Archive of Our Own ^beta

Technoblade didn’t consider himself a very compassionate person. It wasn’t like he lacked empathy, he had it in short brief moments impossible to predict but simply put- he didn’t care about a lot of people or a lot of things.

There were a few things he cared about. Originally, the list was a short collection of objects and Phil. He had mourned the loss of the Axe of Peace, but now...well, the axe Ranboo gave him was far more important. Nameless, because Ranboo hadn’t named it and Technoblade was stubborn and refused to do so. Now Ranboo was dead.

Technoblade had gotten along with Tommy on multiple occasions, although more often than not each encounter left him fuming and hazy under the reddish hue of bloodlust. Tommy, Techno knew rationally, was just a kid. A stupid ignorant child who had little idea of his impact on others or just how sharply his sudden betrayal could bite.

Techno had flopped back and forth countless times, switching between outright rage and awkward domestic posturing depending on Tommy’s mood and who he pissed off most recently. He made mistakes, many many mistakes, but he was still a kid. 

Dream on the other hand, was not a kid. Techno had always been a firm believer of karma, of the reciprocal relationship of hurt-and-be-hurt, but taking one look at Dream he knew things were just wrong. 

He couldn’t ignore a wolf with a broken foot, struggling to crawl and snarling in terror at every moving thing. He couldn’t ignore a startled bird trapped indoors and unable to see the glass walls covering each glimpse to freedom. Hell, Philza practically adopted Ranboo when he showed up on their combined front porch looking miserable and gangly like a newborn foal.

It was an unfortunate character flaw, not at all influenced by Chat’s frantically loud shrieks of delight over the cosmic irony. Technocare! TechnoSoft! And they were roommates oh my god they were roommates!

That was certainly a brief succinct summary of the problem Techno had in his hands now: he had two roommates currently hiding below his house. Each burrowed in their little bunkers on opposite corners below the foundation of his home. Each were blissfully unaware of each other’s existence.

“Ah, this is ridiculous,” Techno muttered to himself, fumbling with gold bangles wrapped around his wrist. They clicked together nicely, glimmering under his careful polishing every day before he curled up to sleep. They were nice bangles, he made them years ago when madly inspired to make all sorts of golden trinkets. Philza laughed at his odd hoarding tendencies, escalating further when Techno’s arguing succumbed into irritated snorting.

They were nice bangles-.

TechnoSoft! TechnoSoft! How long is he going to ignore us? Ooh, pretty. TechnoLameeee go kill something. I remember you making those! So wait is Tommy under the floor again haha Pog Pog Pog.

Chat was not being helpful.

“Hush, Chat,” Technoblade muttered, rubbing his bracelets and jingling them again. He ears twitched, keenly aware of any shifting noises of the floorboards. “It’s all fine.”

Not fine. Pog. Not fine. The house is gonna explode. Bell time? Hah like Phil with the creeper. Pog. I like your bracelets Techno!

“It’s fine,” Techno stressed again, pretending vainly that his bracelets were not in any way whatsoever an anxious habit coming back. It wasn’t like he had placed two ticking time bombs below where he slept at night. 

‘Ah, what am I kidding,’ Techno thought mournfully, already grieving the state of his house. ‘This is going to be a nightmare.’

Hiding Dream was an impulsive decision he hadn’t yet regretted. The facts were simple. Technoblade broke Dream out of prison with help of Phil and Niki. They escaped (and Techno refused to think on Ranboo or what was left of him), fled to the arctic, and that was that.

Once home, Techno had the opportunity to actually look at the man. Techno had spent three months in prison with Dream, but in his absence, Quackity had...done something. Or perhaps it was Sam (who Techno was going to slaughter the next time he saw the creeper) who had terrified or traumatized Dream when nobody was there to argue.

Dream lost a lot of weight in prison, starvation was an uncomfortable truth that resided inside those obsidian walls. The raw potatoes hadn’t been a problem for Technoblade’s piglin digestive tract, but only so much solanine and complex starch could be tolerated before it was just thinly disguised poisoning. 

Technoblade hoped it was the prolonged poisoning that had wrecked Dream’s body, he hoped that was the only problem. Everyone knew not to eat raw potatoes, or at least he hoped everyone knew. Technoblade had spent years of his life dedicated to the tedious backbreaking work of potato farming. Farming potatoes was only the first step, next came proper storage and testing to assure that they didn’t contain dangerous levels of solanine.

Dream obviously had no other choices. Dream obviously had survived off of budding potatoes for ages, slowly accumulating dangerous levels of toxicity until he reached the point he was now.

There were other things that lingered from the prison, things Techno hated to think about longer than necessary. Still, he felt a surge of adrenaline and the briefest flicker of wild panic before rationality could settle his frustratingly primal mind. Chat didn’t help, often exacerbating his stress or transforming pure panic into something volatile and aggressive.

Technoblade wasn’t innocent or naïve when it came to standard dehumanization tactics. In Hypixel, he experienced his fair share of discrimination or slurs based on his floppy ears or marvelous tusks. In the nether, he was ostracized from standard Piglin sounders due to the style of his gait and the glimmering sheen of his armour. He wasn’t oblivious to the cautious glances, or the occasional oinks in his directions.

It didn’t bother him because he refused to let it. Phil liked to tease that Techno’s determination was more bull than piglin. 

What happened in the prison was different, it wasn’t something as easily ignored like a few snide comments. It wasn’t offhand remarks or degradation slurs. It wasn’t the sort of violence Technoblade once excelled at, embraced and called familiar.

“Hey, Phil?” Techno asked one evening, the sky inky black and speckled with stars. Techno hadn’t been so fixated on the little lights before, hadn’t appreciated the breathless expanse of the celestial sky above them.

“Yeah, mate?” Phil asked in return, sprawled out in his wide armchair, ramshackle and heavily modified with thick wool batting and small lopsided pillows. Embedded with Steve’s fur from where the Polar Bear stole it during his midafternoon nap. Techno would bet a gold ingot Phil shoved some of his downy feathers into the lumpy casing at some point.

They were casual with each other, whatever timid barriers that once existed had melted away in wake of Technoblade jailbreak. The slight awkwardness returned with Wilbur’s resurrection, but too fell apart in the heartfelt reunion in the Syndicate’s control room.

Nighttime's were special for them both. It once symbolized a time where Phil could fly unburdened in the sky, camouflage against the heavens above. It was once a time where the avian hybrid could swoop and twirl between the ethereal lights of his goddess and her messages, returning her silent greetings with his own acrobatics in the sky. 

 Night symbolized a period of solidarity, a reminder of how far Techno was from the ever-burning nether or other caves with low burning lanterns. It was a hitch in their breath where they existed in the same place and the same moment. It was hard to explain that to other people.

“In…in the prison…” Techno started, fidgeting in his chair (a heavily forward-tilted thing that accommodated his unique pelvic structure and plaid havoc on Phil’s wings) and clacking his feet on the ground. Steve shifted near the fireplace, deciding to sleep indoors instead of out.

“Take your time,” Phil told him, smiling gently. The man curled one wing towards him, bending the tips to carefully groom the gnarled scarred end where feathers once settled and now couldn’t grow. It took careful maintenance to avoid infection or tearing from the fragile skin, more preening despite the loss of flight.

Techno settled himself, focusing on the crackle of fire and Phil’s quiet humming. He wasn’t thinking of the loud chaotic melody of chat or the nervous energy fueled by housing both a raccoon and a green-blob below his floorboards.

“In the prison,” Techno says, flicking his tongue to lick alongside his left tusk. A nervous habit he hadn’t had before the prison, something he knew Phil had noticed about him. “They…you know I don’t care about- about names and…stuff.”

“Insults?” Phil guessed, rubbing the pads of his fingers over a split vane in his feather, zipping it back together. The avian glanced at him briefly, judging Techno’s face and his nervous tick carefully, “ah, about the er, piglin stuff?”

“I don’t care about it,” Techno repeated, forcing himself to believe it, “I don’t. It’s crap anyway.”

“I know that, mate.”

“Yeah, but…” the piglin trailed off, clattering his hooved feet against the wooden floorboards. He tapped his fingers along his chair, tracing the grooves from where he tested his sharpened knives against the spruce wood. “I- er…”

“You’re really worked up ‘bout this,” Phil stated, keen eyes careful of the room and Techno himself. “Would you like to write it down? We can talk about this later, mate. Whenever you’re okay with it.”

“No, it’s important,” Techno said with a shaky exhale. He drummed his fingers once more, lavishing his tusk with a hearty lick. “I…they were…doing training. Like the hounds.”

Phil steadied himself, running his fingers along the underside of his wing gently. It was a careful movement, calculating and thinking. Phil asked steadily in a calm voice, “ah, dog training?”

“Yeah,” Techno confirmed uncomfortably, “it…whistling and clicking. It- It was only three months but-.”

Phil’s eyes softened, his face changing to a soothing concern instead of pity. He said, “mate, don’t say it like that. You’re allowed to be upset, three months is a bloody long time.”

“Dream was in there longer,” Techno says like an excuse.

“And that’s too bad,” Phil agrees with a bobbing head nod, “but it was bad for you too. Whistles and clicking, yeah? Want me to change to verbal commands for the wolves?”

“No, I-,” Techno stumbled, struggling to convey the true depth of the issue at hand. “Do- I…do you know that experiment? With the bell?”

It takes Phil a second to understand the jump in Techno’s brain. There is a reason they exist well together, and it’s not due to Phil’s easygoing nature. It takes mere moments for Phil to latch onto what precisely Techno is referring to, despite so little being provided. The avian’s eyes widen slightly, his grip arcs into a flash of darkened talons that blend into the obsidian sheen of his feathers.

“Pavlovian conditioning,” Philza says sharply, expressing something stunned instead of furious, “you- that thing where they link a neutral sound or thing to something you react to. A reflex. That conditioning.”

Techno shrugged one shoulder, the movement coming across significantly jerkier than he anticipated.

“Right,” Philza says, closing his eyes for a brief moment to gather his thoughts and hide his rising anger and dread, “and it was…whistling and clicking.”

“Yeah,” Techno says, hesitating after a minor pause. He licks his tusk, taps his fingers and traces the notches in his chair, “I…uh, I want you to…you know if…if uh, if Chat…”

“Ever what?” Phil asks, coaxing him gently like he were a child.

“Get…you know,” Techno says unhelpfully. He gestures towards himself with one aborted movement, gesturing to all of his torso, “...with uh, you know. Chat…and uh, you know how subscribers get around full moons.”

“Ah,” Philza says gently, filling in the unspoken warning. ‘Dangerous. Wild. Bloodthirsty. Feral.’

“If…that…” Techno says, his ears twitching slightly. He can’t help it, when anxiety increases his old piglin brain demands his ears move to find the threat lurking in the lava or behind the netherack. It makes his earrings jingle and piercings rattle comfortingly in his cartilage. He revels in it, settling comfortably before resuming with a tight voice, “I want you to. Uh, click or…whistle.”

“Mate-,”

Techno cuts him off with a hand, staring at Phil with open honesty and seriousness. 

“Please, Phil,” he says softly, offering a lopsided odd smile. Phil’s eyebrows furrow, a mild look of concern gracing his face. “It would…it would make me happy to know I wouldn’t…”

“Yeah,” Phil says knowingly, but the bristling mantle of his wing currently not between his fingers expresses his increasing rage. The fury is difficult to hide, nestled just behind his formidable vocal cords with a vengeance. It’s difficult to hide, simmering just below his careful calmness. 

“And…” Techno shifts his feet, scuffing the floor awkwardly, “and if I uh…if I don’t…” react to that “just…whistle.”

Phil tightens his hand into a fist, his nails biting into his skin as he struggles to not shout at that news. He knows the feather he had been working on will be bent, but it’s not like this wing is functional anyway. The feather is a minor sting, a tiny pain that isn’t as impactful as it is annoying. Phil breathes carefully, nodding jerkily.

“Just a…a little-“ and Techno whistles a crude approximation of a noise. Phil recognizes it somehow, an old sound or song from the mouths of wives or mothers that nursed children in far-off villages. It’s a little jingle, something not quite a lullaby but childish and short enough he knows he once heard Wilbur hum it when he was young enough to still need watching. 

There’s something gravely insulting about that, using a childish tune to imply something dangerous or painful. It’s a mockery of comfort, a sharp jab into a sensitive zone that once provided comfort and now festered a sickened wound.  something Phil can roughly link to a common insignificant jingle that now meant something much more.

Phil’s mouth is dry and his throat is painfully tight. He nods, barely able to do anything else.

“It was…” Techno jerks, nostrils flaring as his ears flap back and forth. The sight of it makes Phil feel sick.  “it meant…well, normally there would be uh- it…it meant you messed up, I guess.”

‘The beep before the zap,’ Philza translated with a sick taste in his mouth, ‘or maybe something else.’

It isn’t easy to hide someone below your house.

It isn’t easy to hide someone for a second time, in the exact same spot they hid originally.

It took Philza a painfully short moment to start suspecting something…suspicious when his nice collection of golden apples started to dwindle. At first, only a few appeared missing, then a greater amount overnight. He was a relatively light sleeper, years of paranoia from creepers invading his home left him with a keen ear even while unconscious. Whoever was snatching his apples had to be a thief, a particularly sly and crafty one to sneak over the creaky floorboards and Steve’s animal instinct.

This left a single easy culprit with particularly grubby hands and sticky fingers. 

Phil has…a strange sort of relationship with TommyInnit. He isn’t the boy’s father (despite whatever odd relationship they have), that alone will settle only on Wilbur’s shoulders. Tommy is Wilbur’s best friend, or as close as you can get with a muddled line left out in the rain and snow to blur even further beyond recognition. Through proxy, Tommy should be family for Phil, but he hadn’t ever connected with the boy beyond that of being simply fond.

He wasn’t one to forget so easily the raw panic the child felt so clearly. Screaming at the top of his lungs as he peeled away from the forest line, hysteria muddled his words into a slurred symphony of utter terror.

He should have anticipated the boy hiding out once more in a clearly safe space, established from years ago when he carved a nice yellow niche below Techno’s floorboards. Now, the little goblin was sneaking around stealing Phil’s hard-earned apples.

“Alright, no more you little monster,” Phil muttered to himself, rigging a tripwire across the entryway of his little home with thin spider silk. It laced its way carefully along his wall, connecting to metal hooks and anchors and the small toxic pile of redstone above an unlit lamp.

He was lucky Wilbur wasn’t here. His son would have argued a fuss at being awoken so rudely. Then again, his son may have instead fallen into euphoric rambling at the sight of Tommy. A significantly traumatized Tommy, but Tommy nonetheless.

“What a bloody mess,” Phil muttered, snipping off the excess silk to store away for later. “He couldn’t have gone back to the mainland, no, he has to hide in our bloody floor…”

Phil sighed, eying his collection of chests and other small memorabilia. Bits of half-finished wood carvings, the broken remnants wire from the last time Wilbur changed his guitar strings. Somewhere in his pile of things, he knew there would be a collection of Tommy’s sweaters he took from Wilbur’s belongings after his confirmed death. Ranboo’s clothes would be too large for the child.

“What a mess,” Phil sighed, repeating himself. With little else to do, he settled himself in the ramshackle assortment of blankets on top of the wooden bed. It wasn’t anything distinctly avian, but the lack of folded sheets or anything resembling a normal pillow betrayed his origins.

Tommy appeared in a flash of light and the small clatter of wooden bowls toppling from their precarious tower. The boy stood in blatant shock under the redstone spotlight, hands curled around a golden apple.

Phil tapped his fingers along his arm, trying not to let his amusement appear too obvious. It was the middle of the night, well past the time Techno would bed down. Phil was nothing if not persistent.

“Watcha’ got there, mate?” Phil asked a tad too calmly.

Tommy swallowed slowly, eyes wide and frozen. Almost comedically, the boy lowered his hand to hide the apple from sight before he said, “uh…nothin’.”

“Really?” Phil asked with a small twist to his head, “looks like you got somethin’ of mine there, mate.”

“Ah, nah nah,” Tommy said, false bravado puffing his chest out like a peacock. Inhaling shakily, the boy belted out his fake confidence with all the courage of an actor. “I was just- just browsing. You know how it is! Looking around like a store- speaking of a store, have you been to town recently? Go window shopping at all? You look like a fella’ who would do some real window shopping- oh and the ladies, lemme tell ya, they love goin’ shopping-.”

“Uh huh,” Phil said, humoring him. He ignored Tommy’s nonsensical babbling, stretching his wings out and forwards with all the grace of a reaching owl.

Tommy fell silent, eyes flickering to the enormous primary feathers thicker than a broadsword. His eyes glanced at it’s broken mirror, landing on the scarred tissue and knotted cords weaving through what once housed feathers. With a choked sound, Tommy fell silent and hastily averted his eyes.

“Why are you here, Tommy?” Phil asked softly. 

“I…I didn’t mean to steal nothin’,” Tommy babbled, hunkering down and inwards on himself. His face looked gaunt, pale in the light and hollowed somehow. “I just- I just wanted to ah, to stockpile a little bit.”

“Stockpile, eh?” Phil mused, folding his wings behind him in a careful clap of joints and bones. Tommy swallowed thickly, keeping his eyes low on the ground.

“You know, if you wanted to stick around, you coulda’ asked,” Phil said, reaching out with one hand. Tommy stared at it blankly, hesitating openly. He gazed at Phil with obvious distrust, suspicion tainting his thoughts.

“I’m fine with ya’ stickin’ around here,” Phil said, “but ya’ gotta’ help out a bit. No stealing my apples with your grubby fingers.”

“They aren’t grubby,” Tommy muttered sourly, reluctantly handing over the pristine golden apple. “I just…they have regeneration-.”

“You don’t need regeneration.”

“But- but what if Dream-,” and the younger cuts off his words with a terrified snap of his jaw. Gazing around frantically, the beginnings of open panic start to manifest on the younger’s face.

‘Aw, mate,’ Phil thinks with a somber sigh. He reaches out, laying a heavy hand on Tommy’s shoulder. Taking one step forward, he lowers himself to peer at Tommy in his eyes with open honesty. “So long as I’m here, I won’t let him bother you.”

“Promise?” Tommy asks him, sounding so terrifyingly young.

“I won’t toss you out,” Phil consoles him with a slight squeeze, “you don’t deserve what happened to you, and I can’t do anything to change what’s happened, but when you’re here whatever stuff you did doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” Tommy croaks with a small sniffle. He tries to hide it frantically, ducking away to curl his chin lower. Phil clucks his tongue, shifting forward subtly with open arms. Tommy, despite all his differences, is painfully similar to Wilbur. It takes no further prompting for the thin smaller boy to curl against Phil’s chest with a clinging tight grip. 

“You’re fine here,” Phil says softly, patting the top of Tommy’s head with one hand, “I’ll talk to Tech’ if you’re worried about that. No questions asked.”

Tommy says something slurred into Phil, roughly translated to ‘thanks, fantastic, epic.’

Phil sighed through his nose softly, gentle enough not to stir the younger or alarm the timid boy. Wilbur hadn’t returned since he swept in with a wide lopsided grin, causing chaos and leaving destruction like a whirlwind. He stayed long enough to sleep in Phil’s attic, chuckle over some childhood knicknacks Phil had carried with him, and stared oddly at his guitar with something close to puzzlement. He left in a hurry, sprouting stories and oddly poetic explanations Phil couldn’t comprehend or decipher in his haste.

Since then, the attic had been barren but clean. Tidy, neat, it still had some of Tommy’s things and all of Wilbur’s clothing sans coat.

“I’ll let you sleep in the attic if you’d like,” Phil offered, trying not to let his unnamed discomfort show.

“No no,” Tommy argued, puling away awkwardly, “I ah, I’ve got my burrow! Big men live in burrows, all the craze. Who needs attics when I’ve got dirt, and oh- oh Phil. The mud-.”

“Alright,” Phil says, accepting the halfhearted rambles for what they were. “I’ll let you get back then- and here.”

Tommy’s eyes gleamed in awe and confusion as Phil plucked the golden apple from where it had been set aside, depositing it in Tommy’s open palms like a precious gift.

“Tomorrow, you come back here,” Phil told him with one last ruffle to his hair, “and help around a bit if you’re going to stay with, yeah?”

Dream’s house was a pathetic ramshackle crevice carved into the rock below Technoblade’s cabin. The rock had been chiseled hastily with a pickaxe hours upon returning to the quiet arctic. The sharp edges and frosted bedrock crudely blanketed by old blankets he once gave his wolves during the worst storms.

It was cold and dark, muffled and quiet between drips of thawed ice from the underground walls. In some ways, it was disgustingly familiar to Technoblade. In some ways, it was a new sort of purgatory.

“Are you going to come up yet?”

The lump in the corner, covered in blankets and one of Phil’s stolen pillows filled with unknown materials (it was his feathers, it had to be his feathers). Dream’s mask had been destroyed early into his incarceration, his facial features were remarkable only for the grotesque wounds still in stages of healing.

As an act of mercy or pity, Techno had sorted through discarded bits of Phil’s exploration gear. The tundra was cold, but Phil had transverse higher mountain ranges and ice spike biomes with specialized gloves and boots. His face covering to protect his skin from the sub-zero temperature looked like a mixture of a hat and a facial scarf, disguising all of his skin except his eyes which were protected by flying goggles.

Techno wasn’t willing to snag something as expensive as flying goggles, but the facial covering was going to a good cause.

Dream was still recognizable even with his hair completely covered and his eyes exposed. It was a facial feature not commonly seen. Technoblade wasn’t sure anyone outside the prison could reliable recognize Dream now.

“You can’t stay down here forever,” Technoblade said, settling as comfortably as he could on the cold stone. It burned his exposed ankles, frighteningly familiar against his flesh. “Like, you’re being a real goblin about this.”

‘Come on, idiot…’ Techno hopes, his increasing attempts to rouse Dream have changed from subtle to something blatantly desperate. ‘Come on…just get up.’

His former cellmate doesn’t react further than a heavy exhale, his body shuddering under the weight of so many layers before relaxing once more into the floor. The food the piglin had brought not only that day, but the former night and former morning are obviously untouched and unappealingly coated in congealed grease.

Technoblade sighed a guttural wheeze, clattering his hooves against the chipped rock in a noisy clamor. Anxiously, his tail twitched and his ears flapped in a frantic bid to hear anything more than Dream’s steady breathing.

“Come on,” Techno grunted quietly, reluctant to walk closer in the tiny cramped quarters the man had climbed into and hadn’t yet climbed out. “You can’t just- just stay in here the entire time. Dude, there’s the whole world upstairs. When was the last time you had a bath? When was the last time you- you touched uh, a good tree?”

Nothing, no response. 

Gross, came the whispering intrusions of Chat between his temporal lobes. He hasn’t showered? Nasty green man. Hah, potato boy in the basement. Is he breathing? Bell in here will make it echo. Acoustics? Has he eaten anything? Technocare? What if you stabbed him. How has he gotten worse since prison?

“I don’t know, chat,” Techno muttered quietly, feeling very overwhelmed and very small, “I don’t know.”

Lame. Borrrrring. Awww Technocare. Homeless basement hermit hahaha. Pog bastard got what he deserved. Is he okay?!?! Is Dream dying?

Techno shuddered, shoulders wilting under the barrage of thoughts and whispers. Normally they were easy to ignore- bloodlust or intrusive thoughts were a constant companion to him. Unpredictable concern and occasion worry that his new neighbor was actually dead under Phil’s stolen pillow?

“Okay, no,” Techno said, stepping across the invisible threshold to crowd into Dream’s tiny corner, “you can’t just…wallow there. Come on, you need to eat at least something.”

Dream didn’t feel different under his hand, he was still the same bony idiot with proportions endearingly similar to Ranboo. His closed eyes sluggishly opened, scanning the tiny cupboard of a room before sliding across Techno with a dazed confusion. Delayed, the other flinched away from Techno’s grip, curling pitifully back into his blankets with a small whine of protest.

“No,” Techno stated firmly, fishing through fabric to find Dream’s other shoulder to try and haul him into an upright seated position, “you’re sitting upright. No loafing allowed, unless it involves bread.”

Dream grunts softly like the drag of a stick over ice. It’s a quiet whisper of a noise, exhausted and tired. Techno tries to ignore the dread he feels, festering dangerously behind his sternum.

Gross. Weird sound. Bell time? He’s alive! Pog! Pog time! Pog!

“You with me, Tellytubby?” Techno asks him, fishing around on the ground with one outstretched hand. On the first day, he practically hauled random bits down the tiny hole and made sure Dream wasn’t going to die of bloodloss or an unknown brain injury. Making sure there was an air escape route was a priority- it would be embarrassing if he killed the wanted man due to oxygen deprivation from a lantern.

The lantern, on quick examination, sloshed with an oil canister nearly full. He doubted the man had lit it once, even to make sure he knew where he was. That meant the man had willingly been hiding in the dark and cold for days, refusing to eat for an unknown reason.

‘I got you out for a reason,’ Techno thought worriedly, fumbling on the flint striker to light the wisp of flame inside the tiny glass canister, ‘you aren’t allowed to just give up now.’

Dream sluggish slams his hands over his eyes, blocking out the dim light like it hurts him. He whines quietly, muffled behind dark fabric that shrouded his head and neck from sight. His oversized clothes- hastily grabbed from Techno’s surplus wardrobe, hang on him loosely around taped gauze and blankets strewn over his shoulders.

“There you are,” the piglin muttered, setting the lantern on the ground a safe distance away. Reaching out slowly with one hand, he tugged a bit at the blankets draped around Dream’s lap. “Come on, have you at least stretched?”

Dream grumbles something quiet and gargled. Potentially an insult or a curse. Techno reached out further, aiming to check Dream’s visible shoulder where the worst injury had been healing last he knew.

“F’ck off,” Dream grumbled, this time audible. He slapped downwards, abandoning his eyes to paw limply at Techno’s hand, “L’ve me alone.”

“Can’t do that,” Techno stated, awkwardly defending himself from Dream’s weakened pawing. “You haven’t been eating, and haven’t been moving. I’m not leaving until I know you’re not dying down here.”

He groans a quiet crackled noise. After a moment of contemplation, the former prisoner slumped forward tiredly to rest the top of his head somewhere near Techno’s collarbone.

“Uh,” Techno said, “I uh, I know we’re roomies again but…uh, not that kind of roomates.”

“...dizzy,” Dream said quietly, body shuddering slightly. The vibrations are concern already, so is the pronounced goosebumps along every exposed bit of Dream’s skin.

“Are you cold?” Techno asks him nervously, fumbling to tug Dream into an upright seated posture instead of a complete collapse, “have you been puking? I mean I don’t smell anything, but you haven’t really been eating.”

Sick? Dream is sick? Gross. Just let him die down here. Sick arc? Get the health soup! Is he poisoned?

He hadn’t considered poisoning. He knew there would be a toxicity buildup of some level, but didn’t it normally hit harder for humans? Or did it take a slow amount over a long period? Was Dream in withdrawal from toxic potatoes or was he struggling to survive from them?

“Where’s Phil when you need him?” he muttered to himself, trying not to lick his tusk in such close proximity to Dream (who was a tad stinky if he were honest).

‘First, check his eyes. The eyes go weird when there’s poison,’ he thought hurriedly, fishing for the lantern. Lifting it with one hand, Dream whined a small protest and jerked backwards to avoid the dim light. From what Technoblade could see, both pupils were enormous and moving coordinated- if not a bit sluggish. 

‘Ah, right. Probably should have considered, you know, the fact he’s been roleplaying a molerat,’ he thought sarcastically, ‘well, let’s ignore that blunder.’

“Stop,” Dream protested, shying from the light. He shivered, vibrating in Techno’s single handhold with his entire body, “tired.”

“Are you normally this tired?” Techno quizzed him, “is this normal? Do you feel okay?”

“What do you think?” Dream snapped, the smallest bite of his original self burning briefly before suffocating out in the shell of his incarceration. He twitched, shuddering in Techno’s hand.

“You probably shouldn’t be this cold,” Techno muttered, fishing to wrap one of the heavier blankets up around Dream’s shoulders, encasing him in fabric, “is that a poison thing? Or the arctic thing? Ugh.”

Dream muttered something, his tone bitter but words lost to the air between them. He felt thin in Techno’s hand, limp and docile in a place where he didn’t need to be so.

“Yeah, okay,” Techno said to himself, filling the eery quiet with his own voice. 

Sick Dream. He’s like a ice statue. More dogs? Dream nooo. Hot an cold haha. Not pog.

“Yeah,” Techno agreed with a sigh, shaking Dream slightly with his hand, “let’s carry you up.”

Dream didn’t argue, he didn’t fight or shout or flail in his grip. Climbing the rope ladder was some struggle, but Dream quietly settled in some haze of disoriented sleepiness that left him prone and mute.

The light of Technoblade’s basement was immeasurably brighter than the cold hole. The glowing lanterns flickered warmly, the soft noises of sleeping foxes whispered against the wooden walls.

Dream writhed, choking on a quiet noise over Technoblade’s shoulder. The pigeon grunted quietly, stomping to the next ladder and ascended that as well. The light of the fireplace glowed in soft yellows, Steve’s baritone snores rumbled through Technoblade’s sternum and chest.

“Here you go, you idiot,” he muttered fondly, lowering Dream with care onto the couch. Snatching a throw blanket thoroughly embedded with Steve’s fur and a few of Phil’s feathers. He draped it over the man’s body, taking care to tuck it around his legs and feet.

Dream blinked at him slowly, still sluggish and delayed to respond. He squinted, the blonde arc of his eyebrows furrowed his face into one of confusion. 

“You good?” Techno asked quietly, careful to keep his voice low. He made a mental note to throw another log into the fire.

Dream hummed quietly, wincing a bit at the light of the fire. His eyes were dark gleaming lights in the dark, somewhat reminiscent of a cat.

“Alright, more logs,” Techno muttered, stepping around Steve to access his firewood pile. He’d have to bring more in tomorrow. “Anything I can get you, smiley?”

Dream said nothing, even as the fire grew brighter and hotter. Under Techno’s thick woolen clothes, he felt the prickle along his hair that signified sweat in humans and other hybrids.

Dream shifted on the couch, rolling subtly from where he lay. His eyes were half lid, his pupils enormous and complexion sickly. The sight left Techno filled with dread and the reluctant awareness of just how deep the man’s potato poisoning lay.

“I’ll get you some water,” the piglin said, clacking his hooves on his wooden floorboards.

He returned and traded Dream’s headwear for the glass of water. Seeing the man’s bruised and scabbed face was sad. Seeing the man struggle to hold the water without shaking was terrifying.

The admin laughed, barking a curt noise with a dark grimace. It tore the edges of his chapped lips, splitting pale skin further.

“I’m not getting better,” Dream croaked oddly, his smile the slightest bit too wide for the dull glaze of his eyes. “Why am I here?”

“Because we’re roommates now,”  Techno told him, trying to hide his nerves. “Drink your water, you’re sleeping in my room.”

Dream scoffed, his shoulder jerking with the shake of his shoulders. He didn’t make any movement to drink from his cup, he stared at the water blankly. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

“Because I don’t kill people who don’t deserve it,” Techno said, “and uh, you definitely didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

“It would be easier,” Dream said softly, “...peaceful.”

Uh oh. Red alert! Techno! Censor time? Uh I’m not ready for this. I mean…

Techno felt his ears twitch, flapping anxiously around his skull. He frantically glanced around the cozy quarters of his living room, fishing for any possible distraction.

‘There!’ he thought, snatching a woven dried reed basket filled with clumps of fluffed grey.

“Here,” he said, aggressively shoving the basket of fluff into the somewhat baffled administrator’s hands, “pull the fluff.”

“...what?” Dream said, spluttering on broken sounds as he awkwardly placed his (now half spilled) glass of water on the nearest table. 

“Pull the fluff,” Techno repeated anxiously, clicking his nails together. The tips of his fingers (darkened with hoof horn instead of keratin nail) tapped softly as he plucked a random clump of fluff between his fingers. “Try…try pulling it.”

Dream blinked slowly, then with the same speed, reached out to pluck the fluff. It stretched out, individual fibers elongating until Dream held a teardrop shaped tuft of fur.

After a pause, Dream opened his mouth, then closed it. After another small pause, he asked with a tight voice, “...why?”

“I need to do this anyways,” Techno said, flicking his fingers and tossing the fluff back into his basket, “and you look like someone who would like pulling fluff.”

“This is wool.”

“Yeah, pull it,” Techno said, leaping back to his feet. Dream numbly pulled the wool, elongating it like spaghetti until he picked up another tuft. 

“...why?” Dream asked, mystified by the process.

“The fur needs to go the same way,” Techno told him, relief filling him like a cold drink on a hot day. Dream’s self-depreciating spiral halted in the sudden unanticipated wool mission. “Pull it and lay it so it’s all facing the one way instead of a cloud.”

Dream blinked, falling silent. Obediently and almost curious, he pulled the fluff and plucked it until each fiber lay row in row.

“This is stupid,” Tommy muttered, sitting on the floor of Phil’s house with a thin blanket on the ground and a heap of fur in front of him. About the size of three pumpkins, it was filled with thistles and hay and smelled horribly of dried grass.

“You live here,” Philza chirped happily, “you help here. Keep plucking.”

“I don’t like plucking,” Tommy scowled, huffing miserably. “I’m not a bloody bird.”

“Watch it,” Phil snapped jokingly, flaring his wings with a small smile, “you can sort that out, unless you think you can repair this window.”

“No no!” Tommy yelped, hurriedly fishing his fingers through the wool to tug out thistles and thorns, “I’m happy here! Doing a great job, oh yes. You know what they call me? I’m the uh, the wool sorter, oh yes. No sheep are uh, are safe from me!”

“You do that,” Phil said, chuckling heartily.

Tommy felt his breath exhale in relief, his desperate pulling slowing to a more manageable pace. Little bits of dirt and vegetable debris scattered onto the tarp, collecting there instead of the floor. 

“So, if you don’t mind me asking,” Phil said, settling on top of one of his chests to better view the crack in his window and the broken top sill, “why exactly are you here?”

“Oh,” Tommy said quietly, hands stilling in the piles of dusty wool, “uh, well…there’s this…guy that uh- that got out of prison.”

“Mm, I’ve heard.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said quietly, gulping thickly, “and uh…and he’s…he’s gonna come after me.”

Phil hummed, cocking his head to view his cracked wooden frame, “you sure about that, mate?”

“Yeah, like…like why- Phil. Phil. He’s- he’s gonna make my life a- he’s gonna ruin me.”

Phil frowned, craning his neck to glance down at the younger boy. The boy was gnawing on his lower lip to the point it was swelling red.

“Yeah, uh…” Phil paused, setting his hammer and nails aside, “look, if Dream just got out, he probably doesn’t have ya’ as a priority.”

“You don’t know what it was like, Phil,” Tommy croaked, hands fisted in the soft material, “It- it was hell.”

“Aw, mate,” Phil sighed, fluttering down from on top his perch. “C’mere, you’re safe here.”

“I’m not,” Tommy moaned quietly, letting go of the wool to run his hands through his hair. He breathed shakily, trembling through his body, “I’m- I’m not.”

“I’m here, mate,” Phil told him gently, patting his shoulder gently, “don’t worry, you got me and Tech. We got the wolves too, we’d notice if he came by.”

Tommy shook his head, his hair flopping back and forth. He said wetly, “you- you didn’t say that before.”

“Aw, shit,” Phil cursed as Tommy hunkered forward with a desperate shaky exhale. It hitched in his throat, bursting out with a loud whine. Tommy trembled, terror wracking him with sobs. Each noise reinforced a sense of bile and guilt from each wingtip to settle in Phil’s throat.

“Tommy, it’s okay,” Phil tried to soothe softly, “it’s alright, mate I’m here.”

“He’s going to get me,” Tommy practically sobs, near-hysterical through his heavy curtain of raw fear, “Phil- Phil please please don’t let him- please-“

‘Aw, shite,’ Phil thought tiredly, running one hand across his head where a headache was growing. ‘Sorry Tech, but the kid’s going to kill himself at this rate,’

“Tommy, breathe slow,” Phil instructed, settling on his heels to try and look Tommy in his eyes. The sight of flushed cheeks and wet tears only served to strengthen his resolve. “Okay, listen to me. If that happens, if he shows up and it’s a dangerous situation-.”

“Of course, I’m bloody desperate! I’m hiding in The Blade’s goddamn basement!”

“I mean a situation where you might die, Tommy,” Phil said sternly, “where you think you have no other choice, Tommy. When you think you are done.”

Tommy stilled. A dark somber emotion just shy of self-loathing formed behind Tommy’s face, glimmering in a dull haze of acceptance. The realization of true desperation, the seconds before his final death.

“If that happens,” Phil says and hates how his breath feels sour and poisonous, “I want you to whistle this -“

And Tommy repeats it, a tad shakily through his chapped lips but it’s recognizable and sharp. It’s a small chime, something Wilbur would have hummed innocently when he still had baby teeth. It was something the boy clearly had never heard before.

“What’s that?” Tommy asks him, trying to subtly blow his nose into his elbow between words, “a summoning thing, innit? Gonna swoop in and wreck that bastard?”

“Never use it if you can help it,” Phil tells him sharply, his expression making Tommy’s smile falter weakly. “And don’t tell Technoblade about it.”

Inhaling shakily, Tommy jerked his head into a nod.

It became a pattern, shared in candlelight between a lonely pair.

It was hard to look at Dream and identify him. He had shed the black winter guard that disguised all of his head except his eyes. Now he sat in a place beyond his darkened pit in the dirt, somewhere he had to pretend his humanity still existed. 

He arranged thin strips of soft wiry wool, coarse and combed from sheep of Phil’s flock. The man would sit on a couch wrapped in dark shadowed blankets and pull a thin twisting cord no larger than a candles wick. 

He was some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing that kept flickering in and out with the pulling tide of the moon and the sun and relentless neurosis. He kept looking around with a paranoia no assurances could quell. If you asked Technoblade to describe him, he’d drawn a crude line under perfectly round eyes and above the chin and mouth which was filled with a thousand sharpened shattered teeth.

But he’d draw it with a smile. 

“Why did you always wear a mask?”

Dream glanced at him, shifting his head just enough for the light to catch on a membrane in his eyes that glowed like a cat, or a shark.

“Why do you?” Dream asked quietly, murmuring softly with words that barely moved his lips. He pinched, pulling and rolling fiber between his fingers into a coil he wrapped around and around to form a fine twine. 

“It’s an intimidation tactic,” Techno told him, watching the methodical twisting and twirling of roving into thread. “People get unnerved if they can’t see your facial expressions. There’s less cues to go off of for combat predictions.”

Dream cocked his head slightly, the strands hanging slightly. The trembling through his arms hadn’t vanished yet, but was lessening. “The same reason.”

“Liar,” Techno huffed, snorting through his snout with a rattle. 

“It isn’t,” Dream said with the smallest shift of his brow. Without a mask, his face was fiercely expressive. “It’s the same reason.”

“You wore a mask all the time,” Techno argued, “and if you didn’t have one, you hid your face. Bruh, you practically have anxiety attacks without it-.”

Dream shifted his head further, staring at Techno with an expression hard to decipher. His mouth had tensed into a thin line, both eyes were round and clear with the faint green sheen like Ranboo’s cat Enderchest (who Phil fed every morning on clockwork). His hands had paused like little claws, pinching and pulling and rolling relentlessly.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Dream asked him, voice a tad too reckless for Techno’s preference. “I made it something recognizable, something noticeable and I wanted everyone to notice me, I didn't know who I-.”

Techno felt his mouth dry, the unspoken reasons tangible and bitter below his skin. I wanted to know whoever I was, I was alive. At least, for a little while.

“You know what a smile means, don’t you?” Dream asked him dangerously, like a shark on his belly writhing in shallow waters. Pinned to the shore under the press a fisherman’s boot- killing him slowly.

“You want me to do what with these berries?” Tommy asked, eying the collection with open suspicion, “I just gotta squish them. It’s that easy, innit?”

“Yep, just mash them up,” Phil told him, pointing to the bucket filled with partially frosted fruit. “I can use the dye from that for this yarn.”

“Gross,” Tommy said grimacing, glancing at the hefty basket of twisted fibre. He hadn’t arranged the cleaned wool into the batting strips Phil called roving, nor had he taken it between his fingers and twisted it slowly together with splashes of water to felt it slightly. He was grateful for that, it seemed like exhausting work.

“Just crush them up,” Phil said with a soft smile, mantling his wings like a makeshift cloak to protect his clothes and body from the intermittent snow. “You can stomp them if you like.”

“I can squish it?” Tommy asked him, squinting at the older man.

Phil nodded, trying not to smile too wide as Tommy energetically whooped in glee and smashed one foot into the bucket. The berries rattled and crunched, squirting red dye against his boot and the oak. Tommy mashed it, happily cracking his heel against the bucket again and again.

Then it shifted and brought new snow. Splatters of red flickered over Tommy’s pants and face. The delight changed to something else, a hollow urgency as Tommy stomped and stomped and spilled red across the snow.

“Tommy?” Phil asked with one outstretched hand.

Tommy flinched back, slipping in red as his hands lifted to shield his face from the sun.

They paused, quietly watching their breath condense between them as Tommy caught his bearings once more. The boy sniffled, ashamed as he rubbed his face to hide his tears and smear juice over his freckles.

“Don’t,” Tommy choked out, flinching at his voice, “I- don’t.”

“What happened?” Phil asked gently.

“You don’t fucking care!” Tommy snapped, stomping one foot in a clean snowbank to rid himself of red. “You don’t want to- to hear the fucking story and you know what? I don’t want to tell it!”

Phil waited, patience, a skill he learned eons ago. 

Tommy’s lip quivered despite how hard he tried to hide it. No matter how hard he pretended to be tough or mean or strong, he wasn’t.

“You don’t care,” Tommy protested weakly.

“Tell me anyway,” Phil urged him, outstretching one broken burned wing with the gentle weight of a shawl over Tommy’s shoulder.

Tommy hunkered, accepting the offering for what it was. He sniffled, trailing bloodied tracks over a barren field where things went to die. “It’s just the same stupid story. You know…a couple of people just trying their best…just trying to survive…”

“Oh god,” Techno said, eying his inventory of golden apples. “Oh boy, he’s still here isn’t he?”

Yep. Raccooninnit! Dadza bonding time. Wilbur’s back? No racoon boy. Feral family. Not techno. Aww. Dream? No raccoon. There’s raccoons now?

“You are useless,” Techno groaned, trying to hide this mounting stress, “I thought he was gone. I thought he had left, are you telling me he’s still here? Living in my floors like a little shrew? Still?”

Yep. He comes up during the day! Stomping berries stream lmao. Oooh this is funny I get it now. Lmao dream comes up when tommy dreams haha. Dream and Tommy? Pog. Not pog! I love trauma.

Dream didn’t emerge from the floor when the sun was still up, something he tracked carefully with a clock Techno provided him. The cramped underground cave started to become more habitable as time went on, no longer as cold or hard with the ample supplies of blankets and lanterns. Techno was sure his roommate could bear the light of the sun, he had grown enough exposure to the fire and lantern to where the light of the afternoon wouldn’t be painful.

“I don’t want to,” Dream told him when Techno pried once more into why Dream had decided to stay hidden in the ground. “Why do you make that sound like it’s a bad thing?”

“I just think it isn’t healthy for you to stay here all day-.”

“It isn’t healthy for me,” Dream repeated, cutting Techno off shrilly. “Get out. Now.”

Techno backstepped, lifting both his hands defensively, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just think that-.”

“Did you consider that I don’t want to go out?” Dream asked him, fisting his hands in the blankets around his body, “or that wanting something is new to me? You know, it’s been a while since I got to actually choose anything, or do you want to take that away from me too?”

“No, dude chill out-.”

“What’s wrong, Technoblade?” Dream mocked him with a voice a bit sharp, “want me to crawl on my belly? Want me to lick your boots? Oh I know! How about you go get a knife and-.”

“Dream, stop,” Techno barked.

Perhaps it was his tone or the way he stood towering by the only exit to the cave. Dream flinched back, words becoming silent through reflex as he ducked his head low pressed his hands to the floor. Submissive and humble, both men jerked free with combinations of shared revulsion and horror.

“Get out,” Dream rasped, hands flying to cover his face and eyes as he crawled to the safest corner of his hole, “get out.”

Techno fled, his tail nearly between his legs.

“I want to forget about it,” Tommy said, sitting with one leg overhanging the small rock which was his perch.

Phil sat across from him on his own little island near the half frozen river. His washings were suspended on a stick, battling against the current. The dyed yarn bled thick trails of red through the water, drifting like ink or the mark of a dying fish.

Phil looked at Tommy. Tommy stared at the yarn, bleeding openly and painfully with no visible wound to its skin.

“I wanted the past to go away,” Tommy said simply, “I wanted to leave it behind, like how I left behind L’Manburg. And I had my life cold, y’know? And then it opened again like a hinge, like- like a part in Wil’s song where it gets all high and then crashes like the fucking explosions-.”

Tommy smashed his hand into the river, destroying his reflection into a ripple of red water and shaky distortions that were his face.

“I wanted to know who I was, Phil,” Tommy whispered, “and- and towards the end of it all…I reckon I couldn’t even recognize myself.”

“Do you now?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said simply, “I didn’t want to be like this.”

Phil fished his clothes from the river, wringing them out to set with their matches on the snow. Leaves drifted around them, cod sleeping far down in the depths where little crawfish still thrived and new algae would one day bloom. Tommy reached into the water, touching his wool (his project, his construction) as it bled in his hands.

“I don’t think anyone wants to be like this, honestly,” Tommy said, “...mean. Or, well, not at the start. I reckon most people want to be kind. I wanted to be kind. But nobody really ever is.”

“Why aren’t they?” 

“Well…” Tommy said, pausing towards the end, “I guess…life. Nobody gets to stay that way, being kind or nice. Having to do shite to stay alive in this world.”

Like a fish, the wool ran clear as dyed. Tommy lifted it from the cold waters, exposing it to the air and to his breath as he held it between his hands like a precious thing. “It’s the same story. A few people just trying their best, one way or another, to survive.”

He feels like he’s healing. He feels not as raw and broken on the edges, healing a gruesome scab that itches painfully- but he won’t pick it.

He wanted to be kind, to be nice and do something for others. Phil had been so accommodating to him, fetching him wool and tools and everything he needed with nothing in return beyond his open effort. 

“I just need to find some sheep now,” Tommy muttered to himself, holding the borrowed sheers with both hands. He hadn’t sheared a sheep in quite some time, let alone try and make yarn from wool like Phil had made him do. 

It’s dawn of a new day, the cusp of morning and the edge of night. He doesn’t imagine Phil will be up from his nest yet, and Techno won’t have bothered with the sheep pen. Now is the best time, the only time for something kind and selfless to be done- and the door to the shed creaks open.

It’s hard to forget trauma. It’s hard to forget the shape of bandages bulging below a jacket, the way they clumped and mounded over a torso or broken ribs. It’s hard to forget the way they would be tied around a throat to hide bruises from choking or something wrapped tight enough to suffocate. It’s hard to forget the different shades of maroon that signify the time since bandages have been changed, or the purplish-black paint of broken nailbeds still bleeding.

Tommy had never seen Dream’s face, but he can recognize it. He’s wearing a jacket three sizes too large and stained around the bottom hem. He has scarves wrapped around every bit of his skin, thick scars bulging from the open places with puckered dots from rudimentary sewing. There’s more scars than Tommy imagined, there’s more scars than he remembers. Tommy stares too long, stunned speechless before a familiar predator with a greenish gleam to his eyes.

“Hi Tommy,” Dream says like every nightmare Tommy still feels, “whatcha’ doing here?”

It’s childish, it’s mean and rude and Tommy can’t breathe. Every exhale catches in his throat, forming into a little rasp that makes him distantly dizzy. 

Dream’s smile stretches from something polite to broad and cruel. There’s something unhinged about him, aware and bright but also simple and dumb. It’s something Tommy would never have noticed without the mask, something glaring and obvious that makes him wonder what could have happened to the man.

“You’re a bit far from home, aren’t you?” Dream asks rhetorically, taking one step into the shed. His body fills the doorway. He speaks softly, “poor little Tommy. Did they kick you out? Finally realize how useless you are?”

“Shut up,” Tommy croaks weekly. It’s feeble and they both know it. “I- I don’t need to listen to you-“

“You always listen to me,” Dream tells him, shifting forward oddly like standing upright hurts him, “you always do. You like hearing me say you’ve been good, don’t you? Always fucking things up for a bit of praise-“

“You’re a dumb bitch,” Tommy snarls, hands tight and shaking around his grip on the old shears. “I- I don’t need to listen to this bullshit!”

“You’re still listening,” Dream tells him, taking one step into the shed. He tilts his head, eyes unblinking as they stare at Tommy oddly. He smiles, the expression fixated and unmoving like a wax figure or a marionette.  “Hey, hey Tommy. Why don’t you start screaming? Oh don’t worry , Sam isn’t going to hear you.”

Tommy’s mouth turns dry. Panic is a chilling sensation that makes his limbs ache and his brain scatter into starburst. Dream says in mimic, “why don’t you scream for me? How about I rip some of your fingers off first to-.”

He lifts the shears, holding them in front of him as a crude weapon. He can tell the moment Dream sees them, interprets them as some sort of threat much greater than they actually are. The man stills, he cowers somehow despite not actually moving. He shifts the slightest bit backwards, his head turns slightly to limit how much of his face Tommy can see while not losing sight of the shears in one eye. Tommy waits for Dream to start talking again, running his continuous monologue (he never shut up ) like Tommy knew he would-.

And Dream. Stays. Silent.

“Yeah,” Tommy croaks, feeling very much like a child, “now who’s the big man, eh? Back the fuck up, bitch. I said back up!”

Dream shifts his weight, almost obediently. His smile is more a snarl, something like irritation and frustration rattling around like the unconscious trembling through his hands and bruised fingers. Tommy remembers Phil’s advice, and if there ever was a time where he was desperate it sure as hell is now.

He holds the shears like a makeshift weapon. Technoblade had killed Quackity once with a pickaxe, surely Tommy could fight with a set of shears. They even had sharp ends on them! They were basically knives already- and Dream hadn’t appeared dressed in armour. 

Dream blinked slowly at him, reaching to the side where on the wall of Phil’s shed, rested a mounted iron axe. 

‘Oh, no no,’ Tommy thought, already knowing the odds of fighting Dream with an axe with a set of random shears. ‘Oh, oh I’m so fucked.’  

“You sure you want to do this, Tommy?” Dream asked softly, Phil’s axe gleaming in the light.

‘Not really.’

“Oh, don’t worry,” Dream says breathily, eyes still fixated on Tommy’s shears, “you won’t die. Well, you will- but I’ll bring you back again and again and again, until you understand how fucked you truly are.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy croaked. ‘Phil! Phil you bastard you better be close by!’  

“Go ahead, Tommy,” Dream taunts him, swinging the axe twice with uncharacteristically jerky movements, the blade vibrating in a tight rattling grip.

Tommy takes a deep shaking breath, and simultaneously whistles as loud as his lungs can manage while ramming the shears in a forward thrust.

It isn’t a pickaxe but it does have a sharpened edge. Tommy isn’t musically inclined to whistle gracefully- not like Wilbur or Philza’s avian birdsong, but he’s got good screamin’ lungs.

Tommy expected Dream to curse, maybe flinch at the unexpected noise. He expected the sort of yelling he got in exile, maybe the manic babbling from prison. He prepared himself to be grabbed, for the sharp agonizing pain of an axe lodged through his ribs. Phil would help him, he had whistled. It would be fine-.

Dream doesn’t do any of those things.

Actually, Tommy can’t quite understand what Dream is doing. The axe is in his hands and more than capable of killing Tommy, but suddenly it’s on the ground and Dream is staggering away from a pair of shears lodged in his right shoulder. It starts bleeding sluggishly, curling around the impaling point that sticks out so far it looks ridiculous. Dream is standing there, stunned with a pair of sheers poking out of him like a bad jack-o-lantern carving. Phil’s axe is on the ground. Tommy hadn’t thought he’d actually manage to hit Dream, in fact, he shouldn’t have been able to.

Tommy laughs a high pitched strangled noise, a loud “hh’nh!” that triggers movement in them both.

Dream spins away, his left hand crossing over his chest to clutch the top of his right shoulder with a loud audible hiss. His fingers spread around the blade, shying away from actually touching the metal. His right hand twitches, flexing open and closed awkwardly from where he dropped the axe illogically. Dream bends forward, shoulders rounding as he clutches around the shears tighter, blood oozing out in slow rivers.

It isn’t the blood that baffles Tommy, but what Dream does. He stands there like a cow, like Henry  when Tommy had wheat in his hand. The admin blinks with fluttering eyelashes, never truly seeing before he’s rapidly blinking again. He shakes his head side to side, a bit like a horse after eating something unexpected, a bit like Technoblade when Chat becomes too loud. A bit like Wilbur before he went insane and decided to end everything and end himself. 

Tommy knows better than to get cocky, it’s the sort of thing Tubbo would kick him about later. Yet…the sight of Dream finally at a disadvantage fills him with a vicious sort of thrill. He laughs a curt baffled noise, fumbling around quickly to snatch the dropped axe like it was a god apple from Ranboo’s private stores.

“Yeah!” he cheers explosively, “how you like that, eh?” 

Once he’s started, he can’t stop. The sight of Dream at a loss is too great, too fantastic after months of pain and suffering. “You like the taste of metal, eh? How that feeling? Want me to take a few more shots? Oh? What’s that green bitch boy? Can’t hear you over how epic I am-”

“Shut up,” Dream hisses at him, his voice strained. He bows his head oddly, jutting a chin as he continues his odd sideways looking. There's one foot behind him, lowering his body into something Tommy recognized as defensive. 

‘This isn’t right,’ Tommy thinks a bit nervously, ‘he- he doesn’t do that. Dream’s always tall and proud!’

The last time Tommy saw Dream like this, he was being hauled from his secret bunker with his hands lashed behind his back and a collar dragging him by his throat.

“Fuck you,” Tommy snaps instantly, “nobody tells TommyInnit what to do! Not- not you…you bitch! You hurt me, Dream! You don’t get to have shit, here!”

Dream shakes his head again, shifting oddly. The hand crossed over his shoulder, fingers around the still embedded shears tightened more than needed to stem the flow. 

“You’re powerless here,” Tommy says, arrogance showing its gaudy head, “oh, oh you fucked up now! Oh you fucked up! ”

Tommy glances behind Dream to the open doorway of the shed. He can see the edge of Phil’s house and the hewn logs that make the enormous dog house filled with war wolves.

Uncaring of Dream’s ears (and slightly to spite them) Tommy takes a deep breath and shrieks as loud as he can; “Phil! Phil! Phil you said to call for you if I needed it and right now I kinda fucking need it!”

Dream doesn’t reach for a weapon again, or even pull out the shears like logic would suggest. His left hand finally drops from the cross over his chest, the palm wet and shiny. Both arms free, the older man takes a step towards Tommy with clawed bloodied fingers.

“Oh fuck no,” Tommy bites at him, lowering his centre of gravity in preparation to swing. He hadn’t much experience with using an axe offensively, but he knew he could figure it out.

“You take one step forward,” Tommy threatens aggressively, “and- and I’ll call for Techno’s Dogs!”

Something about Tommy’s words struck something in Dream. The man jerks back as if hit, or electrocuted. His outstretched hands withdraw immediately to curl against his chest like paws. He shakes his head again, staggering sideways under an invisible blow. His bared snarl alters into a grimace, his eyes squeezing shut stupidly.

“Oh yeah,” Tommy taunts shrilly, “I uh, I’m totally friends with The Blade,” what the hell is going on? “I bet he could wreck you blindfolded! Yeah! And- and with one hand! You know what, you dumb green-.”

“ Stop, ” Dream gasps out in a voice Tommy has never heard before, “Stop- stop fucking talking-“

“No,” Tommy argues back, feeling empowered for once, “you shut up!”

Dream’s mouth closes with a snap, catching one corner of his chapped lip on the close it splits viciously. Tommy blinks stunned at the sight of blood oozing from a reflexive response, entirely baffled by the (uncomfortably sick) situation.

‘Is he…afraid of me?’ Tommy wonders with a perverse sense of curiosity. He takes one step forward, and Dream takes a step back.

Tommy laughs. It’s an abrupt sound that hitches shrilly in his throat. He holds his axe high, letting it catch the sunrise as Dream twitches below him. The man stares at him, eyes glazed and loathing before he jerks his head aside like a dog and pointedly stares somewhere just beside Tommy’s ear.

“What the fuck?” Tommy asks, too breathlessly thrilled by his new discovery, “oh, oh now you’ve fucked up, Dream!”

“What are you going to do now, Tommy?” Dream asks, although the taunt has no power. It falls weak, a mockery of something that used to exist before.

“Well I’m feeling pretty good right now, big guy,” Tommy says, rotating his axe pointedly..

Dream’s eyes flicker to it before hastily looking away, staring at something near Tommy’s ear. He’s made no effort to remove the shears, which much be complete agony at this point.

“Oh, oh this is good, innit?” Tommy asks, baring his teeth, “a nice turn of things, yeah?”

“You won’t-“

“Shut up,” Tommy barks. Dream obeys and oh, Tommy laughs increasingly shrill at that.

“Oh yeah,” Tommy says more to himself, eyes catching something like movement outside the shed, “Phil! Philza Fucking Minecraft you get your feathered chicken ass in here now! ”

Dream jerks at the sound, something fixing in his body before he tenses. Tommy knows Dream, knows the way the bastard would prepare to lunge when weaponless. He knew it maybe better than any other, had seen the man without armour or blade more than anyone else.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Tommy roars loudly, shifting his posture to hold the axe in both hands, “don’t fucking move!”

“Fuck you,” Dream snarls, eyes wide enough to show the whites.

Tommy feels panic settle in his throat. He purses his lips and whistles as loud as his lungs will let him. 

The partially closed door to the shed slams open under the ferocious power of a worried Philza.

Dream chokes in his throat, the tension of his forward lunge redirected itself through a jerking painful maneuver. A pirouette pulled by an invisible fisherman tangling him and hauling him sideways. Tommy collapses with the weight of relief as Philza storms inside, sunrise darkening under the curtain of dark feathers. 

Dream crashes sideways, ramming himself into the wall of the shed for no apparent cause. The muffled hollow thud makes Tommy cringe, the rattle of a bucket being kicked and tomato wire adds to the chaos of the scene. There’s a wet suction noise as the shears are yanked free, clattering to the ground on a pile of iron sheeting.

Philza takes one moment to observe the scene. Tommy quivers in the middle of the room holding an iron axe. Dream collides brutally with the wall, blood dripping over scattered straw and the blurry shape of a red handprint.

“Tommy-,“ Philza starts before he looks to Dream with something like panic, “Tommy you-,“

“Philza!” Tommy cheers with an open exuberant smile. “You see? Look I- I actually got the fucking-“

“Drop the axe,” Philza blurts with a frantic energy, “put it down!”

Tommy’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, his arms lower, so does the axe. “What? But-“

“Put it down!” Philza barks, his wings lifting high over him instinctively in an intimidation tactic, “ down! ”

Down.

It isn’t the axe that drops first. It’s Dream, collapsing to the dirty straw that reek of mice and rats. He falls limp with strings uncut and legs awkwardly bent under him. His shoulder is bleeding sluggishly, not enough to drip but enough to stain his cloak. One leg is bent correctly but the other is sideways, putting unbearable pressure on his hip. His spine is rounded, pressed as low to the ground on his belly he can get with face bashed sideways to the ground.

It looks like a dog cowering on the ground. It looks like a man groveling at the foot of another.

“What the-“

Philza reaches forward and snatches the axe from Tommy’s hand before the boy can react. Phil hurls it to the opposite side, letting it clatter against a hewn log and into the hay. Tommy flinches at the noise, stepping backwards as something like shame starts to grow.

“What were you thinking!” Phil hisses to him, running one hand through the ends of his hair so stressed he nearly dislodges his hat. “I told you- I said not to do that unless you were desperate!”

“I was desperate, Phil!” Tommy argues in a whine, “you- you didn’t see what-“

“Jesus, did you attack him with shears ?” Phil asks, his feathers fluttering in open anxiety.

“I- I had to adapt, improvise, overcome.”

“You didn’t need to- shit. Okay just- oh I am so upset right now-“

“I mean, hey hey, at least you aren’t t hat upset,” Tommy says weakly, pointing towards Dream who visibly jerks away from Tommy’s hand.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Phil says, everything about his body screaming disappointment. “I am, I am beyond words with you right now.”

“Phil…”

“No, you don’t use that tone with me,” Phil argued, pointing one thumb over his shoulder towards the daylight and snow outside. “Inside, right now. We’re going to talk about this-“

“But Phil I don’t wan-“

Inside.

It’s Dream who stands first, his hip crackling from the odd pull and pressure of his previous position. There’s little in Dream’s face, a lack of emotion or comprehension that looks a bit like sleepwalking. He tries to stand, something isn’t cooperating. One knee hits the ground with a rattling sound, his hands fumbling to try and push him upright. 

“No no-“ Phil hastily tries to correct, reaching out with one hand.

Dream jerks under Phil’s hand, going limp and pliable as the older man hauls the younger upright. He’s silent, only exhaling the softest noise as Phil unknowingly grabs the puncture of his shoulder. 

“Shit,” Phil hisses, noticing the wound as his hand comes away wet, “sorry, mate. I’ll clean that, ugh. Let’s get you standing-.”

They stand, and Dream stills. Tommy stands near the doorway with the shears in his hand. Rotating them just so, the red stains his hand like rust, like dye, like blood in his grip.

“He was makin’ all the string, innit?” Tommy says softly, looking at Phil with something close to betrayal. “He…he was doing the bloody yarn shite.”

“Tommy, now really isn’t the time.”

“It is the time!” Tommy shouts.

It’s unexpected, its sudden and loud and enough that Phil stills. Tommy holds the shears, his jaw shifting and trembling. “Why- Phil I trusted you, and…and you know what he did to me!”

“Tommy, please-.”

“No!” Tommy shouts. It’s a scream, it’s a loud deafening scream that makes Phil’s wings flare and his mouth dry. Tommy cries, sniffling wetly with thick words, “why does this always happen? Phil you- you said to pick people but, but why am…why am I so replaceable?”

“You aren’t, mate,” Phil says, shaking his head, “you aren’t-.”

“You’re replacing me for him right now!” Tommy screams, “shut up, shut up!”

“Tommy, I’m not replacing you,” Phil says, holding Dream more securely with one arm, “will you be quiet and take one moment to just look!”

Dream flinches as Tommy looks at him, curling in Phil’s grip so far the avian almost drops him. Tommy closes and opens the shears with a gentle sound of sliding metal, nearly muffled by the choked wordless whine Dream swallows before it truly begins.

“What?” Tommy asks, eyes still wet as he looks at the shears and back. He shakes his head violently, “no, no! He- he’s my abuser he doesn’t…he doesn’t just, just get a…an excuse to just-.”

“For god’s sake, nobody gets an excuse!” Phil argues back, “look, everyone gets a shit hand, alright? Everyone gets shit done to them! People are just trying to bloody survive and nobody gets out of life still kind when shit happens to everyone!”

Tommy flinches, staring at Dream with something like pain and understanding and guilt. He drops the shears, hating the way Dream relaxes slightly but stares at them with no other knowledge in the room. He’s quiet and docile, waiting to be struck.

“I can’t do this,” Tommy chokes, rubbing his eyes, “I can’t…Phil I just want to be happy.”

“Then do that,” Phil tells him, stressing out and feeling like crying himself, “don’t waste your time looking for an easier way out. And mate? You’ll fucking do it.”

“Why did you do it?” Technoblade asked under the shared light of a fire burning.

The wool was red, dyed and stained and washed clean in a river. Phil had provided it with no questions or answers, only giving him a lingering look and nothing more. Dream had been waiting for him above his cubby hole, apparently spending the day in the sunlight as Techno ventured out for food in the forest.

“Do what?” Dream asked, his voice hoarser than usual.

“You know, kidnap all those things. The Axe of Peace, Tommy’s Discs,” Techno said a tad too casually, “I think I just…don’t get it. What were your motivations behind it? Why everything?”

The gentle clacking of needles settled. The wool, red and slowly shaped and twisted and knit together was beginning to form something close to a red bandana.

“It’s my home,” Dream said quietly, voice crackling and tired. “Isn’t that enough?”

I wanted to be able to love. And we all know how that one goes, don’t we?

“Mm, maybe,” Techno said, stretching his back out in the comfort of his home. “But it's enough for me.”