Chapter Text
It was astonishing to see what over a century of abandonment could do to a place.
The castle grounds presented a pale mockery of what they once were. When Phil looked at them, he could barely imagine what they must have been like before. The history books described a palace, splendor that most commoners could only dream of. The lord who used to own it was one of the richest the region had ever seen. But time had brought down sturdy walls into piles of rubble, allowing vines to crawl along the stones and crack their outer shells to dust. The iron gate that had once been effective in keeping intruders out had bent down far enough for them to step over it with ease, feet carefully placed between rungs topped with decorative spikes.
The garden that lay beyond had become wildly overgrown with nobody to tend to it.
Wilbur cursed when a few steps further had his boots sinking into the ground, the soggy remains of a pond long gone reaching up to his ankles. He pulled them free with an unpleasant squelching noise and frowned.
"How old did you say this place was again?" he asked.
"Old. Like, very old," Phil answered simply. "It was abandoned during the Age of Blood."
Tommy kicked a stone, watching it careen off into the distance and skid against a broken piece of marble, one of the many garden statues. Though it had been so thoroughly crumbled, it was impossible to know what shape it used to be. "Why's it called that? The Age of Blood."
Phil laughed while Wilbur shot the younger an exasperated yet fond glare. "Take a fucking guess, Tommy."
"How am I supposed to know, I wasn't even born yet," Tommy said, playing ignorant just to rile Wilbur up.
Wilbur still reacted as if he was being serious. "If the name alone doesn't clue you in, you're passed helping."
The wars that had ravaged the land back then were horrible, spurred on by greedy nobles seeking wealth in every manner they could think of, money and soil divided up like trinkets with no regard for the peasants who died in the warfare. When the civilians finally had enough, they had risen up to push back against an aristocracy that had always treated them as pawns, taking advantage of how prolonged war had weakened their lord's positions. Most of the nobles had been executed by the mobs or – if they were lucky such as the owner of this estate had been – they had fled far away before the riots could get to them.
Their proud estates were ransacked before later being rebuilt by whoever took ownership of the land next. Not this place though, it had laid derelict ever since.
It loomed over them now, sad and foreboding. Phil was not easily scared, but he could admit there hung a menacing atmosphere over this place. The bloodshed that had happened there drenched its history, if not literally then at least as a metaphor.
The chapped wooden door creaked open with a single push, Phil peering into the inky black darkness before retrieving a torch and lighting it. The flame cast a flickering illumination on the castle's interior, dusty and destroyed. Embroidered tapestries had been torn off the wall haphazardly, murals in vibrant colors had faded into pastel hues with time and exposure to sunlight. The click of his feet on the stone floors echoed off the silence.
"This never gets any less eerie, does it?" Tommy muttered from behind him, retrieving the dagger from his belt. Phil was starting to regret giving it to him as a coming-of-age present three weeks ago, but it'd be better than him trying to defend himself bare-handed.
"Why did you want to come if you're just going to complain about being scared?" Phil sighed good-naturedly.
"I'm not complaining," Tommy countered, "and I'm definitely not scared either."
"What are we looking for anyway?" Wilbur cut in, probably to keep Tommy from starting an argument. They hadn't been inside for more than a minute and there was already debris stuck in his curls fallen from the ruin's ceiling. Phil reached out to brush it away.
"A sword." Noticing the confused looks on their faces he shrugged. "Apparently it's a fabled weapon of value left behind here ages ago, but they assured me that it wouldn't have been taken by pillagers. Pete also didn't detail what it looked like, but said we would know it when we saw it."
Wilbur shook his head. "That's... weirdly vague."
"Not the strangest job we've ever had," Phil pointed out. "Remember the mass rabbit escape of-"
"We're not talking about that," Tommy interrupted quickly, embarrassed. Phil knew how much he hated having that story brought up. It wasn't one of Tommy's finer moments. "Let's just look for this sword thing and get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."
They explored the winding passageways slowly, Phil making sure to always stay upfront with his hand resting loosely on his sheath in case there was any truth to the whisperings of the townsfolk.
Rumors were a valuable currency in their work, so Phil had made a habit of scouting out their jobs by visiting local taverns. Sure, just because the three of them prided themselves in taking any odd job that came their way, no matter how strange or specialized it was so long as they got paid, didn't mean they needed to take unnecessary risks. He trusted their source to provide credible information, Pete had never led them wrong before. But Phil also knew the value in townsfolk gossip and when he went to the tavern in the nearest village the locals were more than eager to talk his ear off after they had downed a few ales paid for by Phil's coin.
And their word was that while the castle had been abandoned ages ago, its walls and parapets left to decay under nature's influence, it did not lay entirely uninhabited. Maybe by other humans, but there were more frightening things spoken of in this area. A horrifying beast with a ferocity unmatched and eyes that reminded of bloodlust, said to live inside the castle still and feast on the flesh of unlucky passersby.
Children were told not to play in the ruins if they wanted to return home again in the evening. Strangers were warned against roaming around at night, let alone venturing anywhere near the old castle grounds. When Phil told them the reason for his inquiry, the joviality fled from their tone like snow stricken by the noon sun, dark shadows cast on their faces.
"Do not go there if your own life or that of your sons has any meaning to you," they told him. "What lives in those castle walls now is much more frightening than the lord that has deserted it."
Now Phil was not usually one to ignore grave warnings. But coin had to be made if it wanted to be spent, his purse was becoming worrisomely light these days. If it were just himself living alone or on the road, Phil would not have cared to go some days without food or sleep on the forest floor without a proper bed. He could deal with a beggar's circumstances. He was not by himself, however. He had both Wilbur and Tommy with him – to look out for, no matter how much they'd insist they were capable enough to do it themselves. Phil wanted to give them the best chances in this world he could offer, regardless of how paltry his attempts were to most. And he needed money to do that.
The stories seemed not much more than tall tales to him anyway, spread around by word of mouth to become greatly exaggerated. What people had encountered in these woods were probably wolves and other wild animals. And looking at the state of the building, he could easily imagine uncareful folks getting hurt while exploring the ruins, a small accident growing into a fairy tale when repeated enough over time.
What Phil saw when looking around this castle was not monsters, it was grief.
There was no furniture left standing, no windows left unbroken. An overturned table with glass and porcelain strewed around it betrayed the idea of somebody having lived there once, revealing an echo of domesticity. Long ago, this had been a home. But the image was all too broken to feel real.
"This place is a fucking mess." Phil swept the hallway one final time, not much hope of finding anything in the dark crevices they wouldn't have noticed earlier. "There's not going to be anything here, we were sent on a wild goose chase."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Wilbur said. "We should consider upfront pay if-"
Before he could finish a crash disturbed the silence.
It was a heavy thud. Not the accidental shifting of stone or the settling of the castle's foundations, but sudden and manmade. Tommy spun on his heels and ran towards it, Phil needing a moment to process what was happening.
"Tommy, wait!" He cursed under his breath and sprinted after, Wilbur hot on his heels. He saw Tommy disappear behind the hallway's corner, before hearing him let out a surprised scream which was cut off into a strangled yelp. Phil didn't spend much time on thought as he rounded the corner himself, immediately slamming his shoulder into whatever it was that had pinned Tommy to the ground.
The beast reared back, snarling and clawing, landing on its side. That was when Phil realized it was not a beast at all, but merely a man – though one that looked rather intimidating. He seemed to be of a similar age to Wilbur, though in appearance they could not be further apart. A curtain of long pink hair framed sharp features, not human at a glance if the dangerous tusks and maroon eyes were any indications. While his body had the bearings of a warrior – lean muscles rippling beneath heavily scarred skin – the image was distorted by malnutrition, leaving bones to be visibly poking through. His clothes were disgusting and torn, stained with dried blood, and he wasn't wearing any shoes.
Around the man's throat sat a golden collar.
"What the fuck!?" Wilbur came to a stop behind him while Tommy was already scrambling up again. The man was still crouching as he backed up, one arm wrapped around himself protectively, which Phil could instantly tell was due to some injury. A particular patch of blood on their shirt was fresh and leaking onto the floor. When Phil's eyes flicked over to it the man growled.
"Go away! Leave!"
His voice was furious and deep. Phil could imagine any lesser person running away at the sound of it, tail tucked between their legs. Not him though. Speaking of tails, the stranger had one – stiff and raised in a clear sign of aggression.
Phil stood his ground and didn't act except to raise his hands, palms out to show he wasn't a threat. He could feel his sword hang heavy from his hip, serving as an assurance should the situation turn sour. "Calm down, mate. We mean you no harm."
That fiery gaze shifted over him slowly, assessing. Phil couldn't say what the man saw there, if he read their presence as a potential danger. He relaxed his shoulders somewhat hoping it would make him come across as more friendly, but no movement to let down his guard was made by the stranger.
He looked as if he'd been through an ordeal and a half, really.
"I'm Phil," he said kindly, pressing a hand against his own chest before gesturing at the other two. "This is Wilbur and the kid that spooked you is Tommy. What's your name?"
For a moment longer a blank look was his only response. Phil thought he wasn't going to get an answer at all. Then a shaky exhale, red eyes shifting away from him. "I have no name. The master did not give me one."
Unease filled Phil at those words, the pieces gradually starting to fit together in his mind. Desperately – bitterly – he wanted to be wrong about this. But he had to ask. "What did they call you when they needed you then?"
The man's voice held no emotion as he answered. "The blade."
And fuck, Phil could still see the papers he'd read by candlelight plain as day, fingers tracing the inked lines. A legendary weapon, a scourge on the battlefield. A blade that was never far from its owner's side and was said to have the power to slay countless men without that owner needing to so much as lift their finger.
(The most fearsome weapon the Age of Blood had ever known, which had turned the tide on many foes)
Not for a moment had Phil considered the weapon could have been a person.
As if that wasn't disconcerting enough in itself, Phil knew what this man's presence there meant. The castle had been ransacked over 150 years ago, the owner fleeing and all the staff slain. All except one, as it turned out. And thus, the blade had never left.
The blade had never left.
He had stayed, alone and isolated. Waiting for somebody who would never show up.
The same thought must have been crossing Wilbur's mind. "Wait, how long have you been here?" he asked, pulling his coat closer to himself. He had helped Tommy off the ground too, hand still lingering on his elbow.
"I don't know. I don't remember."
Tommy laughed, but it was a pinched little thing. More awkward than anything. Like he didn't know what to do with the discovery laid before them. "Well shit."
Wilbur turned his head and made eye contact with Phil. What he saw there was something he had become very familiar with over the past twelve years of knowing Wil. When he looked back at the blade, the man hadn't moved an inch. His fingers were still pressed against his stomach though, blood escaping from between the digits.
Phil made up his mind. "You're injured. We can help."
"I don't need help. I need to wait for my master to come back." The answer sounded prepared, Phil knew it had to be rehearsed. Drilled in until it became a certainty.
Trained, like an obedient animal.
He swallowed uneasily. "You can't stay here, this place is in shambles. They're not coming back-"
"Liar!" The man had drawn back even more, expanding the distance between them. His tail flicked angrily, unwilling to believe them.
Phil couldn't stand to watch this, he'd never been good with other people's suffering. He tried reaching out.
The blade's reaction was immediate. He flinched, scampering back to get away from Phil's attempt to help. "Leave me alone!"
"Wait-"
It was already too late. With surprising speed for somebody currently bleeding from an open wound, the man had run off, disappearing into one of the many corridors of the castle. Philza didn't waste a second in giving chase, knowing Tommy and Wilbur would catch up.
But mere minutes later he already had to give up. There were too many corridors to flee in, too many narrow passageways that Phil had no clue about. He couldn't hear the man's footsteps anymore, let alone tell where he had gone. The castle felt just as empty as it had before.
Tommy ran into him, breathing fast. Wilbur followed a few paces behind.
"Shit, now what do we do?" Wilbur rubbed a hand through his hair, a nervous tic Phil had seen a million times before.
"Let's split up and search for him," Tommy said.
"This place is huge, there's no way we'll find him. He knows the layout better than any of us."
"Well, we can't just leave? I mean…" Tommy turned to Phil, nonverbally asking for backup with pleading eyes. "He's what we were sent to look for, right? It would be wrong for us not to help him."
"We need to get to the bottom of what's going on here." Phil reached into the bag he had slung over his shoulder. "The sun is setting, we don't want to get caught out in the dark. Let's go for now and we can come back in the morning."
Neither of them looked entirely pleased with the proposition, but it was the best they could do. Phil pulled out a flask of water and some leftover rations wrapped in wax paper. He put them on one of the crumbled stone pillars, hoping at least the man would return and find them.
While Wilbur already went ahead, Tommy was reluctant to go, staring into the growing darkness of the castle's hallways as their torch was carried out. Phil went over and tapped his shoulder, urging him to come along.
"We'll be back to help him tomorrow. Promise."
Tommy tilted his head down a little. "You don't have to tell me that, I know."
But Phil could catch him throwing troubled looks over his shoulder for the entire journey back into town.
Chapter 2: The Blade I
Chapter Text
He had been waiting for his master to return for a long time.
He did not know how long, for there was no way to tell the turning from days into weeks into years aside from how the castle fell apart around him. But he knew it did not look anything like it used to and that meant they must have left an unbearably long time ago. The servants would not normally have allowed their master's possessions to become this undignified.
In his vaguest memories, he remembered being in awe when he was brought there, stumbling and small, the chain still attached to his collar and curled around the master's fist because he hadn't learned how to behave himself yet. He had been somewhere else way before that – somewhere filled with red stones and molten rock, fire and ash. But he had been taken and brought to the cage, where he was taught to fight in the arena.
Humans with wide grins would praise him for how good he was at it. Deadly with a sword, quick on his feet and agile, brutal with no mercy. They would tell him to step out on the sandy circle and kill whoever faced him while others sat in the stands and screamed for blood, exchanging gold between them whenever he won. Then the master had come and looked at him, inspected him like you'd expect an exotic animal. They nodded in approval, handing over the largest pile of coins the blade had ever seen.
They had taken him and brought him to this castle.
Back then, he had been in awe because it was a building larger and more lavish than anything he'd ever seen, larger than the coliseum even. Many humans worked there – most sneered at him as they passed him by. But he was told that he belonged to the master now so he should not care what they think. He was their perfect weapon, their precious blade.
And as any good blade should, he followed them into war.
Countless foes fell at his hands, perished with his sword in their throat or his claws raking down their backs. The master was happy and admired him, fed him their own scraps of delicious meals in reward whenever he had done particularly well. The chain was eventually taken away as a sign of trust, a sign of belonging - though he got to keep to collar since it was gold and the blade liked gold. He only tried to run away once, early on.
He was dragged back kicking and screaming and punished worse than he'd ever been for anything else. Worse than when he allowed an enemy commander to slip away in battle and reconvene with their allies, turning the result of the warfare to their disadvantage. Worse than when he had accidentally gotten one of the master's favorite horses hurt because of his carelessness.
Worse than when he had asked if he could have a bed, so he didn't need to sleep on the cold, hard floor anymore.
(People have beds. Weapons do not. The master had told him it was that simple and he never asked again)
After that first time, he never tried to escape again either and learned that if he didn't want to be punished he shouldn't do that which warranted punishment. They didn't need to hurt him if he was good.
When the night became filled with fire and screams, when a crowd of people larger than the ones on some battlefields was trying to break down the castle gates, the master left. They ran around as a man possessed, collecting up all their precious jewelry and fancy clothes. All that they could fit on the back of their horse without breaking it. And they had ridden off under the cover of darkness to flee the raging mob, forgetting entirely about their treasured blade. The gate was torn down not much later, the crowd ravenous with rage and vindictiveness both. Many of the servants were slain simply for the sin of being exploited by a man of greed, the castle was destroyed.
An elderly woman that worked in the kitchen and who had a soft spot for him forced him to hide. She told him to stay still and not move, to not come out until the sun had gone down and risen again at least twice. And the blade was excellent at following orders. He knelt in that hidey-hole until his knees ached and peeked through a small crack in the stones to watch the woman pushed down and slain. She always used to sneak him cookies whenever she baked some for the master.
She was killed because hiding him had robbed her of her own time to flee.
When he eventually crawled out, the castle had been emptied of any other living being, leaving nothing but corpses and blood. Like any good blade would, he stayed and waited for his master to return.
That hadn't happened yet.
Others came instead. They came to steal his master's belongings, so he did everything he could to protect them. Sometimes he killed the strangers, other times he merely scared them away. He was only allowed to eat when the master told him to, but whenever he grew too hungry he would take a small ration from the castle pantry. When those ran out and all the vegetables had gone moldy and foul, he started going just far enough into the forest to pick berries or hunt.
Once or twice, the thought struck him that he could leave. Walk into the woods and keep walking without ever looking back. Maybe he could try to find the cages again where people screamed for his victory? Or better yet, he could try and find his way back to the world of red which he barely remembered, the only place where he ever felt warm and safe. But then what would the master do when they came back… They would be angry, and disappointed, and without their blade to defend them.
They would punish him worse than they ever had before. No, the blade decided he had to wait for them.
And then three people came to the castle. He watched them approach with distrusting eyes from atop a little spot he'd found on the inner wall. The day before he had gone to the river to drink and a human had seen him. They had pulled out a bow to shoot at him, one arrow which managed to bury itself into his lower stomach before he could kill them. Back then, he had pulled the arrow out and washed the wound with the cold trickling water of the brook, yet it still smarted and he had barely slept due to the pain.
But the strangers needed to be dealt with still.
He tracked them as they moved throughout the castle and bickered, determining he could leave them be if they did not take anything. There was not much left to take either way, perhaps they were just curious explorers? Travelers who had stumbled upon a ruin and let their inquisitiveness get the better of them? If the blade was lucky, they would simply leave again and he didn't need to bother with them.
He was not that lucky. They had wandered and he had tried to follow without being spotted, moving across the wooden beams set in the ceiling to remain out of sight. The wound bothered him more than he expected, and when he tried to rip off part of his sleeve to wrap the gash and cover it some, he had stupidly slipped and fallen from his perch.
Before he could get up, he heard footsteps heading in his direction and then one of the strangers came around the corner to meet him, blue eyes wide in confusion. There was a dagger in their hand, the glint of it barely noticeable in the dark. He sprung on them, pinning them to the ground with a stifled scream.
Pinching at their wrist to make them drop the dagger worked, but then a great weight knocked into him and his entire side flared hotly with fresh pain. Driven by instinct, he reeled back and curled up. The person who had barreled into him had pulled the younger back to their side quickly, out of reach. The last intruder had arrived too, but they kept their distance.
He growled at them to leave him alone but he went cruelly ignored.
The blade was prepared to fight them. Wounded and outnumbered were not the most damning odds he had ever faced. He would defend himself when needed. He would go down fighting, he would take at least two of them with him.
Instead, the oldest of the men had spoken to him warmly. They had shared their names. They had offered to help him.
As confusing as that was, the blade answered their questions in return. Mostly because one of the master's rules had been that he wasn't allowed to lie. Not to them, not to any of the other humans. They could not rely on a weapon without implicit, unwavering trust. So he spoke the truth, always.
His words had concerned them further and made them double down in their insistence that they wanted to help.
Panicked, still with the burning pain in his gut and three pairs of eyes on him, the blade had run away.
He didn't need any help. He needed to wait for his master to come back. Never had he needed to listen to anybody except the master. Certainly never had anyone spoken to him with the same kindness as these strangers did.
All of it was too confusing for him to deal with.
He could hear them try to chase him, but his suddenness had taken them off guard, costing them the few precious seconds they'd need to catch up. And he knew every nook and cranny of the castle. There were tiny little corridors hidden between walls and more doors than anyone could reasonably count. It didn't take him long to lose them in the labyrinth of his home.
When he was sure they could not find him, he pressed against the wall and heaved, catching his breath. His stomach cramped painfully, his head pounded too. Biting his tongue to not let any noise slip out, he waited for them to leave.
He watched from the same spot he had when they arrived as the three of them disappeared into the forest again, ignoring the smallest part of his heart aching to go with them. It was so easy to ignore, to squash down. The master had called him a fickle beast once, a pathetic cretin that would scamper off in a heartbeat to any other owner that showed him a shred of decency.
The blade did not want to prove them right.
(But when he went down and found that they had left a bundle of dried meat and some water for him on a pillar, he still took it. It would be better if he didn't need to go out into the woods with his injury)
He ate just enough to stop the hunger cramps. As tempting as it was to have more, to finally fill that gaping pit of emptiness that permanently seemed to capture him in its grasp, he wanted to save some food for later. Winter was a hard time, with many animals hiding beneath the earth and becoming impossible for him to hunt. The water in the river never froze over, so at least there was always fish he could catch in a pinch. But the blade preferred red, hearty meat to the slimy texture of fish.
After he was done, he went to the room that had once belonged to his master. Not much of its former luster remained, but it was where the blade always slept. It was a habit hard to break.
He curled up on the floor near the foot of the bed and fell into an uneasy sleep.
When he woke up with a start, two things became immediately clear to him.
He had slept much longer than he usually did. Where normally the morning was still dim and muted when he woke up, the sun had risen high enough to be blinding when he woke this time. Beams of light fell in through the broken wall, dust particles dancing in their reach.
Eating last night had not helped much, nausea was swirling in his gut uneasily. From the moment he cracked his eyes open, the pounding between his temples returned with a vengeance. His skin felt prickly, uncomfortable, much too tightly wrapped around his bones.
More importantly, what had pulled him from sleep so abruptly was somebody calling for him.
Instinct overtook reason, drowning out the little logic in his brain trying to convince him the master was not going to return. He'd never listened to that specific thought anyway, and he was glad he would get to dismiss it entirely. Somebody was beckoning him, somebody was looking for him, somebody needed him.
Who else could it be but the master?
The blade scrambled up onto his feet, feeling the blood rush into his limbs much too slowly. Vaguely, he was aware of how crusted and stiff the front of his shirt was, the wound in his stomach had remained open all night. He'd bled a lot.
He hurried out, down the stairs and through the hallway. He could hear them yelling for him again. If he was quick enough, they wouldn't even be disappointed by his tardiness. Maybe he could be forgiven for his delay if the master understood how long it had been. He hadn't been called on in so long, he had almost forgotten what it meant to be prepared to drop everything and heel at a word.
And if he was punished, the blade would accept that too. His master was back, he would take a million punishments if that was what it took to be back in their favor.
He was prepared to toss himself at their feet and beg if that was what they wanted from him.
The castle was crumbling, the foundation falling apart. Many steps on the staircases had withered over time, and usually the blade knew exactly which ones to avoid and which ones were safe. In his excitement, even such basic memory escaped him.
He knew immediately the moment he had misplaced his foot, trying to catch himself from tumbling down the rest of the way by throwing out both arms. It was halfway successful, but he still stumbled. Reflexively, he tucked in his chin and turned the momentum into a half-roll, even if his body slammed into the ground much too hard to not be painful.
Same as the day before, footsteps approached him. But this time, it was the blade that got pinned down.
The man who had thrown himself on him was not the master either. It was the older one who had come to the castle yesterday - Phil. He put one hand on the blade's shoulder, curling the other around both his wrists to keep him from lashing out. His strength was not too impressive, he could easily throw him off. Something made him not do so.
And for a moment, the odd disappointment that it wasn't his master who had returned for him was mixed with the relief he felt seeing that the strangers had come back.
Why? Why had they come back?
"If I let go, are you going to run away again?" Phil asked. He sounded surprised at his lack of struggle.
The blade shook his head.
Phil sighed and let go. As soon as his weight had lifted, the blade got up and tried to run away.
"Shit!"
Something grabbed onto his ankle. He slammed into the ground, not even managing to soften the blow this time. The wound in his stomach protested the manhandling by shooting pain through his entire body and he couldn't help crying out.
"Fuck, sorry, I'm sorry." The person who had yanked his leg released him. "I panicked."
The blade rolled over, through his blurry vision he saw the guy with the glasses and weird hair was on the floor with him. It was brown, but near the front there was a streak of white that stood out. Wilbur? He was pretty sure that's what his name was. The last stranger whom he remembered as Tommy was hovering nearby, half-poised to chase after him if needed. Seeing him again, there was an identical streak of white blended in his blond hair, though it was much harder to see.
The blade pulled up his legs, a growl building in the back of his throat.
"Mate, you need to calm down." Phil stepped forward, but not as close as he had the day before. "We're not here to hurt you."
"I told you to leave me alone."
"Yeah, well, we're not going to so tough luck!" Tommy said, vehemently.
"We're really only trying to help," Phil said.
"I don't need help," the blade repeated as he had done the day before. Words he had learned by heart. "I need to wait for my master to come back."
"And what if they don't?"
Wilbur had not said it in a hurtful manner, but it still sent a stab of something unpleasant through his heart. "They will!" he spat.
They have to.
Phil cleared his throat. "Do you know how long it has been since they left?"
"I don't-"
"It's been over a century. That's how long you've been here." Phil looked at him with pity, a smile of compassion. The blade didn't like that at all. "They're… they're not coming back. They're not even alive anymore."
He opened his mouth but no noise made it out. Why was it so hard to breathe suddenly?
Were they lying? They had to be lying.
(He knew they weren't)
His vision had tunneled, a rush filling his ears. They were still talking to him but the blade wasn't listening.
He couldn't… he couldn't be without a master.
He couldn't .
"Will you come with us?"
He blinked. For some reason, those words did sink in through the static.
If the master was dead, the blade did not need to wait for them any longer. This was a truth.
These three strangers had come to the castle to take him, much like the master had done in taking him from the arena. This was a truth.
If his old master was dead, then whoever took him would be his new master. A weapon claimed by fresh hands.
Following the thread of his own logic, this also had to be true.
He nodded. "I'll come with you."
"Oh, okay! Great!" Phil's voice sounded a little winded as if he hadn't expected him to actually agree. "Well, uh… do you need a hand, can you get up?"
Ignoring the pain of the injury, he got to his feet immediately at the order. The blade had missed having a master. He had missed the simplicity of following commands and not having to make difficult decisions.
Already, this was much better.
"Shit, that looks bad," Tommy said. He was staring at his stomach, at the blood still pouring out of him.
He felt himself answer automatically. Never inconvenience the master with your problems, another important rule he had been taught. "It's fine."
"It's fine?!" Wilbur echoed rather loudly. "Doesn't it hurt?"
Never lie to the master.
"Well, yeah. But it's fine." When they didn't say anything - just kept looking at him worriedly like they did before - the blade shrunk back. Had he done something wrong? Did these masters have different rules for him to follow?
"It's okay," Phil said. Maybe he'd picked up on his distress, maybe he just didn't want to push. "We'll go back to our camp, then we can treat it."
Phil wasn't speaking in questions, decisiveness lining his statements. The blade was glad. He wasn't good with questions or concerns.
"If you want," he said. The master's wants were all that mattered to him.
They stared at him a moment longer, uneasy. Tommy broke the tension by clapping his hands together. "Yeah, yeah! Let's go back, I'm starving."
"How? You literally just had breakfast?" Wilbur said, genuine shock showing on his face.
"So?"
"So you're fucking weird for being hungry again."
They argued loudly as they walked towards the gate, Phil following behind them and keeping an eye on the blade, who trailed them as he used to with his other master. When they were outside, he took the risk of looking back despite not having permission to do so.
Leaving should not feel wrong. He had new masters, and his masters wanted to leave. The blade did not have any desires except those of his masters.
But as he looked back at the crumbling building he had grown up in, he thought of the walls he had raced through playfully when the master wasn't looking. He thought of the garden he had snuck out into, to pet the horses and comb their manes. He thought of the drawings he had made with sticks in the sand, pretending they were scenes from some great fantasy world.
He thought of the bones he had buried, all the people who had served the master and died to the crowd. He left flowers on their graves sometimes, thought the land had shifted and flattened over the years and he couldn't tell where the mounds were without stones to mark them.
The master had not come back; not for him, not for any of them.
And the swell of emotion in his chest then might be a little too close to sadness for him to name.
Chapter 3: Wilbur I
Chapter Text
Wilbur Soot was a lot of things. Stubborn, a liar, self-loathing, and not always the best at admitting when he was wrong.
But he wasn't a hypocrite.
When they had returned to camp after their exploration of the castle ground, they had sat around the fire in an oddly oppressive silence. Even Tommy had barely spoken for much of the return journey, which was very unlike him. Wilbur watched Phil bite at his lip in indecision and he had known then, that they would be taking that strange guy home.
Phil himself didn't know it yet - still weighing the risks against the rewards in his mind. Actions rarely didn't go preceded by thought for him. He wasn't one to make commitments without the needed considerations first. Wilbur knew this.
But Wilbur also knew that Phil could not turn his back on what was broken without at least making a token effort to fix it. Because over a decade ago, when Wilbur met the man, the same thing had happened.
—
[ "Stay still, little phoenix."
Tommy did not listen to him, he never did. The child renewed his fidgeting as Wilbur tried to wrap the cloak around him, small hands reaching out to entangle their fingers into Wilbur's hair and pull. He hissed, gently grabbing Tommy's wrists to push them away.
"I don't wanna sit still," Tommy complained, almost close to pouting. "And I don't wanna walk either."
"I know, but we have to. We have a long way to go and I don't want you to start complaining you're cold halfway there, okay?" Wilbur bargained. He secured the cloth around Tommy with an old pin, straightening it across his shoulder. Back when Tommy was a baby, Wilbur had used this same cloak to carry him around, hoisting Tommy onto his back safely secured in the makeshift carrier. It was a technique he'd been taught by his mother, who used to be a midwife when she was alive.
Wilbur was never allowed in the room for the actual birthing as a kid, though he often heard the shrill cries of women in labor from his place waiting in the hallway. But then his mother would emerge, a small squirming newborn in her arms still fresh with blood. Wilbur helped her clean them and bundle them up securely before they were handed off to their parents.
She had shown Wilbur from a young age how to take care of infants, and unwittingly saved Tommy's life in the process. Wilbur wouldn't have been able to take care of the foundling if it weren't for her teachings in his own childhood.
By now Tommy had grown too big for the carrier though, since he was already five. Wilbur's back would hurt if he was forced to haul him around all day like he used to.
"Where are we going?" Tommy asked, tucking his head against Wilbur's shoulder when he was lifted up from the table, where Wilbur had put him to help him with his welly boots. He'd already forgotten all about his complaints over having to walk.
"Into town. We're almost out of bread. And milk. And everything else, really," Wilbur said.
"Oh… did you play the guitar well?"
Wilbur eyed the guitar sitting against the wall. Tommy was asking him if he'd gotten gold coins while playing it on the street, which he was supposed to do to earn money. "Yeah," he lied. "We got plenty, Toms. It'll be alright."
"Will you get medicine too?"
Wilbur put him down and grabbed Tommy's hand instead as he opened the door so they could head out. "Probably not."
"Why?"
"It's expensive."
"You were coughing a lot last night…"
Wilbur exhaled through his nose a little. "It'll be alright," he repeated. "I'm more worried about having something to eat tonight, yeah?"
Tommy nodded. "Yeah, I'm hungry."
Swallowing past a clump of guilt in his gut, Wilbur answered. "Don't worry, we'll do something about that soon."
The big city was only a twenty-minute walk away. Living inside it was too dangerous, even those abandoned buildings that could be suitable for them to find shelter in were owned by somebody. Somebody who could come check in on their real estate, and who certainly wouldn't take kindly to two orphan kids squatting in their building. The shack they had found in the woods was much better, nobody ever came to visit it. Wilbur wasn't sure it belonged to anybody.
His grip on Tommy's hand tightened a little as they joined the throng of people making their way into the city through the gates, a guard on either side observing the procession with clear boredom. They had to walk on the outer edge of the road to keep out of the way of the merchants and their wagons. Those were headed towards the market, the same place Wilbur was going.
"You wanna check out the cows again?" Wilbur asked once they got there, not mentioning he could already feel Tommy pull on his arm in that direction.
"Yeah!" So he allowed Tommy to drag him along.
Several cows were standing around in a makeshift paddock, chewing their cud and swatting at flies with their tails. Tommy loved petting them, always saying he would get one when he was older and they could afford it. Wilbur never robbed him of the delusion, but he was pretty sure the animals for sale on the market were all meant for slaughter.
"Once I get one I'll call her Henry," Tommy said, hand reaching through the wooden beams to touch the cow that had curiously stepped closer upon their approach. She seemed disinterested when discovering they didn't bring any treats, though she still allowed the pets to proceed.
"Isn't Henry a boy name?"
Tommy scowled as if Wilbur had said the stupidest thing imaginable. "It's a cow name."
"Of course, my bad." Wilbur straightened his back, watching the crowd. It was already well past noon, the square was as packed with people as it was going to get on a weekday. "Tommy, you stay here. I'll be right back."
Without asking what Wilbur was going to do, Tommy nodded. He probably assumed Wilbur was just gonna run his errands, as he had done many times before.
And in a way, Wilbur supposed that wasn't entirely inaccurate.
Exhaling to release some of the tension in his muscles, he stepped forward and effortlessly slipped into the rows of people milling around the market. He was small enough that most didn't pay him any mind, nimble enough to squeeze through the rabble unnoticed. Quick enough to lift the coin purse off somebody's belt and disappear into the mass of other people before his victim could react.
Wilbur didn't like stealing. He didn't feel bad for doing it either, but the risk of getting caught frightened him. City guards were not expected to be lenient on pickpocketers, not even if they were children. If it wasn't for their hunger, Wilbur would have stopped at the very thought of what could happen if he was arrested. He'd be sent to an orphanage no doubt, Tommy too. The chances were pretty high that they'd be separated. They'd never see each other again. It scared Wilbur.
However, he was even more scared of Tommy starving.
He was careful to pick a suitable target. A lone traveler was always good, somebody who was new around these parts and more easily distracted by their surroundings than a local going about their weekly errands. Then it was as simple as getting close enough unnoticed, doing what he had to do, and disappearing before they could realize what had happened.
Today, he settled on a blond man in weird robes. Their flowy green clothes marked them as a tourist, their wide-eyed expression even more so. They were so enamored by the stalls and the wares being sold there that they didn't even notice Wilbur coming to stand right up beside them, the child pretending to be looking at the same books the man was preoccupied with.
Wilbur was acting as if the covers interested him a great deal, while discreetly glancing to the side every few seconds in the hopes the man turned more to the left. If they did, Wilbur would have no problem grabbing the purse that was dangling openly against their hip. Only a fool who was asking to be robbed would keep their money on such clear display.
"Don't you think those are a little too hard for you?"
Wilbur froze. The man laughed, mistaking his surprise at being spoken to for offense at his words.
"I don't know you, of course. But you don't strike me as the dense literature type, given your age. Books about politics sound boring, right?" They smiled, clearly trying to invite conversation. "What books do you usually read?"
With a shrug, Wilbur averted his gaze. As he hoped, his silence was interpreted as an unwillingness to talk to strangers and after a few seconds, the man went back to browsing. When they turned away to ask something of the vendor selling the books, Wilbur took his opportunity to strike.
He made a swipe for the man's purse, lifting it up diagonally because that's where the strap attaching it to their belt would be weakest, the leather mostly worn down by constant chaffing. With a sharp pull, it snapped loose. Now he just had to turn around and sprint away, blending into the crowd as quickly as possible.
At least, he would have done that, if it weren't for the fact that somebody had latched onto his wrist immediately.
"Hey!" The man's voice was sharp, but not hostile. "I know music doesn't earn you a lot of cash, mate. But I need to eat too."
Wilbur stared at them, shocked and half-expecting them to call for the guards at any moment. They didn't, that stupid smile still on their face as they patiently waited for him to hand their coins back.
Which Wilbur didn't do.
No, Wilbur kicked them.
The man yelped, jumping back when the tip of Wilbur's boot connected with their shin hard enough to make Wilbur's own toes hurt. Which meant it probably would have been twice as painful for them. Their hold on him loosened automatically and Wilbur ran.
He weaved between densely packed bodies, then crawled beneath a fruit stand so he could take a shortcut and dodge from the other end. Within seconds his chest was aching from the exertion, sharp stabs of pain making themselves known in his lungs and cutting his breathing short.
Last night had been bad, but Wilbur had really hoped he could have held out a little longer.
Still, even if the man tried chasing him, there was no way they could keep track of him in the crowd. There was no way-
Wilbur ran right into them.
"Oof." Their collision knocked the air out of both of them, the man also trying to suppress their own chuckling. They were clearly amused, as if this was a game. Wilbur was sent into a coughing fit, and they grabbed him by both his shoulders - so he couldn't take off again, but also because they were concerned. "Damn, you're fast. You okay, mate?"
"How- How did you-" Wilbur cut himself off, mouth open and closing several times as the coughing died down. He had been sure the guy was far behind him a mere second ago. Had they just materialized out of nowhere?
"How did I know you play music?" The man asked, completely missing the point. Wilbur nodded though because that actually was also something he wanted to know. "Your fingers. Those callouses mean you play some kind of stringed instrument, right?"
Wilbur glanced at them, then back up at their face. "Guitar."
"That'd be the most common yeah. I play a bit of lute myself. My name's Phil."
Before Phil could continue he stumbled forward and almost fell over. Wilbur looked down, only to see that Tommy had somehow managed to tackle the guy's leg.
"Let go of my brother you bastard!" Tommy shrieked with all the zeal a child of his age could possibly possess.
Phil looked down contemplatively. "Your brother?"
Wilbur reached out to tug Tommy to his side, pulling him behind himself. "Uh, yeah." They really needed to have another conversation about how bad Tommy was at following instructions.
"Where are your parents?"
"We don't need any," Tommy said before Wilbur could stop him. Phil frowned in that way adults often did when they found out children were without supervision and that's something they didn't approve of.
Wilbur didn't want him to trace that thought too far. "Look, I'm sorry about your stupid purse. I don't suppose I can give it back and you'll forget about this? We'll just get out of your hair-"
"I'm afraid not, mate."
Fuck. Wilbur knew this was going to happen. Phil was going to deliver them to some home for lost kids so they could be 'raised properly' or whatever and Tommy would be adopted immediately because he was the little blond-haired blue-eyed boy all parents dream of while Wilbur was…
Wilbur wasn't.
"I want to at least make it up to you," Phil said, completely derailing Wilbur's train of thought.
"What?"
"This was going to get you your dinner tonight, right?" Phil asked, indicating the purse still held in Wilbur's tight-wound, nervous fingers. "I'm going to need that back, but in return I'll make sure you won't go hungry. Deal?"
Wilbur bit his tongue, hesitating on what to answer. There was the possibility this could be a trap, maybe Phil was some freak trying to lure them somewhere and planning to sell them. Or worse-
"Do you have a big house?" Tommy asked, totally oblivious to Wilbur's hesitation.
"I'm afraid not," Phil admitted sheepishly. "I'm a nomad."
Tommy tilted his head, chubby cheeks even more pronounced when his entire face scrunched up in confusion. "What does that mean?"
"It means I don't have a house at all."
"Oh, we don't really have a house either!" Tommy beamed, clearly already feeling kinship with this strange man Wilbur still didn't trust as far as he could throw him.
"Then where do you sleep?" Phil asked, but Wilbur cut in before Tommy could answer.
"Don't tell him that!" Tommy shrunk back a bit at his harsh tone. Wilbur could apologize for that later when they weren't on the brink of being possibly kidnapped.
"I live in a tent myself, got it set up out in the woods west of here for now," Phil offered, not prying into their own living arrangement any further than that. "It's not much, but I got everything I need to make a pretty decent stew. I don't mind sharing."
Despite how harmless it all sounded, Wilbur still hesitated. Paranoia was such a mean beast to shake. He had been looking after himself for so long, he had found and raised Tommy all alone. And they had been fine by themselves. A little malnourished, or sick sometimes. When Tommy got the flu last winter, there hadn't been anything Wilbur could do but swaddle him in blankets and sit as close to the fire as he could stand, holding a shivering Tommy in his lap while the sweat poured down his back. Wilbur hadn't asked for any help, hadn't needed any help.
The last thing he wanted was this man's pity. Or for him to think they wanted him to take care of them.
Then Tommy tugged on his sleeve, muttering under his breath in a way Phil would definitely be able to overhear. "Wilbur, I'm hungry…."
In the end, Tommy was the more important thing here.
"We can come over. Just this once." When Tommy grinned, that almost made the lingering anxiety worth it.
"Do you have a cow?" Tommy asked next.
"Nope," Phil said, confused. "There's a lot of crows out in the forest though. They're smart little shits. If you feed them they'll remember you can be trusted."
Wilbur couldn't help but feel that was an allegory or something.
One night had turned into several nights, which had turned into every night for the entire month that Phil had remained camped out near the city.
And when Phil packed up to move, Wilbur and Tommy hadn't needed much prodding to collect the few personal items that lay scattered around their cabin so they could join him. ]
—
Thus when Wilbur sat by the fire that first night, watching the gears turning in Phil's head, there was nothing more certain in his mind than that this Blade person would be joining them.
"How long ago was that big fucking war again?" Tommy asked, poking the flames with a stick for no real reason since they weren't even close to dying out. It made embers spark up, flickers of it reflecting in his eyes. Watching him made Wilbur nostalgic.
"Haven't you been paying attention in your history lessons, little phoenix?" he couldn't help but say.
Tommy frowned at the return of his old nickname, which Wilbur hadn't used in years except to playfully mock him sometimes. "Oh fuck off, if that's anybody's fault it's yours, innit?"
Wilbur snorted, but he supposed he couldn't exactly deny that. "I think Phil said something like 150 years? Something close to that."
"That's a long time to be alone," Tommy said.
"Yeah," Wilbur agreed. "It is."
"Wait, if you were a soldier in the Age of Blood war, how old are you?"
"I don't know."
"How old were you when the war started?"
"I don't know."
"Do you know when you were born?"
"I don't."
"Tommy, could you please stop interrogating the poor guy." Phil found what he was looking for in his supplies, bringing the rolled-up leather over to where Wilbur and Tommy were sitting, each on either side of Blade.
"If he minded the questions he would have told me! Wouldn't you, Blade?" Tommy said, looking sure of himself.
Blade didn't immediately answer, eyebrows drawn together so there was a small crease between them. Wilbur had quickly noticed there were only two ways this guy reacted to questions: short but straightforward answers, or utter confusion as if he could barely comprehend what was being asked. This one would fall in the second category.
"I mind," Phil said, kneeling on the ground in front of them. "I need to concentrate on this."
"Do you need help?" Wilbur asked stupidly, even when knowing he'd probably not do any good with how squeamish he was. He still felt as if he had to offer.
"Let's see how bad it is first." Phil opened the pouch, revealing the medical instruments inside. "Could you take your shirt off, just for a moment?"
Blade did as he was told immediately. Wilbur pointedly did not stare at the man's body, as if that would somehow keep him from noticing the frankly ridiculous amount of scars that covered a majority of his skin. Tommy was not as tactful.
"Holy shit…How did that happen?"
Once more, the forehead crease. "Which one?" Blade settled on eventually. Phil was inspecting the wound on his stomach.
"They all look fucking gnarly," Tommy insisted. "Did you get them in the war?"
"Some of them."
"And the others?"
"Arena. Punishments. Training."
"You were in an arena?" Phil asked. "When?" He was using a cloth to clean out the worst of the dried blood around the injury, as well as the dirt inside it. Wilbur thought it must be painful, just looking at it - which he tried to avoid doing - was making his skin crawl. Blade didn't even flinch or give any other indication that what Phil was doing hurt.
"Before my mast-" Blade stopped himself. "Before my previous owner bought me."
Wilbur swallowed, tearing his eyes away and up to the man's face. "When was that? Do you know the year?"
"I don't."
At least partly, they were all trying to figure out this man's exact age. Clearly, he was an adult and going by the accounts of his part in the war he had been an adult then too. But it would be hard to know how long he'd been with the lord he was serving before that.
Wilbur couldn't shake the feeling that Blade was younger than him, even with all the scars and grime on his face. He looked younger. But Wilbur knew how fragile that illusion was if he just thought about the fact that this man had been alive and fighting wars over a century before his birth.
Phil was wiping his hands clean. "It doesn't look too bad, thankfully. Probably just a minor infection. Does it hurt?"
Blade considered this. "Yes," he decided.
"Then why didn't you say anything?" Tommy asked.
And then the crease returned. Wilbur was starting to notice a bit of a pattern.
"It's alright, I've got some salve that will help. We'll just bandage it up and then we can eat, hm? Tommy, will you get more firewood for me?"
"On it!"
As Tommy marched off on his new mission, Phil smiled up at the man he was tending to. "I'm glad you don't mind his energy, I imagine it can be a lot to get used to after being alone for so long. If he becomes too much you can just say something though. Tommy gets excited, but he's also very considerate of others. He'll listen."
Wilbur saw the crease deepen twofold. There was something about what Phil had said that Blade really couldn't place.
"And if he doesn't, just snitch to me and I'll get him to listen," Phil added on as a joke.
Blade did not look less bewildered, but he did nod. Maybe only to satisfy Phil.
"Great, you're all done!" Phil drew back, giving the properly wrapped-up wound another once over but coming away satisfied. "Wilbur, do you mind if I go check the traps or..."
"Nah, it's fine. I'll stay with him."
Then it was just the two of them. Wilbur didn't force conversation, because frankly Phil had been right. Going from living in complete isolation since basically forever to suddenly having three people around you all the time would be enough to overwhelm anyone. Blade just kinda sat there, lost in thought. Wilbur wasn't going to disturb the guy.
Except, well…
"Don't you want to put your shirt back on?" Wilbur asked.
There it was, the return of Wilbur's favorite expression. It was almost like he could see Blade's brain shortcircuit in real time.
"I mean, you probably should," he amended. "It's going to get cold at nightfall."
The Blade scrambled to follow the direction now that it had become something he could interpret as a command. When he picked up his shirt though - which he'd had kinda left balled up on the ground until then - Wilbur stopped him.
"Wait, actually uh…" Wilbur was trying to gauge clothing size by eye but he was really bad at that. He could wait for Tommy to be back, but that might take a minute. "I don't think that shitty thing is going to keep the cold out any better. Hold on."
Maybe if they'd met a century ago, Blade would have been too big to fit Wilbur's clothes. They were almost the exact same height, but Wilbur was consistently described by people as being lanky - perhaps to a ridiculous degree. Once a warrior, malnutrition had now brought Blade close to the same body shape.
So Wilbur got up and fetched one of his own spare button-ups, and a dull mustard yellow sweater that was a whole size too big and which he kind of hated but always hauled around just in case. Finally, it would serve a purpose after all.
Combined with the mess of hair, bare feet, and the fact he still was in dire need of a bath, it made a comedic sight. But at least it would keep the man from freezing.
Wilbur could not fault Phil for anything, least of all for taking in somebody who needed help learning how to look after themself, even if they didn't know that yet.
After all, Wilbur was not a hypocrite.
Chapter 4: The Blade II
Chapter Text
The blade had forgotten how much there was to get used to when changing masters. He'd only really done it once, when he was sold by the arena. And even then, the people that took care of him at the coliseum were not the same as his master. They did not treat him too differently from any of the other fighters. If he fought well, he was mostly left alone in his cell between battles. He had a wooden sword to practice with, and a desk he could sit at even if he couldn't do much more than stare at the wall while doing so. They brought him meals twice a day and barely talked to him, not keen on ordering him around.
His master had only trained him properly after acquiring him. They had taught the blade everything he knew about following directions and being useful. They had shown him his worth. And he had lived by their rules for so long that changing was hard, like forcing a bent and rusted piece of metal out of shape.
He was deathly afraid of making a mistake.
Because it did not matter whether the blade knew if what he was doing was allowed or not. The master didn't care if he understood the reason for his punishment, or if it was an accident - a rule broken because he didn't know of its existence. They only cared that he had been bad and he needed to be disciplined.
These new masters… The blade didn't get them yet. He didn't know their wants. And that was dangerous. He felt as if he was walking across a field of pitfalls, a disaster waiting behind every corner. At any moment, he could mess up and discover the extent of their wrath. He wouldn't be able to hide behind the excuse of being a weapon ill-forged anymore.
He had been trained, he had been sharpened. He should know his role by now.
But if they didn't explain the rules to him, how was he supposed to follow them?
At least there was small mercy in him already figuring out the hierarchy. The blade never had multiple masters before, so he was unsure how to go about it if their orders ever were to contradict each other. He'd already noticed that the other two seemed to look to Phil for guidance though. If not their superior, Phil was probably considered the leader in some regard. The blade would do the same and follow their individual orders as best as he could, but when in doubt he could just do whatever Phil told him to. That seemed the safest bet to avoid punishments.
(Phil was kind to him. He washed the filth out of his wound and applied an ointment that had numbed the angry stinging of reddened skin into a vague throb. He had made the blade drink some water, with a chalky white pill that would bring down his fever)
He shook the thoughts of kindness away. No, Phil was just keeping him in working order. His masters would need him in a good enough condition to travel, and a good enough condition to fight should trouble arise. From how Wilbur and Tommy spoke of it, their home was not too far away. Surely, when they got there his duties would be laid out for him. Probably similar things to what he used to do with his old owner.
The blade hadn't heard of any wars recently, but if the masters' story was true - and he could not doubt them, he could not doubt anything his masters said ever, that was another big rule - then he'd been isolated for so long, he might just not be aware of them.
Wars were a constant, too. There was always one simmering beneath the surface.
Big battlefields or small skirmishes or pathetic uprisings of locals rebelling against the taxes. They owned everything to his master, and these commoners had the audacity to try and cheat them out of their earnings?
The blade was appalled by their ingratitude.
(He had been taught to thank the master for everything he was granted, including the very air he breathed)
So he had no doubt these masters had their own conflicts for him to fight in. They could use him. They could need him.
(He hoped so, he hoped so, he hoped so-)
"Here." Phil handed him a wooden bowl, the warmth a pleasant sensation against his fingers. The blade hadn't eaten soup in… very long.
He could not meet their eye, scared of seeming rude. "Thank you."
Phil smiled. He passed a bowl to Tommy as well, who had held off on the questioning for now. And then Wilbur, long legs curled in front of him. Both of them started to eat immediately.
Phil served himself last. The blade was confused since it didn't fit his mental hierarchy. If Phil was the leader, he should be served first. But then again, Tommy and Wilbur were his masters too. They weren't weapons. They weren't even servants.
Why had the blade been handed a bowl first?
Not that it was his place to question anything they did anyway. He watched as Phil also started to eat, still waiting.
The soup smelled delicious. His stomach hurt, cramping around nothing. He hadn't eaten since last night's dried meat. And before that, he'd not managed to hunt or catch anything for two days. But he did his best not to stare at the swirling of the broth, the floating pieces of rabbit meat, and some type of vegetable root Phil had cut up and put in it earlier. He kept waiting.
He could be good. He could be obedient. So he waited.
"What are you doing?" Tommy cut into his fast-dissolving thoughts.
Wilbur made a soft noise, scowling a little. "Gross, don't talk with your mouth full Tommy."
"Like you're any better," Tommy accused. Then he turned, eyes fixing on the blade again. "Aren't you hungry?"
The 'no lying' rule was one of the only ones the blade was certain still rang true. He couldn't imagine any master - new or old - that would abide by having a deceitful weapon.
"I am."
"Then why aren't you eating?"
"I…" He swallowed thickly. All three men were looking at him again. Their stares were not unfriendly, but the blade still found himself shrinking back under scrutiny. His old owner did not look at him to address him. Why would they? You don't talk to a weapon, do you?
"I want my blade on the right flank," they would say, shuffling small wooden figurines across a painted map. The blade had played with those figurines a few times when nobody would notice. They were like giants on the makeshift tapestries of the battlefields, taller than the buildings and trees that were drawn upon the map.
Kneeling on the floor at their feet, head bowed because the master could not stand it when the blade stared at them while they were strategizing their battles, he answered. "Yes sir."
His master did not acknowledge him, continuing to talk with their commanders.
Currently, his masters were looking at him. They were expecting an answer.
"I'm waiting on permission to eat," he said.
(No lying, no lying, no lying - he reminded himself firmly. Even if the scowls he got in response to his statement made him want to dig in his claws and pull out his flesh for displeasing the masters)
"You don't-" Wilbur started but then Phil moved a hand to his shoulder and Wilbur's jaw clicked shut suddenly. The blade hadn't seen what happened there, if there was the exchanging of a gesture or other nonverbal sign he was not privy to.
All he knew was that Phil smiled at him again, somehow even more patient than before. "Alright, I'm sorry for forgetting to tell you. You can eat now."
"And you should before it gets cold," Tommy added on. "The meat gets all chewy if you leave it in too long."
The blade didn't need to be told twice, mainly because his gut revolted at the very thought of being empty for another minute. He finished the bowl in ten seconds flat, not really caring for table manners.
He had never learned any, regardless. Most often he ate on the floor at his master's feet. No cutlery, just his hands and a plate. Sometimes he got food in the kitchen when one of the more sympathetic servants snuck him a few morsels.
When he was done, his stomach illogically hurt more than it had before. As if getting a small taste had managed to break the dam on an insufferable flood of hunger. He bit his tongue, not wanting it to show on his face even if he couldn't help from pressing one palm against the source of his pain.
Wilbur saw.
"Do you want more?"
The blade startled. Automatically, his shoulders hunched and he tucked his chin in a little. "I don't-"
(A weapon doesn't want anything)
"Let me rephrase." Wilbur held out his hand, prompting the blade to hand him back the bowl. "Can you eat more?"
"Yes," he answered quickly. He definitely could eat more.
"Okay then. Here you go." He tried not to seem too eager as Wilbur filled the bowl again.
The soup tasted as good as it smelled, maybe even more so. By the end of it, the blade was satisfied in a sense he couldn't remember being in a long time. He held onto the bowl a little longer, fingers tracing the edges of the wood to distract himself from a conversation he couldn't entirely follow or be swept up in. He'd become so accustomed to tuning out when people were speaking to each other, that it took him a minute or two to realize they were actually attempting to involve him in the conversation.
"I see Wilbur gave you his sweater." Phil's voice finally broke through the static. There was something about the infliction of it, age-worn and amused, which made it easier for the blade to listen to. It had a familiar, comforting quality to it.
Odd...
"When we get home we can get you some proper clothes." Phil held out his hand and even though he would have liked to hold onto the bowl a little longer, the blade reluctantly gave it back. "And a proper bath too. No offense, mate, but you look like you haven't touched any water in a long fucking time."
Wilbur scrunched up his nose, leaning a bit closer into his personal space. "Yeah, you definitely smell. Like, worse than Henry."
"Henry doesn't smell!" Tommy gasped, obviously offended.
"I think you just stopped noticing because you spent so much time around her," Wilbur said. He turned towards the blade, speaking in a low tone as if this was a secret only they needed to share. "Sometimes Tommy sneaks out at night and sleeps in the barn. It's adorable."
"Shut up!"
"We can cut your hair for you too," Phil continued talking as if he couldn't hear the other two squabbling among themselves. "The ends are an absolute mess, that can't be pleasant to walk around with."
The blade didn't answer, fingers clenching and unclenching uselessly without anything to hold onto. The scars on his palms had never seemed particularly interesting to him before, but now with people scrutinizing him all the time, it had suddenly become impossible to tear his eyes away.
When Phil was still staring at him after several more seconds, he realized the other was looking for an answer.
"If you'd like," he said evenly.
He really, really hoped his new masters didn't want to chop his hair short. He liked fidgeting with the long strands, and he'd had it like this for ages. From before the arena. Even his old master hadn't told him to cut it, they had liked to run their fingers through it sometimes (or if he was bad, used it to yank him around).
But if the new masters wanted it gone then-
"We'll see when we get there." Phil shrugged, unconcerned. Then his eyes flicked down, narrowing a little. The blade knew what he was looking at and tensed. "You can take that off too, you know."
His hand shot up, the cold metal of the golden collar an accustomed weight against his fingertips. The edges of his nails could barely slip under the tight fit, digging into the skin beneath. Frozen, he felt as if his very muscles had become stones grating against his bones.
"Yeah, you don't need to keep wearing that." Tommy's head tilted to the side, expression open but somehow unreadable. "It's kinda weird man."
They wanted it off. They wanted it gone too.
Of course they did, it was a sign of him belonging to his old master. It was what proved to even the most foolish and casual observers that this blade was theirs.
(But then, it had become his too. It had become his collar, his gold, his, his, his, the only item in the world that belonged to him. They changed his clothes and they took his swords when they got dull and he never got to keep anything because he was a thing to keep, he wasn't a person so how could he own something?
The collar had stayed, always.
The collar was his)
The blade did not want to take it off.
But as a weapon, he should not have any wants except those of his masters. And they wanted the collar to go.
It should be easy. The blade knew how easy it should be.
Somehow, it wasn't.
Somehow, he couldn't breathe and he couldn't move and he was being so bad for his masters, he was not being a good blade at all, he was being a disgraceful, ungrateful little thing. He would get punished for defying their orders - especially a task so simple. Just take it off. Just take it off - his mind was screaming but he couldn't, he could try and it would be akin to tearing his heart out of his chest.
He should though. For his masters, he should want to tear his heart out of his chest. It didn't matter.
"Hey!" There was an iron grip on his wrists, pulling his hands down and away from his throat. His fingers were warm and slick an oh, he noticed then that was because there was blood on them. Because he'd been tearing at his own skin, at the collar.
Instincts compelled him to try and struggle. To want to reach up and take it off. Not because he wanted to - he didn't, he didn't, he didn't want to even if he had no wants - but because he'd been told to.
But the person who was holding him was relentless, unmoving. "Just breathe," they told him. "Calm down, breathe for a minute."
He shook his head, still trying to slip from their hold. He needed to do what his masters wanted from him.
"Stop!"
Immediately, he stopped.
His arms would have dropped down limply if it weren't for Wilbur's hold on them, keeping them in front of his chest. His thumbs press into the blade's wrists, almost painfully so. He still couldn't breathe, chest convulsing as it worked to provide air.
"Breath," Phil said next. He used the same firm way of speaking, of delivering a command, as when telling him to stop. It worked perfectly. "I want you to breathe in slowly while counting to five. Then do the same while exhaling, count to ten."
Okay, he could do that. He hoped he could do that.
"I'll show you." And then Tommy was snatching one of his hands from Wilbur's hold to press it against his own chest instead.
Tommy breathed in deeply, really exaggerating the action so the blade could feel his chest expand. With traces of panic still desperate to crawl their way up his throat, he tried to mimic what Tommy was doing. Wilbur kept a hold on his other wrist, not as tightly now. Just kind of lingering.
Gradually, the blade stopped choking on thin air.
He flinched back, away from their touch which felt like needles being driven into his nerves. Mercifully, they didn't question him on it. "I'm sorry," he said. The world was still shaky, or maybe that was everything else about him. He bowed his head, waiting for his punishment.
There was no excuse. He'd been without a master for so long, he had forgotten all of his lessons and he'd been acting out like an untrained dog again. He was shameful and failed as a weapon.
He deserved to be punished.
"It's-"
"Keep it on." Phil cut Wilbur off. "At least for now. Keep it."
What flooded through him then was an odd mixture of confusion and relief. It didn't take too long for the first to be drowned out by the second though. Because he got to keep his collar, his gold, the only thing that was his.
He didn't get why. But when did the blade ever get what the master did, or what the master wanted?
He had not the right to get it. A weapon's intellect was too small to comprehend the complex thoughts and emotions of people. He could only be grateful. Once again, he couldn't meet their eyes.
"Thank you."
It wasn't the right words. He was a selfish, wretched thing.
But he got to keep his collar. The masters had proven themselves too kind once again for somebody as pathetic as him. The blade knew he would have to try harder from now on, and try to repay them for their benevolence.
He would show them he was deserving of being their blade too.
Chapter 5: The Blade III
Chapter Text
The home his new masters talked about sounded wonderful to him.
Not that it really mattered to the blade. His old master's castle had been grand, one of the most lavish places he'd ever witnessed, if poorly defensible as the end of the war had proven. During his many years of serving in foreign conflicts, he had been to other strongholds that belonged to both allies and enemies. But he'd also slept in tents, great big messes of canvas where forty soldiers were packed together back to back to stay safe from the elements on the battlefield.
More often than not, he had slept on the ground too. It truly didn't make a difference to him.
But Wilbur talked about the town they lived in fondly, saying it was not populated by many people yet everybody knew each other. The castle was pretty far away from the nearest village, and his master rarely took him into one. So the blade was a little curious to see what it was like. Tommy had already spoken in detail to him about the farm animals they had, as well as a garden that they used to grow vegetables. Phil said he had built their house himself from scratch.
Curiously, they never mentioned any other servants.
The blade figured there probably had to be some though, who else took care of the chores while the three of them were away?
They were close to reaching it. Eight days of travel, during which they mainly stuck to backroads or shortcuts through the forest that Phil found while reading off a big, ancient-looking map. Sometimes they walked in silence, sometimes the others talked among themselves. Tommy still asked the blade a lot of questions, though not as many as near the start. Often, Wilbur sang songs.
At night they ate and slept and the blade tried to stay up despite not being told he was supposed to keep watch. But since his masters were sleeping, it was only logical he had to be on guard. If he fell asleep too and something bad happened, he had failed his duty as their weapon.
And he still so, so desperately wanted to prove to them his worth. Because their kindness had not stopped.
Phil still checked on his wound and used his medicines to alleviate the pain until the blade hardly felt it anymore and was sure the bandages could come off permanently soon. Wilbur gave him more food than the blade would ever have dared to dream of when under his old master. Tommy showed him how they set the traps, and how to take them down without breaking them if no animal had been caught by sundown.
(That last one was especially important because if he did it wrong and broke the traps, they'd need to punish him. They had been extremely lenient so far, but the blade wouldn't test their patience. It had to end somewhere, he wasn't looking forward to finding out)
"We'll get there by noon, give or take," Phil said, folding up the map in his lap.
"Great." Wilbur stretched his arms above his head, making the blade wince when the socket popped unpleasantly. "Can't wait to sleep in a bed again tonight."
"Where's the big man going to sleep?" Tommy asked, gesturing vaguely with the spoon he'd been using to eat porridge.
"On the couch, probably. At least for now."
Tommy scoffed. "That lumpy old thing?"
"You could forfeit your own bed," Wilbur suggested with a sly grin on his face.
"I'd rather die," Tommy said. The blade couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. Not that it mattered, it was a completely ridiculous proposal. Him, sleeping in the same bed as one of his masters usually did? Not even after being left alone in the castle had he ever done that - not even when winter frost came in cold and cracked the stone foundation, and he spent several freezing nights shivering on the floor. And when that had given him a fever, he had laid next to his master's old bed that looked as if its embrace could send him straight to heaven, wondering if he'd die there alone, forgotten.
(Abandoned... A thought he'd pushed away because his master would come for him. They would have if they could. The new masters had come instead, but the blade secretly thought the old master probably also would have come back if he'd been allowed to wait for them just a little longer)
"We could finally clean out the storage room?" Wilbur said. "I think most of the stuff in there should have been thrown away ages ago. And the rest could fit in the barn, probably."
"Oh yeah!" Tommy's spoon gestured at the blade next, the utensil brandished his way like a weapon. "Then we can be neighbors."
"Neighbors?" the blade echoed. He'd heard the word before, he knew. But he couldn't place the meaning.
"My room's right next to yours then. Phil and Wilbur are across the hall."
He nodded. It wasn't like he had much of a choice anyway. If that's what his masters wanted, the blade would make it happen. Getting an entire room for himself though… he hadn't been allowed that since the arena. Tiny but quiet, somewhere to rest between matches. He had liked that room.
These masters really were wonderful.
(Not that his old one hadn't been. No, no, he couldn't start thinking like that. Ungrateful, disgusting thing that he'd become)
"We could ask Niki-"
Whatever the rest of Phil's sentence would have been stopped short at the sound of footsteps in the underbrush. A pair of heavy boots heralded a stranger's approach. Only one man pushed his way through the thicket towards them, but the blade could hear there were more. Five at least, maybe six. They were outnumbered.
"Hello there." The stranger spoke with a friendly disposition, a toothy white smile stretching wide. It did nothing to hide the dagger strapped to their belt, or the leather armor they wore over their clothes. A cloth bandana was tied around their neck, patchy blue fabric stained with something that might be blood.
The blade had met enough roadside bandits in his days to know where this was going.
A growl built in his throat, but it didn't seem like anybody heard him. Phil had stood up too, putting himself firmly between the stranger and where the others were still sitting. His hand casually rested on the hilt of his sword, an undisguised threat.
Yet when he spoke it was with such amiability it took the blade aback. "Good morning. You gentlemen look like you could use a warm fire and some rest. We'd be glad to offer you ours since we'll be moving on now."
The blade didn't get it. These were criminals, peasants intent on robbing them - robbing his masters. Why would Phil talk to them so casually?
Then his eyes flicked to Wilbur, frozen and pale. And to Tommy, who was standing so close to him they were almost touching.
(He vaguely remembered a boy in the arena, hands stained with blood and eyes full of memories. The boy would always cry when somebody had their head lopped off. The blade didn't get it, he hadn't understood until he heard the boy curled up in his sleep, whimpering and begging for his dead parents, who he had seen executed the same way)
The man grinned a little, inclining his head. "That so… I'm afraid we got some trouble on our hands then."
Phil's face darkened. "Do tell."
That was when their companions stepped forward, though it was clear to the blade that their presence had not been a surprise for the others either. Wilbur had his fingers clenched around the hilt of his own sword, grasp not half as natural as Phil's but firm enough, showing he had no scrupulous about using it. Even if he looked like he'd been nailed to the spot. Tommy was holding his dagger, brandishing it protectively in front of Wilbur. It was the very same one he had tried using to attack the blade when they first met.
Tommy was biting his tongue, or close to it. Amusedly, the blade had the thought that Phil probably warned Tommy about situations like these - highwaymen were an unavoidable part of the traveler's lifestyle. When their army traveled with a small enough battalion, even they had been held up by roadside robbers occasionally. Phil must have told Tommy that if this were to happen, he should leave the talking to Phil.
(Strangely, foreign, the blade couldn't even place why that amused him so much. Maybe because hearing Tommy talk about every subject under the sun for eight days had made him a little curious to know what he'd say now, in this situation.
Tommy always had an answer to everything, Wilbur said. Despite their short acquaintance, the blade was inclined to agree)
"If you hand over all your valuables, we don't want no more trouble." They gestured to their companions, making them spread out to the sides. A pathetic attempt at surrounding them. The blade had seen farm soldiers with more strategic insight.
"Well, I'm afraid that's going to be a problem then." Phil laughed, even as his other hand pulled his sword from its sheath. "Because we're not giving you shit."
The man stared at him a moment longer, considering. The blade could practically see the cogs turning up there in their empty head. Then - just as he had expected - they sprung forward.
Phil caught their blow easily, sloppy as it was. Pulling his attention away, the blade snarled and threw himself toward the nearest enemy to fulfill his duty. This was what he was trained to do, this was what he was born for. He didn't have a weapon so he used his hands instead. He clawed into the man's shirt until he could push them into a tree hard enough to hear their skull crack under the pressure. They fell onto the ground limply, leaving behind a smear of red. They were probably not dead.
(His old master had told him to kill, always. Any foe who could get back up again was one who could turn around and drive a dagger between your shoulders later. Any village that was left standing could train more soldiers that harmed their war efforts down the line.
Any child not strong enough to raise a sword could grow up to be a man that undid everything they fought for)
The blade turned away. These new masters had enforced no such order, and it was clear they were wielding very different rules from his old master.
(Maybe, just maybe, he could get away with it this once... And if not, he would bear the punishment and learn to do better)
Phil had downed their leader and one more. Almost as if enraptured, the blade watched him move. There was something elegant about it, almost mesmerizing. Phil was light on his feet, fast but steady. Cloth trailed behind him like a banner, engulfed in smoke. He remembered battlefields from long ago.
Then Tommy yelped and instantly his attention was back to the present.
There were two more men on that side, and both of them were on Tommy because Wilbur was still standing there frozen, shaking. Tommy managed to fend off one person, dagger now buried hilt-deep into their shoulder and being turned with a sickening squelch. But the other one was coming up behind him.
And thus, the blade got between them.
A split-second decision saw him choosing between stopping their weapon with his hands or his arm. Neither would be ideal, but the first option meant he wouldn't be thrown off-balance as easily so the blade brought his hands up and caught steel with flesh. It was only thanks to his own strength that the momentum stopped and didn't slice his fingers clean through.
Instead, blood pooled immediately, slick and hot. Gritting his teeth through the sharp blossoming of pain, he held their sword still and met confused gray eyes with his own blazing red ones.
(Pathetic. They couldn't even fathom putting themself in harm's way to protect who they belonged to.)
"Tommy-" Wilbur choked out. He was moving then, though his legs seemed much too unsteady to carry his weight, let alone force him into motion no matter how much desperation pulled at him. Because the guy Tommy was grappling with was pushing back, fingers crooked and aiming for the boy's throat. And Phil was still dealing with the third of the group he'd been faced against.
If the blade did not intervene, they might hurt one of his masters.
He slid his hands down, along the honed edge so that it cut into his palms deep enough to hit bone. What had been a blossom before exploded violently enough to have tears pricking at the corners of his eyes at how much it hurt.
(And the blade hated himself for it. He had grown soft, had grown weak. He pushed in deeper and didn't care if he'd ruin his hands forever by doing this. What use were they if they couldn't serve?)
Then blood-coated skin met a vanguard, which the blade could hold onto and pull. Simultaneously, he kicked the man in the stomach, loosening their grip so he could rip the weapon from their hands. He turned it over and used it to slit their throat.
Tommy had dealt with the last man left standing by then and the silence that settled over them was disquieting, full of nothing but ragged breathing. Like some great storm has torn through them and they were all just observing the wreckage.
Ironically, Wilbur pulled himself from his stupor first.
"Fucking hell man." Finally, Wilbur managed to move. The blade was expecting him to check on Tommy, covered to his elbows in blood though one could easily see he was unharmed. Maybe Wilbur would rush over to Phil, shoulder shaking from the burst of adrenaline but also left unscathed. Perhaps he'd get rid of the men who were unconscious but alive.
Wilbur did none of those things.
Wilbur rushed over to him.
And the blade shrunk back, flinching away.
Fear filled him like a wicked beast, baying and clawing. Had he not done what they wanted? Had his performance been unsatisfactory? Were they disappointed that the blade had not been faster, stronger, better, and they had been left getting their hands dirty?
Was this the end of their kindness?
Wilbur grabbed his wrists, not unlike before when the blade couldn't breathe because he thought they would take his collar away. And training won out from instinct then, making his entire body go slack despite how much he wanted to tear loose and run. He needed to accept his punishment because not doing so would mean he thought their retribution was unfounded.
(He would never not deserve what they did, because the masters were always right)
"Shit, that's a lot of blood." Wilbur drew away, only to come back a moment later with a towel and press it to the blade's bleeding hands. "Why the fuck did you do that?"
He exhaled, confused. "I was helping."
"I appreciate it, but that was stupid."
Tommy came up next to him. "Why the fuck would you catch it with your hands though?!"
"That was quicker."
"That was dangerous," Wilbur said sharply, voice shaky. There was something beneath, something which made Tommy glance at him.
"Wilbur-"
Wilbur shook his head. "I'm fine, it's fine, it's just- don't do that again. Fuck."
The blade just stared at the towel getting tinged with his blood, confused. Were they scared he'd be permanently damaged? Was that it?
His master's fingers were wound so tight around his upper arm it hurt, making bruises where there weren't any already. The blade was using his other hand to press against his stomach and keep what was on the inside from slipping out. He felt like he was going to puke and dark spots danced around his vision.
When they arrived at the infirmary, they threw him onto the ground.
"Fix it," they said coldly to one of the medics rushing around tending to the other patients. "I can't have it dying on me."
Voices flowed around him like water, muddling his senses. They pulled and pushed at him, the blade thought - hoped - that maybe he would die. A small, selfish wish. But they patched him up and put him outside again as soon as he wasn't actively bleeding out anymore. So he crawled towards the bunks instead, curled up between two beds, and fell asleep.
The next day, his master needed their blade again. And he would never disobey their wishes
"Tell me if it hurts," Phil said, hands pushed under the blade's own. Supporting them.
He nodded. But really, the antiseptic was nothing compared to the field medicine in the midst of war. Wilbur had gone off for a walk ten minutes ago and hadn't come back yet. Tommy went out to look for him. When they came back, they would move on immediately. They could still reach the home by nightfall.
From under his lashes, the blade peeked at Phil as he worked. He shouldn't - he really shouldn't. A weapon does not get to ask questions.
But it itched and he remembered the master's bruises and the cold of the tent and he had to know or it would burn within him forever.
"Sir?"
Phil frowned down at their hands but continued working. "I told you, you don't have to call me that. Just Phil is fine."
The blade ignored it. "Is Wilbur okay?"
A few seconds passed where Phil continued to simply stare at their hands. There was a soft smile on his face, closer to a wry expression than anything. "Wilbur will be fine. This type of thing just brings up some bad memories for him."
Not wanting to say he didn't understand, the blade kept silent. But it was as if Phil could tell from his face.
"When he was younger, Wilbur lost some people. People who were very important to him." Phil spoke awkwardly. "It's not really my place to tell you this but, yeah… That's why he reacted so strongly. Give him some time to walk it off, he'll be fine."
"So he was scared?"
"I don't know about scared," Phil said, slowly. As if he had to pick each word carefully. "More likely he was concerned."
And that… That didn't clear anything up at all.
"Concerned…" He was testing the word out, but it didn't feel right on his tongue. Not in reference to what another person might feel when looking at him.
"That's what happens when you care about people, mate. You start giving a shit when they're hurt." With that, Phil stood up and clapped him on the back. Before he could question that statement further - and maybe finally get some answers - Wilbur and Tommy returned.
Wilbur's eyes were kinda red like he'd been crying. The blade knew he shouldn't mention it though. Tommy had one hand on Wilbur's shoulder.
"All packed?" he asked.
"Jup!" Phil hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder. "Let's go home."
Chapter 6: Tommy I
Chapter Text
Tommy loved traveling, but he loved coming home even more.
It felt like slipping into an old pair of shoes, comfortable and worn. With no annoying fucking stitches that dug into your toes on each step. No matter how long he was away, home always felt nice. And after growing up without one that feeling seemed to only be stronger. Being on the road was fun, being able to sink into his bed and hear Wilbur play guitar through the walls was fucking fantastic.
Phil was a bit on edge after their encounter with those assholes, so they'd not taken many more breaks. Tommy was exhausted. The sun had gone under for the day but they hadn't stopped to rest because they were too close to the village to really justify it. Tommy whined and harped but Wilbur straight up refused to give him a piggyback ride, claiming he was too heavy for it or something. Tommy figured Wilbur just didn't want to admit he was a little pussy and not strong enough to carry him anymore like he did when Tommy was little.
When they finally got home, Tommy was ready to drop straight into bed and sleep for a million years.
"It's dusty in here," Phil said. He wiped his hand over the table, collecting some of the dirt that had accumulated over their absence.
"It's cozy," Wilbur corrected, despite needing to cover a cough in his elbow. Tommy hummed his agreement.
"Just because you two grew up living in a dump doesn't mean everybody does." Phil threw his bag onto the floor. "But the cleaning can wait till tomorrow, I'm going to bed."
Blade kind of shuffled from foot to foot in the middle of the room. He had followed them inside but then frozen on the spot, unsure what to do next. He seemed ill at ease, though Tommy guessed he always seemed that way. As if he was waiting for some surprise attack that never came.
Phil noticed too and addressed the man looking so out of place in their living room. "We'll get that storage cleared out tomorrow too. You can have the couch for now. We probably have some spare blankets and pillows lying around, which should make it fine to sleep on for one night."
"I'll get them!" Tommy sprung into action. A lot of the blankets they owned were in his room anyway, because he hoarded them. Tommy got cold easily, sue him. He brought two of the fluffiest ones he could find just in case, as well as a few of the decorative pillows Wilbur got on his bed. Surely Wilbur didn't need those. When he came back, Tommy piled them all on the couch.
What they ended up with was closer to a nest than a bed, but it looks so comfortable Tommy almost regretted he wouldn't be able to sleep in it himself.
"All set." He was proud of his handiwork, really. Blade hadn't moved an inch, staring at the pile dubiously and with a far-away look in his eyes. Not all there. Tommy cleared his throat. "We'll see you in the morning, yeah?"
Being addressed snapped him out of it. "Yes. Thank you." His voice came out clipped and unnatural. Tired, but running on autopilot. Answering questions with long-prepared answers. Tommy frowned a little, but he was too tired himself to think about it more tonight.
They all needed a good night of shut-eye before being able to put their brains to work again.
Phil showed Blade where his room was, in case he needed anything in the middle of the night. Then they all broke off into their own bedrooms, the three-week-long journey finally taking its toll. In the hallway, Tommy wrapped his arms around Wilbur like he did when he was small and there was a storm outside. Wilbur ruffled his hair with a laugh but didn't make fun of him for once.
He could probably tell how badly Tommy needed this.
When he crawled into bed, the two blankets he gave away were sorely missed. Tommy kept his socks on though, so he wouldn't get cold. There was a stranger on their couch. And it was something they'd have to deal with tomorrow.
Despite being absolutely exhausted when they came home yesterday, Tommy still woke up with the first rays of the sun shining through his half-opened curtains. He yawned and stretched, but pushed his sole remaining cover off after only a few seconds. Once awake, he always had a notoriously hard time falling back asleep, so it wasn't even worth it to try. He might as well get an early start to the day.
They were back home. Tommy needed to go out and meet up with his friends ASAP.
Wilbur was very much not a morning person so Tommy didn't expect him to be up till noon. Even Phil's bedroom door was still closed, despite him normally being an early riser. Tommy skidded past the mirror while smoothing his hair down, unconcerned with his looks. Tubbo had seen him in more compromising positions than missing out on several hours of sleep and a thorough wash. Besides, he wanted to visit the barn first anyway.
His rapid escape out the front door was thwarted however when Tommy almost tripped over a lump of something lying in the middle of the floor. Thankfully he managed to jump over it and keep from kicking Blade in the face on accident.
Because that's who it was. Instead of using any of the blankets or pillows Tommy got for him, the guy had straight up used the floor as a bed. He was kinda curled up on his side, legs drawn up and arms kept close to his chest to prevent all his body heat from seeping into the floorboards. Tommy could still see the goosebumps along the back of his neck and along his arms where the sleeves of Wilbur's sweater had bunched up to the elbows.
The couch was left completely untouched.
Their almost collision had woken Blade up - probably because Tommy didn't land very gracefully and also couldn't quite keep from cursing up a storm. He blinked once, twice, then came back to awareness all at once and immediately straightened, falling into that same position of ready complacency Tommy had already grown more than sick of. He couldn't have been sleeping that deeply if he was able to jump into action so quickly.
Like a soldier falling back into line at a single command.
Tommy made a mental note to ransack Phil's room later and find the history books detailing the Age of Blood that he knew would be there. For now, he had the current situation to deal with. "What the fuck were you doing on the floor?"
Blade's expression changed into one of confusion. Of all the questions he'd been expecting Tommy to ask, this must not have been very high up the list of possibilities. "I was sleeping."
"I figured that much out. Why were you on the floor though?"
"It's where I always sleep."
Tommy could have responded to that. By the gods, did he have a choice word or two (mostly aimed at whoever had convinced this man that sleeping on the floor was normal or a good idea). This was how you ruined your back forever, Tommy would know he grew up without a proper bed.
But, well… Tommy also didn't like change. They'd already brought Blade away from the place he lived in for the last handful of centuries. Putting himself in his shoes, Tommy kinda agreed it could be nice to hang onto what was familiar.
(He did not think about the box under his bed, no sir)
"Yeah, just don't blame me if I fall over you and break all my bones next time."
Blade cringed and nodded. "Sorry."
Humor was obviously lost on this guy.
"It's no big deal," Tommy said quickly, having not a clue what he was dismissing there. He just didn't like it when Blade looked so gloomy for no fucking reason. "Do you want to come with me? The others are going to be asleep forever, it'll be boring in here. You could meet Henry."
Red eyes avoided his gaze. Tommy realized his mistake a few seconds later.
Right, right, right. Phil had been over this with them.
So he reached out and tugged on Blade's sleeve, pulling him along. If the other flinched away from his touch at first then that was just something they were both going to ignore. "Let's go, we're going to see Henry and then you're meeting Tubbo. He's going to freak out so bad."
The barn door needed a firm push to be opened, rusted hinges meaning it had sunk into the ground over time. Plus, Henry had a bad habit of pushing the hay up against the other side because she was a little shit. Tommy often thought his cow made a specific point out of making his life worse for no reason other than it amused her since she was a massive bitch.
And Tommy loved her more than anything else in the world for it.
Henry lifted her head when they entered, greeting them with a deep rumbling moo. She was too lazy to actually get up, not when Tommy shoved the door closed behind him. The way she looked at them felt extremely judgemental for a cow.
"I'll let you out into the pasture later," Tommy promised. Henry put her head back down, tail flicking lazily at a fly that buzzed around her rump. "Don't be so grumpy."
He walked over to kneel behind her, scratching between her horns. The cow pushed her head up into his petting. Blade stood next to Tommy, not moving.
"She hates it when we leave," Tommy explained. "Always gives me the cold shoulder for the first day we're back. Don't you girl?"
Henry mooed again in agreement. Tommy smiled and leaned in to kiss her dumb fluffy head.
He noticed how Blade leaned forward a bit too as if trying to look at the cow's other side.
What came out of Tommy was almost a question ('what's on your mind?' he would have asked a million times before to a million different people). He caught himself and instead said, "Tell me what's on your mind."
For a scant second, Blade still seemed unsure how to voice his thoughts. But Tommy had told him to do something, he had given him the order. So he couldn't really refuse, could he?
"Where do you attach the reins?"
"The what?"
"The reins, to ride her."
Perhaps Tommy should have felt bad at how hard he laughed. "I'm pretty sure if you try to ride Henry she'll throw you off and trample you. And it'd be deserved." Another joke that Blade didn't laugh at. Tommy looked at him. "You know this isn't a horse, right?"
The look he got in return was almost - almost - a glare. A small, petulant little thing. Tommy bit the inside of his cheek because he didn't want to laugh even harder in Blade's face now that he was finally showing an emotion that wasn't complete submission to those around him.
"I know it's not a horse…" Then those eyes darted away again, making an effort to force back that distant emotionlessness. As if Tommy seeing him get defensive was the same as being caught red-handed doing something he shouldn't. "Uh, what is it then?"
"You don't know what a cow is?"
"I do. I've just never seen one before. My previous master didn't own any cows, they had the milk delivered." His fingers twitched, almost reaching out. Then he put his hand behind his back, grasping the wrist with his other hand to keep it in place.
"If you want you can pet her," Tommy said. As if to demonstrate, he wound his fingers through the longer fur along Henry's side and then gave her a firm pat.
Blade stepped back, stunned. "I-I don't-"
Fuck, Tommy had messed up again.
"Maybe next time though, I'm starving." He got up, trying to change the subject. "We should guilt Niki into feeding us."
It was a bit amusing to walk into town with a tall menacing man covered in scars following him around like a lapdog. Tommy got many odd looks, most of which he just smiled cheerfully and waved at. The village they lived in was small enough that he was sure Blade's arrival would turn into gossip that spread like wildfire in no time. By dusk, everybody in town would know about the weird dude Phil brought home.
When they came to live there eight years ago - Tommy had turned ten barely a week before they moved in - it had not taken a full day before neighbors were knocking on their door offering help in fixing up the farm and cooking them meals so they didn't have to worry about that while they were still in the process of setting things up. How much of this behavior was motivated by kindness and how much of it was curiosity could be debated. Maybe bringing them stuff was just the most convenient way to ogle the newcomers. Tommy didn't care, he'd never say no to free food.
Speaking of: Tommy didn't have any ulterior motives when he befriended the people that owned the town's bakery, but the cinnamon buns he got out of it were a big bonus.
Niki had hung a little bell above the door that heralded their arrival because she often worked in the back if she wasn't actively serving customers. Tommy didn't wait for her to come out front though, ducking under the counter to get behind the register.
"Tubster, Big Man?! Are you home?!"
Immediately Niki's head popped out from the kitchen. "Welcome back, Tommy." She only sounded a little exasperated at his volume, or the fact that he'd seen himself in. He'd been doing that for years already. "He's in his room, I think."
"Tubbo, get down here!" Tommy wasn't about to brave two sets of stairs just to make it to Tubbo's attic bedroom. Not on an empty stomach. "How are you guys?" He directed the question at Niki instead.
"It's been quiet." Niki left the 'while you were gone' unspoken. With Niki raising Tubbo all by herself after their parents died, and with Tubbo and Tommy becoming practically attached by the hip for much of their childhood after meeting, Niki was almost like an extra older sister to Tommy. Much in the way that Wilbur was like having a big brother slash dad. "How did..."
Niki cut herself off, staring at something over Tommy's shoulder. Her smile was a little open-mouthed, trying her hardest not to seem rude. "Tommy, who's this?"
"Oh!" With how eerily quiet Blade was (as if used to making his very presence as unintrusive as humanly possible) Tommy had pretty much forgotten he was there. "This is Blade. He'll be living with us for a while, I think."
Coming out of the kitchen and into the hallway, Niki wiped her hands on a towel. There was flour stuck in her blonde hair. "I'm Niki. It's nice to meet you." She reached out her clean hand for him to shake.
Blade did not take it. Or do much of anything except glance at it in mild befuddlement. Either he didn't know what a handshake was, or he was simply shocked at being offered one and incapable of accepting such a casual gesture of greeting.
Tommy cleared his throat. "He's a foreigner."
He didn't know what Phil's game plan was here. Tommy definitely wasn't going to come out with 'yeah we found an immortal guy in a spooky castle who might or might not be one second removed from killing us all if the right person told him to, no biggie'.
But Niki merely nodded, ever the patient one. "Oh neat. I like your hair!"
Probably without conscious thought, Blade reached up to touch it, winding long pink strands around his fingers for a moment. He lowered his chin, shielding his face with it. "Thank you."
"I've been considering dyeing mine pink-"
Whatever Niki was about to say was lost in the ruckus of Tubbo making it down several flights of stairs with the grace of a newborn fawn, smacking into at least two walls on his way down. If Tommy hadn't become half-convinced Tubbo's bones were made out of metal or some shit, he'd be worried.
One time, Tommy had watched Tubbo do a backflip from his attic window and walk away from that with no open bone fractures. It had changed him as a person.
Tommy himself was not as indestructible by comparison but that didn't mean he was going to complain when Tubbo jumped the last step and barrelled into him. What commenced was a half embrace, half wrestle match that ended with Tubbo in a loose headlock.
"Dude, I missed you. You were gone forever." Tubbo pushed him off.
"Wha- I was barely gone for three weeks?!"
"It felt like forever. Do you know how some animals can't tell the difference between a second and a day? I think I'm like that."
"You're so fucking weird," Tommy said. The words would have carried a lot more heat if they weren't so obviously fond.
Tubbo still gasped in mock offense. "Have you considered you're just boring?"
Niki laughed. "And have you considered taking your shenanigans outside my bakery? I got work to do."
"We would but I'm so hungry." Tommy did his best approximation of what might be considered a pout. Except it absolutely wasn't a pout because Tommy didn't pout. He was an adult, thank you very much.
"Well, promise not to eat everything on the way…" Niki turned back to her kitchen, emerging only moments later with a basket full of fresh cinnamon buns. "I made these this morning. I didn't know you guys would be back so soon, but consider it a welcome home gift."
"Niki, you are so fucking cool. You are the coolest woman in town." Tommy took the basket from her like it was a sacred item that he had to protect with his life.
"So I'm told. Now get out of my hair." She flicked her towel at them.
"A lot of crazy shit happened I need to tell you about," Tommy told Tubbo, shifting the basket's weight so he could carry it better. It was deceivingly heavy.
"You can start by explaining where the big guy came from," Tubbo said.
It really was frighteningly easy to forget the Blade was there. He didn't move, didn't speak unless spoken to. He seemed more than content just standing in the corner zoning out until somebody needed him.
Like a ghost, Tommy's mind helpfully provided. He didn't like that very much though.
"Oh yeah. Tubbo, this is Blade. He's staying with us for now. It's a long story, I'll fill you in on the way back. Blade, Tubbo. My best friend."
Blade didn't really react much aside from shifting his eyes over Tubbo once and nodding. Tubbo laughed. "Stoic type?"
Tommy thought about Henry in her barn. "I'm not sure. It's kind of a puzzle, we get to find out."
Tubbo hummed. "I'll pretend to know what that means then."
"I'll explain later. Let's get these home before they grow cold."
They walked the dirt path through town slow and easy, the air between them filled with light jokes and banter. And behind them, the man who didn't seem like much more than a shadow followed in their wake.
Chapter 7: Philza II
Chapter Text
After weeks of struggling with a slowly growing headache, on the first day of them being home again, Phil woke up with a full-on migraine.
He wanted to stay in bed rather strongly. They'd spent long enough on the road that his bones were feeling the echoes of it, age making it so Phil could not travel as he used to. And normally, there would be no objection. Wilbur and Tommy were able to look after themselves, cleaning the cabin could wait and he was sure that between Niki and Wilbur, the pantry would be stocked in due time - at least enough for those two not to starve if Phil took an extra day recovering. The pounding between his temples was vicious and constant, a combination of dehydration and him neglecting his sacred duties.
He needed to speak to Kristin soon.
But there was the more pressing issue of their unexpected companion. Blade had slept on the couch for one night, and while Phil was sure that man was used to worse, much worse, he wanted to clear out the spare room and give him a more permanent place to sleep. And probably do some proper grooming too, before the villagers started to think he'd brought a vagrant home.
Well, not that Phil particularly cared about what they did or didn't think about him. But still. Reputation went a long way in a place as small as this town.
Also, he'd need to get in touch with the person who had given them their information, who had sent them into that ruin to find what they had described as a 'legendary weapon'. Whether they had been aware of the nature of said weapon - a person, it was a fucking person. Phil did not want the notion of referring to Blade as anything else even taking root within his mind - was unclear to him. But it was something he should get to the bottom of. Getting in touch with Pete should be one of his main priorities.
All these thoughts swirled in the confines of his mind as he lay there with closed eyes, pulling the blankets up so the sharp almost-noon light of late morning wouldn't aggravate his headache. He could hear Wilbur snoring loud enough to be heard through not one but two closed doors, still asleep. Tommy was probably awake, he often was up before Wilbur.
Like a chicken, Phil thought to himself in private amusement. Waking up with the first rays of the sun. Speaking of, that was as good a place as any to start.
Phil managed to force himself out of bed and pulled a coat on over his sleeping clothes, slipping into his shoes barefooted. He wasn't planning to go out today, just far enough to check up on their garden and such. While they were away, Niki and Tubbo took care of the animals and plants. But mostly they did the bare minimum. Since they had their own chores to attend to, making sure nothing died was about the extent of what Phil could ask of them.
Blade's pillows and blankets had been left on the couch. Phil could only imagine the poor guy had been immediately kidnapped by Tommy upon waking, probably dragged off Prime knows where. Phil hoped he was okay since he hadn't exactly spent much time in the outside world for at least a century, maybe even longer if Phil's suspicions were true. It could be an overwhelming thing to adjust to. But Tommy had to be aware of that too, wouldn't he?
He visited the chicken coop first. There were only two eggs, Niki had probably taken the rest for her bakery. Knowing her, Phil was sure they'd be receiving a basket of her baking in return soon enough. Tommy must have checked on Henry, so that left only Carl, the old draught horse. Phil stepped into the stable, already pulling a carrot out of the bag that hung near the door.
Carl came over to the opening of his paddock, nuzzling his nose into Phil's chest as soon as he got close enough.
Way back, before Wilbur and Tommy, Carl had been Phil's main form of transportation. The dark-brown Shire horse had been with Phil through many ordeals, bearing the scars from the battlefield as any war steed did. But these days the only work he did was pulling carts around or helping Phil plow the land - if that. Most of the time he was stuck in his stable, spoiled to the high heavens.
Phil petted his fur for a moment longer, until he heard footsteps coming up the road to the house.
As expected, Tommy had taken Blade with him into town. He had brought both Tubbo and a basket covered in cloth back.
"I made sure we wouldn't starve by getting us some breakfast," the boy announced loudly when he spotted him.
"Hm, all on your own, did you?"
"Well, Niki might have helped a little bit." Tommy said it so off-handedly, Phil couldn't help but laugh. "But I did most of the heavy lifting. Literally." He hoisted the basket higher in his arms, pretending he was being crushed under its weight.
"Go wake Wilbur up then, he's still in bed," Phil said. "I'm going to check the garden, but I'll be right there."
Tommy and Tubbo started to go inside immediately but Blade hesitated, shuffling on the spot. Phil guessed he had a hard time deciding who to follow without outright instructions. He gestured to get the man's attention.
"You should come with me, I'll show you around a bit."
Blade nodded, skipping over to him quickly. "Yes sir."
"You don't have to-" Phil stopped. He wondered… well, it might be worth a shot. "Do not call me sir, please."
"Oh," Blade said, a small little exhale. "I'm… sorry?"
"I've gone my entire life with nothing but my name for other people to call me. You don't have to be the exception." Well, it wasn't a complete lie.
Nervously messing with the sleeves on Wilbur's sweater, Blade nodded. "Okay… Phil."
He said the name as if he was swallowing a bitter pill and it almost made Phil laugh again.
"Names are the one thing most people have from birth and keep until their death," Phil said as he started walking. "The first thing they're ever given. Do you remember yours?"
Previous experience had taught Phil that prying answers out of Blade all at once or in a direct fashion wasn't smart. The man would clamp up. But scattering questions into casual conversation seemed to have better results. Phil knew that with enough time and patience, they would get to know more about Blade.
"I don't."
Even if his answers would remain short and to the point.
"Do you know if you ever had one? I suppose not everybody does."
There was a beat of silence, the expression on Blade's face blank not because of disinterest or confusion, but because of a memory buried so deep, it was almost painful to unearth. A memory that he must now be revisiting. Phil waited, feeling this was progress at least.
Blade nodded vaguely, eyes trained on the distance instead of meeting Phil's own. "I think so. Before the arena."
"A very long time ago then," Phil said.
Ever since finding out, Phil had been wondering if he could find that arena again. If it was even still around - there was no certainty that it would be. The place Blade described as his home before that sounded like the Nether, though that was a bit of an obvious thing seeing as he was clearly some kind of piglin hybrid. Phil would love to figure out how old Blade was when he was taken as a child.
Phil led the way around the house and between the stable and the barn. Behind there was a small plot of their land earthed up to make a vegetable garden. It wasn't super big, just big enough that they could grow what they needed to feed themselves easier and not rely completely on money to afford food. There was probably room to expand it, but Phil had never bothered.
"Most of these won't be ready to be harvested for a while," Phil told Blade. "We planted them not long before we set out." Ah, there was the return of that confused expression Phil was quickly becoming familiar with. He laughed a bit. "I'm aware our home might be quite different from what you're used to. If you have questions about anything, I'd prefer you ask them to avoid issues later." He hoped that framing it like that would make Blade feel able to answer his questions without intruding.
And true enough, the man did clear his throat after another second of watching Phil inspect the ground for weeds. There were none, Tubbo had done an amazing job.
"What… are these exactly?"
Phil stood up, brushing his dirty hands on his robe. "What?"
"These plants. What vegetables are they?"
"Uh, mainly carrots and potatoes. We also got some lettuce, radish, green beans, and similar things in there. Stuff that's very easy to grow, basically." He walked back over. "I also grow my own flowers near the front of the house, you probably noticed them." Blade nodded. "I take it you have no experience growing vegetables, then?"
"I can learn," Blade said immediately, eager to please.
"I'm sure you can, mate. We all pull our own weight around here." That made Blade frown again and Phil chuckled. Was the idea of dividing the work so everybody helped each other out really such a foreign concept to that man? Probably. "The reason I asked is because I didn't know if it's the sort of thing you had to do at the estate we found you at."
Phil refused to refer to the owner of said estate as Blade's former 'master' though. The mere thought made a knot tighten up in his throat. Seeing another person as a possession was downright sickening to Phil.
"There were a lot of gardens around the castle but I never tended to them. And they were all flowers and shrubs. Food was brought on carts."
Phil figured as much. The castle was near enough to enough farm-based towns that growing their own vegetables was obsolete for them. It would just waste space and servants. "I'm assuming that's true for all produce then."
"Tommy laughed because I had never seen a cow," Blade said softly - sounding close to petulant, saying it more to himself than to Phil. In fact, he most likely hadn't meant to say it out loud at all. He drew his shoulders back, spine straightening and face going pale, quickly glancing at Phil as if scared he'd notice that Blade had spoken out of turn.
As if Phil was an inch away from punishing him.
Which is why Phil pretended to be distracted by the garden. From the corner of his eye, he could see Blade relax again when he thought Phil hadn't heard him. "Let me show you something else."
If Blade had never seen a cow before, Phil was pretty confident he had never seen chickens either. The coop was lively, smelling of upturned hay and chicken manure. It was always noisy in there. Chickens weren't shy animals and they didn't care if their scampering about ended with you getting knocked in the face by their wings. Phil was used to getting a mouthful of feathers.
"You know what chickens are, right?"
"They're louder than I expected," Blade said, raising his voice perhaps to an unneeded degree just to be heard over their clucking. It made Phil grin.
"Yeah, that's why they remind me of Tommy."
It was hard to hear over the ruckus, but Phil could have sworn that got a little chuckle out of the usually so impassive man. Regardless, Blade clearly didn't like the chicken coop so they moved on rather quickly.
As they passed by the barn, Phil nodded toward it. "So Tommy introduced you to Henry already."
"Yes sir- Phil."
Phil didn't acknowledge the slip-up. "Then there's only one more animal yet to meet."
Carl neighed softly when they entered the stable. He probably hadn't expected anybody to visit again so soon. The horse immediately came over, probably hoping that it would earn him another carrot. But Phil wasn't going to give him more treats, Carl had already put on an impressive amount of weight over the years he hadn't been ridden into battle anymore.
Phil stayed at the door, watching Blade step forward without waiting for directions. "This is Carl. He's a bit of a lazy sod now, but you should have seen him back in the day. He could run like the west wind and jump across rivers easily."
A bit of embellishment never hurt anyone, did it?
Slowly reaching forward, Blade didn't actually move to stroke Carl unprompted. Which was a good thing, because the horse would definitely not have liked that. Instead, his hand hovered in the air, waiting for Carl to curiously sniff at it and decide if he wanted to be petted. After a moment, he did. Blade ran his fingers gently along Carl's downturned snout. Then around the side. When he went a bit too low towards the neck, Carl exhaled through his nostrils and Phil opened his mouth to warn Blade that Carl didn't like to be touched there. He'd learned that the hard way.
But Blade had seen the horse's ears flick back in annoyance and adjusted his course accordingly, reaching his palm up instead to scratch between the horse's ears. Carl eagerly leaned forward, bumping his head into Blade's chest affectionately.
"You're good with horses," Phil said.
"My master had a lot of horses," Blade explained. "I spent time in the stables often."
Phil frowned at how Blade still referred to somebody who bought him and treated him like an object rather than a person in any positive manner. It rubbed him all the wrong ways. But he supposed the road to anywhere wasn't paved in a day either, so Phil decided not to mention it. They couldn't expect Blade to be able to shed centuries of conditioning in a couple of days of being treated like a human being. And the fact he seemed to be catching himself volunteering information more and more often without prompting was already an improvement.
Every day, Phil felt as if he was able to see a bit more of the real person that hid beneath. He just had to persist in chipping away at that rough exterior.
"Let's go inside," he said, "before those three eat an entire basket's worth of cinnamon buns between them."
They hadn't, though they came damn near close. Phil was able to save one for himself and one for Blade - who going by his face had never had one before. When they were done eating, Phil finally thought it was wise to start on that storage room, so Blade wouldn't be confined to the couch yet again tonight.
"Why did we hang on to so much crap?" Wilbur asked. He was holding up what appeared to be a coat that hadn't fit Tommy in over half a decade. Maybe even the one Wilbur had gotten him before meeting Phil.
"I don't like throwing things away," Phil said. "You never know when something you thought was trash suddenly comes in useful, and then you'll be happy you kept it around."
"When will eighteen blank notebooks ever become useful? Like, all of them at once?" Tubbo was holding up one of said notebooks, leatherbound and expensive.
Phil plucked it out of his hands. "That notebook is probably older than you, that's staying."
"You kept our first father's day present?" Tommy asked, the humor laced through his voice not entirely concealing how touched he was by that discovery. He was looking at the brightly colored stone he was holding fondly.
Phil snatched it from him too. "It's the first gift you boys ever gave me, of course I kept it."
He remembered that day. They'd still been on the road, sleeping in tents mostly or sometimes an inn when Phil could afford it. Life had been hard, a lot harder than it was now. Wilbur found a large, round rock on the riverbank and then he pickpocketed enough money to buy a paint set in the next village they visited. He had Tommy paint the rock so they could give it to Phil for an arbitrary holiday Phil didn't even think they knew about.
"You're such a sentimental old man," Wilbur accused. "This is why we have a guest bedroom that's being used as a storage room close to overflowing."
"Yeah, we really need to let go of at least some of this stuff," Phil admitted. "Not the rock though."
They settled on a bunch of clothes that could be given away to the town's seamstress. Almost all of them were items that didn't fit any of them anymore, and which Sally would be more than happy to use for scraps. With those gone, they had a lot more storage space for anything Phil wanted to keep but had to put away properly in closets and chests. Mostly books and memorabilia of a time long gone. And weapons. A frankly ridiculous amount of weapons.
Seeing as Blade would be using the room to sleep in, Phil decided to move those to the barn instead. There was an upper level where they kept hay. He could fix up a weapon rack or two quickly enough.
"Do we give this away as a clothing scrap?" Tubbo asked. "It's really cool looking."
"It's a flag," Phil said. He handled the delicate fabric with care, the blue and white had faded with time but the emblem on it was plain as day. Just holding it made the smell of snow blossom in his memory as if it were a real thing. "The nation it belongs to doesn't exist anymore." He smiled down at the frayed edges. "Most people probably don't remember it ever existed, actually."
"Oh, so it's completely worthless. I take it you're keeping it," Wilbur asked. Phil tried not to let it show that his comment actually stung a little.
(How could he, when they didn't know what it meant to him and never would if Phil could help it)
"Oh, fuck off. You can just say you don't like history." Phil rolled his eyes at him, and all of them laughed.
Well, all of them except Blade, who was staring at the flag rather intently.
"It's pretty, right?" Phil asked, spreading it open so the empire's insignia was more visible.
Blade looked away quickly and pretended to be busy sorting through a heap of shoes, for once not even acknowledging that this atypical reaction was the type of thing Phil could imagine the dead lord punishing him over. Phil looked down at the flag again, fingers clenching slightly in the fabric. "Well, I suppose it does mean the atrocities of that nation were also forgotten. So maybe that's a good thing."
(Was that how it worked? Were any wrongdoings committed only a burden for as long as others remembered them? It was a nice thought for somebody like Phil, perhaps. Even if he did not believe in the same sentiment)
"What are we going to do with all these books?"
Phil looked up, making an effort to pull out of his own thoughts. "We can fit them in chests, probably. A lot of them are first editions that aren't published anymore." Wilbur threw him a glare. Phil could see the remark burning on his tongue, about Phil holding on to useless things. "What?! They're valuable!"
"Sure they are." Wilbur walked over to the stack and picked up the top book. "I'm sure this first edition farmer's guide about growing potatoes is going to be relevant somehow."
"It has some very informative illustrations in it," Phil said halfheartedly. Wilbur put it back down on the desk with a sigh.
"Well, I think we cleared up enough stuff for you to be able to sleep in here at least. Now all you need is a bath and it almost won't be like we have a homeless guy living with us." Wilbur had meant it as a joke, but Blade did not take it as one.
"Thank you," he said, bowing his head a bit. Wilbur crossed his arms and turned away, uncomfortable.
"Let's get you washed up then," Phil said as he got up. "Wil can share his wardrobe with you for the time being too, but we should probably go into town and get you some proper clothes soon."
Getting Blade cleaned up turned out to be a harder undertaking than Phil had anticipated. He flinched away from the washcloth not unlike a cat would with any type of water and his hair was a pain to detangle. It crossed Phil's mind that it would be easier to cut or even shave off the whole mess and call it a day. But given how prone Blade was to messing with the strands, it seemed like a bad idea. Plus, change was best introduced slowly and gradually.
When he was finally done combing it out, it actually didn't look half bad. Phil braided it, figuring that it would keep from knotting that way. Blade stared at himself in the mirror, turning his face this way and that.
Phil smiled watching him. "I barely recognize you without all that filth, mate."
Predictably, jest didn't hit the mark with this guy. Blade looked down, a bit ashamed. "I tried washing up in the river. I'm sorry."
"No, that's-" Phil shook his head. Yeah, this was not the hill he could die on, explaining every joke he made. Phil's hand trailed down and when his fingers came close to Blade's throat, the man stilled, swallowing uneasily.
They still didn't know how to deal with the collar.
"Do you like gold?" Phil asked. The question took Blade off-guard, leaving him blinking at the mirror.
"I… I don't…" His back tensed up, breathing speeding up a bit.
"I know, you don't like anything," Phil said quickly. "But do you find gold soothes you?"
Those red eyes looked down at his lap guiltily, as if caught misbehaving. "Yes."
"That's normal for piglins," Phil said. "I'm glad you found gold to soothe you. You should keep it and look after it well."
Really, Phil could imagine things would have been harder to bear without the collar. In fact, it was likely that the lord who purchased a living weapon knew this. You didn't need a chain. Giving a piglin gold bound them to you just as effectively. Especially a child. Phil was nauseous at the thought of what this collar actually was meant for.
But once given, getting a piglin to relinquish their gold was even harder. And Phil was not going to pry away the only thing in the world Blade had decided carried any worth to him. If he wasn't ready to give that up, that was fine.
"Thank you… Phil."
Phil met those eyes in the mirror again. He smiled. Subtle, with only the slightest upturn of his lips, Blade smiled back.
A paved road, indeed.
Chapter 8: The Blade IV
Chapter Text
For the second time that day, the blade followed one of his new masters into town.
Phil's house was a bit secluded from all the rest. This didn't strike the blade as very odd since the castle was also built some distance away from any farmsteads or villages because all the land around it was owned by the master. And they needed plenty of space for their gardens and their stables, plus sprawling forests to go hunting in whenever the mood struck them. Sometimes the blade was tasked to go with them. It was a tiring thing, he had to run to keep up with the riders and collect their kills for them - sometimes when their arrows went astray he had to collect those too.
He never minded much though. When they were done hunting, the blade had to help the stableboys tend to the horses and he liked doing that.
What did strike him as odd was that Phil's house was… small, compared to the houses in the town.
Phil's home only had one floor (and also a little hatch in the ceiling that led to an attic where they had put a lot of the items they'd sorted through earlier today). In total there were five rooms. The largest one was the one you entered when coming in, where the couch also was. It confused the blade because it seemed to combine a lot of functionalities that his old master had separate rooms for. There was a table to eat at like in the grand hall, though much tinier. There was a kitchen, definitely much more compact than those of the castle and really only taking up one corner. There was a desk for Phil and space to sit and relax.
Then there were three bedrooms - one for each of his masters. The final room was the armory, the room where the blade slept. His masters also referred to it as a bedroom but the blade thought that might be a joke, or maybe being a bedroom was the original intention of the room before he came along and took up space.
He called it an armory because an armory was where weapons were usually kept.
Outside there was the barn and an outhouse, but the blade could walk from one end of the white picket fence that Phil had around his home to the other end in less than twenty paces. He didn't know how to feel about it.
Well, he didn't feel anything about it. His master's splendor was irrelevant to his drive to be a good blade for them. Even if it was just to protect a tiny plot of land, the blade would give up his life to keep it safe for his masters. If they told him to fight in the defense of a single ounce of hay, he would do it without question.
But in the smallest corner of his mind, he could feel that confusion gnaw at him.
The houses in town were bigger, multiple-level clay buildings with shingled roofs. Wilbur hummed as he walked, much like the singing he did during the journey over when they were still on the road. He was carrying one crate of clothes and scraps of fabrics in his arms. The blade carried the other. He could probably carry both and it had been on his mind to offer. He hadn't though. His old master didn't like it when he offered his help, they saw it as the blade overstepping. It wasn't his place to tell them what to do. His only task was to listen.
These new masters seemed more receptive to him speaking up even when no questions were asked. In fact, they seemed to expect it - encourage it. The blade couldn't tell if that was going to endure, perhaps they were only trying to size him up. Determine the worth he could have to them. What sort of chores they wanted to give him.
"You met Niki, right?" Wilbur asked. The sun was shining and it was warm, the mid-spring air fresh but pleasant. The blade nodded.
"Yes s-" He stopped himself. Phil had told him not to call him sir. Wilbur had not given him that direction, but the blade had gotten good enough at reading people to make a fair judgment of their likes and dislikes. It saved his hide from punishment quite a few times already. "Yes," he settled on.
Wilbur glanced at him but didn't comment on him stumbling over the words. "Good. She's probably going to be coming around a lot, but I think you two will get along. Or maybe it's more that Niki gets along with everybody."
The blade also got along with everybody. Mostly because he didn't really get what it would mean to not 'get along'.
"Tubbo will be around a lot too, though Tommy will keep him busy. They're close. Kinda inseparable, really."
Wilbur made a weird face when he said that. The blade had seen that expression before, on his master when another lord kept prattling on and on about some subject that annoyed them. Did Wilbur not like Tubbo? The blade thought back to their afternoon spent cleaning out the armory, shifting through supplies and making small talk.
No, his behavior towards Tubbo wasn't hostile or unfriendly. Wilbur interacted with Tubbo in a very similar way as he did with Tommy.
Then it was something specific about the relationship between Tommy and Tubbo that was vexing Wilbur?
"Here we are!"
Wilbur's voice snapped him out of his daze. He had been so consumed in thought, the blade had been zoning out again. He hadn't noticed they had arrived at their destination already. He traced the outside of the wooden crate with his thumb until he felt a splinter, digging his finger into the crevice. He wiggled it a little so that the sharpness was just on the edge of hurting. It helped him draw his mind back to the present.
He had to pay attention. He had to remember his purpose.
Things were going to go wrong if he stepped out of line.
"Sir."
Their glare was wicked, lips curling into a snarl over yellowed teeth. The prolonged war had been troublesome for them. Word of their men dying came back from the front more and more often. The blade knew they would ride out soon enough.
But for the moment, there were only the figurines posed on their map to show the approach of enemy soldiers and where they were in opposition of the master's troops. And the blade had been foolish to speak up.
"What?" they spat.
Fear flared alive in his gut and stayed his tongue. He knew the mistake he had made.
"Out with it!" They stood up in one motion and the blade wanted to cower but that would only make the punishment more severe. He had already messed up. If he showed some grace, they'd be merciful.
"If you move your men to the north, they'll be caught in the ravine when the enemy pursues," he said, so soft it was more of a mutter. "You'd do better staying at the end of the valley and laying a trap."
The master looked down at their map with a scowl. The blade couldn't relax even with their eyes removed from him. He had been disrespectful in a way he hadn't been in a long, long time. And after decades in their service, he should have known better.
He had been bad.
Enraged, they turned on him. Their fingers grappled for his throat, trying to hook into the collar. There was no purchase there, the gold sat too tightly against the blade's skin. But their nails could catch on the edges and they dragged him forth. They slammed him onto the table and the blade winced when his nose cracked on impact. The corner of the table dug into his stomach, bringing him close to puking.
"If I ever want tactical insight from a mindless thing like you, I will ask for it. But until I do, you are to keep your mouth shut. Am I understood?!" Their hand had moved to the back of his neck, shaking him about.
"Yes sir," the blade tried to answer. Though it was hard when blood from his broken nose was spilling into his mouth, across his lips.
He was reminded of the arena in a way his heart wasn't often anymore. Longing for it.
They pulled him back to throw him to the floor. "Get out of my sight!" they said. The blade didn't need to be told twice, scrambling to obey.
The master send their men into the ravine and none of them survived.
A little bell hung on the doorframe of the store they walked into, much like the bell in Niki's bakery. It alerted a tall woman with long auburn hair to their presence and she came from the back to greet them. Her eyes were striking and green. When she saw Wilbur, she smiled warmly.
"Oh, you're back! We were all taking bets in the pub on how long you'd be gone for this time and Jack owns me money now." She walked around the counter with a laugh.
"Hey, Sally." Wilbur set the crate down on a nearby table. The blade held onto his because he hadn't been told what to do with it yet. "Are you going to share your winnings with me this time?"
A teasing smile answered him. "Perhaps I could use it to take you out. Would you say yes?"
Wilbur leaned on the table, with his back turned half toward the blade so he couldn't quite tell his reaction. Wilbur's cheeks flared with a bit more color though as he reached up to adjust his glasses. "Ah, I-"
The woman - Sally - slapped his shoulder lightly. "I'm just messing with you. Who's your friend?"
"Oh, right." Wilbur shook his head, and with it the awkward embarrassment at Sally's proposition. "This is Blade. We met him during our trip and he's come back to stay with us for a while."
Sally smiled at him. He hauled the crate a little higher, partly so he wouldn't drop it and partly because it allowed him to hide his face behind the heap of clothes. The blade hadn't realized how much he hated direct eye contact before because nobody would bother to look at him. It was fine when Phil, Wilbur, or Tommy did it. He didn't mind as much. But when anybody else did it, he felt all prickly and uncomfortable.
"He's a bit shy, hm?" Sally said, amused.
Wilbur shrugged. "He's not been around people much."
"I'm sure there's a story there."
When Sally put her hand on her chin, she reminded the blade of the girls that used to work in the kitchen, alive with curiosity and vigor. They would fawn over the soldiers and hope one would marry them, so they could stop cleaning floors and scrubbing pots and trade their servitude for a more mundane existence.
The blade had been told to hate those girls for their ungratefulness to his master. He had tried to hate them.
But when he saw Wilbur roll his eyes at Sally's comment and tap her on the back of her head in jest, the red curls bouncing when she flinched away from him with a laugh, he didn't think he could bring himself to hate her.
"Fine, fine, I won't pry. Not yet anyway." She batted Wilbur's hand away as if it was a particularly bold fly. "But do tell me why you're here because I know it's not just for a courtesy visit."
"We brought you some old clothes Phil had lying around. You might find some use for them?" Wilbur gestured at the box and with a twinkle in her eye, Sally wasted no time starting to dig through the fabric. She held up a white cotton blouse, stretching the sleeve to check the material.
"Is that even a question?"
"We also would need some new stuff made for him," Wilbur said. He motioned the blade over and finally, he managed to unstick his feet from the ground, where they seemed to be glued to the floorboards. Wilbur showed him where to put the box down.
Sally nodded, checking the second box of clothes as well. "I can do that. Just let me take some measurements and I'll send you on your way."
On her instructions, the blade stood in the middle of the room and stiffly held out his arms while she used a tape measure to check on him. His tail flicked a little when she pulled it down the length of his spine. "There'll have to be a hole in the buttocks area," Sally said contemplatively. "You know, I never get to make clothes for other hybrids. This is pretty exciting."
The blade blinked at the curious comment, staring at a spot on the wall to try and distract himself from the tight feeling in his chest at being made to stand at attention. It was the closest thing to what his old master had him do that these new masters had demanded of him thus far.
When Sally was done, she saw them off. Wilbur waved her goodbye but even while walking back he shot strange looks over his shoulder. His hand was shoved in his pocket.
The blade didn't say anything. It wasn't his place.
When they got back to the house, Tommy and Tubbo were still out. Phil didn't seem concerned about the matter, despite it being close to dusk.
There really must be peace currently, if nobody was worried about going out so late at night. The blade hadn't seen any defenses or soldier patrols in the village either. If a war came, these people would be painfully unprepared.
He knew there were training weapons up in the barn though. Phil had moved them from the armory to there to make room for the blade so he could sleep in a bed. A real bed, not a cot. He was expected to sleep in a real bed tonight.
It was something he was trying not to think about.
Maybe he could use the training weapons to keep in shape. He had to be prepared to defend his masters when they needed it.
Phil was walking around the kitchen, making food. In the middle of the room, near the couch, there was a sort of white rune drawn on the floor in chalk. Wilbur walked around it, so the blade followed his example.
"You spoke to Kristin?" Wilbur asked.
"Only for a little while. The veil wasn't thin enough." Phil turned around and walked to his desk. "I'm trying to connect some dots, so to speak. But it looks like I'll have to wait for Pete to get back to me first." He picked up a piece of paper from the table and held it out to the blade. "Can you tell me if any of these names or places sound familiar to you?"
The blade took it from him, looking at the jumbled mess of black lines. They didn't mean anything to him.
Very, very long ago, the blade had been able to understand a bit of writing. He'd never been taught, but when he was very bored during war council there was not much else to do but look at the maps and documents his master was occupying themself with. For a lot of specific drawings or symbols, the blade knew what they were. And he came to recognize the scribbles next to them as letters.
Then it was as easy as searching for specific patterns and he could figure out some basics.
After several centuries of not keeping up with it, the blade had forgotten almost anything he had learned. The library in the castle had been destroyed by the mob. Some books had survived but the blade had not dared to touch them.
He would never steal from his master.
"I can't read," the blade said when he noticed Phil and Wilbur were just staring at him, waiting for him to speak up and answer their question. A question he had barely registered. He really was getting out of shape. Lowering his head, he handed the paper back.
"Oh, that's… Yeah, that's my bad. Kind of a major oversight on my part." Phil took it from him again. "Did you get any kind of education?"
"I was trained for combat, survival techniques, field medicine-"
"I meant a formative education," Phil cut in. Not unkindly, yet it still made the blade falter.
(He was being very bad at the only thing he should be good at)
"No sir."
Phil's frown deepened. He had disobeyed a direct command again, he had-
"I'll ask Niki about it once she comes by to pick Tubbo up," Phil said, putting his paper back down with a sigh. He picked up a cloth from the table instead and threw it at the blade. "Will you please wipe up the chalk, we can't have somebody stepping in it. That'll be a whole mess to sort out."
Immediately, the blade was on his knees.
This was good, this was familiar. This was him following an order as he had been taught to do. This was him being a good blade.
Wilbur knelt down next to him, also with a rag in his hand. "I'll start on the other end, get this done quicker." It was an offer of help, of kindness. It was his master kneeling too, to work at a chore that should be as easy as breathing for the blade but which they were inconveniencing themselves with because he wasn't good enough.
The blade bit his tongue until he tasted blood, scrubbing at the floor even when his fingers felt raw with it.
"I know it's a big favor to ask of you." Phil was clasping his hands in front of his face, looking at Niki pleadingly. "But you're the only one in town with experience. And the only one I can trust."
"There's really no reason to butter me up, Philza Minecraft." Niki rolled her eyes. "You know I'm going to say yes."
"Pretending it took some major convincing on my part will make me better about not being able to pay you," Phil said.
"I do kind of want you to feel bad about that, just a little bit."
The blade was standing near the wall. He usually did, when nobody was telling him what to do. And that was a much more frequent occurrence than he'd like it to be.
He didn't know what to do with himself without direction.
"Get out of my sight!" His old master pushed him away when he was underfoot. Those words, the blade had taken as a lifeline. If his master told him to get out of sight, he went to the stables. Or the garden. And he could remain out of sight until he was called on and given some new command without it being a disobedience.
These masters never told him to leave. But they barely ever told him what to do either. So the blade just… stood there.
"That's settled then," Phil said. "I get to feel bad and you get to teach Blade how to read."
"Probably some other stuff too." Niki walked up to him. She was smiling still, but it wasn't the same as Sally. It was subdued, a little more patient. The blade thought about the cinnamon buns he had earlier and how he didn't know how to thank her.
(He thought about the dead woman in the castle's kitchen whose grave he had abandoned)
Chapter 9: Wilbur II
Chapter Text
The bar smelled of alcohol and grease in a way that made Wilbur scrunch up his nose.
He was vaguely queasy, but that might have as much to do with him being on his third pint while skipping dinner earlier as it had to do with the odor of this place. His finger traced the rim of the glass, the foamy residue felt unpleasant and sticky. With half-lidded eyes, he watched the door.
Every time it opened, the cold breeze from outside would cause other patrons of the bar to complain loudly. For Wilbur, it barely reached him. But goosebumps had already been raised on his skin. Being drunk made him feel oddly as if he was freezing. Wasn't booze supposed to do the opposite?
Well, nothing another mouthful couldn't fix.
Tipping the glass back, Wilbur was disappointed to find it completely empty. He choked out a noise that was half-laugh, half-cough. Damn his fucking lungs, they never got any better. Alcohol only made them worse. Wilbur cursed and slammed the glass down on the counter.
"Can I get another one, Jack?" His words were remarkably unslurred, an achievement that gave Wilbur a distant sense of pride.
A hollow, feeble thing.
"I think you've had enough. You're going to start acting like a twat if you have another one." Jack Manifold, local tavern keeper and the only person Wilbur would allow to call him a twat, said.
Jack came to town after Wilbur did. He remembered moving into such a rural community, how alienating it was at times to be seen as the odd one out. In hindsight, Wilbur probably missed the worst of it because Phil was remarkably adept at fitting in anywhere. And Wilbur himself had been so young, Tommy and he didn't care for the strange looks from their new neighbors when there were woods to explore and a house to build.
By the time Jack came around, Wilbur was old enough to really witness that paranoia aimed at outsiders inherent to small communities. And it had made him feel a certain kinship to the young man with a fiery temper that immediately opened a bar in the middle of town. Funnily enough, that bar was what made everybody warm up to Jack quickly. You'd be surprised how chummy people got with the sole provider of alcohol around.
But all that to say, Jack knew he didn't have to pull his punches with Wilbur.
"Don't be a dick," Wilbur said. "Pour me another one, I have gold to pay for it."
"It's not about your tab, Wilbur." Jack reached out to snatch his empty glass from him. Wilbur held on to it stubbornly. His knuckles turned white with the effort and Jack relented probably because he was scared Wilbur would break it otherwise.
"Then what's the issue?" Wilbur demanded.
"The issue is that the last time you got this pissed you ended up puking all over my wooden floor. I scrub those daily, you know." Almost gently, Jack held out his hand. Wilbur grumbled but shoved the glass into it.
Defeated, he slumped down. He was still buzzed, but not enough to forget. Not enough for it to matter. "You're a shitty bar owner if you're going to kick out your own customers for getting drunk."
"Not this other lot, they can get shitfaced as much as they want, I don't care." Jack dumped the glass in his bucket, then pulled it out to start wiping it off. "But you're not drinking for the right reasons."
"Oh, so you're a shrink too now?" The sarcasm fell flat. Wilbur knew he wasn't getting annoyed at the person who deserved it. He also knew he had spent one too many evenings in this bar to have the moral high ground. Jack could probably see through him like an open window.
"Sure feels like it. You'd be surprised how many people think getting a drink here is a free invitation to unload all their problems on me." Jack smiled vaguely, more amused than actually bothered.
"You should have seen that coming when you opened the only bar in town."
Jack snorted, offering him a vague nod. "Probably. But I don't need your crap piled on top of it. Go home, Wilbur."
Wilbur hesitated, glancing at the door again. The relative tension that settled over his shoulders and made him feel wired in an unpleasant way was broken by the uproarious laughter of the drunks around them. It was early, all things considered. Not even midnight.
But Jack cleared his throat and when he spoke again, it was kinder. "They're not coming, Wil. They never do."
Wilbur didn't look at him. "Fuck off."
"They're not mindreaders, you can't expect them to fix something they don't know is broken." At Wilbur's obstinate silence, Jack only sighed and continued. "You either go home now that I still believe you can get there safely, or I'll call Niki to escort you. And you know how grumpy she gets when she gets woken up this late."
The threat wasn't empty, Wilbur's past experience would tell him as much. Niki could count herself lucky that she - like Jack - had seen Wilbur at his lowest. There wasn't any dignity left for him to save. He tapped his fingers against the counter.
"Unless you'd rather have me get Sally-"
"Oh, fuck off!" He flipped Jack off and got up, almost stumbling in the process. Maybe if he cracked his head open on that polished wooden floor that would solve all his problems.
Maybe that was just the alcohol talking.
"She's also not a mind reader." Jack hummed, his attempt to lighten the mood not welcomed by Wilbur at all. He was already headed towards the door.
"I don't have time for that," he said off-handedly. More under his breath than anything. Jack heard.
"Maybe you should make time for it."
Wilbur slammed the door on him. Over the general ruckus in the bar, it definitely didn't have the dramatic effect he hoped for. Rubbing both hands over his face, he breathed in the chilly night air and hoped it would help ground him. It would be a short walk home, but it was pitch black this late. Staring at the edge of the town square there was a vague fuzziness that settled over his vision where the light shed by the lit lamppost reached. The redstone inside it flickered, the shadows moving endlessly.
Wilbur didn't like the dark.
He wasn't scared of it or anything. He'd spent too long on the road without even a match to light for darkness to be a childhood nightmare chasing him into adulthood.
But with his shoes dragging over the gravel, he found it hard not to think of his family.
A fence gate swinging in the wind, rusted hinges causing the most abysmal squealing, made him recall the sound of the cart door being pulled open. The noises that came after it were much worse though. Not because they were foreign to Wilbur. No, he wasted away plenty of hours helping his mother with her work as a midwife. He had grown up hearing the wetness of a body being cut open and blood spilling across the floor. With his hand clasped over his mouth to keep a fearful cry from forcing its way out of his throat, lying under that cart where his father had told him to hide, was the first time he actually saw the bloodshed.
Wilbur watched, terrified and trembling, while his family was murdered.
And for years after he would wonder to himself why he hadn't died. Not in the cosmic sense. Wilbur wasn't religious or anything. His mother was. She wore a Prime pendant around her neck. Wilbur had left it on her corpse. He didn't wonder if it was the gods that had ensured his survival, he didn't ascribe divine reason to it. But he wondered why he was such a coward that he had followed his father's instructions.
Why had Wilbur not grabbed the small pocketknife his uncle had given him when he turned eight and used it to fight back?
Would he have died alongside his family? Definitely. But at least he wouldn't have spent the rest of his life looking over his back whenever he had to make his way down a gravel road alone at night.
By the time the cabin was within sight, Wilbur knew his walking speed had approached more of a run. He wasn't exactly keen on staying out in the cold for long anyway, and the alcohol and adrenaline mixed in his veins had managed to bring his heart rate up to eleven. If he pretty much barged through the door shoulder first, then that was nobody's business but his own.
Or it wouldn't have been if nobody else had been awake. Wilbur never expected anybody else to be awake.
Blade stared at him, seeming for one brief moment so startled it made him look unguarded. As if for that short blink, Wilbur saw a genuine emotion on the man's face he wasn't used to. His head tilted forward a bit, long hair falling over his shoulders. Some of it was still in knots despite Phil's best attempts, because Blade didn't exactly keep up with it. He only let Phil brush it when Phil explicitly asked. And the old man had other things that kept him busy.
"Wilbur?" Blade frowned at him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." He closed the door behind him, quietly.
"I wasn't asleep."
Wilbur smiled to himself, unsure if Blade could even see in the dimness of the room. His fingers itched to turn on the lights but he didn't. "Why not?"
"Somebody has to stay awake for guard duty," Blade said. It was such a simple answer. Blade might not speak his mind often, he did answer all questions with refreshing honesty.
Maybe Jack was right, who needed mindreaders when honesty did the trick?
Too tired to correct Blade on the guard thing - explaining to a guy who had spent centuries at war the concept of peace sounded exhausting - Wilbur nodded and dropped his shoulders. He finally flicked on the light, wincing a bit when it made his eyes burn. He was still drunk, just not enough to really get anything out of it. How disappointing.
"Well, I'll take over so you can get some shut-eye," he said. "We don't want you to fall asleep during your reading lessons with Niki tomorrow."
Blade did not at all look pleased with that. Wilbur was starting to consider the little worry line between Blade's brows a friend at this point, with how often he saw it. His old master must have never offered to take a job off his hands.
And while usually that notion was so amusing to him, tonight it left a bitter taste in Wilbur's mouth.
"It's alright," he said - hoping to chase away the lingering hesitance in Blade's expression. "You're part of our family now. That's how this works. We take care of each other. Go to bed."
Blade turned away so quickly, Wilbur might have been fooled into thinking he had flinched. Maybe that was a trick of the light. He wasn't going to mention it.
If the alcohol did its job, he wouldn't even remember this had happened at all by the time the sun rose.
It wasn't the sun that woke Wilbur, though its bright shine did fall perfectly through the undrawn curtains and into his face where he was lying on the couch. What woke him up was Tommy basically kicking one of his ribs in.
Wilbur wheezed, lungs getting squeezed to bits by approximately 150 pounds of unruly teenager. Tommy might have turned eighteen a couple of months ago, but Wilbur would refuse to consider him an adult. Especially with how Tommy was laughing his ass off.
"Oof- Tommy, get off me." He shoved fruitlessly at a shoulder that was pushing down on his sternum. "You're way too fucking heavy to do shit like this."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Tommy then huffed as he was knocked onto the floor by one of Wilbur's knees.
"Long night?" Phil asked. He was wearing his jacket over his clothes, meaning he'd already gone outside and checked the animals. Wilbur had slept so soundly, his family hadn't even woken him up with their morning routines.
"Not long enough," Wilbur answered. Phil smiled sympathetically, though Wilbur could tell he actually wanted to laugh in his face. Prick.
"You should take me next time," Tommy said.
"I'd hate to imagine you drunk." Wilbur got up off the couch, glad to find his legs were more or less steady. He'd slept in his clothes, making them incredibly wrinkly.
"I bet I'm a delightful drunk," Tommy insisted. "One of those guys who tells all the jokes and gets all the girls."
Wilbur laughed. "You're probably a sappy drunk, like Phil."
"Hey!" Phil vaguely waved the spoon he was using to stir his tea in Wilbur's direction. "At least it's better than being a mopey drunk."
Very slowly, the door to the hallway opened. Just enough for Blade to slip through and close it behind him without a sound. He stood with his back pressed against it, hoping that his entrance would go by unnoticed. Trying not to interrupt their conversation, probably. Unseen unless called upon, silent unless a direct question was asked.
Little did Blade know the dynamics of this household.
"What kind of drunk do you think Blade is?" Tommy asked, pointing at the man. Blade looked back with not much of an expression. He still looked tired. Wilbur could relate.
"Talkative," he said sarcastically. It was as good a guess as any.
"Have you ever had alcohol before?" Phil asked. Being addressed did make the man straighten his spine, prepared to stand at attention at the drop of a dime.
"Wine is reserved for the master and their esteemed guests," Blade answered automatically.
"What about other stuff? Beer, hard liquor? Maybe you stole a sip or two."
"The soldiers drank sometimes. When a battlefield was cleared, the generals would get a flask of amber to celebrate and share among the troops." At Phil's prompting, they sat down at the table. There was fresh bread, fruits, preserved jam that Phil had made in summer. Without asking, Phil started to pick out some food and put it on Blade's plate. He would not eat unless explicitly given permission to do so.
"So you've had whiskey?" Phil guessed, basing his assumption on his own time in the military.
"It was for the troops to celebrate their victory," Blade said again. "Not the weapons. You can't reward a tool for the labor of the one who wields it." The last sentence sounded so stilted Wilbur knew it was recited from somewhere or somebody else. He reached for his coffee so he didn't need to think about it.
The awkward silence that fell over the table made him guess the others felt similar.
Tommy broke the tension after only a few seconds, talking with his mouth full as usual. "Can I have some cash?"
"What do you need money for now?" Wilbur asked - already reaching for his inner pocket. It wasn't like it mattered, they didn't really have many expenses when they weren't out on the road.
"Tubbo told me about this well in the next town over. They say if you throw coins in it, it can make your wish come true!"
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Wilbur said. He patted his other pocket. Where was his damn pouch?
"Stranger things could be true," Phil said cryptically - because he was old and dried up and saying cryptid bullshit was probably his favorite hobby or something. Wilbur rolled his eyes, finally reaching into his coat but coming up empty.
"Well, you can give him the money then because I seem to have misplaced mine."
"You lost your gold?" Phil asked, alarmed. "Are you sure you haven't left it at Jack's?"
"Maybe, I can go take a look. Or I dropped it somewhere along the way, it was dark out." Ignoring his loss for the moment, Wilbur picked up an apple to eat.
"Oh, you could retrace your steps. Like a reverse treasure hunt," Tommy suggested.
"Is there anything you won't make into a game?"
With a wide smirk, Tommy flicked a crumb at him. "Is that a challenge?"
"I wouldn't dream of it."
When he was done eating, Wilbur had little choice but to follow Phil's advice though. He wasn't exactly the richest guy in the world and again, it's not like they needed a lot of money to live in the cabin. But living in poverty had made the loss of money a tad more painful for Wilbur. He had quite a lot saved up since he didn't spend his gold on anything aside from the bar.
He got Blade to go with him though.
Even in daylight, there was something about walking down that gravel path alone that Wilbur would prefer to avoid. And Phil said it was good for the other man to go out. He'd be stuck inside all day otherwise, sitting perfectly still and practicing his reading. About the only thing Blade did of his own volition since it was so unobtrusive and Niki had technically told him to do it. Anything else, Blade wouldn't do without getting a command to.
So Wilbur didn't see anything wrong with 'commanding' him to help look for his pouch.
Despite the lack of conversation, even the silent companionship was appreciated. He noticed Blade was observing the plants in other people's gardens with a close eye, sometimes even lagging behind so he could take a proper look. Wilbur vaguely remembered one of the books he'd been practicing with, the farmer's manual.
"Do you want to try your hand at gardening?" Wilbur asked.
Blade blinked and looked at him, so preoccupied with his studying that he needed a moment to process the question.
"Phil said it might be useful. I've never done it before." Blade looked over at the garden they were passing again. "Growing food would be functional."
Still looking for ways to serve, hm. Wilbur nodded.
"We rely mostly on what we can produce, yes. A lot of people in the village do." He smiled, seeing exactly what house they were next to. It was on the outskirts of town, the farmer who lived there was a loner and generally considered a very strange fellow. And his garden was huge. "Some people go a bit overboard with it though."
Blade nodded at the garden. "That's a lot of potato crops."
"Yeah, don't mind Squid. He's a bit of a weirdo." Wilbur waved it away. "If you want to try your hand at farming, I'll let Phil know. I'm sure he'd appreciate the help."
"I want to help," Blade agreed.
"So you said."
The road stretched out far into the village, dusty and worn thin. Their footsteps left prints in it that were blown away quicker than they could form, removing the trail of their presence. As if they were never even there to begin with. Maybe Wilbur shouldn't be making heavy-handed allegories when he was hungover though.
At least they found his coin purse before night fell again. Small mercies.
Chapter 10: The Blade V
Chapter Text
"You're coming along really well," Niki said. "You might have a knack for this."
The blade didn't look at her, keeping his eyes resolutely on the pages. He didn't know what that meant. The last person who told him he had a knack for anything were his trainers at the arena. He had a talent, they whispered, for bloodshed.
He never quite understood that either.
Bloodshed was not about skill. War was, but the blade had been told often enough he was much too stupid to grasp the intricacies of strategy. His old master did very well at those already. They had won a fair share of their wealth during the wars.
Then they lost a lot of it during the rebellion. War was a fickle thing.
Thanks to Niki's teachings though, the blade had learned how to read basic texts. It was mainly a trick of memory. She showed him over and over again how certain sounds matched certain letters until he could remember by heart. Then it was as easy as putting the letters behind each other to make the words. And then out of words, a sentence was formed. The blade didn't think it was very hard and as he was taught, he sometimes found himself wondering why his master had so often dictated his letters to be written by a scribe. Or had that scribe read the letters they received out loud. Reading wasn't hard. Writing wasn't hard either once the blade got over the finicky hurdle of holding a pen.
He only had to practice to get better at it. The more he read, the quicker and easier he started to recognize the letters and words. Niki made him read from books that were not very complicated. They often had pictures to match the writing. The blade did think that kind of felt like cheating because he didn't actually need to read the word to know what it said. But he never mentioned that out loud. Phil owned a lot of books and told the blade that he could try and read out of any of them he desired. If there was a word he could read but didn't know the meaning of, he could ask about it.
The blade liked reading. It was quiet and he could do it without moving much. He could do it in the house around his new masters too so he could keep an eye on them and be ready if they did need him. And it made Phil nod his head in approval a lot.
When he wasn't reading from the book Niki helped him with, he read the farmer's manual.
While the blade had not been told yet what the point of him learning how to read was, he had to assume it was for some future task he'd be getting. Perhaps they wanted him to do the transcribing soon? Or he could copy texts like he had seen the servants do sometimes when a lot of information had to be spread across his master's domain very quickly. For the moment, he decided reading books with practical use was a good idea. If he knew how to farm better, that'd surely be good for his masters too.
Maybe they'd compliment him on his foresight. While rare, that had happened before with his old master when he'd done something very clever.
"You're going to make me feel extra bad for not paying you, huh?" Phil asked. He was sitting at his desk, doing something with maps.
When he sat like that, hunched over the parchment, muttering to himself, he reminded Techno most vividly of his old master. Always busying himself with the plans, always trying to stay several feet ahead of something.
(Out of all the comparisons he could make, the blade didn't know why that felt like an unfavorable one)
"I do love it when you feel bad," Niki mused out loud. Sarcasm, assuredly. Saying something when you didn't really mean it was such a strange habit. "You could consider it a reimbursement for all those years of free babysitting I squeezed out of you."
"I don't think that counts, considering Tommy and Tubbo were pretty much attached at the hip during that time." Phil stood up and approached the table. "I left them to run off and raise themselves half the time."
"You can tell from Tubbo's table manners," Niki said with a small smile. "Though I might call on your services again because I'm heading to the capital soon."
"Family business?" Phil asked.
"Loose ends that need to be tied up. I'm not looking forward to it."
The blade had zoned out during most of this conversation, trained by years of experience to listen for when he was spoken to without making it obvious he was also unintentionally eavesdropping on what the people around him were saying. It could be a tough balancing act at times. His old master loathed repeating themself, so the blade had to make sure he could catch anything that might become relevant down the line.
But he had been punished severely more than once for 'thinking he should meddle in things above him'. So he also knew how to not hear things.
Or how to forget things. The blade was very good at forgetting on purpose.
"So, how have you been enjoying yourself?" These last words from Phil were aimed at the blade rather than at Niki, so he knew he had to respond.
However, the blade didn't like trick questions. His enjoyment was irrelevant. "Knowing how to read is useful," he said instead. Not a lie.
"It's interesting how essential it has become throughout the years compared to before," Phil replied. Then he laughed. "I bet that makes me sound so fucking old."
"Everything you say makes you sound old," Niki said.
"Thanks," Phil was also being sarcastic. Then he put a hand on the blade's shoulder. If Phil noticed him going rigid, he didn't mention it. "Always sitting inside with these stuffy books is going to get unhealthy though. You should go out, get some sun and fresh air."
"And do what?" the blade heard himself ask. It was probably too bold a response.
But Phil only laughed. "I don't really mind, mate. You can run laps around the town for all I care. I don't want to see you back inside before nightfall."
The blade swallowed. That was… that was perhaps the most confusing set of commands he had gotten from his new masters thus far. Phil wanted him to go outside and do nothing? One time when he'd been bad, his old master made him stand outside on the training pitch in the scorching heat of a summer afternoon. With one bucket in each hand, so the weight might teach him about burdens. This didn't sound like a punishment though.
"Wilbur and Tommy are probably around somewhere if you wanna go find them to hang out," Phil added as the blade got up. He smiled to himself, looking ever so pleased. As if telling the blade to go away was some sort of accomplishment.
Had his service been so bad that Phil couldn't stand the sight of him anymore?
He heard Niki say something, her tone more urgent. The blade ignored it and went outside. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't do just a random anything. But Phil said he should do something.
Run laps around town?
The blade never much enjoyed running. But he could walk. He picked the same direction he had traveled down with Wilbur a few days ago. If he followed it, he would get to town. Maybe Wilbur was there, or Tommy? They could tell him what to do.
Before he could get that far, he came past the farm with the potato fields again.
The blade looked around but he couldn't see anybody. So he felt safe leaning on the fence and inspecting the plants up close. He'd learned a lot from the farmer's manual. Potatoes were a good beginner crop, it said. They're easy to plant, don't need a lot to grow. Most people could get them to sprout.
Not a lot of people could make them thrive.
Like most plants, a potato could grow larger or more plentiful if you paid them the right attention. Small things such as how you till the soil and add irrigation so they can absorb water more evenly. How far apart the plants were could make a difference.
This field had small canals and the person who planted them had taken care to root them properly. But they had also planted the potatoes too close together to make optimal use of the space.
The blade smiled to himself when the thought popped up in his head that he could probably do it better than this man had.
It was an indulgence he was familiar with, yet one he stomped down often. When one of the other trainees bragged about a bow shot they found impressive - a shot the blade knew he'd be able to perform faster and more cleanly than them if he tried. When he sat in the war room at his old master's feet and had thought up the army's next move long before one of the generals started to suggest it. There was that tiny little spark of satisfaction he didn't dare feel fully.
Once, during a sparring session with the most skilled of his old master's lauded recruits, the blade had dodged one of their more risky attacks and caught another blow with his wooden sword to loud gasps of the men spectating the fight. Then he had feigned his own swipe and in a moment of fear, the man had stumbled back and fallen ungracefully on their ass.
The blade remembered most vividly the laughter and applause in the crowd. The other soldiers who abhorred this specific officer took pleasure in them being bested. And the blade felt that spark akin to a forest fire in his chest.
Afterward, the officer had beaten him so badly he couldn't walk for a week. But even them spitting in his bloodied and bruised face wasn't enough to fully extinguish the flames inside him.
The blade looked around again, assuring himself that the road was deserted. Then he bent over the fence and picked one of the potatoes. The largest one he could find. This would be the standard he had to meet.
He only had to grow a potato larger than this one.
Phil's garden was small, but there was enough land around the cabin to dwarf what the other man had. The blade started by tilling the land, the way the farmer's manual described it. After less than an hour, he was already out of breath. He'd done his best to keep in shape while waiting for his master to return to the castle. Sadly, there was a large difference between walking around and practicing so his sword form didn't slack completely, and the kind of manual labor farming would be considered as. His hands started to hurt from gripping the hoe, the way they used to when the army was sent out to campaign and the blade had to help pitch all the tents for their camps.
The sun sat high in the sky, it was barely noon. Nowhere close to nightfall.
When he was done tilling, the blade replanted Phil's potatoes.
It was a slow process. Every plant needed to be carefully dug out without damaging the roots. Then the blade needed to replant them with the more ideal spacing. Afterward, he dragged the irrigation channels into the ground, drawing lines in the earth that could fill with water. He crawled on his knees to press the edges with clay from the deeper layers, to shape them properly. His shirt stuck to his back as he worked, sweat made his hair cling to his face.
When he was done, his palms were red, stinging fiercely. His master's potato field would grow bigger and better potatoes than the other man's after this, no doubt. Though not more of them, since there were fewer seedlings.
The blade could see the sun, dipping towards the horizon but not close to reaching it yet.
Carl neighed softly when he entered the stable. After checking that nobody could spy on him, the blade went over to the old warhorse to stroke him along his mane. Just for a little while. Phil hadn't forbidden it, after all. And surely the stable counted as outside.
After that, he got back to work. He'd seen that Phil kept his potato supply in the stable too. Many of them had sprouted, some of them enough that if the blade took the knife normally used for cleaning Carl's hooves, he could cut off the sprouted parts. Those could be planted too. With some care, they'd grow into more potatoes.
By the time Wilbur came home, their potato field was far, far bigger than that other man's.
The blade's hands were bleeding, the skin rubbed raw with friction because of the tool he'd been using for hours. His knees hurt from all the kneeling he'd done, though that paled in comparison to the burning ache that had settled over the rest of his muscles. The strain of work had burned through his stamina. Dusk painted the landscape in stark shadows and a cold breeze had picked up, making the blade shiver in his thin, sweat-soaked clothes.
There were still more potatoes he could plant. It wasn't nightfall yet.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" Wilbur sounded more confused than angry, though the sharpness of his tone was enough to have the blade straighten his back.
"I'm farming," he said. "I planted potatoes."
"Yeah, I can see that. You went a little overboard with it, don't you think?" Wilbur not-so-nimbly jumped the fence. Why he did that when there was a perfectly unlocked gate less than six feet down was anybody's guess. When he got close enough to get a proper look, he frowned. "You're bleeding."
The blade looked at his own hands as if seeing them for the first time. He had noticed the injuries before but they were nothing, or not important enough to act upon.
"How did you-" Wilbur started, then seemed to think better of it. He grabbed the blade's elbow without a second thought. "Let's go inside. I'm taking care of those."
It wasn't nightfall quite yet. "Phil said-"
"I don't care what Phil said," Wilbur interrupted him.
Once inside, Wilbur made him sit down on the couch. He shifted through a chest full of small vials and bottles before returning with a cloth and a potion. Wilbur tipped the contents onto the fabric.
"You should have stopped sooner instead of pushing yourself. You're worse than that Squid guy."
"I saw his fields again," the blade said.
"And that inspired you to farm yourself into an early grave? Fuck, man."
Wilbur turned his hand over to inspect it, careful not to touch any of the cuts or scrapes the hours of farmwork had caused. With a tenderness that still settled on the blade as if it were an ill-fitting thing, he wiped at the injuries using the potion-soaked cloth.
("You're part of our family now," Wilbur had said - plain as day, easy as the sunrise. "That's how this works. We take care of each other.")
For a word with a truer meaning the blade hadn't learned until a month ago, it seemed to carry a lot of weight. It pervaded through everything these strangers did. It reflected in Phil brushing Tommy's hair or Wilbur singing them songs at the campfire. It settled in the moments where they didn't need to speak to be heard.
He couldn't really understand.
"Why did you do it?" Wilbur asked while he worked. "I mean, I respect the commitment but… why?" There was laughter in his voice. Not his old master chiding him for being disobedient, no. Genuine amusement, as if the hours he had spent toiling over a potato field were admirable.
"His field was bigger than yours."
Wilbur faltered for only a moment before continuing. "Yeah, it was. That doesn't answer my question."
The blade inclined his head a little. "Doesn't it?"
"It doesn't, because if this was about us, you would have asked." Wilbur stopped what he was doing briefly, the cloth still in his hand but staying there forgotten. "You don't do anything without us asking first, even stuff like sleeping and eating. None of us said we cared about his field being bigger than ours so, why would you care?"
"I…"
Did he care?
(A weapon should not care for anything except proving its worth)
"I don't know."
Wilbur hummed, picking the rag back up again to resume his work. "Bet it felt nice though, when you beat him."
The blade smiled. "It did."
"We don't have use for that many potatoes, but I suppose we can rub it in his face." When he was done cleaning and treating the wounds, Wilbur bandaged his hands.
That was when the door opened and Phil walked in.
Automatically, the blade checked the window. He could still see the deep red hues of sunset casting a gentle glow on the sky. It wasn't night yet. He wasn't-
"Stay here," Wilbur said. The hard edge to the words had him freezing in place. "Phil, we need to talk."
"What's up?" Phil asked. His smile fell at the expression on Wilbur's face. "What's wrong?"
They shared a look - one that the blade was right at the center of and that made him nervous. Then Wilbur gestured to the door that led to the bedrooms. The air was thick with tension.
The blade watched them go, helplessly sitting there devoid of meaning and purpose.
When their argument got loud enough to carry through the walls (though not loud enough to be understood through them), the blade pulled his legs up and wound his arms around them.
Somehow, he must have messed up really badly if he'd made his masters argue like this.
"Oh man, are they going at it again?"
The blade hadn't noticed Tommy come in. That was also bad, he was once again slipping up and not being very attentive. He really had gotten the bright idea to do something of his own volition once and see where it got him.
"What are they shouting about now?" Tommy asked. He was covered in dirt and the blade wondered if he should ask about that. Tommy looked like he had spent the day out in the woods wrestling with a pack of wolves.
"I farmed potatoes," he said. It wasn't a proper answer. The blade offered it anyway because the punishment for silence was more severe.
"That explains all the crap outside." Tommy sat down on the couch beside him. "Doesn't really explain why they're yelling though."
Instead of saying anything, the blade stared at his hands. The ones Wilbur had bandaged up for him.
There was a question that burned inside him along with the fire. It rang like hope and the meaning of family and Phil telling him to leave and Tommy being out all day but always coming home when the sun went down.
It tasted like the anger that burned Wilbur's throat and the gentle, saccharine care of his worry when the blade got hurt.
It sounded like Wilbur's laugh when he agreed it was nice to beat somebody, echoed Tommy's victory cry when he won a game, and mimicked the pleased little hum Phil couldn't fully keep down when he figured out one of his maps.
The blade found himself wanting to ask if that spark was what it felt like to be a person.
(His old master was louder than all, brandished into the fiber of his memory so he might never forget the lessons he was taught to hold above all else. So he might know his own value. At that moment, it came back to him to drown out the rest.
'So a weapon shall never forget its place')
He kept his mouth shut and listened to Tommy talk until it was dark outside.
Chapter 11: Tommy II
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"He's out there again."
When Tommy leaned against the window, he could just barely watch Blade at work in the potato field outside. It sprawled way beyond where their garden used to end. Phil said they had to put up a fence soon. Wilbur agreed.
It was more or less the only thing those two could agree on in the past week.
"So? If it makes him happy I don't see the harm," Phil pointed out from the table. He was sorting through a box he had found in the storage room the other day. More books. It was always more fucking books with Phil.
Wilbur made a noise that was closer to anger than anything else. Phil did not acknowledge him.
"I'm not sure it makes him happy," Tommy said softly to himself. Well, it was meant to be for himself but he didn't care if the others heard. They were too up in their own asses to really pay attention anyway. Tommy had missed most of the fight so he had no fucking clue what that was about. He just knew it had been a week and they were still going at it. It sounded exhausting.
"Then you should go and tell him to come inside," Wilbur told Tommy. He glanced at Phil, a silent challenge. "He'll obey."
"Don't use that word," Phil said - voice cold. Colder than usual.
Wilbur scoffed. "Why? Isn't that what you did?"
"Ignoring the way he thinks the world works isn't an option either, Wilbur. Even if he's wrong. The man needs some fucking guidance, at least until we can figure out how to snap him out of it properly." Phil closed his book in annoyance. Tommy sighed and started to put on his shoes. He didn't feel like dealing with this.
"Your 'guidance' made him farm until his hands were all messed up and bleeding."
"I didn't-" Phil stopped, and closed his mouth. His expression turned darker. "What is this actually about?"
"Can you two make sure you've knocked it off by the time I get back?" Tommy asked. He slammed the door behind him without waiting for an answer, knowing it would get his point across. He stood outside with the satisfying bang of the latches still echoing in his ear, looking at the barn. Tommy wanted to go in there really bad. He could snuggle up with Henry and comb her fur maybe. Settle in the hay so it doesn't itch anymore and fall asleep. Hope that Wilbur and Phil had sorted their terrible crap out by the time sunset came around.
Then he looked at the field, where Blade was painstakingly working on tilling another row of potatoes.
Tommy trudged over, mindful enough not to trample any crops on purpose but also too lazy to take the long way around. "Hey, Blade! What's up?"
Blade stopped what he was doing to look at him, wiping some sweat from his face. Man, he must have been at it for hours again. His eyes flicked up towards the sky, Tommy braced himself for the obvious joke he could see coming from a mile away.
("What's up?" was something Wilbur used to say a lot. And then Tommy would giggle, before even being able to bring himself to answer.
"The sun, dummy!")
Except it didn't happen. It was as if Tommy could see a thought be formed and then dismissed in real-time. Weird. Everything about this guy was weird.
"How are you doing?" Tommy asked instead.
"I'm fine," Blade said. He was always fine. Tommy had never not known him to be fine.
"What about your hands?"
Blade put the hoe into the ground, letting it settle in the pushed up the earth so he could show Tommy his hands. The bandages had come off and the wounds were mostly gone. There were scars, but it was impossible to say if they'd been there before. Blade was kind of littered with them.
"Phil told me I have to stop when they are about to bleed," Blade said simply.
"Good call," Tommy said. "Kind of weird you couldn't have figured that one out yourself. Are you a masochist or something?"
"A what?" Blade asked automatically, then snapped his jaw shut. He picked up the hoe to continue working. If Tommy didn't know any better, he'd think Blade was trying to distract himself from talking out of turn.
(Or maybe Tommy did know better.
Maybe Tommy did know just like he knew exactly why Phil and Wilbur were fighting.)
"You know, somebody who enjoys getting hurt," he said.
Blade kind of scrunched up his nose. "I don't enjoy getting hurt. Nobody should."
"Some people do," Tommy insisted. When he was so small he still fit on Wilbur's back with ease, he'd woken up in the middle of the night sometimes and watched his brother stoke the fire in whatever little cabin or half-destroyed building they'd commandeered for them to survive the winter cold. Then Wilbur would reach out his hand and hold it close enough to have the flames lick at his skin.
Tommy always had to close his eyes when he did that. He didn't like fire.
"Then they are idiots," Blade said suddenly. He was frowning down at the earth as he worked, turning the tool over so deftly Tommy couldn't really follow the motions. He never considered that anybody could be good at farming before. To Tommy, working the fields had always been a chore, not a skill. Blade was proving him wrong.
"Dude, why are you like, weirdly passionate about this?" Tommy laughed.
Blade's scowl deepened further. His words came out not quite as a stutter, but kind of cut off and short. Like he wasn't allowing himself to think about them. Tommy had the impression that if Blade did think, he wouldn't be saying anything. He'd just get all quiet and demure again. So Tommy much preferred this.
"Wanting to be hurt. It makes no sense," Blade insisted. "It's… antithetical to survival."
"It's what?"
Blade blinked, stopped farming to look at him. "Antithetical. It means, like… the opposite of something."
"How can you not read but you know the word anitiletical-"
"Antithetical," Blade corrected. "I've heard it. It's a word lots of people use."
Tommy choked out a little disbelieving laugh. "No, it's not, nobody ever uses that word?"
"My master uses it all the time," Blade said with no hesitation. And then froze.
Tommy watched him hunch in on himself. The hoe slipped out of stiff fingers and tumbled to the earth. Blade's eyes flitted to it, watching it go, caught between picking it up or maybe throwing himself after it. To grovel on the ground for mercy from Tommy because he mentioned some dead guy.
Tommy swallowed away the nausea quickly building in his gut.
"It's whatever," he said quickly. "Anyway, if you really think that getting hurt makes no sense, why didn't you stop it with the potatoes sooner?"
Blade slowly - so slowly the action could only be described as calculated and unnatural - picked up his tool. "Wanting to be hurt is antithetical to survival," he said again. "Survival is what most people want, what they're instinctually drawn to. It makes sense for them." Then, eyes drifting away as if he remembered something, a vague smile graced his lips.
Not the kind of smile Tommy liked. No. Somehow, every bland disinterested look Blade had ever shown him did not feel as hollow to Tommy as this vague grin did.
"Survival is not a weapon's reason for existing," Blade said.
The silence that hung over them after that statement was awkward and tense. Tommy was not one to mince his words so he wasn't even going to try. The first thing out of his mouth was his most honest reaction.
"That's fucking stupid."
Blade looked at him, the farming tool clasped firmly in both hands, forgotten for the moment. He was stunned enough to forget about his task too, apparently. "What?"
"That's fucking stupid," Tommy repeated. "Even if you were a weapon - which you're not-"
At that, Blade made a face Tommy was deciding stubbornly to ignore.
"-then wouldn't it be smarter not to die? You can't really protect anybody when you're dead."
"Yes, well, that is…" Blade stopped himself. "A weapon doesn't question the commands it's given. Obedience trumps survival."
Tommy suspected that Blade could tell he didn't like him saying that. 'Didn't like' might be an understatement, honestly. It was this kind of faulty thinking that made Tommy's head hurt and his gut burn. He didn't know how to change it though. How could he start to explain every single bit that didn't make any fucking sense about how Blade saw things.
"Maybe your 'master' was an idiot too," Tommy said eventually.
Blade turned around, lifting the hoe again. "I need to continue with this." The way his hair fell over his face hid his expression from view.
"Wait, hold on." Tommy grabbed the handle. Blade let go instantly, backing away. Tommy awkwardly held the tool up. "Let's go do something else."
A moment of Blade's eyes darting at the house passed. Tommy had the sickening thought that he didn't know whose opinion would win out, his or Phil's. Would Blade refuse to listen to him because he still thought Phil wanted him to farm the potatoes?
Before he'd made up his own mind, Blade relaxed his stance. He silently waited for Tommy to direct him on what would happen next.
Swallowing, Tommy's appetite for doing anything had already drained. That hay in the barn seemed mighty comfortable to his imagination. But he ignored that.
"Let's go find that Squid guy and rub it in his face that you won."
"Won?" Blade asked. "It wasn't really a competition."
"It is one now," Tommy said, "Have you seen his fields? He's been scrambling to get back at you. We should go gloat."
"If that's what you want," Blade shrugged. It was as if their earlier conversation hadn't happened.
Well, Tommy didn't hold any specific desire to dig back into that can of worms so he would let it go. Where would he even start?
Blade followed him as they walked the road into town. Tommy sometimes felt like he could travel every inch of it blind. Like all those years before coming to live there were a dream and he actually always grew up in Phil's dumb little cabin. Sometimes, that almost made him kind of sad.
"Say, you're very, very old, right?" Tommy asked. "Like, Philza old. And that's very old."
Blade nodded. "Yes?"
"Do you still remember everything?" Tommy kicked at a rock, watching it careen off in front of them. "Because I don't think that's really possible. If you've been alive for ages, that's a lot to remember."
They reached the rock again. Tommy kicked it again.
"I don't know," Blade said.
"What do you mean? You don't know if you remember?"
"I don't know if I remember." Blade kicked the stone this time. The boots he was wearing used to belong to Wilbur and they were slightly ill-fitting. But Phil said he was worried about Blade's feet getting messed up if he kept walking around barefoot.
"That probably means you've forgotten some stuff," Tommy said - because that made sense to him. "Man, that sucks."
"Why?" Blade asked.
Tommy looked at him but Blade seemed too concentrated on finding the stone and kicking it out in front of them before Tommy did, to really notice he'd asked a question. So Tommy answered quickly before it did occur to Blade that he'd done that and he'd get all weird about it again.
"Because you might forget something important," he said. "Or something good. That's even worse, really."
Blade didn't answer. He kicked the stone one last time but then it flew off into the tall grass on the edge of the path. And his lips pulled down into an almost pout that had Tommy chuckling at his expense. Blade glared at him. Again, without really seeming to notice he'd done that.
It made Tommy grin.
"There's probably a lot of stuff I've forgotten," he admitted. "And when people always say you are made of your memories and your experiences and all that fucking shit, it sucks. If that's true, you can forget who you are."
(Sometimes Tommy stayed awake at night and wrote in his journal all the little things he remembered from before they met Phil. So that those little things couldn't leave him. Every cold winter and day of them going hungry. Every time Wilbur's coughing fits got so bad blood stained their blankets and Tommy was sure his brother would die. He wrote about it because that fear shouldn't be allowed to fade.
How could Tommy be grateful for what he currently had if he forgot?)
"You are what you do," Blade said.
Tommy blinked up at him, pulled from the maelstrom of his thoughts. "Hm?"
"You are what you do," Blade repeated. As if the second go around would suddenly make it all clear for Tommy.
"So if I did something bad yesterday but something good today, I'm a good person?" He couldn't quite keep the disbelief from his voice.
"It means you're a better person than you were the day before," Blade said.
"Huh…"
Tommy found that hard to wrap his head around. But maybe it was a nice idea.
They came upon Squid's farm, now pushing against the boundaries of his plot of land. He'd really gone overboard in the past week or so trying to keep up with what Blade had been doing. The rumor mill in town had started turning - mostly in amusement and some disbelief that this was the hill either of them wanted to die on. What would Phil even need that many potatoes for, they whispered. At least for Squid, it was a profession. He sold his potatoes to nearby stores and traveled to markets far and wide. In trying to best him, Blade was just being petty.
Tommy loved that for him.
"Hey, look at that," Tommy said loudly. He put one foot up on a lower part of the fence. "It's the second-largest potato farm in town!"
"It's big," Blade said. Objectively, that was true.
"Ours is bigger," Tommy answered.
"You!" The back door of Squid's house flew open. Tommy saw the man squint at them over the plants, trying to make his way through without trampling them. Kind of like Tommy had done before, but a lot less elegant if he'd dare say so himself. He marched all the way up to the fence too, nose to nose with them. Mostly Blade. "You're the one making my life a living hell!"
"Isn't that a bit dramatic? It's just potatoes," Tommy said. Squid was too busy wagging an accusatory finger in Blade's face.
"Why did you even do it?" Squid asked. "Do you actually care about who has a bigger potato farm? Who- who does that?" He threw up his arms. "You'd have to be some kind of- You'd have to be a total bozo!"
Tommy laughed so hard he doubled over and had to use the fence for support. Squid glowered, turning on him. His arm kind of moved down, maybe to push Tommy off because he was bending the wood under his weight. Before Squid could come anywhere near him, Blade had intercepted it with his own hand.
Squid made a sort of uncomfortable squeaky noise, maybe because Blade's grip looked less than gentle. But the man had already let go again, once he'd confirmed Squid wasn't actually trying to touch Tommy.
"You seem to care very much," he said. Tommy could almost hear the smirk in Blade's voice despite how unaffected his expression remained.
"I don't," Squid said, getting a bit flustered. Seeing him like that was hilarious. "But if I did, I would want you to know it's not over yet. You might have won the battle, but not the war."
"Did you just call this a war?" Tommy asked. "Like, a fucking potato war or something?"
"That's exactly what it is."
"It's really not."
"Heed my words!" Squid waved his finger again, before turning around and rushing back into his house. Presumably to start strategizing for this alleged self-declared potato war.
"Well, he sounds like he'll be completely normal about this," Tommy mentioned.
"I'm not worried," Blade said. His serious gaze drifted over the field in front of them, assessing it with the same scrutiny and tactical insight as a general preparing themselves for a siege that could change the course of history. "His farming technique is imperfect. Exploits will be easy."
Tommy shook his head, turning around so they could start heading home. "You're so fucking weird man."
Maybe he should tell Wilbur he was wrong about what made Blade happy, though.
The tension in the house had not lessened much by the time dinner was served. Tommy was seriously considering the barn after all. Maybe he could sleep there. Wouldn't be the first time and Henry's body kept him decently warm despite the harsher temperatures. It couldn't be much colder inside what with Wilbur and Phil's frigid moods.
But as they were sitting at the table, Wilbur cleared his throat.
"Pack a bag when you're done because we're leaving early in the morning."
"What?!" Tommy dropped his fork onto the table. "Where are we going?"
"The capital," Wilbur said. "Niki has some stuff to attend to and we're joining her."
"Who's we?"
"You and me." Wilbur nodded at the only person left at the table since Phil was already over at the counter. "And Blade."
"What about Phil?" Tommy asked.
"What about him?"
"It's fine, I'm staying here for a job," Phil said - apparently within earshot. "Don't worry about it, Tommy. I think it's better for you all to be gone a while."
As if his saying that wouldn't make Tommy worry about it more.
"You guys are acting so fucking stupid over this," he said. Blade glanced at him from his spot at the table. Then he kind of lowered his head and paid full attention to his food again. Tommy bit his tongue.
Yeah, fighting with each other in front of the guy who totally thought they were all his owners or something similarly messed up was a great idea.
So he held his tongue all evening, no matter how much he wanted to scream at them. Often, Tommy felt like the only sensical one in this family. And it didn't even matter, because all his complaints would be dismissed anyway. Wilbur and Phil must have both missed the memo about him growing up. The memo that was supposed to remind them that Tommy was totally a big man now and didn't need them to keep all the secrets between them two.
(Wilbur reached out and ruffled his hair and back then it made Tommy feel safe rather than dismissed.
"It'll be okay. Don't worry." Wilbur's words were so reassuring to him.
It didn't fucking feel like that anymore, did it?)
But when he had grabbed his blanket and was on his way to the front door, he crossed Wilbur in the hallway and couldn't help run his mouth.
"Do you really think this is how you can fix things?"
Wilbur didn't look at him. "I'm not trying to fix anything, Tommy."
He sounded tired.
"Liar."
"Go to bed," Wilbur said in a harsher tone. "We have a long day ahead of us."
Tommy just scoffed as he walked past him.
Notes:
Hah, you thought Blade was the only screwed up person in this fic? Oh no no no. And unlike him, the other guys' baggage is not going to be fully explained because they're bad communicators and unreliable narrators. But hey, I'm sure it won't cause any issues /s
Chapter 12: The Blade VI
Notes:
We ignore that it took me like 5 months to get to uploading this chapter. It's extra long to compensate.
Chapter Text
"Have you ever been to the capital before?"
The blade blinked as Niki's simple question drew him out of his sinking thoughts. He was having a lot of those lately. Thoughts. Not that he didn't have thoughts before, but they were simple things. Functional. They were thoughts like those of an animal, clear statements and directions mustered up by his brain that served as guidance on what to do.
Get up. Go to the barracks. Eat enough to not grow weak. Train. Fight. Die for the master.
The blade liked them because it made things easy. Even after the master ran away and the castle was reduced to rubble, he was a little confused but his thoughts made simple orders for him to follow.
Wait for the master. Check the castle for intruders. Wait for the master. Stand at the gate when the sun goes down. Wait for the master. Eat. Wait. Sleep. Wait.
And on the battlefield, soaked in blood and gore, thoughts went away to be replaced by muscle memory and instinct. Nothing was confusing there. Killing required no thought.
Lately, his brain had been a lot more busy. The blade wouldn't say he minded. Serving his new masters was honestly kind of boring. They didn't get into wars as often as his previous owner did, nor did they delight in expanding their territory. Their estate did not require as much upkeep and it didn't have as many servants, so there weren't a lot of chores to go around either. And the chores that did exist were divided very differently. The blade trained like he used to since he got the practice weapons from the barn, keeping his skills sharp and his reflexes sharper. They wanted him to learn things. The blade could be a quick learner, he'd become able to read more easily. Farming potatoes had been a good way to pass the time too, which made the blade almost mournful he had to stop.
But he had to stop for a good reason. His masters had finally given him a proper command. Escort missions were pretty standard, but the blade enjoyed them fine.
The thoughts, however, could be a problem, if he allowed them to distract him.
"Yes and no," he said eventually. Niki never seemed to mind when it took him a while to answer questions.
"You have and haven't been to the capital?" she asked, laughing slightly. "How does that work?"
"When I went there, it was not the capital yet," the blade told her.
Wilbur had shown him on the map the place they were going to, three days travel away from the town the masters lived. It would take longer if they had to walk, but Niki had a cart and Phil gave them Carl to pull it. The horse was old, but strong. Like most war horses - even in age they were massive and resilient. The blade could vaguely recognize some of the mountain ranges and rivers on the map. He spent hours staring at maps during war councils and such, and he had a good memory for them. Thus the blade now knew where the town was, where they were heading, even where the castle of his old master was in relation to everything.
"They made it the capital after the war," Niki said.
"I see."
When the blade went there, he was barely old enough to be trusted. The collar sat freshly around his throat and his master was still training him. He was young, small, naive. The city was big enough to impress him. Some other noble presided over it. A friend of his master.
"The entire place was razed to the ground, so it's probably going to look quite different from how you remember." Niki adjusted Carl's reins in her lap. Wilbur and Tommy were sleeping, she kept her voice soft so as to not wake them.
The blade frowned, taking in those words. It wasn't the fact that they changed the capital that puzzled him. This was quite common in warfare. Usually, the winning party would seize control, and whatever place they called home then became the seat of government. Or sometimes, a capital would be moved for economic reasons like trade routes.
What he didn't understand was why a city of this size would be torn down and then rebuilt for the purpose.
Sure, it wasn't uncommon for buildings to get destroyed, though most battles were waged out in the open or on farmlands. When they campaigned, the master would often task their soldiers with burning fields and leveling towns. On enemy territory, every crop was a ration. But bigger cities were left standing. Laid under siege if need be. If you were just going to take over when you won the war, you'd need settlements. Whoever went around razing entire cities had to be an idiot.
Or they had to be acting out of anger rather than strategy.
The blade remembered his owner's castle. How senseless the slaughter was, how even hours later when they must have known his master was long gone, the mob continued to destroy all their belongings. Then they left the ruins without rebuilding.
Back then, he never asked why they waged war. His master gave him reasons sometimes - claiming land or property, keeping the commoners in line, aiding allies, defending against threats. His master had enemies because others were greedy and full of envy. The blade didn't linger on these reasons. It was not a weapon's place to know why it was wielded.
The thoughts kept turning.
"Are we there yet?" Tommy flopped over the wooden back of the seat, pushing aside the heavy canvas that covered the wagon. Looking over his shoulder, the blade could see their belongings piled up in the back, a glimpse of Wilbur's curls sticking out from the top of a bundle of blankets. Tommy yawned and rubbed his eyes.
"We will be in an hour or less," Niki answered. "Before noon, for sure."
"Nice." Tommy clambered over the backrest to sit between them properly. The blade automatically scooted to the side to give him room, not wanting Tommy to be squeezed between them uncomfortably. But that only made Tommy hold onto the back of his shirt a little.
"We'll have time to enjoy the day before I need to get my stuff done," Niki said. "Anything in particular you want to do?"
"Just the usual," Tommy answered. The way they had spoken about this trip before implied it was a regular enough occurrence. Though Phil would normally come with them if it was for leisure. Niki had business in the capital, so this time would be different. Wilbur had only come along because he wanted to get away from Phil.
The blade swallowed away that thought, a bad thought. Not a useful one.
"Do you think you have a shawl or cloak he can borrow?" Niki asked suddenly, nodding at the blade. "We don't want to have any issues with the guards."
"Oh, right! Yeah, we brought something, hold on. Blade is going to look awesome."
Tommy climbed over the seat again, somehow more clumsily than before. Carl was only going at an easy saunter, but Tommy's acrobatics made the blade nervous all the same. He had seen an unfortunate soldier or two be crushed beneath the wheels of a loaded cart before, fallen at the wrong moment or trampled by the horse's hooves. Aside from it being both a terrible way to die and a horrible sight to witness, the blade knew Phil would never forgive him for it.
Keeping Tommy, Niki, and Wilbur safe, and getting them back from the capital unharmed at the end of their errands, was the blade's mission. Easy enough, he supposed.
Well, easy enough in theory. Tommy's recklessness wasn't inspiring much confidence.
"By the way, do you have any other name I could call you?" Niki asked him next. The blade looked over at her and her smile was unchanged, if a little strained around the edges. "Or even a nickname. No offense, it just feels a little weird to call you 'Blade' all the time."
The blade wanted to point out that 'Blade' wasn't even his name either, it was merely something his masters decided on calling him. He didn't have a name. A blade didn't need a name. People had names. Weapons weren't people. Thoughts. So many thoughts.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Probably not the response she was hoping for, but one that served him well over the years. No matter if he actually understood what he did wrong, apologizing could earn him goodwill and make a punishment less severe.
To his surprise, Niki merely giggled lightly. "That's okay. Maybe you should consider picking one."
The blade titled his head, puzzled again "A name?"
"Why not?" Niki shrugged. "If you want to be Blade forever, that's fine, I can probably get used to it. But if you want to change it, you should. People change their names all the time."
Niki was similar to Phil in that regard, asking him what he 'wanted' often. The blade didn't want anything. A weapon shouldn't want anything.
Except farming potatoes, maybe. So many thoughts made things harder than they should be. But being upset that he couldn't do something anymore seemed to indicate to the blade that it might be a thing he 'wanted'. He prepared the farm as best he could so it would keep producing in his absence. He wanted the potatoes to thrive.
Before, when he was young… had he wanted things after all? And simply presumed tucking those wants away deep, deep, deep below it all was the same as not wanting at all? Another swirling thought.
He put one hand on the hilt of the sword hanging from his hip, rubbing a thumb over the polished metal. When he slid it down, he could catch skin against a sharp edge. Too many thoughts. He had to concentrate on his task as a blade.
Niki took his non-answer for what it was, not pushing any further. They were quickly distracted by Tommy almost falling onto his face for the third time anyway, one elbow jabbing the blade in the side as he reclaimed his spot between them.
"Tada!" He unfurled a large piece of dark red fabric. A cloak of some sort, as Niki mentioned. Tommy turned in his seat so he could wrap it around the blade's shoulders, fastening it with a simple bronze clasp shaped like the sun. "Here you go, big man."
"When we're around other people, you should keep it on at all times," Niki said, tone more serious. "To hide the collar."
The blade reached up to touch his throat instinctively, as he had done a million times before. The cloak did wrap loosely around, sitting high against his chin almost more like a scarf before trailing longer in the back. The blade didn't mind wearing it, his arms were unconstricted in it so it might even be more practical than some of the cloaks his old master made him wear. They wanted to radiate their wealth through velvet and silk. They forgot that a weapon fought better when not sheathed.
All the same, the fact that his collar was a potential issue made the blade's face feel strangely hot. They wanted to take it off before. He had disobeyed them. And they had been kind enough to let it slide, but if it was going to trouble them further then the blade was not only disobedient, but bad.
"I'm sorry," he said again, barely breathing. His thumb pressed into the metal harder.
"It's fine. People just don't take kindly to humans being kept as property," Tommy said bluntly. "Or hybrids, for that matter."
"Hopefully if somebody does see it, they'll think it's a weird fashion statement," Niki added quickly. "We don't want to get into trouble over a misunderstanding."
A misunderstanding?
"There it is!" Tommy pointed ahead of them. The blade could see a few spires and bell towers barely visible above the treetops. From between the foliage, he could discern the curve of a wall. They had arrived at the capital. The ground rose a little, Carl snorted as he had to drag the cart uphill, making it slow going. The city was built on higher ground, the blade remembered from his previous visit. The wall had been there then too. It would be a short while before they came to an entrance gate.
"Wake Wilbur up," Niki told Tommy.
"Yeah, his lazy ass has been sleeping too long." Tommy kind of rolled backward, landing among their supplies with a little oompf noise. The blade watched him start to shake Wilbur awake.
The blade was a little surprised at how deeply Wilbur slept in this wagon. Back at Phil's home, he could often hear Wilbur stay up until late hours. Sometimes he played his guitar, sometimes he paced around his room. Frequently, he would head out. Multiple times, the blade had thought Wilbur fell asleep only for the man to wake up again in the middle of the night. Since he was a light sleeper himself, having somebody move around would often wake him.
Not that the blade minded. He'd rather be awake when his masters were, so he could be ready when he was needed. But it struck him as odd that Wilbur seemed to sleep better while out on the road like this.
In a weird sense, it reminded the blade of how he slept better when in the barracks rather than in his master's room.
When Wilbur sat up, he stretched his arms far above his head and righted his glasses, which had slid askew in his sleep. "Are we there yet?" He even said it in the exact way Tommy had.
"Just about," Niki told him. "So we're going to need your charm to get us an inn."
"Wilbur's the best at striking a deal," Tommy said, climbing over the backrest of the driver's seat for the fourth time. The blade hoped he would stay put now. "He's all, 'that price is preposterous and you should be ashamed!' and then he frowns until people give us a discount."
"It's called haggling," Wilbur said a little testily. "And it's a form of art."
Niki shook her head with a slight frown. "Just make sure to get us a place without mice this time."
Wilbur grumbled something in answer but the blade could hardly hear it over the sudden noise. Another pair of hooves, multiple. He blinked, one brief moment when he was back on the battlefield seconds before the march. Then the memory was gone, and it was simply Niki pulling their wagon onto a larger road with cobblestones. There were other horses, and people on them. More carts. The blade hadn't seen this kind of hectic activity in a long time.
And the open gate of the capital rose before them.
The city had grown.
That was what the blade kept noticing. Obviously, it would grow. When it became the capital, it drew droves of people towards it. The amount of citizens living there must have skyrocketed. And it wasn't exactly small to begin with.
Beyond that though, it was as if something else had grown too. The noises, the smells, the towering of the buildings around him. Everything had expanded and became a lot. Too much, maybe.
He didn't like it.
He never liked when things were too much. When he got overwhelmed, he couldn't function properly. He couldn't think either, which used to be fine but since the thoughts were in his head getting all tied up because of his new masters that was another thing to contend with. The blade could only handle so many things at the same time. Keeping his masters happy was one thing. The most important thing.
Niki took his wrist.
Softly, a hold that he could break easily if he wanted to. Nothing like how his old master hauled him around, yelling in his ear about wandering off. Niki's fingers curled around only enough to guide him.
"There's a crowd so we don't want to get split up," she said.
The blade wondered why she wouldn't do the same for Wilbur or Tommy then, who were both walking a little bit ahead of them. Wilbur was easy enough to spot, tall and with the white streak in his hair. Tommy was harder, he bounced around a lot and the blade had trouble tracking him. He also didn't trust Tommy not to get lost the way he did Wilbur.
People everywhere, glass windows with the most dazzling displays. Music playing on street corners. A mixed scent of spice and burned sugar. The blade remembered why he hated cities. He'd take the chaos of the battlefield over this any day. They had to leave Carl in a special stable outside the capital's gates too, something that was mildly concerning to him. He didn't often entrust the care of his master's horses to strangers. Though if it was what Phil had agreed on with Niki, the blade's opinion didn't matter.
Just like it didn't matter how strangely the woman of the inn had looked at him. Wilbur and Niki both distracted her and it hadn't gone further than a few glances.
"If you need a breather, tell me," Niki said into his ear.
The blade shook his head, barely.
Wilbur slowed down a bit, falling into step beside him. That was good. That was one less thing for the blade to worry about, one less thought. Tommy was staring into a shop window, both hands pressed to the glass. They stopped behind him, looking at the wares.
The blade couldn't tell what he was looking at. They seemed to be animals? Very small animals, cut out of wood. They reminded him of the war figurines from his old master's maps. There were elaborate scenes set up with them, tiny barns and fences and some other buildings even.
Perfect for planning out a battlefield, except they seemed to be meant as toys. Well, start teaching them young, the blade supposed.
"Should we get a gift for Phil?" Tommy asked.
"A miniature?" Wilbur tilted his head curiously, but clearly didn't think much of the wooden figurines. Definitely meant for kids then. "If you want to get Phil something, we should just stick to books like we usually do."
"But books are boring," Tommy complained. "These are adorable and cool." He nodded to himself, as if satisfied by his very subjective statement.
"If you want to get some for yourself, you can just say so," Niki said with a slight grin.
Tommy puffed out his cheeks when he turned away from her. Wilbur hummed, putting his hand on Tommy's neck to slightly drag him along, toward another shop across the street. "Books it is."
The bookstore was big and dusty, but quieter than outside so the blade already preferred it. He dutifully followed the other three around as they looked at books, discussing which ones Phil would like. Nobody asked his opinion. The blade didn't need them to - after all, opinions were not what weapons were good for. Even if some part of him had almost come to expect it from these people. A good thing though, as he would not know what kind of books Phil enjoyed reading. Despite having looked over Phil's entire collection in his pursuit of pleasing them in learning to read.
But at one point, Niki held up a book with a textured, deep red cover and a big illustration of a swan in flight. "Maybe this one."
"Phil has that one," the blade said automatically. He remembered seeing it.
And then he bit his tongue, casting his eyes away. They didn't ask-
"Nice catch," Wilbur said. Ah, well, maybe if he was saving them from spending money fruitlessly that was a good thing.
His old master hated any sort of advice, from the blade or from his generals, given with good intentions or not. The blade should know by now, that even when they made mistakes that would be infinitely better than for him to act heedlessly and speak without permission.
So he fell back a bit, back into line where a weapon like him belonged. Why was it so easy to forget his place with these new masters? So many thoughts.
The shopkeeper was staring at him too, which didn't do much to make him feel less on edge.
"What's wrong?" Tommy asked at one point. The blade scrunched up his face a little, the confusion getting so much worse when he was trying to find an answer that was not a lie and not selfish and didn't inconvenience them.
"I don't know," he said eventually. Tommy's eyes followed the direction he was looking in. Then he huffed and took the blade's elbow to take him along.
"Oh, don't mind them. People aren't used to seeing Piglin hybrids around."
Phil had called him that too at one point, when talking about the collar. The blade didn't know what it meant. He knew what hybrids were, there had been soldiers in the army who were hybrids too. Some servants at the castle were hybrids. Hybrids were just people who weren't entirely human. Those with tails or strange ears or wings.
What a 'piglin' was remained a mystery to him.
It burned inside him - thoughts, thoughts, too many thoughts - because the blade had never met anybody like him and of course he hadn't, he was a weapon. Why would he meet people like him? Other hybrids were like him in that they weren't human either but they weren't like him because they were people. They were people and he wasn't and so when he looked in the mirror, the slight tusks sticking out of his mouth or the blood-red eyes or the strange pinkish hair… were there others that had those things? Were they people, or weapons?
The blade dug his claws into his hand and slammed it into his thigh a few times, allowing the pain to ground him. Tommy looked at him funny, but Wilbur interrupted them before he could comment.
"We got the books." He held up a brown paper bag, presumably with the gifts they got for Phil inside. The blade didn't know which ones they got, though he knew it wasn't any Phil had. So that was good. He wouldn't be chided for inattentiveness, probably.
"Should we stop by the pantheon before we head back?" Niki asked.
"Probably. Unless we want to be haunted in our sleep tonight." Tommy shuddered at the thought.
They went out, back into the swirling streets of the capital. The blade exhaled through his nostrils, concentrating on keeping inside his own head while they continued traversing the crowds. It was hard, there was a vague pounding between his temples. He followed his masters to a huge building the color of ivory. He'd noticed it sticking out above some of the roofs.
Something about it was imposing, in the same way his old master's castle had been.
They stepped inside, two guards at the door also giving the blade a curious look over but neither of them intervening. The blade expected a lot of hallways, and staircases. The building had looked so large from the outside, it would make sense for whoever lived there to have a lot of different rooms.
Except, it was all one big room. One gaping hole the size of a mountain, it seemed to him, with large stone pillars that supported the domed top. There was still some separation in the space, because the walls were curved inward almost like flower petals, making different-sized alcoves connected to the main space that people could walk into. The one directly opposite the door was the biggest one.
And there were dozens of people, kneeling in front of an altar.
"The pantheon is made so folks can worship whatever deities they call on. At least all the commonly practiced religions that are recognized by the big guys in charge," Tommy explained, pulling him along by his sleeve again. The blade didn't know when that had become a habit, the causal touches to help him. Offering information freely so he wouldn't feel confused. Or was his face easy enough to read so they could tell he had no idea what this temple was?
Wryly, the blade realized he was quite bad at his task today. Perhaps it was a good thing Phil wasn't there, he'd be disappointed.
"Do you know Prime?" Niki asked. The blade nodded his head. Everything was very quiet, the few people who were talking did so in hushed whispers. Probably to not disturb the prayers.
"Figures, that's one of the ancients," Wilbur mumbled.
The blade's old master didn't worship Prime. A lot of the commoners did though, and thus the master knew about the god and what it represented. Their shoes made a soft sound against the polished floors. The alcove next to Prime's was only slightly smaller and just as filled with people. The blade saw a woman on a bench, cradling a child to her chest. The boy was breathing roughly, straining with every inhale. He wouldn't live long anymore, sickness already growing inside him.
So the blade was not surprised to look up at the statue of a veiled woman.
The Lady of Death was widely worshiped on the battlefield. When they were preparing for an important skirmish, the blade often saw the soldiers pray to her, asking to be welcomed softly into her embrace. When the fight was over, sometimes bodies would be laying in pools of blood, broken and twitching, begging for her to offer release.
(The blade did not know if the gods were real or not. He saw no higher purpose than serving his master. But once or twice, maybe he had whispered into his cupped palms asking for her mercy too.
She had never given him any.)
Tommy walked to the front of the altar, picking up a piece of parchment. Prayers to the Lady of Death would often be written down rather than spoken, the paper either burned or tied on a crow's foot. The candles scattered around would imply that the former was preferred in this pantheon. Tommy knelt near the statue, the shadow cast by the figure covering most of the alcove.
"This might take a bit," Niki said softly to the blade, watching as Wilbur followed Tommy's example to pray also. "They can't talk to her as often as Phil."
He looked away from her as if he knew what she meant. Not that it mattered that he didn't. He was only to serve his role.
The old master did much stranger stuff with no explanation.
"I'll be over there," Niki told him. She nodded to some other niche, across the pantheon. Another god worshiped, probably. The blade nodded again. He could keep watch.
When she had gone, he leaned against the nearest pillar. His head did hurt pretty bad, worse than it had in a while. Rest would do him good, though it was doubtful the blade would get much tonight. Unfamiliar territory was tricky, and they were staying at the inn. That meant there were strangers all around them. Different from setting up a camp, the blade knew he couldn't let his guard down with so many people nearby. Harm to his masters could come from unexpected corners. He did something he barely ever allowed himself to, tipping his head back to rub at his weary eyes.
A strange smell reached him.
The blade dropped his shoulders, turning towards it on instinct. What would emit such a scent, he couldn't place. Except that in a way, it was familiar to him. It smelled heavy, ash and brine.
Before he knew it, his feet were carrying him towards it.
The fragrance lured him further to the back of the pantheon, off into a little niche so much smaller than the rest. As if it was added as an afterthought, barely big enough to fit two people if they were standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the circular altar. Sitting atop the altar was a bell made of gold. The blade liked gold. He felt that if he reached out to it, it would make the loveliest sound. But when he moved, the blade's foot landed on something soft and he pulled it back, curiously looking down at the strange dust that covered the floor. Not made of tile, but something different. The walls too were covered with a strange material that appeared to him like cracked molten rock. A few vines hung from the rafters and fungus-like plants grew in the stone's crevices. Were those what caused the scent? All of it did feel as if he'd seen it before, though his recollection failed him on where.
Did it remind him of the red place?
The alcove was drenched in that color too, because a stained glass window of crimson was the only source of light. The sun fell through it from above, making the thousands of eye shapes painted on the glass seem alive and blinking. The small space was curious, yet pleasant. Standing in that red hue that made his skin look as covered in blood as it was on the battlefield, the blade's chest felt tight with a belonging he couldn't remember from ever before, not with his old master and not in the arena. Not even with his new masters. He looked up into that legion of eyes watching him. Watching the blade shuffle closer to the altar.
He could hear them, a choir of a hundred overlapping voices between his ears. They knew his name.
But then somebody called for him, called for their blade, and he flinched back as if he had been burned by a fire. Hurriedly, he turned around and tried to return before he could be punished for wandering off. In his haste, he didn't see Niki before bumping into her.
"Oof-" She stumbled back and the blade caught her elbows so she wouldn't fall. She had to tip her head back to look up at him. "Oh, there you are. Is something wrong?"
"No," he answered quickly. "I was looking around."
He shouldn't speak this way to his masters. Though, Niki wasn't technically his master, was she? Not a weapon either but not the one who wielded him and maybe it allowed him to speak a little more candidly around her.
"Yeah, the pantheon is pretty breathtaking, right? It always impressed me as a little girl." She stepped away. "Come on. The others are waiting."
"Yes."
But leaving felt like agony.
He wanted to know.
"Who is this one for?" he asked, looking back at the alcove. The crimson luminosity from the stained window seemed almost to reach them. Those eyes too, watching.
"Some obscure Nether deity," Niki said offhandedly. "The Blood God, I think it's called? Not a lot of people worship there, that's why it's so small." She grabbed his wrist to tug him along.
Anger flared alive, one second where he wanted to bare his teeth at her and tear loose.
Then that faded, replaced with a deep-rooted dread at his own misbehavior, cold and poignant where it settled low in his stomach. Niki didn't notice. The blade was fortunate she did not notice.
He might not be this lucky in the future.
With his chin held low, he followed her back to where his masters were waiting.
Chapter 13: The Blade VII
Notes:
This chapter was supposed to be significantly longer but the second half was vexing me so I decided to cut it in two. This means you get a short update today, my apologies o7
Chapter Text
"Here you go. Since you probably won't be sleeping anyway."
The blade looked up as Wilbur held a book out to him. It was hefty, leatherbound so it appeared pretty old. However, when he took it he noticed the mass-produced quality of it. Real rare books were made painstakingly by hand, every single page woven individually. This one had the edges pasted. The cover was merely wrapped in leather to make it look more expensive. The blade knew this only because his old master put a lot of importance on these sorts of things. They commissioned people to make books for them sometimes, a symbol of wealth.
"I got it at the bookstore while we were looking for gifts," Wilbur continued, perhaps to make up for his hesitance in taking it.
"Is it for Phil?" the blade asked. Wilbur could not possibly think he was so bad at occupying himself, that he should give the blade one of Phil's future gifts to keep him busy. That was… a horrifying thing, really. Sometimes the blade got hand-me-downs but he couldn't use an item meant for his master before they even received it.
Wilbur's expression fell, and darkened. "No, I got it for you. Don't be daft."
It wasn't the worst word ever used to describe him. If anything, it was probably an understatement. The blade's old master made certain he was very aware of his own stupidity. Yet somehow his fingers curled around the book's cover and he frowned at his own lap. Though by the time Wilbur resumed talking, he had forced his expression back into a more agreeable one.
"With all that practice you're probably good enough by now to read something like this, and it seemed like a book you'd enjoy. So I got it for you. Not everything has to be about Phil, you know." Wilbur sighed there, a little annoyed.
"Thank you," the blade said quickly. He'd only very rarely been given anything, let alone something he could keep. A true possession, like his collar. Expressing gratitude made sense.
Even if Wilbur's entire attitude was confusing to him.
"Yeah, don't mention it." Wilbur waved his hand and walked back to the other side of the room.
The blade turned the book over. He couldn't completely decipher if it was meant to be an account of history or a fictional dramatization. Once enough time passed, he supposed that the lines between those two would start to blur anyway. And the Age of Blood had been a long, long time ago.
He had to keep reminding himself of that fact. He didn't feel like it was that long ago, but it was. It was and the master was dead and the wars were over and the people who the blade knew were dead so long already that no living memory of them existed anymore. None aside from his own.
The door opened and Tommy walked in, wearing a linen shirt and shorts, with a towel around his shoulders. His hair was still dripping with excess water. The inn Wilbur found for them had a bathhouse attached. And no mice, which was certainly a good thing.
"Man, this place is nice. They didn't even charge extra for soap." Tommy flopped down onto one of the four beds in the room. "Are you really going to bed while smelling like shit?"
Wilbur frowned at him. "I don't smell like shit. When you're not a teenager, you literally don't have to bathe every day to stop from being gross."
"I'm not a teenager either," Tommy said. "I just care what the ladies think."
"The ladies probably think you're a fucking teenager," Wilbur told him.
"Ah, I get it. The only lady you care about isn't around so-" Before Tommy could finish his sentence, Wilbur had already grabbed him in a half-hearted headlock, sitting down on the mattress next to Tommy so he could clamp his hand around the younger man's mouth.
"Shut up," Wilbur hissed.
Tommy said something - something the blade couldn't make out for the life of him - before elbowing Wilbur in the side. Wilbur yelped and let go.
"Do you want to take a bath?" Tommy asked the blade, probably smart enough to change the subject with Wilbur still right next to him. "The place is terrific, they have heated floors and everything."
There they went asking him what he wanted again. The blade traced the book's spine, feeling every small groove and edge. "I-"
"It would probably be too suspicious with the collar. Don't want to invite any questions we can't answer," Wilbur cut in. Tommy didn't look too happy with it, but he shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess." He rolled onto his back. "Should we just go to sleep then? It's early but I'm kind of tired. We've been walking all day."
"You should," Wilbur said. "I'm going down to the bar."
"Really? Are you sure that's a good idea?" Tommy made a gesture with his hands the blade couldn't entirely discern, or maybe him lying down somehow messed up what he was trying to gesticulate.
"It's fine, don't stay up waiting for me." Wilbur grabbed his coin purse from the table.
"Uh, should we wait up for Niki?" the blade asked. He didn't like how both of them instantly looked at him as soon as he spoke up, that was still somewhat stressful. It made the little instinctual alarm bells in his brain go off with warnings of what could happen if he talked out of turn.
But he had also been obsessively reminding himself all day that his task from Phil was to keep the three of them safe. So that's what the blade had devoted himself to. Niki left somewhere around sundown and the blade didn't know if or when she would return.
"Oh, she's not coming back tonight. She went to have dinner with her family so she'll probably stay with them," Wilbur said.
"They live in the fancy building?" the blade asked.
Again, a question. He shouldn't be asking so many questions. But the blade remembered when they'd gotten there, after leaving the cathedral. The walls were hung with flowers all along the bricks outside. From every windowsill, a banner draped down. The blade had never seen anything quite like it before, so he couldn't discern the building's purpose. He was perplexed by it, and interested. Niki said goodbye to them before going inside. She seemed tense.
"They're fancy lodgings for nobles from outside the city," Wilbur explained. "Niki's family owns land in the north. But that would be too far for her to travel when they want to see her."
The blade nodded. This honestly opened up a lot more wonderings for him than it explained anything. He wasn't aware Niki had noble heritage, nothing about her was in any way similar to the nobles the blade had been surrounded by all his life. If Niki was a noble, why did she run a simple bakery in a small town far away from important cities? And if she came to the capital to visit her family, why was that so distressing for her? Unless she had a bad relationship with them, but even that didn't make any sense.
If they had disowned her, they should have executed her. That's what all the nobles did when the blade saw it happen.
"She'll be back tomorrow. Just try to get some sleep," Wilbur said again, heading towards the door with his coin purse clutched in one hand. "And keep an eye on Tommy maybe, so he doesn't do anything stupid."
"Fuck off," Tommy said.
"You could try reading him to sleep, he used to enjoy that," Wilbur added.
"Yeah, because it was so boring," Tommy shot back, but Wilbur had already closed the door behind him. "Ugh, what a bitch, can you believe that guy?"
The blade was staring at the book in his hand, but he looked up when he realized Tommy was waiting for an answer. He shrugged.
"He's pissed because Phil is being annoying, but then he acts like that?! There's a word for that type of guy. A hypnokit?" Tommy rolled over onto his stomach, putting his folded arms under his chin.
"A hypocrite," the blade supplied.
"Yeah, that! They both are hypocrites."
The blade stayed silent. He'd come no closer to figuring out what the issue was, why both Phil and Wilbur were so on edge with each other when they'd seemed pretty normal at first. It wasn't his place to know why, except that everybody else - mainly Tommy, honestly - seemed to assume it was. And that the blade should have some sort of thought about it. Or a strong emotion. The blade felt… annoyed by it, if anything.
And that was bad of him. Very bad.
Neither thoughts nor emotions had any place in the mind of a weapon. Definitely not annoyance aimed at his owners.
"So? Are you going to read to me or what?"
Tommy's voice pulled the blade from his musing - again, not a good thing. His masters shouldn't have to beg for his attention like starving dogs at the city gate. If anything that was the blade's job - and he nodded. If Tommy wanted him to read, read he would.
He opened the book to the first page, sitting back on the bed and pulling up his legs beneath himself. Tommy shuffled to be beneath the blankets as the blade started speaking.
'There were many ruthless souls who might be made responsible for the Age of Blood turning out the way it did. Some scholars will lay such blame at the feet of the nobles, others will point at uneducated masses whose rebellions will always lead to savagery. While it is not apt to hold accountable a single man, one general will be remembered most. He was known as The Angel of Death.'
A thud from downstairs startled the blade awake in the middle of the night.
He didn't mean to nod off. The last thing he remembered was reading for Tommy. Then at some point, the younger man had fallen asleep and the blade had settled into a more relaxed position on the bed, continuing to read in silence. He got through a few more pages, but he must have been pretty tired if he fell asleep without realizing it. The thud was dull, far away, but followed by a small round of laughter. All the noise sounded muffled coming from downstairs, where the bar was. But the blade slept lightly so it was enough to rouse him.
He rubbed at his eyes and sat up. Tommy was snoring softly from the other side of the room. The remaining beds were empty.
Wilbur hadn't come back yet.
The blade knew that Wilbur said not to wait up for him - and technically they hadn't. But he had a vivid image in his mind from a little while ago, when he stayed up late and Wilbur stumbled into Phil's cabin in the dead of night, smelling of alcohol and vomit. If his task was to keep the others safe, checking that Wilbur was fine would probably count.
Or maybe the blade was getting too curious for his own good again and he was looking for excuses.
He dreamt about that the other day. It was such a small thing he had forgotten. But when he was little and his old master had very recently purchased him from the arena, he would wander to places in the castle he wanted to get a closer look at. He would pick up objects to inspect them better. And he always had some lie ready as to why.
His master beat that out of him. Lying was the worst thing he could do.
Once the thought popped up it was hard to shake, however. The blade allowed it to grow, to spur him on so he slipped back into the soft-soled sandals Phil had given him to wear for the trip. Phil said walking around barefoot in the big city could be dangerous. He hesitated before also taking the scarf-cloak thing Tommy had handed to him on the cart. The blade only wanted to take a quick little peek downstairs, make sure Wilbur didn't need any help. He didn't want to cause his masters any additional issues.
The blade closed the door behind him and slowly moved, following the noises until he got to the bar. The inn was small and didn't have more than eight rooms. They would get a majority of their profits from the drink and food they sold. The bar was crowded too, bright to an almost painful degree. People were cheering and singing along to a musician who was playing in one corner of the room. Others were talking so loudly the blade couldn't understand how they'd be able to hear each other. Much like the city, it felt overwhelming to him.
So he squinted his eyes, hoping to find Wilbur quickly.
Sure enough, the man was slumped on the bar counter. His face was smooched against the wood, though his hand remained curled around a glass of ale. There was very little left inside, and the blade doubted it was Wilbur's first one of the night.
He made his way over, taking a seat on the stool next to Wilbur's. The blade carefully brushed some hair out of Wilbur's face.
His eyes were closed, though as soon as the blade touched him they blinked open. His pupils were huge and dilated. The blade tilted his head.
"You're drunk," he observed out loud. With the noise of the bar, he doubted Wilbur could hear.
Except then Wilbur's face split into a crooked smirk. "Aren't you clever?"
"Do you want me to help you upstairs?"
"I'm fine." Wilbur sat back, almost tipping out of his seat. He only didn't because the blade put a hand on his lower back. "Do you want a drink?"
The blade stayed silent. He was considering his options, but all the ideas he was coming up with were bad and disobedient. He didn't like the thought of leaving Tommy alone too long. He didn't want to leave Wilbur alone either.
How odd, he was going to start wishing for an easier time when he only had one master to deal with again.
Wilbur started to laugh suddenly. "Oh, right, right, I forgot. You don't want anything, do you?" The tone was bitter, mocking him.
The blade almost retorted with vitriol, but bit his tongue until he tasted blood instead.
"Come on, you're just proving Phil right. And that's the last thing he needs, with his 'holier than thou' attitude. It wouldn't kill him to be wrong about something for once," Wilbur said. He gestured at the man behind the bar, who retrieved another glass of foamy ale. The blade thought it looked disgusting.
Wilbur picked it up, hand shaking, and held it out to the blade. Some of the liquid sloshed over the rim.
"Go on, drink it," he said. "It would do you some good to loosen up a little."
"No."
Wilbur blinked at him, slow and lethargic. He seemed to be having trouble really parsing the fact that the blade was refusing. The blade was definitely feeling some kind of way about it himself. He swallowed, the unease a vice around his throat.
"Drink it," Wilbur repeated. "I'm telling you to drink this. Now."
He was commanding the blade to.
The blade reached out to take the glass. He put it down on the counter again, next to Wilbur's already empty one.
"You're drunk," he said again. Then he looped Wilbur's arm around his shoulder and lifted him from the seat. "You're in no state to stay here any longer." Despite Wilbur being a few inches taller than him, it wasn't exactly hard to drag him around. He was all limb, not a lot of muscle. And he was inebriated enough that he pretty much entirely slumped into the blade's side. He saw the bartender draw up an eyebrow, though the man didn't comment. The blade held no respect for somebody who would serve a person so clearly already past their limits. In the army, while most soldiers would celebrate a victory with abundance, they all knew when to stop themselves or each other from going overboard. When the sun rose, a regiment had to move. And stragglers would get everybody in trouble.
"Stop that!" Wilbur tried to push the blade off, though he ended up with an effort closer to that of a beached fish trying to get back into the water. Very pathetic, and almost enough to make the blade laugh in his face. He didn't let the hand slapping clumsily against the side of his cheek distract him.
The stairs were a bit of a pain, but eventually the blade managed to get them both to the rented room again. Tommy was still sleeping, so the blade was glad that Wilbur's vocal complaining had died down in more of a pathetic whimpering, that of a wounded animal dragged off into a ditch to suffer. The blade rolled his eyes.
Honestly, he kind of hoped Wilbur would have the mother of all headaches tomorrow. Then maybe he would learn.
He pulled the sheets of the bed away, so he could dump Wilbur on it with his clothes on. It would have to do. He pulled Wilbur's ankles up on the mattress and tucked in the blanket again. Wilbur was kind of giggling at this point, muttering something under his breath the blade couldn't catch. He just stepped away again, exhaling when Wilbur drifted off into soft snoring.
The blade looked at him a moment longer, the feeling in his chest oddly suffocating. He was… worried about why Wilbur would do something like this to himself. Why he'd be so upset at Phil - who wasn't even there - that he'd let it steer his actions. To show a viciousness the blade wasn't used to from him.
Did Wilbur truly think it was such a terrible thing that the blade enjoyed serving his purpose for Phil?
And then it came crashing down on him that he had disobeyed an order.
The blade was too numb for it to register with surprise. He'd been trying so hard to be less bad. He'd only gotten worse. Stupid, insolent little thing.
("Stupid, insolent little thing." His master grabbed his hair and the blade cried out. He sobbed and shook and begged to go back to the arena. He was so tiny, a child, that the master's hands fit around his throat. He didn't have the collar yet, their fingers could easily slot into place. They squeezed, harder and harder, watching the tears brim in his eyes.
He was bad, he needed to be punished.)
The blade walked to the window. Kneeling, the wooden floorboards dug into his knees and lower legs. Especially when he straightened his back, this position was painful to keep up for extended periods of time. He knew this from experience. He'd soon be extremely sore.
His old master loved punishing him in such simple ways. Easy, yet effective.
Thus the blade stayed there and waited for the sun to rise.
Chapter 14: The Blade VIII
Chapter Text
He did not find the capital city more agreeable the second time around.
The sun was glaring brighter too, adding an uncomfortable heat to the equation. The blade's knees hurt and the scarf made him feel constricted and uneasy. The only good thing was that Niki had indeed joined them again. She didn't really comment on how business with her family went, aside from mentioning she'd have dinner with them again in the evening. So that was another night spent at the inn. Another night for the blade to mess up.
Wilbur clearly did not remember what happened at the bar.
A small mercy. His pants covered the angry red marks on the blade's legs, some bruises already turning a deep purple color. He would like not to need another punishment.
They ventured out into the city again, to visit more shops and enjoy the sights. The blade was making a very deliberate effort to keep his mind on his tasks today. No more getting distracted, or having sudden flights of fancy. He needed to concentrate on what mattered. He wanted to bring the trip to a good end, so they could return home safely and Phil would be pleased with him.
And maybe, if the blade worked up the courage for it, he could ask for Phil not to send him away again.
He knew that demanding one task over another wasn't his place, but it didn't feel like the blade's presence in the capital with the others was really needed. On the battlefield, things were different. The blade stood at his master's side because a weapon was supposed to be there. Outside of war, he would make himself useful however his masters required. But nothing so far had pointed towards the capital city being a particularly dangerous place. Wilbur and Niki were intricately familiar with its layout and Tommy was good at engaging strangers. What was the blade there for if there was no threat to fight? Who was he supposed to defend his owners from?
He could serve just as well back at the house, farming and doing chores. Making himself useful.
"Stick close, if you can. And if you do lose us, try to head to that fountain over there so we can find each other again." Niki pointed out a large water feature in the middle of the town square. Even with the busy market that was going on, the bronze shapes on top stood out to the naked eye. The morning light caught on the gleaming metal.
The blade nodded. He wasn't fond of the capital at all, and this market thing even less so. Markets were nests of vermin and deceit, his master used to say. Traveling merchants couldn't be trusted. A man with confidence in his wares would open a shop, then his customers would come to him. He could build a reputation. Somebody who bounced from place to place, peddling his wares to other people persistently? They either were desperate and thus a pain in the ass with how they would cling to potential customers in the most obtrusive ways possible. Or they were straight-up liars, tricking innocent fools.
The blade did not have a lot of knowledge about either. He didn't like salespeople in general. They were… pushy. And loud. And touched him in ways that made him flinch to get his attention.
"Are we looking for anything in particular?" he asked carefully. If he knew what his owners were looking to buy, he could keep an eye out and they could all be out of there quicker. Perhaps they could go back to the temple. The blade had the thought that they might need to be there again. He heard the chiming of a bell in his dreams sometimes. For some reason, he felt the bell on the altar would make a similar sound.
Claws curled into his own palms, pain brought him back to the present. Concentrate. He had to concentrate.
"Nah, just having a little wander," Wilbur said, the statement light and airy in stark contrast to the sour look on his face. The blade might not have mentioned the bar - and again, Wilbur obviously did not remember all of it - but the headaches were there. Wilbur's shaky, pale form reminded the blade of the soldiers in the barracks, during times of peace when nothing stopped them from drinking too much. Laughing and playing cards and half-heartedly sparring on the pitch around sundown.
His master had foul stuff to say about those men too. Squandering time and resources, swords rusting in their scabbards. The blade would do anything not to become like them.
So he did his utmost best to pay full attention, walking after the other three across the market. Most of the stands sold either food or fabrics. Though in neither case was it the sort a commoner would usually buy. The cloth was spun on long wooden cylinders, allowing the desired length to effortlessly be unfurled and snipped off. Their colors were rich, vibrant, not easily manufactured. Blues and purples and blended shades that transitioned from one hue to another. Some already had rhinestones and embroidery worked into the fabric, to save a seamstress the trouble. The food too, a variety of exotic spices and cured meats. The blade saw dishes ready to be served, and bottles of expensive wine.
They were near the grand building Niki went to when she visited her family, so that made sense. The blade could presume a lot of nobles lived or stayed in this part of the capital.
Despite this outward appearance of grandeur, the market certainly wasn't exclusively one meant for luxury items. The scent of manure permeated some corners, coming from stands that had cages full of chickens in them. And some tables displayed wares of a lower quality. Wilbur seemed particularly drawn to these, looking to strike a bargain.
For his part, the blade staunchly kept his wits about him and concentrated on their surroundings, on every face in the crowd. He had to be on guard. He couldn't mess up anymore.
"Woah!"
His attention was drawn by Tommy crying out in amazement, darting off towards a man who had set up a tarp on the ground. Wilbur and Niki followed Tommy over, with the blade following because he couldn't afford losing any of them. The man was sitting cross-legged on the tarp in front of a very low table, barely two or three inches off the ground. On the table were three cups.
And next to the man was a sign that said 'Skeppy's Spectacular Subterfuge'.
The blade tilted his head, unsure what that word meant. But the man - Skeppy, unless the sign was lying - was explaining the rules of the game to a crowd of eager onlookers right as they walked up. The blade caught the tail end of Skeppy's explanation.
"All you have to do is guess which cup is hiding the ball. Easy enough, right?" Skeppy smirked and held up a small, rubber sphere. He let it run through his fingers, the trick impressive at a glance though the blade knew it would only require a small amount of dexterity. Less so if the ball was weighted, which it likely was. There was a tiny seam in the rubber.
Another person was kneeling on the opposite side of the tarp, back facing the crowd. The person invited to partake in the game, presumably. A young woman around Niki's age. She was wearing a fine silken dress, bunched up around her hips a bit though that didn't entirely stop it from trailing in the dirt. Rich. A noblewoman.
She had already put five golden coins on the table's corner, away from the cups. The price for partaking in the game.
Skeppy balanced the ball on the table and covered it with the middle cup. Then he started to shuffle them around. His hand movements were smooth and quick, cups sliding across the table that was sanded to a perfectly flat surface to allow this to work. The blade had seen games of a similar nature before sometimes.
He wasn't very surprised when Skeppy lifted the edge of the cup and allowed the momentum to slide the ball from under it, until it disappeared under the rim of another cup. The little flick happened so fast, the blade assumed that the woman kept tracking the wrong cup with her eyes.
"Take your pick. Whichever one you think has the ball beneath it," Skeppy said when he was done, spreading his arms. "And remember, if you win, you can have whatever you want from my collection." Skeppy nodded at a small heap of jewelry lying next to him.
"Oh, I'm sure it's this one," the woman proclaimed, placing her finger on the top of the cup that Skeppy originally hid the ball under. She had a good eye to still know which one that was.
But when Skeppy lifted it up, of course there was nothing beneath it.
"Aw, that's too bad," Skeppy said, insincerely. The woman was too busy gaping at the empty cup to notice. "Want to go again?"
Rather than answering, she got up in a huff, literally scowling down at Skeppy in disdain. The man didn't mind, grinning back at her until she had left, before grabbing his winnings from the table. Then he addressed the crowd.
"Anybody else wants to try their luck?"
"Me! Me!" Tommy was basically jumping in place. The blade saw Wilbur make a grab for Tommy's sleeve to stop him, but Tommy had already sat down. He placed a few coins on the table. "Just have to see where the ball goes, right?"
"Easy," Skeppy agreed. "I'm sure you can manage."
The blade was very sure Tommy wouldn't manage.
Niki seemed to think so too. "Are we going to let him do this?"
"It's his gold he's losing," Wilbur shrugged.
Skeppy put the ball on the table again, returning to sliding the cups around. Like last time, he changed what cup the ball was under at the last second. The blade wondered if Tommy had noticed. It seemed unlikely that he'd be the only one who caught the sleight of hand, deft as it was. But then again, catching stuff like that was something he'd been trained for. The smallest motion, the cupping of poison into his master's drink, a dagger pulled out of a sleeve. Reflexes sharpened to perfection.
Tommy pointed at the wrong cup.
"Aw, man," Tommy sighed when it was lifted. Skeppy beamed.
"Hey, you could play again. Double or nothing?"
"Tommy-" Wilbur tried, but went ignored again by Tommy, who picked another bunch of coins from his purse. The blade knew that Tommy didn't make money. He got it from Wilbur or Phil. So despite Wilbur saying earlier that it was 'his gold he's losing', the reality was that the money belonged to all of them, or both of them, in a way. The blade found it very useful to not need to manage money. It seemed stressful. His old master also antagonized about their income a lot.
The game resumed. Skeppy did the same thing again, changing what cup was hiding his rubber ploy. Tommy considered his answer more carefully this time, frowning at the upside-down cups as if he could look through them if he tried hard enough. The effort was almost enough to give the blade his own headache in empathy. Especially because he knew where the ball was. Tommy picked wrong.
"Fuck!" Tommy grabbed at his hair. The crowd gathered was losing interest, some already moving on to other stands. Seeing somebody get beaten over and over had little novelty to it. "I wanna try again."
"Tommy, are you sure? You're going to end up broke," Niki said placatingly, kindly trying to dissuade him.
"Nah, just help me look," Tommy insisted.
"Double again?" Skeppy suggested. "Third time's the charm, right?" He gestured with one hand, calmly. Trying to reel them in, since he was so certain of his win.
"Yeah! Yeah, let's do it." Tommy pulled out his pouch again. Wilbur crossed his arms but didn't say anything.
The same routine commenced, familiar enough that the blade barely needed to pay attention. Tommy was concentrating so hard, his tongue peeked out from between his lips, squinting at each cup in turn. Then he looked up at the blade unexpectedly. "What do you think?"
"I-" the blade faltered, not expecting to be called upon for something this mundane. But he could not lie to one of his masters. "It's that one," he said, pointing out the cup Skeppy had secretly slid the ball under. He saw blue eyes widen in surprise, from both Skeppy and Tommy for very different reasons.
"Really? I didn't think it was that one," Tommy said. "But if you're sure."
The blade nodded once. Reluctantly, Skeppy lifted the cup. The ball came tumbling off the table with the more jerky motion. Some of the people who had stuck around to watch clearly shared Tommy's surprise.
"Holy shit!" Tommy pumped his fists, laughing. "Nice. Well done, Blade."
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." Skeppy pushed the gold into Tommy's lap, not too happy with the defeat. Though if the redness creeping up his neck was anything to go by, the embarrassment of having been humiliated in front of a crowd was the worse thing.
"Maybe Blade should have a proper turn, he's good at it," Tommy said, already pulling the blade down by his elbow to sit beside him.
"Fine," Skeppy said. "Though the day isn't getting any younger, so we're doing a one-round per customer thing now, okay?"
The blade smiled to himself. Skeppy wasn't as dumb as he looked. He wasn't going to let them win often.
Tommy put coins back on the table. Skeppy returned to his attitude of sportsmanship with a smirk, shaking the loss off as a fluke. He showed the ball to the blade, who barely glanced at it, before sliding it under the middle cup. The blade didn't get the point of this exercise. The game was kind of silly. But if his master wanted him to play, he would.
Skeppy started to shuffle the cups slowly, gradually speeding up to build some suspense. The blade didn't think it was necessary. Most of the crowd was already invested. They wanted to see if the blade winning was a coincidence or not. Skeppy flicked the cup again, even more subtle than before. The blade watched the ball roll into his lap, hidden between the folds of his clothes. He continued shuffling as if nothing had happened, then raised his hand.
"So, what cup do you think the ball is under?" he asked.
The blade frowned. "None of them," he said.
Skeppy's lip twitched, slightly, though he made an admirable effort to play it off with a laugh. "That's not an option, just pick a cup, man."
"Do you want me to just pick a cup or tell you which one the ball is under?" The blade was genuinely a little confused.
"What do you mean?" Tommy asked.
"He flicked the ball from under the cup and into his lap," the blade explained.
Wilbur snorted loudly. "Skeppy's Spectacular Subterfuge? More like a spectacular swindle."
Some mutters passed through the crowd. Skeppy waved his hands, swiping up the ball and feigning surprise. "Ah, wouldn't you know? Guess I dropped it by accident."
"Right," Niki said sweetly. "Completely by accident. But our friend did win, so shouldn't he get a prize?"
"Fine." Skeppy did not look all too happy with it, which made the blade smile again. Losing bruised Skeppy's ego. The blade beat him at his own game. He thought about his potatoes, and the large field of the other farmer. He hoped Phil was taking good care of his plants.
Their plants. Phil's plants, really. The blade planted them, but the plants were not his.
An array of shiny items was deposited on the table with a grunt. "Pick whatever you like."
It took a second before the blade realized he was being asked to choose. He glanced at Tommy, assuming he would be the one picking a trinket. Wasn't the blade playing at Tommy's behest? But Tommy seemed completely unaware of the blade's hesitation, busy putting his coins back in his purse. The blade sighed and looked at the small collection of jewelry Skeppy had presumably either stolen or won after people ran out of money while betting on his rigged game.
He picked the first golden thing he saw.
Gold was good. Not the sturdiest metal, useless for weapons. But shiny in a way that the blade appreciated. And gold soaked in heat, making it warm to the touch. The item he picked was a thin band, simple links chained together. Not the finest craftsmanship. The blade liked it regardless. He held it in his open palm, almost jumping when Tommy dropped three coins into it too.
"Here. Since you kept me from losing all my money, it makes sense you deserve a share."
"I-" the blade started. Before he could finish, Skeppy was shooing them away.
"Go on then, other people might want to play too."
Tommy got up, pulling the blade to his feet. The blade glanced behind him, but the man was already back to entertaining the few gullible people from within the crowd who truly thought the ball landing in Skeppy's lap was an accident and not planned. The blade shook his head. His old master was right. Commoners were too trusting sometimes.
He curled his hand loosely around the golden bracelet and the coins Tommy had given to him.
The blade didn't know what to do with them. A weapon had no need to buy anything. What a strange waste of resources. He rubbed his thumb over the largest coin over and over, but truth be told having them in his possession made him strangely uncomfortable.
One time, he watched a servant girl steal from the master.
She was an ungrateful wretch. All of the servants were to some extent, naturally. None of them truly appreciated all that the master did for them, and the blade was rarely the sole exception. He did his best to show the master that he understood the magnitude of their kindness. The servant girl had wanted to run away. She had family living in the north. An aunt and an uncle, people who would take her in when the war had orphaned her. The master took her in instead, and all she had to do was serve, and yet she would scorn that. She tried to steal some money, a paltry amount that would last her through the journey north.
The master had her whipped for all to see. Then he had hung her from the wall, where the crows feasted on her body.
The blade remembered it as a tumultuous time, not too long before the men were called to the front and the war broke out properly. The two incidents never seemed connected before, but since he had heard word of rebellion and with knowledge of how the war ended… he did wonder if the master was setting an example for a good reason.
Maybe if the master had hung more servants from the walls, the blade wouldn't be wandering a market with three people who were not his owners but also not not his owners, and who gave him money he had no clue what to do with.
"Is something wrong?" Niki asked. They'd come to a stop at another stand, one with musical instruments that Wilbur was looking at. The blade loosened his grip on the coins and held them out to Niki.
"I don't know what to do with this," he admitted. Because he shouldn't lie, and it was an easy out. He couldn't articulate any of his other issues, so the coins were a good scapegoat.
"Do you want to buy something, maybe?" Niki asked. The blade couldn't tell if she had missed his point on purpose or not. He was not suggesting that he spend the money. That'd be ludicrous.
But Niki smiled at him so sincerely it made something twist inside him.
"I can buy something," he said.
He didn't want to. His masters wanted him to. And thus he had to prove he could buy something. If he tried to conceptualize it that way, he could do it.
"What do you want to buy?" Niki asked.
There it was. Why could things never be easy with these guys? The blade shrugged.
She gently took his wrist, and tugged him over to another market stall a little ways away. The man behind it was old and weathered looking, with a scar that ran over his cheek. His eyes widened a little when he saw the blade.
While the blade and Niki were still busy taking in the many books this table had on display, the man bent down to pick something up from next to him. He showed it to them with a grin.
"This might be of interest. Hybrids are a rare sight in the capital, right?" A sharp incisor peeked out from the corner of his mouth with the smile, eyes that had slitted pupils in them twinkling with friendly delight. "I picked this up from a researcher the other day, he's already back off to the Nether to study another species."
"Oh! Thank you!" Niki took the book. The cover was handmade and had a strange drawing of a pig standing on two legs. The blade could not read the title, the words too complex for his reading ability. She showed it to him. "Do you want to get this then?"
"What is it?" the blade asked.
Niki pointed at the words as she read them, showing him which one was which. "'A detailed account of piglin language, culture, and lifestyle'. It's royally funded field research in the Nether."
The blade blinked. He'd understood basically none of that except for a single word.
Piglin.
That's what Phil and Tommy said the blade was. Or part of him. The part that was not like them. The part that made him a weapon, maybe.
"I want to buy the book," he said.
The statement burnt on his tongue the moment he spoke it, feeling foreign and sharp, more spit-out barbed wire than anything. It made him want to cringe in on himself.
Niki didn't notice, she took the coins from him to pay the man.
They turned around, almost running straight into Wilbur who was approaching them from behind. He looked frazzled, hair a mess as if he'd run his fingers through it multiple times.
"Can we go? Where's Tommy?" Wilbur asked.
"Wha- How would we know, wasn't he with you?" Niki frowned, confused.
"We got into an argument and he ran off," Wilbur said. "I just assumed he ran to you guys."
"We haven't seen him," Niki said. "What kind of argument?"
"Nothing, just him being pissy," Wilbur answered vaguely. "Fuck, what a pain." He looked around, but the square was too crowded to see much.
The blade knew, because he was doing the same, dread a familiar enough thing. He turned his head, but he simply couldn't see Tommy. Anything could happen. Tommy could be hurt, or kidnapped, or killed, and the blade was supposed to be preventing that, but he was too busy buying a book with money that shouldn't even be his. These masters confused him, with their lenient touch. That didn't mean they'd refrain from punishing him for being a useless weapon. The one time he could have been of true use to them.
One day. All the blade needed to accomplish was one day of not being distracted from his purpose.
And he hadn't even managed that much.
Chapter 15: Wilbur III
Chapter Text
Wilbur knew with absolutely certainty that Phil would kill him for this.
Maybe not in the literal sense. No, definitely not. Phil was much too passive for that. Phil, who would rather 'wait and see how things work out' and who told Wilbur time and time again that 'some pains will just need to pass by themselves'. He'd express his disappointment, and the mere crease in his brow would tell Wilbur all he'd need to know, the light dusting of Phil's disapproval for his choices that settled all over Wilbur's life. Phil would not kill him for losing Tommy.
Maybe Wilbur would have to kill himself, then.
"He can't have run off that far."
His eyes were busy trying to scan the dense crowd around them, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun in Tommy's blond hair. The capital was huge. Wilbur could only pray Tommy wasn't dramatic enough to actually take off in a random direction and get lost. Hopefully, he was sulking somewhere nearby.
"What were you two arguing about anyway?" Niki asked, going through a similar routine as him. She was much shorter, though, and thus had a harder time peeking out over the crowd.
The question made Wilbur grimace. "Doesn't matter. Let's just find him before I have an aneurysm."
Wilbur knew for a fact that Tommy had already shaved several years off his life. From needing to look after him when he was a literal infant to the chaos of Tommy's teenage years, Wilbur sometimes marveled how both of them managed to survive all that. Never mind that Phil was there for the later parts. But at the end of the day, the thought of something bad happening to Tommy was still enough to make his heart cease with fear. Funny how that worked.
"Over there," Blade said suddenly, starting to walk without waiting for a response from either of them. Good thing he stood out even in the throng of people.
"What's he- Ah, shit!" Wilbur picked up his pace when he noticed Tommy had been stopped by one of the capital's city guards.
Stopped might have been an overly generous description, even. By the looks of it, the guard had grabbed Tommy by the scruff of his neck, using their other hand to keep a tight hold on Tommy's wrist. Tommy was flailing about and yelling, with his voice barely rising over that of the guard and a noble lady standing nearby, who was clutching her own purse to her chest. A red flush of anger had risen to her cheeks.
Clearly, Tommy had managed to work himself into some sort of trouble again. Good thing that Wilbur was adept at talking his way out of most finicky situations.
He was already mentally running through exactly what he would say to get them out of this mess, when Blade reared his arm back. Wilbur's eyes widened and he sprang forward in an attempt to prevent what would certainly complicate matters more. But he wasn't fast enough, and Blade's fist connected with the guard's face before Wilbur could stop the other man.
Blindsided by the assault since he'd been so busy with Tommy's squirming, the guard went down easily.
The lady shrieked loudly, and even Tommy looked slightly befuddled at being released so suddenly. Blade pulled him closer by the elbow.
"Guards! Guards! He has accomplices!" the noble woman yelled, looking around for somebody to come to her aid.
"Lady, calm down," Wilbur said urgently. Not exactly the peak of charisma.
"What happened?" Niki asked in a much more soothing tone.
"He stole from me!" the woman said, pointing an offending finger at Tommy.
"She accused me of stealing from her," Tommy said at the same time with a matching gesture of his own. "A totally baseless fucking accusation, by the way."
At that moment, Wilbur noticed two more guards heading their way, drawn towards the commotion. "Ah shit."
Blade tugged Tommy even closer against his body, eyes shifting around nervously. Wilbur realized this could get ugly quickly if Blade presumed they were being threatened. To him, it wouldn't matter if it was some random bandits or the city guard. He would fight to defend them, he would kill if he thought it was what was needed. And then Blade would go to prison. And Phil might be a bit more than disappointed.
So Wilbur scooted forward, positioning himself between the trio of guards, two still approaching plus the one who was getting up from the ground, and Blade. He held his hands out in a placating gesture. "It sounds to me like this was all one big misunderstanding."
The guard who got punched was on his feet again at this point, rubbing his jaw. "Mind explaining what sort of misunderstanding leads to you attacking a city official?"
Wilbur opened his mouth, but Tommy was faster. "Our brother thought you were kidnapping me, obviously!"
The guard blinked, taken aback by the words. Wilbur watched the gears in his head turning, attempting to work their way through the confusion. In any other situation, Wilbur would have thought it was hilarious how Blade had a matching expression on his face.
"We're from the countryside," Wilbur added quickly. "He's never been to the capital before, and clearly it doesn't sit well with him. It's made him overly jumpy. He's very protective of Tommy, he thought you were hurting him."
The two other guards had joined them at this point, one of them crossed their arms over their chest. "Your brother should have noticed the uniform."
"He's impulsive," Tommy said.
Wilbur nodded along. "Very impulsive. And very, very sorry, I'm sure."
The guard looked over at Blade, who squinted back, arm raised over Tommy's shoulder in a semi-embrace. Something told Wilbur that Blade wasn't fully aware of doing it, driven by instinct.
"You're sorry," Wilbur said, making his voice a bit more firm, and noticed how it immediately diverted Blade's attention to him, registering the command. "Right?"
"Yes," Blade said flatly. "I'm sorry."
Wilbur clapped his hands together. "Great. So if that's all sorted, we'll be on our way-"
"Hold on one second," the noble woman who had been watching this exchange go down suddenly spoke up, shrill with indignation. "The boy still stole from me!"
"I can assure you he did not," Wilbur said smoothly. And with absolutely no certainty that he wasn't lying. Pickpocketing was how they had earned an income before meeting Phil, it wouldn't be completely out of the question that Tommy reverted back to old habits.
"He ran into me," she insisted. "His grubby little hands were all over me, he was definitely trying to take my jewelry."
"I was just in a hurry and didn't want to knock you over," Tommy said, scowling. He wasn't entirely being truthful. Most likely, he was running to get as far away from Wilbur as physically possible, and not looking where he was going in the process. Regardless, it must have been an accidental collision that the noble woman was interpreting as something sinister.
"But-" the woman started. Niki stepped in front of her with a smile.
"This young man is my companion today," she said. "I will gladly vouch that he's not a thief. The guards could search him right here and now, if that would make you feel better. But they'll find nothing unwarranted on his person. If you do find anything went missing or got damaged when he ran into you, feel free to send a request to House Nihachu, we'll reimburse you."
When the name of Niki's family was spoken, the lady visibly paled three shades. "H-house Nihachu?"
"Yes. I'm Niki. Nice to meet you." Niki held out her hand, but the woman seemed too stunned to accept it.
Hurriedly brushing some dirt off her layered clothing, the woman took a step back. "Ah, well, you can never be too careful these days, am I right? All sorts of filth runs around the capital." Her gaze narrowed slightly as she let it travel over Tommy, Wilbur, then eventually settling on Blade with a light sneering upturn of her mouth. Wilbur could admit the other man looked a little rough.
Or a lot rough. Thankfully, that would only give more credence to their story that Blade was from the countryside and not used to the big city.
"Of course," Niki said. "Apologies for the misunderstanding."
The woman kind of wagged her head, not a full nod but close to an acknowledgement, before she turned to walk off with her chin held high. Wilbur rolled his eyes.
"All's well that ends well," he said. "We'll be on our way then."
He put his hand on Blade's shoulder, intent on getting back to the inn as fast as possible. He needed to talk about what happened with Tommy, and he couldn't do that when Blade looked seconds away from causing another scene.
The guard stopped them with a clearing of his throat. "Hold on one second."
Wilbur turned towards them again slowly, facial muscles tensing in an effort to keep smiling. "Yes?"
"How long will you lot stay in the capital for?"
"We'll only be here for two more days," Wilbur said. "We're leaving the day after tomorrow."
The guard hummed in answer, waving for his two companions to return to their duties. "Where are you staying?"
Uncomfortable, Wilbur swallowed. The cross-examination was concerning. Maybe the guy was still pissed that Blade had punched him, or maybe something else had made the alarm bells go off in this man's head. Something about them came across as suspect, despite Niki's presence with them as a member of a well-respected family.
"We have a room at an inn a few blocks from here in the lower commercial district," Wilbur answered carefully.
"What's with all the questions?" Tommy asked. The crease in the guard's brow deepened at him mouthing off.
"I'm doing my job," he said testily. "You still assaulted a royal guard." The man looked at Blade again, one hand relaxing to the sheath of his sword. "Normally, I'd need to arrest you for that, misunderstanding or not."
"We won't cause any more trouble," Wilbur assured.
"I'm not talking to you," the guard snapped. Blade met his gaze, unmoving. "You can't go around acting that way, you hear? That sort of feral behavior might fit the countryside, but not in these parts."
Lightly, Blade frowned. What must have been going through his head in that moment, Wilbur could only wish he knew. Blade clearly had a lot of thoughts he'd never voice out loud. In a blink, he seemed to take in the guard, his disposition, the hierarchy at play, all of it. And yet he still deferred to following the lead of his supposed 'new owners' in a way that turned Wilbur's stomach.
"Yes sir," Blade said slowly. He bowed his head.
"Good." The guard seemed pleased at the display of submission. Until the gesture loosened the cape hanging around Blade's shoulders. "Peculiar fashion from the countryside?" he asked.
And with a chill down his spine, Wilbur realized he meant the collar.
"My brother is training to be a blacksmith," Tommy said suddenly. He must have come up with the excuse days ago, to have it ready at the drop of a hat on the off chance somebody would notice. He reached up to tug the fabric aside more, as if not ashamed to show it off. Because why try to hide something that was totally non-suspicious? "It's one of his first pieces. A bit too bulky to be a good choker, but he's proud of it, so he never takes it off."
The guardsman didn't look entirely convinced. Not even when Blade touched the gold fondly and said, "very proud."
"Guard!" somebody called, rushing up to them. Not just any somebody, a very familiar somebody. Without preamble, Skeppy reached for the guard's sleeve.
"You again?" the guard asked, trying to wrench his arm away, but Skeppy had already grabbed it and clung on. "I told you I'd turn a blind eye to your little business venture if you steered clear of causing issues."
"And give you ten percent of my earnings, right?" Skeppy said. The guard flustered and quickly turned fully towards Skeppy, not wanting them to overhear the rest of the conversation. Their voices were a little too raised for that, though.
"Yes, what do you want?"
"There's a dude peddling illegal merchandise over there," Skeppy said, nodding his head at the other side of the town square. "I thought you might want to, you know, do something about that."
"Of course," the guard grumbled. He barely looked back at them as Skeppy started to drag him away, though not before the short man threw a wink their way over his shoulder.
Huh, Wilbur didn't assume Skeppy would help them out, but maybe in a strange way beating his ass at the stupid cup game had gained them Skeppy's respect. Or he'd be coming around looking for a favor later. He seemed that type of guy.
But that was something Wilbur didn't want to worry about yet.
"Let's go back to the inn before we manage to get the entire royal guard after us," he said.
Leaning against the side of the doorway, Wilbur watched Tommy sleep.
The younger man was facing away from him, so Wilbur couldn't see much aside from the curve of Tommy's shoulder, the messy hair, the light fall and rise of breaths moving through his body. He couldn't at that moment recall how often he'd watched Tommy sleep, especially when they were kids. Wilbur was always so scared. Constantly, as if he'd wake up and Tommy would be gone. Vanished into thin air overnight. They hadn't spoken about their argument. Tommy didn't want to talk about it.
Meanwhile, Wilbur didn't think there was anything left to say.
All he did was tell Tommy that he thought it was time he moved on. Away from Phil. Away from the village. Wilbur didn't know where he would go, but he could figure that out on the road. Tommy could come with him, or he couldn't. He was old enough to make his own choices.
Turning away, Wilbur saw that both Niki and Blade were reading. There was something endearing about the sight. Niki read faster, turning the pages with quick strokes. She might be skimming more than reading every word, like she'd read the book before. A few times, Blade turned his own book towards her and pointed at a word, getting her to help him understand the more difficult terms.
Wilbur's mother taught him to read. And then he taught Tommy. Phil asked Niki to teach Blade, rather than ask Wilbur to do it.
"I need to go pray," Wilbur said.
"You're going to the pantheon this late?" Niki glanced out the window. It was dark outside.
"It's only a few blocks away," Wilbur answered.
Blade stood up. "I will go with you." Maybe Wilbur's expression betrayed that he was about to protest, because Blade reached for his cape without waiting. "It's safer."
"He's right," Niki said. "Tommy and I will be fine."
Something told Wilbur that wasn't what Blade was worried about. Didn't he go down to the bar a few nights before, and Blade had to drag him back? Wilbur could barely remember.
"Whatever, you can do what you want." He grabbed his coat in a hurry.
The air outside was chilly, biting at the flesh of Wilbur's cheeks. Dark clouds shifted and moved through the sky, stealing what little light the moon would cast. But plenty of the rowhouses had fires burning behind the windows, bathing the deserted streets in a yellow glow. Wilbur didn't like the dark. He didn't like nighttime and shadowy corners. He shouldn't be out there.
"I don't want you to come with me," he said out loud, assuming Blade would hear where he was trailing a few steps behind.
"I know," Blade said. He didn't hesitate or go back.
He looked staunchly ahead, almost stone-faced. For once, his stare seemed to burn through Wilbur. As if Blade wasn't looking at him, but also wasn't drifting out of focus. The pantheon's domed roof could be seen clearly from almost any point in the city. Wilbur frowned as he looked at it too, that dark half-circle.
"Are you religious?" he asked. Blade's eyes darted away, at Wilbur, at the cobblestone, at his own feet.
"My old master didn't worship Prime," Blade said.
"That's not what I asked."
"I think there is functionality in belief," Blade replied instead.
Wilbur chuckled. "You could say that."
The pantheon was empty this late, the doors closed though they opened at the lightest push against the bronze handles. The place never locked up. Prayers could be performed at any hour - in fact, some deities probably dictated worship during the night - but overall, this late the various alcoves were more popular for the homeless than any actual religious folks.
One upside of Kristin's nook was that it was considered bad luck to sleep within Lady Death's domain.
Whereas the other gods, such as Prime or the Blaze Empress, provided shelter for the less fortunate seeking to sit out the night in the pantheon, the small section where Kristin was normally called upon remained empty. All the candles had been extinguished. Somebody had swept away the ash that usually covered the floor in front of the altar.
Wilbur knelt in front of the benches and closed his eyes.
He could feel Her cold touch on his forehead. She did not hesitate. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw until they rested at the bottom and lifted his head up. He could see Her shape outlined in stardust stuck behind his eyelids. An impression more than a physical thing.
They couldn't speak. That was what pained Wilbur the most. Bound by the laws of the unnatural, even deities had to respect certain limitations. For Kristin, this meant no direct communication with a mortal. And Wilbur would roll over dead before asking Phil to relay his questions and provide the answers he so desperately sought.
"Why did you bother saving me?" he asked all the same. Blade wasn't within earshot, he fucked off as soon as they entered the pantheon and Wilbur couldn't say he cared where the other man went. It might do him some good to be off on his own, and not follow others around like a meek animal.
Kristin's figure tilted Her head, the smile on Her face ethereal and vague. Wilbur felt that he couldn't look directly at Her without smudging Her image. It made him dizzy.
When Wilbur was eight, he should have died.
Twice, actually. The first time, when bandits ambushed his family as they were travelling down the road. Wilbur crawled beneath the cart as his father told him to, and he was saved from the slit throat his parents suffered. After that, when the goods had been stolen and the bodies long since gone stiff and cold, Wilbur started to wander. In hindsight, he was in shock back then, and thus while eight was usually old enough to go to a village, find help, anything, Wilbur simply… walked. He walked without stopping and without direction, until he curled up in a ditch to die. The lack of food and water, or the harshness of winter, whichever one claimed him sooner.
She had touched him instead.
Wilbur didn't die because She willed it so. The streak of white in his hair was all that remained of that horrible time of his life. But what stuck with Wilbur more was that She never told him why he had been saved.
Months later, when Wilbur stumbled upon a burned-down village, and heard the cries of an infant in the rubble, he found a baby with a matching streak of white. Tommy should have burned alive, but he didn't. Wilbur thought that maybe She had saved him just so he could save Tommy in return.
But that couldn't be true.
"It's fine if I leave, right?" Wilbur asked. The shade before him didn't answer, didn't waver. She observed him in silence. "Tommy doesn't need me anymore, Phil never needed me. I can leave."
Kristin's thumb stroked his cheek again. She seemed sad.
God, Wilbur was such a fucking coward. He'd been telling himself he would leave for years, but never had the guts to actually do it. And there he was begging for permission he already had.
It brought him comfort, though. Kristin's presence, Her touch. They made him feel warm inside, chasing away the cold that had rooted there since he died (and then didn't die).
Wilbur knelt for a long while. When he got up, his back hurt. He turned and walked to the door.
"Wilbur?"
Ah, right, he'd completely forgotten he didn't come to this place alone. Wilbur opened his mouth and faced Blade, to tell him they had to head back to the inn and try to sleep a little before sunrise. Tomorrow would be their last day in the capital before the long journey home.
The words died in his throat at the sight in front of him.
Blade was standing near the entrance of another alcove. One devoted to an obscure Nether God, The Blood God if Wilbur recalled correctly. The stained glass windows were a blur of black and red, the lack of light made the heavy paint look like blood dripping against the panes. There was a light glow to the scene, coming from plants that draped along the walls and altar. Wilbur had never paid it mind before, but there was something about this he couldn't pull away from. As if the very vines had hooked around Blade's ankles to keep him there. As if every eye behind him was framed and alive.
And then Wilbur blinked, leaving only the dim alcove with Blade standing almost outside it, taking a step towards Wilbur away from the soaking red colors.
"Are we leaving?" he asked, softly. Unsure, but not like how he usually was, where he was looking for a command to latch onto.
No, Blade sounded unsure if leaving was the right choice.
"We should get back to the others," Wilbur said. "They're waiting."
"Right." Blade pulled free fully and joined his side.
"What's wrong?" Wilbur asked.
There was a lot wrong, probably, with both of them. He could think of a dozen things Blade could bring to his attention and seek his guidance on, though what he ended up asking left Wilbur stumbling.
"Why did Tommy tell the guard I'm his brother?"
Wilbur drew up his eyebrows, exhaling a laugh. "Huh? What?"
"There were more convenient lies," Blade said. "More convincing ones."
Wilbur supposed they didn't look anything alike. The problem was that Blade assumed it was a lie to begin with.
"Tommy is honest to a fault when it comes to things like that," he said, leaving it at that as they exited the pantheon.
Chapter 16: Tommy III
Chapter Text
Tommy was definitely ready to go home by the time their final day rolled around.
Scratch that. He was ready to go home the day after they arrived. He used to relish these visits. The capital was an exciting, lively place. Tommy loved the town they had their home in, where things were quiet and peaceful, and Tommy could basically run off into the woods whenever he wanted. But the capital reminded him of when he was little, traveling around with Wilbur. Always something new to see or do. Besides, their old rural town could get so fucking boring sometimes. No wonder Phil liked it. Phil was also dreadfully old and dreadfully boring. Tommy preferred a good change of pace now and again.
But this time, Tommy just couldn't hype himself up for it.
Phil had been acting all weird, and then Wilbur got stupid. Not unusual, Tommy kinda knew that when Phil got in a mood, Wilbur got in a mood. And when Wilbur got in a mood, Phil got all smiley and dumb. He'd kinda hoped they were over that by now. It seemed to have wound down a bit in recent years. Until Blade came around.
Not that Tommy would blame the guy or anything, it wasn't Blade's fault that Phil and Wilbur had their weird tiffs. He just hated every single second in the capital this time. He wanted to go home.
"Tommy." Blade touched his shoulder. Tommy looked up, forcing a grin.
"Yeah?"
Blade held out a steaming, brown piece of paper to him. Tommy took it in both hands, seeing that it was actually some sort of bun, wrapped in the paper to keep the liquid sugar from leaking out. The scent of it was sweet, actually a little overbearing. It reminded Tommy of Niki's bakery. "What's this?"
"Food," Blade said.
"No shit." Tommy scooted to the side on the stone steps he was using as a seat. Blade hesitated, then sat down next to him. They could watch the crowds together. "What is it?"
"Niki called it a honey bun. I bought it."
"You bought it?" Tommy asked, a little skeptical. Wilbur had given them all a couple more silver coins for their final day in the capital. Typical of him. He thought throwing money at things was a good apology. But Blade had kinda looked like he'd never held coins in his life.
"Niki wanted me to buy them," Blade said.
Tommy snorted. Yeah, that made more sense.
But it was still a good thing, wasn't it? Blade had inadvertently taken possession of a bracelet, two books, and now a few honey buns. Yeah, they'd be eaten before long, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he'd started owning things. Phil said they had to ease him into the whole 'being a person' thing, and that was one of the issues he was butting heads about with Wilbur, who thought they'd needed to treat Blade as a person right away, and the rest would solve itself. Tommy didn't really know which side to choose. Maybe neither of them was going about it the right way.
He wanted to follow Blade's lead and see what made him happiest.
"What do you make of the capital?" he asked. Blade looked at him and blinked, expression a little uncertain. "What do you think about it?" Tommy pressed.
"What part do you want to know about?" Blade asked. "Defensive weaknesses? Citizen population and vulnerabilities? Best invasion routes? Resource scarcity?"
Tommy, who had just about taken a bite of the bun and choked on it when trying to get the sticky dough down while also processing Blade's answer, coughed. "What?! Why would I want to hear about any of that?!"
"That's what my old master would be most interested in," Blade said, looking a little guilty at the confession. He didn't seem to like comparing them to that monster, yet couldn't entirely stop himself. Tommy hated it, hated how it twisted his guts in discomfort.
"I'm not him," he said, peevishly. "I meant, what do you think. Your opinion. Do you like it?"
Blade chewed on the thought a while, as always finding difficulty with voicing his outlook on things. But he was trying. Tommy knew he was trying, and had witnessed firsthand how Blade had started to sneak in his personal judgment more and more often when talking. Every time he wasn't beaten down for it, it would become easier.
"I don't like it," Blade said eventually.
Tommy took another bite of the bun. "Why not?" he asked.
"It's loud, crowded, dangerous. There are too many people. It smells-" Blade paused to sniff the air, and his face scrunched together in distaste. "Bad."
"Not a fan, then?" Tommy smiled.
"Not a fan."
Tentatively, Blade took a bite of the bun. His lips curled up, and Tommy felt something slap against his back. Blade's tail, wagging side to side.
"Do you like sweets?" Tommy asked, wanting to push his luck a little more.
Blade swallowed before answering with a little shrug. "I guess. They're rare."
"Rare?"
"I don't have them often. Maybe that's why I enjoy them."
Huh, Tommy never stopped to consider that. He remembered how much more precious having a roof over their head and a warm bed to sleep in felt when Wilbur and he were still traveling. When they had to pickpocket to get by, and Wilbur would steal candy for him, or crayons, or a small rubber ball that would inexplicably bounce when thrown into the wall. They felt extra special because they were hard to come by. Not like a lot of stuff now, which Tommy could take for granted.
"What else is rare for you?" he prodded. Blade was already having his next bite, and Tommy didn't wait for him to finish. "Like, if you could have anything in the entire world right now, what would you want to have?"
Blade frowned at him, looked down at his hands. The bun was already almost gone. "Another one of these would be nice," he said softly.
Tommy laughed, reaching one hand around Blade's shoulder. "We can make that happen, big man. I meant something more out of the box."
"Out of what box?"
Snorting, Tommy released him. "Like, it means something more creative. Something that seems impossible for you."
"If it's impossible, what's the point of wanting it?" Blade asked.
"Because nothing is impossible," Tommy insisted.
"That sounds false-" Blade started, then cut himself off, and quickly ducked his head. His long hair fell in front of his face like a curtain, stealing away the look of shame at his push back.
"It's more like an expression," Tommy said, trying to distract him. He playfully knocked his legs into Blade's knees.
And for some reason, that made the other man gasp.
Tommy frowned, unable to not see the little twitch of pain that seemed to run through Blade, before it ended in a clenched jaw. "What happened?" he asked, eyes scanning Blade top to bottom. Did he get hurt with the guards recently-
"I want a horse," Blade said quickly, red eyes darting away.
"What?"
"If I could want something that's impossible, I would want my own horse."
"That sounds pretty possible," Tommy pointed out. They literally had Carl in the stable outside the capital. The only reason they never got more horses was because they always either traveled on foot or by cart, in which case only a single horse was needed. It'd be a bit silly to get Wilbur and Tommy their own horses, and Tommy already had Henry.
Blade made a face, gaze slightly narrowed and going back to him, but whatever was on his mind, he decided not to say. He shrugged again.
Tommy shrugged too. "Do you like horses?"
"They're… more agreeable than people," Blade said. Tommy was almost completely rejoicing at how well this conversation had been going so far, but of course, Blade had to then ruin it by continuing to talk. "Having a single horse to ride is a strategic advantage in combat. You learn the animal's quirks, its body language. It actually makes everything easier."
"Bruh, you like horses for the worst reasons," Tommy complained.
"They're also cute," Blade offered.
Niki approached, casting a shadow on them as she stood in front of Blade with a wide grin on her face. Her hair, which before had largely been light brown with parts of it bleached to an almost white, had been completely transformed. Her hair was a vibrant pink, perhaps a few shades darker than Blade's hair. Tommy stared in open-mouthed awe.
"Woah, that's fucking sick, Niki."
Niki giggled, winding some of the strands around her finger. "You think? It's probably going to fade pretty fast, but I wanted to try it."
"It looks epic," Tommy assured, which he could tell wasn't entirely convincing to her. Maybe he was exaggerating a little bit for the hell of it, but who cared? He elbowed Blade in the side lightly, very careful since earlier his reaction had been so odd. "Don't you agree, Blade?"
"Uh, sure," Blade said haltingly.
"That's not very convincing," Tommy pouted. "Here's a tip from one of the experts, Blade, if you want to impress girls, you need to compliment them and buy them flowers and shit."
"Why would I want to impress girls?" Blade asked.
"Anyway," Niki cut in smoothly with a giggle. "Looks like you two are in a good mood."
"Yeah, unlike somebody, am I right?" Tommy scoffed. "Where's Wilbur, anyway?"
"I think he'll meet with us back at the inn. He needed some time by himself," Niki said.
Tommy did his best not to roll his eyes at that. When did Wilbur not need time by himself? He kept turning it over in his head, their yelling match of the other day. Wilbur wanted to leave. He wanted to- wanted to fucking go off and do whatever and never see Phil again? Well, he didn't say that exactly. He gave some empty promises about writing letters and coming by to visit. Screw that! He said that Tommy could come with him - that Tommy wouldn't need to be abandoned again - but that even if Tommy wanted to stay, he would still go. And why?
Because they didn't need Wilbur around?
"You don't need me anymore," Wilbur said. "Phil doesn't need me."
Tommy put his hands on his elbows, pulling his arms close to his chest. He didn't like that Wilbur decided to announce this in the middle of a market square, between looking at instruments and vegetables. Just… out of nowhere. Like it didn't fucking matter.
Like it didn't make Tommy want to puke.
"So you'll go somewhere that needs you?" Tommy asked, confused.
Wilbur didn't answer.
"What about your business with your family?" Blade asked suddenly. "Did that go well?"
Tommy blinked, and Niki looked a little surprised, too. But she smiled, somewhat strained. "I guess as well as it was ever going to go."
"You never told us what it was," Tommy said. "Your secret noble business."
"I didn't?" Niki asked. "Oh, hm, I suppose I didn't. I denied a marriage."
Tommy's mouth fell open again. "You were getting married?"
"My parents wanted me to marry. But, you know, my parents also want me to move back home and take over the role of heir and all that sort of stuff."
"That's wild," Tommy said. He laughed and waved a hand, "Not just the marriage thing, but that you could be fucking rich and decide not to be."
"It's more complicated than that," Niki sighed, indulgently.
"Was he handsome, at least?"
"He was handsome," Niki said.
"Then you should have married him for a little bit and then killed him and taken the money," Tommy said seriously. Blade chuckled lightly. Tommy turned toward him, and Blade looked spooked at the sudden attention. "You disagree?"
"No," Blade said quickly, fiddling with his fingers. "I just think some things never change. Arranged marriage and assassinations used to be very common in my old master's circle, too."
"Thanks, I hate it," Tommy deadpanned.
But Niki laughed at that, and Blade had that sort of half-smile he sometimes did, when clearly he was amused, just too used to not showing it. Little cracks of emotion coming through from beneath the surface.
For a moment, it didn't even bother Tommy that Wilbur was off sulking. Maybe it was better that he wasn't around.
He did feel immediately guilty for it, but pushed that away. Tomorrow, they'd go home. And hopefully, everything could finally go back to normal.
Wilbur insisted that they'd keep going through the night.
Tommy knew Wilbur sometimes got nervous about traveling by cart, on account of what happened to his family. But maybe he'd hated his time in the capital as much as Tommy had, and that was why he wanted to get the journeying part over with. Or maybe, he'd changed his mind about leaving and he wanted to hurry home so he could tell Phil.
Fuck, Tommy figured that was unlikely, but he kind of wanted it to be the case.
To make it so they didn't have to stop and set up camp, Wilbur, Niki, and Blade took turns with the reins, keeping Carl going at a pretty steady lumbering pace. Phil said that horses only needed a couple of hours of proper sleep if you didn't wear them out too much, and besides, Carl was a war horse. He'd been trained to deal with pretty dire circumstances.
During the night, when one of them rode, the others slept. And during the day too, they could nap.
The others. Tommy couldn't get a wink of sleep.
The only time he drifted off, he woke up with a sudden gasp smothered into the pillow of his bedroll. He had that fucking nightmare again. The one where he was still a little kid, and Wilbur took him out to the city, and then they got separated in the middle of a busy street. Memory or fantasy, Tommy hated how scared it could still make him, despite the fact that he obviously wasn't a child anymore. He was a big man. Even if he lost Wilbur - even if Wilbur ever left - Tommy could take care of himself. He'd be fine.
He didn't… He didn't need Wilbur. But wasn't that why Wilbur was leaving?
He let his head fall back with a sigh, thumping it against the wood of the cart. Yeah, nope, no more sleep for him. He pushed the blankets away and crawled to the front, where Blade was steering Carl down the path. Tommy didn't think he'd ever seen that guy yawn once. Like he didn't get tired at all.
"How long before we get there?" Tommy whispered, keeping his voice low.
Blade jumped, physically startled by the sudden intrusion. He did seem like he was very absorbed in the task at hand. But then he looked up, observing the night sky. "I think we'll be there by noon."
"Oh, that's good," Tommy said, draping his arms on the backrest of the seat and tucking his chin on top of them. "I hope Phil and Wilbur will finally talk things out when we're home."
Blade nodded, then stopped, going rigid. Like even nodding in agreement was the same as speaking out of turn.
Tommy chewed his bottom lip for a moment before deciding that directness had paid off lately with Blade. He might as well go all in. None of Wilbur's purposeful abrasive bullshit, nor Phil's ambiguous avoidance.
"Isn't it exhausting?" he asked, "to always second-guess what you're supposed to say or do?"
"No," Blade said instantly. Tommy was about to protest, but Blade shifted the reins in his hands and kept going. "A weapon doesn't need to think. A weapon doesn't need to decide. I mean, a good weapon can't really do those things to begin with, but it's also really easy. No pressure. You only do as you're told."
"But what if you're told to do something you don't want to do?"
"A weapon doesn't want anything," Blade responded.
Tommy didn't believe that. But he knew it wouldn't matter. Blade believed it.
"So you're going to obey them even if they're a bad person, if they do bad things, if they hurt you?" Tommy argued. There had to be some sort of loophole in Blade's logic.
That last comment made Blade frown, shifting the reins again. "If you serve well, they don't hurt you."
"You know that's not true!" Tommy yelled, getting louder. Not caring if it would wake the other two up.
Blade looked away from him.
Tommy sighed and dropped down again, cheek to skin. It was like arguing with a brick wall, sometimes. In a certain way, Wilbur and Blade were similar. Stubborn, set in their ways, and really bad at listening to reason.
"Where will Wilbur go?" Blade asked then, unprompted.
"No fucking clue," Tommy said, "Off a cliff for all I care."
"Do I need to go with him?"
"Off the cliff?"
Blade laughed. Barely there, Tommy could have tricked himself into thinking he was hallucinating it. But that was definitely a genuine laugh, for one brief moment, before Blade brought up his shoulders, hiding behind his hair and his cloak, behind everything.
"I wanted to know if he was going to take me," he said.
"When he leaves? Uh, you'd have to ask him? I don't think so."
Blade rubbed his finger over the leather of the reins a few times, allowing Carl to come to a stop so he could graze at the side of the road. Barely, the sky was lighting up. They had a little flickering glass lantern attached to the top of the cart to light the way, too. But dawn was close, and the shadows on Blade's face made the emotion there even harder to read than usual.
"But who owns me?" Blade asked. "Wilbur or Phil?"
And with that, this conversation was officially too exhausting to keep up.
"Neither of them owns you," Tommy said offhandedly, pushing off the backrest to return to his bedroll. "You're not a weapon anymore, you're a person now."
In the darkness, he could feel Blade stare at him for a while longer before he could finally fall back asleep.
That night, it was just the three of them at the dinner table. Wilbur had run off as soon as they arrived back in town, probably to Jack's pub. He hadn't exchanged a single word with Phil.
So much for changing his mind.
Phil was happy to have them back around, and happy with his gift, and just overall happy without saying a word about what he'd been up to while they were gone. Tommy picked at the vegetables on his plate. He wasn't hungry.
He'd never felt so stupidly out of place and wrong around his own family.
"It's good that you've been reading a lot," Phil said, as Blade had explained to him about the books he'd gotten from Wilbur and the merchant. Blade perked up at the compliment.
Phil had put the food on his plate for him, and verbally given him permission to start eating. Otherwise, Blade would just sit there without moving the entire time.
But as they ate, and chatted about their time in the capital, and Tommy very vehemently pretended to ignore the all-encompassing wrongness of all of this, Blade cleared his throat.
"I want-" he said, and then swallowed with the difficulty of swallowing the most bitter of pills, something that went down like rocks. "I want to go to the Nether."
Phil's eyebrows raised in surprise, but he did offer a smile. "You do?"
"Piglins are from the Nether," Techno said. "That's the red place, right? From my memories."
"It's likely," Phil said.
"Then I want to go to the place I remember being in before my masters found me and made me a weapon."
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