What do you want to find?

Technoblade did not know what gave him more pause, the question itself or the fact that Chat were the ones who asked it. Something, would be his answer. There has to be something.

Coming back made him feel like a ghost. Distant yet close enough to touch, though his fingers would only slip through the seams. Memories had a way of transforming with time. That was why a story twice told could already be removed so far from the actual events that inspired it, any witness would hardly recognize it for what it used to be anymore. In his nightmares, the very foundations of these walls would make fresh fear run through his veins.

But standing before them now, Techno could see they were merely stones.

The wooden stocks that haunted him were nothing but planks and iron. The ground he remembered being dragged over kicking and screaming hardly held evidence of him ever being there. Time had come and gone and taken with it the testimony of his suffering. If it weren't for the scars branded into his skin, Techno himself might have doubted the truth of what had happened.

And he couldn't quite put into words if that relieved or disappointed him.

"Should we go inside? Like, inside inside..." Ranboo asked, feet braced firmly on the ground. He held his arms around himself, seemingly begging for them to say they didn't want to. This place had made Techno feel so small, so helpless. It was nothing.

"No, I uh-" Phil turned his head, caught Techno's eyes. Techno couldn't tell what his friend saw in them. "I let Sam know he could raid the place not long after we got Techno back. Told him he could take anything useful as a thank you for helping us out. There wasn't really anything interesting he said, some supplies I guess. He got the body taken care of too."

"Helping you out?" Technoblade echoed. "What did he do?"

Was he stalling for time? Maybe.

"He helped us find you, actually. Or got us in touch with somebody who could." Phil's wing twitched. It had always been one of his tells, meaning he was hoping to change the subject. "Not that it matters, we're only here to burn this shit to the ground, yeah?"

"It is kind of ugly," Ranboo passively chimed in. The strain in his voice betrayed how uneasy he was with being here, only making Techno appreciate his presence more. One day he would find the gestures needed to convey that gratitude without words.

"I want to see it first," Technoblade said. They didn't ask him what he meant. He started towards that familiar door with torturingly slow steps, almost as if subconsciously wishing to be stopped. But he hadn't come only to tear it down – no, if that were the case he could have entrusted the task to Phil alone. Could have told Phil that he didn't want a brick left standing and slept easy knowing the job would be done.

He wanted – needed – to see it before it was gone forever. More than anything, Techno needed to go down there once more but by choice this time. He needed to walk out again on his own two feet.

His cane scratched against the stone of the staircase. Outwardly he was trying to appear calm, but goosebumps had risen on his skin and his heart beat fast and heavy in his chest. Phil might be talking to him, might be saying something important, but Techno realized he couldn't listen.

Because a few more seconds and then he was standing in that room again, staring. The shackles were still attached to the wall, the chain that had been a part of the collar that soon became the bane of his existence. There was the corner he had hunched in, puking his guts out. There were the cracks in the cobblestone where he had broken his nails clawing to get out. Several splotches of brown patchy blood, unrecognizable in their origin stained the floor. Technoblade the only one who still remembered the wounds that bled them.

And despite all that, it was just a room.

His hands were shaking again and he couldn't bother to stop them or hide them away. All he cared about was breathing, throat closed up unable to let go. Oh, how dark it had been when the master took their light away. How relieved he had been when they returned with gentle hands and undeserved care.

He hated this room but couldn't bring himself to hate the part of his being that still insisted he belonged there.

That was the part he had come hoping to find. To maybe understand it, or reject it, or deny it. As ironic as it was, being in this place was the last time Techno's world had been steady, had told him what to feel.

But it was just a room.

"Techno?" Phil's voice came to him distantly, barely bursting through hazes of static. He couldn't even hear Chat anymore, echoing in similar concern. Technoblade wasn't breathing right and he knew it, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it except helplessly gasp for air.

This wasn't what he had wanted. Seeing this and seeing nothing – stupid of him, to think it would make things fit. Would magically have all those jumbled emotions he got after escaping make sense. He must be some kind of idiot.

Ranboo said something to Phil, who was starting to sound high-pitched and panicked. And he must be acting bad again but this time Techno couldn't even care. Not when he couldn't breathe.

"-nk he's freaking out, Phil. Maybe this was a bad idea."

"That's a fucking understatement!" Phil shook his shoulder. Techno couldn't even flinch. This wasn't happening. This didn't feel like it was happening. Or not to him at least. He was just watching it happen to somebody else, watching the scene unfold.

(The classics, they were often tragedies; told in five acts. Each act had a name but the final one was the only one of consequence)

He watched himself be taken by the wrist, watched as Phil pulled him out of the room again. Ranboo trailed behind, stopped at the door and slammed it shut with an anger almost unlike him. Techno watched his body shiver at the outside air as if he were cold, watched his own chest heave as if it couldn't draw breathes.

Saw Phil curl his hands into shoulder-length hair – slowly growing back, almost long enough to braid – and put his thumbs against reddened cheeks. Phil pressed his forehead against Techno's, blocking out all the rest.

"Look at me, Tech. Look at me and just breathe okay? You gotta breathe for me, mate."

"I can't-" he choked, using the touch as enough of an anchor to pull himself back into the present and his own body. "I can't, Phil, I-"

"Yes, you can. Techno, you've done shit so much crazier than this. You can fucking breath for me now, or I swear to God!"

"Phil!?" Ranboo huffed out an alarmed chuckle.

"Do it with me." To demonstrate, Phil took the most ridiculously exaggerated breath he could, inhaling with his entire chest and holding it for a few seconds before blowing it out. Any other day Technoblade would have pointed out it made him look like an idiot. But he could only nod stupidly, trying to match the slowing rhythm.

In for three, out for seven. He knew this. He had known this all his life.

(Why did this place make him feel as if he didn't know anything anymore?)

"Are you breathing again?" Phil checked and Technoblade nodded once more. "Good, now take this and wreck the shit out of that thing. We'll take care of the rest."

He blinked his eyes open to see what the heck Phil was talking about. His battle axe was being pushed into his hands – Techno couldn't remember bringing it honestly – and then Phil urged him towards the stocks.

Oh... Techno hated that thing. Hated it more than he had hated anything in his entire life. And maybe he did still know what to do with things he hated. Throwing back his shoulders, he slammed his weapon into the pillory. Shards went flying.

He raised the axe again, satisfaction and despair all curled up into one. Techno brought it down onto splintered wood, the movements easy yet still a cry ripped out of his throat with each blow. He wasn't aiming at the stock anymore, not truly.

What he was hitting was something much more primal, buried much deeper inside him. Tears had started to blur his vision which he refused to let spill over and still Techno was screaming and slamming his axe into broken pieces of timber over and over. He was angry and tired and upset and it wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair.

"Let's go. We can watch this shit burn to the ground from a safe distance." Phil pulled on his shoulder. He hadn't even noticed they had left to start the blaze. Techno lost all strength – all will to fight – at once. His axe fell to the ground but Ranboo picked it up for him, clutching it in both hands.

As they stood and watched the mansion burn, Techno didn't know what to feel anymore.

Everything had become some sort of messy jumbled-up ball of emotions he couldn't sort through without bleeding all over himself by reopening old wounds and Techno wasn't even certain if what he found in the wreckage would be worth keeping. He had agreed to come back only because he had hoped that would help him discover the answer, but it hadn't.

If anything it had made him more confused.

His legs failed him. Phil made sure he wouldn't fall, guiding him to sit on the forest floor instead and kneeling at Techno's side. His wing braced against Techno's back, almost wide enough to cage Ranboo in as well who was crouching at his other elbow.

"It didn't work," Techno mumbled, more to himself than to either person with him. It still earned him a worried look or two.

"What didn't work?" Ranboo asked after a moment.

"I just- This didn't- It's not fair!" he stumbled over his words, latched onto his own knees to pull them up and try to vocalize the turmoil within his mind. "I thought coming back here would somehow show me what I've been doing wrong. I've been trying to ignore it, to go back to normal but... but this place changed me, made me something different than what I was. How am I supposed to know who I am with this gone?"

"Oh Tech..." And Phil sounded so horribly broken. Disappointed, not with Techno but with himself. His hands had captured the warmth of the sun and the glow of a trillion stars and now they wrapped around Techno's shoulders to hold him with the same gentleness one might hold the universe in their palms with. "Technoblade, you are still yourself. You have never been anything but yourself no matter what they told you. And that's more than enough."

Phil pulled him in, embraced him and enveloped him with dark feathers just so that the world could not harm him. Ranboo said nothing as he slotted into Techno's other side to do the same, tail curling around their legs. Phil's wings were large enough to cover all three of them huddled together.

And surrounded by such blatant compassion, Technoblade finally cried.