Work Text:
Love and death are, despite what many think, much the same.
Grief is love with nowhere to go. The objection of affections, transcended to the beyond, cannot accept what is no longer theirs to hold. It’s a pity, the whole thing. To love is to accept that you will one day mourn—that you will one day no longer be able to love again. A foolish, fully human endeavor. Why bother with loving something if it will only hurt you in the end?
Because the love is worth it, of course, is always the answer. The point of life was to love and live in spite of death.
Death, of course, does not mind this. How could She, when she loved just as fiercely? Only, differently than those that lived. Death loved many things, but none quite like she loved her Angel. Her Angel, her lover, her most loyal servant, her most dutiful warrior. Her most beloved, whom she is doomed to never meet until there is no more life left to be sapped away from the planes. A cruel fate, it was, to be the lover of Death knowing you could never stay together, but, in the realm of the Gods and the supernatural, so very interestingly human of a feat it was, to love . So very admirable, so very exciting.
Exciting, of course, unless you are said Angel, doomed to never cross paths with their lover; because the thing about the un-killable, the immortal, is that even if you were to strip them of everything that made them holy and divine, they will remain, stubborn and true, for the duties of those greater than mortal and lesser than the deified never truly end in a way that matters.
All that to say, Phil was a fucking ghost, and he hated it.
It hadn’t been that bad at first—after he’d recovered from the initial shock of being cut down from the sky and painstakingly slaughtered, only to wake up again anyways, sans physical form and only half visible to his own eyes.
The injuries he’d sustained had stayed with him, meaning he had no heart to beat and no lungs to breathe, but his wings—his gift from Death herself—remained clean and glossy on his back, as if they’d never suffered at all. Staring at his own corpse (not something he’d recommend doing, for the record), Phil had known that was not the case. They’d been ripped from his back and set ablaze and laid in scattered, disfigured pieces across the muddied ground. And yet, in his new, ghostly form, they stayed.
Phil didn’t know why he was surprised, considering that his business was going to be forever unfinished, and that was half the reason ghosts lingered in the first place. It was more the dying that was a shock than the ghost thing, really. Maybe he had grown cocky after all his years, forgetting his place. He had been mortal once, after all, and blessed as he was, he was just a man, and Death did not pick favorites when it came to her domain—not in a way that would save him, at least. Phil could bleed. Phil could die. What Phil could not do was cease his duties as the Angel of Death until there was nothing left to kill, and that would not happen anytime soon.
The Curse of The Undying, his wings had been called, once, by a war general moments away from being cut down by Phil’s sword—one of very few people to recognize his wings for what they were. Phil had laughed at that, half scorn and half amusement, and promptly forgot. But he understood now, unfortunately. A curse it was indeed, to only die in form and not in soul. A curse, indeed.
It hadn’t changed much of his duties. He reaped souls, much like before—an omen of unluck, a reverse guardian angel, the instrument of Death Herself. He couldn’t kill anyone like before—his form passed through others like he wasn’t there, because he truly wasn’t. Phil could only haunt a battlefield with the intent to reap the aftermath, rather than being the cause, seen only by those moments from their fate. He scared the dying, when glazed and terrified eyes met his. It was, in many ways, satisfying as fuck. With his new, horrific (and bad-ass, honestly) form, he stuck fear in the hearts of those he finished off.
But that was the only time he could be really, truly seen. Sure, Phil had not been jumping at the chance to speak with others—he had his crows, and that was good enough for him—but he still interacted with people. Each battle was a dance, verbal and physical. He traded for goods, spent nights in taverns, harassed idiots to goad them into a fight when Death craved a new soul. It was never anything of importance, never led to a true connection, but it was something. It was something, and post-death, there was nothing.
Phil, like many ghosts, could interact with objects if he focused hard enough, but throwing things at people got boring quickly. It was fun to laugh at them, but that was all he could do. Laugh at them. Always at, never with.
It was lonely. Indescribably, unbearably lonely.
Being Death’s lover had been burden enough. But this? This was unfathomable. It did not matter what he did, did not matter how loud he screamed, nothing mattered. He only ever grew more transparent when his form flickered, never solid. He wasn’t real. He was no longer a figure to strike fear. He was nothing.
Phil spent years wandering, never needing to sleep, or breathe, or eat, or anything. There was no point to it all. He had purpose—to collect souls—but that was it. Phil was nothing but his purpose. He was just… empty. Scooped out and hollowed of anything that could possibly make him feel real.
Phil did not mind being alone, or isolated from all of humanity. He did, however, mind being isolated despite being surrounded by hundreds of bodies. And as the years went by, it was hard not to sink into a haze of nothing.
Some years were better than others. Some years, he felt the loneliness as an incurable ache, and he screamed and cried and raged because nothing he did mattered. Some years, he lost in the blink of an eye.
Like every ghost, Phil was losing his sense of humanity—if he, as Death’s Angel, had ever had it in the first place.
When they met, Phil didn’t even realize it was going to be anything monumental. He’d been perched on a tree limb, high above a raging battlefield he knew neither side of and watching the ground become slick with blood with mild interest. It had been a few decades since he’d seen such a thoughtless clash of armies, bodies swarming with no rhyme or reason and cutting deep into friend and foe alike. It was a frenzy. A pleasantly familiar sight that had him hissing when a dumb decision was made and laughing when a splash potion backfired. Something to entertain himself with, and nothing more. Something typical.
The battle had not stayed typical.
Halfway through Phil’s estimation of how long the battle would last, a sharp cry had rang out—a warning: “He’s here!”
Phil had blinked, because what? Who?
And then the stench of murder and blood and God-Chosen hit him, and as his wings snapped open to posture offensively, for the first time in all his undead years Phil felt alive.
The two opposing sides, as if suddenly one, had turned their blades to the new, bigger threat—the apex predator that had dominated the field. The newest opponent, dripping an aura like a bleeding wound of the divine. This wasn’t some upstart army leader. This was someone on the Angel of Death’s playing field. From his vantage point, he couldn’t make out the figure, but he could sense them all the same. Phil had been certain everyone of his caliber had either died, or retired from duties not as binding as his. This was no longer a childish entertainment: this was an investigation. So he raised his wings high and proud, and took off to circle the bloodbath like the soul-vulture he was.
A shock of pink and red, adorned with a glittering crown and a skull mask belonging to an animal Phil could have sworn he remembered going extinct a while ago. Outfitted in a shiny, dark metal, and clutching at an axe so blood covered it seemed as if it was made of rubies. Netherite, Phil recognized. Something only a select few could get access to, let alone forge.
This was someone truly exciting.
“Holy shit,” Phil said to himself, landing neatly to watch the chosen cut down the soldiers like he was taking a scythe to grass. There was a practiced ease in the motions that Phil had only ever seen in himself. Had he still been alive, he would have wanted nothing more than to be this man’s friend. Another divinely blessed, possibly old as time, with a love of battle to top it off? It was everything he had ever hoped for, when he was still alive.
“These guys are such nerds,” the chosen said to the empty air after positively decimating the battlefield until he was the only one standing. “Don’t they know Technoblade never dies?”
“Technoblade, huh?” Phil murmured, testing the word in his mouth. Considering the kinds of names he ran into normally, it wasn’t that far fetched. Then again, Phil had been alive for a while, and naming schemes were constantly evolving. If this Technoblade was truly divine touched (undoubted; he reeked of God), it wouldn’t be a surprise if they were similarly aged.
“My reputation precedes me, but they just can’t help themselves, huh?”
“Makes my job easier,” Phil snorted to himself. It wasn’t even a lie—vulturing souls had never been so efficient. Phil would have preferred to be the one doing the killing, or at the very least helping Technoblade do it, but, well. Beggars, choosers.
“I’m not looting their corpses, chat,” Technoblade said abruptly, sparkling health potion halfway empty. Another point to his age—potions were becoming a lost art amongst commoners, now seen as a rarity as fear of the Nether spread. “Do you know how long that would take? No, we have places to be, and they probably don’t have anything interestin’ anyways.”
“The fuck?” What the hell was a chat?
“Don’t swear at me,” Technoblade said, and if Phil didn’t know better he’d say Technoblade was responding to him. The thought was nice. Even still, he couldn’t help a disconcerted giggle, because what the hell was this guy talking about? “Mods, ban this guy, it’s against TOS,” Technoblade joked, beginning to pick his way through the field of corpses.
For lack of anything else to do, and great interest in someone so similar to him in every way except deceased status, Phil followed him, whistling at the gruesome destruction. “These guys got fucked up, Jesus,” he laughed.
“Maybe their leader will be competent,” Technoblade wondered out loud, “So far all we’ve seen are his goons, so I guess it makes sense that they’d all suck.”
“A blade is only as competent as the hand wielding it,” Phil said solemnly. Predictably, Technoblade did not respond—Phil wasn’t expecting him to, really, but it was nice to be able to pretend. Sure, some people talked to themselves, but none of them narrated quite like this. No one acted like they were actually talking to someone.
Phil didn’t think he could be blamed for following Technoblade. It had been far too long since he’d met someone so interesting, let alone another person clearly touched by the otherworldly. If nothing else, Phil could excuse it as looking for an easy source of souls. After all, if the fight he’d just witnessed was any indication, Technoblade killed for the hell of it, and he killed well.
For the next few weeks of following the man on his killing spree, Phil learned a few things about Technoblade:
- He had been gifted by the holy touch of the Blood God (Blood for the Blood God was a popular battle cry of his, right up there with Technoblade never dies.)
- He had an excellent sense of navigation.
- He talked to himself a lot.
Phil was most interested in the last part. Chat, as Technoblade referred to them, seemed to be a sort of… incorapal person(s?) that only Technoblade could hear. Chat could not interact with the real world, but seemed inconceivably omnipresent and could gather information through means unknown and relay it back to Technoblade. Phil could only assume this was his divine boon—something like Phil’s wings. Whether it was a blessing or a curse, Phil didn’t know—but by the way Chat seemed to literally never shut up, Phil and his introverted tendencies would call it a personal hell rather than a curse. The information, though. That was useful.
Technoblade, it seemed, could not communicate telepathically with Chat, but they could him—if the way he would speak up after periods of silences with, ‘Sorry, I was thinking,’ were any indication. This meant he spoke out loud, constantly. For Phil, who had been deprived of company for so long, it was a blessing like no other. A balm to the ever burning wound of his loneliness. And with Technoblade requiring his words to be spoken aloud in order to communicate with Chat, it meant Phil felt… included, in the conversation.
Unknowingly, of course, but still included. Included enough to where Phil regularly remarked back to Technoblade, offering suggestions and commentary as if he was part of Chat.
And Phil, unless he had finally, actually lost it… was pretty sure Technoblade could hear him.
It wasn’t all the time. But Phil quickly realized that Chat did not swear, and every time Technoblade heard him do it, he commented on it. More than that, he remembered , and he bantered back every time .
“Fuck, shit, piss,” Phil had said, testing his theory for the hell of it.
“Okay, seriously, how is this guy still here? He’s been swearing up a storm! Are my Mods betraying me or something?” Technoblade had replied almost immediately. And-
“What the fuck,” Phil laughed incredulously, eyes wide. There was no way. There was no way.
“Don’t WTF me,” Technoblade griped, looking up from sharpening his sword to squint suspiciously at nothing. He was almost, almost looking in Phil’s direction. “Listen, just because you have good murder advice doesn’t mean you can just start swearin’, okay?”
“I think it does, actually. Both are pretty vulgar if you think about it,” Phil replied cheekily. He felt— elated. Euphoric beyond measure. He was talking to someone and they were talking back. Even if just for the briefest of moments, he was talking and that was enough to leave him breathless and giddy, grin so wide his face hurt and sides twinging from laughter.
Technoblade just sighed, bringing his hands up to rub at his face like he had a headache. “This subathon was a mistake,” he muttered. Another nonsense word the man seemed fond of. “Just a few more days… a few more days. No, no, chat, don’t subscribe more come on, I’m already filthy rich—”
The next few days passed.
“Okay, Chat,” Technoblade said, staring off with a precise focus at absolutely nothing again. “It’s been a blast having you here for the subathon. But I gotta call it quits. It’s been almost a month. If I wanna go anywhere I’m gonna have to fight, and I need to leave some people alive to repopulate.” Phil barked a laugh at that. “Yes, I will be live again eventually. But the VOD- the VOD is already so long, Chat. There’s plenty of content to re-watch. You’ll live until the next stream, I promise.” Technoblade sounded fondly amused, as he ran through what seemed to be a… goodbye, to Chat?
A temporary one, from what Phil could tell, but one nonetheless. How… interesting. So he could dismiss Chat, then? Not for forever—judging by the goodbye speech, Chat would get antsy if Technoblade went too long without letting them observe his killings. Perhaps that was the drawback. Constant chatter, yet useful info, or peace and quiet with a restlessness that wasn’t yours. Phil couldn’t imagine it. Sure, his crows had been chatty, but he could tune them out or dismiss them as he pleased. They were Death’s crows, certainly, but crows. This Chat seemed much more… alive. Human, almost.
“Ugh,” Technoblade groaned from where he had slumped nearly horizontal on the log he’d been sitting on. “That was a lot of blood.”
“Tell me about it,” Phil snorted. Technoblade had killed a lot of people, in a very short period of time, and Phil had watched it all, so he felt the comment was appropriate. And then Technoblade jolted in abject alarm, hand reaching for his sword as he shot up to his feet.
“What,” Technoblade practically growled. “Who— you- you’re the guy who kept swearin’!”
Phil blinked, equally as taken aback as Technoblade was. What. “You can still hear me?” he asked dumbly. He had fully expected for Chat’s dismissal to dismiss him as well. Not for Technoblade to still be able to hear him.
Technoblade looked… understandably distressed.
“If it helps, I’m not part of your… Chat, or whatever it is you’ve been talking to, I’m literally just a ghost,” Phil said. He hoped to soothe Technoblade’s concerns—he would be just as frazzled in his place, assuming he understood how Chat normally functioned for the chosen.
“A ghost,” Technoblade repeated, slowly easing out of his battle stance to stare dubiously in the air.
“Yep,” Phil replied. Please don’t be too freaked out, you’re the first person that’s been able to talk back to me in literal years and it’d suck to not have anyone to talk to, he thought, but didn’t say.
Or. Well. Did say, apparently. Whoops.
“Years? How long have you been dead?” Technoblade asked murmured. Phil snorted.
“Dude, I don’t fucking know. Doesn’t help that I was old as shit before the ghost thing. Everything just kind of blends together at a certain point, you know?”
“It does,” Technoblade said slowly. “So- yer’ a ghost. Why can I hear you if no one else can?”
“Fuck if I know,” Phil laughed. “I’d guess something to do with the fact that we’re both chosen by the divine, though.”
Technoblade stilled. “Who are you, exactly?”
Phil didn’t like the one he asked that in—low and neutral, void of the natural sort of mirth he normally carried when he was talking to Chat.
“I was Philza. Now I’m just… Ghostza, I guess,” Phil laughed bitterly. Technoblade visibly balked.
“As in Death’s husband, Philza?”
Phil’s reputation preceded him, apparently. Though, he shouldn’t be surprised, really. Becoming the chosen of a divine was a sort of… dying art. People worshiped gods, sure, but to bear the boon of one? That was a whole other matter.
Phil did little jazz hands that his companion couldn’t see. “The one and only.”
“…What the fuck.”
“So you can swear!” Phil exclaimed, jabbing an accusing hand into Technoblade’s chest with all the energy he could muster. It surprisingly did make contact, though all it did was send a spike of pain up his finger due to the netherite breastplate. Actual, physical pain. Now that was a sensation he hadn’t felt in a while.
“I don’t think that's important right now!” Technoblade stressed. “And I’m not allowed or I’ll get banned—are you honestly telling me that the Philza has been following me around as a ghost for a month?”
“How much have you heard about me?” Phil asked with a tilt of his head. Technoblade didn’t answer for a long moment, flopping back down on the log. Phil followed suit, sitting on the grass with his legs folded neatly beneath him and wings sprawled across the grass.
“That’s… a good question,” Technoblade eventually said. A clawed hand absently traced the gemstones decorating the pommel of his sword.
“What?”
“You see, when you said you were Philza, the knowledge just sort of popped into my brain, but I don’t actually know where it came from.” Technoblade paused. “Which is to say, I haven’t heard anything about you.”
“That’s weird,” Phil said. Something related to how Chat could acquire information through unknown means, but without Chat as a vessel?
“Ya think?” Technoblade muttered. “I’m talking to a ghost, and I somehow know who the ghost is. Wonderful.”
“The ghost is right here, you know, and he doesn’t appreciate being talked to like he isn’t there,” Phil said pointedly.
“Oh right. Sorry, I’m not tryin’ to exclude you. You could say… I’m also not used to talking and having people be around to hear me that aren’t Chat.”
“How long have you been alive?” Phil asked abruptly. “Kind of rude to ask, but you seem like you’ve been around a hot second.
“Same amount of time you’ve been dead.”
Phil’s next inhale was soft and breathy. “You don’t know?” he murmured back. Sure, it wasn’t like he had known exactly, back when he was still alive, but it was… still sad to hear. Perhaps more because Phil had lost that knowledge of himself decades ago.
Technoblade shrugged. “I woke up in a desert cave, in a pool of blood, with Chat going off in my head. I don’t remember anything before that moment, but… I have scars I don’t remember getting, and muscle memory I don’t remember making.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Philza winced. The divine giveth, the divine taketh. The constant balance Kristin spoke of, the scale that shan't be tipped. Chat’s ability to seek knowledge alone would fetch a hefty price, assuming that was the only gift he had been given. Memories, for knowledge. In this world, it was a good bargain compared to some. “So when you got chosen or whatever, your memories were wiped?”
“Maybe… I think I died, though.”
“Damn, okay,” Phil said reflexively with a bite of laughter.
Instead of responded, Technoblade reached up: hands first removing his crown and setting aside, and then undoing the straps of his skull mask to pull it away to reveal his face, and—
“Oh.”
Across nearly all of Technoblade’s forehead, like a messed up tattoo, was an explosion of a scar, filled with pure gold that snuck into his hairline and curled above his right eye like eyeshadow, turning a few thick lashes gold and splintering the iris like a cracked plate. His sclera was all black, eyes nothing but a thin ring of white with a hint of red in the dead center.
“The mark of a totem,” Phil said, mind running a mile a minute. And then: “Is this where the Technoblade never dies thing comes from?”
Technoblade smiled, revealing sharp, fanged canines that poked just so into his lip. “Nah, I just said it one day, and it’s stuck. Same with Blood for the Blood God.”
“I mean, last I checked the Blood God was an actual, like, dude,” Phil began, “but that could have been centuries ago, so maybe you’re like his new vessel or something?”
Phil had been the only person he’d ever met who held a totem of undying, aside from the man they were fashioned after. Even gods, immortal as they were, used totems—because immortal simply meant not mortal. It spoke nothing of undying. The only being that could not die was those that were already dead, and perhaps death herself.
“That would be a lot of pressure,” Technoblade mused. “I hope not.”
Phil barked a laugh. “If we went back to your blood pool or whatever, I could probably figure it out. I have a sense for these sorts of things,” he said. Sitting across from the man, while he could certainly sense divinity pouring out of Technoblade, along with a ghostly form dying had dulled Phil’s senses. Besides, it was better to get the bigger picture before jumping to conclusions.
“I definitely remember where it is, but are you sure? I don’t wanna take up your time.”
“I’m literally a ghost,” Phil deadpanned. “I’m not doing anything else.”
“Fair enough,” Technoblade conceded easily. “I guess I’m not doing anything either, and a long trip would be good while all the murder I did blows over.”
“Oh, yeah, you are definitely super wanted now,” Phil laughed.
Technoblade suddenly went white a sheet.
“What?” Phil asked, sitting up straight as worry sparked to life.
“Chat is gonna be so mad they didn’t see this,” Technoblade whispered, completely seriously. And Phil—
Phil tipped his head back and laughed.
(Later, Phil would learn how to interact with the world more. How to make himself appear visible. He’d perch himself on Technoblade’s shoulder, wings held high and form flickering as Technoblade’s easy drawl threatened whatever ‘goon’ had decided to dare turn their sword against the Blood God. Technoblade would bring Phil dying corpses for him to eat souls from as a present, and Phil would shout warnings from above while Technoblade fought. Later, they would become Technoblade-and-Phil, not Technoblade, and Phil.
But for now, they had a journey to make. And for once, it wasn’t an end. It was a beginning.)
(As soon as Phil finished laughing, of course.)