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Techno stares up at the sky, endlessly grey and snow trickling down like soft new feathers.
He can only remember ever seeing the down of a baby once before. When Phil had first picked up Tommy, his chubby baby legs and tiny, flightless wings. Techno had only been six or seven himself– nine at most, the years when he had spoken about five words combined and Wilbur had translated for him. That year was the one Phil had come home with a makeshift sling against his chest and a tiny, tiny baby inside it, downy wings as fragile as a newborn.
Tommy’s feathers hadn’t come in until he was tenish. They’d had to deal with shedding down more times than Techno can count, the tiny fluff catching and dusting across the floors and under furniture. Tommy had liked to chase after them when he was small, crawling and then toddling after his own shed feathers. They had been so soft, so hard to preen the right way. Techno didn’t even want to try, his hands too clumsy and shaky to get it right. He’d just sat and watched as Wilbur and Phil had done it, holding toys and occasionally making funny noises to distract Tommy and keep him sitting still.
The snow reminds him of those days too often.
He stretches out a wing to the side, drawing it around himself in place of a cape and letting the snow settle on his feathers.
Dotted and speckled with darker spots, tawny and long. They’re not wide, but lean and made for speed. His type is a smaller bird– kestrels, sparrow hawks, but they fly fast and sharply. He’s pulled off maneuvers that would make Philza wheeze with his old-man lungs, and has taken corners that Wilbur would never dare. He reaches up and runs his fingers through his own feathers, and quietly pretends they’re Wilbur’s.
He used to preen them, like this. And after Wilbur had gone, Ranboo had–
Techno inhales, then exhales, his breath billowing out into the cold like dragon’s breath.
His wings tremble as he lets them fall back against his shoulder blades, feathers shivering in the cold. He ignores how they’re matted against his back, where his own hands can’t reach. He’s refused to let Phil touch them lately, not when there had been two different people before. Three, even, if you count Tommy in that.
And three for three, they’d all kicked the bucket.
There must be some sort of curse in his feathers, starting in the calamus and shuddering down his vanes as they grow. Something that poisons the people it touches– that kills them, in the end. Techno fears if he lets Phil keep preening for him, it’ll kill him too. Who knows how much a lifetime of feathers has already hurt him.
The sky is dark above him, but not in the indigo-sunset kind of way. Just an endless expanse of grey, not unlike a void.
“Techno?”
He startles.
“Phil,” he says calmly, hiding whatever thoughts he’d previously been thinking and ignoring the surge of fondness from the voices.
“It’s snowing,” his father-brother-mentor-friend says, almost surprised.
“We live in the tundra,” Techno drawls.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Phil shoots back, and Techno cracks a quiet grin, looking down as Phil sidles up beside him on the bridge connecting their houses. Techno looks up again after a second, catching sight of the orange glow coming from Phil’s attic where he knows Wilbur’s been squatting. His own house is mostly dark.
Ranboo’s is silent.
“How are you doing?” Phil asks.
“How are you doing?” Techno asks. Phil sighs.
“I know you’re hurting,” he says. “Techno, you look– awful. No offense.”
“None taken,” Techno says, his wings curling vaguely around his shoulders. Defensive, in a way. “I’m fine, Phil. Stop mother henning.”
“I’m not a hen,” Phil says, but his wing brushes against Techno’s and it’s warm, and safe, and Techno turns and presses his face into Phil’s shoulder, huffing out warm air against the fabric of his cloak. “Oh, Techno.”
“It’s so quiet,” he says, voice muffled, trembling entirely. “It’s so quiet, and it’s my fault, Phil. I broke him out. I didn’t– you shoulda seen his face , Phil.”
“I was there too,” Phil says gently, and Techno shakes his head.
“Not Ranboo’s,” he says. “Tubbo’s.”
“Oh.” Phil goes very, very quiet.
Tubbo is something different to all of them. To Tommy, he’s a brother and a best friend. To Wilbur, he’s a soldier still, even now after all this time. To Techno, he had been a stray dog that someone had kicked to the curb. To Phil, another son. Tubbo had been to Ranboo… a husband. A father to a shared son. And he hadn’t even fucking known. It had stung, yes, when he’d found out in such a terrible way.
Techno had delivered messages like that before. Never had it been so personal.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Phil says, but even he doesn’t sound like he believes it. Techno just snuffles, tucking his wings into his back tightly and letting Phil bring his arms up around his shoulders, wraps his wings around him, and suffocates in the warmth.
Because it is his fault. And everyone knows it. Tubbo had known it, the devastated look on his face betraying his thoughts as Technoblade had explained the situation to him. The hesitance now in Phil’s voice, the screaming of Tommy he’d heard in the distance once or twice.
Technoblade’s fault. Always Techno’s fault.
It’s the damn poison in his feathers.
They shudder and shake as they stand there, Techno hunched over with his face pressed into Phil’s shoulder. His back itches from where he can’t reach when preening, but when Phil raises a hand to press against the area, he flinches. Pulls away, shakes himself out, the snow ruffling from both his hair and feathers. They feel heavy with the weight of melted and melting snow, but he ignores it for now. The snow is white and soft against Phil’s feathers too, and Techno stares at it, remembering a quieter time when baby Tommy had run across the room with bare feet and baby wings, white as anything.
The last time he’d seen Tommy’s wings, he’d been pulling feathers out from stress. They’d been patchy in places, parts of them crooked where someone had broken them. They’d been utterly hideous. Nothing like the beautiful shining wings Tommy had once had.
“Techno?” Phil asks, breaking the monotony of his horrified thoughts.
“I’m alright,” he reassures gently, patting absently at Phil’s feathers, ignoring the way Phil watches him with a concerned look. He pulls back entirely, until it’s just him against the chill. “I’m fine. I– I’m gonna go back inside. Goodnight, Phil.”
“...goodnight, Techno.” Phil says gently. Techno resists the urge to crack a joke– something, anything to fix the weight he feels on his chest. But nothing comes to him at the moment, and so he just turns and heads back inside, leaving Phil on the bridge underneath that void-down sky.
His back itches.