Chapter Text
Numb.
He just felt...
Numb.
He knew he was spiraling, having heard all about that and other mental health terms and shit from Technoblade back when—
No.
No, he is not thinking about them anymore.
They left him!
They left him.
They left him…
And it hurts, it hurts so bad but he can’t help it, can’t stop it.
An aching and stinging and crawling and growing reminder that they don’t care that they don’t love him that they—that they—
That he doesn't matter.
Not really, not anymore.
The only one left of that lot who cared was Wilbur, and he even stopped caring at the end.
How else could he explain the shouts, jibes, insults, and slaps from his brother at the end?
(He tries to ignore how his mind echoes to him, sounding oddly like a certain nightmarish man, that he deserved it, he was nothing more than a burden, making out everyone else to be the villain when he messed it up—!)
The boy sighed, turning to look towards the waves, washing away some of the last streaks of blue caked into the sand. It’d been a while since Ghostbur’s last visit, but he wasn’t too worried. That ghost would have trouble finding his way out of a paper sack, but he always comes back.
He always has, one way or another…
Smacking his hands to the sides of his face, the sound and the sting grounding him and stopping his thoughts from going down that same path again, he got up from where he’d been staring at the latest crater in the sand, and hobbled his way back to his tent, his Tnret, if you will.
Finally reaching the ratty white fabric of what once could have been called a tent, he sat down roughly. Slowly, he peeled back what’s left of his right pant leg, examining the burn the day’s explosion gave him, faintly realizing that his shoe is wholly unsalvageable. The rubber sole was torn to shreds, falling apart at the slightest of movement, the soft, worn fabric singed, embers still slightly burning warm, ashen flakes falling down to the sand, laces ragged and fraying, stringy from the abuse.
Salt, he tastes salt.
Reaching up, he brushed his hand against his face, and it came away damp.
He’s crying.
A laugh bubbles up from his throat, broken, breathless, and dejected, all at once, completely resigned. Crying over a ruined shoe, he really is as weak as they say, huh?
He huffs, angrily scrubbing at the tears with his mangled fingers, rubbing at his red eyes to stem the crying. Sighing as he gets up, he should really get his burn patched up, but he’s nearly beyond caring at this point.
Glancing once more at the ocean, he inhales the salty, briny scent it always carries. You would think that after being trapped here for months, he’d get sick of that smell.
But he hasn’t.
It’s one of the few constant things in this wretched place, besides the boy himself, Him, and pain.
Breathing deeper than he has in months, he tries to use that scent to ground him, like he did when he was younger, when it was just him and his friends fooling around in the surf as their parents watched with saccharine sweet smiles at the children’s laughing antics.
Then he remembered why he shouldn’t. Violently.
When his lungs weren’t even at half capacity, he started hacking, coughing, and doubling over in pain, a scratching, grasping pain sitting deep in his chest.
Bright red globules of blood were scattered among pretty purple petals and bits of green leaves in his hands, on the ground, everywhere, at this point.
As soon as he saw the plant parts, his mind simply shut down. Too emotionally drained to cry anymore, too numb to truly care about himself.
They are gone. They left him here with this—this—monster of a man!
No, he shouldn't say that, that’d be insulting to Uncle Brian’s mobs…
They’d all abandoned him. Every. Single. Person. Except for one.
Good ole’ Ranboo.
Ranboob!
Rambo.
A Friend…
And yet they’ve even taken them away too.
He was exiled to stop a war, at least, that's what he was told.
And yet that war will start anyways, taking away his only friend, the only person who seemed to love him anymore. The only one who made time in their schedule to visit him in his torture. Leaving him here, alone, exiled, and still hated, all for nothing, nothing at all. With nothing more than a hopeful promise on a blood-stained letter to show for it. He’s only had that letter a few days, yet his hope had died the minute he read it. The minute He handed him a letter, he knew it wouldn’t be good, nothing he ever got here was good, and that pattern just seems to march on!
He glanced towards the sea again.
The moon was bright and full, a softly glowing cream pearl in the swaths of navy fabric that is the sky, the stars glimmering and twinkling around the gentle centerpiece of the night, all reflected back on the soft, lulling waves of saltwater below.
He giggled once, twice, still steeped in a faint trace of hysteria.
“Aunt Clara must be happy, I haven’t seen the stars this bright since Purp did xir first successful mission. She and Punz were so proud.”, he murmured to himself, recalling his childhood memories of deities and their lovers. When his life was calmer and the world seemed a bit less tragic.
He remembers one time, when he visited the Palace of Comets with his Mum, how Aunt Clara let him plot a few lone stars, and even let him embroider a new constellation in the sky! He, of course, chose a moth, though left it unnamed, letting his aunt name it. She chose Clementine, after her wife, someone who he looked up to greatly, and who she said he reminded her of. She was always so cool to him, she controlled the raging tides like they were nothing more than misbehaving children! It was really awesome to watch, and Aunt Clara said he was just as stubborn in his will as her. His beamed, being likened to someone he looked up to so much made his chest bubble like a new star. His smile was so bright, it caused Purp to grumble about how he’d blind someone one day, laughing as xe looked fondly at him as he simply smiled wider.
That same smile faltered now, remembering how Mum and Dad were so proud whenever he showed them his little projects, be they crocheting, knitting, or embroidery, how they’d frame his little needlework gifts like works of art. How his favorite one, a large cross stitch project showing their entire extended family, centered around their little group of five. Somehow, he’d managed to keep it a secret from all of them until it was finished, even though it was just over seventy square meters, and he worked on it nearly daily for years.
They were so proud, they hung it up in the entrance hall of Mum’s Void Keep! Techno was proud of his dedication, and Wilbur of his artistic rendering, as he called it.
They were so proud, they hung it up in the entrance hall of the Void Keep! Techno was proud of his dedication, and Wilbur of his artistic rendering!
Too bad Da—Phil’s indifferent now, or how Techno loathed his very being, or how Wilbur would rather die than stay with him—NO! He will not spiral about his family right now!
Sighing again—he’s been sighing a lot more recently…Oh well, can’t exactly talk much with plants squatting in your lungs!—he stood up once more, clutching the letter close in his pocket, his other hand grasping at the tarnished compass sitting on an old rawhide cord around his neck.
Stumbling a bit with only one intact shoe and a burned and bleeding foot, he took off his shoes—both the good one, and the tattered one—as well as both of his socks. He didn't want to get more sand in them, not when he only has the one pair left.
Starting a meandering path to the ocean, he noticed it was low tide. His eyes softened into something that while still not dangerous to others, was still quite deadly to him. It may be his first of such a journey while among the waking world, but it will definitely not be his last. The lull of the sea is a comfort to him, it eases his aching joints and ringing ears. And if he wakes up in it every morning, he might as well go to sleep in it, r̸͎̘͓̔͊̚i̵̢͙̪͋͋͝g̵̘̼͎̈́̒͝h̸̫̺̺̓͌̒t̸̠̪̿̓?!
Sitting down in the surf, not caring anymore if he gets his only clothes wet—they’d endured much worse over the months in the caves—he breathes in, making sure not to breathe too deep as to not upset the alliums magic had apparently thought that growing one of the few flowers not associated with Tu-his former friend would make dying by suffocation this go around any better.
As he sat there and let his mind start to descend into white noise and sickening static, drifting into the coddling embrace of unconsciousness, he heard something new.
A soft melody, something primeval. He couldn’t make out any words, which was odd, as he knows many languages thanks to his father’s travels.
He sat a bit and let the lilting sounds filter over him, wondering how such a song can convey so much raw emotion so precisely, yet he couldn’t even understand the words. It almost reminded him of all the nights Wilbur sang him to sleep when he was younger, especially after a bad nightmare—always about losing somebody, about how he was back there again, about how nobody cared about him anymore—to calm him down, reminding him in the soft cadence of his voice that he was cared for, and they still loved him.
He smiled. His first true smile since Ranboo had last left. It was… calming. Bittersweet, since all those fears except one came true, and he somehow found a worse place than there, but it was still nice. Reminded him of a better time, a better place…
He knew he might not wake up again, as many things in this world use their songs to subdue their prey and shit, but he couldn't bring himself honestly give a fuck right now. Damn, he really seems to pendulum between hyper emotions and utter apathy.
He breathed out, truly feeling something remotely like peace for the first time in a long while.
The song is nice, and whoever is singing it seems even nicer.
Clementine.
He doesn’t know where that name came from, maybe from thinking of Aunt Clara and the moth earlier, but it seems to fit the singer. He thinks it might be their name.
It is quite a poggers name, if he does say so himself. Belongs to one the most bad-ass women he knows. The boy smiles softly, looking up at the blanketing void above, finding that constellation, so new and sloppy, but wholly his.
He likes them, the singer, because either they’re nice and will let him wake up tomorrow well rested after being sung to sleep after a Dream’s Day™, or they’re nice and he won’t have to experience another day of this hellhole tomorrow and will wake up back home in the Keep with Mum!
A small, but oh-so-real smile still gracing his face, he tilts his head back, reaching out and grabbing a blanket he was able to keep away from Him, having stuffed in between two rocks a few days ago, and he feels content, for once.
Snuggling down into the now-sopping-wet blanket in the warm water of the ocean, the tide rising around him, he says one thing to the one being to give him any real company in what's looking to be weeks, if not months, alone.
(Dream doesn’t count. Not anymore.)
“Thank you…” He breathes out, barely audible, but, somehow, he thinks, he knows, they hear him. His mind turns calm for a moment, soul slipping into ∷ᒷᔑꖎᒲ 𝙹⎓ ⎓∷ᒷ↸↸|| as his breath evens out, still shallow, but now so less tense. And then he is gone, mind dreaming up renditions of his life from the before, from when all seemed a bit more right with the world…
***
And for only the second time in months, there is a person there, someone who doesn’t mind him, his personality, or his issues.
Unseen to all but one, a merling-selkie hybrid (dubbed a merlkie by her nephews, nieces, in-between, and children) sings, claws latched onto the rocks ringing in the beach, claws etching warmth and protection into the breaking sea.
And she knows.
She smiles softly, somehow, with her 3 rows of needle-like teeth. Razor sharp fins smooth down along her winding, pitch black tail. Ear fins, just like the scales and the fins of her tail, freckled with the colors of the stars woven by her wife, flow down and out along her cheekbones to frame her face alongside the smooth, inky black strands of hair falling out of the two lofty space buns that crown her head.
Her dark navy blue skin, splotched with lighter sections of a rippling teal shines pearlescent as it drips with sea water. A large scar puckers the skin, and runs down her inner right forearm, small green coral blooms hug the sides of the scar tissue, and pepper the skin around the many smaller scars she’s accumulated through the years as she grips the craggy rocks, ancient claws gouging dents barely visible on the soft boulders. Another prominent scar runs across the bridge of her nose, the coral surrounding it is sprinkled across her cheekbones like green glowing freckles.
Her sclera is as black as her hair, deep as the void of night, her irises a reflective and icy, almost white, blue. Pupils swirling black starbursts, an old courting gift from her wife. She smiles, the sides of her eyes crinkle, deepening the crows feet that fan from her eyes, showing years of laughter and mirth.
Her clothes are minimal, but functional. A breast-band made of green and red seaweed encircles her torso, a utility belt made of sea-grass sits on her waist, filled with potions and weapons crafted from the tides. An old fishing net swirls lightly around her tail, not impeding her or the fish life, but instead filled with glinting gold, silver, iron, other shiny trinkets, and lost items people have thrown into the ocean. Forever lost to the sea and time.
This boy may not be her pup, but she will protect him as much as she can from the false masked man in green, and from the way the wind whistles through the rocky outcropping, gently tugging the blanket securely around the injured child, right after her final trill as the boy nods off, his head cushioned on the seaweed sprawled amongst the rocks, her love is in agreement.
And as the flock of magpies that follow the young one perch on the sharp rocks, content to whistle mournfully down at her as the protectively circle the child, the two watching can only assume one thing. His mother agrees as well.
