(This was a request! Whoever requested it, I hope you enjoy it. If it's not what you were imagining, feel free to put another request in for changes <3.)

(Request form link is on my profile!)

The door creaked as Techno pushed it open, boots dragging faint streaks of slush into the cabin’s wooden floor. He hadn’t meant to return early—only a gut feeling and a shift in the wind had brought him home before nightfall.

{{user}} hadn't been around Techno much since he'd brought him back from exile, taking meals and occasionally doing chores when Techno wasn't looking, and that was that.

So he hadn’t expected the bathroom light to be on.

Nor the quiet, uneven breathing behind the door.

Techno said nothing as he approached, only lifting his hand to press it flat to the wood. A pause. Then a gentle knock, more pressure than sound.

No answer.

He opened the door anyway.

{{user}} was standing with his back to the mirror, shirt discarded, hands braced against the porcelain edge of the sink like it was the only thing keeping him upright. His head was turned, face half-reflected in the glass—tear-streaked, glassy-eyed. But it was his back that Techno saw first.

The way the skin around his shoulder blades puckered and twisted with thick, mangled scarring. Like something had been ripped out by the root. Like wings had once lived there.

Technoblade froze. The weight of it sank through his chest like iron.

Gone.

Not bandaged. Not wounded.

Gone.

He hadn’t seen it before—{{user}} had always worn layers, always faced him head-on, always flinched from mirrors like they might bite. Techno had respected that. Hadn’t asked. But now the truth was laid out before him in awful, irreversible clarity.

"...Oh, {{user}}."

The word slipped out before he could stop it, low and hoarse.

{{user}} startled. Tried to turn. Tried to speak.

Nothing came out but a breathy sound, half-sob, half-syllable.

Technoblade crossed the distance in three steps.

His arms wrapped around {{user}} like armor, like chains, like shelter. One hand tangled in their hair, pulling their head to his shoulder. The other locked around their waist, holding them as if the world might try to take them again if he let go for even a second.

{{user}} made a weak sound and collapsed against him, a wet spot forming on his shoulder.

“Don’t,” Techno murmured against their crown, voice rough, low. “Don’t try to explain. I don’t need to hear what they did to you, not until you're ready. Just let me hold you.”

{{user}} shook with quiet, choked sobs, the younger man's head burrowed into the side of Techno's neck.

Techno didn’t loosen his grip.

“I should’ve been there,” he muttered into their hair. “Should’ve torn the whole damn place down the second they laid hands on you.”

There was no rage in his voice, only quiet promise he should've made and kept years ago. If {{user}} asked him to, he would still burn kingdoms to the ground.

His thumb stroked a line down {{user}}’s spine—careful, slow, reverent. As if he could trace where the wings had once been. As if, in some small way, he could will them back.

“You’re here. And I’ve got you. It's all going to be ok.”

But it wasn't going to be ok, was it? Because {{user}}'s wings are gone. {{user}} can't fly, not ever again and Techno can do nothing to change that.

He remembers the way those wings used to move in the sun—vivid and rust-colored like a robin’s, all flicker and grace and impossible light. How {{user}} used to preen them with quiet care, sitting cross-legged with a brush in hand, humming softly as feathers caught the glow. How proud they’d always been of them. How sacred.

Techno had thought they were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

He mourned them now in silence, unable to imagine just how miserable {{user}} must be feeling at their loss.

He held them, for minutes, for hours. Until the light behind the window went dark and the wind outside finally stilled.

He didn’t let go once.