Chapter Text
The longer Tommy hangs around Techno’s house like a bad omen, the more obvious it is that something is wrong. Bar Wilbur’s… untimely exit left, Techno assumed things in New L’manberg returned to the status quo, him included– but twenty-one hours into their new living situation, something slips.
“Tommy, I have to go outside,” Techno says, one shoulder already in his cloak. “I think a creeper just blew up my fence.”
“Oh, well I’ll go with you,” Tommy says, to Techno’s unsurprise– he’s been scampering around the house after Techno like a loose raccoon, but he’s twice as hard to communicate with. Techno pins his cloak to his shoulder and sighs, but holds the door on his way out.
Ice swallows them. Tommy skids slightly on the porch; Techno thinks banally that he should dig a pair of boots out of the closet, then shudders. He doesn’t recall giving Ghostbur permission to possess him.
They wade through the front yard and Techno lifts out his lantern; it washes across the edge of the hole and throws shadows along the jagged edges. He pushes the light against Tommy’s chest and hauls one of the fence posts upright, then pulls the crossbeams in place, arms tight from days of shackles and then more days of “bedrest”. Personally, he finds the idea that Tommy could hold him to recovery offensive, but he can’t pretend Phil wouldn’t have done the exact same if he was here.
Techno thunks the last log into place and sits back on his heels. Past the circle of lantern light, the forest rings them in for miles, all spikes and edges, and beyond it, the mountains with their halo of moonlight. Somewhere beyond that, Phil might be at a window, staring at the same darkness.
He shakes himself.
“Alright, we’ll fix the rest tomorrow,” he says, and gets up, fully expecting Tommy to protest the assumption that he’ll help. Instead, he turns and Tommy is still staring at the creeper hole. “Tommy?”
“Huh? Yeah,” Tommy says, in a distant voice. Snow flakes on his cloak –Techno’s cloak– and settles in his wheat-gold hair. “Tomorrow…” He swallows, and glances down at the lantern. His fingers are white around the edges. Techno frowns.
Tommy falls silent again, for a minute, then looks between the lantern and the hole and in one, jerky motion, throws the lantern into it.
Techno says, “wha-?”
Snap! The lantern hits the bottom and glass shatters, leaving them in the dark.
Tommy staggers back, like he’d been pushed.
Techno says incredulously, “what’d you do that for?”
Tommy says, “sorry! I’m sorry, I don’t know! I–” he cuts himself off with a sharp breath, and steps back again. Techno opens his mouth, but a distant growl winds through the woods, and he squints at the dark to no avail, then decides they can have an argument inside, where they aren’t at risk of getting blown up every five minutes. He waves, vaguely.
“Alright– whatever,” Techno says, and trudges back across the yard. Tommy trails behind, wringing his hands. Raccoon, Techno thinks, then scoffs.
The second time Techno gets the sense that something is wrong is the next day, between axe swings. It’s Friday, which means it’s woodgathering day, but Tommy’s here which means that as soon as Techno wraps his cloak around his shoulders, he’s got a shadow. Tommy talks his ear off for nine hours straight, but at least they’re done before dinner.
“See, what did I tell you, Technoblade?” Tommy gloats, as they load up the sled. “You’re getting old. You need someone around– someone to keep up with the demands of country life. Someone young and spry.”
“Never say that again,” Techno says, and hoists an armful of logs onto the cargo basket.
“What, this town isn’t big enough for two lumberjacks?”
“It is. You just aren’t one.”
“Well that isn’t very sporting of you, Technoblade, I mean I just lumberjacked at least half the forest in one day. I’d say that qualifies me–”
“What, to be bad at grammar?”
“--to be granted the rank of lumberjack, you asshole.”
“Tommy, it isn’t like– it isn’t like a guild, you don’t–” he snorts, “--you don’t start out as a lumberjack apprentice and then climb the ladder–”
“Hey, fuck you,” Tommy says, and shrugs on his sled harness. “I reached the top of that ladder today. Actually, I reached the top of about twenty ladders. I am an expert ladder-climber. In Logstedshire, I even built a tower, you know that? You know, I think that was the highest I’ve ever climbed before, and it wasn’t even to lumberjack, it was to–” he stops.
Techno slides the last log into his sled and dusts his hands off, then glances up, expecting him to go off on a tangent, or butcher a noun into a verb again, but he doesn’t. Tommy clutches the leather straps on his shoulders and stares at some point on the horizon, suddenly miles away.
“To…?” Techno prompts, and fastens the buckles around his ribs, leather rough on his calluses.
“Sorry, what?” Tommy says, in that distant voice.
Techno studies him briefly, but his curiosity wins out over his need for silence. “You built a tower in Logstedshire to…?”
Another moment of silence. Tommy shakes himself, blinks, and frowns at Techno. “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Point is, I have been lumberjacking for years, Technoblade– years!” He starts toward the path home, and launches into a rant about grammar and definitions that takes years off of Techno’s life. Techno regrets asking.
Later that night, he consults the Voices, because it’s got him confounded: why would someone alone on an island need a tower? He doesn’t make headway until one suggests he’s looking at it wrong, and it hits him-- why would Tommy, alone on an island, need a tower?
He doesn’t like what the Voices agree on.
The truth comes out, piece by jagged piece. Techno needs dogs and Tommy needs to stop talking to the walls of his five-by-seven basement, so they hike into the fresh powder and firs and the gentle glow of the aurora, and call it a day trip. Techno’s circadian rhythm allows for night travel just fine, but he has his doubts about Tommy until Tommy goes off about the nap he took that day– a novel occasion, apparently.
“You know where there were dogs, Techno?” he says, close to midnight, when they’ve covered several miles and come up with one. “Logstedshire.”
Thus ensues a fifteen minute debate about whether they should go. Techno decides to scout out the surrounding marshes, so he gives Tommy an enchanted lantern to keep track of where he is, then sends him off. From what he’s heard, Logstedshire is the least interesting place on the map; population one. Well, population zero, now, when Dream isn’t there.
It’s a mistake.
Thirty minutes into the search, Techno realizes Tommy hasn’t said a word. He stops beside a birch and holds the lantern up. “Hey, is this thing on? Tommy, you there?”
A pause.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” he says, dully.
“See any dogs?”
“...no.”
Techno sighs and pushes through frozen branches. The dog he had found yips at his feet, delighted when sticks clatter against the rocks. “Well, just keep looking, I guess. You’re sure there were some there?”
Silence.
“Tommy?” he asks, and stops again, at the edge of an icy lake.
Tommy mutters, “I… no, why is that blown over? Isn’t he here?”
“Who?”
“Dream, my friend. No… that’s not right. Is it?”
Techno remarks, “well, you were kinda hiding from him in my basement.”
“No, I know, just–” a pause. Tommy takes a shaky breath. “Oh, he wouldn’t like that. I’m not allowed to go visit, Technoblade, he wouldn’t like that.”
Alarms go off in Techno’s head. He snorts, “he wouldn’t– Tommy, since when have you ever let Dream tell you what to do? Furthermore, when did you start caring what he wanted?”
“Well, it’s for my own good, you know, Technoblade. Same as when he had me put my things in a hole… and blow them up, it was for– well, it was for my own good, I– wait, where did I get this lantern?” His breathing picks up, erratic and heavy like a cornered animal, and over the lake Techno can hear Tommy’s steps do the same. Ah, shit. “Technoblade, did you give me this lantern? Oh no, no, he wouldn’t like that, he wouldn’t like that–”
“No, no no,” Techno says, and Tommy’s stunt at the creeper hole suddenly makes sense. “Tommy, do not let go of that lantern, you hear me?”
Silence, except his nigh-hyperventilation.
“Tommy, is it happening again? Tommy, you’re freaking out,” Techno says.
“What?” Tommy scoffs, “but I– I’m home, what– what’s happening?”
“You’re freaking out,” Techno repeats, and it hits him– Tommy is freaking out, and alone, and in the general vicinity of the man that seems to want that most. “Listen Tommy, just get out of there. I’ll meet you on the way back.”
More fast breath and footsteps.
Techno swears and pushes away from the tree, bark crumbling under his gloved fingers. “Alright. This is what’s gonna happen. You’re going to name five things you can see.” The dog yips at his feet again as he climbs the slope away from the lake.
Tommy swallows. “...trees. My tower. The water… and craters.”
“Close enough,” Techno says under his breath, and crests the edge. He glances up at the stars to orient himself and heads right. “Now five things you’re touching.”
“The lantern… my pack…”
They get through all five senses by the time Techno finds him, shivering and alone on the trail to the house, a mirror image to the night he and Wilbur showed up to Pogtopia. Something tight in Techno’s chest loosens; he pulls off his cloak and wraps it around Tommy’s shoulders, then grips him by both shoulders and looks him over. Aside from the dark circles under his eyes and his foggy expression, he seems unscathed. Questions clog Techno’s throat. He swallows them.
“C’mon,” he says, and jerks his head toward the house.
They barely speak the next day. Techno futzes around, doing housework, changing bulbs– because he can’t do nothing but there’s no way he’s taking Tommy out again. He checks the ladder to the basement every now and then, but the hatch stays closed.
Maybe he’ll leave, and Techno can go back to his quiet and his plans.
Would you let him? The voices hiss. He’s seen your weapons, where you live. He’s a liability.
“Shut up,” Techno tells them, “does he look like he’s in the right state of mind to use that information?”
It’s a resounding no. Tommy shows up for one meal the next day, eyes dark-circled, and says a total of ten words before he disappears back into his room. Techno sits up at the fire longer than he needs to, twining leather around spear hilts, one eye on the forest outside the windows. He dreams of Dream’s cloak swishing around his ankles and the reins tangled in his hands.
Halfway through the night, a shriek pierces the walls and startles him from sleep. Shit.
He scrambles for the trident and the lamp at his bedside and gets halfway across the room before his eyes fully open –is it Dream? Has he found them, so soon?-- and he throws open the door–
–and Tommy runs smack into his chest, panting.
“What is it, is it him?” Techno asks, and grabs his arm.
Tommy makes a noise between a gasp and a sob. He grasps his throat with one hand, and his eyes dart from window to window, but he shakes his head and, after a second, manages a hoarse, “no.”
Techno lets out a long breath, and lowers his trident to his side. Tommy continues to scan the windows, shoulders twitching at the whistle as the wind cuts around the corners of the house. Techno scrubs the crust from his eyes and releases his shoulder.
“Technoblade–” Tommy starts, and grabs his wrist. Techno suppresses a flinch; he’s not a babysitter, and he’s not a Wither to cower behind, or what Tommy needs more than either of those– Philza. Emotions are as quiet and partitioned to him as the potato field he and Phil put down before winter and it’s easy to lean on the fence to watch someone else trim the weeds. It’s another thing to open the gate for a wild animal.
And Tommy– is wild. There was dirt on his clothes when Technoblade found him and there’s a glint in his eyes like before a horse bolts. Techno carefully disentangles his arm, then makes a stay motion with his palms, and backs away.
Tommy’s gaze is glued to him while he pulls open a closet and drags out the spare sofa. A few straws and threads poke his hands, and it smells faintly of the garlic bread Phil dropped on it once, when he spent the night, but it’ll do. Techno pushes it under the alcove the stairs make. This way Tommy can see the windows, and the rest of the den. And– into Techno’s room.
It’s his best concession, and hopefully, the only one– but Tommy blinks fast and whispers, “thank you,” and Techno thinks it isn’t so bad.