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Time is an old and endless thing. Philza has never yet been able to slow its magnificent tide, nor cheat its movement, nor go back or between it. He has been alive for a very, very long time, but not nearly as long as time itself. Technoblade must be getting close, though. But he too is unable to cheat that slowly moving clock, and Death must come for all in the end.
The mirror before him shows his face, blurred and doubled by the presence of what might be tears and what might be sleep in his eyes. Phil’s hands slip over his shoulders as he lets out a soft sigh, though when he blinks, hoping for no reason at all, his friend still does not appear.
For a single second he sees long pink hair falling against his back, red eyes blinking up from where a face rests on his shoulder, tusks bared in a soft smile —
And then the image disappears, and he shudders, and he looks away.
And so it goes.
Birth. Time. Death. Technoblade does not have the same luxury as Philza when it comes to his life being whole and endless. His is broken apart, held together only by the hands of a God that does not afford either of them the mercy they so desperately need. When he dies, Phil is left alone in his endless form, casting about searching for the man he has made friends with. When Technoblade is found, things are right again.
Sometimes.
Sometimes Technoblade awakens from the womb of the world with no memory of every lifetime he and Phil have spent together. Sometimes he is violent and confused and distrusting, refusing even to speak with the man he’s known for centuries.
And other times, there is mercy.
Technoblade knows who he is. Knows who Phil is. He knows anything at all, knows enough that when Phil throws his arms around his friend’s neck and hugs him tight, that embrace is reciprocated with a tearful smile.
But all of these lives must eventually come to an end, and Philza must send his dearest friend off to his love and hate it.
There’s no use in thinking about that. Phil leaves his mirror behind with one of his hands still ghosting over his shoulder where if he tries just hard enough, he might feel a familiar smile pressed into it. He has work to do — work that involves finding the new vessel for that smile, for that violent God which thankfully always seems to find him someday. Or perhaps — Philza is simply so stubborn that he’s the one who finds the God, time after time again.
Wings hung upon his back, a hand on the hilt of his sword, Death’s Angel goes and looks for a God of Blood.
—-
Oftentimes, reuniting with something so enigmatic as a vessel of the Blood God happens by chance. Philza might spend many months — perhaps even years — after his friend has died simply yearning, hope dwindling as he never quite manages to find the friend he has lost. And then suddenly —
In a bar, miles from home. On the other side of a war, eyes filled with fear when their swords meet. In a pile of bodies, where Phil’s only thought is of how he was too late, too late, too late—
And sometimes, they have an easier meeting. Stumbling through the forest that borders their home, seeking shelter from the snow. At a local library, pouring over a book that includes tales of his exploits that he does not remember. In Phil’s own house, memories as solid and full as they ever are, so that the crow walks into the cabin late at night and finds a home.
Throughout it all, even with the promise of a hunt, Philza can’t help but feel as if his heart has frozen. He is merely a victim to time, not a friend or a foe, and the one time it seems to go still is when it makes his heart go still and silent and quiet with the mourning for someone he knows he will eventually meet again.
He thinks that sometimes, he can count the beats on one hand, over a year. He yearns — both for the woman that takes his friend from him and the friend himself — and he waits.
But as always, they meet again.
Philza has tired of kingdoms and empires and government after so many years of either being a part of them or being victimized by them. And yet, he still holds many a faraway ally, men and women and alike that he would lie down his peace for and who would do the same for him.
It is raining, when he arrives. This particular mission of his is a peaceful one — he’s needed not for his knowledge of battle but for his knowledge of infrastructure. The water slicks down his wings and forces his hair against his foreheads like strands of hay, uncomfortable as it adds weight to his clothes and ignites a fiery ache in his knees.
Ancient, annoying things. His bones spend more time protesting movement than they spend moving at all. Of course — when Phil has his friend, it feels as if he’s managed to take away decades from his age. But now is not one of those times, and he tries not to think about it as he hands his steed over to one of the stablehands and starts his journey up the steps to the castle.
This time he’s lucky that it isn’t war that brings him out of retirement. He hates fighting when the world is in its rainy season. His wings are what makes him so good at fighting, but when he flies through the rain, it gets him soaked. Even now, just carrying himself through the castle, he shakes the massive appendages off into random corners and empty rooms, but they never seem to dry properly.
He is offered good food and a small room in a secluded section of the castle, along with a large sum of money that he turns down. There are servants too that are assigned to tend to him, but Phil has spent so long in solitude since Technoblade’s last passing that honestly, they seem clumsy and too much for his space now. He has nothing against the kind folk of this kingdom — it’s just that he misses a sort of much better company.
He prays to his wife, when he can. She’s usually unable to answer, but he’s used to that. He knows that whether She speaks or not, She is always there, Her hands held against the back of his wings as he bows over his knees and mutters soft poetry into the ground beneath him.
He prays to other Gods, when he wants. Burns his food as offerings or begs time to give him a singular moment to himself, to wait, for it to slow. But still, the only thing that remains frozen seems to be his chest.
And his limbs, Philza muses, as the rain refuses to let up all throughout his days working in the kingdom. He seldom leaves the castle for fear of slipping and just dying on the soaking ground outside. Plus, it takes him upwards of hours to dry all his feathers out, and he, unfortunately, doesn’t have his usual pair of helping hands to aid in that process.
Well, he can clean his own damn wings without Technoblade, thank you very much. (Even if he wishes he didn’t have to.)
—-
The sky decides to stop sobbing into the streets of the kingdom for the first time in several weeks. Phil has gotten rather cooped up in his own end of the castle, and pacing around his room for hours on end is not exactly helping his cramped up limbs. It’s his wings that have gotten sore now — he’s barely been able to fly at all recently.
His window is high enough above the ground, he reasons, as he jumps right out of it.
There are several gasps from the people in the courtyard below as he plummets, freefalling with wind rushing past his face, touching Death for a single second before—
Philza’s wings snap open, and he grins as he starts to sail through the wind. He brushes past the trees in the courtyard to a flurry of laughter and cheers, the practicing soldiers below awed and dizzied and impressed by the black feathers keeping him afloat. In a matter of seconds he’s cleared past them already, the fingers of the wind preening his feathers and tangling through his hair.
It’s been a long time since he visited this kingdom and its wonders. It’s as bustling and prosperous as ever, with long sprawling city streets full of people and stores, bars and libraries and seamstresses and all sorts of other things. It holds hybrids and humans and mobs alike, all of them together, and all of them safe.
It’s these sorts of places that always remind him of who he has lost. Such peace is rare as diamonds, richer than emeralds, softer than gold. In a land that has had centuries to perfect the art of hatred, there is often so much love to be found. He thinks, despite the man’s status as a vessel for Blood, that Technoblade would like it.
Phil stumbles out of the air and into a clearing to the sound of screaming children, all of them absolutely enamored by the wings on his back. It takes about ten minutes for their parents to get them to stop mobbing him — and it makes his heart ache, just a little. But he just smiles and leaves that park behind, wandering around the city streets in search of a place to eat.
There’s a long stretch of city streets where no carriages or other such vehicles are allowed. A market, filled to the brim with everything from fascinating and rare treasures to the most common garden fruits. Phil arrives within it to the sound of laughter and joy, the smells of spiced foods and mead swirling around his head. His senses are blissfully swamped by the heat and warmth of such a place as he starts to carry himself through, scanning the stands for anything that catches his eye.
Even in such places as these, though, nothing can quite reignite the beating of his heart. There’s nothing in this world besides one single man that can fix that emptiness between his ribs — nursed by a hand splayed across his sternum, kneading the skin there as he walks through the market.
He’s well used to grief and the way that it decides to come knocking on his bones at the most inopportune moments. Despite the open skies and the beauty of the market and all of the joy radiating about around him, there is still something fundamental missing. That’s the way these things work, muses Philza, who has more grief than perhaps any being before him stored in his chest.
Flight. Food. Kindness. None of them will ever be able to fix what is broken within him, even as they make him smile or laugh or even feel just a twinge of joy. There is no separating Philza from that frozen sort of anguish in his chest — for it is as attached to him as his wings.
And then —
Philza falls to the ground, tackled by a huge mass of muscle and what seems to be a bag full of potatoes and only that. He immediately moves to his sword as his back cracks against the dusty floor, eyes wide with panic as arms wrap around his back and move to constrict his ribs, to break his wings, to crush his chest—
And then he sees it. Pale pink hair. Thick gnarled tree trunks of arms, familiar scars wrapped around them. A face he knows like his own pressed into his shoulder, and a laugh like the rushing of a river and all things good.
“Tech,” says Phil breathlessly as air returns to his lungs, as his arms stall, hung there in the air and as frozen as his heart. For a moment he thinks he must be crying, or Technoblade must be, because there’s water spilling on his face, and then he watches as the heavens open up and once again start to sob.
He finds he doesn’t much care, as he trips over himself ripping his arms away from his sides and wrapping them desperately around Technoblade, and he’s sobbing, the same sounds matched by the tearful, frantic laughter of his friend as they lie there on the ground and hug. Techno hauls him up onto his knees and then they’re eye to eye, rain quickly soaking through pink hair and blond hair and black feathers and the spilled bag of potatoes on the ground.
“Phil,” says a voice he feels as though he hasn’t heard in eons, and then Technoblade lets out another boneless sob and his hands clutch Phil’s shirt, and his head falls back against his shoulder.
The avian in question feels the ice clutching his ribs melt away with the rain, saturating his chest in a river of joy and it is the grief within him instead that goes cold, as he holds Technoblade so tightly to his chest that it burns.
This time, Technoblade remembers him. This time, they are safe. This time, things are right.
—-
Death comes for everyone.
This time, they get lucky. Lucky as one can get, Phil supposes, months after Technoblade has passed. It had been an infection that took him, a wound that festered too long. This is only lucky because this time, Technoblade had allowed Phil to put him out of his misery. The poison had taken effect swiftly, and Phil had been allowed to hold his friend in his arms as he convulsed, still smiling, and then passed on.
It doesn’t mean it hurt any less, though.
He returns back to that old cabin of there, covered in dust and half in ruin. There’s no food nor warmth — (No friend, either) — waiting for him there. He arrives alone by horseback, dressed in the black of his mourning clothes, wings feeling heavy as the sky itself. Philza trudges into his old home, always welcoming back should he need it, and finds Technoblade’s bed, and sleeps upon it.
It’s a long time before he’s willing to get up again. A long time before he does anything more than lie there and grieve, so numb to that awful agony that he can hardly even cry.
One morning, though, Philza faces the window beside his bed and sees the stars start to dissipate. The darkened sky lightens to a shade of bloody red, accompanied by soft, gentle orange, until it fades into a beautiful yellow like the flowers that used to grow in their garden outside.
Technoblade’s garden, really, he thinks as he watches those watercolor hues spread, touching every inch of the universe with their spiraling fingers. It is his friend that he sees within it, despite the knowledge that his friend is dead. Philza sees the man’s eyes in the red and sees his laughter in the orange and sees his gentle hands planting tulips and daisies and roses outside in all the other colors, a dizzying dance of beautiful shades.
Philza sees his friend in all the beauty of the land and he weeps.
—-
Dew-coated hands trace the grass. Phil’s wings hang low until they too are soaked with the morning mist, brushing up against all the little greens in the dirt. He sits outside, now, instead of watching the sunrise from his bedroom. It has been a long time since his friend died again. Long enough that he has forgotten how much time has passed altogether, and long enough that when he feels his grief, it aches, instead of ripping him apart.
The garden outside their home may have fallen into disrepair, but new plants have begun to grow regardless. Flowers with no name and weeds with no purpose and mushrooms that cannot be digested. Philza is the only one there to look over them and protect them, any longer.
And so he does, for that garden was once owned by a friend and he still sees him within it.
—-
He starts to search again.
—-
Technoblade is always in the most random places. The Blood God is probably amused as It watches Philza struggle to find his friend, sending him on wild goose chases for what feels like eons. But still, fate always brings Blood and Death back together in the end, for when one goes quiet, the other comes to collect.
The times when his friend has no memories are the hardest. Harder perhaps than even when Technoblade is dead and gone entirely because it means that Philza must restrain his joy. Must hold himself back from leaping into his friend’s arms and sobbing his joy into those broad shoulders. Must watch from a distance, must try to rebuild what should, by all rights, already be there.
But Philza is well-practiced in waiting, just as he is in grief and joy and sorrow and mourning.
He finds Technoblade abandoned in a park as just a child, with nothing but hate and distrust to give his old friend. Phil raises his partner up and though he never remembers, they begin anew, and they are friends in the same way they always have been.
Next, they meet in the dusty bowels of an illegal fighting ring. Technoblade only remembers a little, but when he sees Phil, he immediately drops his sword and weeps. And though he never recalls all that they once had, their friendship is just as strong.
He’s too late, sometimes. He meets Technoblade just as an arrow severs his jugular, or right before an explosion destroys his village, or right after he’s just downed a bowl of pure poison and Philza is forced to set his friend, who believes him only to be a stranger, to rest.
But Gods, Philza is also stubborn.
Without fail, every time his friend passes away, he searches for him. Whether the death is messy or quiet or he hasn’t even been there to witness it, Philza searches for Technoblade without fail. And even though his grief burns and his sorrow rages, without fail, he finds his friend.
Sometimes Technoblade never really remembers him. Sometimes he knows exactly who Phil is sometimes. Sometimes, Phil finds him. Sometimes, Technoblade finds Phil. But always, and without fail, they are returned.
Time never stops for anyone. Eventually, though he starts to make peace with that.
It doesn’t matter if his friend remembers anything at all. It doesn’t matter even if that means Technoblade barely even trusts him, at first. Philza knows his partner, part of his universe, one of the planets he knows by name that rotates their sun — and he will love Technoblade as such no matter the circumstances.
It becomes clear after so much time that Philza can no longer remember his own age that Technoblade is just as immortal as him, in a way. For a long time there’s always a fear in the back of his mind that one day, there will be nothing left of his friend to find, and Death will finally claim him forever. But no such day ever comes.
Things are painful. Things are good. But every time Technoblade passes, every time Phil never finds him in time, he is reminded that he will always, no matter what, have another chance.
—-
“You’ll never be gone forever,” says Phil one starlit night as Technoblade tends to their garden, the avian sitting in the grass nearby, a smile teasing his lips as his hair blows about in the evening wind.
Technoblade lets out a rough snort of a laugh, tail flicking through the air and smacking a rosebush out of the way. His hands, rough and weathered and scarred, are endlessly gentle as they harvest the grown potatoes out of the dirt, setting them aside to be cleaned and stored.
When he looks up at Phil, there’s a funny little expression on his face. “I know, man. It gets exhaustin’ coming back to find this one old man all the time, yknow—”
He cuts off with a laugh when Phil reaches out and smacks him, an indignant squawk on his lips.
“You know you love me, you piece of shit!”
“Oh? Oh, do I—”
“You are willingly living with me right now, you fucker—”
Technoblade wheezes, bending over into his knees until he’s collected himself enough to speak again. When he turns to Phil, though, there’s a gentle kindness in his blood-red eyes, a genuine smile, not often seen, on his lips.
“Yeah. I do love you, y’big sap.” Then: A quirk of his brow and a tilt of his head. “What’s brought this on, though?”
That renders Phil silent for a moment. He tips his head back as he stares up into the approaching stars, one of his hands tangling in a mess of grass, teasing it until his talons cut through the dirt and into the roots.
He has been alive for a very, very long time. He’s had many years to make peace with the fact that he will always lose his friend, and he will always find him as well. And yet still he is always thinking, always wondering — why are they like this? Who cursed and blessed them to their respective immortalities? Who gave them the gifts of endless life, always intertwined and tangled and messy as the grass beneath his hands.
When Phil looks back at Technoblade, the man has gone entirely still, one hand held out as if about to take Phil’s in his own. Well— the avian accepts it, tugging Techno forward until they’re eye to eye, both of their hands occupied with the other’s.
“I’m just… thinkin’. You’re never really gonna be gone, ever,” Phil says, and he finds that his voice is soft and vulnerable. When he clears his throat, it does nothing to clear that tone from it. Instead it seems to make Technoblade the same, as the man reaches out and places one large hand on Phil’s cheeks so that their eyes meet again.
“Not as long as I’m here, mate. Not as long as I’ve got you in here.”
Phil drags his other hand out of Technoblade’s and splays it across his chest.
—-
Blood flows from a ragged emptiness in Technoblade’s chest. He gags, back arching off the ground as crimson and bile both start to spew from between his lips, dripping backward into his nose and down onto his front.
Phil is there in less than an instant. There, lifting his friend into his arms, muttering “No, no, no,” over and over, as if he has any control over this departure. Technoblade cries out in agony as he is moved, then settles with a quiet huff when he’s simply tugged against his friend’s chest, his own blood painting Phil’s shirt.
“You’re— you’re ok,” he says, because even after all this time, he always attempts to deny the inevitable. Phil lets out a choked whine and wipes at the blood on Technoblade’s face, only for it to swiftly be replaced by more.
His friend gags on his own tongue, silent for a long moment as he convulses, the blade in his chest not far away from them. The wound bleeds steadily, red so dark it looks black soaking Phil’s knees and the ground and even starting to dance along the edges of his feathers.
Then, Technoblade lifts a hand from the wound, a ragged sob blown out of his lips as his palm traces Phil’s cheek. The avian is quick to grasp it, leaning into those bloodied fingers, his other hand occupied with keeping Technoblade comfortably leaned into his lap.
Several times, Technoblade’s lips silently open and close. Each time his teeth are a little redder, his face a little paler.
“I—” Techno swallows a mouthful of blood. His eyes are wide and glassy but absent of fear. They hold only the deepest trust, as Philza holds him, as they stare up and down at each other, as he dies. “Lo— hhf— Love you.”
“Oh, oh Gods, mate, I— I love you too, just— just hold on—”
And Phil tries, he really does try to stem the bleeding to get Technoblade’s fate to wait, to get the wound to close somehow, impossibly. But it’s no use. And he knows he doesn’t have much longer, and so—
He bows over Technoblade’s broken form, pushing sweat-soaked hair away from the man’s brow and pressing a kiss there, the salty taste of blood and his own tears lingering when he leans back. Techno is still staring at him, wet trails of tears cutting through the crimson streaked across his face. There is still only trust, adoration, and love in his eyes.
The same is mirrored in Phil’s expression. But this one time, he can feel the cloud of grief within his chest lift. It is broken by the rain of spring, pitter-pattering apart on his ribs, scaling his sternum until it breaks the awful agony in his mind.
Because he knows that he will see his friend again. He knows that no matter what, no matter how long it takes—
“I will never,” he gasps out beside a sob, with a smile, “Stop searching for you. I will always find you. Always.”
“Don’t… Don’ wait too long t’ start— Ah— hgg… T’ start lookin’, ok old man?” Techno slurs out, a soft laugh breaching his bloodied teeth. They stare at each other, and for the first time in eons, though there is pain in their eyes, there is also hope.
A cool wind blows upon Phil’s back as he leans down and shrouds Techno with his wings, leaving just enough space that the dying man can still watch the sun as it sets.
“Until we meet again,” says Philza, as Technoblade’s eyes slip shut and his chest goes still.
It’s a promise.
—-
It’s a promise he fulfills. It takes some time to find the new iteration of his friend. Takes lots of searching, lots of travel, lots of waiting and anticipation. But instead of misery between Life and Death, Phil feels joy. For the knowledge that he will get his friend back, for the knowledge that he isn’t alone and that they will always somehow meet again.
And this time, when he finds him, Technoblade is no older than 12. His fists are knotted into his shirt, eyes downcast as he stares up at Philza, his pockets full of gold that he’d just stolen from the friend he didn’t even know he had.
When he looks up at Philza, though, Technoblade finds mirth in his eyes, a teasing smile on his lips. There is no anger or hatred — not even any sadness at the fact that his friend doesn’t remember him.
“I think you have something that belongs to me,” says Philza, watching as the younger boy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bracelet. It’s a bright and shining golden one that Technoblade had gifted to him for his birthday at least twelve lifetimes ago. Philza slips it on with a laugh and a smile, the irony not at all lost on him.
Technoblade just looks confused, though, and perhaps a bit irritated at being caught and then laughed at. He even takes an unsure step back when Phil crouches down, their eyes level, something caught between them even though only one of them knows it’s there.
“My name,” begins one of the two, head tilted in a curiously owlish fashion. “Is Philza. What’s yours?”
“Technoblade,” says the boy, and the cycle begins again.