Chapter Text
Technoblade isn’t used to the quiet.
It surrounds him, encompassing every bit of unoccupied space until he’s drowning in it. It washes down the mountain, through the forest he’s claimed as his own and into the wild beyond. Ever-present, the steady buzz of life in the background.
That’s not to say he doesn’t enjoy the quiet. Quite the opposite, actually. The peaceful notes of soft birdsong, the whispered rustling of the wind through pine needles, the barely-there sounds of various fauna living their lives as nature intended; it soothes an ache in Techno’s soul that he hadn’t really realized was there. He loves his isolated cabin, tucked away at the top of a dirt road that no one save for him is brave enough to traverse. He loves his farm, the fields tilled and sown with care and dedication, the animals tended to diligently day in and day out. He loves his territory, the dirt beneath his feet and the mountain air in his lungs.
But he’s not used to the solitude yet. He’s not used to waking up alone, with only the soft hum of the forest beyond his windows. There’s no twin brother singing to himself from behind a closed door, accompanied by soft guitar strumming and the scratch of a pencil on paper. There’s no mom sitting in the kitchen, radio playing beside her as she taps away on her laptop from the table with a steaming cup of coffee cooling beside her elbow. There’s no dad puttering around the kitchen, mumbling under his breath as he rifles through the cabinets while prepping dinner.
He’s happy that he’s starting to make his own life, proving that he can survive on his own, but he misses them sometimes. He misses the cackling laughter that followed his dry quips, the warm arms that wrapped around him when he needed a grounding touch, the companionable silence that never felt anything more than comforting. He misses his family. He misses his Pack.
The desire for Pack sings in his blood, howling a lonely tune that no one else can hear. Wolves aren’t meant to be alone, aren’t meant for solitude and isolation. The lone wolf myth is exactly that, a myth. A story born from hubris and stubborn egotism. He needs family. He needs Pack.
At least they’re only a phone call away. If he needed a pick-me-up, Wilbur could ramble for hours and hours about anything and everything that caught his attention. If he needed a listening ear, Kristin would drop everything to give him her fullest attention. If he needed advice or reassurance, Phil always knew the exact thing to say to soothe his troubled mind.
And he’s not totally isolated. There’s a whole town at the bottom of the mountain, filled to the brim with Wolves and others with magic in their lungs and lightning in their veins. And though he’s not the most gregarious soul, preferring a crackling fire and a cup of tea to a rollicking bar and a cool pint of beer, he isn’t a complete shut-in. He’s made friends with Eret, the witch who owns the antique store on the corner and always seems to have a new vintage book to show him. He chats with Quackity the bar-owner, a mystery to even his sharp nose who never fails to slide him a twice baked potato and a large glass of water as soon as he comes in, every Saturday without fail. He taunts Dream and his little ragtag Pack every time they fail to get the jump on him. When he does his weekly check in with his Pack, he always has some new story to tell them about the little place he’s carved for himself.
He loves his Pack with his whole heart, and they love him with the same ferocity. They were sad to see him go, worried about his safety and wellbeing on his own, but happy to see him thriving.
Sometimes, though, he wishes he hadn’t left. Hadn’t left the safety and security of the family den. Hadn’t left the company and solidarity in exchange for self-sufficiency and clawing loneliness.
This winter has been harsh, harsher than any that Techno can remember. He remembers the winters that he spent back at home, both he and Wilbur in their fur, one chestnut brown and one pure white, curled up by the fire. Both small, still teenagers, with gangly limbs and paws too big for their bodies. Phil would come in from checking the borders, thick fur heavy with snow and ice, and shake the moisture away as best he could. He remembers his mother, with her pitch-black coat stark against his father’s shining gold, curling behind them both, running her warm tongue between their ears as they shuddered in fear. He remembers barely sleeping as storms raged and battered the little cottage, with the little family tucked away inside.
The storm heading his way is set to be even worse than any he can remember in his lifetime. Niki, the kind Wolf baker in town with a spine of steel and eyes of liquid sunshine, had fretted over him as he’d made his last supply run, worried that the road from his home to town would be too treacherous to traverse if he needed help. He had appreciated the kindness, and told her as much, but he wasn’t too worried. He’d been preparing for days, cutting back dead branches, patching weak points in the roofs, securing the barn and the coop to keep his animals safe. He’s ready for anything.
Dark clouds, heavy with the coming snowfall, swirl on the horizon. The wind howls down the mountain, bending the young pines that litter the sparse landscape so they nearly scrape the snowy ground. His fields are fallow, an expanse of bare earth and soil. His animals are penned, bunkered down behind pine walls in their beds of straw. Snow is already thick on the forest floor, leftover from last week’s far gentler snowfall. Flakes have yet to fall, but from the looks of the clouds gathering, Techno knows it won’t be long now before the blizzard descends.
Scraggly scrub grasses poke the tips of their blades through the white, tiny dots of brown and gray peeking through the wintry blanket covering them. They jab at his paw pads as he patrols his home, pricking the sensitive exposed flesh, but the discomfort isn’t enough to dissuade him from the task at hand. A hare, white fur as bright as his own, stares at him before darting away into the forest beyond.
His territory is small, much smaller than the acres upon acres that his Pack’s territory covered, but he doesn’t need much more. It’s enough to get him by, and then some. He stalks along the border in his fur, crisp white against crisp white, large paws helping him traverse the drifts around him. Triangular ears swivel and twitch at every plop of snow and skitter of small paws. Large brown eyes, so dark they’re nearly red in the wintery sunlight, sweep over the landscape. A dark nose, stark against the white of his fur, scents the air and freezes.
His territory is far from anywhere populated. The only town is far down the mountain, and he knows the scents of everyone that lives there. He has no neighbors, save the bears that hibernate in the nearby cave, the arctic hares that huddle in their warrens, and a scattering of arctic foxes that flit back and forth across the clearing. One particular one, with a startling amount of intelligence in their eyes and black markings across their face, stares him down before darting back into their den. There are prints in the snow, but they smell of mundane wolf. Not a spark of magic or moonlight on them. He has no neighbors, neither human nor Wolf, that border his territory. No one to encroach or intrude.
So why can he smell one?
The sky is growing ever darker, the looming threat of the storm heavy on the horizon. Flakes fall all around Techno, dampening the scents of the forest even further. He waits, panting slightly, short exhales turning to fog in the freezing cold and drifting away. He stands in the quiet of the forest as all other living creatures find shelter from the snow. Vigilant. Watching. Listening. Waiting.
A soft cry, high and thin and pained. He whips his head towards it, angling his ears just so. Everything is dulled by the snow around him, deadened until all he can hear is wind and breath. But he knows what he heard. And he knows what he smelled. He strains at the very edges of his hearing, grasping at the slightest disturbance in the air. There’s nothing but wind, whispering through bare branches.
A whimper.
Technoblade shoots off towards the sound, kicking up snow behind him. Bounding over fallen logs and frozen creeks and barely hidden den entrances, he doesn’t stop to wonder where he’s going. Only focused on finding the sound. Finding the intruder. Powerful legs eat up the ground beneath him. He swerves around boulders and stumps. His heartbeat is loud in his ears, the thrill of the hunt bubbling in his blood. The forest is a blur of snow and squall and silence. Dark eyes prowl over bright ground. He leaps down an incline, sending a spray of pebbles and muddied snow everywhere.
He stops. His heart pounds heavy in his chest. His breath whistles low in his throat. He listens.
The sound is gone, but there is a lump in the snow, just beyond a line of spruce trees. There’s something about it, swirling in the air alongside the snowflakes, that wraps a vice around his tongue. It’s familiar.
Too familiar.
He creeps closer, tail low and belly close to the ground. Nose brushing against the forest floor, searching for something. The metallic sting of silver. The herbal rot of aconite. The musty haze of leather and iron. Boot polish and horsehair bows. The smell of hunters in the air.
But there’s nothing. Nothing, save for the fading tang of moonlit runs and starlit songs. Nothing but the bite of magic, draining from its vessel to return to the earth. Nothing but the burn of copper and iron. Nothing but blood.
Nothing but death.
With a heavy heart, he pads closer. It is a familiar shape after all. Sometimes, he hates being right. It’s a dead Wolf. A she-Wolf, a young mother if the soft scent of milk on the wind is anything to go by. Pale blond fur, stained brown with blood, is nearly covered by the snowfall. A rusty stain stretches across the ground, frozen to the hardened earth beneath. She’s thin, barely more than skin and bones. Probably a cast-off from her Pack, sent running into the vast unknown of the outside world. Techno feels a pang of sadness for the Wolf, a distant sorrow for a soul that he never had the chance to know. Pressing his nose to the space between the Wolf’s ears, he sends a soft prayer to the Lady of the Moon and the Lord of the Hunt, wishing her safe passage into the starred woods beyond.
“May you run free, safe from pain and sorrow. May you sing forever in peace, surrounded by those who have sung before you. May you hunt where you wish, unhindered by fence or fatigue. Sleep well, stranger.”
As he straightens his neck, intent to leave the Wolf until the thaw comes and he can properly put her to rest, his eyes catch on a tiny, near imperceptible movement near her belly. He freezes in place, ears pinned back and lips drawing back to free knife-sharp teeth. A low growl rumbles deep in his throat, a clear warning to any who can hear it. A promise of bloodshed and ferocity. He will not be caught off-guard, will not let the body of one of his Kin (maybe not by blood, but by shared soulstuff. By fur and fang and magic in their veins) be desecrated by scavengers, poachers, and pillagers. He will not let her suffer alone, not after she died alone.
His hackles raise as he peers over the fallen Wolf’s body, every muscle strung tight with tension and poised to attack. He has the bulk to take down a full grown elk on his own, and he has no doubt he could take down an entire hunting party of humans should the need arise.
The frost-covered snow crackles under his paws as he takes a slow, deliberate step forward. He waits a heartbeat, two, three, before lunging forward, teeth bared and snarling.
His heart drops from his chest and he pulls up short. Horror and dread coils in his gut as he stares down. His ears pin back and a whine bubbles up in his throat, just barely held back by the vice locked around his vocal cords.
Curled up in the snow, tucked tight against the dead Wolf’s belly like it would shield him from the harsh wind and cutting chill, is a Wolf Pup. He’s tiny, barely a few weeks old, and whimpering softly under his breath. His coat is thin, barely anything more than baby fur without a thick double layer to keep himself warm. From where he looms over the tiny thing, Techno can count each and every one of his ribs and the knobby bones in his spine. What horrifies him the most, what sends a jolt of pure panic through his bloodstream like a bolt of lightning, is the fact that the Pup is motionless. He lays in the snow, soaking up the fading heat from his mother’s (because Techno can smell the Wolf all over the Pup, a familial tie that disappears with each passing second) body as best he can. His eyes are squeezed shut, and he isn’t moving. Not even to shiver. The Pup isn’t shivering.
The Pup isn’t shivering.
Techno doesn’t hesitate. He may be stoic, may have layers upon layers of walls built up over years and years, may be slow to warm to people and even slower to trust, but he’s not heartless. He’s not cruel, not a monster in Wolf’s clothing. He snatches the Pup by the scruff, shuddering at the chill of his flesh between his teeth, and sets off towards home.
He’s hypervigilant of the tiny thing’s breathing, desperately listening to the barely-there whimpers and whines, terrified that between one moment and the next the fragile life in his jaws will snuff out forever.
The walk back feels like it takes both a single moment and an eon. Spruce and pine blur in his peripheral vision. The fox from before, eyes sharp and tail lashing, runs ahead of him, leading him right back to the path he’s worn into the earth from his patrol. Before he can even think to thank them, the fox slinks off into the snow without a backwards glance. Techno rushes through the gate, barely taking a moment to slam the door shut with a hind paw, before climbing up the porch stairs and pushing through the cutout in the backdoor.
He shivers at the chill that greets him when he gets inside the cabin, growling to himself at his thoughtlessness. The Pup whimpers softly at the sound, squeaking from where he dangles from Techno’s jaw. Techno awkwardly huffs, trying to comfort the little thing. He noses the dark red knit throw from the back of his favorite armchair, dragging it onto the floor in front of the fire. With careful paws, he builds a little nest out of the thick blanket, building up fabric walls until it’s thick and tall enough for his tastes. Ever so gently, he places the Pup in the nest, grasping the edge of the blanket with his front teeth and tucking him in carefully. The Pup settles into the nest with a barely-there grumble before burrowing deeper into the pile of fabric.
Techno watches like a hawk as slowly, slowly, slowly, a shiver wracks the Pup’s frame. The Pup whines at the motion, the tugging on sore muscles, but Techno lets a little bit of the tension seep from between his shoulders.
Satisfied that the Pup wasn’t teetering on the edge of life and death, Techno shifts from his fur and paws to hair and hands. Red flannel (a gift from Wilbur, telling him he “needed to look the part of a mountain man”) sticks to his skin with cold, melting snow. Pink hair lays strewn across his shoulders, knotted and tangled and not at all cared for like it usually is. There’s a tremor in his fingers and a stutter in his steps that wasn’t there this morning. He stumbles to his feet, slightly dizzy from the sudden shift, before staggering to the cold, unlit fireplace. Muscle memory takes over for him as he gathers firewood and lights the kindling when the events of the last hour finally hit him.
He found a Pup. An orphaned Pup. A Wolf Pup with no Pack, no support system at all, if his lack of scent is anything to go by. And Techno is the only Wolf in a ten mile radius.
Techno had never thought about having Pups of his own. He hasn’t ever met anyone he would want to have them with. Dealing with his child of a twin was enough for the rest of his life, or so he thought.
But now he has a Pup. In the middle of the worst blizzard in a century. With no way to get into town for supplies, not until the thaw. And no way for any help to get to him anytime soon.
Well, shit.