Chapter Text
Surprisingly, Squiddo gets her own spare room. She learns fairly quickly that Ash's organization is referred to as the Regime, a much more serious and dramatic name than what she's used to, and if she's being honest it sounds a little ridiculous to her.
Ash takes it very, very seriously, so she doesn't laugh, not even a little bit, when he informs her.
The bed is comfortable, at least moreso than the ground, a pitifully low bar even for them. Once they lay their head down the nausea and the dizziness subside and they fall asleep easily. They do not dream, and when they wake in the morning they stay in bed, for hours, and hours, and hours.
They watch the angle of the sun in the window shift over the course of the day, doing nothing but staring listlessly at the wall. Every so often a fleeting spark of hope rips through them, telling them that maybe 4C is looking for them right now. They'd even be happy to hear Wemmbu's voice through that rickety old payphone, if it meant someone they knew was going to find them. It's always gone just as soon as it appears.
The sharp aching in her muscles has receded to a dull sort of throb, the consequence of being stuck in a stasis of poor health. She's sick, and not only in the body, but her condition does very little to encourage her to get out of bed.
Multiple times throughout the day, Ashswag comes to check on her; she assumes it's him, at least. He never says a word and she won't turn to look at him, but she at least chooses to shift her position just a little to let him know she's not dead.
Not yet.
At the end of the day, someone else wordlessly leaves a plate with a few slices of bread and some fruit on it on the table next to their bed. It's touching, to them at least, regardless of whether or not Ash sent him or he did it of his own accord.
It's then, though, that they finally accept that this is not the Ash that they love. After calling them dead weight simply for remaining alive, there's not a shot in hell that he would do this for them as they lay in bed useless.
This time, they barely feel it as their cheeks once again grow warm and wet.
She passes three days in this manner, but not without a little reflection. On the wall she visualizes the orbital strike cannon and its internal mechanics, trying to work out just how it could have taken her here. The damn thing had the ability to bend time around itself, so maybe universe-hopping shouldn't be as big of a shock as it was. But if that's how she's supposed to get home, she's out of luck; she doesn't have the time or patience to build it all a second time, let alone by herself, and definitely not without the blueprints she left behind in her home world.
Another cannon is out of the question. But by the morning of their fourth day under self-imposed house arrest, they're fairly certain their story doesn't end here.
Perfectly on time for another young man to burst into their room, carrying a clean set of clothes. They're fairly sure it's the same person who brought them their food (snacks, really), and they don't recognize him from back home, but it seems like he already knows who they are quite well. Most likely a friend (coworker?) of Ash's.
"Hey there!" he announces, dropping the clothes on the edge of the bed. "Up and attem. I need your help with something."
Squiddo rolls onto their back to stare at him in silence.
The stranger looks around awkwardly, tugs on the collar of his shirt like a cartoon character. "Uhh. Squiddo, right?"
"Uh-huh."
"Great! I'm Tubbo. It's nice to meet you. Welcome to the Regime."
It's quiet here. The silence is unwelcome.
The pair make their way to the railway Tubbo told her all about as she got dressed. The clothes remind her of 4Cvit's — even the heart pins have somehow made their way to the same spot on the shirt where 4C wore his, just below the collar, over her heart. She fiddles with them anxiously as she tries to match Tubbo's brisk pace.
Her muscles are angry with her; her muscles are not going to let her hear the end of this later.
Nevertheless, she presses on behind him. She can't, after all, get back home if she gives up and collapses in the dirt. To his credit, Tubbo doesn't ask her a single question about where she came from or, god forbid, how she got here, and surprisingly enough his lack of questioning gets her more in the mood to talk.
"Can plants spread spores like a fungus?" she asks him as they reach the railway. The things growing from her eye socket (and from her skull, she later learned after a quick glance at her reflection) had drifted to the back of her mind, but with the fresh air and space to think she wants to cross that bridge first.
Tubbo thinks about that for a moment, dropping the materials he brought by the side of the tracks. "Well, they spread pollen."
"I know they spread pollen, I'm asking about spores." She kneels down across from him, assessing the problem; several longish sections of track are busted up and broken. "Can they just… grow anywhere?"
He looks back up at her, tilting his head; she takes off her glasses to give him a better view. "Not usually, I wouldn't think. But I haven't seen those little things before in my life."
Squiddo makes a noncomittal sound in reply and picks up a pickaxe to pry up the broken bits of the track. They move carefully, as carefully as they can through the faint tremors in their hands, following Tubbo's lead and dismantling it bit by bit.
They work mostly in silence. Occasionally, Tubbo will ask them to do something specific or try to start a conversation, but he is invariably met with no verbal reply. Squiddo keeps their eyes down on the railroad tracks, doing just what he directs and nothing more.
"You weren't on the cruise ship, right?" he asks after about a half hour or so.
"Huh?"
"Like, you haven't just been hiding out this whole time." He tosses some broken bits of wood to the side. "You're from somewhere else. You just got here."
They look down, focusing hard on their task. "Oh. Yeah."
There's a brief silence, but not like the awkwardness with which Ash interacted with her by the beach. It seems to Squiddo more like Tubbo doesn't care what they say next at all.
Weirdly, it's kind of comforting.
"I think I'm…" They close their eye, ignoring the squirming in their stomach. "I think I came here from another world."
"Oh, yeah?" he replies, clearly amused.
"I know it sounds crazy, and I can't prove it, but listen," she says softly. She pulls at one of her pins, trying hard to remove the back, with no results. "These represent how many lives I should have left. When you die — when you die back home, I mean — you lose one, and the person who killed you gains one."
Somewhat surprisingly, he does listen. He sets down his tools and watches her try to withdraw a heart. She's not sure if he believes her, but it's a start, at least.
"Normally I would be able to take one out and give it to someone else, but I can't. Which means I can't add any either, and that must mean that if I were to kill you you wouldn't leave one of these for me to take."
"So you can die multiple times over?" He sounds fascinated. "I see."
"Everyone starts with ten." Squiddo looks over her small collection of pins, letting him come to the conclusion on his own.
"Yeesh." He grimaces. "I'd hate to see the other guy."
That finally coaxes a little laugh out of her.
Tubbo grins back.
"You think it's possible then?"
He shrugs and goes back to work. "I don't see why not. But how did you get here? Surely with enough engineering skills you could figure out a way to… make a portal, or something… but it doesn't sound like you wanted to take a little beach vacation."
The thought of herself and Wemmbu and 4C working day and night on the cannon fills her mind, making her chest squeeze. They worked so hard, and for what? For Ash to ruin it all?
For Wemmbu to die and for her to be stranded on another planet altogether?
"I don't know," is all she says.
She gets the feeling Tubbo can tell that it's not the whole truth, but he lets it go without comment.
The quiet feels much less tense now, though it's glaringly obvious to Squiddo that Tubbo is much more proficient than she at building and repairs. It does kind of beg the question why he dragged her out of her cave to help him when he could have asked anyone else for likely better results.
Unsurprisingly, their hand slips and scrapes against a splintered crosstie. They yelp and move to press the wound to their shirt, then remember that it's brand new and also kind of a gift and it would definitely be very rude to get their blood all over it.
That thought is pushed to the back of their mind when they notice that it's not blood oozing up through the scratch in their skin. It's gold.
By now Tubbo has made his way far down the tracks, so they pretend not to notice the strange fluid coming out of their veins and lift their palm to their mouth, hoping it's shallow enough to stop on its own.
It doesn't taste anything like the irony smell they're familiar with; in fact, it's hard to discern a taste at all through the tangy sting of it. Whatever it is, it's not blood.
This is ridiculous! she thinks, grumbling as she licks the rest of the not-blood away. Of course this would happen to me…
Wait a minute!
Squiddo sits back on her heels. How could she forget Squiddo's Law?
Previous statistics and experiences suggest that the absurdity of her situation was actually a rather normal occurrence for her, even if the situation itself was not. Getting home, then, should require an equally ridiculous turn of events.
Fortunately for her, that's just her forte. By simple logic and the course of her own life, the most bizarre possible thing to occur would be for her to make her way home; therefore her success is guaranteed so long as she tries.
She nods resolutely and continues working.