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The first thing Ranboo feels is something cool against his palms, smooth and unrelentingly stiff. He tentatively flexes his fingers, realizing he has his face pressed against the hardwood floor in some dark, empty room he can’t remember entering.
His mind feels hazy, and apart from the spruce scent of the wooden planks under his cheekbones, he can’t tell much else of what is happening. Whether from just waking up or from the pitch black darkness he is currently in, his eyes can’t seem to focus.
Ranboo tries to push against the floor to get up from where he lies on his stomach; and a second thing becomes acutely clear in an instant.
Pain.
Way too much pain.
His arms give out as soon as a sharp sting travels up from his wrists to his shoulders, and before he realizes his face comes crashing down against the floorboards once again. He whimpers weakly, curling in on himself instinctively, only to get another shock from horror as all his limbs start burning at once.
His back arches, breath hitching in his throat. Ranboo can’t think properly, and his hands, feet, legs, everything, are scorching him alive. His throat is raw, his muscles are sore, and he feels cold, despite half of his body being completely engulfed by itchy flames, sweat dripping down his body like-
Ranboo scrambles to sit up, chest rising up and down harshly. When he’s finally able to focus on his hands, he feels as though he’s choking on air.
They’re red. They’re scratchy, yes, and irritated, and wet. And so are the hems of his striped pyjama pants, and the long sleeves of his nightshirt. His left foot, instead of white, is now stained a dull shade of purple, covered in blisters and sizzled up skin.
But he can’t seem to pay attention to that.
Because his hands are red.
From blood.
He’s fully awake now; and he feels sick, head spinning with a thousand scary questions and another thousand scarier answers. He watches as thick, fresh blood trickles down his fingertips, smearing his palms that are flakey and dried already.
How long ago did this happen? What happened?
Had he been enderwalking again? Of course, he thinks, letting his hands go limp in his lap. The blood glimmers in the moonlight that comes in from a window to his right, looking nearly obsidian black if not for a slight maroon tint.
What had he done this time? Ranboo hugs his knees flush to his chest, the skin of his limbs still burning to the touch. He tries and fails to get a hold of his breathing while assessing the situation.
The room he is in is devoid of any furniture, but everything about it screams that he is at home, in the Snowchester mansion, except in an unfinished part of it, far away from where he sleeps. The night sky outside is so bright with stars that it seems to mock him, but he supposes that he can’t have been out of it for too long, with the moon still rising high.
Now, for his clothes- He was cold, and wet from… snow. He had been outside, and that single realization hits him like a brick. He had gone outside a- and- done something. To someone.
Had Dream taken control again? He nearly rips his hair from his scalp, gripping onto it like a lifeline. He scrunches up his eyes, wishing desperately to remember something, just one thing about the past few hours, but he knows it’s useless. If he really had been enderwalking, there’s no telling what-
Oh, this is it. He is done for. He has gone out there and hurt someone, and now everyone will hate him for it, and he will hate himself for it, because his blood isn’t even red, it is purple-
Ranboo freezes.
Who-
Before he can even finish the sentence in his head, he scrambles to his feet and starts running. He doesn’t even feel his feet anymore. He only feels his chest cold and aching, and his stomach dropping.
Michael.
Please, please, let it not be Michael. He can’t- his knees feel weak at the thought, and he trips as an image flashes in his head, of Michael, cowering away from his own dad, trembling and scared and bleeding-
Ranboo has to put a hand to the wall to stabilize himself. There’s bile climbing up his throat and he feels sick to his stomach.
But he keeps running.
He’s not really seeing anything in front of him, just turning again and again, looking for any signs of an inhabited hallway. This mansion is too big, and it’s all his fault, and he hurt someone, and he’s such a bad person-
He turns another left, and suddenly he sees carpet. Red carpet. The one they chose to put in front of Michael’s room.
He’s at the door in less than a second, gripping the handle so hard that he can feel his nails dig into his palm. He takes a ragged breath in, looking down. He really despises the color red right now. He can’t tell whether the carpet is stained with dirt or something else.
But just as he’s opening the door, he thinks he might’ve heard something. A snore, maybe. Something inside him melts before he can even confirm he’s right, but he can only hope.
The room inside is dim, scarcely illuminated by a warm lamp in the far corner, away from the child’s crib. From the door, Ranboo can see him: a tiny bundle of blankets rising and falling to the sound of steady snores.
He takes tentative, silent steps to his son’s crib. But his shoulders have already slackened by the time he gets close enough for his mind to take it in as confirmation.
Michael is sleeping soundly, tiny hands hugging a bunch of the blankets under his chin, almost as if it were a stuffed animal. His little piglin tusks are poking out from his bottom lip, mouth the slightest bit ajar; he looks so happy, so peaceful, that Ranboo can’t help it, and he’s crying.
He’s crying, and it hurts; everything seems to hurt again, all of a sudden. He sits on the floor, rests his head on the slats of the crib, and stays there, watching, trying to calm down.
He doesn’t know what he would do to himself if something ever happened to Michael. He shuts his eyes, listening to his son’s breathing and steadying his own.
He’s so tired.
He’s tired of reliving this nightmare every other day, waking up in pain, confused and worried. He’s tired of going to bed scared, trembling at times, at the mercy of who knows what, helplessly trapped in his own body, doing things he doesn’t think are right.
He’s tired of being used, and yet doing these things himself. He’s tired because he feels dirty, almost corrupted, and he hates it. He hates himself for it.
He hates that he’s not sure of himself anymore - that is, if he had ever been in the first place.
He hates that he’s not sure… whether or not he would hurt his family.
It's haunting.
By now, Ranboo is crying a bit too much. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, willing his tears to stop. They hurt. Michael might wake up.
He wants to run, scream and punch all at the same time. It’s foul. He is foul. There’s no way out.
Something cracks inside of him as it crosses his mind that there’s nothing he can do about it. Nothing.
His own breathing is much louder than Michael’s now, and he feels a strange type of numbness to the world.
He’s cracking. He can feel himself split between wanting to hurt Dream and himself. He hates himself even more for it, because if he wants to hurt people while conscious, then who’s to say enderwalk is still not just him? How rotten is he, if he just wants to hurt people?
Still sitting on the floor, he backs away from Michael’s crib.
He can’t- he can’t do this. He needs to do something.
He needs to get it under control.
He struggles to get up, but in no time he’s away from Michael and out the door, his legs taking him away almost as if he has no say in where he goes. The tapping of his bare feet on wooden planks echoes on the walls of the mansion, so eerily quiet it sends a chill down his spine.
He feels as though he’s lost all control; but being merely a watcher doesn’t mean he doesn’t know where he’s going. All he needs is a few water bottles, and he will be okay. He will be good again. He can get himself under control, if he just-
“Ranboo?”
He stops at the foot of the stairs, in the main hall. He hadn’t even noticed he had gotten this far.
His heart is hammering in his chest as he slowly turns back to the steps, feeling a pit down his stomach.
Just a few steps above him, sporting an oversized shirt and sweatpants, Tubbo stops too.
The huge windows of the main hall let in a lot of moonlight, and Ranboo can clearly see him from where he stands, just a few feet away. Tubbo’s hair is ruffled from sleep and he doesn’t hide it when he yawns, but somehow, he’s not entirely sleepy. His eyes have something behind them, a sharp spark that Ranboo decidedly can’t face. So he looks down at their feet, completely unaware that he’s clenching his jaw so tight his teeth hurt.
It’s only now that it occurs to him that he might’ve been making noise. Did he wake up Tubbo? The thought makes something churn inside of him.
“Were you enderwalking?” Tubbo asks, making his way the last few steps of the staircase so that he is finally by Ranboo’s side who, frozen in place, can’t decide whether he wants to run and hide or stay and… ask for something. He can’t even nod to the question, but his silence is enough.
He’s tense, and he needs to get away from Tubbo, or he might hurt him too; he’s not under control, and he needs to fix that, but how can he, when Tubbo smiles up to him so easily, moves around so relaxed, even though he knows exactly what terrible things Ranboo can do?
Ranboo flinches as he feels a touch on his wrist, and tries to recoil from it; but then the grip tightens, and he stills himself, letting Tubbo get a view of his bloody hands, feeling utterly defeated.
He closes his eyes in anticipation, lowering his head so that he can curl up into himself.
“Hey,” Tubbo says, soft and yet firm, “come on man, look at me.”
Ranboo does, meeting that glint in his eyes, and it scares him less than it probably should. Tubbo’s gaze is searching him, and from anyone else that would’ve been unbearable; but his eyes don’t seem to hold an ounce of judgement at all, and it always puts Ranboo slightly more at ease.
Nonetheless, he can’t quite shake the weight of his crimes away.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and Tubbo’s eyes go wide in fear. He feels so small, even standing so much taller than Tubbo, and he can’t seem to help the nervous rambles once they start; he’s scared that if he stops, Tubbo will think terribly of him forever. “Michael is okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way, I swear I would never-”
Tubbo lets out a big exhale through his nose, shoulders dropping in a second.
“Shut up,” he just says, pulling Ranboo into a hug.
Ranboo lets himself be hugged, feeling his insides melt at the way Tubbo crushes him by his waist. His own hands are shaking, and he hovers them over Tubbo’s back for a second too long before finally hugging him back.
He rests his head on top of Tubbo’s and closes his eyes, trying to ease his breathing. He has to focus on not crying, because he feels so safe, and he needed this hug so bad tears are kicking down all the doors he keeps closed, and he doesn't want to open them right now, because crying hurts, and he has just stopped crying a few moments ago and his cheeks still feel aflame.
He sucks in a ragged breath through his teeth and grips Tubbo’s shirt hard, bunching up the fabric in his fists until he can't feel his fingers.
“You scared me,” Tubbo says against his chest, voice leveled and distant but... Ranboo knows Tubbo enough to notice the crack at the end, and he knows how Tubbo becomes detached when he stresses out, and he knows he did this to him, his best friend, woke him in the middle of the night, and made him think he had hurt Michael...
And he breaks.
A sob racks its way through him, ripping away at his chest and throat, and he is crying. He buries his face in Tubbo’s ruffled hair, feeling his cheeks sting and burn against the touch.
Distantly, Tubbo says something, but Ranboo can't tell what it is. He shakes his head against Tubbo’s own, breathing hard and unable to think very clearly.
He is lowered to the ground, still in a hug, and lets himself get dragged into sitting down, leaning his weight on Tubbo.
He’s just... so tired.
It hurts, but he can tell Tubbo is trying to dry his tears before they can do too much more damage, brushing his thumbs against his cheeks where tear tracks carve their way into his skin.
And they sit in silence, Ranboo crying, finally letting out all that he had been bottling up, and Tubbo silently taking care of him, until he starts making slurping noises at each swipe of his tears.
Ranboo can't help chuckle, weakly swatting one of Tubbo’s hands away, muttering a “What the hell, man,” at his attempt of humor.
But Tubbo doesn't stop until Ranboo is openly laughing, telling him to stop that.
He grins widely, jumping to his feet and extending both his hands to his friend, still sitting on the ground.
“Come on. Time to bed.”
Ranboo takes his hands, and lets himself get pulled off the floor with a smile. Tubbo barely spares a glance back, bee-lining to their bedroom.
Ranboo lets out a sigh, staring at Tubbo’s hand in his bloody one, both seemingly glowing under the moonlight.
He's tired.
But he 's not alone.
Someone is alone outside though, but at this point they’re long gone, blood smeared dry and body buried in the snow.