Chapter Text
Philza Minecraft was immortal.
He had seen stars blink and fade, he had seen worlds crumble and burn, civilizations dissolve like sugar in tea, had watched End of Days after End of Days.
His heart had died a long time ago, buried into the ground and her face haunted him in the veiled visage of death.
He loved, because that was what he did, he laughed, for that is why he loved, and he breathed, because he’d rather have his lungs fill with something than nothing.
For convenience's sake, he claimed to have only one life while others held three. People believed him to be simply broken, defective, weak, and he couldn’t help but agree with them, if not for different reasons.
Philza Minecraft was immortal but lived like he was one mistake away from being nothing, from reuniting with his heart.
Perhaps, that’s why he loved his first son so much. He lived a similar way, for similar reasons.
Technoblade had not always been Philza’s son. First, he had been an ally, then a friend, and then family.
Technoblade was younger than he looked, with voices in his head, a golden crown adorning it. Technoblade never died.
Well, not truly.
Philza learned this one cold arctic night, before he had known he was committing war crimes with essentially a child, that the voices, the ‘chat’, were not just voices of the dead.
They were the voices of Technoblade’s past lives.
Each past instance of Techno’s old soul, all awake, all aware, all crammed in his head. Technoblade was uncertain if everyone dealt with reincarnation or if it was just Technoblade but as long as he got a headstart on the competition, he didn’t mind.
Technoblade told Phil the stories of his lives’ past and Phil quickly felt discomfort at the familiarity the tales had.
Theseus, a pink haired piglin hybrid who spoke only to those who spoke to him and to himself, sent to kill Phil, in fear of the Angel Of Death’s blade. Phil had let the boy believe himself a victor, if only so the man could once more fade into naught but legend.
The boy had returned home, a hero.
He had been sent back out, broken and bleeding, crying out. Phil had come to the boy’s, the child’s, aid, cradling him as he sobbed out his last breaths.
“I don’t wanna die,” was the boy’s last words. “I don’t want to be a voice.”
Technoblade was a pigman, one of the last not zombified, lucky enough to be immune enough to avoid infection and transformation due to entering the overworld.
He wore his hair in a fishtail braid, much like poor, young Theseus, the difference where there had been awkwardness and fear in Theseus’ battle style, there was confidence and practice in Techno’s.
Theseus thanked Phil for that last bit of comfort in his final moments.
Phil tried not to love the socially awkward and yet confident fighter as he panicked when Phil started crying.
But for all the love Phil had given, it had been eons since he had cried and to have that ability returned to him was enough to carve the reincarnating war pig a sizable chunk of his heart.
Wilbur Soot was just a street corner guitarist when Philza found him, but the boy quickly grew into a musician in his own right under Phil’s (heh) wing.
The memory was as recognizable as the sound of Phil’s own laugh, listening as the child sang a little song he had come up with on the spot, something about a boy and some ice cream?
The boy had beamed, dimples showing as Phil placed one or two nuggets of gold in his guitar case.
Wilbur Soot was a boy who was easy to love, easy to hold, or so he let you believe. He allowed you to think he was your son, your brother, your boy, but he never could convince himself to stay in one place, taking what he needed, and disappearing into the fog of the morning.
Wilbur Soot was a scared, sad, dark boy, who stared a second too long at railings, who hummed tunes that Phil had only heard in the darkest of places, who eyed everything and everyone like pieces of game, afraid everyone would turn on him before he could turn on them.
Wilbur Soot slipped into Phil’s heart like a part he had always known, this boy of light and dark, of impulsivity and control, of creation and destruction.
Wilbur Soot was more than a boy and Phil did not need to be immortal to tell. Perhaps he had been once like Technoblade, perhaps he had once been like Phil but the boy was more than a boy and his music was the only remnant of whatever power had once gifted those small, dirty hands.
Wilbur Soot was barely his son for a month when he left for the first time. Phil did not chase, he knew how consuming wanderlust could be.
Wilbur Soot returned, thinner and weaker but with a bigger smile, settling back into Phil’s life like a snake shaking off his skin.
When Wilbur Soot left the second time, it was with Phil’s blessing and Techno’s protection, the two going as the sun rose.
When they returned, Techno had that crazed look in his eyes only battle gave him and Wilbur was a little richer.
When Phil accepted the small bag of nuggets, he sighed before laughing.
The feeling of concern, of fear for a being other than himself was washed away by Wilbur’s banter but still lingered, a heartache that had long faded from Phil’s empty chest. It was pleasant, the worry before the relief, the way Wilbur’s curly hair and brown eyes seemed to glow that felt like a balm on his soul.
Tommyinnit was the last to be found but he was not last in Phil’s heart. The boy was exactly what he said he was, always. Perhaps he felt more than he let on, perhaps he was not exactly truthful about many things, but he never said what he wasn’t.
If he was a big man, he was a big man. If he wasn’t a child, he wasn’t a child. If he was a gift from the stars above on a poor space traveller named Clara, that was what he was.
Tommyinnit was not immortal but he was not a child. The stars had wanted to bless the lonely astronaut but they had no reference frame for child growing! All they had was the pictures and books Clara would sigh over, ghosting a hand over her belly and the pictures.
Tommyinnit was a star, sent down and packaged in flesh, Clara thanking the star that had given up its own child for her happiness.
She returned to the planet, glowing.
She died with the starlight leaving her body in a wailing baby.
You see, humans were not made to hold stars, the brightness blinding them and the heat burning them.
It seemed like the stars and Clara had forgotten such a significant detail, the woman sobbing her gratitude on her newly born child as she faded away.
Tommyinnit grew like a child and like a star all at once, too fast and yet too slow, his mind still lingering in the playground while his body stretched like a beam of light. Admired only from afar.
Philza learned all of this over the course of many years, each small offhand comment, each inside joke with himself, each blow up, piecing together a tapestry of Tommy’s existence.
Tommyinnit has nebulas for eyes and starlight for hair and galaxies at the tips of his wings.
His wings.
Oh, his wings, big enough to allow him to be almost eye level with his earthly siblings, but too weak to be even close to his heavenly ones.
That did not matter to Philza, for Tommy wanted to fly, and if Tommy wanted to do something, by gum, he’d find a way to do it. That did not matter to Philza because if Tommy wanted to fly, he needed a teacher.
Phil’s wings were voids of life while Tommy’s were explosions of existence, but they were larger and more powerful and they had not been used in so long.
In the time before, when his heart walked the earth, when the world was simple and kind, Phil flew everyday, his wings grazing the border between the sky and the beyond, his heart and his flock flying behind him.
It had beyond years since Philza had flown but his wings remembered how to, the joy of flight still leaving its fingerprints on his spine.
When he first helps his youngest touch the sky, he knows Tommy is also marked by it. How could he not? He was a star, meant to shine high enough that all could see, but he was also a boy, a normal little boy who made people happy by his mere existence alone and only that.
Being among the stars, flying with Tommy, was the first breath of air that actually tasted sweet to Philza.
Three boys, three pieces of his heart. He almost felt whole again, for the first time in a long time. You’d think becoming immortal would mean you’d run out of firsts but apparently you just added more to your list.
It was a freeing feeling, the feeling of loving and being loved in return, teasing nicknames, exchanging worries, protecting one another.
Family was a freeing feeling.
But like all things, even Philza’s heart must die.
Wilbur was, unsurprisingly, the first to go.
The boy had always been a living contradiction, light and dark, creation and devastation.
Of course his life would be so similar, of course his death would be.
A prince and a tyrant, a leader and a destroyer, his son, his boy, his heart, Wilbur shook the foundations of every world he stepped onto.
Eventually even the ‘gods’ took notice.
Philza did not believe in the sovereignty of these ‘sky gods’, he had seen their rise to power after all, and he had seen those that had risen and fallen before.
If there was a god, the sky gods were not it.
They took Phil’s son, they took Wilbur, snatched him out of his warm bed in his sleep, and twisted him.
They made his son fight for his survival and then they made him make others fight. He only knew of his boy’s continued existence due to the stories of his son’s mercy and cruelty.
Philza wanted to fight, wanted to tear these so called gods from their perch on Olympus to reach his boy, but this was not his fight, this was not his struggle, and Phil knew Wilbur would not take his hand in kindness if Phil were to interrupt.
He loved Wilbur and Wilbur loved him but this was something Wilbur was supposed to do alone.
A part of his heart was stolen from him and suddenly Philza found it hard to laugh. He could chuckle at Tommy’s screams and at Techno’s snark but they felt hollow and empty, just like a third of his chest.
Tommy was the next to go, always following Wilbur, always challenging gods and demons alike, always taking Philza’s breath with his sheer stupidity and bravery, his little shooting star, chasing after everyone as if he could not take to the skies and leave them all behind.
Tommy took only the essentials, food, water, a toothbrush, and Wilbur’s guitar. If Tommy was going to find Wilbur, that instrument was (heh) probably instrumental to bringing Wilbur back as well.
Perhaps greek mythology was his eldest son’s thing and perhaps Techno was pretty on point with calling Wilbur Orpheus, but Phil had been there for every story and Tommy’s eyes shimmered with the same determination to save the one he loved as the mostly fictional man.
As Phil tried desperately to breath without Tommy, he prayed his son would have more success.
When Techno followed after the others, it was not in the same way Tommy and Wilbur had left, one snatched and one chasing, both of their bodies gone.
When Techno left, he left a pink furred pigman warrior in his wake, vacantly staring at the wall, mumbling to himself, only moving when it was time to fight.
It started off slow, the voices’ volume increasing, causing Techno to wince if noises got too loud, their panic clear but the meaning undecipherable.
Techno moved slower, fought more brutally, stared at knives and forks with an uncomfortably intense look. He no longer went out to farm his potatoes or to tend to his cows, to his numerous pets.
Whenever Phil suggested it, Technoblade just gave him a look like he had just suggested he rip his own heart out.
It got worse and worse, the glaze over Techno’s red eyes thickening, the periods between such times lessening, and then-
And then it stopped.
It stopped and Techno was fine and there were stories of the sky gods’ little pet admin’s cruelty, stories that made Phil go cold.
Techno was fine and they thanked their lucky stars. Neither confronted the cause of that terrifying pause.
And then it returned, in time for an angel to arrive by the admin’s side, both raining fun and pain in equal measure among innocent players, usually in groups of 100, competing in horrible games.
Phil woke up and his son was in the kitchen, staring, mesmerized, at the rat, who had gnawing in the walls, now impaled with an engraved fork onto the table.
Phil felt sick and he pulled the pigman into his arms, holding him until Techno returned home, shaking as he questioned quietly how long he had been gone.
Technoblade was no saint, no angel, he took delight in bloodshed and rubbing victory in his enemies’ face, but no one deserved the kind of death that was being given to him. No one deserved to become a passenger in their own body, unaware of what was happening, unaware of what they were doing.
His youngest sons’ cruelty mounted as Technoblade grew more and more distant and Phil did not need to be a genius to figure out what was happening.
But what could Phil even do? If he left Technoblade now, who knew what would happen. If he stayed away from his sons, they would remain at the mercy of demons calling themselves gods.
To leave one was to risk the other.
In the end, Wilbur made the choice for him.
Any stories pertaining 100 players losing a crucial life to an admin with a roulette wheel for a morality compass or an angel with a foul mouth and a pair of sticks vanished.
The whole day after was completely free of whatever the lingering disorder was. Technoblade was inconsolable.
The pigman spoke in cryptic codes and greek mythology and painfully desperate sobs, clinging to Phil like he was going to disappear in a blink of an eye.
“They’re screaming,” Techno gasped out, Phil’s black wings wrapped around him. “Something’s in here, Phil, and they’re not us, they’re not them, and they’re screaming too. Bellerophon, Bellerophon, he made it to Olypmpus and now he’s in my head.”
Phil fell asleep not long after Techno finally passed out, resolving that as soon as he got his other pieces of his heart back, he was never letting them leave without talking to him first again.
He woke up and Techno was gone.
Phil ran downstairs, wings puffed in panic, praying those accused false gods had not taken yet another son from him.
The front door was open and Phil let out a curse, tossing on a coat and grabbing his bow and quiver, chasing after the hoofprints left in the dirt. The forest that had been security swallowed him up like a particularly hungry beast.
With every step, Phil’s heart shriveled up more and more, leaving only anger and disgust.
Every pet that his sons had held dear was out, slain swiftly and hopefully painlessly. Phil prayed Techno was not the one holding the sword.
He heard a scream and Phil ran because,
oh, gods, that was Wilbur’s voice, Wilbur was home, Wilbur was hurt.
Phil burst out of the forest into the clearing with a show of black feathers and deadly sharp arrows.
His son,
his son, his Wilbur, his flame, his songbird, his heart,
lay on the ground, sword still embedded in his chest, eyes wide in shock and horror and dull with the sting of death.
Phil’s own eyes widened and narrowed, not allowing himself to stop and think, stop and
see
who was standing over Wilbur, an arrow flying out and burying itself in the other’s chest.
Technoblade,
his son, his ally, his friend, his emperor, his heart,
stumbled back at the sudden thing in his body. His glazed eyes looked up at Phil and cleared just to show
relief, why did it have to be relief, why couldn’t it have been hurt or confusion or anything but that,
and then Technoblade pitched forward, Phil’s deadly aim barely leaving the pigman time to realize he was dead.
Phil stood frozen in that clearing, bow still in hand, two-thirds of his heart bleeding out on the ground before him.
With a wail, Phil tossed away his bow, rushing towards his fallen boys. With a squelch, Techno’s sword was pulled free of Wilbur’s body, with a sound like cutting paper, Phil’s arrow was tugged out of Techno’s heart.
It did not take much imagination to see how this sight came to be, Wilbur returning home, triumphant and proud in his victory over the sky gods at his escape, expecting Tommy behind him and Phil and Techno before him.
Wilbur running into an absentee Technoblade, running on bloodlust and the screams in his head. Wilbur going to greet his older brother.
Wilbur screaming as he died.
Techno standing, half dazed, half not home upstairs.
Phil does not bury them, carrying them back home and placing them carefully in their beds. Ignoring the red staining their shirts, they almost look asleep.
He waits, waits for them to respawn, waits for Wilbur to stumble downstairs, a little betrayed, a little bewildered, all alive, waits for Techno to follow after, eyes clear, mouth empty of apologies but hands itching to recover a hurt, all there.
They do not come back. Phil is unsure if his sons just lost all three of their lives and Phil had not noticed or if the sky gods had ripped that from his boys too.
All he knows is he is suddenly alone and he needs to find Tommy.
It is hard to find to reach the ones who have been taking everything from Phil but the thin air does not stop Phil when he can’t breath anyway.
He flies and flies, wings slicing through air and cloud, reaching for the stars, for his star.
The sky gods’ perch is just as pointlessly pompous as Phil expected but he was not there to ravage the heavens, not yet.
He walked quickly and quietly through the halls, listening for Tommy’s voice or some sort of scratch or burn on the pristine walls, any sign of that blonde haired, starry eyed mischief maker.
He heard haughty and cruel laughter before a mockery of someone’s scream echoed. The laughter increased right after.
“Oh, maybe we should give him another pair, just so we can rip them off too!” one voice jeered.
“Or maybe we can send this pair to his old man!” another added on and Phil’s blood froze. “That hardcorer is still mourning those other two! It’ll push him over the edge!”
There was a chorus of ooooo’s and Phil realized there was someone also crying in there, quietly, as he got closer.
The alabaster white door was open just a crack, allowing the voices to flow out loud and clear. There was a snap and a feeling of power, followed by increased cackling.
Phil stepped back due to the almost physical force of energy hitting him. He flinched, squeezing his eyes shut instinctively.
When he opened them, his arms were holding something.
He held back a strangled gasp as he realized what exactly he was holding; a pair of starry wings, nebulas frozen on the feathers, a mocking, golden bow tied around the two limbs.
Oh gods. They cut Tommy’s wings off.
The sky gods were not ready for a blur of black feathers to burst in and scoop up their latest toy, disappearing before they could get a good look at the intruder.
Tommy was limp and quiet in Phil’s arms and the light he normally carried was absent, leaving Phil in darkness as he rushed inside their lightless home.
Tommy was gently left on the table, put on his stomach to avoid advergating his wing cuts.
The medkit was in the bathroom where Phil left it and the immortal man snatched it up, rushing back to his youngest (and now only) son.
Tommy was still unconscious and Phil was still afraid, even as he put cleaning alcohol on the numerous injuries the young boy had.
It was painful, seeing Tommy,
his son, his boy, his star, his heart
, so still and, and
quiet
, bundled up in bed, suddenly so small without his wings.
Tommy only seemed to get worse and worse, the cuts where his wings,
his wings, his wings, those accursed sky gods took his wings
, should be getting infected.
The younger boy slipped deeper and deeper into sickness, barely opening his eyes for a few minutes and seeming to believe Phil a hallucination.
It didn’t seem right, for Tommy to die this way. It didn’t seem right for him to die
at all
.
On the last day, Tommy woke up. He woke up and was still a little delirious but it was almost like Phil’s star had come back to him.
He yelled and laughed, cackling while he cursed out Phil, threatening him with a dull stick.
His star, his star, his heart, please don’t leave me yet-
Tommy fell asleep on Phil’s shoulder, reading a book that did not interest the boy at all. Phil smiled softly and pressed his lips to Tommy’s forehead, deciding to worry how to move forward without two-thirds of their family, of his heart.
Phil woke up and Tommy was cold.
The winged immortal did not wait to see if his son would be revived, the sky gods would not allow Phil that kindness.
Phil finally went upstairs and moved his eldest two from their beds, laying each piece of his heart on a pyre.
He could not put his heart into the earth, not again. He didn’t want to forget where they lay, like he did with
her
.
First went Technoblade, the fires climbing higher and higher, just like the pigman himself, pushing himself higher despite the hatred from his opposition.
Wilbur followed shortly after, his flames more calm and peaceful, as if even the fire admired him and wished him to know peace at the absolute end.
Last but not least, young Tommy, the embers looking like stars against his pale face.
Phil had remained strong throughout all of this. The disappearance of his boys, the deaths of his eldest, the passing of his youngest, but watching their bodies burn, watching his heart turn to ash, well.
The sky gods saw Phil as a survivor, a builder, a man who sought peace, a father. All of these things were, of course, true.
But Philza Minecraft was more than that. He was a warrior, a sadist, a destroyer, a man who watched civilizations burn with a smile and had lit some himself.
Philza Minecraft had slain false gods and demons on thrones before. Even Zeus himself had given more of a challenge than they would.
Their only warning of the oncoming storm was a stray black feather, flitting into their hall, the Grim Reaper's calling card.
Philza Minecraft arrived at sunset, skulls of the ones he had lost in hand and accused sand in his hands.
While the demon left by his sons’ loss destroyed their heavenly perch, Philza Minecraft located those who had laughed when his youngest had lost his flight. He found those who had whispered into his oldest’s head, Techno’s Bellerophon. He found the ones who had outstretched their hands and snatched his middle boy from his bed, molding him into a monster against his will.
Philza Minecraft found the ones who broke his heart and he gave them the kindness they showed his sons; he drove them to insanity, to violence, to sickness, he deprived them of death and life and he only smiled when they cried.
If these sky gods thought themselves gods, if they thought themselves demons, they had not yet met the cold gaze of the Angel of Death.
Death came for all, after all.
All but Philza Minecraft.
The destruction of the sky gods’ heaven was the last clear moment Phil remembered for a long time, life once more blurring into practiced routines without a heart to feel with.
His wings once more were hidden and he faded in and out of history, name ever so slightly different every time.
A small cautious hand brushed against his covered wing and he turned, dropping the apple he had been buying.
Wide, galaxy blue eyes stared up at him, staring at him in disbelief.
“Dadza?” Tommy questioned with budding tears, even his disbelieving whisper echoing in Phil’s ear as if he had screamed it.
The boy barely had time to react before he was pulled into a hug, Phil near tears as he held a part of his heart that he thought he had lost closely. Tommy clinged just as tightly.
Phil felt something like relief, like hope, like love, fill his empty chest once more.