bitterly - as it is, Phil is the only one to stand, and he was damn predictable. Of course he’d come; he’s Tommy’s and Wilbur’s and maybe Techno’s too, just as much as they’re his, and meanwhile everyone else has that look on their face that the older officers get when the COs give lectures on journey trance. Something like you are going to get yourself killed, but I don’t want to be the one to tell you. Something like you have to know you are going to die, but I will not meet your eye in case I don’t like what I find there. Niki, who Techno likes to consider a friend - they’ve had some interesting chats over books and tea - glances down, picking at a hangnail that is already bright red and irritated. Fundy, who Techno has always found an amicable silence with, if never quite understood, stands and leaves; his footsteps are deafening in the sudden, prickling silence.

“He’ll come back,” Wilbur says, after a moment. 

Tubbo, who’s always been the quietest of the hide save maybe Niki, looks up, his eyes burning, furious. “You won’t,” he spits.

There’s a collective exhale. Eret, who stands in the corner, almost glacially still, reaches up to adjust her glasses; her mouth twists into something like a grimace.

“You can’t let Tommy go,” Tubbo spits. Tommy is asleep in the other room, and all of them are loath to wake him. “Wilbur, if you - if you do this, it’ll kill him. You know that, right?”

“Tubbo,” Wilbur says, hands out, placating, “he can make it.”

“Techno can bring the speeder to the walls,” Phil says. “If he goes. It’ll only be a short walk then.” And this, Techno thinks appreciatively, is why they keep Phil around - certainly it’s not because Techno is fond, or anything - sometimes he’s pretty damn practical, chances upon the obvious solutions to problems that had stumped the rest of them with very little effort. Bring the fucking speeder back to the walls. Of course.

“A short walk through the outer wastes -”

“They’re not that bad just outside the walls,” Techno offers, and then tries not to cringe when Tubbo glares at him. “The, uh - they provide shelter. The wind’s not as -”

“You should’ve kept your fucking mouth shut,” Tubbo tells him, his eyes boring holes through Techno’s skull. “Arsehole.”

It shouldn’t sting. It shouldn’t. Tubbo, Techno tries to convince himself, does not mean it; he’s lashing out because, well. He thinks they have sentenced his best friend to death at the hands of his own blind faith, which, as any cynical soldier knows, is the worst way to go. All of them are cynical, in this hide, save Tommy - it’s just that some of them are stupid enough to go along regardless.

“It’s Tommy’s decision,” Wilbur says, “whether he goes. Techno, you’ll leave at dawn tomorrow. How long -”

“Two hours,” Techno says, “give or take. I don’t know how long it’ll take to get the speeder back, though.”

“We’ll need to be ready.” Wilbur, some odd hybrid of cynical patience and fierce idealism, stares each member of the hide down as he talks; some cringe, and some look away, and not one of them meets his eyes. “They’ll see your approach, Techno - we have to be there the moment you’re back.”

“Sounds, uh. Sounds good.” Techno would rather shrink into a back room round about now - Tubbo is still glaring daggers at him, and Niki glances his way with eyes that carry the cold, detached apathy of someone who is very practiced at giving up on the doomed, and it’s a pretty grim sight all round. 

“Anyone who wants to come,” Wilbur says, “should be ready, tomorrow, dawn. We’ll leave two hours after Techno does, and it shouldn’t take long to get to the gate. Techno, you’ll let me know where you’ll bring it?”

“Yeah, will do.”

“Alright.” Wilbur grins, then. It shouldn’t be unnerving. It is. “We’re headed to Paradise, men -” Eret clears their throat - “crew, anyone who wants to come. I’ve heard green is pretty fucking spectacular.”

“You know that’s a myth,” Tubbo snaps, and his chair screeches as he stands. When he leaves, the door slams behind him; the room is left briefly speechless in the wake of its clear thud. Then Techno startles - there’s someone in the hallway behind him.

“Pogtopia,” comes Tommy’s voice, then, a little raspy but with no less fight in it than usual, and Techno relaxes. “Wil, you’re saying it wrong.”

“I’ll say it how I like,” Wilbur says, but he whirls, his coat flaring, and drags Tommy into a hug. Tommy protests, squirming; Techno can see his smile. “Phil, you’ll be there, then?” he says, over Tommy’s head.

“‘Course,” Phil says simply, and that’s that. Then he gives a chuckle. “You sure tomorrow is the best idea? I’m pretty sure there’s a superstition about beginning things on a sixteenth.”

“Oh, is tomorrow the sixteenth?” Wilbur says, just as Tommy manages to squirm out of his grasp. “I hadn’t even noticed.”

“It’ll be fine,” Tommy says dismissively. “That’s just a superstition.”

So is green, Techno thinks but does not say, and watches as Tommy and Wilbur turn to head back down the hallway, shoulder to shoulder. Two peas in a pod, or brother and brother, they are - neither believing in superstition, but both believing in miracles. Both believing in Paradise.

Phil makes some kind of noise, one that could be consternation or concern, and then gives Techno a gentle thwack on the shoulder, with just enough force behind it that the light touch doesn’t make him wince away. “It’ll be fine,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself. “Good luck with the walk, okay, mate? You stay safe out there, it’s a bit of a fucking nightmare from what I’ve heard.”

“It’s doable,” Techno says. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

“Good, good.”

“Yeah,” Techno says, and does not think about superstition.

The second time he makes the journey, eyes still crusted by the hours before dawn, it’s quicker - instead of wandering, searching, he forges a straight path towards the coordinates saved on his communicator and straight-up shaves half an hour off the time spent walking. Which gives him a little time to be alone with his thoughts, because he can’t afford to show up before the rest of them are ready at the gates. There’s a strange quality of agelessness that settles over his shoulders within the bounds of the speeder, and it leaves him feeling on edge, just barely, like there are invisible spiders all over his shoes. He slots his battery back into place - a different one to yesterday, because he wanted it to hold the maximum charge possible, and when Wilbur and Phil meet him at the gates with Tommy, both of them will be carrying their own spares. (It was difficult to scrounge up half the hide’s spare batteries for what most of them seem to think is some kind of doomed mission, but - Wilbur’s always been very persuasive, and Tommy’s always been very persistent, and between the two of them, they managed.)

When the battery clicks into just the right configuration, the speeder comes alight again, with that same gentle engine-hum that feels almost ethereal; Techno sets to familiarising himself with the controls. The faint worry he’d been trying to ignore, that the thing wouldn’t move, is quickly dispelled - he sends it skipping over a sand dune, first on the leg-things beneath it that remind him of skis in the old snow mythos, then, holding his breath as he presses a button to fold them away, in hover-mode to keep the sand from getting into the engine. It functions perfectly. Beautifully. There’s a tiny gap between the shields and the roof, and dust comes flurrying through it at the motion, but Techno finds the button for a ventilation system and flicks it on.

The air’s - fucking stellar, then. Techno isn’t much one for swearing, but he thinks this warrants it. There was some kind of - freshener, or something, left in one of the vents, and it fills the entire speeder with a faint sweetness that leaves Techno taking deep, deep gulps of air, scarf tugged down to rest around his shoulders, the brilliance of it almost addictive.

He’s never smelt something like that. Never been so exhilarated from something as simple as a breath of clear air and some old-world air freshener. But, well - wow.

At the half-hour mark, he stands from where he’d been resting with his back to one of the shields and makes his way back over to the controls - despite his fiddling around with the speeder’s various features, the main screen still displays the navigation data. (The route to Paradise still blinks, in that strange hue of yellow.) The maps are definitely years out of date - Techno did some research last night on the flooding of the coastline, and from that he can put it at maybe forty or fifty years old - but the city is still in roughly the same direction, and he’d told Wilbur and them to meet him at the eastern gate. (There’s something about Paradise being to the east that feels too good to be true - eastward in Eden, and all that. But the stories have no importance here. What matters is that real people once used this speeder, and had real nav-data as to this mythical greenplace’s location, and now the map sprawls on a screen before Techno, real enough to touch.)

He takes the throttle in his right hand. Sets his left hand over the screen, where the steering and autopilot commands are kept. Techno hasn’t piloted one of these since basic training, but it feels almost right.  

He eases his right hand forwards, enters a series of commands with his left, and the shuttle streaks towards the city.

Holy fuck.

Techno’s never seen anything move this fast - the wind screams past outside, but the shields hold firm, and the console continues beeping cheerily away like it isn’t rocketing across the goddamn desert. Slightly dazed, he takes his eyes off the sand outside and watches the little blue dot on the map, the one representing the speeder, eat up the nav-trail between its resting place and the city. Then, antsy, he checks his watch.

They should just about be there by the time he arrives. And they better be ready.

It takes the speeder four minutes to move a distance that took Techno two hours to walk; admittedly, its sleek shape is far more aerodynamic than his own body, but the disparity is so wide it’s almost funny. Once he gets within eyeshot of the eastern gate, he taps out a message to Wilbur - a get ready - and receives a thumbs-up emote in reply. 

The pickup goes so smoothly it feels like something out of a storybook, happens so quickly Techno can barely process it until it’s already done: the speeder draws to a smooth halt right by the base of the gate, and there’s a shout from someone on guard, but then Techno sees them. Tommy, lugging a tank behind him and with a respirator clamped firmly over his mouth; Wilbur, a battery under one arm, pack slung over his shoulder, that stupid obsolete gun at his belt and his eyes darting every which way as they approach; Phil, with a pack strapped tight to his back, easily the most put-together of the three of them. There’s the telltale screech of one of the pulley systems, likely a guard heading down to demand clearance, but - the pulleyhold hasn’t even made it halfway down the wall by the time Techno’s throwing open the gate, helping Tommy drag the tank on board, hurtling back towards the controls only to find Phil already there, one hand on the throttle. Techno has a moment of panic when his hands are shaking too much to zoom out the map, but Phil cuts in smoothly to do it for him - pauses, at the sight of the strange yellow icon - his hand hovers over the console. “This one, mate?” he says, a little hushed, a little awed. Something in his voice like he means Oh, it’s really there. Like he means I trusted you, I did, but seeing it is something else.

“Yeah,” Techno manages, and Phil selects the icon, starts the route - the groaning of the pulley system breaks into a loud clattering - then the two of them reach for the throttle at the exact same moment, glance at each other, eyes equally wide. Push it, together, to its highest point just as Wilbur manages to slam the gate shut behind all of them.

Techno is prepared for the sudden jolt as the speeder breaks into motion; Phil is not, and stumbles backwards until he’s planted firmly on his ass on the deck. Tommy has his back to one of the shields, his chest heaving but his eyes so full of exhilaration it must be killing him not to break out into laughter; Wilbur is gripping onto the gate for dear life, looking distinctly like the disgruntled starfish from that one piece of stock footage everyone uses in history classes about the ocean. Slowly, Phil takes a deep breath. Another. Then lets himself fall backwards until he’s lying flat on the deck, and begins to laugh.

That’s what sets the rest of them off. “Holy shit,” Wilbur says, “the air in here -”

“It’s fucking mental,” Phil says. “Holy fuck.”

“Do you think I could -” Tommy says, and raises a hand towards the respirator, and Wilbur barks a no but Techno tilts his head, considering.

“It’s,” he says, “the best air I’ve breathed in my life. Dunno about you guys.”

“You’ve got your nose stuff, Technoblade,” Wilbur says, but he, too, is taking such deep breaths that Techno can see his chest rising and falling from the other side of the speeder. “I - you’re - this is better than the fucking hide, though. Less smoke. Less, like, gas and shit. More dust.”

“If it’s the dust that’s the only issue,” Phil suggests, “you could grab a mask, Tommy. Filter out the bigger shit.”

“That works,” Techno says, “if, uh, one of you has one? In a pack?”

“Yeah, I’ve - I’ve got some, I’m pretty sure. Gimme a sec, I’ll grab ‘em.”

“Holy shit,” Wilbur repeats, and slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the ground. His eyes are brighter than Tommy’s, and Techno does a double-take when he spots their unshed tears. “Holy shit - it’s real, Technoblade. We’re actually going to fucking make it.”

“Told you,” Tommy sniffs.

Techno, against his will, feels a slight smile tugging at his lips. He’s still using the console for balance, and turns his attention back to the map - maybe he shouldn’t risk compromising the data, because the hells know it’d be the saddest, stupidest thing if he tried to rename the icon and ended up deleting it by accident, but. Well. He’s feeling risky today. “Hey, Tommy,” he says, and selects the icon again; it brings up the details of the nav-route in progress, and there’s details about the amount of energy left in the filters, the amount of bonus oxygen left in the speeder’s subdeck tank, that Techno will have to do maths with later. Just to be certain they can make it. Tommy’s got tanks of his own, though - they should be fine. “Come check this out once you’ve got a mask on, okay?”

“Sure,” Tommy says, and, still faintly smiling, Techno double-taps the bit of the icon that reads Paradise. Releases a shuddering breath when the only thing that happens is the appearance of a text interface. Enters, letter by letter, a different name.

A few minutes later, Tommy - wearing a pale blue mask and very obviously exhilarating in the quality of the air - appears at his shoulder. “‘Ello Tech-no-blaaade,” he says, in the raspy voice he adopts when he feels like memeing. “What’ve you - Oh.” At once, the faux-growl drops from his tone. “Oh, that’s - pretty fucking poggers. Holy shit.”

The little icon, in its strange shade of yellow, reads Pogtopia. And they’re on their goddamn way.

It doesn’t take them too long to settle into the swing of things. Phil seems to have picked a corner of the speeder as his own, and he spends long hours there, eyes fixed to one of the narrow glass-covered peepholes in the shields; he, unlike Techno, has never been outside the city walls, in all of his life. (“And that life,” Tommy says, scoffing, “was very, very long.” Phil abandons the corner briefly to take a swipe at him for that.) Wilbur paces, because that’s what he does. Tommy’s low on energy for the first few hours, adjusting to having clean air to breathe, but eventually he picks himself up and begins pestering Techno about this and that. With the mask, and lack of respirator, he looks like he’s never been healthier. (Techno doesn’t miss the way Wilbur takes a few minutes on the respirator himself, and makes a mental note to keep an eye on his breathing - he’s got a tendency to forget about his own variety of asthma in favour of stressing over Tommy’s wimpy lungs.)

Techno waits until Phil’s keeping Tommy occupied - the two of them sniping back and forth at each other about something to do with a game of cards last night? - before beckoning Wilbur over to the console, where they sit down with calculators and work out details. The navigation data says there are fifty hours left, if they travel through the nights. Wilbur tallies up the total oxygen they have in tanks, in case the speeder’s ventilation system stops working. Both he and Techno know off the top of their heads exactly how much oxygen Tommy needs, on average, per hour on a bad day. 

Even in their most disastrous calculations, they have enough for him to make it. There’s enough for all of them to make it. Fifty hours is … almost unthinkably quick, and changes the game completely. They could throw one of the tanks off like ballast and probably still have enough for Tommy to breathe from it the entire rest of the way.

Phil, who has been sending glances over at them out of the corner of his eye, produces the hide’s pack of cards from his pack; Wilbur chortles over it, and his quickness to laughter must do something to ease Phil’s nerves, because Techno can see the exhale Phil gives when he thinks none of them are looking. They pass the first few hours with some game involving lying about whether a card is in your hand, Phil and Wilbur and Tommy, while Techno stands a little distance away, watching. He’s had a bit of a stressful morning, honestly. But they’re content to let him be quiet, and there’s a pause at the start of every round in case he wants to join in, and around about two hours in he does exactly that. And loses, in spectacular fashion. Wilbur’s the only one whose bluffs he’s ever able to call; Tommy’s face moves too quickly, ever-expressive, while Phil’s poker face is utterly impassive. Phil ends up thrashing every one of them. 

It shouldn’t feel as lighthearted as it does - they are, after all, heading further and further into scorched wilderness, and the air outside the speeder is utterly unbreathable without respiratory gear at this point. Three hours from the city by speeder is more than two days on foot, and that’s at Techno’s pace, someone who’s been trained for long marches through harsh conditions. If anything goes wrong, they’re - 

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

So Techno doesn’t.

Later still, Techno’s sorting through the contents of Phil’s pack - taking inventory soothes his anxiety, though he couldn’t tell you why. He’s already done Wilbur’s, and knows the contents of his own by heart - when a faint “Wow” from Phil catches his attention. He looks up, and sees Phil, again, at one of the glass lenses.

“What is it?” 

“The sunset,” Phil says. “It’s - Christ, I know it’s ‘cause of the shit in the air, but. Holy fuck, that’s pretty.”

Tommy perks up and jumps to his feet, jostling Phil out of his spot rather than taking up a position at literally any of the other viewing points scattered around the speeder. Phil yelps and mutters something uncharitable. Techno draws himself slowly to his own feet, and Wilbur pauses in his pacing at one of the other lenses in what must be the speeder’s western shield.

It’s pretty good. Nothing Techno hasn’t seen before, with all the journeys he’s made out here, researching greenplace after greenplace and having all of them fall through, or be long-gone, or be completely made up. Red bleeds across the horizon, the sun a dark crimson ball spreading its harsh orange wings; it’s gorgeous, if you’re one who likes appreciating the effects of the planet being so violently fucked that the sky is permanently clouded with smog. Techno’s familiar enough with the concept. Sunset is often the brightest time of day, what with the eastern coast constantly being on fire - along with what’s left of the ocean, given the oil in it - and the emissions of the city heading straight up, leaving the west positively clear in comparison. From the city, however, it’s impossible to see a good sunset unless you’re standing in one of the guard towers on the western wall, and they don’t let non-military up without a good reason, much less wanted insurgents.

“Kinda fucks you up,” Wilbur says quietly, after a long moment of just looking. “That it’s that way because of - you know, that it’s so gorgeous ‘cause the sky is so shit. I dunno, I’m - I dunno what I’m saying.”

“No, I know what you mean,” Phil says, gazing, and gazing, and gazing. Techno hums quiet assent. Tommy makes no sound, only takes a deep, shuddering breath like he’s back in the city, and then bursts out into laughter as Phil, Techno and Wilbur turn to stare at him in equally startled concern.

“I’m fine,” he insists, demonstrating deep, exaggerated breaths to prove it. “Promise. I just - thought it looked cool.”

“Life finds a way,” Wilbur says, faux-philosophically, and then shrieks as Tommy lunges at him for the very, very stupid, dated quote.

Techno doesn’t sleep that night - someone has to make sure the speeder doesn’t collapse underneath them, and it might as well be him. (Wilbur’s got bags under his eyes the size of Jupiter, Tommy needs the fucking rest, and Phil had lost when they’d played paper-scissors-rock for it. The agreement was that Phil could take the following night.) Nothing’s gone wrong, at least so far, so Techno’s been staring at the console for the better part of two hours - he’s switched it to display the view from the external cameras, so it’s almost like looking out a window without having to stand. He doesn’t mind the waiting. Techno’s always been good at passing time with his own thoughts and the sensation of his drumming fingers against a hard surface, and honestly, it’s kinda therapeutic to have some time alone in his head. Zoning out’s good for the soul, and all that.

He’s caught in some strange middle ground between being hyperaware of every movement around him - every sound, every breath - and completely oblivious to them all. He hears Phil shifting against his bedroll - he’d brought two, one for Tommy and one for himself, and they’d all had a bit of a snicker at Wilbur’s expense when they realised he’d forgot to bring his own, although Techno passed his over after a few minutes of teasing - but the sound doesn’t disturb him. Not, that is, until it comes again, and again, and then Phil makes some kind of discontented grumble and sits bolt upright. Techno raises his gaze to find Phil rubbing at his eyes, grimacing.

“You alright?” he offers.

Phil startles, visibly and viscerally. “Jesus fuck - yeah, mate, fine. Just can’t sleep. Something about the - motion, I guess.”

“I thought you would’ve liked it,” Techno says, nonsensically. He’s not sure why. Something about Phil just - seems made for movement, for alacrity, for flight across barren wastelands. In another life, he might’ve been a bird, if Techno believed in that sort of thing.

Phil gives a wry grin. “I do,” he says, and then glances across at Tommy and Wilbur, both still asleep, and lowers his voice guiltily. “Maybe - too much? I dunno, my - my brain keeps waking me up like I’m scared of missing out on any of it. Cause I do enjoy it. The movement, I mean.”

“Sometimes you just gotta lie awake and zone out,” Techno offers. He’d know. 

Phil offers him a half-laugh. “Yeah, guess so.”

They sit in silence for a little. Techno, antsy, switches the console view briefly back to the map - the little nav-route still blinks, its calculations projecting thirty hours left until, well. Until Pogtopia, now. Techno can’t help giving an amused little huff at the reminder of what they’d set the marker to. They’re just passing one of the speeder’s old crew’s markers, actually - amber, and the text, glowing faintly in the dark of the speeder, reads got our shit together <3. Techno has no idea what it could be referring to, but it feels private, intimate. Not meant for him. He clears his throat, and turns away, and almost jumps when he realises Phil is standing right beside him. 

“Is the orange the old crew, then?” Phil asks.

“Don’t do that,” Techno demands, and Phil grins his way, unrepentant. “Uhh, yeah. How’d - how’d you know?”

“Well, there had to be an old crew, didn’t there?” Phil says reasonably. “Wonder what happened to them.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever know,” Techno says. A little stupidly, he adds, “I don’t - really want to.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Phil says ruefully. “It’d be a bit depressing.”

Techno snorts. “Convince us that whatever got them was gonna get us.”

“Yeaaaah,” Phil says, long, like a sigh, and clears his own throat. “Yeah. You know I never really thought you’d fiind anything.”

Techno ducks his head. It’s useless, given Phil is so very much shorter than him, but still. “Neither did I, honestly.”

“Thirty years in that shithole of a city,” Phil says, “I’d never once heard of a greenplace that panned out.”

Techno swallows. “Me neither.”

“But,” Phil says, and cuts himself off - Techno, though, has a feeling he knows what he was gonna say. Something about Tommy, of course. Or Wilbur maybe - they’re as bad as each other, but motivated by different demons. Tommy believes in a greenplace cause he’s young and it keeps him going, and maybe because not being able to stomach the city’s open air has made him a bit sheltered. Wilbur believes because it’s all he’s got. 

Techno -

Techno believes, he thinks, because what else is there?

“I think I believe in it now,” Phil mumbles, echoing Techno’s thoughts, and then bumps their shoulders together. Techno gives a little startled huff, and then elbows him back; Phil chuckles. “Doesn’t really bear thinking about, anyway. I’m - gonna try to sleep again, I think.”

“You enjoy that,” Techno says, switching the console back to the camera. Outside, the desert speeds by, almost obscured by the smoke in the air.

By the next dark midday, the sun high above them and almost invisible, they’re singing.

Well. Wilbur’s singing. Tommy joins in, occasionally, self-conscious, but stops the moment anyone gives him a second glance. Phil stays quiet, but he’s smiling. The songs were quiet at first - some that Techno had heard before, in those dark days when he did his best to visit Wilbur because he knew damn well no one else would, all full of low desperation and you make me hate this city and some very on-the-nose lines about asthma. (Those songs, more than anything else, had been what made Techno understand how deeply Wilbur hated the city and its pollution and its indifferent governors - there was a certain furious quality to them, even the quieter ones.) At one point, earlier, Wilbur had sung maybe one day I’ll live in  - and abruptly cut himself off, but Techno knew how that line ended. 

Now, though, the songs are brighter. A little more nonsensical, at times - something about foam and headrests makes Phil burst out into bemused, incredulous laughter. But cheerier. Made for brighter times. It seems disingenuous, given the shadows across the sky, like the wings of Pollution on their black, apocalyptic horse - but here the brightness is, and it doesn’t give a damn. Wilbur’s voice cracks every so often because he’s been going for a few hours now, and Techno’s not gonna lie, his pitch isn’t the most fantastic in the world - but he sings like he means it. Like he’s hopeful.

He sings like Tommy’s days on oxygen tanks are over, and like Techno will never again have to report to a CO who wants his best friends dead, and like Phil will see all the sunsets he wants. He sings like the three of them made it. The city might’ve given Wilbur asthma, but the speeder will help all of them escape it, and -

And maybe, just maybe, Paradise - Pogtopia, if Tommy’s to be listened to, and hasn’t he proved that he is? - will be their new skyline. Maybe there’s a chance they could make it.

Techno thinks, brash and reckless and optimistic, We’re going to make it.

Wilbur sings like the sky isn’t dark. Techno dares to imagine a future - an Eden - where it isn’t. 

The second day drags onwards; despite Techno’s reservations, he can’t help the steady build of the anticipation in his chest, a crescendo. Once Wilbur’s throat is well and truly worn out, the four of them settle into a companionable quiet. Tommy plays some shitty old game on his communicator, and Phil watches the landscape pass like there’s no tomorrow, and Wilbur’s writing something in his notebook - probably a memoir, he’s got ideas like that - and Techno keeps zoning in and out of attention, eyes mostly on the map before him. On their little blue icon, eating up the yellow-blue trail. Like a slavering beast, drawing closer and closer to paradise.

Maybe they shouldn’t be heading to Pogtopia, after all.

But there’s nothing they can do, now. It’s not like they can turn around: Tommy won’t be shaken from it, and besides, he looks better than he ever has after the days on the speeder, his cheeks a healthy warm colour, his eyes shining rather than holding a defiant spark. Wilbur, too, looks better. Has been sleeping better. It could be the company, or the air quality, or the fact that - after all these years - he has something concrete to hope for.

Techno ruminates on hope, for a while. He’s still thinking about hope when he first hears it.

A strange tick. Or maybe tick isn’t the right word, because that invokes clocks, and it’s hardly regular - he notices it once and passes it off as a piece of gravel hitting the speeder’s shields. None of the others even glance up. Techno has always had better hearing than those around him, at least for small aural details that others would miss in favour of things like, uh, listening when someone was speaking to them; it’s not particularly unusual that he notices a faint sound and those around him don’t.

The tick, however, comes again a few minutes later. It’s not until the third time Techno hears it, after another ten minutes or so, that he pays it any real thought, stitches the separate occurrences together in his mind - maybe they’re going through a gravelly patch of land, or something. It shouldn’t be anything to worry about, but now his interest is piqued, and he pays more attention.

“You good, Tech?” Phil asks, glancing over. Techno startles.

“Uh, yeah,” he says. It comes again, a little ping, and this time he realises it’s not coming from the shields at all, but from somewhere directly below him. Something hitting the skis, maybe? They’re supposed to be retracted, since non-contact travel is faster and smoother, if less energy-efficient - but Techno supposes that after this speeder being abandoned for fifty-odd years, it’s bound to have a few eccentricities.

“Good, good,” Phil says absently.

Tommy looks up. “I’m fucking crushing this dinosaur game,” he says. “In case you were wondering.”

Techno fights the urge to roll his eyes; he and Tommy are the same in the way interests tend to consume them, and so he knows Tommy is also like him in that an indifference to the interest might come off as an insult to the kid. “Is that you saying you wanna show me?” he asks, and there’s a little warm sensation in his chest when Tommy perks up and stumbles his way over - the speeder hits some kind of bump momentarily, and Tommy almost falls over, and both Wilbur and Phil have a good chuckle at his expense after that. It’s - nice. It’s so goddamn nice.

Tommy, flushed red, parks himself on the floor of the speeder at Techno’s side and begins to ramble. Techno can’t exactly see how a game this simple - a pixelated dinosaur avatar that must periodically duck or jump between pixelated pterodactyls and pixelated cacti - could possibly have meta, but Tommy always manages to surprise him. He’s halfway through an explanation of different cactus heights and a risk-reward analysis of jumping at certain points when the sound comes again - once, then rapidly twice, then in a hasty flurry of sound. Wilbur looks up and asks, “Can anyone else hear that?”

“Something’s been making that noise for the last, like, half hour,” Techno says. “I’m not sure what it is.”

“Sounds a bit like gravel,” Phil says, and then there’s a groan from beneath them, like the screeching of metal on metal, and then the low engine-hum stutters. Just barely. Like a heart skipping a beat. Techno knows his own feels like it did, anyway.

“What,” Tommy says, “the fuck was that.”

Techno stands so quickly his head almost spins, making a beeline for the console. Tommy and Wilbur rise to follow him, but his instincts are working a little too quickly, making him paranoid - “You two,” he barks, pointing at them, “stay over that end. One of you in each corner.” There must be something in his voice that brooks no argument, because they share a worried look and retreat to separate corners; Phil, catching on, moves closer to Techno’s end of the speeder but sticks by the wall. Techno shuffles to the left, so that they’re all evenly spaced - one in each corner of the speeder. Even distribution of their weight. Roughly. He’ll admit there’s a significant disparity between, say, Tommy and himself, given the kid’s tall but it’s all skin and bone and Techno’s carrying both a reasonable amount of muscle and a pack full of survival supplies.

Distributing weight more evenly makes it easier on the anti-grav engines, below them. Just in case something’s wrong.

It comes again a second later, the juddering in the speeder’s steady path and then the engine cutting out for a brief fraction of a second - Techno curses, eyes glued to the display. Only after another maybe thirty seconds of nerve-wracking business-as-usual does any kind of warning notification show up on the display. It’s red, but - warning notifications tend to be red. The colour doesn’t indicate anything about the severity. If Techno panics, he could be dooming -

No one is being doomed. Techno does his best to cast that thought away.

The error is packed full of jargon that Techno knows maybe fifty per cent of - not enough to know how the hell to fix whatever’s wrong, but he sure can understand that there’s a problem with the engine. Doesn’t seem like there’s a problem with the ventilation, but -

The speeder shudders again, and then there’s a sharp jolt and the awful scream of tearing metal, and then - they’re on their way again. But this time Techno can make out hissing. He knows that sound well, the precise timbre of it - oxygen leaking from a tank.

“What’s that,” Tommy says, quiet and fiercely steady, like he desperately wants to be told there’s no need to panic. Techno knows damn well that the kid’s plenty familiar with what a leaking tank sounds like. He’s had to lug them around often enough.

“Surplus tank, I think,” Phil says. His voice, too, is slightly strained. Techno glances over to see him craning his neck, trying to look at the screen. “It’s - Okay, from the looks of that, there’s nothing wrong with the ventilation. But we might be running out of the extra saturation pretty soon. Means it’ll be breathable, still a shit-ton safer than outside, but -”

“We’re not risking that,” Wilbur says. “Tommy, grab one of the respirators.”

If this were back at home, Tommy would probably complain. Here, in this speeder which gives another sudden jolt before the engine resumes humming as though nothing was ever wrong in the first place, he complies easily; Techno doesn’t miss the way his knuckles are white as he clenches his fists. “The - the good one? Or -”

“One of the normal ones,” Techno says. “Just for now. We might - might need to change that, later.”

“Okay,” Tommy says. He fumbles in his pack for the facial segment of the machine, connecting it to the rest of the respirator - sitting innocently on the floor beside him - with the ease of long practice. “Okay.” Techno hasn’t heard his voice muffled like that in days, now. It’s startling how wrong it sounds. God, you hear a kid speak like he’s not about to choke once or twice and get used to it.

“Fuck,” Wilbur says, under his breath, quiet enough that he probably thinks the rest of them can’t hear him, and then he’s humming one low note in his chest. Self-soothing, Techno knows; he does it himself, sometimes, the faint vibration comforting. The engine cuts again. This time, it takes a moment too long to kick back in, and there’s an awful moment where Techno feels the underbelly of the speeder scrape against the desert below.

He reaches for the console, swipes frantically through different screens to get to a control panel from which he can deploy the skis. They’re designed so that it’s possible to have them out while in antigrav travel - makes them less aerodynamic, and the little map chirps at them reproachfully, but the next time the engine cuts it’s smoother, as the skis hit the sand briefly and they slide for a moment before resuming fast-travel.

“We could switch to skis-only mode,” Phil suggests.

“How long would it take, then,” Techno says, his throat tight. The loss of the oxygen tank beneath - had been accounted for by their calculations, but, he realises, a change in pace hadn’t. If they move any slower, there’s no guarantee they’ll make it to Pogtopia before anything goes wrong. The little yellow marker blinks cheerily up at him, and it makes him want to punch something.

Phil says tightly, “I don’t know. But there’s something fucked up with the engine. You know that as well as I do.” He’s speaking more quietly now, but Techno’s pretty sure both Wilbur and Tommy can hear him still - the thing is, of course, that Techno has his military training, and Phil was at one point a mechanic, but no matter how good Wilbur is with numbers he’s a civilian-turned-orator-turned-outlaw who never got formal training with machinery, and Tommy’s a kid with a talent for entertainment and a passion for being fucking annoying and not a whole lot of practice with anything else. The point being that there’s not much Wilbur or Tommy can do, in this situation, to help. It’s down to Techno and Phil.

That’s not a particularly fun thought. Techno swallows.

“If Tommy will start needing oxygen once the saturation goes,” he says, “and we move too much slower - if we mess that up -”

“If the engine goes,” Phil says, “we’re dead.”

Techno pushes away the surge of panic. “Could it be - Do you think it’s the battery? We have a spare -”

“If it was a power-supply thing, we’d be moving slower and slower, not cutting in and out.” Phil leans over to the console and switches it to a diagnostic screen, full of jargon that Techno can only somewhat understand; Phil, at least, seems to know what it means. “And we can’t afford to stop, and changing the battery while in motion would be, uh - not the fucking smartest.” He gives a strained chuckle. “To say the least.”

“Good to know,” Techno says, trying for a smile. “Do you think we should swi -”

The engine cuts again. The skis make the jolt smoother, but Techno still feels the swoop of it in his stomach - and there’s a horrifying moment where it doesn’t kick back in, where their momentum is the only thing keeping them moving. Then there’s a moment where the humming is louder than it’s ever been - then it cuts, again, and the speeder bounces. Tommy yelps. One of the oxygen tanks slips from his grasp, tumbling across the deck - Wilbur lunges for it, and misses, and the sudden shifting of weight sends the entire speeder spiralling, its ability to right itself apparently compromised, and - 

The engine sputters once. Cuts again. Techno waits with bated breath, but its low, steady hum does not return.

The four of them sit in silence for a long moment. Finally, Wilbur says, low and panicked, “I’m - I shouldn’t’ve - I just wanted to make sure the tank didn’t -” Techno’s eyes flicker to the oxygen tank, lying on its side by Wilbur’s outstretched hand. Hissing faintly. Because things couldn’t get worse, of course.

“Wasn’t your fault, mate,” Phil says. “Don’t - The worst thing you could do is beat yourself up about it. We’ve just gotta stay calm here -”

“Calm? The speeder’s fucking broken down.”

“It hasn’t broken down,” Techno says automatically, turning back to the console. “I - don’t understand half of this -”

Phil skims it. There’s an ugly trepidation in his eyes. “It’s - If I’m entirely fucking honest, that’s not looking good.”

“What happened?” Tommy demands, voice a little shaky.

“From the looks of things?” Phil says, the tiniest bit bitter. “We commandeered a speeder half a century old with a warranty of three years, and expected it to work.”

“That was fucking stupid,” Wilbur says, voice rough. “I was fucking stupid, I’m sorry -”

“Wilbur,” Techno says, “respectfully, you do not have the luxury of self-hatred right about now.” It’s callous of him, but it gets Wilbur to shut up. “We have to make a decision,” he continues, “and we have to make it now.”

Because, sprawling in front of Techno like two paths diverging in a wood, the choices seem blindingly clear. It’s the same kind of understanding that he stumbled into when he first stepped onto this speeder, the same kind of certainty as when he said I found the way to Paradise. They have two options here, or a third that is lie down and wait to die, which is no option at all; in Techno’s mind, the choice is clear.

“Either we stay here,” Techno says, “survive a little longer, die when we run out of food. I guess we could try fix whatever’s wrong with this thing,  but I don’t think we have enough - time.” He means oxygen. Phil’s mouth twists. “Or we turn back,” he adds, “try walking through forty-five days of desert, and I dunno about you but I don’t think that sounds like a particularly good option.”

“Or,” Wilbur prompts, his eyes fixed on Techno, eagle-sharp.

Techno takes a deep breath. “Or we, uh, stake everything on Pogtopia,” he says. “Move on. It shouldn’t take us more than three days - if we’re careful, we’ll last that long. If there’s oxygen there. But we’ve gotta - be in agreement, I think. If we split up, chances are we’re all gonna - chances are none of us are gonna make it.”

“We’ve gotta keep going,” Tommy says immediately. He’s still muffled by the respirator, but there’s a steadiness to his voice that Techno has almost never heard to it before. “Right?”

Phil says, hesitantly, “If it’s not -”

“We can’t,” Wilbur says, “afford to think like that.”

“We can’t afford not to,” Techno snaps. “What’ll you do if you’re wrong?”

“What the hell are we supposed to do otherwise?” Wilbur demands. “We wouldn’t be able to make it through fifty fucking days, not on foot. Not all of us. You know that.”

“I could - do my best to fix this thing up,” Phil offers, but all of them can tell he doesn’t believe it. “From the logs, it just kind of - died of age.”

“Wow, like you, Phil,” Tommy says; it’s so unexpected that it actually startles a laugh out of Techno, raspy and slightly panicked. Phil rolls his eyes, and Wilbur cracks a smile, and for a second it’s like Tommy has dragged all of them out of their worry. Then, just as Techno’s amusement dims, Tommy keeps talking. “I - you know we’ve gotta keep going, guys. Once we make it, we’ll be fine. And on the off-chance that there’s nothing there, well - hell of a way to die, right?”

“Don’t fucking talk like that,” Wilbur snaps.

“I mean,” Phil says, and shrugs. “He’s kind of right.”

“We’d die in a pointless quest for something that we never could have reached,” Techno points out, but something buoys up the sinking feeling in his chest - something like hope, maybe. Wilbur might call the shift from can’t afford hope to can’t afford to let it go character development; Techno, he decides, is simply going to ignore it.

“I got to see some pretty pog sunsets,” Phil says, and shrugs.

Wilbur stares at him, eyes imploring. “How are you so casual about this?”

“What else can I be?” Phil says lightly. Techno doesn’t catch the flicker of tension that crosses his expression, but Wilbur seems to miss it. “Going full steam ahead to Pogtopia is our best shot. There’d be no point not taking it.”

“That’s a meme song,” Tommy says wisely, and then snickers when they all turn to look askance at him. “Never mind. Alright, then, let’s - let’s do this, I guess.” He hops to his feet.

“Hold the fuck up,” Phil says, at the same time as Wilbur says “Tommy, wait,” and the two of them exchange mildly amused looks. Phil is the first to speak again. “We’ve gotta figure out what’s the best way to do this,” he says. “Tommy, you should probably - put a mask over the respirator?”

“I’ll be fine with just a scarf,” Techno says. “You guys, uh, you’ll need masks - Phil, you should be fine without a respirator, you’re just kinda average. Wilbur, if you’ve been taking the preventer stuff -” Wilbur’s face reddens, and Techno rolls his eyes. “Okay, you might - how many respirators do we have?”

“Two normal ones and Tommy’s good one,” Phil rattles off. 

Techno knew that, actually, but the knowledge had deserted him briefly. “Oooo-kay. Wilbur, you use one of those - don’t plug it into a tank, just use the filter. And that should get us through a few days. If anyone has, like, eye-protector stuff, now’s the time to mention it.”

Phil squats to rummage through his pack; just as he does that, a loud clunk echoes through the speeder, and the console flickers on and off once or twice. The faint whirring of the ventilation, so constant Techno had completely forgotten it was present, cuts off.

“Shit,” Phil says. “I’ll -” He tugs two pairs of goggles out of his bag. “Techno, get that data on your communicator, right fucking now. If we lose it, we’re -”

“Yeah,” Techno says, “yeah, I know.” He doesn’t want to risk connecting his communicator to the speeder’s mainframe and somehow corrupting it, so instead he selects the stupid green Pogtopia icon - blinking cheery yellow-blue, still - and begins copying the coordinates over to his communicator’s map, to as many decimal places as it’s physically able to process. “You guys, uh, get set up. While I do this.”

It takes another half an hour for them to prepare, and the air grows steadily less kind without the constant ventilation or the oxygen supplementation. Despite it, somehow, Tommy is relentlessly cheery. Wilbur still speaks harshly at the slightest provocation, but Tommy’s constant stupid jokes seem to drag him out of his - well, Techno’s not quite sure what to call it, but whatever it is, Tommy manages to drag him mostly out of it. Techno syncs the coordinates to all their communicators, just in case something goes terribly fucking wrong, and gives them the same advice the military gives to all new recruits about their first journey into the beyond-the-city conditions informally known as where shit is utterly fucked. It’s a particularly creative name, Techno thinks to himself, and somehow, ludicrously, has to stifle a laugh.

There’s a strange sense of deja vu to all of it. But Tommy’s eyes are bright, and Phil seems curiously relaxed, and every so often Wilbur will give a bitter chuckle that hurts to listen to but is a hell of a lot better than his previous, bitter silence. And Techno dares to think, looking around at the three of them, that maybe they can still make it. 

It’s fucking hard.

Techno doesn’t swear much, but - it’s warranted. He’s not going to lie. It’s hard for Techno, and he has it the easiest out of them - experience dealing with the environment, and the military modifications to filter shit out before it can get up his nose, and a lot of practice ducking his head and letting himself fall into the rhythm of the journey. Tommy, startlingly, seems to be coping fine - maybe there’s something about hope that has a galvanizing quality, Techno muses. The sheer invincibility granted by optimism. He’s heard stories about what humans are capable of if they can overcome certain psychological blocks; maybe hope is one of those overriding factors. As long as Tommy has it, he’ll be fine. Techno notices it himself, he thinks - because he is hopeful, he will admit it now. Techno is hopeful because there is little else left to be. And so he keeps walking, even though the dust in the air stings his cheeks, even though he’s exhausted mentally and emotionally, even though anxiety is a constant low-level parasite in his stomach. He can’t let himself zone out, because every so often he needs to point out a hazard of the landscape that these three stupid city idiots would miss if he didn’t, and that makes time pass in what must be a goddamn crawl, dragging its nails over his scalp like it’s a chalkboard as it goes.

Still - it goes. Bit by bit. Step by step.

Phil’s doing okay, but obviously having the most trouble breathing - maybe Techno’s assumption that just a mask would be enough was a little hasty. He stumbles every so often, and his chest stutters every so often; once or twice, he coughs. That’s when it gets really alarming. But every time Techno turns to him, he waves it off, and Techno isn’t feeling up to pressing, especially when they have to cover as much ground as physically possible before night falls and their main concern will be preserving heat. If Phil keeps having issues, Techno will make him wear the spare respirator. 

It might mean something, that hope - at least in Tommy’s case - means more ability to fight, and that Phil’s finding it the hardest. But belief is a hard thing to wrangle. Techno’s not going to hold it against him, just like he didn’t hold that strange, too-peaceful stillness against him, because people cope in different ways and if Phil’s is accepting a potential death before it comes then so be it. They’re going to make it, anyway.

Techno doesn’t know if he should believe they’re going to make it. In the past, he’s always been of the opinion that presuming the worst is safe and clever - the most it can hurt you is by living up to expectations, and in the best-case scenario you find yourself pleasantly surprised. But, well - how long can someone go on like that, assuming the worst? It would have to take its toll. Humans, Techno thinks, might be built for hope, for optimism, for faith, just as they’re built for trust. For closeness. For love, in all its forms. Maybe hope is just love for a future you dare to believe in.

Techno wouldn’t know.

Would he?

Wilbur is cynical, has always been cynical, is some strange juxtaposition of cynical and full of boundless faith; Techno’s never really understood that before. But, as they plod through earth that has had the green stripped from it by years and years of humans fucking it over, as they traverse a wasteland for no reason other than that they dared to dream of somewhere better, Techno thinks he might be starting to understand how it works. Wilbur, with his fierce eyes and bone-deep loyalty and vibrant idealism, believes in stars and revolutions and greenplaces, as much as he would like not to. Wilbur, with shadows yawning under his eyes like great ravines, whose hide members are a constant revolving door because people do not often stay forever, whose idealism has gotten him nothing but hatred and a dark cave under the ground of a stinking city, has learned better. Wilbur, who believed in this journey, has always struggled to let himself. 

He’s been breathing better, though. Probably because Techno bullied him into taking the medication he’s meant to be on a weekly dosage for; he has a strong suspicion Wilbur has not taken it in a long while, based on the way he coughed at it, although whether that’s because of self-flagellation or genuine forgetfulness or executive dysfunction Techno may never actually know. Still, it helps to know that he’ll take it if he’s reminded. And that it helps him. Helps him enough that he can still crack jokes, even with the wind that screams across a dead desert snatching the words from his mouth; enough that, once, he makes the mistake of trying to sing. Which can’t be good for him, because that doesn’t work particularly well when one’s wearing a respirator, but it’s amusing and heartening to see him try.

Days pass like that, and none of them fall. Techno hasn’t stumbled into this kind of trance in a long time. At some point, they tie themselves together with rope, because the ground isn’t always particularly trustworthy; it feels a little like a promise. When the wind is too loud to hear each others’ words over it, they sometimes take to their communicators to trade stupid jokes. If Techno has to read one more of Wilbur’s stupid hi :) messages, he might actually strangle him. One might have made him smile. Fifty in two minutes was decidedly excessive.

They breathe, and breathe, all four of them. Apparently a group chat with this exact combination of people has existed for almost five years now, after Wilbur made it briefly to send them all the same image at once and Tommy briefly spammed it before giving up when neither Techno or Phil responded; it’s nice, to think that Tommy and Phil had existed in Techno’s periphery before he ever actually met them. He isn’t one for fate, but Tommy and Wilbur both are, and Tommy doesn’t fucking shut up about it.

But hey. If Tommy’s talking, he’s still got energy left. He’s still breathing. Techno thanks the fucking stars that the speeder’s oxygen saturation meant Tommy hadn’t actually used the tanks while they were still riding it; they should, at this rate, just about have enough to make it to those elusive coordinates on his communicator. A little yellow dot, in the middle of a vast, unfeeling desert where no one else has breathed in a very, very long time. The further east they travel, the thicker the smoke gets.

Techno has a suspicion about what the colour of the Pogtopia icon had been, back on the speeder. His own communicator doesn’t display the same shade, but - well.

In the nights, they huddle for warmth; Tommy cracks some jokes, the first night, but none of them have the spirits left for it after the second day. Midday on the third, Tommy starts flagging for real - Techno sees it in the slump of his shoulders, the way his footsteps have begun to drag - but still he perseveres. Hope is such a strange, fickle thing, and Techno wonders if he has ever loved anything more.

Onwards to Pogtopia it is, then.

Sometime in the third night, Tommy mumbles, “Shouldn’t we have made it by now?” The thought sparks a sudden, awful paranoia in Techno’s mind, and he fumbles frantically for his communicator, elbowing Phil accidentally in the side as he does it - while he pulls up the map function with shivering fingers, the image of the speeder, buried in the desert, plays over and over in his mind. It would have been so easy to miss it. It could be so easy to miss it. As the smoke gets thicker, visibility has gotten worse; there hasn’t been a proper sunset since the first evening after the speeder died, the sun itself struggling to breathe from behind its clouds. If they’d walked past something in the darkness -

But no. The little icon, Pogtopia, as transcribed faithfully into Techno’s communicator, still lies eastward; they haven’t gone too far. Only, Techno thinks ruefully, possible too slow - there’s no use panicking about it, but he is conscious of their ever-dwindling oxygen. The conditions are fucking terrible, out here. A week ago, he would have laughed at the idea of Tommy lasting a day.

“No,” he murmurs out loud, and Wilbur makes some disgruntled sound in his sleep, “no, Tommy, don’t - don’t worry, man. We’re fine. We still got a little way to go, okay?”

God, he sounds so soft. It’s embarrassing.

“Yeah,” Tommy murmurs. “Okay.” And he’s so obviously half-asleep that it makes something clench warm and frantic in Techno’s chest. Hells. He knew he cared about these people, knew they were the closest thing he had to a family, but - he didn’t realise they were more than just close to it.

Ah, to hell with it.

He’s stuck with them now, anyway. Might as well let them know.

The next morning, which is marked only by a brief lightening of the sky at sunrise and the temperatures growing markedly warmer, Techno rouses all of them until they’re standing. Marshals them back into some semblance of alertness, ties them back together, puts Phil at the back because he looks a little more alert today, himself at the front as always. It’s a strangely quiet morning - the wind is a little less harsh than usual, and even though that means the shit in the air has settled, lies thicker on his tongue with every breath - all he has been able to taste for the past three days is ash - there’s a kind of solace in the lull. Some kind of eye of the storm, maybe. 

That would imply, of course, that there’s more storm to come. Maybe, Techno dares to think, it has passed once and for all.

Once they’ve been walking for a few minutes, Techno dares to say, “You know, you guys are kinda - kinda all I’ve got. In terms of family. And I kind of wanted you to know that.” Maybe the wind will snatch his words away, or swallow them whole; maybe they will never be heard. Maybe -

“Aww, mate,” Phil says, which is the most banal response Techno could have possibly come up with, to the point that he actually turns to glare.

Wilbur says, “Yeah, man. Uh, me too. If I had to be strapped to anyone by a rope that’s fucking cutting off circulation to my legs or some shit -” Wilbur was not the fondest of the rope idea. “- I’d, uh, rather it was you guys.”

“Keep your chin up, king,” Tommy says, by way of answer. “Your crown is falling.”

“What the fuck, Tommy,” Wilbur demands.

Tommy breaks into laughter, wheezy and rattling and a waste of valuable oxygen he cannot afford to play games with. Techno doesn’t have the heart to remind him. If the cost of joy is a little oxygen - if sometimes you need to sacrifice a few minutes of breathing for the sake of living, of finding a way through the shittiest of things and managing to have a laugh at their expense - well, so be it.

Hells. He sounds like a live-laugh-love board. It’d be nice if they could get to Paradise sometime soon, since he’s obviously going to be needing therapy for the next decade and a half.

(And so Tommy laughs. And so all of them let him. And so the oxygen in the tank steadily dwindles, but -

They’ll make it. They have to make it.)

It’s dark outside. It has been dark outside for as long as Techno can remember. He doesn’t notice the trance state he’s slipped into until the beeping of his shitty old communicator startles him out of it - maybe there was some truth to those stories after all.

He’s the first to stop walking, and it takes the others a second to get the memo - Tommy collides briefly with his back, then says, scowling, “Why’d you stop?” Techno honestly isn’t too sure. It’s sometime in the late evening - they were going to stop in a minute for the night, anyway, because the temperatures had begun dwindling to the point that even Techno’s shivering. He thinks he might be getting some kind of sick, honestly. This many nights exposed to the elements don’t do anyone’s immune system favours, and who knows how many viruses are floating around in the air out here after the plague decades, those twenty years not so long ago where each year brought a new strain of pestilence that was worst than the last. That could be what his communicator is alerting him to, maybe. He’s not sure. It’s taking a hot second to turn on.

Phil says, voice all but snatched away by the wind, “Are we stopping for tonight?”

“Probably a good point,” Wilbur says. He sounds run ragged, like every one of his edges has been sanded away until they’re smooth but grazed. Like he’s too tired to be angry, too exhausted to be bitter. Like the one thing keeping him going, Techno thinks, is hope. “To call it a day, I mean. We can find Pogtopia tomorrow - we’re close, right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Techno says. The four of them draw closer together almost out of habit - having only their backs facing the outside world gives all of the stinging bare skin on their faces a break, so they huddle, shoulder to shoulder, like some unbreakable chain. “Sorry, give me a second, this stupid thing’s not turning on.” He gives his communicator a gentle thwack against his knee, and a second later feels Tommy’s shoulder collide with his on his left, feels Phil on the right. Wilbur’s facing him, wearing a pair of Phil’s goggles - they don’t seal properly to his skin because of the respirator he’s wearing, but he insists they’re far better than nothing. Even if they make him look like a twentieth-century excuse for an aviator. Or a bug.

“Be gentle with that,” Phil says, with one of those laughs that is half-strained and half-genuine. “Given it has, y’know, the literal fucking path to salvation on it -”

“Not like you guys don’t have backups,” Techno says, giving the communicator another whack. This time, it flickers on. “Sorry, it was - beeping, I dunno what it was about.” The logo of the company that made it displays for an uncomfortably long moment - something about making these things turn on slower so that the brand shows up for longer, if Techno remembers rightly - and then makes Techno enter his password, which he does, impatiently, with fingers clumsy within their gloves.

“Let me see,” Tommy says impatiently, so Techno tilts the communicator as the previous display comes up. The first thing to load in is the map, and then the dot - white, on Techno’s communicator - that represents their current location. Then the icons - Techno doesn’t have too many, just the standard hazards and, of course, Pogtopia, in its shade of yellow.

They’re - they’re close enough that the Pogtopia icon, the little pin, overlaps with the dot that is their current location. Techno zooms. And zooms. And for a second, he doesn’t get it.

Then Phil says, his voice almost too quiet to be heard underneath the wind, “You - you said it beeped?”

“Yeah,” Techno says. Then, like cold lightning down his spine, shattering through his veins, everything slots together.

His communicator picks that moment to beep again; this time, the notification pops up, and all of them take it in. There’s something about having your doom read to you in a font you picked because you thought it was funny. Navigation route complete, reads the popup, in Comic Sans, a pale thing like Death’s mythical horse.

“Wait,” Tommy says. Techno can hear the shake to his voice.

“We could’ve gone past,” Wilbur says.

Phil says, still in that too-quiet tone, “I guess you could’ve entered the coordinates wrong.”

“I - I might have,” Techno says faintly. He knows he didn’t. He checked twice, thrice, twenty times maybe. “Or we could be missing it.”

“It’s - it’s saying we’re here,” Tommy says. “But there’s fucking - nothing.”

“Thanks for the summary, Tommy,” Wilbur snaps, an awful coldness to his voice. 

“We gotta fucking look for it, then,” Tommy says, fiercely determined. “There’s - It has to be here somewhere, right? Can we get some fucking light, please?” 

Wordlessly, Phil flicks on a high-beam torch. The air is full of dust, still, and Tommy gives a cough that punctuates the volume of it, but - Techno can make out shapes in the air, now, skeletons all around them. His head is spinning, but he forces himself to be cool, cold, calm. There must be some mistake. They can’t have made it.

They can still make it.

“Speeder,” Phil says, and points to their left, and sure enough, it’s another speeder - a slightly different shape to the one that got them this far. A newer model, maybe. And beyond it, yet another. The shapes loom out of the dusty dark, bones on bones on bones, all made of metal - when the torch beam hits them, they glint back through the gloom. The dust scatters and shadows the torch beam and makes everything seem to twinkle. A small skiff gleams, to Techno’s right, like jewels scattered on a beach, like a treasure chest battered by storm and washed up to shore. It’s a veritable elephants’ graveyard of vehicles, great and small. Some kind of Pandora’s box, with hope left trapped inside, and the four of them have stepped in and closed the lid behind them.

“There’s - there’s something here,” Tommy says, voice even wobblier than it was before, and kicks at the sand between them. Techno drops to his knees; Phil aims the torch beam towards the ground, and together Techno and Wilbur scrape the sand away from whatever Tommy’s found. Something metallic, in a dark colour not unlike blue, and as they uncover it further the wind grows harsher. Techno pauses, briefly, to tug his scarf back into place over his face. Wilbur’s chest is rising and falling in slow, exaggerated movements like he’s forcing his breathing to stay steady. Tommy joins the two of them in squatting, but hunches over into himself, tugs his oxygen tank closer to his chest, squeezes his eyes shut like he’s focusing on not much other than staying alive.

The dark-coloured metal, a strange yellow-tinted blue not unlike the first Pogtopia trail, turns out to be a sign; there’s something written on it in a script that looks like Second Age English but Techno doesn’t exactly have the presence of mind to place. But the fact that it’s here, and so deeply buried that they’ve struggled to unearth more than the top of it - well. Techno’s heard the old stories of cities buried by shifting sands, of the Orkney islands, of the midsts of the Old Gobi, of ruins. Of forgotten places. Of skeletons and graveyards and the people who would do anything to find them.

He’s heard, too, stories of the Crusades. Of those who died for blind faith and for fury, and for something that was never proven to exist, and -

“Fuck,” Wilbur says, hoarse, and Techno knows he’s gotten it too. 

“We could probably use one of these speeders,” Phil says. “Make it back.”

“That’s green,” Tommy says hoarsely, squinting at the sign in the torch’s shivering beam. “It has to be. Like the fucking - Like the route. In the old - the - the speeder.” He gives a laugh, and it sounds awfully like hacking up a lung. “That was green too, and we didn’t even fucking notice.”

“The - the real green was the friends we made along the way?” Phil tries to joke. It falls flat, amidst the screaming wind, surrounded by speeders and skiffs and, likely, bodies, bones, what’s left of the other faithful. Paradise, Techno thinks, and wonders how many other speeders are scattered throughout this stupid fucking desert.

“Well,” Wilbur says. If Techno looks closer, he thinks Wilbur might be crying behind the goggles, but it’s hard to tell. His voice is certainly wet enough for it, and he gives a furious sniff. “We’ll - we’ll make it back to the hide, I guess. For now, let’s - let’s hole up for the night. It’s too fucking cold for this shit.”

Paradise, Techno thinks again. Paradise was those sunsets. Paradise was the city, with its choking smog and its apathetic governors and the hides scattered all through its catacombs. Paradise is a graveyard for the ones who cared too much, who dared to hope for something better. Who made it this far, and never made it back to anywhere else.

Tommy says, shaky, “Yeah, let’s call it a - let’s call it a day, boys, I’m really fucking tired.” And he, too, sounds shattered. Sounds a bit like someone’s slaughtered a cute animal in front of him. Such, Techno supposes, feeling a strange cruel coldness rear up in him like a snake’s head, is the nature of hope, and of losing it.

It’s that much harder to put one foot in front of the other, now, but Techno forces himself to wrench his goals back into place: they will find somewhere slightly warmer to spend the night. In the morning, they will find another working speeder and hope it can last them the days across the desert. After that, they will make it home.

They have to. 

The first vehicle they enter, Techno and Phil shoulder to shoulder with Wilbur right behind them and Tommy ever-so-slightly straggling, smells of death. It’s a tall, old skiff, but from the looks of things the bodies are recent. From the looks of things, Techno thinks, reeling, they just lay down to die. These people are no longer people, but they were, and it was recent, and perhaps they were from the same city as Techno. Or perhaps they travelled south, or north, or even west from somewhere closer to the fires. All searching for the same Paradise, this fucking empty place in the desert that might have once been real. That clearly isn’t.

Techno doesn’t know what he expected. But he had hoped, and that was the worst part.

They don’t let Tommy go into that one.

The second vehicle they check is empty; its inhabitants must have wandered off, Techno thinks coolly, to die somewhere else. Its battery does not fit the one that Techno brought, so they can’t power it on, but it does have a door that closes; the air inside is musty, and dank, and filled with the chemicals and pollution that saturate all the air through here, but at least it’s a little warmer than the desert outside, where the temperature is rapidly plummeting. Tommy’s shivering. Wilbur is shaking, though Techno doesn’t think it’s from the cold. Phil’s eyes don’t seem to focus on anything in particular, and Techno can’t decide whether it makes him look peaceful or like he’s already dead.

This vehicle has a great glass windshield. The better, Techno thinks, to see the bodies as they try to fall asleep.

In the end, he sleeps with his back to it. There’s nothing to see here, after all - only emptiness, and more desert, and the fact that it is always, always fucking dark outside.

Techno blinks open his eyes in the faint, bloody light of the dawn to coughing.

It’s a dry cough, one that sounds disconcertingly familiar, and it drags him from sleep like it’s digging fingers into his ribs and pulling him upright. He shifts underneath his blanket - hadn’t bothered with the rest of the bedroll, but it had been too goddamn cold to sleep without something. Reality comes trickling back in in bits and pieces, rather than hitting him all at once like a deluge, which he thinks he appreciates. Makes it a little easier to process the, uh, sense of crushing defeat and hopelessness.

“Who’s that?” he asks, voice raspy with sleep.

“Uh, me - fucking hell, man,” comes Wilbur’s voice, and there’s a loosening of the knot of fear that had been building steadily in Techno’s chest. At least it’s not Tommy. Wilbur might be having issues - and if he’s struggling to breathe even with the door shut, Tommy must be having it even worse - but Wilbur’s never had so much trouble breathing that he had to be on the tanks for a month. Wilbur’s never had to sit in a stupid bed underground all day because he didn’t have the energy, physically couldn’t get enough oxygen into his bloodstream, to make himself get up. Tommy, on the other hand -

Tommy isn’t coughing. That’s a positive.

Phil shifts. He, unlike Techno, is apparently lying on a bedroll; Techno supposes that makes him the resident non-disaster of their little group of four. Maybe he just needs it for his old, old bones. “You good, Wil?” he asks, and gives a little chuckle like he doesn’t want it to sound too serious.

“Ughhh,” Wilbur says, then gives one more rattling cough. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Sorry if I woke you guys up.”

Techno glances out the windshield of the old speeder they’ve holed up in. “Eh, it’s morning anyway. You’re fine.”

“Tommy, you’re sleeping like a rock, man,” Wilbur jokes. “You good there?”

“Let him sleep,” Phil says, quietly, just a little wistfully. “You saw him yesterday. He - he fucking needs it.”

“We shouldn’t be out here any longer than we have to,” Techno says. Then, because someone has to say it: “Our only chance now is to get back to the city.”

Wilbur winces, visibly, and Techno doesn’t miss the way he throws Tommy another glance. “God. That’s - It’s fucking awful.”

There’s a horrible sinking feeling winding its way through Techno’s veins. “I’m - sorry,” he says, and ducks his head. “I shouldn’t’ve said anything.”

“If it had been real, though -” Phil says. “You did the right thing, mate. I’m - I’m just sorry the world let you down.”

“You’d think we’d be used to that,” Techno says dryly, standing. “I’m gonna go check if any of these others fit our batteries, okay?”

“Yeah,” Wilbur says. “Yeah, okay.” It sounds like belief. Sounds like yeah, we’ll be okay. Some small, traitorous part of Techno dares to bud at that, like a sapling sprouting new life, all in green.

“Tommy,” Phil says, a little ruefully, “you should probably wake up.” He gives Tommy a gentle poke, where the kid’s lying, face down, hunched into himself underneath a thin blanket. It is kind of weird, honestly. Usually, Tommy would be complaining by now. Loudly, at that. Phil rolls his eyes and goes to tap Tommy again on the shoulder, and Techno (who is decidedly not watching fondly, has decidedly not stalled in the door because there’s something sweet about the gentleness of the motion, thank you very much) notices the way Phil’s knuckles, by accident, skitter against Tommy’s bare neck. Because Phil’s hands are shaking. Concern swims up inside Techno, breaks some invisible surface inside his mind.

“Phil,” he says. “You good, dude?”

But Phil has gone curiously still. 

“Phil?” Wilbur says, and he crouches at Phil’s side, slings an arm around him. “Is something up?”

Phil, silent, reaches his hand out again. Presses it briefly against Tommy’s neck. “He - he shouldn’t be that fucking cold,” he says.

Techno blinks. “Sorry, what?”

Phil’s eyes flicker closed. He presses two fingers to the side of Tommy’s neck, and the gesture registers in Techno’s military-trained mind - it’s something familiar, something very, very wrong, but he can’t place what, exactly, it is. A strange nausea wells up in Techno’s throat at the sight of it. It feels out of place.

Then Phil goes white as a sheet, and Techno, abruptly, recognises the gesture. Cold slams into him like a physical thing, like his body has been plunged into freezing earth. Like he’s being buried, like they did a thousand years ago. Like death has come for him early.

He knows damn well what it looks like when you check someone’s pulse.

And Phil has gone fucking silent.

The thought is catastrophic, too much to comprehend, for all of two seconds. Then something in Techno’s mind goes curiously quiet. It is a little too much, he thinks, to dip even a toe into the emotion eating him up from the inside out, like acid escaping his stomach; instead, he finds solace in a strange quietness, doesn’t quite feel like himself. Feels, in fact, a little bit like nobody, or like he has no body, or like he’s drifting beyond it. It’s strange, and ever so slightly familiar, and he has just enough cognitive function left to realise that this was the state he floated up into when Pete crashed his speeder. They had had a name for it, back then, this strange me-not-me-not-my-body panic that isn’t a panic. Techno finds it much easier, not to think about it.

He watches, very calmly, as Phil’s face shutters like windows before a hurricane. As his hands go slack. He watches as Wilbur says something to Phil - the words reach him slowly, like syrup, too distorted to quite make out - and then Wilbur blinks as Phil does not answer him, only continues to curl in on himself. Like he would very much like to shut out the world. Techno knows the feeling.

When Techno moves, it is a hell of a lot like he’s dreaming. He makes his way slowly over, and bends down, and, as if possessed by something, checks Tommy’s pulse himself; finds nothing; thinks, strangely clear amongst the haze clouding the rest of his mind, Hope can motivate a person to do a hell of a lot of things. Live, for one. It is not possible, he knows, to die of grief. But it is certainly possible to live on borrowed time, and to live on feverish belief, and to combine the two into something that cannot possibly last beyond the burning of the Garden of Eden. It’s certainly possible to be fighting your entire goddamn life because you believe that someday, it will be better. Because you believe in a greenplace.

Techno knows about giving up. But his lungs, unlike Tommy’s, are not fragile enough that giving up would kill him.

The human mind is a very strange thing.

Wilbur’s voice, low and hasty and rough, drifts through the molasses of the dusty air to find Techno; he thinks he hears his own name. He has always found Wilbur easier to understand than most. This, then, is why he can see - like deja vu - the realisation play piece by piece across Wilbur’s face. He is, at first, confused, in a way that Techno thinks he would call ugly if he felt a little more connected to the world and its people right now; then Wilbur’s eyes widen, with some horrid guess, and Techno can see the thought process that runs behind them, something like I am panicking, I am catastrophising, there is no way that is true. Techno, dimly, wants to say something. Wants to reach out. But it’s hard to set words straight in his mind, even harder to shape them between his lips, so instead he stares. A little helpless. A hell of a lot broken, but that’s nothing new.

Wilbur, unlike Phil, is loud, and furious, and he screams when he realises. Techno moves one step, two steps away, and there is a ringing in his ears as Wilbur glares him down; things are beginning to crystallise, into a scathing clarity whose enormity threatens to crush him. Wilbur’s turned Tommy over, at some point - Techno tries to reframe the shape under the blanket in his mind, to be logical, cool, calm about it, but it makes his stomach reel to consider the term body. And Wilbur is still speaking, his words raw, unshaped, mostly incoherent - shaped by the shudders wracking his body more than the intent behind them. He’s crying. Techno hadn’t noticed. There is a pallor to Tommy’s face, and Techno thinks of Phil saying he shouldn’t be that fucking cold, and very coolly forces himself not to vomit.

“Wil,” he says, quietly, his own voice a strange thing. “Wilbur -” He extends a hand, a peace offering, maybe. Or an upturned palm for a feral thing. Feral is certainly right - Wilbur, words still out of order, scrambles away, takes a swipe at him with a clumsily formed fist. The wind is screaming outside, and Techno cannot stop hearing it. It is a chorus of voices. It is the spirits of the dead. It’s the uncaring fucking wind, and the elements that have been fucked six ways to Sunday by thousands of years of human selfishness, and it screams through the desert like the hand of judgment. It says, You did this. You should’ve kept your goddamn mouth shut. It says, You brought this on yourself.

Time goes liquid. Phil, still very white, very still, rocks slightly, does not speak; Wilbur, ever the externaliser, cries for a long time, lashes out every time Techno even moves, eventually finds his way back to full sentences with a cruelty and a vitriol that are almost startling. When Techno has spent too long with his back pressed against the wall, feeling like he’s only half inhabiting his own skin, he picks up his pack and winds a scarf around his neck, the motions familiar because of - years, now, of going out into that cruel desert because of -

Because -

“You’re a fucking asshole, Technoblade,” follows him. Techno thinks he might be shaking, just a little, but he cannot afford to consider that right now. If there’s one thing he knows how to do, it is to pour himself into a task with such focus he forgets his own name, and it will do well to save him here. Both from that abyssal emotion yawning in his gut, too gigantic to name, and because he refuses to die today. 

He’s a cynic. Always has been. Expects bad, is surprised for the better, is unshakeable in the face of the worst. That’s who Technoblade is. That’s who he’s got to be.

And so he finds them a functioning speeder, and clears out the bodies - this one’s newer. Tommy, he thinks, clearly, scathingly, will not decompose here. It’s the most fully formed thought he’s had since waking, and it tears through him, bladed, almost surgical in the precision with which it takes him apart. Techno very carefully moves away from what he is doing, then tugs down his scarf, then vomits into the sand. Before he can inhale, he pulls it back over his mouth and nose. If he breathes in without it, he is dead.

The smell, the taste, are so abhorrent he almost gives in there. There’s something so tempting about the idea of - throwing in the towel. Calling it quits. Sitting down, like everyone else in this goddamn graveyard of a Paradise, and waiting to die.

But he won’t. He can’t.

He made it this far for -

He made it this far for a reason. Something drags him through the sand back to Phil and Wilbur and the thing going cold between them, that reason, and Technoblade thinks, just as clearly, No one else is dying.

In Techno’s experience, there are fewer things crueller than Paradise. Wilbur Soot may be one of them. Hope may very well be another.

But he’ll be damned if he lets them guilt him into giving up.

He goes through the motions in some strange headspace, still feeling half alive, fiercely functional. Phil, after a little, comes back to himself enough to offer perfunctory help; he does not speak, however, for the next three days. Techno speaks very little, too, but for different reasons. Phil, Techno thinks, is still in the grasp of that jarring disconnect between speech and thought; Techno, in contrast, will collapse if he stops working, and his conversational prospects are Phil, who will nod or shake his head back, or a body Techno failed, the body Techno put there, directly or not, or Wilbur. Wilbur, who is some slow-burning ember now, made of anger and a sharp tongue and very fucking willing to remind Techno that he got them into this. Wilbur, who combs his fingers through a corpse’s hair until some of it comes out when he grips too tightly. Wilbur, who blames Techno, and who blames Phil, and who most of all blames himself, eating at himself from the inside out.

There’s one moment, the second day on this slower speeder, as the three of them sit in stifling silence, where it’s like something breaks open. A dam, or a storm front, or the ground beneath his feet. It hits him, then, in a flood, a deluge, everything too fucking clear and too much and bald-faced in front of him. The chill of Tommy’s body, Tommy’s body, as Techno had dragged him onto the speeder. It. The body is an it. There’s no more brightness to the eyes. Chances are his lungs are shiny with pollution, if someone were to cut him open and see. They’ll burn him when they get back to the city, and it’ll mingle with the smog, and the next day someone will breathe in the smoke that came when the fire couldn’t quite destroy his bones. There had been a moment where Techno had wondered, coldly, if it would be more efficient to discard the body as ballast.

Techno whines ever-so-quietly to himself. The sound is pathetic. Too small for him. Wilbur raises his head, eyes boring into him, through him, shadowed, exhausted, still angry. “You doing okay, man?” he asks.

Techno stares back at him. How the hell is he meant to answer that?

Wilbur’s lip curls. “Be like that, then,” he snaps, and turns away.

Phil, from the console, looks over at the two of them. He says nothing. Of course he says nothing.

Outside, the wind is fierce. There is less air in this speeder than there was in the last. Techno takes one deep breath, and then another, and then shuts himself away from the bile rising in his throat.

They will make it home. If nothing else, Techno can fix three quarters of the wrong he did.

The hide falls silent, weeks later, as they enter.

Tubbo’s face contorts, at the sight of them, into a kind of furious, ugly grief. “I fucking told you,” he spits.

Techno can’t look at him, can’t meet his eyes, can’t. He knows. He knows. And if he had just kept his damn mouth shut -

Hope is dangerous. Optimism gets kids killed. This shitty air is the best there is, and it’s about damn time Techno stopped complaining.

Wilbur’s eyes are the darkest they’ve ever been. “This stupid fucking city,” he curses, and that’s all there is to the utterance - he turns, strides away, consigns himself to whatever hell he’s managed to construct in the privacy of his own room. Phil mutters something perfunctory and meek, and he’s not meek, not quiet, has never been - grief twists people, makes them shadows of themselves. Techno doesn’t know if he’ll ever be climbing his way out of this one.

It’s dark outside. It’s dark here, underground, but what does darkness matter? Tomorrow, Techno will carry a corpse to the cremation furnaces. It will make the sky infinitesimally darker. The world will spiral closer and closer to its heat death, and this city will implode long before then, will devour itself, will choke itself. Techno imagines himself asphyxiating, and thinks he might deserve that.

He stares at the floor, and shuffles out of the hide. They won’t, of course, welcome him back. Besides, he has a body to collect.

He doesn’t bother with a scarf over his nose and mouth, not as he heads through the dull city streets, not even as he hurries beyond the walls to collect what’s left of a kid who was optimism. Who was hope. After all, the worst it can do to him is kill him - and Techno knows perfectly well there’s no mythical greenplace waiting in the afterlife.

Just as well.

Techno’s sick of Paradise. He’d rather choke here in the dark, cynical, and have his last words be I told you so.