#fire.works

Just the thought of it almost made him chicken out again.

Instead, he steeled himself, and carefully pulled one petal from the rose, exactly as Kristin had instructed him. 

As soon as the petal detached, his familiar attic dissolved around him like the magical rose was spilling the void out of itself, swallowing everything in impenetrable darkness. Techno blinked a couple of times, but his eyes never adjusted. Total, complete darkness. 

“Okay. Cool.” He said lamely. The void seemed to swallow the sound. “Kristin, this better not be a prank-”

A glimmer of dim light broke like dawn in front of him. A single star in the night he’d found himself in. He went to walk towards it, but his attic floor had disappeared from underneath him. It caught him off guard for a second as he pinwheeled in the darkness, but the afterlife apparently took pity on him, or got fed up with him, and a strange force rose underneath him like a swelling wave. The force shoved him forward, toward the hint of light. It almost felt like a massive hand underneath him, scooping him up. The void echoed silently with laughter. 

“I mean, I don’t know what you were expecting from me,” he said to Kristin. “I don’t get too much practice swimming in the void.” 

She dropped him off in front of the dim red light, jostling him playfully for good measure. He tried to act affronted by it, but he was pretty sure she knew he took comfort in it.

The light was floating before him, a miniature star. It cast him in warm light, reds and yellows, that seemed to fill the void around him with life. Techno reached out to touch it on instinct, and the closer the tips of his hoof got the bigger and brighter the light became. By the time he held it in his hand, the light was all around him, swallowing him whole. 

This time, when he blinked his eyes open, it wasn’t to an endless void. Instead, the first thing he saw was a forest. 

A familiar forest. 

Crimson vines swayed in the warm air, humidity thick but not uncomfortable, the hazy glowing shroomlights filtering through the various plants crowding up the trunks of the trees. It all seemed almost dreamlike, colors drifting and blurring together, details vague. The netherrack ceiling was so close that the trees brushed up against it if they got a little bit too tall. Even the lava bubbling was quiet here, replaced by rustling leaves and hooves scuffing through the thick, red mycelium. There was a path through it that Hace had carved so that Forgeflare could haul buckets of lava to work on their tools and weapons.

He almost turned back, almost sat down on the netherrack somewhere and waited for the rose to lose all its petals and send him back to the cold familiarity of the tundra. But he didn’t. 

Techno followed the path. Even after so long, he could remember the way home. 

Home was a patch of soft moss and dug-out hollows in the ground. It looked exactly like how he’d forgotten. Exactly how they’d left it. Some of the crimson wood was cut into planks, lashed into palettes and structures big enough to house them all as they slept in shifts. Forgeflare’s forges were glowing hot, chests full of gold and salvaged supplies stacked carelessly to one side. A few makeshift target dummies were propped up a little ways off. The old cooking pot was still bubbling with god-knows-what over a little campfire that had never seemed to stop burning. 

The sight of all of it made him feel like he was drowning, just a little bit. It had been years. It had been decades. It felt like he’d never left. Everything and nothing had happened since he was here. A petal fell off the rose and drifted to the packed netherrack, dissolving into nothing. 

“Uhm…?” A voice from behind him spoke, in the hoglin language instead of the common he’d grown so used to. He couldn’t bring himself to turn around. “Spirits, Forge, what happened to your fur…?” 

A hoof-like hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. 

Bellfire was like a beacon against the backdrop of red. Her fur was even more blue than he remembered, like the twirling vines of the warped forest she was born in. Her eyes met his. She looked around his age, not like the full-grown old person she’d looked like when he was younger. He was around her height now, when had that happened-

Her breath caught in her throat, one hoof going over her mouth. “Techno?” His name came out as a whisper. Just hearing it made him want to collapse. 

“Hey.” His voice was just as quiet as hers, dragged out of his throat. The language was unfamiliar, snorting and squealing instead of carefully formed vowels and consonants. 

“Oh my- You- You’re here? Techno-” 

She nearly jumped at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. He hugged her back weakly, barely able to keep himself from collapsing to the crimson moss at her feet. It felt exactly like he remembered, she smelled exactly the same. Another petal fell off the rose. 

“Bell? Who the fuck is that-” 

Bellfire pulled away from him. He could see the tears in her eyes as she turned toward the new voices, toward the hoglins walking into their old camp. He couldn’t look up at them, he only had the strength to stare into the forest over Bellfire’s bright blue shoulder. Everything was overwhelming, rocketing between good and bad emotions. He could feel eyes on him, could feel Bellfire’s hand on his shoulder. He took a deep breath. 

When he looked up, the first eyes he met were Dell’s. 

“Guess you were right,” he said, shakily, “I never did end up taller than any of you, did I?” The joke drifted in the air between them, and for a second he was nervous, but-

“Told you so.” Dell responded automatically, like the words were there before she could decide to say them. She was smiling, in the tentative way she did sometimes. 

His family was looking back at him, coming home from what looked like a successful mushroom hunt. Dell was smaller than he remembered, but not by much. She was still that same orange-red that made his heart hurt every time he saw a similar shade in the overworld. Stonehigh was next to her, holding his father’s hand. Spring himself had a look in his eyes that Techno had never seen before, a mix of sadness and hope and excitement and grief. He had a dark brown spot of fur on his cheek that Techno had forgotten. 

Forgeflare pushed through the little crowd, her pink fur shot through with white streaks Techno had never inherited from her line. All he could do was stand stock-still as she approached him, slowly, as if he’d melt away if she moved too quickly. She stopped in front of him, reaching out to rest her hand on top of his head.

“Well?” Forge asked in her low rasp. “What took you so damn long?”

Like a spell had been broken, Technoblade was tackled to the ground. 

Dell was nearly shrieking with laughter rolling him over in the mycelium and shaking him like she always did when they sparred as kids. Between the peals of snorting laughter she squeezed him until he was laughing too. Stonehigh jumped on him, digging his boney knees into Techno’s side. Bellfire was back to hugging him as much as she could without getting caught in Dell’s crossfire. Bubbleflow was laughing nearby, crouched and trying to pry Dell off. “You’re gonna suffocate the poor boy, Dell, at least give him a minute-” 

Bubbleflow only got dragged into the pile of hoglins for his troubles. 

For a glorious moment, everything was familiar smells and snorting laughter and piles upon piles of limbs and faces he’d nearly forgotten. Another petal fell off the rose. 

Eventually, Dell caught her breath enough to begin her interrogation. “So you finally kicked the bucket, eh? Took you long enough. Spirits, we almost started a bet that you’d gotten lost out in limbo or something-”

“But it was too sad. So we stopped.” Stonehigh cut in.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. No but like, seriously? Where have you been? I ‘ve been waiting SO long and all of these people,” Dell gestured to everyone else in the pile. Everyone was making themselves firmly comfortable with Techno stuck in the middle. “All of these people are SO boring. None of them even like to fight me anymore because I always win-”

“Untrue.” Hace said, grinning. 

“Shut up, old man-

Hace laughed. “At least give him a chance to talk-”

“You’re no better. Stop picking flights with your daughter.” Bellfire snorted, running a hand through the braids in Techno’s mane. His was longer than any of theirs, fur longer and thicker than it would ever get in the nether. 

“Let the boy speak.” Forgeflare’s words fell like a blanket over all of them. They all went quiet, expectant. 

Techno felt like he was about three feet out of his body, firmly somewhere else. All he could do was lay there in shock for a silent moment, until. “Uh. Well.”

Another petal came loose, falling off the rose. Techno watched it go. 

“I’m just here- to, uh. To visit. I guess.”

“What?” Dell asked, the same unreadable emotion in her eyes that her father had. “But you- you just got here-”

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Bubbleflow snorted quietly, staring at the rose in Techno’s hand. He had always known more about magic than any of them. He always said he was going to teach Techno how to write enchantment books eventually. They never got around to it. 

“Yeah. Y’know, immortality. It’s an occupational hazard.” 

“Visiting.” Forgeflare said slowly, sharing a look with Bubbleflow. 

“Visiting.” Techno parroted back. In the center of their haphazard circle of hoglins, the rose glowed its alien white light on all of them. 

Dell squeezed him tighter. “You mean you’re leaving?” Her voice was tight, holding back a mountain of emotion that Techno could feel pressing down on him. 

“I’m sorry-”

“Don’t apologize.” Bellfire was crying, holding his forearm and smiling through the tears. “Spirits, Techno, we were starting to think we’d never see you again- Don’t apologize. Please don’t apologize.” 

“I- I really didn’t mean to be gone for so long…” 

“Immortality.” Hace said, taking a deep breath. His tusk was still broken like it had been the day all of them had died. A wound that never truly healed. “That’s a heavy thing to carry, kid.”

“I know.”

“Clearly, looks like you’ve got more scars than me these days.”

“That’s not a compliment, man.”

Hace grinned wickedly, just like he had when Techno had hit his first bulls-eye with his crossbow. “I didn’t mean it as one.” 

Techno rolled his eyes, shoving Hace’s dumb snout away. A bit of the ice melted, even if the tears didn’t dry. Dell didn’t let him go, and he didn’t ask her to. She was his best friend after all, she was allowed. 

They talked and joked, shared stories, picked up the slack when Techno couldn’t find words to say. It felt like being folded back into the pages of an old book he’d been torn out of. The petals fell until only a few remained. With each one that fell, Dell held him tighter and the grief in Forgeflare’s eyes got deeper. 

“I’m sorry for- y’know.”

“Killing us?” Stonehigh said, deadpan as ever. “I guess I can forgive you. Maybe.”

“Stonehigh.” his mother scolded him. 

“What? He stabbed me!” 

Techno shrank into himself a little bit. 

“Ignore him.” Hace snorted. “C’mon, kid. You did what you had to. I mean, Spirits. You did what I taught you. And a damn good job of it, too.” 

Spring nodded. He looked a little guilty. “If we knew that the rot would come for us, we would have found another way out. There’s no changing the past. I’m glad you made it out.” He smiled. “Even if it took getting stabbed a little bit.” 

Here, with all of them around him, Techno could pretty clearly remember what they’d looked like on that day. The green eating across Spring’s skin, the ugly gored holes in Forgeflare’s stomach from Stonehigh’s tusks, Bubbleflow roaring at him even as holes were rotted through his face. He remembered how the blood in the snow seemed like it was glowing. He remembered the total silence after Dell had bled out, the two of them surrounded by the corpses of everyone else. He remembered it all.

But it felt more distant, now. It felt like it was scarring over instead of bleeding. Right now, all he could see were his family smiling and talking and arguing like always. He held onto the memory with both hands. This was what he’d remember, he promised himself. This is the memory he would keep. 

For just a moment, as the conversation rumbled on and on around him, he felt like a kid again, sitting with his family around the fire under the shade of the netherrack ceiling. He smiled around his tusks, and they smiled back. 

It was only a moment. And then it passed. 

The second to last petal fell before he was ready. There was so much left to say, so much left to do. He still hadn’t gotten to talk to Spring that much. He hadn’t gotten to hug Bellfire again. He hadn’t found a good way to apologize to Stonehigh. Dell hadn’t let him go yet. He needed more time. There wasn’t enough time in the world , and there certainly wasn’t enough time left in one measly little rose petal. 

Dell had her face pressed to his shoulder. She was mumbling something, alternating between begging him to stay and threatening him to keep himself safe. 

“I love you, I missed you too. I love you.” was all he could respond with. It wasn’t enough. 

Hands closed around his, squeezing them around the rose. He looked up and met Forgeflare’s eyes. His grandmother, even if there wasn’t a translation of the word to hoglin. She gave him a watery, gentle smile. 

“Techno-” She said, voice low and rasping. He swore to himself he’d never forget what it sounded like. A tear fell before he could stop it, her smile only softened around the edges. “Technoblade, go home. You don’t need to be here.”

Stonehigh made a soft noise of complaint. Spring shushed him. Dell only shoved her face deeper into his shoulder. 

“We’ll see you again, when you’re ready.” Forgeflare said softly, sadly. “Don’t come back even a day before then, alright?”

Techno went to speak, but words failed him. All he could do was nod. 

She smiled again, and pressed her snout to his forehead. For that last moment, everything was warm. “You’re alright, it’ll be alr-”

The final petal fell. 

The nether faded away. He opened his eyes to total, suffocating darkness.

Dell’s comforting, familiar-but-forgotten weight was gone. Stonehigh and Spring were gone. Bellfire was gone. Hace was gone. Bubbleflow was gone. Forgeflare-

The void closed in around him. Two massive, unseen hands cradled him like a lit match against the wind. The darkness buzzed with warm compassion. She held him until he caught his breath, until the tears slowed and the surreal memory of his family’s afterlife felt less like a live wire in his mind. She held him a little while after that until finally, finally, letting him go.

His attic faded back into focus around him, chasing away the endless darkness. All that was left was the crumbling, ashen twig of a rose stem in his hand. 

Techno sat for a while, staring as the stem dissolved into the air, leaving nothing behind.