Work Text:
Techno stares out at the ancient server.
He doesn’t remember how long it has been since anyone has stepped foot in here.
Decades, for sure. Centuries, even.
Too long.
Techno tries not to visit servers he used to be a part of. Part of it is trying not to bring up old feelings - he knows almost every person within them is dead by now, and he doesn’t want to drag the idea of his own immortality and the consequences of it back into his brain.
The other part is more attributed to the fact that he fucking hates the mess always left behind. Servers he’s in never end peacefully - explosions, death, giant demonic eggs that possess all your friends and leave you fighting against the people you used to call loved ones - those types of things, y’know?
But he promised himself he’d come back to the SMP, this SMP. He doesn’t remember why anymore - he’s sure it was very important to his past self. This server touched closest to his heart for thousands of reasons, especially the family - of all kinds, he thinks, and his stomach turns - he had to leave behind.
The syndicate are all long dead. He misses them terribly, and today is certainly one of the worst days he’s had in a while, but he attributes that to literally walking over the newly-green vines that killed them. He knows being here at all might be a bad idea for the kind of thoughts his mind likes to think, but he told himself he’d come here, so he did.
He’s not quite sure where he’s going at first - it’s not like he needs any further materials, and if they did, anyone’s home is open to robbing. He lets his feet drag him to a few random places - the burger van Wilbur and Ranboo had made, the L’Manberg crater, a few of the old nether bridges, Foolish’s old builds that made Techno think of ancient discovered palaces.
One of the nether bridges leads him down the long path to the snowy biome that once contained his home. He follows it almost instinctively, feet trailing through the snow in leather boots that definitely aren’t meant for this kind of substance. He can practically feel the snow melting and soaking boots that are not meant to get wet.
He hadn’t brought armor or anything, but the sight of his old base almost makes him want to pull on some netherite. It’s instinctual - this place sparks the need to prepare for something. He’s not sure what he wants to prepare for, but a fight sounds good. Maybe a rescue of some kind - a rescue he never got the chance to do.
Some of the wood here is rotting slightly, as it was in a lot of the other places he had visited, but it’s whole enough that he can walk over it without being too careful or getting too worried. He wouldn’t actively fall through if he took a wrong step, although he might get some damn nasty splinters.
As soon as the thought about Dream’s rescue pops into his mind, his stomach starts to ache. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t rescue Dream, and he knows it, but the guilt still climbs up whenever he thinks about the masked man, tortured and dying alone in a prison he built to keep himself.
Techno distracts himself by searching through his chests. They’ve been almost entirely looted, which is unsurprising. Techno left the server before a lot of the people more prone to taking than making, and his chests were left unguarded, so whoever was left likely took it as free access.
There are a few spare potions, sluggish and half-dry within their bottles. Spare bits of material or long rotted food. Even a bit of string wrapped around a splintering piece of wood - but Techno finds the real gem in one of his hidden chests.
A compass, cracked and glitching but still whole. It’s glowing gently with a purple enchantment, and when he holds it, it flashes. Techno left this compass behind after it became useless - it used to take him somewhere, used to take him home - but all it does now is lead to a corpse.
He watches it pulse with that little lavender light for a long moment before he sets it back down. The compass shifts slightly, adjusting to where it’s supposed to lead to- who it’s supposed to lead to. The little red piece in the middle - that points directly to the prison, to obsidian walls and a complicated system in.
Techno walks away from the compass, going upstairs to discover that his bed is still there. He doesn’t know why that’s surprising, seeing as no one steals beds around here and no one is around to sleep in it, but he’s still shocked.
He brushes off the thin layer of dust and shakes out the blanket, sneezing occasionally as dust particles spin in the light of the windows. When he sits, a great cloud of dust puffs up around him, and he fights a wince.
That’s what this place is now. Dust and looted chests and abandoned bits of a once-lively world. Techno puts his head in his hands and ends up sneezing again. There’s a silence to the house he doesn’t like - he’s not used to it.
A memory of Steve curled up in the corner rises in his mind, and his chest is aching so hard he ought to check if it’s something physical and not just phantom pain. He doesn’t look into that space, doesn’t look into the should-be, though, just stands up to go check the rest of his chests.
He walks across the bridge into Phil’s attached house. The place is equally looted, but otherwise looks even further undisturbed than Techno’s own home. He supposes it got less use after Phil was taken by the egg - Techno still used his own home, but Ranboo and Niki and Phil’s are all empty except for dust bunnies.
Niki’s is the cleanest out of all of their homes - other than Techno’s, of course. Her secret city was used as a hiding place for survivors and escapees from the egg’s rein. It didn’t last, obviously, but it was one of the longest kept spaces for survivors on the SMP.
There’s only one really valuable thing left in Phil’s home. A netherite pickaxe, heavily enchanted and humming with magic as Techno runs his fingers over the dulled point. It needs to be sharpened, and the handle is brittle enough with the cold that it’d probably snap if he held it too tightly, but he could fix both of those things easily. There’s no name written on the weapon, but it seems familiar nonetheless.
Techno tucks it into his belt, prepared to fix it later. There’s a lot he can do with an already enchanted piece of netherite - he could even unenchant it, if he wanted, grab himself some free XP. If he doesn’t want it fixed, then he’s got something to take apart and use. If he does want it fixed, it’ll get him a free enchanted netherite pick.
After he puts it away, he goes back to his home, preparing to lay out his bedroll. He’d love to sleep in his old bed, but it’s dusty enough that he thinks he might actually have an allergy attack to things he’s not allergic to. The floor is slightly less dusty, so he rolls out the pad that fits under his sleeping bag first.
When he stands back up, he catches something in the corner of his eye, glinting a light red and pulsing with purple magic.
The compass moves, Techno’s eyes following the red as it twists back and forth like - like someone walking. Pacing, even.
This compass leads to Dream. Dream is dead.
The compass is moving.
Techno can’t figure out the damn opening to the prison. He takes about twenty minutes flicking various levers and going through a few different nether portals before he realizes that someone inside needs to help him get in.
The compass tied tightly to his belt keeps him going. It currently reads as whatever might be inside as still, but Techno has to look - he has to see. Is there something with Dream’s corpse, or is he like Techno? Did he survive these long years inside of the prison?
Techno’s gut freezes as he stares at the prison, thinking of Dream alone inside for years on end. There wouldn’t have been a food supply - even if it had been automated, it certainly wasn’t automated for that long. And from Techno’s ideas of it, he was almost entirely sure it was just Sam shoving the occasional raw potato into a chute that shot things into Dream’s puddle of water.
Techno stares at the prison for a long moment longer before he gives up on the stupid door. He’s got a netherite pick and the guardian is absolutely dead at this point - he’s gonna mine his way into the main room, and he can figure out all the fancy levers and pulleys from there.
Hope climbs up his stomach, and he tries to crush it. It’s not really working, but he can’t afford hoping - even if that is Dream in the prison, he’ll be a much different man than who he was years before. Dream has - Dream might be in an awful state. It’s honestly heartening that he might have been pacing.
Techno hates the curl of memories that rises under his skin. Those are easier to shove away, but they won’t leave as easily once they start flushing back. He cannot rid himself of Dream, smiling and laughing and dancing in fields and swirling in fights and flourishing unnecessarily in duels and eyes shut against the wind as it blew over his face.
The prison wall is broken through faster than it should have been - it’s certainly been hours, considering the prison wall is thick and obsidian is an annoying block, but he’s absolutely sure about the lack of a guardian now. There’s no sluggish feeling in his bones, and there’s no slowness to the way his pickaxe falls.
In fact, there’s only one thing lining the strokes of his pick, and it is anger. At first, he’s not sure who he’s angry at, but it spins out into hate. The prison, the Warden, the torturer that all worked together to take Dream away and hurt him over and over again. He’s angry for a moment at Dream - not quite sure why, but he’s furious at the man in green. It tugs back into anger at himself and Dream’s ‘friends’ and then -
And then his pickaxe breaks through the wall, and anger disappears from where it was coiled in his stomach. Techno uses the pick to shove through the last of the wall, breaking it down just enough to allow him a tight squeeze through. For a moment, he considers stopping to rip through, to make a hole big enough for two people to walk through. He shuts down the thoughts and walks further inside.
He recognizes the front room from a few of his visits, and he knows exactly where to go. Sam has the same documents tucked away into his chests. When Techno looks for a minute, he finds a little lever under the lid of one chest that opens up a latch with what appears to be an extra key card.
Techno snatches it. He didn’t mean to find it, he was just looking for any information or blueprints or something along those lines. But if he thinks about it, it’ll be easier than the dying and respawning process that will leave him itemless and alone in the face of who or whatever lies within the prison and the cell within.
It takes him a moment to get a hang of how to use the card, but it’s less difficult than it seems, and when he manages to get into the last room before the prison, he almost pumps a fist in the air. It gives him unnecessarily strong feelings of accomplishment, and he’s grinning until his eyes land on the lava curtain.
Behind that wave of molten rock lies Techno’s beloved. Dead or alive, Techno doesn’t know anymore, but Dream is inside of there. Perhaps Techno will see his corpse and be able to give him a proper burial - perhaps he will let an insane man out of his cell and into the open world outside.
Techno swallows heavily and pulls the lever to lower the lava.
It falls slowly. Lava takes a long time to dissipate, and if Techno falls in, Dream might either insult him or cry - Techno doesn’t know which one would be worse right now. Humor from Dream might be wonderful, or it might make Techno start to sob. Crying would be awful because Techno hates the idea of Dream ever crying.
When the lava finally falls, Techno sees a crumpled body on the other side. He doesn’t waste time with the platform that takes so long and is so annoying. He just tosses an ender pearl, looking down at the man in the cell.
He’s in a little ball, orange jumpsuit stained and ripped and burned. It’s in tatters, but it covers him alright, and it doesn't give much room for the skin to obviously show. What he can see makes him want to wrap Dream in a tight hug.
There’s a clear brand on his collarbone in the shape of a ‘PV’ accompanied by a ‘Q.’ Q is almost certainly Quackity, so PV is probably Pandora’s Vault. Techno wants to stop over the markings, to run his fingers over them and coat them in a healing potion so thick it’ll remove any scars, but he can’t. He has other things to do first.
Dream’s hair is long, very long, and the gold Techno used to love so much is patched with white. It’s tangled and knotted, and from where it lays flat, Techno can just barely see the edge of a horn, shaved down messily. It still looks rough, like sandpaper fastened into a little knob on someone’s head.
There’s burns and scars all over his body, dotting from his face to his ankles. Techno wants to will them away. Techno wants to hold his beloved and make sure no harm befalls him ever again. Techno wants to make sure that this wonderful man in front of him lives an equally wonderful life.
But he can’t do that if he’s dead, so Techno brings his hands forward to check Dream’s pulse. It takes a long moment before he can locate anything, but the strangled noise he makes when he realizes that Dream’s heart is still beating is probably the most embarrassing sound he’s ever made.
In typical circumstances, Techno would make an excuse. Maybe crack a joke. But all he can do is pull Dream to his chest, tears already gathering in his eyes as he cups the broken and bruised body that he was so sure was a dead man.
Dream is limp in Techno’s arms, and after a long moment of silent sobs and wet cheeks, Techno goes to see something else. He can’t tell if Dream is unresponsive because of how he’s been in the prison, or if he’s just unconscious. Either seem valid, but Techno prays to whatever gods might be above him that Dream will live on as more than a shell.
A little mumble sounds from Dream when Techno presses his thumb to the ‘V’ on the brands. Techno immediately pauses, looking to Dream and holding him up higher as if that might help him see his beloved waking up.
But Dream doesn’t do anything. He just lets himself lay in Techno’s lap, half sitting on Techno’s legs and half cradled in Techno’s arms. He doesn’t protest, even when Techno stands up straighter and picks Dream up.
He’s light. He’s so goddamn light and Techno almost missteps because of the difference of what he expected of weight and what he got. But he still manages to get Dream into a solid bridal carry, and as he tosses an ender pearl to the other side, the stomped out hope begins to sprout a new root.
The issue comes when Dream first wakes. They’ve almost made it to Techno’s house at that point, pausing in the snow so that Techno can tighten the cloak he’s wrapped around Dream. When he finishes up the wrapping, Dream’s eyes flicker open slowly. His eyes are so sunken and his eyelashes are so long that they drag across his face when he blinks.
It’s the emerald eyes that make the tears start to fall again. Techno has not given himself time to process, to think - he doubts he really will for a long time, but half of it is falling on him now and it just might be the heaviest thing he’s ever held - but his stomach suddenly hurts.
Techno’s beloved is here, he is alive, and he is so terribly hurt. He’s in pain and he’s traumatized and there’s an amazing chance that he will not trust Techno or his surroundings or anyone around him. Techno’s dead lover is back in his arms, and Techno can do nothing but bring him home and brew healing potions.
(He wonders, distantly if Dream might still love him. Did he think they knew he was alive? Did he think he had been abandoned on purpose? How long did he think he had been trapped inside of that living hell?)
Despite all of this running through his mind, Techno can’t help a relieved smile when Dream’s gaze fixes on him. He reaches out to stroke Dream’s hair, to hold his chin, to tell him something, to do anything - and a fist slams into his nose.
It doesn’t hurt all that bad, seeing as Dream is emaciated and his muscles have partially atrophied and he hasn’t eaten in what must be years, but the shock makes Techno drop Dream anyways. The man stumbles, legs unsteady and unsure, but he gets his rhythm after a moment and looks back up to Techno.
“Put me back, put me back, put me back!” Dream yells, repeats it over and over again, and Techno’s heart shatters into thousands of little broken pieces. Dream’s voice is raspy and hoarse, and it’s clear that he’s been talking to himself. “I need to go back, you need to - to put me back, put me back.”
“I can’t do that, my love,” Techno murmurs, and for a moment, there’s something akin to recognition in Dream’s eyes. It fades as quickly as it comes, and Dream is back to the snarl and the defensive position. He hasn’t fought in a long time and it shows - he’s unsteady, and he doesn’t defend his belly well enough.
Techno doesn’t try to hit back, though, he just counters easily. He catches the next fist Dream throws at him, and the next, until both of Dream’s fists are held tightly in Techno’s hands. He tries not to squeeze or hurt his lover, but Dream shudders in his hands at the contact.
Techno can’t tell if it’s a good shudder or a bad one, so he releases Dream’s wrists and watches as Dream growls once again. “Stop - stop playi-ing with me, put me back! I need to go back, need to be in there - he - he - they all said so, put me back put me back put me back putmeback!”
The words are nearing a shriek now, and half of Techno thinks it might attract mobs. He almost warns Dream, but the fists are back, punches landing uselessly against Techno’s broad and armored chest. The only reason Techno is considering grabbing him again is because he’s scared Dream might hurt his fists against Techno’s armor.
Techno tries not to consider the bits and pieces of what Dream is saying. He can’t worry about it now.
‘Stop playing with me.’
‘I need to be in there.’
‘They all said so.’
“Come - come on, you have to - I have to be in there, please? Please put me back, si- I - please, please, ple-ease. Gotta go back, I have to go back. I have to be there. I have to - have to be inside,” Dream’s voice trailed off into a low whine, and his punches slowed. They’re limp and loose now, barely a swing of the arm before they thump lightly on Techno’s armor.
There are tears on both of their eyes now, pouring down Dream’s face and pooling in Techno’s eyes. He doesn’t want to cry - he’s supposed to be helping Dream right now - but he can’t stop them from falling as his beloved slowly starts to break down in his arms. Techno tries to gather his words for a moment, but they spill out before he can situate them.
“Dream? Dream, listen to me. Come on, please listen to me,” Techno can’t tell if he’s begging yet. He thinks he might be. “I am Technoblade. I’m not Quackity, and I’m not Sam, and I’m here to help you. You don’t deserve to be in there - you know you don’t deserve to be in there! Quackity put some kinda ideas in your head, and,” Techno breathes in loudly. He’s trying to keep more tears from falling. “And they’re wrong, they’re so wrong. You’re lovely and lovin’ and nobody deserves what went on within that stupid fuckin’ place.”
“But-” Dream protests, his voice breaking in a sob. “Please just take me back. I want to rot. I want to die there, please? Please.”
“Dream, you can’t die! You won’t die there - you won’t be killed, either. You’ll keep decayin’ while you’re alive and you’ll be able to feel every single second of it, so - so please, Dream. You shouldn’t have been in that prison in the first place, torture and starvation or not - we don’t have laws on this server, and that’s - not the thing we’re talkin’ about.” Techno sighed. “We both know you didn’t deserve to be put in there. We both know you didn’t deserve that, because absolutely nobody does!”
Dream lets out another sob and goes almost entirely limp against Techno. Techno catches him and holds him up, but there’s something almost strange about this. He needs an agreement, a response, and -
oh, fuck. Dream slips a stack of pearls from Techno’s pocket and kisses him on the cheek. “I need to go back there, Techno. And if you won’t let me back in, I’ll find someone who will.”
The pearl breaks somewhere far away, and Techno chokes as he starts to sprint. Dream has 16 of those, and they don’t leave a trail - and Dream is going to get away.
But Techno is determined, and he has a little compass on his belt, and Dream will not live on like this.