Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Technoblade had always prided himself on being concise, collected, and confident. He never went into a contract without knowing what he would be up again, and on the rare occasion in which whoever was contracting him did manage to lie about what it was they were hiring him to fight, he could always count on himself to be overly prepared. 

He’d always been a good, reliable Witcher. Serves him right that the first time he really gets cocky, he loses his eyes. 

It’s not entirely his fault. The woman in the village told him they had a nekker problem; she’d told him merchants were being attacked on the road into the village, and when he’d asked for a nest, she’d pointed him deeper into the forest. He’d come armed with several Northern Wind bombs and his swords, and that was supposed to be that. 

Someday, humans will learn that if they want their monster problem dealt with, they need to describe it as what it is. Lying to a Witcher about there being a Leshen in your woods doesn’t get you a cheaper price—it only gets you a dead Witcher. The buzzing of his medallion felt like it exploded against his chest, and then the antlers had risen over the hillside, and Techno had known he was thoroughly fucked. 

He’d put up a good fight. The first wave of wolves the Leshen had summoned were easy enough to deal with, but he’d missed the roots sprouting out of the ground to grab him in favor of keeping a nekker away from his throat, and it’d just gone to shit from there. 

He doesn’t remember what actually took his eyes, but he knows whatever took them should have killed him, and he’s decidedly not dead. 

Something is jingling in whatever room he’s in. And it is a room. A room that has been in a state of decay for quite some time, but underneath the rotting wood smell is something that most lived in places contain. The jingling is attached to something that’s moving around the room, stopping beside whatever it is Techno’s resting on and then moving back over to where a fire is going in the corner. The jingling creature is cooking something over there. 

A test of his mobility reveals that—while he’s armorless—he still has all his limbs, but there’s the tightness of bandages around his stomach that has him wondering if whatever is jingling took one of his organs to cook over its fire. He can smell something cooking; he hopes he can’t smell himself cooking. 

No weapons on his person. Fine. He can do that. His vision is gone. Also fine. He can smell, and he can hear, and there’s a decent chance he can move. Whatever is jingling doesn’t sound very big, its steps are soft as though it weighs very little. Technoblade is a man made of several decades worth of muscle and experience; he can fight something small. 

But then he tries to sit up and pain spreads like wildfire from his torso outward, and he’s crumbling back onto whatever he’s lying on with a tight gasp. 

The jingling stops abruptly, and the hair on the back of his neck raises the same way it always does when there are eyes on him he can’t see. 

Through ragged breath and clenched teeth, Techno attempts to sound intimidating. “Who’s there?” he snarls into the room. 

The jingling comes closer, accompanied by the patter of quiet feet, and Techno forces himself to focus on the creature’s heartbeat. It’s much faster than any monster could be, faster than a human’s, faster than most things. 

“I’m Tommy,” the jingling replies. “You’re really fucking heavy, you know that?”

The heartbeat is not, however, faster than that of a child. 

Tommy, whoever he is, is a child. Techno relaxes minutely when his senses adjust to account for the sound of the smaller boy’s breathing and heartbeat, the scent of wildflowers mixing with freshly turned topsoil. The kid smells like he spends all of his time outside. 

“Did you drag me in here?” Techno asks next, and this time, he pushes himself into a sitting position slowly. The jingling moves behind him and he freezes. “What are you doing?”

“Of course I dragged you inside, bitch. You’re in my house. And I’m moving your pillow so you don’t fucking fall over.”

Techno feels behind him for the pillow, and after finding it and making sure there’s nothing hidden behind it, he slowly leans back against it. The jingling moves further into the room again, and when it returns to his side, something bumps his arm.

He reacts without thinking, really. He flings his arm out to push whatever it is away, and Tommy shrieks. From the sound of the jingling, the boy jumps away from him to the other side of the room. How he made it so far, Techno doesn’t know, but he doesn’t say sorry, either. 

“I’m just trying to give you water, you piece of shit! Gods, some people are such ungrateful bastards…” Tommy trails off into petulant grumbling, but he’s persistent, Techno will give him credit for that. He approaches once again with more jingles alongside each step, and then a small ceramic mug is pressed into his hand. Techno raises it to his nose to smell it, but it’s exactly as Tommy said. Water. He grunts his thanks.

“You really don’t talk a lot, huh.” Tommy’s prattling on to himself, jingling around the room and, from the sounds of it, climbing on pieces of furniture. “I think you should talk more, Mr. Witcher, it’s very important to keep a conversation going when your host is being so nice to you.”

“Where are your parents?” Techno asks instead, and he hears Tommy scoff. 

There’s a lot of grumbling where Tommy’s retreated, but the jingling really makes it difficult for the kid to sound mad. Tommy’s feet hit the ground softly and he huffs. “Well they’re not here, are they? You’re so nosy. What’s your name? I gave you mine.”

He gives the kid his name, and Tommy has the audacity to laugh. Techno almost feels offended, and then Tommy is jingling his way back over while he drags something made of cloth behind him. There’s the distinct sound of glass clinking underneath all the sounds of the bells.

“What’re you doin', kid?” He grumbles. The only answer he gets is what sounds like Tommy tripping, and then the kid starts swearing at the bag he’d been dragging. 

“I’m trying to bring you your stupid potions, you bitch.” There’s more shuffling and clinking of glass, and then with a cacophony of jingles, rustles, and clinks, Techno’s saddlebags are dropped into his lap. The saddlebags that he left on Carl. Carl, his horse, who is not in this tiny room with himself and this child. 

“Why do you have these?” Techno snarls, turning his head in the direction the jingling had come from, but he doesn’t know if he achieves the full effect of his usual glare with his eyes bandaged. It must not work—at all—because Tommy heaves a tremendous, dramatic sigh, and then he jingles away. 

“You have so many questions,” Tommy whines from over by the fire again. “I got them off the horse! He was waiting at my house when I brought you back here. When is it my turn to ask you questions?”

Techno offers only a grunt of annoyance and focuses on sifting through his bad. He has to be meticulous now that he can’t see the colors, but their smells are enough to go off of. He pops the cork on three potions before he finds what he’s looking for, and he downs it in two gulps. By the fire, Tommy’s jingling comes to a stop. 

“What did you take?” The boy asks him, sounding both curious and uncertain. “Which one was that?”

“It’ll fix my eyes,” Techno answers. Tommy clearly knows his eyes are fucked up, the kid’s the one who bandaged them to begin with, and considering the pain in and around his eyes had been minimal, he’d done a good job. But Techno has always kept a White Raffard in his bag or on his person for this reason. 

He unwraps the bandages from around his eyes against Tommy’s hurried protests, and he blinks his eyes open. 

There’s nothing. Techno can’t even call it darkness; he knows that intimately. This is the absence of darkness, of light, of everything. It’s like trying to see out of the back of his head. 

Underneath Techno’s internal panic, he can hear Tommy from somewhere behind him, though the boy sounds muffled. “Did it work?” He asks, and it’s only then that Techno catches the scent of fear. He doesn’t know which one of them it belongs to. “Can you see again?”

He can’t. He blinks again, he knows he does because he can feel his eyelids moving, but he can’t see. He can feel whatever wound was on his stomach stitching itself back together, can feel the toxicity of the potion sinking into his bloodstream, but he can’t see. 

“Technoblade?” Tommy presses, quiet and clearly afraid, and Techno finds himself swinging dangerously between rage and a tired kind of acceptance. 

“No, Tommy.” Even to his own ears, he sounds like the kind of calm that precedes danger. The sour stench of fear spikes. “I can’t see again.”

Tommy comes closer anyway, the soft tapping of feet on what Techno assumes is a dirt floor, and the boy stops a short way from the bed. “Do you want me to rewrap your eyes? I can… I’ve got herbs and stuff that I can make a paste with. Maybe you need fuckin’ magic or something.”

“Is there a healer in the village?” Techno asks him, and Tommy scuffs his feet on the ground with a huff. “Tommy.”

“Yes,” he snaps back. “I don’t know why you’d want to go to the village. They’re all a bunch of liars.”

Now that he mentions it, the village had lied to him about the Leshen. It’s not an unusual thing to be lied to about, but Tommy isn’t someone who should have a problem with that. Techno can’t say with confidence that most villages are kind to their children—his definitely wasn’t kind to him—but this boy, for all his faults, would be endearing. 

Techno hums instead of answering, and he weighs the bandages in his hands. “How bad?” 

“Oh, those guys are the fucking worst—”

“Not the villagers, boy. How bad are my eyes? How bad is my face?”

This time, Tommy falls quiet. His clothes rustle as he shuffles closer still to the bed, and the foot of the bed shifts as he climbs on it. “It’s not… good,” he answers tentatively. But he’s not answering fast enough, not enough detail, and Techno doesn’t have the time to waste. 

When he brings his hands up to trace the scars that mar his face, it’s both shocking yet not to find them jagged and deep. Three long scars carve the width of his face, two of which pass through his eyes while the third splits the bridge of his nose. Judging by the tightness of one scar to the next, it’d been a nekker. 

“You killed the asshole that took your eyes, if that helps,” Tommy tells him quietly, still sitting at the foot of the bed. The balls of the bells he wears roll in their casings with soft, short noises. He’s fidgeting. 

“And the Leshen?”

Tommy’s fidgeting worsens. “He went away.”

Leshens don’t just go away. He tells Tommy as much, and the boy jingles rapidly toward the other side of the room. Techno’s already miserable paranoia is even worse. 

“He did. He likes the bells, so when he hears them he stops being a dick.”

Techno goes to wrap the old bandage back around his eyes, but Tommy returns and drops a new one into his hands. He tries not to startle too noticeably before he traces the bandage, and he finds he can feel the difference in the bloodied versus the clean one. “Is that why you wear the bells?”

“No,” Tommy answers, but he huffs like he doesn’t want to do so and scurries back toward the fire. “I wear the bells because I like them. Niki wears bells because they keep the Leshen happy. Oh! She ties them in the trees, too. The trees like the bells, Techno, did you hear them when you came into the forest?”

“Who is Niki?” 

Tommy returns to his side as quickly as he’d left, and he sets down the bowl of stew he carried over. He takes the bandages Techno still hasn’t done anything with from his hands, and after a moment, the Witcher leans forward off the bed to let Tommy wrap them around his eyes. It’s only the constant jingling and the subtle smell of topsoil that keeps Techno’s muscles locked and prevents him from lashing out. Tommy steps back when he’s done, and then he places the stew in Techno’s open palms and scurries back across the room. 

“Niki is the witch who lives in the woods!” The jingling returns close to him again, and when Techno doesn’t move, Tommy huffs and jingles excessively. A moment after Techno uncurls his fingers from their fist, Tommy’s dropping a poorly carved spoon into his palm. “I put a bunch of the good stuff in the stew to help you heal, but you’re an asshole who doesn’t appreciate all my hard work and took one of your weird potions, so now it’s just stew. You should apologize to me.”

Technoblade is not, in fact, going to apologize to this obnoxious little kid. The stew he’s made smells like venison and celandine, but underneath it is just enough magic to make his nose itch. 

“Is Niki nice to you?” Were he dealing with an adult, or even a teenager for that matter, he’d have asked for more details. As it is, witches in the woods have a habit of taking on the abandoned children of nearby villages, but the purpose for which they keep them always varies. He’s killed witches who eat kids, who beat kids, and then he’s met some that simply enjoy having little apprentices. Whatever magic is in this stew probably came from her, and she may be able to find some way to heal his eyes. 

Through a mouthful of food, Tommy answers. “Niki’s great! She helps me put up new windchimes when the storms knock them down, and she likes it when I sing to her flowers because they grow really fuckin’ good, and she keeps the big tree safe from those assholes in the village! Don’t tell her I said that stuff though; she’ll get a big ‘ead.”

Techno takes a bite of his bowl of stew, and the magic settles across his tongue gently. It’s healing magic for sure, likely meant to fight infection were he suffering from anything. It’s at that moment he remembers the gashes along his stomach, and though the potion he took would have healed them, there’s always the chance they were infected. 

“Kid,” he calls, and Tommy hums his affirmation. “Was I sick? Your witch put healing magic in this.”

“Oh, you were gonna die on the first day for sure,” he answers, and the only thing that keeps Techno from choking on his next bite of stew is an entire century to practice his composure. 

“The first day?”

“Yeah, the first day. Don’t interrupt me while I’m talking, bitch, that’s rude.” Tommy slurps another spoonful of what Techno presumes is his own bowl of stew rather obnoxiously before he continues. “So on the first day, you were really sick. Like, I could’ve used you to cook an egg. Not one of the eggs with a baby in it, though, Tubbo would get right pissed with me. And the second day you were still sick and the same with the third day, but then on the fourth day you stopped being really warm and now it’s the fifth day and you’re awake.” 

Five days. He’s been unconscious for five days—sick for the vast majority of them. 

“And Carl—my horse—you’ve been taking care of him?” He has other questions, ones that are probably far more important, but Carl is important, too. 

“Your horse is a bitch, Technoblade. I hate him and he hates me, not that anyone could ever hate me, but he smells terrible and he ate all of my nice hay and he shat in Niki’s garden. You’re a terrible horse father, did you know that? Why haven’t you taught your son how to behave properly?”

Outside, a horse that Techno hopes is Carl neighs in what could very well be contempt. Tommy gasps, there’s the sound of his bowl thudding onto a table, and then he jingles angrily until a window is flung open. 

“Fuck you, horse!” Tommy cries. “You’re an ungrateful piece of shit, and I won’t give you any more sugar cubes if you keep talking to me like that!”

“Is Carl out there?” Techno’s fumbling for a surface to set his bowl of stew on without even thinking about it, and he tries to stand once he’s found it. Standing proves to be a mistake when he slams his forehead into… something that clangs loudly and then clatters to the floor. With one hand on his forehead, he attempts to stand up straight again and slams the back of his head against the ceiling. 

Over by the window, Tommy is laughing so hard he starts to cough. His laughter is a pleasant sound, all things considered, boiling over with the epitome of childhood innocence. But he’s laughing at Techno, and he growls in warning. 

Tommy stops laughing instantly. Fear curls around the small room, stark and cold, and then Tommy’s laughing a little hesitantly; the way someone would to break the silence. It has guilt festering in Techno’s gut before he even has time to think about it. 

“Right, um,” Tommy clears his throat and shuffles around the edge of the room—as far from Techno as he can be—and then a door creaks open and Techno can feel the warmth of the sunshine on his face. “The horse is outside. The sun’s going down but you can, uh, you can go out and see him. He misses you.”

Technoblade is not a kind man. He is not an emotional person, he cares only to keep himself and his horse fed long enough to find someplace to winter with Phil, and then he begins again the next year. The feelings of others mean little to him, and he cares not for children. 

Phil likes to call him a liar, most often to himself. 

“Can you… help. me.” It’s stilted, barely even a question at all, but the nervous jingling by the door pauses. The fear that’d been circling the small room like a predator cloaked in shadows subsides. Techno nudges whatever he’d knocked from the ceiling with the toe of his boot. 

“Oh,” Tommy realizes quietly, a soft gasp before he’s hurrying over. “You can’t see. And you’re very tall, so you have to hunch over.”

Techno bites back the retort on his tongue about how he knows that already. The kid’s hovering around him again, pushing whatever it is that was hanging from the ceiling out of the way with clangs and crashes that grate on Techno’s sensitive ears. Hesitantly, the jingling comes to halt, and then two fingertips brush the back of Techno’s hand. 

He doesn’t lash out this time, as much as he would like to. Tommy is still a kid, and he’s trying his best to help. Techno doesn’t need to scare him. 

Tommy takes one of Techno’s hands in both of his, and then he slowly begins to pull him outside. It’s a slow-going process, Tommy hesitant and softer than he'd been earlier, Technoblade awkward and unused to being led by his hand. He hadn’t realized just how much he took his sight for granted until now. The bells Tommy wears are a decent indication of where he’s going, and the boy is good about giving him directions. 

“You have to step up here, Tech- oh shit. Careful, bend down a little more. Okay, you can stand up all the way now.” Tommy lets go of his fingers as Techno stands to his full height and pops his back, and then the little boy hurries across the grass. “Horse! Your father is awake.”

All things considered, when the thump of hooves in thick grass stomps over to him and Carl shoves his nose directly into Techno’s chest, he can’t help but be a little grateful that the kid who found him actually knows how to take care of an animal. Carl’s clearly been well taken care of, and Techno has been cared for decently, too. 

“Hey, Carl,” Techno murmurs to the horse, smiling slightly to himself when Carl stomps the ground. He brushes his fingers through to Carl’s mane, but his smile drops when his fingers snag on… braids. The braids are interwoven with flowers, neither of which were there the last time Techno saw Carl. “Tommy?”

There’s rapid jingling until Tommy comes to a stop by his left side, and Techno can almost picture the boy looking up at him. He tilts his head down to where he thinks Tommy would be, cracking a small smile at Tommy’s disgusted noise. “How’d you know I was looking at you?” The little boy asks. “That’s freaky as fuck. Don’t do that.”

“Did you braid Carl’s mane?”

Tommy is quiet for a while, and then he huffs dramatically. “He asked me to. I put hate flowers in though because I hate him and he hates me.”

“Mhm. Sure he did.” Techno has never been well versed in flower language, but if Tommy’s going to call the buttercups he can smell ‘hate flowers,’ he’s going to take the boy’s word for it. “Your witch, Niki, where does she live?”

“That way.”

“...Tommy.”

He’s quiet for a second before muttering a soft ‘oh,’ and then there are small fingers reaching up to grab the side of Techno’s pant leg and tug. Techno lets himself be turned until the supposedly setting sun directly warms his face. Distantly, he can hear windchimes in that direction. 

“Niki lives that way. I don’t know what way that is, but it’s that way.”

“Thanks,” Techno mutters at last, and he can practically feel the joy radiating off of the boy who still hasn’t let go of his pant leg. 

“You should probably wait until the morning,” Tommy tells him. “The path is really wiggly and sometimes the monsters come out even though the forest tries to be nice and make them leave me alone.”

“Is that so?”

Tommy jingles sagely and the fingers disappear from Techno’s pant leg. “Yeah. And it’ll be hard for you to not trip on the roots and the rocks because your eyes are broken. So I can bring you in the morning but not tonight because of the—”

“Because of the monsters, yes,” Techno finishes for him, only a little bit frustrated at his apparent dependence on a child. He’s a Witcher, for fuck’s sake. A little bit of darkness shouldn’t be a problem for him. 

But he’s a blind Witcher, and there’s a reason he’s never heard any tales of one who’s gone blind. Having someone who knows the forest so well may be good for him. 

“The Leshen,” Techno realizes, turning to face where Tommy last was and startling when the jingling happens behind him. 

“What about him?” 

“How did you get me away from it?”

Tommy hums before he answers. “I told you, he likes the bells. They make him nice. And I got in front of you when he clawed at your stomach and I said—” There’s aggressive jingling as Tommy likely reenacts what he’d done, though he’s forgotten Techno can’t see him. “— Hey! You get away from him! Don’t be a fucking dickhead! And I wiggled my arms like this—” From the sound of the bells, Tommy wiggles his arms a lot. “—and then he stopped trying to pick you apart with his roots. And then I had to drag you back to my house. You’re so fuckin’ heavy, Technoblade.”

Never in his near-century of life has he heard of a Leshen being placated by bells. He’s never read it anywhere in any book, and he’s read a lot of books. Phil has had no stories about anything like this; none of the other Witchers he’s met on the path have had anything like this to say. It’s an anomaly. You’d think that would be something you’d tell someone. 

“The Leshen likes the bells?” He tries to clarify, and Tommy hums again. 

“And the windchimes. Don’t forget those.” He jingles back over and reaches up for Techno’s hand, grabbing hold of two fingers and tugging. “Come on, Techno, it’s getting dark soon. The monsters will leave Carl alone, but they’ll be mean to us. We have to go inside.”

He’s never known monsters to leave a horse alone, but if Tommy’s to be believed, he’s been unconscious for five days. Carl’s been out here for five days. The horse doesn’t smell like fear or any kind of distress. 

“Who taught you how to take care of a horse?” Techno asks him, hunching over so the little boy can lead him better. “Why are you by yourself?”

“Nobody taught me how to take care of a horse,” Tommy answers easily. He tugs down on Techno’s arm, and the Witcher ducks in accordance. “And I’m by myself because I didn’t want to stay with Niki. I’m a big man. I can take care—duck a little more, there’s this big ugly pot that I can’t get down—I can take care of myself. Okay.”

Tommy lets go of his fingers and jingles behind him where he shuts the door with a thud, and then there are small hands pushing at the back of Techno’s legs. “Go finish the rest of your stew! I made that and I don’t want you wasting it.”

For a moment, Techno considers what Phil would do in this situation. And then he remembers that Phil has been scammed by children at least seven different times, and he stops considering what his friend would do in this situation. 

“Am I going to hit my head on anything else?” 

“No. But you’re gonna trip on your armor if you’re not—” Techno trips on his own armor. “—careful.”

Chapter Text

It is considerably harder to put armor on when you can’t see all of the buckles, Techno learns the next morning. 

“You could just let me help,” Tommy says from where he’s sitting on the table—which Techno bumped into earlier and now knows the location of—a whine tinging his voice as his offer of help devolves into a borderline demand. “I know how to do buckles and shit.”

“I’ve got it, kid,” Techno growls back, and he pretends he can’t smell the curl of fear that his response elicits. Honestly, Tommy’s unease is the only thing keeping him from full-on yelling. He’d have cursed all the gods and more if he didn’t have an audience, especially an audience that only ever seems afraid of him when he’s yelling. 

And then he fumbles his belt for the fourth time, and the sun has risen high enough that he can feel the heat of it on his face through one of the windows, and he’s a little overwhelmed. Witchers don’t get overwhelmed, overstimulated, whatever, but Technoblade has had a very bad week, so he’s allowed these small mercies. 

“Fine,” he snaps, and he hears the way Tommy flinches away from him. “You want to help so bad? Help.”

Tommy doesn’t move. The only sound in the small room is the racing of the little boy’s heart and the unsteadiness of his breath. Techno stands rigid, holding different straps of his armor in each hand, and he waits. He breathes deeply and reminds himself that Tommy is a child who lives alone. A child that doesn’t like the village he lives near, and instead prefers the company of a hedge witch in a forest a Leshen occupies. 

There is a reason children end up in the company of witches. Abandoned or abused, that tends to be the first place they’ll go. 

“Maybe… maybe you don’t wear your armor?” Tommy asks nervously, voice barely above a whisper as he fidgets where he sits. “It looks… I mean. The monsters stay away from the windchimes and the bells. You don’t need it.”

“I’m not leaving without my swords,” Techno bargains, and Tommy scoffs. 

“You’re not a very good Witcher if you’ve got no swords, are you?”

Which—fair. Techno lets go of the straps of his armor and resists the urge to cringe when it crashes to the ground around his feet. Phil would have a field day with him right now, he already knows it. Between the two of them, Techno has always been the one who advocates for armor maintenance. His armor is something he’s cultivated for the last century; it’s something he’s proud of. 

Tommy jingles toward the far wall, and then Techno can hear the scraping of his sheathed swords against the wooden floor. He keeps his head low as he shuffles over carefully until Tommy presses his swords into his hands. “These are fuckin’ gigantic, Blade,” the little boy tells him. His heart rate is almost normal again. “They’re even bigger than me.”

No one is here to witness his failure. No one of note will be there to see the blind Witcher when he dies. 

“Do you need me to do the strap?”

Except for a boy shorter than Techno’s swords are long, little hands holding his fingers as he waits for permission to help him. 

“Let’s see if I can do it first, yeah?” Putting on his swords, though as much muscle memory as it should be to put on his armor, proves far easier than he’d thought it’d be. The leather strap goes around his shoulders and threads easily through the buckle across his chest, and after only a few fumbles, he secures it with ease. The familiar weight is a comfort. 

“Good job, Technoblade!” Tommy praises the way only a child can, and Techno finds himself smiling despite everything else. 

“Thanks, kid,” he answers softly. He stands as tall as he can and offers his hand to the open air in front of him, and then Tommy grabs two of his fingers with both hands and leads him toward the door with enthusiastic directions. 

The rising sunshine greets him before Carl can, and when he stands to his full height, Tommy clings to his fingers. Techno lifts his arm just to hear the boy shriek with laughter when his feet leave the ground. 

Carl stomps his way over and presses his nose into Techno’s shoulder, and while he entertains the child clinging to him with one hand, he greets his horse with the other. Carl nudges him for treats, but he huffs and moves on to nosing the little boy when he finds nothing. 

“Fuck off, horse,” Tommy whines, and Techno can feel the way he wiggles around in the air. “Your dad likes me more than you now.”

“Alright,” Techno half announces, gently shaking Tommy’s hold on him and reaching for Carl’s reins, or bridle, or anything. He finds nothing. “Tommy? Where are Carl’s things?”

“Oh, the horse is naked.”

He inhales deeply, calmingly, and reminds himself that the kid doesn’t mean any harm. “I’m aware of that. Where are his things?”

“He took them off.” Tommy jingles across the yard with a pep in his step. “Or, he asked me to take them off for him because he wanted to not wear them, so I did. They’re over here.”

Techno huffs a sigh in the direction of his horse, and Carl huffs one back. Then, Techno walks carefully toward where he can hear Tommy fighting with Carl’s things with a whistle for the horse to follow him. 

Surprisingly, tacking Carl is easier than it’d been to try to put his own armor on. He tries not to think too hard about it, and instead makes sure Carl is as comfortable as possible before mounting the horse. And then he stops, feels the weight of the reins in his ungloved hands, and realizes he can’t see where he’s going.

“Come on, horse!” Tommy calls, jingling cheerily in the direction of the distant wind chimes. Carl follows him at a leisurely pace. “Niki has a lot of apples she can give you, and she doesn’t know you’re a little bitch, so she’ll be nice to you.”

Carl huffs, and Tommy gasps in turn. “Horse! You can’t say those things!”

“What’s he saying?” Techno asks, humoring the boy leading him through the forest, though he doubts it’s necessary. 

“I can’t repeat it, Technoblade,” Tommy jingles seriously. “The horse is so vulgar. I can’t believe you raised him to be like that.”

“I found him on the side of the road, actually.”

Tommy hums before he speaks again, and slowly, Techno tunes him out. He focuses more on the sounds in the trees, twisting outside of the wind chimes and gliding away from the places the sunlight touches. He can feel it on his back as he rides. There’s a stream burbling somewhere through the trees, and in the underbrush, he can make out the sounds of small animals snuffling. 

“You need to listen, Technoblade,” Tommy says, and Techno’s focus slams back to the little boy against his will. He’s momentarily disoriented, but he listens all the same. “The forest is dangerous. You’re a Witcher, so you know that, but it’s different. It’s not… don’t go in there without me, please.” He pauses to fiddle with the bells around his wrists. “You don’t have to listen anymore, Technoblade.”

Techno releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. His shoulders relax and he can hear the stream burbling again, but before he can even consider it, Tommy’s speaking again. “Oh! Look! Tubbo! Turn the fuck around, asshole! It’s Tommy!”

“Tommy!!” Another young voice calls, and then there’s a cacophony of jingling as two small masses bump into each other and Carl stops moving. The jingling slowly distances itself from him, and despite himself, Techno feels a sense of unease settle in his bones. He slips off Carl without really thinking about it, grabs for the reins he dropped, and begins trekking as carefully as he can after the disappearing bells. 

They dip behind the windchimes and into the underbrush at one point. Technoblade hesitates in the middle of the path, torn between following after them and remaining here to wait—but he’s a Witcher. He has never been made to wait on anyone in his life. It has frustration spiking in him to be so reliant on someone so defenseless. 

There’s shuffling in the grass to his left, and he’s reaching for his sword without thinking about it. 

“It’s good to see you on your feet again, Witcher,” a kind voice tells him. Each step the person it belongs to takes is accompanied by wind chimes. “I’m Niki.”

“Tommy’s witch,” he realizes aloud. 

Niki laughs, melodic and gentle. “Tommy’s Witcher.” She comes closer still until she’s standing close enough that he can hear her breathing, and then she hums under her breath. Techno’s starting to see where Tommy gets it from. “Your eyes are still bandaged.”

“They didn’t heal,” he answers, and then, “I’m Techno. Technoblade.”

“Come with me? I can get a better look at them if you’re sitting down. You’re rather tall.” He thinks that’ll be it, but then she speaks again. “Ranboo, could you go get Tommy and Tubbo? I’d rather not leave them out here right now.”

“Do I have to?” Another little boy asks, far more timid than Tommy. 

“I would really appreciate it. Or you could stay here with Techno, and I’ll go get them?” There’s silence, and then Ranboo, too, scurries into the underbrush with a jingle of bells. He’s only gone for a moment, and then several sets of bells are tumbling through the underbrush in a mix of giggles. 

One set of bells breaks away from the pile and jingles confidently toward him, and then familiar small fingers are grasping his free hand. “Hi, Techno,” Tommy greets happily, and he presses himself against Techno’s leg. 

“Hi, Tommy,” he greets in turn. It comes out softer than he means it to, more affectionate than what’s warranted in such a short time, and he nudges Tommy away from him. He can’t make himself shake the boy’s hands, though. The reliance he has on this boy and his bells is irritating.

“You’re tall,” Tubbo tells him as they begin to walk, moving somewhere near Niki with speed a child really shouldn’t possess. “Why’re you so tall?”

“It’s rude to ask people why they’re tall, Tubbo,” Ranboo hisses quietly.

“I just wanna know why he’s tall. It’s not that big of a deal,” Tubbo grumbles back, and though Techno can’t tell which one of the boys in front of him kicks the stone, he assumes it’s Tubbo. 

Tommy squeezes his fingers twice, a happy little hum preceding his words. “Don’t worry, Technoblade. You can be tall. I don’t mind.”

Techno sighs and squeezes Tommy’s hand back. “Thanks, kid.”

“You’re welcome.”

The children keep up a constant stream of chatter the whole way to Niki’s home, broken only by Tommy giving Techno quiet instructions or Niki shushing them as they pass through a particular area. The stream is absent now, and if he focuses hard enough, he can hear the patter of small paws in the underbrush. Further away, heavy feet thump after them. 

Niki shushes the boys again, and they fall silent without question. He can hear the way their heartbeats pick up, and the heavy feet change from a thump to a shuffle. Carl huffs anxiously behind him as whatever is in the woods ambles ever closer. He’s half-tempted to reach for his sword despite the obvious lack of his eyes, already turned to face the trees he can’t see; the absence of his bag of potions pushes at the back of his mind and has him biting down a swear. 

And then a breeze twists through the trees and jostles the wind chimes, sending them from a quiet dance into a frenzy. Tommy rattles the bells on his free hand with vigor, and Niki grabs a fistful of her skirt and shakes it. The noise has whatever is watching them from the woods—Techno knows what stalks them—turning and making a slow, lumbering retreat. 

When the breeze dies down and the forced jingling stops, Techno slowly releases the tight grip he’s had on Tommy’s hand. 

“The Leshen,” he guesses, and this time it is Niki who answers. 

“Yes. He’s unused to others being in his forest.”

Techno considers what he knows of leshens, compares the ones he’s dealt with to this one, and comes up with nothing. “It’s afraid of the bells?”

“Not afraid,” Tubbo answers. “He likes them.”

“He likes them.” It sounds disbelieving even to his own years. 

“We’re here, anyway,” Niki announces, and Tommy pulls him away from Niki and the other boys. “You can tie your horse over there, and then come inside. I want to take a look at your injuries.”

Tommy lets go of Techno’s hand and stomps in the direction of Niki’s voice. “Niki,” he whines, “Technoblade took one of his stupid Witcher potions instead of eating the stew.”

“And you worked so hard on that stew, didn’t you?” She placates. 

“I did!” 

For some reason, Techno feels like he has to defend himself. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s left standing somewhere in Niki’s yard, unaware of where he can place his feet in order to walk into her home. “I ate the stew.”

“Yeah,” Tommy scoffs, jingling petulantly back to his side and taking hold of his fingers once more. “After you drank your shitty potion. What if that’s the reason your eyes are still broken? What if it messed up your healing? Can it do that? Oh, Techno, what are your potions like? How do they work? Can I try one?”

Niki, apparently uncaring of his plight, laughs somewhere ahead of them. The wind chimes tied to her skirt clang against each other when she moves. Truthfully, it isn’t a pleasant sound. He tries to focus his hearing on Tommy instead, making a show of nudging the boy roughly before preventing him from falling. “Witcher potions are for Witchers only, Tommy. They’re poisonous to humans.”

“Well yeah, but—” And then Tommy heaves a sigh, and he releases Techno’s fingers. “Niki’s door is low, so you gotta duck.”

“You can go play, Tommy,” Niki tells the little boy, gentle and understanding of something Techno isn’t privy to. “Ranboo and Tubbo are supposed to be picking ingredients in the garden, but we both know they won’t.”

“Can I pick them?” Tommy asks her, and Niki laughs softly. 

“Of course you can. Go on, now. Let me look at your Witcher in peace, little bird.”

Tommy jingles briskly out the door, and then it’s just Niki and Techno in her small house. At least, he assumes it’s small. Given the size of Tommy’s home, he can’t imagine someone else living in the woods would have a much larger one. It’d be easier to gauge how big or small the room was if there were things moving within it, but that’s not the case. Techno can hear objects that are moving. It’s the ones that are still that trip him up. 

“I’ve got a stool just to your left that you can sit on,” Niki instructs him, a certain kind of power in her voice now that she’s in her element. “It’s low down for you, be careful.”

He has to fold over to grapple for it—and isn’t that embarrassing—and when he finally finds it, he nearly misses it as he sits. Niki, maybe for her own sake or maybe for his, doesn’t comment on it. She just bustles around her home with the combined noise of her skirt swishing and the wind chimes tied to her waist clanging. Cabinets open and close, jars clink onto counters in one place while a small fire wooshes to life in what Techno hopes is a hearth. She murmurs the names of plants and salves to herself as she goes. 

It’s a lot of auditory input. Before losing his eyes, Techno had learned easily how to take in all of the sensory input and file it away, examining it quickly before dismissing it if it wasn’t a threat. The absence of his eyes has thrown all of that training in the metaphorical gutter. He’s overwhelmed, overstimulated, whatever. His head hurts. 

“Unwrap your eyes for me, please. Or we can take a look at the other injuries you sustained if you’d prefer.”

Techno grunts and undoes the ties of his shirt, tugging it up and over his head so Niki can get a better view of his injuries. He knows they’re not still open, though the tightness of his movement suggests scarring, so letting Niki look is probably for the best. He could look on his own if he weren’t—well. He has to feel around for where the bandages are tucked together, but he manages to find the beginning, and unwinding them from there is easy. 

Niki hums in consideration once the bandages are off. She’s in his space with a short clang of wind chimes, and her cold fingers prod at the scars across Techno’s torso. He tenses each time she moves, and not for the first time, he wishes he could fucking see. Niki keeps up her constant movement, and the wind chimes she wears give him a good idea of where she is at all times, but it still feels wrong to be missing one of his senses. He’d had it less than a day ago. 

That’s not true, though. He’d been unconscious for nearly a week. He keeps forgetting that part. 

“The potion you took,” Niki says, sounding contemplative as she moves from his torso to the scars on his shoulder. “It closed most of your wounds. The ones on your stomach were deep, though I can tell the difference between your natural healing versus the potion. You don’t need to rewrap them. We can look at your eyes next.”

He fumbles with the ties of his shirt, but he gets them in the end. All that’s left is the daunting task of removing the bandages from his eyes. They’re useless, and he knows that, but the unease still remains. 

In the back of his mind, he finds himself wishing Tommy would come in from the garden. It’s a baseless desire, one that means very little in the grand scheme of things, but he’d prefer the jingle of bells on satin ribbons be inside the house instead of outside. It’d be easier that way, he thinks. The fact that it would put him at ease does not go unnoticed, nor will it go unpunished. 

Niki is painfully silent when the bandages all fall away. He waits with bated breath for her to speak, but she doesn’t. 

“The potion?” He prompts, and she finally sighs. 

“You’ll be happy to know that taking the potion isn’t the reason you can’t see,” Niki informs him, and he barely holds his sigh of relief. “Though it definitely sped up the healing, there wasn’t much that could have been done to save them. Had we had a proper healer, or even a sorcerer, nearby, there’s a chance they could have undone the damage, but it’s highly unlikely.”

“Is there anything you can do to fix them?” Techno asks, torn between acceptance and foolish hope. He has never heard of a blind Witcher before—likely for good reason. He does not want to be another forgotten story. 

Niki’s fingers prod his face without warning, but he’d caught the disturbance of the air as she lifted them. She tilts his head from side to side, and then her magic ghosts across his skin before seeping slowly into his pores. The boar medallion hums against his chest. 

“Tommy said it was a nekker,” she prods, and he grunts in confirmation. She sighs heavily and shifts her stance, and Techno can feel the way her magic sinks into the scars on his face. It doesn’t burn, but it’s a close thing. “When you were fighting the leshen?”

“Yes.” When Niki sighs again, Techno’s brows furrow. “What? Why does that make any difference?”

“It’s not a normal leshen, Technoblade. And it doesn’t summon normal nekkers.”

He’s growing frustrated, angry, even, and he leans back to smack her hands away from his face. The sudden absence of magic leaves a startling chill under his skin. His words come out more growl than speech. “Stop beating around the bush, witch. Tell me what’s wrong with my eyes. Why is this different?”

“This is a fae forest, Witcher,” Niki snaps, and Techno’s mouth shuts with a sharp click of teeth. “A normal leshen is hard enough to deal with, made of the forest’s need to protect itself from humans, but this one twisted a faerie into something else entirely. We can’t recognize him anymore. He’s dangerous, more dangerous than any other leshen I’ve encountered. It’s—” She huffs and moves away from him, skirts shifting as she fumbles with what sounds like a book. It’s heavy when it hits a table, and he can hear the dry pad of her finger sliding over the paper. “The forest made him. It’s his mother. And in its danger, it twisted him into something even worse than before. A curse, or something. Because your injury was caused by fae magic, I can’t undo it. You’d need another faerie for that.”

Techno takes her words in slowly, parsing through them for any hint of a lie. Her elevated heart rate sounds more like frustration than falsities. She’d been close to this faerie, whoever he was. And it would make sense. The boys, or at least Tommy, must have known him, too. The use of bells to deter the leshen a remnant of who he used to be. 

“This is a fae forest,” Techno repeats. “Is there another faerie I could speak to? Surely there’s someone else who can help?”

Niki sighs softly, seemingly in defeat, and she closes her book. “Not in this forest. When it twisted him, he used the last of his free will to close the doorways between this realm and their own. The ones who were trapped outside fled this forest to find another that would take them in. The leshen… he spares no one.”

“Except for Tommy. And you,” he observes quietly.

“He was very fond of us,” she mourns, nimble fingers brushing over glass jars and through the leaves of a plant on her windowsill. Beyond it, Techno can hear Tommy’s laughter. “The fae are tricky creatures, but he’d spent long enough with humans that he made more of an effort to be kind. My hair is pink because of him, now. A visual mark that I trust him with my life, and he with me.”

“And Tommy?”

“He’s young.” That is the only answer she gives him. Niki stops moving entirely, then, standing eerily still by the window. “Technoblade?”

“Hm?”

“You know the fae of this forest mean you no harm, don’t you?”

He says nothing, for he doesn’t know. He’s never met anyone of fae blood before. There’d been one man, a bard he suspected when he failed to age after fifteen years of wandering together, but he was never sure. Bards are vain creatures. A glamor, even subtle, wouldn’t have been unheard of. 

Niki turns to look at him. He can feel her eyes on his face—or maybe it’s just paranoia. “They mean you no harm, Witcher. Should you come upon one, do not treat them with contempt. Fae cannot lie to you. The ones of this forest mean you no harm.”

She repeats herself several times, phrasing it in every way she possibly can to get him to understand. He doesn’t interrupt her, just listens to her run through her speech and the sound of bells through the window. When she stops, he gives her another moment. 

“Do you know another—” He pauses, frowns, and reconsiders. “—someone else who could… help me?”

Niki considers his question, and then she laughs softly. “There’s another faerie, they call him the Archivist, about a month’s journey northwest. He has a library near the forest of Kinoko. He attempted to court me the first time we met, but he stopped when he realized I wasn’t a man.”

“Is he from this forest?” He asks, and she laughs again.

“Oh, no. He’s from… honestly, I don’t know. He’s interesting, but he’s rather sweet. A little ditzy for someone who collects knowledge, but he shouldn’t be malicious. He’s spent decades in our realm.” She pauses, considering something, and then taps her fingers on the wood of her table. “Do you have anyone who could guide you? I know your other senses are enhanced, but your vision…”

It is only then that Techno realizes, at least subconsciously, that he’d just assumed Tommy would be coming with him. The realization is similar to dumping icy water over his head: cold and slightly suffocating. The bells on the boy’s wrists are easy to follow; his constant chatter, though occasionally annoying, makes him easy to track. He’s already good about directing Techno over roots or under doorways. Without thinking about it, it made sense. After thinking about it, it scares him.

Witchers are not meant to feel fear. It’s beaten out of them young; they can’t afford it in their profession. But it still creeps up Techno’s spine anyway when the knowledge that he would willingly place his life in the hands of a child after such a short amount of time makes itself known in his head. It’s born on pure reliance, but he has no other choice. He will die on his own.

But he cannot care for a child, not in the state he’s in now, nor in the best shape of his life. He’s at an impasse. 

Familiar bells tumble through the window, and Tommy comes to a stop against Techno’s calf. His greeting is smothered in his giggles. 

“How did you do that?” Techno asks him, already reaching down to let small fingers take his. He pulls Tommy easily to his feet. 

“I jumped,” the little boy answers. He dusts himself off with another jingle of his bells, and then he gasps. “I left my basket with all the fuckin’ flowers n’ stuff outside. I’ll be right back!” He’s out the heavy door in a flash, jingling into the distance behind the house. Techno listens after him long after he’s gone. 

Niki is silent for a few moments, her eyes on him, and then she sighs. “If you take him with you, you have to promise to look after him. You can’t yell, or snap, or cause him any harm.”

“He’s just a boy,” Techno answers without thinking. “I would never hurt him.”

“If you make him a promise, you have to keep it. Do you understand me? I don’t know what it’ll do to him if you don’t.” He opens his mouth to respond, but she keeps going. “He’s young, Witcher. I don’t need you reinforcing the lesson that he’s bad, or unwanted.”

“Why would I—”

“Niki!” Tommy shouts from outside. “I’ve got your potion stuff!”

Techno tries to speak again, but Niki calls back to Tommy through the window, and the conversation ends. The little boy bursts through the door amidst the heavy smell of flowers and weeds alike, reaching up to hand the basket to Niki and then jingling back over to Techno. Tommy pulls on his sleeve aggressively. 

“The horse wants to go on a walk, Techno. He’s being pissy again.” 

“Is he now?” He asks, and he secures his swords to himself once again. He stops, though, when the flutter of bandages meets his hands. After a moment’s hesitation, he winds them back around his eyes. They’re not necessary, but they imply that his eyes will still heal. He won’t be stuck like this forever. 

“He is,” Tommy confirms. “He keeps stomping all over my dandelions. Also, careful of your head. Niki has wards and shit on the ceiling.”

When he stands, he keeps his shoulders hunched and his head down. Tommy grabs for his fingers again and tugs him toward the closed door, and they’re almost out when Niki clears her throat. They freeze much the same way children caught with their hands in the cookie jar would, and she laughs at them. 

“Tommy, do you think you’d want to go with Techno to visit the Archivist?”

The little boy gasps, practically vibrating with a wave of excitement as he jingles joyfully. “Is Sapnap gonna be there?”

Techno can hear the barely concealed distaste in her voice, though he doubts Tommy picks up on it. “He sure will! You know he prefers it up there. I bet he’ll be very excited to see you.”

“When are we leaving? Can we leave now?” He tugs on Techno’s hand harder, and the older man lets himself be dragged outside. “I think we should go right now. Horse! Come on, we’re going on your stupid walk. Except it will be a very long walk to see my friend. Technoblade, do you have any friends?”

“I—”

“It’s okay if you don’t. Ranboo didn’t have any friends before he had us. You and I can be friends, best friends even. Everybody wants to be my friend. Tubbo’s my best best friend, though, so you’ll have to go behind him. But you can be in front of Ranboo.”

Carl walks contently behind them as Tommy drags Techno back in the direction they’d come from. For some strange, completely unknown reason, he feels like this is going to be the longest trip of his life. 

Niki watches them leave with her arms crossed, a frown pushing at her face. The pink slowly making itself known in the roots of Techno’s hair is concerning. She can only hope that this Witcher will be kinder to Tommy than the last.