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The war is, in the end, lost to history. The name is forgotten. The furthest it is taken is in the marching paths—some of those are settled down, around arable land, and the paving stones taken up for cornerstones and walls. Such is the way of things.
But lost to history doesn't mean unremembered. Philza remembers it very clearly.
Well, remembers the important bits clearly. There are some nasty bits—smells, for example, and screams—that are happily blurred out. There were a shocking number of important bits, such as;
Philza lands in a field. The twilight pulls out a few bright stars from the sky, and it's almost nice outside. He walks the rest of the way to the camp, stretching his legs stiffly on the way, and remembers at the last minute to make his footsteps loud so nobody gets startled by him and, say, shoots themself in the foot. For example.
The camp is sleepy and calm; nobody presses him for the crest he has in his pocket, or for the code word he's supposed to say. He'd be unsettled by it except for the fact that he doesn't care. It's a stupid precaution and, anyway, with supply lines being as they are, updates to the code phrases are too slow to be awfully reliable. He slips into the tent that looks like it has someone in charge inside of it and clears his throat.
There's nobody at the meeting table.
"Are you looking for somebody?" someone says, sitting at a much smaller table in the corner. It is not instantly recognizable as a table, because it is covered in more papers than Philza has ever seen.
"I guess," Philza says, hovering awkwardly. "I'm not, uh, I shouldn't just be handing this stuff out, though, it's proper confidential."
"I can take it if you don't want to wait," the stranger says, pushing their glasses up their nose.
"Uh," Philza says, gesturing vaguely to the tent at large. "Where...?"
"They went hunting for a moobloom," the stranger says. Philza laughs. The stranger does not laugh. Philza stops laughing.
"You're not kidding," Philza says.
"I'm not kidding," the stranger says in the voice of paper pushers everywhere, who have been at their fucking limit for a long while now.
"Oh, dear," Philza says.
"Yeah," the stranger says.
"I guess I could drop it off here," Philza says, fiddling with the strap on the leather case that carries classified troop movements. "Honestly though, I'm fuckin' starving, and I'd rather eat first if that means I might be able to hand this off in person. No offense," he adds.
"Yeahp," the stranger says, standing. A couple of papers fall to the ground. "I'll show you to the mess tent. Do you have any dietary restrictions?"
"No," Philza lies with terrible speed, in case they have bread. He misses bread so fucking much.
The mess tent is loud and crowded. Philza and the paper-pusher both gravitate outside, where it's a little more chilly but much more breathable.
"You good?" Philza asks. The stranger has been staring at their plate for a few minutes now and their glasses have fogged up from the steam. He might have only known this person for five minutes, but it's starting to worry him a bit.
"Technoblade," the stranger says. "Uh, by the way. Is my name." They take off their glasses and pinch the bridge of their nose very carefully.
"I'm Philza!" Philza says. "This camp is a disaster. I hope nobody attacks you when I'm gone."
"I'm sure that will never happen," Technoblade says.
"Haha," Philza says, and finds quickbread holy shit his favorite kind. This camp is not irredeemable.
"You're a courier guy, right?" Technoblade says. "What's that like this time of year? Cold?"
"Not terribly," Philza says. "It's more the wind that gets to me, honestly, my lips can get fucking chapped in the winter. What about you?"
"Heh?" Technoblade says.
"You're a paper pusher guy," Philza says. "What's that like?"
"Great," Technoblade says. "I love... supply lines. So much. I am a man who enjoys his job."
"Oof," Philza says, at a bit of a loss.
"I think doing this much paperwork has stripped the capacity for small talk from me," Technoblade says, leaning his elbows on the tiny camp table. "Can you give me an idea of what the troop movements look like from the air?"
Philza's answer boils down to: Not really! But Technoblade has a way of listening that makes Philza keep talking about it, even when he's fumbling for words. It's probably the eyes. They're very dark brown, and they make you feel watched. You don't get that a lot when you're flying around a few hundred feet above the ground.
"I don't think the lack of the front helps much," Technoblade says. "It's a little ragged right now. I think they keep sending people down there, and they either make a lot of progress or get yoinked, as a unit. It's too disorganized right now to be doing much more than throw scouts at each other to figure out what's going on."
"Yeah," Philza says, mostly to keep Technoblade talking. Tactics fly over his head; always have.
"I think we're only pressing the advantage because we have the numbers to," Technoblade says. He hasn't touched his dinner much. The steam on his glasses has condensed into droplets that snag the dim lantern light. "Which is a bad thing. The underdog is always a danger. If we're not careful, we'll become the big unconquerable evil, and that's prime material for a main character."
"Main character?" Philza says through a mouthful of thin soup.
"Yeahp," Technoblade nods solemnly. The world has turned soft and dark with the evening. "If there's external conflict to juxtapose internal conflict for a protagonist with a dark and terrible past, we're done. The war's already over. It's deus ex machina until we die."
"What the fuck are you saying?" Philza laughs. There's a warmth to that laugh, and Philza thinks it's because Technoblade was trying to make him laugh. That's a nice feeling. He missed eating hot food and laughing at dumb shit with people.
"If it looks like we're going to lose, do you think they'll let us pack up and just go home?" Technoblade says, "'Cause I think I left my oven on."
Still joking, but something in it sobers them both up. Philza feels his smile fade. They stare into the dark of the flat grasslands that stretch out around them, silent without the crickets to scream at each other.
"Here's hoping," Philza says.
The next important bit is a long ways away.
It's spring, but still so miserable and cold and wet that it doesn't really count yet. Crocus is just starting to peek its greens above the frost when Philza lands at a camp, again almost at night. This time the guards stiffen when they see him approach, stark black against the gray-and-white landscape. Philza shows them his crest and his message scroll case, and they let him in. A patrol marches past him as he walks into the camp.
"Oh," Philza says involuntarily, pulling up short just outside the commander's tent. "It's you!"
"It's me," Technoblade says, looking somehow more exhausted than before.
"Well, if nobody's out hunting for mooblooms, I've got a gift," Philza says.
"Finally," Technoblade says, pushing open the tent with one hand. Philza ducks inside and blinks. There are people at the meeting table this time. One in the corner, too, but no desk, just watching.
"Hey, guys," Technoblade says, walking past Philza. "This is our courier. He's got some fresh intel. Philza, do you wanna sit down?"
"I'll stand," Philza says. He's still a bit lost, until Technoblade sits down at the head of the table and cracks the scroll seal with his thumb. Huh. A promotion.
"Okay," Technoblade says, passing the scroll to the person next to him when he finishes reading it. He pulls a few pieces of paper off the table and puts them on the ground next to him, where there is a growing stack of slightly damp documents. "Okay. This is fine. New plan."
Philza wasn't lying; he's happy to stand, partly because his feet hurt much less than his chest from being in the sky most of the day, and partly because he can stand next to a bin of hot coals and discreetly warm his hands while he listens.
He knows enough strategy to know things are a bit of a mess right now; the other side is pulling some punches that they didn't predict and throwing others so hard it's making some attacks just devastating enough that they can't afford to not send reinforcements. It's keeping the front in turmoil, so they have to act like they're fighting two and a half wars for the price of one, and it's hell on the supply chains and couriers. Philza nods before he can catch himself. Ah, fuck, he's probably got that expression on his face too, the tell-me-all-about-it one. He tries to look courierish.
Technoblade starts talking about the closer stuff, like walking arrangements and small-scale tactics. Philza finds himself oddly approving. He's not great at fighting in a crowd, but he knows enough to tell that Technoblade isn't wet around the ears about a fight. He also talks a lot about the horses. Philza, a pedestrian by nature and a flier when he's paid enough, is instantly lost again. Horse teeth freak him out. He's pretty sure animals aren't supposed to be like that.
"Anyway," Technoblade says, "I should probably eat before I pass out. Dismissed."
Philza has to fight a grimace when some of the eyes of the council flick over him. Not that he's not used to being stared at; that happens all the time, with wings this big—no, some of their faces look very young, and unused to a hard winter, by how worn the skin around their eyes are. They leave one by one, even the person in the corner, who hands a sheaf of yet more papers to Technoblade and carries a little box with ink and pens outside with them. Technoblade takes a minute to rustle through, Philza is pretty sure, every single paper on the table, dear lord, and finally just ends up with a meager handful. He stands and braces his hand on the table for a minute, closing his eyes.
"Philza," Technoblade says, "Did you eat yet?"
"What, today?" Philza says. "I think I had an apple."
"Mmm, apples," Technoblade says, and wavers upright.
"Don't pass out," Philza says, helpfully.
"I would never," Technoblade says. "Me? At my age? I'm too cool for that."
"Yes, of course," Philza says carefully, edging closer. His goal is to be within grabbing distance to make sure Technoblade doesn't spontaneously collapse. "Anyway, I meant to eat more, but I decided to skip lunch. I was nearly here."
"Yeah," Technoblade says, orienting as they step out of the tent and walking at speed to the mess tent. "Do you get sick if you eat too much when you're flyin'?"
"Oh," Philza says. "Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Just makes sense," Technoblade says, for some reason. They step to the side to let a horse and cart through. "It takes a lot of core strength to fly. Not much room for food in there."
"I guess you're right," Philza says. "I never thought of it that way."
"I have so much core strength," Technoblade says. "The power of constant anxiety has given me abs of steel. I'm the most ripped nerd in a ten mile radius."
Philza laughs, perhaps a little harder than he'd planned. They get a meal—the same as last time, except the thin greens aren't as fresh, just boiled with some salt—and eat in the cold, away from the mess tent but not far out enough to be easily snatched by an enemy assailant or, more likely, a very hungry mountain cat. This time it is silent, comfortably so, and this time Technoblade doesn't finish his plate again. He stares at the dark face of the mountain, lit from one side by the moon and on the other by the lanterns, and looks awfully tired.
"I'm under orders to wait for you to send a message to someone else before I leave, by the way," Philza says when he finishes eating. "Donno if they put that in the official document. Savin' energy, and all that."
"Yeah," Technoblade says, and rubs his eyes under his glasses. "I'll think of it tonight. We can send you to one guy, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Can I send you with some extra messages to disseminate to a few other commanders?" Technoblade says hopefully. "Not, like, you wouldn't fly immediately from one guy to the other. I was thinking I could bundle a few messages, to tell the next guy to spread the word or something." Technoblade runs a hand through his hair. "That might be too much. I'll downsize it to something reasonable before tomorrow."
Technoblade is trying so hard to fix the unfixable—the unfixable here being the bureaucratic communications system that the military so favors. Philza feels a little sorry for him, and then wises up. People he feels sorry for often die. "I'll see what I can do," Philza says.
"Alright," Technoblade. "Sorry for peer pressuring you. It's just," Technoblade puts his head in his hands briefly and makes a primal and deeply unintimidating sound of irritation that goes a bit like "Brrrraaargh."
"No problem," Philza says.
"There are so many problems," Technoblade mourns. Then he straightens up and cleans off his glasses.
"You done eating?" Philza asks. "I can take your plate back."
"Yeah, thank you," Technoblade says. "I'll see you in the morning."
They don't see each other in the morning. Philza gets a scroll and a slip for directions, and then the camp is packing up, moving off. Some switch has been flicked to move them into motion. Philza spots it when he takes off: a thin, utterly black column of smoke that streaks off when it hits the wind, a pennant of destruction. When he next lands, he learns it was the first civilian casualties on their side that weren't from friendly fire.
The war becomes nastier.
Nasty is a simple word, but Philza feels it much encapsulates what's all been going on. Footsoldiers complain now about the enemy, more than they complain about being away from home. Spring is wet and bleak. Morale is low. The jolt of energy he used to bring as a courier has soured into a "fuck me, what is it now?" expression. Also, when Philza sneakily reads about the troop movements without breaking the seal, which is a secret trick he will take to his grave but any old fool could figure out if they were ever bored enough, he's pretty sure they've gotten worse. It's hard to tell. There are so many words being used now he's pretty sure the troop details have devolved into sheer propaganda.
The posted guards don't let him in because their stupid secret code words are outdated. He has to wait in the cold spring rain, miserable and horribly damp and in need of a long, dry sleep and a preen besides, for someone higher up the chain to point at him and go "hey, we know that guy!" This is such a stupid fucking job.
Technoblade is in another meeting when Philza is admitted by the guards. "Oh, it's Philza!" he says, and stands up and walks at speed to him.
"Uh," Philza says, professionally.
"Yoink," Technoblade says, out loud. He cracks the intel seal with his thumbnail and talks about something else as he reads it—he's—arrows? Maybe? Is he talking about arrows or archers or what? Immediately Technoblade launches into discussing the troop movements, and what's possible. He seems to be aiming for pretty low goals. Is that a good sign? Philza isn't sure. He hangs his short cloak next to a bin of coals and starts to preen some of his feathers in the corner so he can stop feeling quite so ready to rip somebody's throat out.
Technoblade starts doing math out loud.
It is late in the night when he dismisses the meeting, and the rain has turned to a vague drizzle that has a sort of sneaking, sideways feel to it, like it acts as if it's raining from one direction and then you realize it's going diagonally. Technoblade pulls a cloak from a hook and pulls up short at the tent entrance.
"Oh," Philza says, "right." He pulls his cloak back on—still fucking damp, he hates it here—and follows Technoblade outside. He uses the cloak to cover the documents and alternates between mute and nonstop words, many of which are lost on Philza.
"Oh," Technoblade says, drifting to a halt, as if he's seeing the cramped mess tent for the first time. It's the first slow movement Philza has seen out of him. "Let's go back to my tent."
Philza follows him back out into the rain. He remembers wishing it would rain, last—oh, it was only last summer that it was dry outside, and he was wishing for rain. Only a few months ago. He wonders how flooded the stream is, and where the minnows go to wait out a rainstorm. If they sleep through the winter. Do fish sleep? If not, maybe Technoblade is a fish in disguise.
"I think it's finally sinking in that we're fighting a deception more than an army," Technoblade says. "Like when you fish with a trident you have to aim underneath the fish to hit it, because water distorts light. They're still too conservative when it counts, though, this isn't attrition anymore and it's not—"
"Ah," Philza says. "You—er."
"Heh?"
"Your, um," Philza brushes a finger under his nose. He knows he looks worried and he hates that, it's awful to be on the recieving end of being treated like glass, but he can't help it.
Technoblade swipes a hand underneath his nose and finds blood. "Huh," he says. "That's new."
"Are you okay?" Philza asks.
Technoblade wipes his nose off with his hands. "Philza," he says, "can I tell you a story?"
"Sure," Philza says, almost too worried to eat.
Technoblade starts spinning his fork in his fingers, and tells him the story of an emperor who retired. It takes a long time for the story to wrap around to the retirement part, because there are so many feats of martial prowess and down-to-earth genius, but the end is Philza's favorite part, because the emperor goes home and works his fields again after it's all said and done. From the sound of it, that's Technoblade's favorite part, too, even though there were a couple of other parts that were pretty neat in the middle.
"The peace didn't last, of course," Technoblade says. "But it's a nice story. Are you a farmer?"
"What?" Philza says, startled.
"You kinda seem like one," Technoblade says. "Reasonable."
"I am neither of those things," Philza laughs. "I used to fish some, though, does that count as farming?"
"No," Technoblade says, and takes the first bite of his food. "What's fishing like?"
"I don't fucking know," Philza says, too tired to think of much. "It's like fishing. Actually, it's a lot like being in the rain outside like we just were, except not so fuckin' damp because that's the fish's job."
"Did you fish for a job?" Technoblade asks, shoveling food into his mouth.
"I mean, not really," Philza says. "I did more odd jobs for money than I ever sold fish. I made a lot of soup, though," he adds, brightening. "Some damn good soup. I miss eating seaweed," he says, and sighs.
"You can eat seaweed?"
"Yeah, some of it, anyway."
"I thought that was a joke," Technoblade says, putting down his fork. Philza feels like slapping him with it, does he ever eat enough? "Do you actually eat seaweed? Like, the green stuff?"
"Yes," Philza laughs. "It's really tasty, it's like, pre-salted from the ocean—have you never had seaweed?"
"I would remember eating seaweed."
"I'll bring you some, sometime," Philza says. "It's so good. 'Specially King's Crown. Fuck, I miss King's Crown. It'd wash up on the beach if there was the right kind of storm..." he sighs wistfully again.
"I'll try it," Technoblade says. "I can only handle so much green stuff at once, though."
"You'll like King's Crown," Philza says, with all the firmness of someone who enjoys a really obscure comfort food. "It's so good. You've gotta try it."
Technoblade makes a noncommittal noise and takes another bite of food. He screws his face up this time. "Ugh," he says when he's finished it, and pushes away his plate and stands back up. "Nice talkin' to you again, Phil. I'll write your next message and then I need to go back to work."
Philza blinks. "Uh," he says.
"Heh?" Technoblade says. "What?"
"Nothing," Philza lies. Technoblade looks like he hasn't slept in two days, is all. Well! He'll probably pass out at some point. Hopefully before delirium sets completely in. "I'll deliver it in the morning, I'm tired."
"Oh!" Technoblade says, as if he maybe forgot sleep was a thing that people needed to do. "Right. You can leave now, it'll take me a minute to compile everything I need to pass on."
"Yeah," Philza says, standing and taking Technoblade's plate again. "See you in the morning, mate."
This time they see each other in the morning. Technoblade has, somehow, become more energized. At this rate he's going to start giving off light, or sound, or something, like a star. Philza sneaks him a roll from the mess tent and lights off with a scroll in his case, seal still soft and malleable from candle flame. He doesn't have much time to feel worried about Technoblade, though, because now he's pissed that his wings are fucking soggy again.
The war reaches the point that there is either waiting or fighting or running frantically from battleground to battleground. Philza is under orders to fly by night and use no fire but camp fires, because couriers are easy to shoot down when their wings are black against the blue sky.
There's no bad morale, because there's no willpower left in the soldiers. The long fights have made them meek, willing, generous and wispy creatures. They eat through one mouth and shit with one behind and claw forward with one tangled, steady limb. The armies' movements leave a stain behind, devoid of wildlife and dry wood and fresh, unsoiled ground. With all the moving forward, all the single-minded motion, there is still a feeling like the world is holding its breath, waiting. Philza feels like he's being crushed by a huge gray blanket, but can't bring himself to be more than briefly, viscerally angry every once in a while.
When Philza lands, gore-crows shout at him from where they have been tagging along the company. A different face greets him this time, not the commander he's used to. When it's polite enough, he asks, "Where's Technoblade?" No dread, no curiosity.
"Oh, the commander," the person he's passed the documents onto says, blinking. "He's in the medical tent."
"Uh," Philza says. "Where is that, exactly?"
"Follow the smell," they joke, and sober up very fast. Philza thinks he has a terrible expression on his face and can't be bothered to feel bad for it all. "He's fine, he's—um, it's to the north part of the camp."
Philza grabs something from the mess tent first, just something quick. It's a quick trip to the medical tent. It's smaller than he expected. It still reeks of dead flesh. He walks a little faster.
Technoblade is easy to find; he's one of three patients actually sitting in a bed, and he's so bored that it makes the nurses walk remarkably faster to make sure they don't get flagged down. Philza beelines to him.
"Hey," Philza says, "the fuck?"
"Oh, hi Phil," Technoblade says. "How are you?"
"Better if you tell me how you got in here," Philza says, and remembers to pull out the roll from his pocket.
"I walked in," Technoblade says, a bit smug. "I blacked out on the bed. I have excellent timing."
"Yeah, okay, why are you hurt though?"
"Oh, we were ambushed."
"Fucking what? Why?"
"I dunno," Technoblade says. "I guess they couldn't avoid a challenge. I can get that. I think they were hungry, though."
"Yeah?" Philza says, splitting the roll in his hands. It's still a shit camp roll, but it's warm.
"Yeah," Technoblade says, and starts talking. The enemy, it seems, is doing poorly. They're used to doing poorly, though, and they've been hungry enough that they're desperate, especially since Phil and Techno's side ordered that prisoners of war are supposed to be executed unless they're high-ranking. Death or a good meal must have been a fine enough coin toss for a lot of people, many of which didn't have shoes or weapons, to raid the mess hall one night.
"So you were stabbed why...?" Philza says.
"I had a great monologue lined up but my opponent just didn't want to chat with me," Technoblade says. "Joke's on them, I never want to chat with anybody in the first place. I run on nervous energy."
Philza laughs shortly.
"Anyway," Technoblade says, "I'm tired from talking. It's your turn."
"Right," Philza says, and instantly forgets everything he has ever known. "Uhh."
"How are the orders this time?" Technoblade says, and Philza starts talking. He's tired enough that he probably gets some of the military words wrong, but that's fine. Technoblade has stopped talking long enough to eat his roll. That's what counts.
"Stay the night," Technoblade says, brushing the crumbs off the blanket across his legs. "There will be archers tomorrow morning, and rain, but they might go away."
"Okay," Philza says, too tired to argue. He sleeps dreamlessly, eats quiet breakfast with Techno in the death-scented tent in the morning, and flies in a quiet, patchwork, humid summer rain. There are archers, as a matter of fact; enemy archers. They risk some arrows and one scrapes across Phil's foot. It is swollen and stinging when he lands, hours later, at the base of a valley filled with smoke and low fires. It is the main company, and on the horizon is the low, ruddy glow that marks the war front.
The next time Philza lands in Technoblade's camp, he is barely conscious.
Conscious is a weird word to describe what's happening to him right now, but he finds he doesn't care! Nothing matters. Words are a silly thorny briar that mortaldom grasps with meager hands. He is light-headed, though, that is real. He takes a few deep breaths and it goes away.
"Phil?" he's in the... the thing. Somehow. He's supposed to be here, for some distant, laughable reason. He doesn't know. He doesn't care.
"Do you have a message?" A carefullness to that phrase. Not the kind he's used to, though! Usually it is "Philza, you are made of glass" careful, not the "Philza, oh no!" carefullness. Is he a predator now? That would be funny. A good joke, he thinks.
"Philza, you're bleeding," Technoblade technoblade of course he recognizes that face. That face is important. He remembers it. "Answer me."
The ringing in his ears of that divine, living darkness mutes him, makes any spoken language obsolete. He jolts when Technoblade puts a hand on his shoulder—not to talk but to steer Philza to the tent, a tent? The command tent? It doesn't matter. Philza finds himself sitting down so hard his teeth click in his mouth. He can't feel his hands.
"Start from the beginning," Technoblade says. "Tell me what happened."
The beginning is easy. There was darkness first. And then light. And over everything it was peaceful, and there is always that peace, there is always that stillness at the bottom of lakes in the caverns of caves so old they were hollowed by water that knew no bones but the microscopic bones of tiny organisms that thrived on the byproducts of deep, dark warmth at the bottom of oceans that are so old that to be known by them is to be crushed, obliterated, to be silt. And there are living things, now, too, big complicated ones like horses and stuff that has weird complicated things like spleens, and, of course they think they're important but nothing—nothing is ever going to be big enough to disturb that deep-down peace. The war doesn't matter. It doesn't matter anymore, it never did, they are gears in a machine whose end is printed into the gears into the very shape of things into the very nature of the earth. There is—it's so beautiful. It's so quiet, down there. It's like being dead. It's so quiet. Philza closes his eyes. It's so quiet.
Technoblade nods. He took his glasses off at some point and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees, businesslike, it's funny, and now he picks up something—drinkable, because Philza knows to drink from it, water? It tastes awful—and Technoblade says, "Who stabbed you?"
Philza laughs and chokes a little bit. "I don't know," he says. "It was dark."
"Where was it dark?" Technoblade asks, gentle, and now it's back to the glass-kind. Philza doesn't mind. Glass is just waiting to be sand, and he could never be sand, he can only be glass forever. He can't break. "Were you in an enemy camp."
"Enemy," Philza echoes. "Right. War. The enemy. Okay."
He was shot down. His own dumb fault, ahaha.
Technoblade does not laugh at his hilarious joke.
He was flying in the daylight so it was his fault. Really, if the record shows, let it be his fault. There aren't faults or debts, really, but sure, if people feel like writing stuff down, there it is. Philza was delivering a message and was shot down and dragged somewhere deep underground, or deep enough that light was an unwelcome guest. Lantern light was swallowed there. The camp was stationed over a natural cave, see, very clever, what is that, use of natural resources? Philza is so good at military words.
Anyway, they were thinking about torturing him, but didn't get to, because they killed him first, because they had everything they needed anyway and couldn't feed another mouth. He thinks they buried him or tried to because he woke up underground in the dark, the dark, Philza takes a moment to just shiver. Cold, too, forgot about that. And he woke up and—and he knew it was beautiful, it was beautiful. He thinks he killed everyone maybe? That seems like an important bit. Relatively speaking.
"I'm hungry," Philza interjects, a surprise to him. Hunger happens to things that need. He forgot he needed anything. He's fucking ravenous, actually.
But there was a fight, and he didn't win because nobody can win a fight, really, when there is dying. There is just death and then you can walk away from it or lay down. So Philza walked away from that, flew, rather, and he doesn't have the documents anymore but he thinks he could find it in his brain? Remember it. He read it. He read it by firelight because the scrolls are transparent and once you have the knack of reading across several blurry lines of cramped handwriting at once you can figure out what's going on for the most part. That's a crime! Treason, probably!
"Okay," Technoblade says, and hands him a plate of food. That's fascinating. Philza has no idea where this food came from. "Do you remember what the documents said?"
"Haha, not really," Philza says, and rattles off what he remembers. It's patchwork. Bird brain, happens to the best of 'em.
"Okay," Technoblade says. He gives Philza a napkin. He wipes the griefless tears off his face, first, and then his mouth. There is something stuck in his teeth. Vastly annoying. He picks it out with a fingernail, remembers his manners, remembers that it's Technoblade and nobody else right now, and remembers that nothing matters anyway. It's fine.
"I'm just goin' to be doing paperwork in here," Technoblade says, putting his glasses back on. "You can sleep on the bed in the corner if you want."
"That's your bed, though," Philza says.
"I won't be using it," Technoblade says. "It's daytime."
"Oh," Philza says, staring at the sunlight (the sunlight, the sunlight) filtering in through the tent canvas. "I forgot."
"Yeahp," Technoblade says, turning to his desk. Philza lies down lengthwise. He should preen his wings at some point. They're manky. he should sleep first, though, that's what this awful cot is for. He stares at the wall and shivers and thinks about pulling someone's throat out with his hands with the same perfunctory, visceral flinch as he had when he saw someone use live bait. Killing is bad, he thinks with clarity, and then suddenly it is fourteen hours later. Technoblade tells him, when he shakes Philza awake by the shoulder.
"You need to move around or your brain might lose it," Technoblade says. "Doctor's orders."
Philza drinks some water while he's awake. It tastes like ash. This is because the front has been set on fire, Technoblade tells him, by one side or the other. It blazes in a constant bloody haze on the horizon. Some of the horses have caught sick from the smoke and died. Philza listens to him talk as he preens. The low cadence of Technoblade's voice resolves after a few minutes into a report on the war, which has become somehow even stupider. Civilians have been evacuated, at least. The economy must be in shambles.
Technoblade huffs a laugh. Philza must have said that last part aloud. He hums a song under his breath as he neatens his wings, adjusting the feathers that have grown in. The next primaries will be molting soon. They are looking worn.
Philza eats and drinks and talks to Technoblade and sleeps again, this time for only twelve hours and woken groggily by his own body. He drags himself unwillingly outside in the very early morning to relieve himself and spends a few minutes floating, somewhat terrifyingly, in darkness before he shuffles back inside and blows out the candles on the desk.
Technoblade has passed out at his desk. Philza takes off his glasses before he can think twice, or think at all, and blows out that candle too, leaving only one in the entire tent to keep the world awake. He tucks a blanket around Technoblade's shoulders, too, before Philza curls up on his belly and dozes until dawn. He thinks it's the sort of thing that would be embarassing, or one that he would regret, but it's hard to care. He is so loved, he remembers. It is terrifying to be loved by something you will never understand. He hates this fucking war.
He is woken up by Technoblade again, who is looking a little baffled. "Hey," he says.
"Hi," Philza says. He feels ill. He thinks it might have been that he killed a lot of people three days ago, and he hates doing that, and he feels unclean.
"Did you take off my glasses?" Technoblade says, squinting.
"Yeah, that was me," Philza yawns. "Sorry, I didn't want to wake you, I think." Philza frowns. "What... did I tell you?"
"A lot," Technoblade says, which Philza takes to mean "everything you thought you said". Philza takes a moment to be utterly humiliated. "I am so sorry," he says, muffled. "I don't know what happened."
"A little hysteria is humblin'," Technoblade drawls as a means of forgiveness. "Not to me, of course. My hubris is unmatched."
"Sure," Philza says, and freezes midway to standing up. Either his bones are broken or he is so sore he might never recover. "Wow," he strangles.
"I think the war will be ending soon," Technoblade says, and holds a stained cloth to his nose as it starts to drip again. "Do you want to stay here? I think you could get away with it."
"I don't know," Philza says before he quite means to say anything. "I think I'll eat first, if nothin' else. I hate having muscles," he adds, just for fun. "And a body. They suck. They were an awful invention."
They eat another meal together. It's becoming dangerously habitual. Technoblade isn't far from being a person Philza can be lonely from. It's important, that they ate, but he doesn't remember many details. They were together. He forgets the rest.
It goes a long time before he sees Techno again. A long time. The war is not, actually, over soon; there's not a lot of actual tactics left, just mad scrambling, and the breathless cleaning-up. Philza isn't sure who won. It might have been a stalemate, but one or the other is being annexed. Everyone's too tired to really care, not just him. He becomes a balm to soldiers again, a bearer of fresh news.
There is still that awful stillness in him. It finds him in the early mornings before he takes flight, and on late nights when he has nothing to keep him busy. He doesn't know what to make of it. He doesn't know if he wants to meet it again, whatever he found in the shallow grave twice over. Sometimes when he drifts off, people avoid looking in his eyes. He is almost sorry for it.
Almost.
For once, he hears about Technoblade before he sees him.
It's a little strange because he knew Technoblade was very pleased with his position—renowned enough to be treasured by the people under his command and respected by the people he worked with, spoke with, but too quiet and dodgy to be noticed by anyone higher up. Too quiet to be talked about by other companies' soldiers. He didn't want to be promoted further, or something. Philza is just glad his wings are too useful to trap them under the chain of command. He thinks Technoblade was jealous of that.
Is. Is.
He doesn't remember the exact message. That's not important. He remembers grabbing the poor sod by the lapels though, and pulling them half across the mess table. "What did you say?"
"Oh, fuck," the soldier gasps. Philza remembers himself and loosens his hold, and remembers Technoblade and doesn't let go. "What did you say?"
"The—the prisoner of war camp—"
"Technoblade," Philza says. "I heard you talking about him."
"He—" the soldier pulls backward hopefully. Philza does not budge. "He's a nice guy, he got captured, they were going to break them out but—"
"Where?" Philza says, the word feels like breathing too quick. There's not enough air in the room. There's not enough time.
"Pixen Field," The soldier says.
"Where is that?" He shakes them.
"I don't know, forty miles northeast, follow the lights, let me go!"
Nothing about that flight was important, but he still remembers time stretching thin, transparent, as he flew. No thought but the arrow-minded fear and the background scan for a good place to land.
There is plenty of room.
He's flown over a couple of prisoner camps, in the dark. Usually on their side, because they can afford it. The other side only had four camps total.
It is, somehow, worse than he expected in daylight. Mostly because there is so little left.
Retrospect paints a different picture. Technoblade took a willing party of volunteers, as well-stocked as the end of the war would let them, to a prisoner of war camp. To mitigate damage. He never said exactly what went wrong, but things went wrong. Philza likes to think that the horses got away and lived happy, saddleless lives somewhere on the plains, eating flowers and grass.
The picture that Philza lands on is churned soil and no screaming but the crows'. There are a few things left alive. He can hear them moaning, animal or man, he can't tell, and supposes it doesn't matter, really, when you get down to it. Nothing should know to make that sound. It's horribly natural.
He supposes he might feel pity, later. But as much flying as Philza may have done, he is also a soldier, and does a soldier's duty without feeling anything at all. They do not beg when he puts them out of their misery. They are very thin. He thinks that illness would have killed them before war did, although that's a bit of a misnomer, as wars go.
He wishes Techno were here to explain what the fuck happened here. Some kind of desperate scrambling fight, obviously. Nothing planned. Nothing organized. The mud of the yard is too thick and churned to know which footprints mean what. Philza is good at that, usually. Reading footprints and tracks. Ducks, anyway, and sometimes shoes on a road.
"Hello?" He calls, inside the shoddy stone building erected as a guard's keep. He feels like an idiot and keeps walking, pulling his sleeve over his nose as he goes.
A lot of the keep is stuff he blurred out, and stuff he would like to keep that way. He's never been a very queasy person but there's a very clear memory of him bracing a hand against a chilly wall, retching so hard he thinks he might throw up everything he's ever eaten.
In the end, Techno finds him first.
"Augh!" Phil cries, or something similarly embarrassing. He grabs the hand of whoever's trying to stab him, because his hindbrain insists that he doesn't kill it right away. "Wha—"
The extra hand grabs him and throws him across the hallway. He has to roll to land on his chest and not fuck up his wing joints, which knocks the breath out of him, and he rolls over and curls his legs. Technoblade. He knows that person. That's Technoblade.
"Techno," he says, and dodges. The knife sparks across the stone. Technoblade's face, lit by the sudden light, is utterly blank.
"Techno!" Philza yelps in a very manly voice. Techno won't let him up so he swipes his ankles out from under him, which was the wrong decision because now he's crawling towards him really fast and "That's so fucking creepy! Techno, what are you doing!"
Technoblade swings at him, low and clean-cut. That's Technoblade, that efficiency with flair served on the side when he can manage it. There's no flair right now. It glances off Philza's bracers and Philza uses the momentum to crack Technoblade's hand against the wall. It crunches a little bit, and Technoblade makes no sound, but the knife clatters to the ground. Philza kicks it and it flies, glinting, all the way down the hallway and down a few stairs, it sounds like.
"Stop!" Philza yells, voice raw. Technoblade reaches a big spidery hand up to Philza's face and in a move that is much quicker than Philza thought he could ever be, under pressure, Technoblade is pinned to the wall. Philza has his wrists in one hand and a fistful of Technoblade's tattered uniform in the other. "Techno, mate, what the fuck are you—"
Technoblade scrapes his face raw on the unfinished rock wall. Philza shakes him. "Stop that," he orders, feeling for once both in complete control of his body and absolutely useless for it.
Philza watches Technoblade crack his head on the wall a few times, and then, it seems, he is spent. He sinks to the ground, and Philza follows, both crouching in a cold and filthy and rank building erected for the plain purpose of suffering for suffering's sake. He's too wary to let Technoblade's hands free, still, but when Technoblade's breathing has softened, and he's turned away from the wall, and he tries to pull one hand out of Philza's grip, he obliges. Technoblade touches his face gingerly with his fingertips. Philza winces. That's an infection absolutely waiting to happen.
"Where?" Technoblade rasps in a voice that sounds half sandpaper.
"You tell me," Philza says, too startled to gentle his voice. "Some prisoner of war camp."
"Oh," Technoblade says, screwing his eyes shut in the dark (the dark the dark). "Yeah. That." He laughs hysterically for a minute, every breath a raw-edged gasp. "Phil, I think I lost my glasses." He tries to hold his face in his hand, twitches, and curls them in his hair.
"Probably," Philza says, a mostly empty word that means nothing more than 'I am listening.'
Philza considers himself a pretty grounded guy. Except for that one freak incident, he knows what's real. it's always been pretty easy for him.
He's not a hundred percent sure, right now, but he's almost completely sure that the awful din he hears right now, like screaming and sobbing and wailing and laughing all at once, pooling in a tight circle around Technoblade and growing louder, is real. Evidence number one is the way Technoblade's hands tighten in his hair and the way he shuffles his feet closer, his body tighter together, like he's barricading himself.
"Philza," Technoblade says, eyes screwed shut. "Can you tell me a story?"
It's a story he makes up as he goes along, and it's not very good; he's better at visualizing things, is Philza Minecraft. But he makes do.
Philza tells the story of a fisherman. He builds a house by the ocean, low and gray, and raises animals and crops there. He brings bees, too, even though they're fucking stupid and keep drowning, and talks to gods. Some of them are reasonable and some of them are real shit. There's this one guy who tries to steal everything, whisk it away where nobody but he can have it, and so the gods of the overworld and the gods of the eternal flame make a pact, and flood him out. His work is not undone, but his domain is flooded, and life flourishes there, in the deep, in the airless void. Sometimes the dolphins get a bit confused, but that's to be expected, with a complete lack of a magnetic field.
"Nice," Technoblade manages.
"Yeah," Philza says, eloquently. "I think there's a lady, too, named Rose? And part of the pact between the land and the sea is that she makes a monument out in the real deep part, exposes it to air, and makes a lot of flowers grow there. It's very pretty. Somethin' like that."
"I'm sorry I scared you," Technoblade says. "That was pretty cringe of me."
"I think I'm the one who startled you, mate," Philza points out, but Technoblade shakes his head, and Philza doesn't want to argue, so they sit there for a minute.
"Do you have any water?" Technoblade says, sounding, dare he say it, feeble. Philza passes him the waterskin.
"How old are you?" Philza blurts.
Technoblade says, "Heh??"
"Sorry, that was out of the blue," Philza says. "I'm twenty-six."
Technoblade squints at the far wall. Philza is tempted to look himself in case there's an interesting bug he's staring at, but at last Technoblade says, "I'm nine thousand and counting. I drink the tears of orphaned children to keep my complexion glowing."
Philza snorts and ugly laughs for a minute. It feels nice. And then one or the other of them stands up, offers a hand to the one sitting, pulls them upright. And then they leave.
Most of the stuff after that becomes unimportant—war-wise, at least. There's a lot of interesting backflips that the economy does for a while, but no backpay or reimbursement for veterans besides what people decide to let for free at taverns.
They talk about things, sometimes. When it is dark and secret and they can't see each other's faces, where there is no light for the truth to cringe away from. Technoblade tries seaweed. He has mixed feelings about it. He tries fishing, and likes it, at least as long as he can pace, or as long as Philza is there to listen to him talk.
It's sort of like retirement, except retirement means you leave your job. There's no leaving this. They take a weapon or two everywhere they go, now, even if they joke about it. They sleep in shifts when the nights get too bad. Sometimes Philza has awful dreams that he won't wake up screaming from but will make him viciously, bitterly nauseous all day. Technoblade has enough screaming nightmares to tide them both over. They don't talk to anyone else about it. It's not the sort of thing you talk about.
Philza thinks of the dark, when he is dozing in the sun or walking along a path at sunset or waiting in the dark for sleep to take hold of him. He wonders if he really died or not. It's not something he's looking to test, but he hopes it won't mean leaving Technoblade behind. The man's a mess. As it turns out, the 'forgetting entire meals' thing wasn't a fluke of wartime appetite, it was just habit. He could strangle Techno.
They live in the same house by the sea. It was easy work to pull in another thin bedframe, another uncomfortable straw mattress. The first few nights the mattresses have too much give and they both end up sleeping on the floor, a closer consistency to the camp cots. Technoblade doesn't ever talk about going back to wherever he came from before the war, and Philza doesn't bring it up. He doesn't wonder, either.
They're restless people. They can't settle down, now. It's like how if you hop off a cart after a long ride, the road still looks like it's moving underneath you, and when you start walking again it makes the stones underfoot lie still. Philza has it worse than Technoblade, but they pool their money together, as one unit, when they buy a covered cart and hitch Techno's sturdy draft horse to it.
The morning that they leave, Technoblade is the last to leave the house. He locks the door and puts the key in an empty plant pot out of habit, and clambers into the seat next to Phil. He's got some papers in his hand, like old times. Like a year ago, or thereabouts.
"Where're we goin'?" Philza says, chewing a piece of straw as a joke. It actually doesn't taste that bad; he doesn't know what that says about him.
"Uh," Technoblade says. "I don't know. North?"
"What, don't you have something in mind?"
"I could make something up," Technoblade says. "I thought you wanted to go somewhere."
"Did I?" Philza says, baffled.
Technoblade heaves a sigh. "Let's go northwest, then," Technoblade says. "What's the biggest mountain you've ever seen?"
"I'unno," Philza says, snapping the reins. "Big?"
"Not as big as where we're going," Technoblade says, and folds the map and stows it away in his bag. And the rest is another story.