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To begin every DSBI fic I've ever done, read the tags.
in case some of you skipped the tags:
THIS IS A DARK SBI FIC. read the TAGS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
You cannot die. You are not allowed to die. Live.
His first thoughts, upon waking up, are not his.
Breathe.
He gasps, but he can’t breathe. No, he’s submerged in this liquid. Technoblade’s eyes open, and he can’t see anything. He doesn’t know up from down, he can’t see anything, so he tries to swim up. He claws himself upwards, trying to keep himself from panicking so that he doesn’t lose any air.
Technoblade counts his lucky stars for one moment, and in the next he breaks through the surface. Whatever it was that he opened his eyes to, it blinded him for a brief moment. He tries to wipe it off of his eyes but it doesn’t go off easily.
From this murky darkness, to this red pigment, to the sight before him.
He’s in… an underwater pit. He’s somewhere in a cave, with some glowing lichen that serves as the only source of light around here. Technoblade looks around and he finds that whatever he’s in isn’t water.
No, it can’t be water. Water is typically clear, nothing viscous like whatever he’s swimming in. He looks at his hand, and he sees the familiar sight of blood running down it. He looks down, and he tries not to violently react at how the blood he’s swimming in. He hopes he didn’t drink any of that, he wouldn’t like to shit black later on.
Technoblade frowns, confused. The lake is waist-deep, which is odd because he clearly remembers swimming a considerable amount just so he could rise to the surface. He shakes his head, wanting to think nothing of it. His main priority is to get out of here.
He looks around, and there’s a cliff there. It’s sloped enough for him to be able to climb. Technoblade walks ahead, and moves. He avoids the thought of slushing through someone ’s blood. Someone can’t bleed this much, no matter how unrealistic, so either this is fake or he’s swimming in about, maybe a dozen or two’s entire blood supply. If anything, Red Cross has probably had unsanitary methods of keeping their blood bank secure.
For whatever reason, though he woke up within this pool of blood and it’s a very concerning issue. One that he is evidently going to have to fix by swimming out of it.
The last thing he recalls… it’s a blur. He thinks he was fighting someone, and the stakes were high. For some reason, Technoblade knows that the stakes are always high. He clutches his head, trying to recall what happened last.
A smile. Something drawn on white, but the childish view looks more horrific than anything.
He climbs up from the pit. He can worry about it later. He has to get out.
Technoblade climbs out of the pit. It isn’t an easy fit, but it isn’t impossible considering his physique. He’s scaled less lenient buildings than this. This is a walk in the park compared to having to climb up a brickless, concrete tower without as much as a harness. Whatever sent him here, he’s glad that they made it so that the pool isn’t walled by tiles.
Imagine having to climb up tiles. That is a horror and a half, and something he would rather never experience ever again. He quivers at the thought of nearly peeled fingernails and desperation of that degree.
He pulls himself up with a huff, muscles burning. He’s going to be experiencing some soreness either later or right now considering he’d probably pulled a muscle sometime in the climb. How weak. When he gets home he’s going to have to–
Home.
There’s something wrong about that word now, and he can’t quite place his finger on it. No matter, now is not the time to be pondering on something like that anyway. He has other concerns, which is mainly getting out of here .
Technoblade pulls himself up, and he nearly falls at the sight that welcomes him. Before him is a wall of the cave. Maybe once it would have been rough and rocky, but it’s smoothened using a probably horrible method.
But that’s not really the primary thing he’s supposed to notice, no. There’s chalk and paint on the wall, messages of desperation clinging to the rough patches of stone so barely smoothened. Technoblade has his feet on the ground when he’s capable to read what they say.
Hope. Save us. Save us all. Protect us. Salvation. Salvation. Help us. God. Help us. Help my family. Save my family. End them. Destroy them. Change is coming. Carnage will save us. Blood. Blood for the Blood God. Vengeance.
Vengeance is the largest word on the wall. Graffiti of spraypaint still dripping down the wall. It’s still fresh, based on how the way he could still see the paint glimmering on the walls of the cave. It stretches to where an average man of average height could reach, which isn’t very high, but it stretches wide enough for it to overwhelm him.
Technoblade looks down at the foot of the wall.
It’s an eerie sight, under the light of the lichen and nearly blown out torches. There are pictures. ID Pictures and passports.
His heart skips a beat when he sees faces that are just as young as Tommy’s on the floor. There are children.
Technoblade looks up at the wall, trying to decipher something, anything about what this means. Thanatos came for them too soon. Technoblade’s heart sinks, knowing what this meant.
These people died.
He approaches cautiously, fearing for the worst. He sees the red, painted Vengeance bleed down to the floor, where at the center lie a book.
Technoblade doesn’t think twice to approach it.
It is an untitled paper bound notebook, cardboard as the cover and springbound. The paper inside is lined, and worn down, but he could tell it was worn down due to use and less due to time. He opens it, and he reads the single line on the first sheet of paper.
FORTIS CADERE, CEDERE NON POTEST
“The Brave May Fall, but Never Yield.” He says outloud. It’s the translation for that latin proverb. He doesn’t think anything of it. It’s a pretty common proverb, a lot of people would say. Technoblade knows a few latin proverbs, they ain’t special.
He flips to the next page.
“To Salvation,” This is a letter.
It reads as such:
To Salvation,
When you read this, we have gone. Do not ask where we went, you will never find us. Any of us. We do not know who you are, who you will be, but we have gone and left our mark in our world as your presence. Our will and our hope relies on you, your power, to save who remains of what we love. You come to save us. You come to serve us. You come from vengeance and vengeance will come from you.
You will end them. You will.
My name is Clementine. I will no longer exist when you breathe your first air, but I am the catalyst that brought you here. My ability, the one I was born with, has allowed for your existence. I will not spare you the details, but it took a grandiose amount of effort to bring you here. The blood we once bled is now yours to pour, our flesh that we once lived is yours to tear, the tears we have shed is yours to avenge.
I no longer matter.
The rest of this notebook will detail the weight of your existence and impact that is desired.
Okay, kind of forceful there OP. Kind of sounding like a cult, and he doesn’t really think he stands by things like that now. He snorts, flipping to the next page.
Look behind you. Is the single thing on the page. He does, and he flinches when he sees his peripherals fool him. For a moment, it looked like the blood he’d crawled out from had followed him like a shadow, stretching all the way down to the pit. He looks directly at it, and he finds nothing. Just his ordinary shadow stretching no further than where the lichen’s glow allows it.
Everywhere else, at the corner of his vision but never right in front of him, are… are people. There’s no way to describe it. Something eerie. They all keep their distance, staring at him, watching him.
He turns back around, facing the wall of graffiti, and finds nothing. The eyes are no longer on him. No longer following him.
Technoblade flips to the next page.
Do you remember how you died?
He stops, breath hitching as the memory rises from the back of his mind.
And he’s brought back. Him. His last moments.
He is Technoblade, an odd name, but one he’d given to himself since he was a child. A childhood name, something hopeful. He’d made it his identity as he took on the mantle he’d made for himself. Atlas.
He is a hero named Atlas.
Atlas raises his hands, knowing that there’s nothing that he can do. The gun isn’t at a distance that he could do anything with, and Dream has his Emerald.
Silvertongue is unable to do anything.
“Y’know, this is pretty helpful. Thanks for it.” Dream chuckles, tilting his head so he could test the way the emerald dangles from his ear. “Certainly does make things a lot easier.”
“Easier isn’t your shtick, Dream.” Technoblade says daringly, eye glancing at his friends who are surrounding the two of them. They are, without a doubt, thinking of a way to get him out of the way. “You like fun, and it doesn’t seem very fun if things are this easy for you– mind giving that emerald back?”
Dream hums, as if contemplating. “Nah,” Technoblade can’t read the expression on Dream’s masked face. “I’m after a better game of chance.”
And it was uneventful, how it happened. Technoblade’s mind was racing with a quip, something to distract Dream and to buy his friends more time to think of a way to save him. He could already hear how Vermillion, his little Theseus, is arguing with Silvertongue on the best way to approach this.
One moment, his mind is full of thoughts that race around one another.
The next, he’s nothing.
A soulless body slumps to the floor at the sound of a gun shot. It sinks. When a gun is shot to the head, it’s nothing special. It doesn’t look very violent, save for the gruesome gore on the head where the bullet enters the brain by cracking at the cranium. The body doesn’t jolt, doesn’t fall back dramatically like in the movies.
No.
His body sinks, going limp. One moment, he has his hands up, quivering despite his bravado under the gun. The next, he is still, slack, lifeless.
Maybe if he were shot in the heart, or in the chest, he would have heard the wail of his friends. Those who he deems brothers, that who he deems a parent. A family where there couldn’t have been before.
But he didn’t.
He now ceases to exist, and he can do nothing about it. Not anymore.
He stumbles back, a sudden dissonance from what he does know. He’s alive, his breathing, and he’s here.
Technoblade was dead, but now he isn’t.
That’s a lot that needs to sink in, Technoblade thinks blankly. He looks to the side, and he sees clothing. How hospitable of this cult to lend him some, even going as far as lending him a variety of clothing. Most of them evidently wouldn’t fit, but he has a feeling they were guessing his size and stature when they got as much clothes as they could possibly hand off.
Not hospitable enough to lend him a towel, sadly.
But as he looks down at his hands and arms, he comes to realize that there doesn’t seem to be a need of it. He’s not wet, barely even a glimpse of wetness save for what probably is sweat.
Which, as far as his history in bloodstains go, doesn’t normally happen. Blood doesn’t just go away.
Yet there’s no sign of it. No sign of him swimming through that pool of blood. For good measure, he, now dressed, walks back to the edge of the cliff, and he sees the pool where he comes from.
He can even smell the iron wafting to his nose, strong enough to remind him that this, no matter how used he became to the sight of it, is an unusual occurrence.
That can’t possibly be real blood.
So many people would have died to bleed out this much– that, or they broke into the red cross and decided that there were better ways to summon demons and perform necromancy than cutting yourself.
He figures that the latter would be unlikely.
He also has a good guess of who exactly this blood came from.
From the emptiness in the room to the eerieness in the message, he has a very good guess of the name of one of the bloodletters. He tries not to chuckle at the gruesome joke that it shouldn’t have taken this much blood to make up a person– person being him, that is.
The blood we once bled is now yours to pour
Technoblade decides to test Clementine’s words.
He raises his hand, index finger flexing to call upon his blood to form a weapon. In his mind is a scythe, not his favorite, but one that he’d used enough to know that it’d require a lot of blood letting to manifest.
And his heart sinks when the pool responds underneath him, pulling up from the bottom of the pit, spikes rushing to reach his palm as it forms exactly into the weapon he wanted.
A blood scythe, dripping at the edge but without a doubt something that could cut. It is large, spanning all the way to the ceiling of the cave when he’d as much as raised it.
Vengeance. Carnage. Blood for the Blood God.
He drops his weapon, the blood turning into liquid once more when he lets go. It seeps back to the pool, eerily casting waves within it.
What. What did he hear?
Still, as disturbed as he should be, and while he may be surprisingly nonchalant about the whole ordeal of this human sacrifice for the sake of reviving him of all people, Technoblade is somewhat, the slightest bit, grateful for his revival.
He can’t wait to rub it in his allies faces– Technoblade Never Dies is actually real, true, and proven. Sure he did die, but he didn’t exactly stay dead now did he?
Technoblade turns on his heel, and he walks out of the cave. It’s easy to navigate his way out, fortunately. They’ve so kindly line the walls with their messages on the way out, getting sparser and sparser the more light he sees at the end of the tunnel.
Whoever they were, they were hiding, and they were hiding well. It took a while for twists and turns to actually lead him outside.
He can hear water dripping, the sound echoing in the cavern that he’s traversing. Technoblade walks more, until he reaches the mouth of the cave. There he is, finally, outside.
It’s raining.
Somehow he thinks that he’s supposed to feel a certain gratitude, a certain shift in paradigm in enjoying the rain even more now that he’s died and come back to life, but still he feels that same disdain for the way the rain falls in dissonance due to the way some water catches up in the leaves and some falls to the floor earlier than the rest. The pitter patter is annoying.
Maybe one day he could enjoy the rain. For now, it’s just a nuisance.
As nice as the weird cult people had been to lend him some clothing, Technoblade is just slightly more aware of the fact that they didn’t think to lend him a towel and an umbrella for this situation. Are they really looking to give their newly revived ‘Salvation’ a cold?
He huffs, placing the notebook under his clothing for the sake of even slightly reducing how soaked these important pieces of paper will be once he gets through the rain.
For being dead-now-alive, this is certainly a very underwhelming experience. The cave is going to get a horrible rating on AirBnb.
.
When he first got his ability when he was in foster care, the first thing he wanted to do is right some wrongs. First things first, he left the foster system. It did as much good to him as it did for the government. He was almost an adult anyway. There was no point in staying any longer if no one would have him and he’d have no one.
Independence was the first step. He’d built up a name.
Vigilantism was illegal in L’manburg. It always was, even when he’d made a name for himself– technically he didn’t make that name. If it were up to him, he would have had No One as a title. It was confusing and meta.
But no. The people who he saved had given him the name Atlas. He brought it upon himself to put the world right in his hands, make things right.
That was how he met his family. Vagabonds like him who wanted to make the world right again.
Sic Semper Tyrannis. Technoblade loved that proverb. Tyrants who were at the head of the system were going to get what they deserved.
Tommy was one of the many that he saved. Back when his gear consisted of less than ideal material and barely put together garments from thriftstores and dumpsterdives, Tommy was a kid. He’d saved the kid from trafficking– something that was rampant back then. His parents sold him off for money.
He remembers that day like the back of his hand– just as he remembers every face he’s allowed another chance to live. Tommy had the brightest blue eyes, full of spite and fight. He was feisty, and he had been a lot of help considering that his aggression towards his captors only made it quicker for technoblade to retrieve him as safely.
But he remembers more than that. Technoblade remembers how the kid shook in his arms when he’d finally been saved. How he’d muttered his gratitude with utmost reverence. This wasn’t the first time Technoblade had to calm someone down after the adrenaline falls, but it doesn’t make it any less terrifying.
How could they just give this kid away? He’s so small, in his arms. Technoblade had barely hit twenty when he’d saved Tommy. He was so small, so little. How could they?
Technoblade didn’t feel any pity that day when he’d arrested Tommy’s parents– tied them up and left them at the foot of the police with the necessary evidence to get them jailed for the rest of their lives. Technoblade abhorred them.
He did feel hesitation when he’d left Tommy in the orphanage. No one would take care of him– Technoblade had known that from the start.
But he couldn’t take Tommy in. It was dangerous, and chances are that if Technoblade was caught as Atlas, he would have landed in the Orphanage anyway. He was better off there than on the streets.
It was true.
“Please don’t leave me.” Tommy was ten years old, crying into his shoulder as the caretakers of the orphanage were the sole witnesses of Technosoft. He’s clinging to Technoblade, unwilling to let go. “I don’t want to go in there. I don’t trust them.” Tommy sobbed.
Technoblade’s heart cracked. “I’m sorry, kid.” He said softly. “But they can take care of you better than I can right now, and soon enough someone who will love you will take you away from here.”
“That’s a lie!” Tommy wailed, and Technoblade wants to continue lying. He needed to. Tommy was a wonderful kid.
The kid is easy to love. Technoblade had a difficult time trying not to in the short three days that Tommy was in his care.
“I, you have to understand, kid.” Technoblade had a hard time pulling Tommy off of him so he could keep him at arm’s length, so he could look at his eyes. “Your parents weren’t good people. That doesn’t mean everyone is the same.” He eyes the matron of the house, who looks back at him with pitying eyes. “You’re going to be in good hands. In even better hands. I’m not the only good guy you’d come across, kid. You can trust me on that.”
Tommy had given it a chance. Technoblade thought that it’d be the last he’d see of Tommy.
Technoblade can’t hope for things like that. The kid is stubborn.
He’d dubbed himself as Vermillion two years later. Tommy was twelve years old when he became a hero.
.
He’s not left with a lot of time to think to himself. Not when the short walk from the cave to civilization sums up to a simple 30 minutes. He really is a human GPS.
But mainly, he’s met with things he can recognize. He knows that seeing these buildings would only mean that not much time has passed since he’s died.
From where he stands, in the small hill where nature transitions into human interference, he could see that everything was just as he’d recognized. Hell, he could still recognize the very tree he’s leaning against. Oak, carved with a childhood message.
He could remember fondly, back when he had been in foster care. Back before things had become complicated over his need of justice– proper justice. Technoblade hums, seeing the familiar words: Sic Semper Tyrannis . Thus always to Tyrants. The government back then had horrible, inexcusable acts done by themselves. It was a cringy era, he thought that this would have led to something legendary– technically it did. He became a hero because of his fascination with this Latin proverb.
And this, among many, was one of the pieces that allowed him a family.
Tommy was one of the people he saved. One of the heroes that followed after him.
He’d convinced to get Tommy out of the streets and at least into the computers. The boy is talented at it. Nearly godly at the thing. Tommy had laid down the mantle of Vermillion and he’d settled for being the man in the chair. He figured that stopping Tommy wouldn’t be an option.
Wilbur, however, was his age, and he’d be a hypocrite to stop or at least put a hinder on it. Instead, he offered to fight alongside him under the condition that they never work alone. There’s safety in numbers, and Technoblade was able to provide exactly that. They were a family. Always.
Philza was an unexpected addition. He came from elsewhere, not even local to their country, and he’d decided to help out. The story is a lot longer than that.
Sic Semper Tyrannis. Thus always to Tyrants. As vigilantes, they weren’t exactly what the government wanted to work with but they were what their country needed. Technoblade had started as a revolutionary figure, until eventually things became… things became better. Crime were dealt with by the police force and there was almost this moment where he could lay down the mantle as Atlas and leave it up to the government who should have been better.
Two years did a lot. Changed a lot.
Then came people who wanted more.
Dream was only one of many who had taken their brand of anarchy and twisted it into something less noble. They sullied their title as vigilantes, called themselves the same title as them. They called themselves heroes when everyone had dubbed them anything but.
They were villains. They had no regard for the law, no regard for order.
Technoblade was hardly the one to pioneer the term for Heroes, but his had been the source of Villains. Organized crime had become a lot more vocal and rampant, violence had become the language of all with power, with abilities most were born with.
Atlas as a name had become a lot less positive than it had before, but Technoblade wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s his weight to carry, his burden.
So Dream and the villains is his issue to solve, and it just so happens that his family, Tommy, Wilbur, and Phil, had been there with him to deal with the consequences of his actions. He doesn’t regret what he did that caused all of it, but he does have the intention to deal with it.
Technoblade continues downwards and onwards. He has a landmark, and he can walk his way back from there. He’s not sure how the rest of the boys would have reacted to his death, but surely they couldn’t have done anything drastic. Everyone knew the risks of what they do, his death shouldn’t have had such a large impact on them.
On the people, maybe. Hope is always a dangerous thing.
But it’s… rather deserted. Technoblade looks around, and he could have sworn it’s only been a few moments since the light had fully gone from the sky. There are lights on the streets, yes, but there are barely any shops open, barely any windows that trust the empty street enough to show its light.
There aren’t much cars, save for the the few that are parked at the side of the street and the one or two that speeds by him.
Is there— there’s never been curfew in L’manburg, has there?
Unless Dream is out and about, causing some ruckus, but then that’d open some opportunity for Technoblade to reunite with his friends who would definitely destroy all the threat there is. Heroes, he and his friends are heroes, and where there is crime there is Tommy surveying that area.
But there’s… nothing. Not even the sirens of the police cars who’d race against the illegitimate heroes of the country, trying to do their job before they get proven useless once again. Not even the people peering out to catch a glimpse of their favorite masked robins.
It’s not lifeless, no. He could see trash in the bins, benches that are pristine.
He walks around, soaking wet. Technoblade enters the first open shop– a convenience store.
The chimes alarm the shopkeep. Behind the counter, Technoblade sees the person wearing an underwhelming and overused uniform of 7-Eleven. The attendant looks up at him, bored, before her eyes widen in both shock, fear, and especially recognition. “Pink hair,” she whispers under his breath, and she looks at his eyes. “Red.” There’s realization, like she’d uncovered a horror.
“Hullo.” He greets awkwardly, waving. He’s suddenly not too sure about taking shelter in this place. “Uh, don’t mind me–”
The clerk stands up abruptly, and she rushes towards the door to flip the sign closed. She turns towards him, placing a finger on her lips, before motioning a ‘follow me’.
He eyes the nametag on her chest, “Clara, not to be rude, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re both strangers and you’re a 7-eleven store clerk. Again, this isn’t me downplaying your role in society, but you can see where I’m coming from–”
“We haven’t got the time ,” Clara hisses. “They’re about to do their rounds soon and if they see you around here we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.” She says, “Please, please come with me to the back of the store. Just the back of the store, nowhere else, and nothing is going to happen.”
Technoblade doesn’t know what’s going on, but…
If worst comes to worst, Technoblade could just resort to harmless violence. That sounds contradicting but it’s possible, and it’s supposed to be possible because that’s basically his job. A lot of harmless violence and light lawbreaking. Hero work is illegal.
He follows her in, and he watches as she shuts off the light inside the store. “Isn’t it more suspicious that a 7-eleven is closed,” he squints at the digital clock, “three hours too early to call it late?” He asks. “Whoever is patrollin’, you’re acting pretty suspicious.”
“It’s not unusual to close early these days.” She says, rather ominously as she holds open the door to the back room.
Technoblade enters.
She shuts the door behind her, fiddling with her fingers while she looks around the room. “I, first of all, once I’ve done my responsibility, you’re on your own.” She says, still with her back against the door. “You’re on your own, and I’m leaving here. Never recognize me. Ever.”
Technoblade shrugs. That’s fair. He already wants to leave immediately, nothing new here.
Clementine walks back, crossing her arms as she sinks into a foldable seat. “I, well, I don’t have that video Clementine told me to show her champion– I threw that out. That shit’s illegal, but I can tell you what you need to catch up. Apparently there’s not a whole lot I have to do knowing she revived you of all people.” Clara says, sounding a bit bitter. “Simply put, when you died, the world went to shit for a second and it reset.”
“That’s not a very good help.”
“Well it’s a lot compared to what others will give you.” She snaps back. “If you came across anyone else who aren’t part of Clementine’s ‘Coven’ you would have been given up to the Syndicate.”
Technoblade raises his eyebrow. “The Syndicate ?” He asks incredulously. “That sounds illegal.”
“Technically it is, but at this point that ‘nameless’ organization holds more power over the people than the government itself does. Puppet government and shit.” She leans back, “I’m risking my life here, but thankfully there’s nothing inconspicuous about a 7-eleven convenience store.”
“Other than the fact that you’re, based on what I’m hearing, holding what the ‘Syndicate’ wants.”
“Other than that, yeah.” She nods. “Just, pointers I guess,” She reaches to her backpack, pulling out a phone. Clara shows him a picture of people. They look like vigilantes, ones that were just like him. “Avoid these fuckers, for one. You’ll do an awful lot of ‘avoiding enemies’ by walking in the shadows.”
“What are they?”
“Patrollers. Syndicate underlings who have bloody fucking dashcams on their bodies.” She answers.
Clara pulls her phone back, and she swipes a few times before showing it again. “These are the buildings you’re going to have to avoid entirely.”
Technoblade doesn’t recognize them. Not at all. “Are they new?”
“Been built since you died, yeah.”
“How long has that been?”
“Four years.” She answers.
Four years… that can change a lot. It could destabilize an entire nation, which technically, it did. He did. He didn’t think that his death would have had this much of an impact, that the country would have been so reliant on his presence that it fails to run the moment he’s out of the picture. Maybe that should be something he should have done.
He looks at the picture, it’s vaguely familiar in shape, but he can’t really place where. Phil would know. He’s a sucker for these type of things. Once upon a time, Technoblade had been told that if Philza weren’t in law enforcement he would have gone into the arts.
Speaking of…
Technoblade looks between the pictures and her, “What happened to Vermillion, Angel, and Silvertongue?”
Clara shrugs. “No idea,” She says. “Went MIA ever since the night you died. I was twelve when it happened, but there were many things that people thought had happened. First is that we believed that Dream’s lackey caught Silvertongue and stole his power.”
He feels his gut sink. Something happened to Silvertongue the night he died. He suspected that Dream wouldn’t have been alone that night, but he didn’t think that it would have been with Halo of all people. He stole abilities, it couldn’t have been anyone else but him. The name Syndicate sounds like it’d be coined by Diamond or Monarch, both of which are great friends with Halo.
“Who?”
“No fucking clue.” Clara looks up at Technoblade. “Your death was broadcasted, that much I do know, but anyone who witnessed it live had died.”
Technoblade’s blood chilled. He and Wilbur had talked about this, once. They’d explored his ability without their emeralds and he found out that his commands work beyond live audiences. It works in electrical transmissions, only hindered by generation loss to a great degree. “How many.”
She types something into her phone, and she flips it once more to show Technoblade.
4,763 .
His breath hitched, but he tries his best to listen as Clara continues. “My parents were two of those bodies, it…” She inhales, “It’s not too much, more people have died since then. People who were brave often died first. People who were good were next. People who were smart soon afterwards.”
“Who is left?”
Clara laughs. “Cowards.” She answers, sounding sardonic. “Which is why this is all I’m leaving you with. I don’t fucking care if I change anything, that’s your job and if you fail that’s not on me.” Clara stands up, grabbing a bag and tossing it to Technoblade. He catches it with ease. “I said everything I know, everything else to help you is in that notebook of yours.” She snorts at the sight of it. “I know that dumb notebook anywhere, she tried her best to be impactful with her words– hard to do that when it’s written in a springbound sixty GSM shitty lined notebook.”
“Any reason why it’s not in ominous leather?”
“Had to act innocent enough to last her til today.” She hums. “RIP Clementine, I won’t miss the shit she pulls.”
He’d suspected as much. Whatever blood was in that pool must have been from a few people– Clementine included. Technoblade nods, “Lead the way out then.” He says. “I’ll be off on my merry way.”
“Good, I thought that it was about time I skipped today on sick notice.” She snorts. “Good luck, or whatever. Stay safe there.”
Technoblade hums. “I’ll try.” He drawls.
“And,” She pauses, hesitant, hand clasping and loosening on the door once before gathering the courage. “If it’s any worth, you were my hero.” Clara says. “Not to put any pressure or some shit, but I hope you don’t let me down a second time. Asshole.”
Technoblade huffs something amused. “Sorry that my death was such an inconvenience.”
“World crashed when Atlas did.” She shrugs, and she swings the door open for him. “Last thing– hide your hair. You’re a walking target.”
.
He was thirteen when he first met Wilbur. There was nothing exciting about it other than Wilbur pointing out that they look very similar if it weren’t for Technoblade’s hair.
They were sat next to each other during dinner in one house, and Wilbur had been the one to open up the conversation. To break the ice. “You look an awful lot like me.” He pointed out, and he could still see that he was chewing on that rather tough piece of beef that they were all served.
Technoblade, for all his wit, answered dutifully: “You ever considered that you look a lot like me ?” He retorts, and that made Wilbur choke on that beef. Technoblade had to be the one to slam Wilbur’s back free from dying out of badly cooked beef.
His relationship with Wilbur prior to being a hero was shaky in a sense that he wasn’t quite sure that there was one in the first place. Wilbur wasn’t a constant in his life. He was a passing breeze that sometimes felt playful enough to take a u-turn and tease him. Wilbur was an old friend who you’d barely remember any specific memories about, but he’d still be someone you’d wave at when you catch his eye.
That was in the beginning, before Technoblade became Atlas.
When he literally slammed the beef out of Wilbur’s esophagus, he didn’t expect to see him later on in life fighting crime with an ability he didn’t think Wilbur had. Silvertongue was his name, and as you know, Silver tongue is how you’d describe someone who can easily persuade.
Wilbur can command someone to do his bidding, and they’d do it in a heartbeat, without hesitation nor restraint.
Like Technoblade, his ability was something that his parents feared. Except there was no physical evidence of such. His ability evoked paranoia because his parents wouldn’t know if they did things out of love for him or out of his whims. They gave him away.
Technoblade had only known his story ages after he saved Wilbur’s life.
“It’s funny,” Wilbur said once out of the blue. “When you saved my life, it was during a moment when I couldn’t utter a word for anyone to save me. You did it out of your own. Why?”
“I’m not an asshole.” Technoblade answered. “I didn’t save you because you wanted me to, did I?” It was a rhetorical question.
Wilbur grinned, “You’ve got a good heart, don’t you?”
“That’s literally the bare minimum. I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of it.” Technoblade said. That was the end of that.
.
And yet again, Technoblade is alone . He slings the bag secure on his shoulder. When he gets to somewhere relatively more secure, he could probably check out if he’s tracked.
He made sure to avoid any cameras on his way out the back door, and he continues to avoid the characters when he walks. His mind is reeling with the things he has to do. With the things he needs to do. He opens the notebook, his little survival guide on how to live through what could be defined as a literal dystopia.
There’s an address on the parchment. Clementine, the author of this notebook and the one who literally revived him from the dead, had written a few where he could collect materials from.
She’s smart, Clementine. She’d thought out every possibility of what to do.
When he first spots a patroller, he hides. He’s skilled enough to, senses honed to detect it easily. He isn’t the most powerful vigilante in the world for nothing. He’s Atlas, literally named after a guy who lifts the entire world on his shoulders. He’s not going to be defeated by some rando side-character patroller .
Technoblade sneaks by, moving to the next address. He recognizes it, at least. He’s native to the country, he knows how to navigate, and fortunately Clementine’s resources aren’t stretched thin. Wherever cave he hailed from (something that he, in fact, is unfamiliar with) is surrounded by her people.
Clara had been listed as one of them, but he scratched her off.
She did say never to return. Her personal address being in here didn’t seem like a viable option.
He lands in front of an apartment. He rings twice, then once, to the specific doorbell for someone named Samuel. Technoblade doesn’t wait long before he hears distant thumping from behind the door growing louder before stopping.
The door opens wide to reveal someone with dyed green hair with the roots showing, and black sclera and lime eyes. His eyes go from Technoblade’s eyes, to the notebook in his hand. Samuel gestures Technoblade to enter, and when he does he shuts the door behind him. “Quickly, before anyone else sees.” Samuel leads Technoblade upstairs, presumably where his apartment is.
He’s in the apartment with a more hospitable owner than the last host. “To begin with, you came just in time. I was about to burn this damned floppy disc.” Sam says when they’re both inside.
“I’ve been told it was illegal.”
“It is, and no doubt that if you came to anyone else after me, you’d find that they’d already burned theirs.” He says. He eyes the bag Technoblade is holding. “I presume you’ve arrived elsewhere before you stopped at mine, though.”
“Already burned hers.” He answers curtly.
“Ah, smart.”
Only cowards are left. “She wouldn’t say the same.” Technoblade answers. “Now what is it that you so badly want to show me?” He asks, “Whatever this is, you guys act like you’re handing out bombs to one another.”
Sam winced. “It used to be, but it’s… watered down.” Sam answers. “Floppy disc, meet ancient disc player. I have no idea how much Clementine dumpster dived for the damn things, but she made sure every disc came with a player.” He hands Technoblade the two, “You– we can only watch it once. I’m going to burn it after.”
Technoblade places the disc inside the player. He presses what he assumes to be the right buttons, but it doesn’t work.
“It won’t play. Will you just tell me what it is?”
Sam huffs, grabbing the player. “Clementine said it was video evidence, processed through generation loss, of The Rapture .”
“A film, you’re giving me a pirated film.” He deadpans.
“No,” Sam looks up, something unreadable in those eyes. “It’s the broadcast of the day you died.”
Technoblade’s blood ran cold. He’s… he’s going to see how he died. “What’s the point of showing me this?”
“It… it gives you a name.” Sam answers nervously. “It will give you names of who exactly the bad guys are.”
“Bad guys is a severe understatement for whatever runs the dystopian fiction that this is.”
“I’m afraid that most words I do know are still counted as understatements.”
Sam fiddles a bit with the buttons before the video starts. Technoblade’s entire paradigm is shaken, forced to shift.
His death changed a lot more than he’d ever thought. Than he’d ever hoped.
He could have never seen this coming. Never in his life.
.
Meeting Philza was admittedly not really in his best interest. The man was a war veteran, not that Technoblade would have known that when he’d firstmet him. It would have been a great help to have known that, though, because if Technoblade had known that he’d be crashing in his house for the night because of a grievous injury.
Technoblade felt his heart race for the nth time today when he’d been pointed at with a gun. He raised his hands up in defense, flinching at the sight of yet another gun for today. If he hadn’t lost enough blood that night maybe he would have known to steal it from the man, but he’s just as powerless and weak as his blood count and as such he’s vulnerable in front of the man with a gun.
“You’re that Atlas fella.” The man said to himself out loud.
Technoblade looks up, hoping that this guy isn’t one of many who wants him dead. That number seems to grow rapidly these days.
“Yes.” Technoblade answers softly, not wanting to aggregate the man holding a gun. On another occasion, maybe he’d be calmer, a lot more sarcastic and confident, but he’s weak right now. There’s no going out of this situation without the mercy of the man holding the gun.
The man lowered the gun, and instead had offered a hand. “You look like you need a hand, mate.” Technoblade watches as the man smiled down at him.
He reminds him a lot of an angel. He’s a hybrid, wings fluffed behind him and talons growing back into his ordinary hand.
When Technoblade took the hand, got treated while Phil recounted his experience with the army, he thought that was the last of it. Technoblade had known that this was a big country.
Technoblade seeing Phil once more from a window when his villain enemy had fallen from a gunshot from somewhere wasn’t what he expected. He confronted the man.
“You almost killed her.” Technoblade said, standing at Phil’s balcony. He didn’t fear a gunshot– Technoblade knew that the man wouldn’t kill him. Phil is a good man.
“Almost was the intention. I had a feeling you’d be upset if I did.” Phil answered with ease, cleaning a gun that he’s holding. He doesn’t look intimidating. He’s not trying to be. “I’ve got a ranking, technically it’s legal for me in this country to take that matter into my own hands and end it in your stead.”
Technoblade was almost stunned by the blatant admission of Phil’s intentions. “Why?”
“I believe that less bad people in the world would make it better.”
“That’s counterintuitive.” Technoblade retorted.
“How so?”
“If all the good people killed the bad guys,” Technoblade starts. He grabs the gun from Phil’s hand, slowly. “How could you call them good?”
Phil smiled. Technoblade couldn’t be scared of that smile of his. Something kind, but something that was more than that. Phil was a good man. That day, Phil had welcomed Technoblade into his home with hot cocoa.
When he’d later on be faced by an enemy, Technoblade had been stunned to find that his enemy was knocked over to the ground by a very sudden landing. He looked up at the new arrival, a man wearing a dark green hat that fanned far from his face, eyes darkened by a mask and some makeup. Technoblade finds that the comforting smile of Philza can’t be hidden by any disguise.
Technoblade had given Phil some pointers on vigilantism, and Phil then paid him in kind by keeping him alive.
He found a family in three people.
He couldn’t be any happier.
.
His breath hitches at the sound of a gunshot, and he sees his own body fall limp.
It’s the night he died, and he could barely remember that there was a helicopter that was surveying the fight. So close, with advanced gear and the ability of one Henry Oxenfree who could record any sound he wishes and transmit it over live Television. He’d been featured on his shows more often than not, Henry Oxenfree being an avid pursuant of the vigilantes of L’manburg.
He died.
A soulless body slumps to the floor at the sound of a gun shot. It sinks. When a gun is shot to the head, it’s nothing special. It doesn’t look very violent, save for the gruesome gore on the head where the bullet enters the brain by cracking at the cranium. The body doesn’t jolt, doesn’t fall back dramatically like in the movies.
No.
His body sinks, going limp. One moment, he has his hands up, quivering despite his bravado under the gun. The next, he is still, slack, lifeless.
Maybe if he were shot in the heart, or in the chest, he would have heard the wail of his friends. Those who he deems brothers, that who he deems a parent. A family where there couldn’t have been before.
But he didn’t.
He now ceases to exist, and he can do nothing about it. Not anymore.
His family can, though.
And the first subject of their grief and anger, without someone to encumber and muffle that rage, was the man who killed him. Green, and proud, walking away from the corpse as if it was nothing. Dream walks, gun swinging in his hand like it’s a toy.
One could understand why the three heroes would be pissed.
Silvertongue and Vermillion rush towards Atlas’ body, and Angel is the one to capture the villain.
Technoblade’s gut sinks. Vermillion was with him. With them, that night. He was so young.
Tommy had seen him die– Tommy was fifteen.
He’d dropped the gun so easily, with so much compliance. If anyone would have asked him, which no one did, he would have answered: “I’ve had my fun for today.” and he would have answered that with a smile, and laughter. Scarred face crinkling into such childish joy that it wouldn’t have looked like he’d just spoken about the death of someone so important.
The Angel, brazen in his fury, raises Dream by the collar, hands clutched tight. His wings are ruffled, hackled by the neck. Dream, as the only one who could see the Angel right in the eyes, could see that he was mad. Good. That was what he wanted.
He wants to ruin them.
And he did.
“You.” Angel growls, a dark look crossing over his face. He punches Dream, and at the act, his mask flies across the roof.
Dream isn’t fazed. No, he looks even more excited if anything. The man grins, a confident look in his eyes while he stares down at the man who’s lifting him up by the collar. “Oh, come on.” He chuckles darkly. “What are you going to do? Send me back to Pandorica?” Dream mocks,
He looks to the side.
Somehow, that cocky grin grows wider at the sight of the Angel’s distressed frame, shaking grip on his collar. “Oh, gonna beat me up within an inch of my life before putting me back together?” The mask off of his face didn’t help. He is expressive, eyes feigning fear when everyone knows that he’s mocking the Angel. “Angel, Angel, Angel , this is getting old.” He continues to mock. “Time and time again, you’re gonna let me be the last thing people see before they die?”
Vermillion, clutching at his ally’s limp figure, hugs him tighter. As if he could hold his soul right back into him.
But there’s no bringing him back, is there? There’s no bringing this brother, this son, back.
Silvertongue stands from where he’s knelt, about to throw himself at the green, smile-clad villain. “I will fucking MURDER YOU !” He shouts at the top of his lungs,
But he is held back by Vermillion. “Stop.” Vermillion’s voice quivers, weak and without that usual, irksome confidence that everyone loves him for.
That had once included Carnage. One less person is able to adore Vermillion.
That number will continuously dwindle, days from now. That is a threat to the masses, not for the two who remain by his side.
And this brave, courageous soul only giggles. His eyes dares to dart to the side, staring at Silvertongue with an all-knowing, pompous look. “You can’t.” He says in confidence, almost singing in his glee. “You can beat me up, cut me, throw me back to that god awful prison, but you can’t kill me .” He tilts his head, “You’re a hero. ”
This seemed to be the punchline that caused him to laugh hysterically. “You’re a hero! You’re so beloved, but what will all that love do to you?” He turns to the Angel. “I’m a villain.” He leans in, “I can do whatever the fuck I want to do.” He giggles.
Vermillion is quiet.
“Oh,” The hero that holds the villain chuckles, something dark and something unamused. “Is that what you think?” The Angel’s voice is shaky, and anyone within the vicinity who didn’t know the Angel would have thought that it was out of grief. This anger, welling and ebbing and finally peeking at a chance of bursting at the seams of this once calm, collected man.
Except the man in his hands could see– could recognize the lack of humanity in his tone, in his eyes while he looks right back at his own. The Angel is mad, yes. He is grieving, yes. But that’s not all, and that’s not the most of it.
No, he looks deranged. He looks like he’s excited .
“Because I agree .” His one hand crawls up, the other tightening the hold on the collar that kept the villain up. “I always have. Thought that hero-work would have been a lot more troublesome. A lot harder to handle. We’re not even recognized by the government we so faithfully serve.” He places a thumb at Dream’s Adam's apple, bobbing up and down, showing his sudden fear.
The Angel grins, something more frightening than anything Dream could procure. Something more disturbing, so out of place from such a kind face.
“It was never my idea to be heroes.” He laughs, and the grip on Dream’s throat tightens. “It was never Vermillion’s or Silver’s idea to be good, merciful, charismatic, kind .”
Dream chokes, now clawing at Phil’s hand. He looks desperate, something a lot more satisfying now that he’s without that mask that had protected him once.
“You should be proud, Dream.” He says, watching with satisfaction as the pathetic villain, one he could have handled in a day , writhes in his hands like a worm in salt. “You seem to be fond of seeing the world burn. You managed it, today.” A nail sinks into his throat, drawing blood. “Though, you won’t be able to witness this city burn. Rest assured that it will,”
He pulls the man closer, watching a human slowly turn into a corpse.
“ Because you took a heart away from a kind man .”
The grip tightens, talons growing from his fingers. With a grip so tight, the head of the corpse slides off the body, the rest of his carcass still hanging from one hand.
He lets go. It falls limp onto the floor, blood pooling at the Angel’s feet. Crimson drips from his hands.
Technoblade watches the video play out, barely held in a gasp when he watches Dream’s head roll.
He’s… he died soon after him. Phil had killed him.
Phil had killed.
Phil couldn’t register the looks that were given to him. People who were watching from adjacent buildings, gawking as they saw their beloved hero draw blood, begin to watch that hero tear that title apart. Some people celebrate, finally, a way to get rid of those damned vagabond extrajudicial tyrants . Some people mourn, because they don’t want anymore grief for their beloved heroes.
Some people, two of them, have their heart turned cold as they follow in the Angel’s footsteps.
Vermillion’s hand that had been on Silvertongue’s wrist falls, climbing up to the Emerald that was enchanted to allow immunity from each other’s abilities. It hangs from his ear, no longer dangling because of that desperate grasp. The Angel does the same, staring as the maddened hero clenches his fist.
Silvertongue grabs that ridiculous megaphone that Dream once owned. He curls three around the handle, one finger placed on the trigger. He turns to the helicopter that flies around the place, watching with satisfaction as the camera and mic points at him.
He smiles,
Hope springs from the chest of many, prepared to hear a speech that their charismatic Silvertongue would say. They look forward to the speech, something that would bring them up after the death of their beloved Atlas. He who held up their world. He who had brought the world on his shoulders, inspiring the future as they prosper over his head and mind and care.
They will miss him.
A tear falls from Silvertongue’s chin, not that anyone could see.
“Henry, will you do me a favor?”
Technoblade could hear Henry’s yes, a distant and manipulated, weakened sound over the transmission of the video.
“Can you please let everyone hear this for me? Please?”
Now Technoblade could see the camera shift. He could hear the whisper, a dutiful thing, a yes, of course Silvertongue.
Everyone was always so selfish. Silvertongue is unable to blame them. He had been tolerant of it, once upon a time. Just this morning he could remember jesting with a man he deemed his brother. He said that he would maybe snap if they took one more of his belongings. Technoblade responded by saying that there’s nothing that can’t be replaced.
He proved himself wrong. They had taken too much.
So with a smile on his face, his lips make no long prose of speech. One word, one imbued with power, and golden eyes leaves his lips.
“ Die. ”
It’s silent. It is silent for only a moment, before the world who witnessed the death of Atlas fell and crashed against the pavement. Most have done so literally.
Windows from adjacent buildings break, from it jumps out the citizens of L’manburg.
From even further, there are buildings that burn. Everything comes crashing down. The helicopter whirs wrong, tilting to the side and towards those who were once deemed heroes.
A red energy crawls up, curling around the piece of metal and making it fall before it could hit any of the three of them.
Transmission cuts.
Technoblade likes to believe that he’s spent today being pretty productive. Cut the dead-now-alive guy some slack. He’s suffering through whiplash after whiplash. Sam, hospitable as he is, had given him a place to stay for the night. For some reason Technoblade suspects that he’s going to kick Technoblade out soon too. Even he seemed shocked at the revelation of that video.
He seems a lot kinder than Clara is,
According to Clara, this is only going to get him killed.
Technoblade leaves Sam the morning after. He decides not to think about his family. Not after witnessing what they’ve become.
.
Technoblade does his research alone for the first few weeks. It’s easy. It should be easy. He’s not as much of a computer wiz as Tommy, but he at least knows how to leave no footprints. He’s the one who taught Tommy the basics, after all. Phil and Wilbur are just as good, but not like Tommy. The kid is a genius.
He reads up on Vermillion, Silvertongue, and Angel.
They’ve all been missing in action ever since that night, and he doesn’t read any headlines about them dated beyond his death. All information date back to before it. All of it were things that he already read once before.
He could even fondly recall a time when he’d ridicule all of these headlines with them. It was fun. It was so easy dismissing the weight of people’s expectations when there were others beside him who seemed to lift the same amount as he does.
It was all so easy, once upon a time.
Technoblade mourns a time before he died. Maybe things would have to be simpler. Maybe he wouldn’t have doubted the lack of headlines and mentions.
A part of him desperately hopes. Maybe Wilbur didn’t mean to. Maybe Halo struck control over Wilbur from a distance. Maybe the guilt is what made them disappear, and from the shadows they’ve been trying to make up for it.
But not even that he’s granted. Technoblade has known of underground vigilantes, he knows a few. There were many nameless heroes, but even then sightings and interferences were recorded and broadcasted when they could.
There’s zero mention of Vermillion, Angel, and Silvertongue. Everything is silenced, null and void after his death.
It’s like they died with him, but they died in a way that matters. After Technoblade’s own death, he could see forum posts of people mourning him. Technoblade tries not to react as these people he barely knows mourn Atlas.
They were all people who he’s saved once.
Technoblade tries his hardest to never forget a face, but when you’re lifting the world on your shoulders you tend to forget the smaller details.
He reads on, searches for more information. Even archives are gone and missing from the internet. That should have been impossible, unless there’s someone who is intentionally blocking it out.
Technoblade tries. He really does.
Denial can only go so far.
He eyes the notebook beside the worn down PC. There are… there are answers somewhere. Technoblade knows that maybe he shouldn’t. That maybe whatever cult Clementine put up were biased against his friends and allies. That this is all a ruse and a hoax to pit Technoblade against the people he trusts the most in the world.
But he remembers Sam. He could remember the genuine horror and disbelief on his face when faced with the reality of what happened that night. Even he didn’t know what was going to play from that disc. Technoblade knows.
Clementine brought together people who didn’t know . They don’t know the severity of what was in their hands.
He has to source this information from the right people then.
.
He spends his days since then collecting Clementine’s evidences. He visits person to person, avoiding patrollers. He moves around only at night. Some people had kept their copies, and he tells them to burn it after telling them that he’s already seen it.
The records of that day remain to be the only witness of when the world had changed. The world that Atlas had once held up had rolled at his feet, beside his pristine corpse. Everyone who had seen that event live had died, or had lost their mind trying. Five thousand, six hundred twenty-four people in L’manburg died that day, and more from the international transmissions where Silvertongue’s voice had been brought across.
When he came across the one who had processed Clementine’s order to make the video bearable to the normal and uninhibited ear, she answers exactly what he knows. “The generation loss is what masks Siren ’s command.” They told him.
He knew that.
His family knew that. Technoblade had been the one to test it with Wilbur– how his recordings, if clear enough, could serve as a command.
Pandorica has stopped becoming a prison for only the cruelest villains. It’s become a facility to keep those who survived being witness, in hopes of one day undoing Silvertongue’s command.
Any villains who were worth a cell in Pandorica had since died.
There remains to be a wasteland in the center of L’manburg, where Theseus– Tommy had built the home of the fallen heroes. That had witnesses. Had people watching as they built an empire on the tomb of Atlas. The Angel was one of the more frequent among the sightings, often the one within the skies and bringing down anything and anyone that dared make contact with him while he was on a mission.
No one knows what his goal is. Whatever it is, there’s no hope of stopping it. The sole heroes had now become the cruelest villains.
Many tried to take up their mantle.
Technoblade then hears the more personal tales. The people Clementine reached out to were people who were either uninvolved, good, or victims. Technoblade had met many people who lost their children in wars for territory and control. Parents who died protecting their home.
It was cruel.
They were arbitrary gods, and Technoblade tries. He tries not to be horrified by what they’ve become because a part of him still wants to believe that maybe they were influenced. Maybe someone is at gunpoint and they’re only doing their bidding.
Maybe there’s a bomb underneath he entirety of L’manburg and they’re sullying their images for the sake of avoiding that bomb.
Technoblade’s mind races for impossible circumstances, but he’s left with only the conclusion.
These people… Tommy, Wilbur, and Phil. He doesn’t know them.
Proof soon comes.
It comes, and his routine faces a drastic change. He’s done more than half of what he’s supposed to. He’s made a network of people and plotted alongside them to evoke a change in the country. Clara had been half right when she said that first came the brave, because seldom does he see anyone who would have stepped up, looked at Technoblade in the eyes, and said ‘help us do something about this’. No, more often than not, Technoblade had to be the one to approach. He had to be the brave one out of the people he’s approached.
The first to die are the brave. That much is true, but there’s a reason why the good people die second , and the smart last .
He needed little to convince them. Technoblade is trustworthy, and Clementine had revived the single person with the most chance to topple over the Syndicate.
He knows his family more than anyone. This is the weapon Clementine must have hoped for.
Know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be in peril . Sun Tzu, he’d bored Tommy once, intentionally. If by some off chance he took his words into heart, the important thing is that they don’t know who exactly is leading.
The first sign was jarring, but he should have expected it.
After all, the first to fall were the brave.
So when the time comes for his true taste of L’manburg, he’s stunned by the public display. He’s faced with an effigy. A public one, but it’s gruesome. More than he’d ever expected.
Technoblade is one of many who had been faced with the displeasure of witnessing it. The body before him. Desecrated, hung to the wall by a spear to the throat– but he knows that it wouldn’t have been the killing blow. It wouldn’t have been the first strike, because there were injuries all over the body. The body’s fingers were cut, all but the thumb. One leg is missing, and he could see the patella hanging
He watches as people in uniforms clean it up without much violent reaction. They treat it like it’s ordinary trash. Beside it is a familiar mask.
Fuck, he knows her. He knew her. Four years ago, she was an up and coming vigilante who was famous in the western region. He met her once, cocky grin but starstruck eyes, a casual wave as she jumped to the roof opposite of the direction he was headed.
He realizes belatedly that she’s wearing her mantle. One that was red, just like his. He remembered thinking when seeing her the first time that she was likely a fan of Atlas.
Slowly, she disappears. He watches as the only thing that’s left is the sign at the bottom.
She Was Brave.
Technoblade walks away. Turns out that it’s more than just Clara’s belief. The brave die first, in this country. And really, with the way he moves into action, he should have seen it coming. It was inevitable.
He comes across a patroller, dead on his feet. Technoblade’s eyes land to the dashcam.
Discreetly, Technoblade walks past alongside a few others who have to go through their day. This patroller would have been unaware of who Technoblade really is. Many people wouldn’t have known, really. Technoblade had gone through great efforts to hide who he is. While he’s physically incapable of altering his image– the pink hair is a curse brought upon by stubborn genetics, just as alive as the blood he controls. He can at least hide it. If anything, this moment shouldn’t be flagged among the millions of dash cameras placed on the chest of all the patrollers.
He’s an ordinary citizen. Nothing to see here.
They don’t know what they’re looking for, and that thought is what brings him through the day.
And while he’d comforted himself throughout the way walking out of the sight of many with that thought, he couldn’t help but feel the need to sit down and just… calm himself.
He decides to move quicker.
Eventually, people who were smart outnumber those who were brave. Murals are around town, taken down in short notice but are quick to deliver their messages. Patrollers are taken down, tied down and given messages by masked people. All wear the same scarlet on their faces, black cloaks to cover their hair. Their presence leaves no prints, save for a name. Protesilaus– a brave warrior.
Because the people who were smart are different from those who were brave. The people who were smart, they hide. They all hide and keep to themselves, keep their names out of it.
But those who were brave.
They have no identities, and they all share a single mask, a single name, a single identity.
Technoblade loves a good revolution. He’d started it once, he’d start it again.
The red masks and black cloaks were simple, but it poses a message large enough to send waves. Technoblade had been hoping for it. He had been one of them, since he’s the single entity who couldn’t have an identity. Titleless, nameless. Through the chaos, Technoblade could see the opportunity. He takes it, grab each one.
He leaves time to mourn for the masks that he’d lost, but he won’t let it distract him from the goal.
Technoblade is supposed to win.
It was a hopeless land now. A city reigned by crime and murder, and an iron fist that had long gotten rid of the true power of the government. Tyrannical rulers, they were. Sticking to a sick, strict moral code for the sake of upholding this twisted image of what they believed would have been a wonderful city.
The only crime on the streets are run by their own men.
It was only fit that he’d changed that.
.
The revolution is imminent. Technoblade had done what Clementine had hoped, and he’s so close.
The country is slowly toppling over, and there is turmoil in the puppet government as the good try to reclaim their power and the smart twist it out of the Syndicate’s hands. More and more people are dying, but at the same time more people have become more enraged. He could practically smell the fear from many. The air is tense, taught, but Technoblade knows that beyond that is an opportunity of change. Something will snap, one day.
It was simple to do. To revolt against such a simple name. The Syndicate in itself is such a malicious name, people with a shared interest. Nothing more than that– to Technoblade, he works better not remembering that their names aren’t Tommy, Wilbur, Philza. He works better knowing that they’re villains.
Just as he worked better knowing that he was against a masked man name Dream, and not a man named Clay who had been just as wronged as Technoblade once was by the government.
That could only work for so long.
.
“Technoblade?” It’s a wispy, desperate voice that calls to him.
The pink-haired man had done the mistake of turning towards the voice in recognition. It was dumb of him to do so. He had been avoiding them on purpose, plotting in the shadows now that he’s alive and back. He had a plan. He had a plan to fix all of this without contact. He had a plan to fix it all without having to put a face at the front.
Technoblade had been on his way towards one of the bases he’d put up in secret. It’s been a while since he’s been revived, so in these time he spares no moment for inactivity. The sooner he finishes this, the better for everyone. Bodies were piling up as the days go on. Technoblade can’t help but feel responsible for every one of them.
It was his death that caused theirs.
He doesn’t run. The most innate part of his mind, one that is built into this body’s mind and soul had it marked that this voice, that face that he’s looking at, is something he can trust. Something he can love wholly.
Tommy can never hurt him, his Theseus.
And he looks like it. Technoblade had seen some semblance of that look in Tommy’s eyes before. He’s seen it when he adopted a racoon he got after witnessing the most traumatic event that being a hero could offer. He’s seen it when Tommy watched a shitty sad movie where his favorite character’s dog died. He’s seen it when they had to bury someone he once knew in the orphanage they found him in.
That look of grief and pain was only heightened by that startlingly bright hope in his eyes.
Can he really bear to run from him?
“Technoblade.” He gasps, now recognizing the man. Technoblade is torn between running and saying something . “You’re– You’re real, right?”
That,
That had the implication that Tommy had been fooled by someone with a similar face. Maybe by a hallucination or by someone who tried to pose as him. Maybe someone had attempted to placate him into a false sense of security before attempting for his life. That had to have failed, otherwise he wouldn’t still be hearing news about those who were once his friends reigning tyrannically over the city they once swore to protect.
Against his better judgment, he answers truthfully. “Hello, Tommy.” he says,
And his words had made the young boy tear up where he stands.
Tommy, his Theseus. He’s a lot older now. He’s taller. Tommy has changed a lot in four years.Technoblade had always known that Tommy would have grown tall, but to see it here– he regrets missing so much. He regrets dying, no matter how inevitable it would have been in his line of work. “You’re–” he swallows, blinking away the tears but failing ultimately. “You’re real. You’re really here.” His fingers twitch, reaching out while he begins to step towards him.
Technoblade steps back cautiously.
Tommy pauses.
“Techno?” Tommy asks softly. For a moment, he could see a flash of fury, but it had gone as soon as it had appeared.
Technoblade remains silent. He looks at Tommy, looking at every inch of his frame, every action a word in his head. He can read the kid, he should know that much. He’s vulnerable, but he can’t take his chances.
“Why are you–” Tommy blinks, “I, I missed you.” He says wetly,
And Technoblade’s chest hurts at that admission. It was always so hard for Tommy to say what he meant. He was always defensive, avoiding revealing his heart. Now it seems like he’s looking at someone so broken and so desperate to have his heart on his sleeve.
He hurts for Tommy, someone he had so desperately protected once upon a time.
“It’s me,” Tommy raises both his hands, smile shaky– where is that confidence he was so famously known for? That childish persona, one so happy. “I’m, I’m still your Theseus, right?”
Technoblade keeps his face stoic while his heart crumbles. Maybe this was a huge misunderstanding. Maybe Wilbur was controlled, and Phil. Maybe someone with an ability is using them as puppets, and Tommy is innocent. Nevermind that he’d made that helicopter crash– maybe that was just to keep his family alive. A desperate attempt where he couldn’t keep that helicopter flying.
But he’s gone through all of these maybe’s and what-if’s before. Technoblade knows his family, how no amount of rage could strike Philza cold. How the Emeralds he’d made for them make them invulnerable to any sort of outside mental influence, or how Tommy had once lifted three cars no biggie with his power.
Technoblade knows there is no hope for the three of them.
“Theseus was a hero.” is all Technoblade says.
“He died.” Tommy retorts.
“You answered your own question, then.” He says, coldly, ignoring the ache in his chest. It feels like betrayal.
Tommy gapes, and Technoblade thinks he looks like a goldfish when he’s stunned. Wide eyes, mouth going open and close as if he’s at a loss for words. Technoblade wants to laugh at him.
But the time has long passed since he could. Maybe, once upon a time, they would have laughed together.
They’re on the opposite sides now, though, and they’ve become everything that Technoblade despises.
To think that they’ve only just reunited now.
“ You died.” Tommy says, but it sounds more like a question.
“I’m alive now.” He says. “And I’m honestly not likin’ what I’m seein’.” He drawls, looking at the corner where a vigilante’s corpse had been displayed. That was a week ago.
Tommy follows his gaze, and he frowns. “Techno,” he starts, but he doesn’t say much of anything else.
“This is your first and only chance to change my mind.” Technoblade tells Tommy. “You were always the roughest liar out of us four. Tell me– why did you think the Syndicate was a good idea.”
Technoblade watched as there was an irritated glint in Tommy’s eye. “They needed it.” He says, and he says it wholeheartedly– as if it were fact. “They needed us after Atlas fell.”
“Who are you to decide that?”
“People who saw firsthand their faults.”
“And you’re void of all of that?” He questions.
Tommy clenches his fist. “Tech, just, why won’t you just listen to me. Just come home. You’re back, and— and Phil and Wil would hardly believe it when I’ll tell them I saw you today. They’ll be so happy to see you.”
“Will me comin’ back change this.” Technoblade gestures to the city. “This city built and regulated by fear?”
The boy is quiet. “That’s not my position to decide.”
Technoblade looks at Tommy– he really looks at him. He’s older, now. A lot more older than before. Tommy was fifteen when he saw him die. It’s been four years since then. He’s nineteen years old, or at least turning nineteen. Technoblade is not quite sure. It’s not like he kept tabs during his time dead.
“I’ll be seein’ you, Tommy.” Technoblade says.
He turns his back against Tommy, and every fiber of his being is screaming at him to be ready in case Tommy uses his ability against Technoblade. But Technoblade knows.
This is a line that Tommy will never cross. Technoblade will never be subject to Tommy’s ability unless Technoblade allows it. This goes the same for Technoblade, that he will never draw blood from the boy he once deemed his little brother.
Technoblade hides a lot better since then. He doesn’t test his limits– not when they know he’s alive.
.
He’s driven up to the wall in paranoia. They know that he’s here. That he’s alive. What does– what is he supposed to do?
It has occurred to him before that maybe he can just talk them out of this. To stop them from interfering from the affairs of the country, but Technoblade needs to serve justice– it’s black and white. There are no greys in the scales. They’ve killed so many. 4,763 people. Some of them left children behind. Some of them were children. Technoblade couldn’t think that it was possible.
But they were his family, once upon a time.
No. There’s no changing this. Technoblade has to serve justice. All those people deserved it. Their family died. They were innocent. There were so many innocent people who died, good people who wanted to avenge them. Technoblade is…
Is torn.
Seeing Tommy again had slapped him with a reality check. These weren’t masked people who he knew barely anything about. That was Tommy . That was Tommy, who had cried the first time Technoblade parted ways with him. He was young, so small, when Technoblade had first seen him.
Wilbur is somewhere, abusing his voice. Technoblade loved him, his twin. He’s just a boy who loved to play guitar, who loved singing when there was no crime to stop. He loved teasing his friends, and his laugh. Oh his laugh, it was heartwarming. But that same boy had killed so many people. Had commanded the death of so many innocent bystanders.
Philza, at the head of it all, had so many fears. He’d told Technoblade years ago. He told him that as much as he’d once loved death, he was afraid of her. That she’d take those he’d love too soon. That he’d seen her as a familiar face yet would weep when she’d ever indicate holding any of their hands as welcome to her domain. He was afraid that his family would hurt. He barely has any left, finding solace in the fact that Tommy, Wilbur, and Technoblade were strong individuals capable of handling themselves. He was afraid of being too late, of being there to witness a mistake before he could even have a chance at avoiding it.
They’re so painfully human.
“Atlas,” A man named Fundy calls, snapping him out of his crisis. “There’s a patroller about to search the area. I think it’d be better if your next move is South rather than West.”
Technoblade nods. A patroller hasn’t caught him before, but that’s not an assurance in itself. While he is stealthier than most of the people the Syndicate has hired, Technoblade knows better than to let his guard down just for that.
He moves quickly out of his hiding spot. His base is spotted across the map, and he moves without any pattern save for convenience alone. All his people move quickly. He likes to treat them all like pawns– less in an objectifying manner and more in movement. Always in adjacent blocks, never with the ability to step backwards. The network exchanges information quickly like this. It’s easier this way rather than to collect them all in one place.
He has a plan.
It requires a lot of parts moving, but that’s okay.
It’s human nature to move, after all.
.
“There you are.” A familiar voice greets when the chimes from the door he’d just entered stops jingling.
Technoblade’s head snaps towards the man who spoke, and he tenses up at the sight of him. “Wilbur.” He looks around as the people around him mind their own business. They look down, no one sending glances at their direction.
“Technoblade.” Wilbur smiles, but it’s a sharp, dangerous grin. Technoblade thinks it foreign on the brunet’s face.
He doesn’t move from where he’s standing. He keeps a watchful eye on Wilbur who seems nothing but comfortable on his stool.
“What’s with the animosity?” Wilbur asks, tone almost sad. “I was thinking that you’d be greeting me with much more enthusiasm after the years, Technoblade.”
He hums, “Nah,” he says trying to keep his wits about. “It hasn’t been too long on my end.” He says. “You seem to have done a lot since then, though.”
“ A lot is an understatement.” Wilbur agrees. “You seem to think that way.”
“Seems like it.”
Wilbur shifts, back straightening so he could scoot over and present the stool beside him. “Don’t you want to take a seat?” Wilbur asks, “I imagine you must be tired from all that walking.”
“You’d know that I’ve been walking for long.”
“We tried to keep tabs on you.” Wilbur laughs. “It’s hard for them to keep an eye on you. You’re sneaky.”
Technoblade had known that. They were trying to sic the patrollers on him, but to no avail. Every attempt was easy to wave off now that the attention is on him.
Still, the confirmation is news.
“I was a vigilante longer than they were patrollers.” Technoblade says.
Wilbur hums, “That’s true,” He looks Technoblade over, before his eyes rest on his again. “You haven’t aged a day.” He remarks.
“I can’t age when I’m dead.”
That seems to have brought a violent reaction. Wilbur’s fist hits the table in front of him, cracking the faux wood. The grin drops. Now his lips form a thin, taut line. He relaxes at an exhale, though. “I, your death was… it was very sudden.” Wilbur says.
“I can tell.” He says.
Wilbur doesn’t look very pleased at his sarcasm, and he looks just about ready to retort something in anger but Technoblade watches as that hostility melts into something tired. Wilbur sinks his face into his hands. “I miss you.” Wilbur says.
And Technoblade’s own heart sinks lower, something aching and longing. He’s been working months into toppling over his family who had somehow taken control of the country while he was dead.
“I miss my family.” Technoblade answers back.
Wilbur looks up from his hands, something like hope kindling in his eyes.
“We could still be that.” Wilbur said, voice nearly begging. It’s quiet, not the larger than life tone that he’d had since they’ve reunited. “Please. Tommy– he, he didn’t do too well since you last saw him.” Technoblade could see the grief in his eyes, the desperation aids with his voice. Soft, in need. “He wouldn’t leave his room for days.”
“Was it because of me or because of the people you’ve killed together?”
The brunet is startled by Technoblade’s harsh words, and he could see the blatant hurt in his eyes when the words sink deep into his chest and stays there like a dagger. “I don’t kill anyone who is undeserving of it.” He hisses.
“And who made you the god to judge?”
“When you died,” Wilbur rises from his seat, and Technoblade is reminded how tall Wilbur is. They’re just about the same height, but his size compared to the rest of the room had been a reminder of who he is. “I had an epiphany that the world needed one.”
Technoblade clenches his fist. “ 4,763 people, Wilbur.”
“That’s 4,763 people less who would take advantage of good people.”
Technoblade is stunned. That was heartless. That was without hesitation, and off the top of Wilbur’s head. He look sat Wilbur for a moment, and not for a single spark did he find at least the slightest bit of regret.
He finds out today that he abhors Wilbur.
So slowly, he says. “You’re no longer the people being taken advantage of.” He tells him. “You’ve become the very thing we fought– don’t you see that?”
Wilbur walks towards Technoblade, looming closer. Technoblade knows that there is no threat before him. “You don’t get to pin the blame of grief on me, when you died.” No grief, no sorrow. No. In his eyes was a rage. Something that stuck long ago, clung hard to his soul until it became his very being. Spite and anger and selfishness.
This was a man who refuses to recognize sin for his own.
A selfish, greedy, cruel man.
“I’m sorry for dying, then.” Technoblade deadpans. “How weird though, for all my mistakes in life– my body count remains to be one .”
They’re face to face, at eye level. Technoblade has never been closer to his family since he’s died.
No, that’s wrong.
His family has long since gone, and they died with him. Technoblade is faced with yet another corpse, one corrupted by so much death that he could barely recognize the person behind the rot.
But there’s desperation.
He wants to find at least a hint of hope.
“Did you regret giving that command, the day I died?” He asks, slowly. He needs to know. He needs to know if the people he loved were still in there, waiting for him, for a chance.
And Wilbur smiled. It was something soft, sincere, and Technoblade could only hope. He could call back his forces, focus on another way of changing things. Cutting the weeds from the roots rather than burning the patch a whole like he’d planned.
His mouth opens.
“No.”
Technoblade’s hopes are crushed, and it leaves nothing but cinders for a flame that will soon spread into a fire. He will burn. There is no family left to salvage.
Technoblade shuts his eyes, and if he were any more hopeful, just by a single drop, maybe he would have shed a tear for the good people he killed. “I’m sorry, then.” Technoblade says. He opens his eyes, and he sees the cold, heartless eyes that look at him. “I’m sorry for you. You were good, once.”
Wilbur laughs. “Good people die, Technoblade.”
“It’s odd how you kill them second, then.”
Wilbur hums. He steps back, grabbing the wallet he left on his table. “You can continue to think that.” He says. “Soon enough, your faith in good people will dwindle, and all I can say is that I told you so.” Wilbur opens the wallet, and he hands Technoblade a card.
It’s a single string of number in the middle of the blank paper, engraved in black. It’s sleek and neat, and has no other indication of who it’s for.
“Are you really so pompous to have a calling card?” Technoblade drawls,
Wilbur barks a laugh. “Oh, I miss you.” Wilbur grins, but it’s something maniacal. “We miss you, so much.”
Technoblade can’t help but imagine the words underlying it.
We hope that you’d join us, soon.
The brunet leaves easily.
Technoblade never wears the same clothes again after that day, worried that somehow Wilbur would have planted something on him. Anything. He doesn’t doubt that he would have done that. It’s not beyond him to plant a tracker or any sort of device on him.
.
The end is nigh. On Technoblade’s part, the plan is slowly getting more solid. People are preparing, and he’s taking into account every person who is fighting for their cause. He could see with every visit. How their eyes gleam with a determination he once saw in other vigilantes who fought alongside him when he was alive.
Technoblade doesn’t think of the aftermath. He doesn’t have to. When this all ends, and when they’re victor, the people will decide what to do with his family.
Pandorica, the place that holds and keeps away all the most dangerous people in the country, will take hold of Tommy, Philza, and Wilbur.
Technoblade doesn’t think of the implications of that.
Of how the government will lash out at him for being the catalyst of all these deaths and all of the damage. He doesn’t mind. He’s died once before. It seemed only fair.
Seemed, is the keyword.
Because while it’s true that he’s to be held accountable, he doesn’t think he’ll be stopped. He won’t allow it. He will fix it, and this means he has to fix all of it. It doesn’t stop at just ceasing the Syndicate’s control over the government.
Things has to go the way it used to, right before he died.
Petty crimes will be punished accordingly, and government corruption will be revealed to the public for them to decide what to do with. Technoblade is a mediator, and the world went to shit when he died.
Yet, on the other hand, he debates on just leaving.
The world had needed him, dubbed him Atlas for he seemed to hold the world on his shoulders like a weight.
Wilbur and Tommy– to an extent they had a point. Not what they were expecting to lay across, but a point nonetheless.
The world’s dependency on Technoblade was dangerous.
His death was deemed inevitable once upon a time, and yet it caused this much collateral damage. It was dangerous. He is dangerous.
Maybe leaving would be better. Working in the shadows is better. The world turns on its axis safely without a name to credit it by.
Technoblade decides that when this is all over,
He’ll disappear.
He’ll be normal again. Corruption isn’t something that an individual can fight. Justice isn’t left to a single name.
Technoblade will not take credit for the revolution that will happen.
Maybe he had the right idea about Salvation all along. The masses, working under one mask and one identity. One identity spread throughout the country and fighting as one.
They aren’t Atlas. No, Atlas died and the heroes Vermillion, Silvertongue, and Angel had died with him.
They were Salvation.
.
Technoblade finds Tommy on a park bench. It seemed like coincidence. It’s a small city, after all, but for some reason Technoblade knows not to expect anything innocent out of Tommy. He’s nineteen years old. He’s no longer that young, impressionable child that Technoblade would find often gawking up at him. Not the child that looked up at him since his early stages of heroism.
But he gives him the benefit of the doubt.
Technoblade turns, and walks away.
Only to be called by Tommy. “Technoblade!” Tommy yells for him, and Technoblade finds it harder and harder each day to refuse the kid.
He turns, and he walks towards Tommy.
“What do you want?” Technoblade asks.
“I,” Tommy is at a loss for words. “What are you doing?” He asks. Like it’s an ordinary day.
“I could ask the same to you.” Technoblade replies. “What are you doing out here, kid?”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Sorry, a bit of a timeskip is difficult to get over.” Technoblade hums. “What are you doing out here, Tommy?”
Tommy glares at him. “What, I can’t walk around my own country?” He asks.
“I was thinkin’ that you’d have some reservations walking around people whose family you’ve murdered.” Technoblade retorts.
Tommy scoffs, and he looks away. He raises his legs towards the seat and he crosses his arms on top of it. It’s a habit Technoblade noticed from Tommy ages ago. Defensive. He’s defensive. “I don’t kill innocent people.” Tommy says. “I remove criminals from L’manburg.” As if that’s any better.
“By killing them.”
“Can we not talk about this?”
Technoblade rolls his eyes. “Sure.” He says. “Sorry for failing to ignore the elephant in the room.”
“Good thing we’re in an open area, then.” Tommy mutters. “Bitch.” he adds for good measure.
The pinket chuckles, allowing himself just a moment to forget. It’s easy to, when Tommy has changed a lot in four years but had kept so many aspects of him that makes him recognizeable at the very least.
“Can I sit here?”
“Sure. I don’t own the fucking park bench.” Tommy grumbles.
They spend the time quietly. Technoblade doesn’t say anything, allowing the moment for themselves. He doesn’t have anything that he could say without sending Tommy into yet another defensive rant. He will do that, of course.
It’s Tommy who breaks the silence.
“You were the only one who was really good out of the four of us.” Tommy started.
Technoblade turns his head to look at Tommy, and he sees the boy looking right at him. “What do you mean?” He asks, not really certain where this was brought about.
Tommy looks back at the park, watching the birds while they live their lives without a clue that they’re living in a dystopia. “When you saved me, I wasn’t… I wasn’t a good person. You didn’t know that, but Wilbur did.” Tommy says. There’s a distant look in his eyes. One that is recalling a time from before. “When he and I first met, I almost killed him– I thank the gods every day for making me spare him.”
Technoblade didn’t know this. Tommy refused to talk about the time between him saving Tommy and the reunion when Technoblade was old enough to actually take the kid in.
“I was Vermillion, yeah, and I enjoyed it when I hurt the bad guys.” Tommy says. “I liked it when they’d flinch when I’d curl my fist, and I like it when they screamed. It felt right. It is right. They’re the bad guys. They deserve so much more than just to be sent to prison.” Tommy clenches his fist, “You didn’t know, and I never let you know, but,” Tommy turns towards Technoblade, “I killed mom and dad when I was thirteen.” he says, unapologetic. “And I killed the people they sold me to, and I killed more and more– I almost got rid of Wilbur. But he was kind to me. He was sympathetic. He gets me.”
And Technoblade… he doesn’t know how to react to that. The admission of something that happened ages ago. It just didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense.
Tommy was so kind. So easy to love. He seemed incapable of hurting anyone.
But today, post-mortem he had already figured out that they were capable of these things. But it was always under the assumption that it had happened after his death.
“And I kept killing.” Tommy says. “It’s easy, you know?” He eyes a bird that flew close to them, pecking at the ground. “It’s easy when you know how the body works. We tried this out ages ago, but I knew long before you taught me.”
Tommy raises a hand, and there’s a glare of red in his eyes as he watches the bird with intent.
“If I know where to look,” he twists his fingers, and the bird’s feathers ruffle, “If I know what to hold.” He twists, and the bird seizes, squawking loud.
Technoblade’s heart thrums at the sound.
“I know what to target.” Tommy curls his finger, and the bird falls limp to the floor.
Technoblade watches in horror.
People had died in Pandorica. Pyros had died, leading Dream to spiral down into more than just a trickster two years before he died. The deaths at Pandorica had stopped since then.
Tommy looks up at Technoblade, something solemn in his gaze. “And you were kind.” Tommy says, and he seems blind to the repulsion that Technoblade feels. “You were everything I hoped to be, and you were– I tried to be like you. I really did. I stopped.” The boy wiped his eyes. “It was hard, but you were everything.”
“Tommy, you were thirteen.” Technoblade says.
The boy’s eyes hardened. “And never in my life did I learn to regret their deaths.” Tommy says. “They were cruel people, and there was no changing them. There was no changing the fact that they had sold their son for a little bit of candy.” It softened. “I wanted to be like you. You were everything good.”
Technoblade is stunned. He didn’t know that he mattered that much.
“When I died,” Technobalde trailed off.
“When you died, well, there was nothing left to uphold.” Tommy looks down at the bird, dead. He twists his wrist, and they watch as Tommy so easily dumps the creature into the trash beside them.
Tommy looks back at Technoblade. “We were never good people.” He says with finality. “But we were always your family.”
Technoblade allows him a moment to let it all sink in.
For a moment, his determination to go through with his plans wavers. For a moment, he realizes just how important he was. Their moral compass.
He allows himself a moment to believe that if he came back to them, if he walked into their base and talked to them, they would change. They would repent. They would try to be good again. Try to be the heroes they once were.
“If I came back,” Technoblade starts, and he sees the hope in Tommy’s eyes. “Will you try again?”
Tommy grips his hands together, clenching one as if he were pinching himself. “I will.” He answers.
Technoblade looks at Tommy.
He was always a horrible liar. Technoblade had once loved that about Tommy. Yet at that moment, Technoblade had wished with the heaviness of his chest that he’d lied a little bit better that day. He wishes that Tommy would have been as good as a liar as Wilbur– maybe he would have allowed himself to believe his answer.
Technoblade had smiled, and left Tommy.
He burned his clothes that day, and kept into account everything that he might have brought.
There is no trusting them.
.
A man named Phil is sat opposite of the man named Jack. He’s smiling, something serene, but Jack with all his knowledge of the people who run this shithole knows that this is going to be anything but.
Not unless he plays his cards right.
“You’re pitting him against us.” Phil hums. It’s not so much of a question, really. He may sound amused, but there’s something simmering there, lilting his voice tight at the end of the sentence.
“Not really.” Jack snorts, tilting his head at Daedalus. The leader of the Syndicate and the most powerful man in the country– at the moment . Jack had faith in Atlas that this will all change.
But he had very little faith that he’d be saved at all.
“Brave. What makes you say that?”
Jack shrugs, “To begin with, he’d been the one to approach us , convincing us against you lot. None of us were instigators. I’m sure you made certain of that when you wiped out the rest of the population after that day.” He says. “You know the saying, don’t you?”
“Enlighten me.”
“People who were brave die first. People who were good were next. People who were smart soon afterwards.” Jack answers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you lot don’t know about it– people like you don’t face death.”
Phil hums, “You’d be surprised.” He says. “It’s what started all of this mess in the first place.” The man with wings leans in, eyes glinting something dangerous. “But you seem to know that, don’t you?”
“It’s no secret nowadays.” Jack answers. “Everyone had known since the leak by Salvation. I’m not an idiot to try to hide that from you.”
The man tilts his head. “You’re awfully receptive to my questions. Awfully honest too.”
“What can I say?” Jack sits back, trying to get comfortable in his seat while being interrogated. He interlaces his gloved fingers over each other, something sharp in his eyes. “There’s a reason why the smart die last.”
.
Technoblade is quick on his feet when he senses that something is wrong with this hideout. He steps back just as someone lands in front of him, right before he could enter the place.
He draws blood, a scythe coming to his palms at his beck and call. He swings in front of him to create a distance, and he watches as the figure swiftly backs off before any severe damage is done.
Technoblade watches as Phil smiles at him.
He doesn’t look any different save for his garb. He doesn’t don a mask, and instead he wears a finely decored suit and tie as well as a black sunhat.
He knows why. His eyes are sensitive to the light. This was the reason why he wore it even as a hero.
“Phil.” Technoblade greets, but he doesn’t drop his weapon. “I’d say it’s a pleasure meetin’ you, but…” he continues off, letting Phil imagine what he has to say next.
“I can see why, I must be disturbing your business.”
“On the contrary, I was plannin’ on disruptin’ yours.” Technoblade retorts.
Phil snorts. “I miss you.” He says, and it’s not as warm or as desperate as Tommy’s or Wilbur’s declaration of it. No. It sounded like a demand. Like something he had to fix promptly or there will be consequences.
He detests that.
“So I’ve heard.” Technoblade says. He swings some of the blood, forming it into a sword into his palm.
Technoblade steps back, allowing some of the excess liquid fall around him in a circle.
Since he’s died and discovered that the pool of blood he woke up in is now his , he discovered that contrary to before his death, Tehnoblade is now fully capable of using as much blood as he needs.
Clementine had overcompensated when she brought him back to life. She’d prepared him for everything in her stead, including for the buff in his ability affiliated with blood and the control of it.
Phil only tilts his head.
“You don’t trust that it’d only be between us two?”
“I don’t trust you .” Technoblade snaps back.
For a moment, Phil looks hurt. That moment didn’t last long, because the facade is quick to come back up. “I can see where you’re coming from.” Phil says placatingly. He raises his hands, both of them, in mock surrender. “I came to talk.”
“We can talk.” Technoblade says.
“Somewhere more secure, perhaps?” Phil suggests, amused at Technoblade’s hostility.
“I don’t see anywhere more secure than here, Phil.” He shifts his weight to another leg, all too prepared to lunge at or away. “If anything, the one less secure in this position is me– this entire country seems to be your turf now.”
Phil crosses his arms, and the man only looks like he’s bickering with Technoblade. Just like before, like the old times.
He misses it. He has such longing for a time long passed but it has only been worse the more he’s been confronted by them all. The reality just hammers it every time that he is never going to get his family back.
“Wilbur was right.” Phil remarks passively.
“About what?”
“You’re very hostile towards us, more so than you were with villains back then.”
Technoblade’s chest runs cold at that. He knows exactly why. It’s worse to be faced with people he cares about and admit that they’ve become the very thing that he used to fight before. There’s more history in it. It’s more personal, painful.
They should have known that the mark of a traitor is deeper than one of an enemy’s.
“I think you’re more dangerous than they are.”
“And why, pray tell, is that?”
“You know me better than they do.” Technoblade inhales, “And I know you more than them.”
A double edged blade. Clementine had hoped for a very strong weapon. He could tell from what she would say in her notes that she’d given to him. It just so happens that the weapon she’d been given is a weapon for and against the enemy.
One that could be so easily used to attack her own side just as it is harmful for the enemy’s.
It’s still jarring to imagine that he’s referring to Phil as one of them.
“That’s true.” Phil considers. “I just hoped that you’d be more considerate at least. Just for old time’s sake.”
“I was hopin’ that this consideration extended to people other than me and the other two, but we all have our hopes down in the dumps don’t we?”
“Technoblade.” Phil sounds stern in his reprimand.
He isn’t nearly as reactive as he used to be.
“We could barely hold a conversation like this, what with you being on the offense all the time.” Phil says. “Let’s be civil, please.”
“Civil?” Technoblade asks, and he barks a laugh. It’s something sardonic, mean and cruel. “You want to talk to me about civility ?”
Enraged. That’s what it is. Technoblade is enraged. Peeved. Annoyed. He hates this. He hates that he has to talk to his old friends like this. He hates that he has to treat Phil, Tommy, and Wilbur with hostility because of things they’ve done. Morally fucked up things that they’ve done without as much as a single hesitation.
He swings down the sword, aiming it at Phil who steps back in alarm. He avoids the attack. It isn’t a calculated move. Far from it. It’s a desperate act, something mad, fueled by an emotion he rarely let to the surface. “Do you know what brought me back, Phil?” He asks, voice roaring as he lunges at Phil.
Technoblade shifts the sword to an axe when he recovers from the swing, shifting his weight so he could swing it sidewards. He doesn’t care that he barely scratches Phil.
He has to know. He has to let it be known of the impact that their deeds had on the people they once protected. The people they once cared for.
“I woke up in blood . The blood of the people you slaughtered. I woke up because someone died trying to bring me back to life.” Technoblade drops the axe, the weight now lighter and allowing him to slash the newly formed dagger upwards in such speed.
He watches as Phil barely shields himself from a cut to the chest. There’s blood running down his palm.
“And I was greeted back to L’manburg being turned to a literal dystopia. People are faced with effigies of people who were brave enough to face you .” Technoblade, with his hand raised, summons the rest of the blood within his control so he could swing down with the most momentum. The axe splashes to the ground when the impact misses Phil.
“They were people out to get Wil, Tommy, and I.” Phil retorts.
“They were vigilantes like we were !” Technoblade kicks from the puddle, sending spikes flying towards Phil who dodges all of them by flapping his wings and flying up.
Phil kicks Technoblade when he’s above, and he lands in front of him.
Technoblade nearly stumbles, but he recovers quick enough to catch Philza’s wrist when he’s faced with talons reaching out to him. “I don’t fucking care .” Phil says.
Phil flaps his wings, and it pushes Technoblade back.
Technoblade twists, and he allows Phil to tumble beside him. Phil, stands, balanced on his feet. “I don’t give a fucking damn how many people died, how fucked up everything is.” He looks at Technoblade in the eyes. “It’s quiet. It’s better now.”
It almost scares Technoblade how uncaring Phil looks when he says what he does. He’s dripping in sincerity as he speaks words of apathy. “L’manburg is free of crime, don’t you see?” he says. “Charges of corruption had long since disappeared. People who kidnap wouldn’t dare do it within the boundaries of our country.
“The damned are dead , and people are at peace .”
“You call fear peace?” Technoblade hisses. “This isn’t any different than before I interfered– people don’t do anything because they’re frightened for their lives. When criminals ran the streets, only few were brave enough to–”
Technoblade is shoved to the wall, but he isn’t quite breathless. Instead, he fights back, shoving back against the winged man who pins him against the wall, collar raised. Pissed. “And what did bravery bring them?” Phil cuts off, hissing. It looks like a sore topic. “What did bravery bring us ?”
Technoblade clenches his jaw. “Back to square one, technically.” He grunts, “You’re the ones they’re running from.” He claws at Phil’s hand, drawing blood just to piss him off. He hates this. He hates what they’ve become. He hates the shattered figures they are now, sharp and broken but all the more deadly to touch.
It feels cathartic to hurt.
To hurt a traitor.
“They will always believe that they’ll get away with it with a light sentence.” Phil says. “They don’t know the stakes. They don’t care . That’s what happened. That’s what happened the night you died.”
“And the children and their parents who you killed for witnessing that?”
Phil pauses, expression neutral and apathetic. He lets go, standing up straight and fixing his coat. “A message.” He said simply.
And Technoblade can’t believe it.
How inhumane that man he once looked up to had become. How heartless and cruel, and morally abhorrent. Wilbur didn’t regret it. Phil had justified it.
They truly believe they aren’t wrong. That they’re right for doing what they’re doing.
“I will fix this.” Technoblade says for the nth time since his revival, and he’s not sure that he’s said anything more sincere than this since he’s been revived. It’s more than a promise. It’s a threat, an oath, and a curse altogether.
He is dismissed when Phil hums. “You’ll come back.” He says, before his wing spread.
The man flaps his wings, and he ascends. Technoblade watches as he flies away.
For the rest of the week, Technoblade had put all his efforts into reshuffling the network just in case everyone had become compromised.
.
“There’s movement around the country.” Sam points out during one meeting. “I’ve already disclosed this information to the rest, but from the south up to the north they’ve started to build these speakers at every corner street. It’s loud enough to spread through every street in the place.” He says.
Technoblade has an inkling as to what they’re plotting. He has an idea, because he knows what would be running in their minds.
Wilbur is going to make another demand, and it’d be over the speakers. Technoblade knows for certain that this is what they’d want because they’re going through extreme measures to make sure that no one interferes with any of the speakers. Technoblade could spot a patroller within the vicinity of every one of it.
Niki, an ally from the adjacent building, speaks up. “They’re putting a front that it’s for the inauguration of the new president, but they didn’t go all out as they are now in the previous one.” She points out. The blond haired woman looks at Technoblade with concern. “Are they planning to do what I think they’re planning to do?”
Technoblade looks back down at the printed pictures, and he nods.
Sam steps back, hand covering his mouth. He looks scared. He’s right to be. The last time Wilbur has pulled something like this was when thousands of people were killed under his command.
“I can’t prepare the protective emeralds in time.” Technoblade says. “Inhibitors are our best bet for our men–”
“You don’t have to.” Sam replies. “And you can’t. You can’t provide these things for every person out there. At this point you can only make one that’s effective for you and you alone.”
Niki crosses her arms, frowning. “Worst comes to worst, they’re going to take us hostage and demand for you.” She says. “Or they command all of us to bring you to them.”
“Sounds likely.” Technoblade responds, but it’s too open. It’s blatant.
Except what else could it be for?
“When it happens, try interfering with your own auditory senses.” Technoblade points at his hear. “Earbuds and music, anything that can try to make the audio at least muffled.”
“Will it work?”
It won’t. Technoblade knows that. “We can only hope.”
.
He finds Tommy again, except this time it looks like the kid was waiting for him. He’s sat at the corner where Technoblade was supposed to take a turn, and he watches the boy’s face light up when he finds Technoblade right in front of him.
“Techno–”
“How did you find me.” He demands. Because he had been moving in patterns that couldn’t be recognized. Randomized and without influence save for moment decisions.
Tommy looks down, fists clenching and unclenching as he tries to find his words. Technoblade thinks it strange. Tommy wasn’t one to think of or find words. He spoke the very first thing that came to mind. He was crass with his words, but he was always the pinnacle of honesty.
“You already fucking know that we have resources.” He spits, and even that seemed to be an attempt of a calculated response. It’s like he’s trying to find the right words.
Soon enough he’ll figure out that there’s nothing that he could say that Technoblade would consider right.
Tommy looks up from the curb he’s been glaring daggers at, and he stares at Technoblade with this resignation. “Can’t you just… Can’t you just fucking stop?” Tommy asks. “It should be simple. It’s so simple to just stop and call back whatever the fuck you’ve formed against us.”
“Formed what?” Technoblade says in a dull tone. He’s not bothering to hide it anymore. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. All I’ve really been doing was running away from you.”
Tommy snorts. “Bull fucking shit.” He says. “If you really wanted out, you should have left the country ages ago.
“No. Whatever brought you into this must have known that shitty thing you kept repeating to me. Sun Tzu or whatever.”
“Nice to know you listened to me back before I died.” Technoblade mutters. “With hope I say that maybe you should listen to me now that I’m alive again.”
Tommy looked stunned at his words, as if he didn’t expect them. He almost looks hurt. “Techno, I’m trying to… just listen to me. To us.” He says. He’s begging.
“Will you stop whatever this is, Tommy?” Technoblade asks. “Will you surrender to the people and try to make up for the deaths and the injustice?”
“They… they don’t deserve it. Don’t you see?” Technoblade finds it hard to listen to him. This is a traitor wearing his brother’s mask. This can’t be Tommy.
The Tommy he knew would have beat the shit out of this imposter. Technoblade is faced with someone who couldn’t have ever been the kid he pulled out of the streets. The kid he saved, took in as family. The one who tried to stop crime. The one who wanted justice, to be like Technoblade.
This isn’t Tommy.
“Tommy.” Technoblade grits his teeth. “If there’s no convincing you, then there’s no convincing me.”
“If we stopped right now. Will you come back?” Tommy asks. “Will you let us be a family again? Just us. No more of L’manburg. Just us four, together. Like before.”
Technoblade’s gut sinks. That’s what he wants. He wants desperately for that. Exactly that. Technoblade wants his family back. No more L’manburg. No more Atlas. No weight of the world shared upon four pairs of shoulders. Just them as people. As family.
“I miss you.” Technoblade says. And it’s true, and honest.
He wants that.
But he remembers the cruelty they’ve done, that they will never apologize for. He remembers that if he’d come back to his own family he’d be shaming the families that had died to get him here. The hundreds of families torn apart for the sake of one reunited.
It was unfair.
Technoblade can’t live with that on his conscience.
“But I can’t let you get away scot free.” Technoblade declares, and he watches as that hopeful expression on Tommy’s face crash and burn into something akin to despair. “Don’t show yourself to me, because the next time you do I won’t be so lenient as to let you go.” He says. “The next time you see me, you won’t be Tommy. You are Theseus of the Syndicate. You aren’t Vermillion. You aren’t my Theseus.”
He could see the tears well up in Tommy’s eyes. He could see the anger coil up, and so ready to spring up at him. Rage. Something so similar to the ones he saw in Wilbur’s eyes.
But it melts. It weakens, and Technoblade could feel the resignation seep into Tommy’s bones.
“You say next time.”
Technoblade doesn’t answer.
“I’m still Tommy today, then?” Tommy steps forward, and Technoblade doesn’t step back. That much seemed to be enough of an answer to Tommy.
He takes more, and more, until he’s right in front of Technoblade.
Tommy wraps his arms around Technoblade. It’s tight, desperate, and it’s just as much as a goodbye as ever. Technoblade puts his arms around Tommy, and he might have grown bigger, but he’s still the kid he saved once upon a time. A hero. Tommy will always be a hero to him.
Technoblade grips onto Tommy, imagining that for this moment they can be happy. That there are no blood on their hands, that they were still four years younger and a lot of life to look forward to.
This isn’t his Tommy anymore. Not in the ways that matter.
.
The numbers dwindle. Technoblade should have known. Should have suspected it. Working with this many people will have its drawbacks, but he didn’t think that it’d happen so soon.
Not when they’re so close to the final step.
It was a simple plan, one that shouldn’t have ended in yet another massacre.
Technoblade looks up, and he’s faced with yet another public display. It’s horrific how much he’s gotten used to seeing these.
But most of all, he’s horrified by the face he sees on the wall this time.
Clara .
She’s wearing her uniform. The one with the nametag he used so he could figure what her name was.
Very little had been done to her. It at least looked like a quick death. Technoblade grip around his coat’s lining tightens as he turns away from the display and walks away.
He hadn’t seen Clara since the first night he lived again. He respected her decision not to be involved with the things he had planned.
Yet there she was. Clara is dead, and she was either brave, or unlucky. Her death is yet another on his shoulders.
Atlas as a name is becoming a lot less positive by the minute. He’s holding the weight of guilt, and he can assure you that it’s a lot heavier than the world.
She was the first of the pattern of deaths, and the last one to be displayed. Soon enough the people under his command were dwindling in numbers. All of them going MIA and unreachable. Technoblade knew that he should suspect them dead and killed by the Syndicate.
There’s a mole.
He’s tried reshuffling the network twice or thrice, and while that might have hindered the rate at which death occurs, it still ends up back on track and on schedule for yet another victim.
He has to move quick. Faster than they could. They’re already so close.
Technoblade knows exactly how to hit. He’s tested it and proven it with Phil when he’d last encountered him. It was unexpected, yes, but in the end he still got something out of it.
For all their justification of these people’s deaths, they seem keen on avoiding Technoblade’s murder.
Wibur had suggested it. Phil had proven it.
Technoblade should find a way to work with this.
.
“ Bring Atlas to the Podium.”
He should have seen this coming.
Today was the day
He figured that it’d be some semblance of command, and he knew that this was one of the options. Technoblade prepares to fight off anyone after him.
But no one approaches him, not even those who know he’s here.
Except no one brings him to the front. No one moves, not an inch.
Instead, someone else is brought to the podium. They’re blindfolded, with pink hair and clothing similar to his. Technoblade looks around, looks to the side and he sees that people are watching in horror.
They don’t know.
He forgot.
In his insecurity that someone would out information, he made sure that he was the only one who knew everything . No one knew his location, where he would be posted. No one in his army knew anything .
So they would easily believe that they caught him.
But he’s trapped. Technoblade is trapped in a sense that if he were to out himself now, everyone will know him and they will find him . The command will take into effect, and he’d be placed on the podium himself.
Patrollers were just as scattered everywhere as his own men.
He’s trapped.
The president before him is shaking on the podium. He’s making some speech about how Atlas has been causing dissonance and chaos from under their noses, a speech about how their peace is being disturbed. He and everyone around him knew it was bullshit .
Technoblade watches as an armed man stands beside the kneeling figure with pink hair.
He’s watching an execution.
He has to stop him. He has to stop this. Technoblade is living because someone is framed as him .
His fingers twitch.
Before he could do anything, there’s a firm hold on his shoulder. Technoblade flinches at the sudden feeling. He turns abruptly, and he sees Niki. There’s a grim look on her face.
“Technoblade, we have to go.” She says, and she tugs him by the arm to the side. “We’ve been breeched, this is a trap.” She’s abrupt as she tugs Technoblade away from the crowd. He doesn’t fight much, whatever Niki is trying to do it should be for the better.
“What’s going on, how did you find me?”
“Not the time, we have a mole.” She hisses, pulling him towards an alley. “We have to go.”
Technoblade rips his arm from her grasp. “How aren’t you affected by Siren’s command?” He asks.
“There wasn’t one.” Niki answers. “It’s a fluke. It’s meant to have everyone think that Atlas was brought against their will, and when they saw you on stage they thought that it was a deed committed.” She answers. “But Technoblade, that’s not the plan here. That’s not the main concern.” She answers, and she looks so troubled.
Technoblade eases up, dread curling in his gut. “Niki, what is it?”
She looks up, and there’s so much shame in that gaze. “I’m sorry.”
There’s a hand on his nape, and he falls limp to the floor. He looks up from the ground, near unconscious when he sees two of his allies looking down at him. Niki was fiddling with her fingers, and in front of her, right beside Technoblade’s limp body, is Jack Manifold. He’s putting back the glove on his hand.
His ability was to induce sleep at a touch of five fingers. Technoblade knew that because Jack was one of the first to be on his side.
There’s guilt on Niki’s face, and pity on Jack’s.
It’s the last thing he sees before his vision blacks out.
.
Technoblade wakes up tied up. The room is dark, but fortunately he could feel that he’s still wearing that emerald on his ear.
The first thing he does is observe his surroundings. He’s in a room, that much is certain, and he’s on something soft. He’s on a bed, then. That’s unfortunate pushes himself to sit up, which is an incredibly embarrassing act. Technoblade twists his wrist so he could draw at least a droplet of blood.
He freezes when he hears something move from behind what he can only assume is a door. There’s light coming out from the bottom, and ig he’s given more time to adjust his sight to it maybe he would have found out on his own that he’s in a bedroom. A lavish one.
A chance he’s given, because the movement dies, fades away. Footsteps go away, and Technoblade blinks so he could adjust.
A bedroom, one that’s big enough to hold ten people and still have space to do escrima. It’s huge. It has no reason being that huge.
Technoblade bites his lip, ignoring the pain so he could draw blood. It’s a bit of a stretch, and a lot more difficult to control, but Technoblade has done it before. It would have been preferable to make the blade of blood from the very area he’s planning to cut, though. Beggars can’t be choosers.
He unties himself with that small bead of blood cutting the rope. It was an awkward and embarrassingly long endeavor.
Technoblade notices that there’s no window. It’s a common thing for rooms this large, especially when in a manor. This is likely a large establishment.
He shuts his eyes, trying to recall what he’s here for in the first place.
First thing, he’s not here out of his own volition. This means that he is undeniably unaware of what this place is or its layout. He’s never been in here before in his life.
Second, he’s been kidnapped– duh, and likely by Niki and Jack who had crossed him for whatever reason. He has some suspicions, but he doesn’t want to jump into any conclusions yet. Technoblade wants to trust that they were doing this out of what they perceive is the good of Salvation, but that isn’t likely.
People who think they’re doing good won’t have that expression on their faces. Chances are that they sold him out to the Syndicate. He wants to blame them, really, but he always should have known. Cowards die last, after all, and he’s noticed that it’s been an awful game of Survival of the Fittest. Really should have expected this.
Third, he has to get out of here. Immediately.
And it isn’t a difficult endeavor in the beginning. The place is typically designed, easy to navigate, and wonderful to sneak around. It’s practically made for covert missions.
He almost feels nostalgic over his first break-in as Atlas.
Almost, because now he’s breaking- out .
He runs into one person. Just an unlucky guard who is about to get ripped into shreds by their boss because of how they’d been so useless against stopping him. If their bosses were the Syndicate, they should be more sympathetic.
Technoblade isn’t an easy opponent after all.
It was okay, he was sneaky at first, and he could see what he bets is the exit– except there’s a knock on that door.
Someone is going in, or someone is going to open the door. Technoblade can’t be here for either. He moves to the side and–
“You going anywhere?” There’s a hand on his shoulder, gripping tightly.
Technoblade turns quick, a previous injury on his forearm bleeding so he could manifest a weapon. It’s a blade, quick, light, and easy to maneuver. He swings his arm as he turns, aiming for the chest because these people do not fuck around.
He falters when he sees Phil.
That was his mistake. In his lack of concentration, Phil slips something on the wrist that was holding the weapon and he clips it on. The blood drops from his palm, acting like ordinary liquid.
Technoblade pulls away, and he looks down on his wrist to see a–
It’s an inhibitor.
Phil clipped on an inhibitor on his wrist.
“I was looking for it while you were asleep.” Phil says apologetically, as if he wishes he put it on sooner. “It’s awfully scarce to find the materials for it. You should know– you’ve been hoarding most of it.” He laughs.
Technoblade’s blood ran cold. “How do you know that?” He questions. It’s more of a demand than anything.
“Some little birds told me.” The blond answers ominously.
Technoblade feels fear run through his chest, curiosity and desperation. Internally, he knows. He knows how Wilbur knows this. There’s a mole. He’s expected this but there was no easy method of counteracting against it without compromising everyone’s safety and security. The system he made was with their sake in mind.
So what some knew, everyone knew. The inhibitors weren’t a secret, but it wasn’t well-known either.
He just needs to ask, to know .
How many people did they have to go through to get that information?
Phil is smiling, but there’s this concerning look in his eye, slightly wider than usual in a happy expression. He doesn’t look troubled, not at all. Sometime ago Technoblade might have thought that this was a good thing.
Now he just doesn’t know.
It’s hard to accept that he doesn’t know anything anymore no matter how much he claims to. It’s his only strength– admittance of its futility would only be admittance of his defeat.
Technoblade has a plan in his head. The first thing he needs to do is warn his network. Any way he can– since their positions are compromised either way, it’s better than he sends them a message even if it’d be easily tracked. That’s important is that it wouldn’t get intercepted and that it gets to them as soon as possible.
Now that he’s here, he can instead– wait.
He looks. Fond. Phil looks fond, nostalgic even.
“You’re always thinking on your feet, mate.” Phil smiles. “You don’t have to do anything, Tech.” He says. He grabs something from his inner pocket of his coat, and he hands it to him.
It’s a yellow, spingbound notebook. Worn out after nearly a year’s worth of consulting and writing and reading. Technoblade looks at it with horror, realizing that his most hidden location has been compromised.
“What did you do to them.”
“All you have to know is that there’s no one you can turn to now.” Phil says curtly.
Technoblade looks up, fury burning in his eyes. It was either fury or frustration welling at the corner of his eyes and in the center of his chest. The people in that notebook were by the hundreds . They were people linked to each other, his network. L’manburgians who were risking everything for the sake of change. For the sake of vengeance.
“Did you kill them?”
“Pandorica wouldn’t have treated them nicely anyway.” It’s such a quick, simple answer. No hesitation, no sign of restraint. Not even shame. He doesn’t even seem sheepish.
The confirmation shatters him.
Sam. Fundy.
There are names in his head that screams for vengeance, so many that were killed in the name of this fucked up sense of ‘justice’. This arbitrary decision on who gets to live and die.
There were people on that list who didn’t even want to be involved. Technoblade feels his heart sink. So many of them had families, so many of them had lost families. Had lost their chance of retribution and justice.
Had lost their lives for a fight they hadn’t even looked at.
“Technoblade,” Phil calls him out of his stupor, “Do you want to eat dinner?”
He asks that so easily. A suggestion so easily made, like they’d just go out and eat their favorite budget meals and share the sauce packets because they were always given too little. Just like how once upon a time, they had been happy over a mere ‘thank you’ from a citizen when they’d give them take out or get them free bread. Tommy always loved hand outs.
These people would kill them.
It’s hard to accept that. To remember that. But Technoblade is Atlas, and more than anything, he endures .
So instead of answering with words, he lets his fury be known through a very much needed punch on the face. He slams his knuckles across Philza’s cheek, feeling the bony prominence of his cheekbones stab against his own bones. Technoblade is frustrated. Pissed. Thoroughly tired by what these people has become.
He’s understandably upset. Of course he is..
They’ve taken more than just the city he loved.
They took his family, and they’ve turned them into whatever this is.
Phil nearly topples over to the ground, but his wings are added support to his balance, he watches almost amusedly as the black bunch of feathers fluff and flutter wildly to regain his composure.
He doesn’t go down without a fight. Of course he doesn’t, he’s Philza. Technoblade has done nothing but fight him. The man is a veteran of war. It’s a language he loves and understands. Violence was something they shared between them.
He curls his knuckles once more, and he steps forward so he could send another hit.
Technoblade needs this.
He needs to hurt him.
He’s so sick and tired of seeing all this evidence that these people that he loved, that he made his world were liars. Traitors. Sick, disgusting beings that were monsters wriggling behind what could barely be called human flesh.
Yet at this moment he can’t say he hates them.
Not yet,
But soon. For a moment, he will.
Someone topples him over. All Technoblade sees is a head full of curly, golden hair. He feels something sharp from his ear, and it’s bleeding. In any other occasion he would have counted that as an advantage on his part, but the inhibitor on his wrist makes it harder.
Instead, he elbows Tommy in the face. His hesitation doesn’t come up in this moment– he’s made his promise. He told Tommy that he will not consider him the same again. They both knew how this would go.
But it doesn’t help that the betrayal in his younger brother’s eyes are more stark than the shock of Phil’s when Technoblade had moved to raise a fist against him once more.
He will not feel regret.
“ Freeze. ”
Movement stutters, until it goes into a still. Technoblade is frozen in the middle of a swing, blood still dripping from under the inhibitor bracelet that’s been stuck on him. While he is frozen, his mind races.
Betrayal had never run thicker than before.
They had an oath. The two of them had an oath. As something more than heroes, as family. Technoblade hadn’t cared before it, but it was something sincere.
The emeralds were his design, his making. Somethings he made for Wilbur’s sake. He was a sensitive soul– he still is. Mind control was such a unique and strong ability that it’d no doubt influence how he developed his relationships. Technoblade had known that.
Wilbur was his oldest friend, no matter how shaky their relationship started out as.
An oath to be free from his command, yet he’d do what Wilbur asks with utmost sincerity.
Wilbur had promised that to all of them. All three. He’d come to Technoblade to make the emeralds– an inhibitor for Wilbur and Wilbur alone. That way he’d know– what they do is what they want to, not because of Wilbur’s command. Sincerity goes above all, for Wilbur.
He had never used his ability on Tommy, Philza, and Technoblade.
Not before now.
It must have been naive of him to expect something so noble. Something that was so intimate had been thrown to the dust.
Technoblade can’t even look him in the eyes to confirm
Wilbur is in front of him now, glaring at him, looking at him in the eyes with such fury. “You’d raise a hand to Tommy?” Technoblade doesn’t care. He doesn’t care how mad they are. He doesn’t care about them.
Tommy isn’t his.
This isn’t his Tommy.
This is a traitor, trash wearing skin.
“ Speak. ”
“You’re traitors.” He says with all sincerity. Technoblade abhors these people. He doesn’t recognize any of them. Broken promises, hypocrisy, apathy and mass homicide. Technoblade could count all of their sins the world would drown from his numbers.
Wilbur only laughs. He doesn’t sound amused, not at all, but he laughs. “For all your righteous preaching Technoblade, you seem to be just as difficult to convince about this entire thing.” Wilbur muses, eyes manic as he hides Tommy behind Technoblade’s heated gaze. “You keep trying to remind us that we’re the bad guys– we already know that, and we already told you that we don’t care.”
The brunet grabs Technoblade’s ear, still bleeding from the pulled earring. He squeezes it, and Technoblade can only wince. He can’t move to react or to avoid, or to at least land a well deserved punch against his cheek.
“Wilbur.” Phil says in warning.
“What? It’s true.” Wilbur snaps. “We are, and we don’t give a shit. We lost a shit years ago.” He turns to Technoblade, eyes wide, mocking a realization. “It’s like we’re completely different people.” The skin breaks, Wilbur’s finger is in between the gap in the hole. His gaze sharpens, a snarl forming on his lips when he looks at it. “You, as you are now, don’t deserve that stupid earring.” he hisses, eyeing where it once hung. The blood drips from his fingers.
“Wil.” It’s Tommy this time.
He lets go.
“I ought to change you myself if you continue being like this.” He whispers.
Tommy pulls Wilbur back, “Don’t you fucking dare!” He shouts. “There’s a fucking line. ”
“Made of chalk!” He retorts. “Who the fuck cares if it happens,” Wilbur’s eyes turn to Technoblade, angry, frustrated. “It’s not like the only person who cares about it would remember .”
“That’s enough.”
“No it isn’t.” Wilbur turns to Phil. “It’s never enough.” He takes the emerald from the ground, and shoves it at Phil’s chest. “We finally get him back, and it was okay playing along. It was fun. I liked the effigies, I liked the hunt–”
He turns sharply towards Technoblade, and he pulls him by the collar. Technoblade is still frozen, but he yields under Wilbur’s control. “This is the line I fucking draw– he hurt you, he hit Tommy. ”
Technoblade glares while Wilbur continues to speak.
“You are a hypocrite.”
He isn’t.
“You hate me for breaking my oath, yet you so lavishly indulge in breaking yours.”
He promised it to his Tommy .
“He says we’re monsters,” Wilbur says. “But we’re all looking at the one who made us like this.”
And.
To an extent, it’s true. It’s true that Technoblade had given Phil the initiative to take part of his nights, that he’d given Tommy lessons of violence and Wilbur this confidence to use his power. He’d been the very reason why they’ve gone amok and rampant on these streets of L’manburg and why they had been reigning in this method. They’ve sought vengeance in his name, just as he’s sought vengeance in the thousands of victims’.
In his lack of speech, Wilbur clicks his tongue. “Speechless, Atlas?” He asks, coldly.
“You can say what you wish to say.” Technoblade says, but he could feel the lie twisting in his tongue, curling in his throat. “But it doesn’t make it any more true than you wish.”
Wilbur curls his fist, and he hits Technoblade.
His head is turned to the side, frozen and unable to recover from the hit.
“Hold him, please.” Wilbur asks the two.
They do it of their own volition. They’re wearing the emeralds on their ears, walking towards him as they hold his arms.
Technoblade knows what this means.
Wilbur can’t inflict more than one action on a person at a time. If he’s to make a second command, the first will be released. Panic curls in his chest at the realization.
He’s going through with it, and Tommy and Phil are going along with it.
Wilbur turns Technoblade’s head gently. Gone is the violent, jerkish movement.
“It’ll be over quick.” Wilbur says, voice like stone.
“Wait, wait .” They don’t back off. They don’t pause. Tommy and Phil wrap grip at him, holding him tight so that he may not move. So that he can’t resist or cover his ears, or run away.
They restrain him.
“Wilbur, stop.” Technoblade says, but it’s to no avail.
“Wilbur ,” the tone is more desperate, but still there is nothing. “You told me you’d never use your powers against me.” Technoblade says, daring and begging the same.
Wilbur doesn’t falter. He looks just as unapologetic as when he was confronted with the mass murder he’d done. “You told Tommy that you’d never hurt him.” He leans closer,
“And you told me you’d never die.” He says.
Technoblade is held further down by Phil and Tommy as Wilbur sharply grabs Technoblade by his cheeks. It’s harsh, but not so much that he’d bleed.
“Technoblade,” Wilbur smiles. “It’ll be okay.” He soothes.
Technoblade’s eyes water. Something like this hurts. It aches in his chest. It feels so unfair. It isn’t right. This isn’t right . Please, there has to be some of the people he loved still in there. Please .
“Wilbur,” Technoblade’s eyes water, betrayal burning hot in his heart. “Wilbur, please .”
“It’ll be better soon.” Phil promises into his ear, still holding him by the arm so he can’t do anything against.
Technoblade chokes, watching as Wilbur’s eyes turn golden when he’s about to activate his ability to weave a command.
Desperate, he turns to Tommy. “Tommy, Tommy we made an oath . Stop him. Please.” He averts his eyes from Tommy’s, witnessing for just a moment that flash of guilt. That single hope of humanity left in any of them. He turns to Phil, and he watches Technoblade with pity. “Phil, Tommy, please. ”
Tommy’s grip tightens. Phil’s pity turns into bitter amusement.
“I’m not your Tommy.” Is all he says, before adding: “Not yet.”
Dread crawls in his chest, slinging around his aorta and stringing it shut and tight, knotting and hurting him as he tries to live . It tries to kill him, but he just can’t die. He won’t die. They won’t allow it, will they?
A crippling realization stalks around in his mind, revealing itself from the disguise and attacking. Something cold, something dark flushes down his entire being.
“ I hate you. ” He hisses, desperate and raw, and true. He hates them. All of them. To his very core, every bit of him hates them all for what they’ve become.
Traitors.
Wilbur’s light flickers at his words, and he could feel Phil’s grip on his arm tighten. Tommy’s weaken. But really, all he could focus on was the hurt in Wilbur’s eyes. Good. That’s what he wanted. He wants them to feel, to hurt, to suffer.
They need that slap into reality. Maybe if it hurts enough they can go back to what they once were.
This is all but a moment’s grief, a flicker of hope, a second to wish. Wilbur’s ache doesn’t last long. He’s fickle as his decisions and arbitrary like god.
With brown eyes, Wilbur responds:
“You won’t for long.”
And he smiles. It’s so gentle, so accepting and warm. It was as if he was told something good. Technoblade abhors it. Technoblade can’t help but see the similarity between the golden eyes and the eyes he sees in the mirror every day.
Wilbur’s eyes turn golden.