Chapter Text
On the last night it had ever snowed in Overworld, all was silent, save for the careful crunch of footsteps in the thin layer of fallen snow. The Captain, whose fluffy hair matched the powdery snow, stopped at a house she’d been to a few times before but not many. In her arms, a blanket, or rather what was under the blanket, squirmed. The unusual parcel stuck out a single foot from the thick blanket, and upon meeting the cold air, decided that the temperature was just right, and stopped squirming for the most part.
The Captain smiled. That was just like her son, to sleep through the cold walk like that. Despite her struggling to hold him as he just seemed to get heavier during the trip, despite the itchy wool blanket, despite the freezing snow, the boy just slept through it. She held him close and approached the house.
The one tree outside it was as bare in the cold winter as it would ever be in the summer, and given that no one had ever bothered to cut it down, it had now become just a part of the landscape. The curtains of the house were drawn, but the Captain could see an ever dim light coming from the inside of the house. When she stepped up the creaking steps to the door, she saw the rest of the address numbers had fallen off, and had been painted back onto the door.
She took a deep breath, and knocked.
No answer.
Of course, she really should have expected that.
As carefully as she could to make sure her sleeping bundle did not wake up, she knocked louder and more insistently. Heavy footsteps came from inside as the occupant shuffled his way to the door and yanked it open.
“What the fuck d-” the ram horned man impatiently started, but faltered when he saw the Captain, and stopped completely when he saw her son in her arms, a swaddle of blanket with one foot sticking out. “Puffy?”
“Hi, Schlatt.”
The man looked about as puzzled as he did tired. And a bit annoyed. “What are you doing here?”
“Jeez man, not a ‘How you been?’ or a ‘Come in’, huh?” the Captain said, keeping her voice low. She shouldn’t have expected anything else.
“Oh, uh. Come in, I guess.”
The Captain rolled her eyes at him and slipped past him into the living room of the house. Once she wasn’t steaming from both the cold and annoyance, she mumbled a “Thanks.”
The inside of the house was at least better taken care of than the outside, and Puffy was thankful for that. Seeing the state of the exterior nearly made her rethink her choice and turn around and walk away on the spot. But she couldn’t afford to do that.
Schlatt pinched the bridge of his nose and just sat down on the couch, urging the Captain to do the same. He looked back at the bundle Puffy was still holding close. “That… That’s the kid, huh? He’s gotten a lot bigger since I last saw him.”
Puffy held a faint smile as she looked down at the sleeping boy. “Yeah, he sure has.” She looked up at Schlatt with apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t visit as often as I should. I know Tubbo sure likes visiting his favorite uncle.”
“I’m his only uncle.”
“So favorite by default, but still. The kid should get to see his only other family at least once in a while.”
“He’s still happy though. Look at him. Sleeping like a log.”
“A log that likes to kick, sure.” Puffy sighed, deciding on her next words. It did make sense to put it off, that would only make it more difficult. “Schlatt, I have to be honest. I… can’t do this anymore.”
“What, the whole pirate thing?”
“No, not that. Well, in a way, yes, but I’m talking about…” She turned to her son, wishing for any other conversation at the moment. “I can’t take care of a child. Not in my line of work. At least, not anymore.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Just, steal shit by day and be home to take care of the kid by night. Simple.”
“It’s not simple, Schlatt. I can’t do anything with the ship now that the whole lake has dried up and you know it. I can’t even sell it ‘cause no one needs a boat when there’s no water,” the Captain said. Her hands idly combed through Tubbo’s hair. “I heard about a new job, with a new crew. The problem is, it’s a starship. I don’t want Tubbo to have to go through the hassle of space travel when he’s just a toddler. It’s too dangerous for him. But… I need the money. We need the money.”
“Are you saying…?”
“I’m saying that I— I need you to look after Tubbo for a while. I’ll send money, I promise, but… I just can’t take care of him on that starship.”
Her brother went quiet, his eyes staring ahead at a spot on the coffee table, taking in the situation. He was tired and his sister had just asked him to take care of her son. Schlatt didn't know anything about children, especially not one this young, but… He did care about both his sister and his nephew.
"Can— can't you find other work? Drop the whole 'life of crime' thing and settle down?"
"They know my face. I'm a well known captain of a thieving crew, I won't just get away with that." Again, Schlatt looked away, so Puffy rushed on, "Look, I know it's a lot. If I had anyone else, I… You're his only other family, and I want him to have someone there for him if he ever grows his horns or his little toes turn into little hooves."
"Will he even get hooves or horns?"
"I don't know. But I do know that he needs his family, Schlatt, and I can't take him with me."
The ram-horned man sighed a deep breath, then held out his arms. "Let me hold him."
Puffy carefully handed the bundle over to her brother. The boy stretched and gave a tiny yawn, opening big blue eyes.
"Is he always this quiet?" Schlatt asked as though the answer would change his mind. It wouldn't.
"Not always, no, but he's not loud, either," she said softly. "He's a happy kid. A smart one, too; I think almost anything can entertain him."
It slowly dawned on Schlatt why Puffy cared so much for this kid. He considered it. Raising his nephew as his own son, just for a little while. Could he really support both of them? At the very least, he would have to start portioning his meals, and he wasn't even sure what the toddler would eat. But Puffy was right. Tubbo needed his family.
"I'll… I'll take care of him," Schlatt decided. "Just make sure you come back soon, a'ight?" The lil guy's gonna miss you.
"As soon as I can," Puffy promised. She wiped at her eyes with the sleeves of her worn out coat and rose from the couch, brushing a hand through her son’s hair as a goodbye. “I gotta get going. Sparklez is an understanding guy, but I don’t wanna keep the whole crew waiting.”
It was smart of them to leave at night, Schlatt thought. Less people watching the skies, and by the time anyone realized a ship had illegally left the atmosphere, they’d be long gone.
“Have fun in space, I guess?”
Puffy smiled. “I will.” And with a kiss to blond curls that have not yet turned their dark brown, she left.
Schlatt held the sleepy toddler as they looked on at footprints in the fresh snow, and said, “Looks like it’s just me and you, kid.” In response, Tubbo babbled back at him.
What had he gotten himself into…?
"Techno says he found a booth that has model planes from Earth!" Tommy yelled right in Tubbo's ear over the crowd.
"There's no way those are real. They have to be fakes," Tubbo said, holding a hand over the ear that Tommy just screamed into.
Tommy crossed his arms. "Techno says they're real. He would know, being a history major an' all."
Tubbo scoffed. Techno, the history major, knew everything about Earth according to Tommy. Tubbo was pretty sure Techno was pulling Tommy's leg half the time, but Tommy believed him either way.
"Alright, I'll come see in a minute. I'm already in line at this one and I don't want to lose my spot," Tubbo relented.
Tommy gave him a smack on the back. "See you in a bit, Tubso!" Then he dashed back the way he came.
It was particularly hot that day, and Tubbo hated standing in one spot for so long, but the line for this booth was particularly long and he had already made it this far, so he was staying. This booth was really popular, since the guy that ran it made his own miniature robots, and even if he didn't have the money for one, Tubbo still wanted to be able to see one. He picked at his fingernails, shifted from foot to foot in the long line, and let his eyes wander in impatience.
The opposite way down the street that Tommy had ran, a large truck was filled to the brim with cargo, yet workers were still trying to fill it with more boxes and bags from the cargo bay of a nearby building. The large, stenciled spray paint above the cargo bay read Property of XD Research Facility .
Phil had said something about visiting Kristin at work as a surprise after their trip to the market, since it was so close by, and Tubbo briefly wondered if he might see her among the workers outside. It was unlikely, though; she was probably busy in the lab. She had gone in early that morning, saying there was something important going on at the lab, and that she had to go right away. Did the important thing include moving what looked like everything out of the building?
Tubbo turned his attention back to the booth in front of him, studying the parts and pieces from a distance, but there was a buzz running through the crowd. The truck outside the research facility started to move with some of the workers hanging off the side with weapons to escort it, and people were clearing a path for it. As it made its way down the rocky street, chatter erupted like a wave throughout the customers of the market. Tubbo tried to listen in to the biggest game of Telephone he’d ever seen, but it proved difficult when even the people talking weren’t sure of what they were saying.
What's going on?
A loud groan resounded from a structure nearby.
From a worn out post of the XD Facility, a siren that looked like it had never seen a day of use crackled to life with a jarring blare. Between the siren’s cries, a voice over the speaker announced, “Attention! All civilians are instructed to evacuate the vicinity—" A person in the crowd shrieked. "—Repeat: All civilians are instructed to evacuate the vicinity. This includes the Market and neighboring streets—" Where is Tommy? "—Please exit safely and—" The speaker was cut off.
Down the street, he could hear Tommy shout his name while the crowd's panicked yells grew louder.
Seeing a building crumble and fall into itself, watching in slow motion as a thing you knew as solid and definite in the world simply collapses sparks one of those unidentifiable emotions. Like when you realize that your friends and strangers and everyone you’ve ever encountered and never will all live their own lives separately from yours, on their own time, and that time is not yours. It will pass by before you even know it. Things you care about and things you’ve only paid a bit of attention to all end, just the same.
But that, of course, only lasts a second before you realize you are no longer safe. Before that feeling of vertigo, as your feet are planted firmly on ground that is no longer firm itself.
Tubbo tried to run, but so did every other person caught in the storm of footsteps and breaking ground. The ripples of explosions beneath the surface gave the appearance that the cobbled road was no longer solid at all, but a wave that carried stray rocks and dirt with it.
A blinding light, a feeling of weightlessness.
Vertigo.
When he woke up, everything hurt.
His bones ached, and his right side seared with a white hot pain, and he was blinded by it, that sensation of pain yet numbness at the same time. A disorientating fog covered part of his vision.
And the constant ringing in his ears was giving him a headache, to add insult to injury.
It took a few minutes laying in the rubble for Tubbo to fully understand where he was and what had happened. To remember the blast. The fall.
“Hello?” he choked out, coughing soot out of his lungs. His voice echoed the cold walls of the strange place he must have fallen into. All echo and no answer. He tried shouting for Phil, Wilbur, Tommy, anyone, but they all yielded the same answer. Silence.
He considered just curling up on the ground and sobbing, but no tears would come out if he did. He was always told as a sick kid, crying makes it worse. So eventually he just stopped.
He sat up, feeling bruised down to the very bone, and got a good look at the place. Soft sunlight was streaming in from a craterous hole in the ceiling, and just below that, a pile of rubble and concrete. It was strange. Tubbo woke up a good few feet away from the rubble, but common sense told him he should have been trapped below it, or at least on top of it. That is, if he fell through that crumbled hole in the ceiling. He was grateful, either way. Being crushed underneath a ton of concrete didn’t sound like a nice way to spend his Tuesday.
He needed to do something about the burns he got from the blast. Whatever divine force that caused him to miraculously land away from the rubble had also decided to spare his backpack, which looked like it had been tossed aside as an afterthought. It didn’t have a first aid kit, but it did have the next best thing: a bottle of water and bandages. At least his hands wouldn’t have to suffer while trying to get out of here.
Conserving as much water as possible, Tubbo washed the burns on his hands and half-heartedly wrapped the bandages around his palms and between his fingers, and once he was done with them, it looked like he had been gearing up for a fight. Now that his hands were taken care of, he dug through his bag for his communicator and pulled out a shattered mess of a screen with missing buttons. Fuck .
He flopped down flat on his back with an added yelp when his ribs screamed at him for the offense.
He had no way of contacting the only semblance of family he had left. If they were even out of range of whatever explosion had dragged him down to this hellish underground tunnel.
Had they even made it out?
Was Tubbo the only one left?
Either way, this is just what he gets, right? What a cosmic joke.
Without a flashlight, he was not about to explore the dark cavernous hallway behind him, so the only unfortunate option left was going up.
He carefully tested each foothold of the pile of rock and concrete before putting his weight in each spot. His hands still burned, but the bandage wrapping was better than nothing. It took a while, but Tubbo was eventually able to reach the crumbling ledge of the hole in the ceiling and painstakingly pull himself out. He rolled out onto the concrete sidewalk and coughed the dust out of his lungs, only to be replaced with the same kind of dusty haze which appeared to be the city’s new and improved form of pollution for the day.
Though he couldn't see it through the haze, he felt the sun warm his skin, just as it had been seconds before the blast. Everything had been so normal… until it hadn't. Bright flashes and vertigo still fought to make him nauseous, to make him double over and cry like he wanted to, but there’s a time for that and it isn’t now.
Tubbo shook his head to clear his thoughts and looked around the deserted area, though it was hard to see through the thick, dusty smog in the air. Some of the market stands had collapsed in the chaos, but others were perfectly intact, all in a radius around the research facility. It was unsettling how quiet it was, save for the crunching of boots hitting the dirt in a uniform rhythm. He didn't even need to see that far through the haze to know it was an Officer, a big gun pressed close to his chest, making his way through the smog looking for survivors. Somehow, this filled Tubbo with more dread than if he were alone.
Sure enough, the Officer spotted him on the concrete and pulled his radio out of his shirt pocket to tell the others that he had found a survivor. Then he approached Tubbo and said, "Were you here when the blast went off, young man?"
Tubbo almost found it comical. Here he was, on the ground, covered in burns and visibly having just crawled out of a hole in the ground, and the Officer really just asked him that. He couldn't bring himself to speak, though, so he just nodded.
The Officer said plainly and so devoid of personality that Tubbo thought the guy could be an android if those weren’t illegal, “Alright, I’ll notify the hospital and have an ambulance come to make sure you’re okay.”
That couldn't happen. If they took him to the hospital, they'd scan his ID and find out he's been living without a legal guardian for over a year now. It might make it easier to find his friends, but then they might scan Phil's ID and find out things they weren’t supposed to, and… That just couldn't happen. He quickly shook his head and almost wished he hadn’t when slight nausea creeped into the back of his throat.
Under his helmet, the Officer didn’t miss a beat. “It’s standard to bring all near or involved in an accident to the hospital. It’s for your safety.”
Tubbo did his best to stand up to show the Officer that he was fine, really . His legs tried to argue with him, no you are not , as pins and needles shot through him, but Tubbo decided he could stand anyway. He had to.
He needed to tell the Officer that he was okay, he didn't need any help. He needed to say so many things, to yell for Phil or anyone, but he just couldn't. That dry, chapped feeling when you haven't spoken in a while, when your lips feel like they could crack and split if you spoke your mind; it's pervasive. He didn't want to say anything to this guy or anyone. He just wanted to go home.
But the Officer couldn't understand any of that, so he just shrugged, shook his head, and started walking away. It wasn't like there was anything the guy could do. With every step, Tubbo grew more and more sure that the Officer actually was an android, as all it did was tell him to stop as it stayed unmoving in its place. Weird. Dream must be one hell of a hypocrite to make androids illegal but then use them to enforce the law.
Ignoring every wince of pain, Tubbo kept walking. Every step was a crack, a crunch of ruined concrete. What had really happened to this place? What happened to make Tubbo wake up underground, but saved from the rubble that should have crushed him?
A crunch of concrete that Tubbo was fairly certain he didn't make solved the mystery as to why the Officer made no move to follow him. He stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. He couldn't see the Officer anymore through the haze, but that didn't matter. The sound hadn't come from behind him.
Something was lurking. Sculking.
The hairs that weren't singed off of Tubbo's neck stood on end. Out of everything that this plague had changed and the chaos it brought, this, to Tubbo, was the worst. The ones with the sickness that weren't quite Husks yet. The ones that hide and watch and wait for someone to slip up. The ones who still have the brain function to think, but not any sense of fear, and a reason to be angry. They hide and watch and lurk and they are mad at the world for letting this happen to them.
And the haze made a perfect spot for them to hide.
Tubbo held his breath. No other sound came, but Tubbo felt eyes on him. He just wished he knew from where .
Why does silence seem to have its own heartbeat?
Carefully, he took a step in the opposite direction, away from the now quiet sound of footsteps, away from the crumbled mess of a lab, away from the far away walls of the SMP that he couldn't see, but always loomed there no matter how close they were.
A form seemed to materialize through the smog, a mess of what was left of a person. They lurched forward toward Tubbo, but there was something off about them. They didn't have the same bloody knuckles, the same yellow fingernails. They didn't cough up blood and there was way too much going on behind their eyes.
They charged.
Adrenaline can surprise you, can make you do things you didn't know you could. In that moment for Tubbo, that was the simple act of running. He darted off the street and into an alley as he heard a stunner go off behind him. He didn't turn around.
It didn't matter to him how his legs burned and a few of his joints popped. The only thing that mattered was getting away. Get away, get away, get away.
The only thing that stopped him, just for a moment, was the sprawled out figure of another Officer on the ground ahead of him.
Tubbo couldn't tell if they were dead or not, but as he approached, it was clear that they weren't even alive to begin with.
The android had been hit over the head with something, and it wasn't blood that seeped out onto the ground. The tar-like substance that came from the Officer andoid mixed with the dirt below into an awful mud, and though it wasn't even a human, was never even alive, Tubbo felt like he was going to be sick.
A stunner lay just a few feet away from the decommissioned android, and there just had to be something good coming out of all of this, so Tubbo picked up the large gun and continued running, because that's all Tubbo could think about anymore. Running.
He thought about his goal. Home. Or at least, Tommy’s house. His own house hadn’t truly been his in years. The government claimed it as soon as Schlatt got sick enough to need hospitalization, and that left nowhere for Tubbo to go except to show up at Tommy’s doorstep, miles away in the dead of night. He’d done it before, he could get there again.
In reality, though, his stumbling, limping jog only carried him two neighborhoods over.
The foundations of the houses around him finally stopped looking as though they'd cave in when he slowed down and heaved labored breaths. Despite the more intact look to the street he was on, it was as still silent here as it was a few streets back.
Remembering the etiquette he'd been taught if he ever needed a place to stay (which was much too often), Tubbo picked a house with open curtains and unlit lights and slammed the door behind him once he got inside. He slid down with his back against the inside door, catching his breath.
The first thing he did was close all of the curtains, which luckily were still intact and hadn't been stolen by raiders. In the sudden dark, the dim light strips in the wall kicked on, illuminating an eerie light throughout the few rooms of the house.
Tubbo knew better than to trust a place this quiet. He searched every room for a sign that someone was there, but couldn't find any signs of anyone currently there, husk or human. But there were other signs, signs Tubbo didn't want to think about.
Although thick dust hung in the air, only a thin layer covered the countertops and surfaces of the house. There were dirty clothes in the laundry basket, clean ones hanging up in the laundry room. A bowl sat on the kitchen table with the dregs of cereal and milk from a morning meal someone had had, but Tubbo could see the start of spots in the milk and flies buzzing around. Other dishes lay in the sink, also gathering dust.
The pantry, though rather bare, still had boxes and cans of food in it. The towels hadn't been stolen from the bathroom yet. The beds—there were two—were both unmade, as if those who slept in them expected to come right back. That sick feeling crawled back up into Tubbo's throat when he found the toys in the kid's room still set up in formations of a story unfinished. Of a child's life not lived.
Whoever lived in this house meant to come back, but neither ever did. And Tubbo could guess where they were now. The same place that burned his face and bruised his body. A tomb of concrete and dirt and gunpowder and the weeds that grew from the ruin. They had gone to the market just like him. Just like his brothers.
Despite the hot, dry temperature inside, he shivered.
No matter how uneasy he felt in the house that was so well trapped in time, Tubbo needed to treat his burns. A quick search through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom proved helpful, giving him enough bandages to wrap the burns on his face. By the window was a poor looking aloe plant, which from the looks of it hadn't been watered in several days, but it was better than nothing.
He avoided looking into the mirror like, well, the plague. A good portion of his face felt numb, and although Tubbo wasn't a doctor in the slightest, that didn't seem like a good sign.
Sitting on the cold bathroom tile, wrapping his arms with bandages, Tubbo wondered about his family. It was selfish that he hadn't thought much about them until now, until he was safe. He wondered if they had made it out, if they had lived. If they had lived . He didn't like lingering on that thought.
He thought of his communicator, its cracked and bloody screen. The thing looked about as bad as Tubbo felt. In a time that seemed so very far away, Tommy’s older brother had given him that communicator. He said it was his old one and that Tommy already had one, so it only made sense to give it to Tubbo. He had never had an older brother, or a brother at all, but in that moment, Tommy’s family felt like closer family than his own uncle. But maybe he wasn’t giving Schlatt enough credit. Either way, Tubbo wouldn’t be contacting any of them any time soon, not with the useless communicator. At least the module that pops out to show his identification still works.
In the end there was only so much he could do about wrapping the burns on his face. It felt clumsy and unsubstantial, but it was the best he could do without covering both eyes. And being able to see, at least out of one eye, seems pretty important.
As dusk fell, Tubbo grew restless.
He had walked the entirety of the house several times, tracing an arcing path of the floor plan (he made sure to avoid the photos framed on the wall. He covered the family portrait in the living room and steered clear of it, as if giving it it’s own space). Some of the floorboards creaked, others squeaked, and some bowed under the weight of his footsteps. There was one in particular that was shifted in its place, it wasn’t nailed down. It was in the living room under the sofa, and if Tubbo pushed down on the end of one of the floorboards, the other would lift up.
It could have been just natural wear and tear of the floor, but he had seen Schlatt's habits of hiding things in the couple of years before he had gotten sick. If there was anywhere to hide something useful or valuable, it would be under the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. Thank whatever god there was that Tubbo had learned some tricks from his doomsday prepper of an uncle.
Unfortunately for the doomsday preppers, however, Doomsday is not a day. It is the slow buildup over years of people making their lives worse for themselves, and not doing anything to fix it out of pure convenience. Oh, I'll stop tomorrow , and I'm not going to make a difference by myself . The excuses one can make while preparing for hell on earth to come in a day, ignoring the fact that slowly their own life is turning into its own little hell.
While Tubbo's life had changed in a day, it wasn't the day that blew up that lab and the market around it. It was the people who planted the explosives. It was the people who detonated them. It was the people who knew that it was going to happen and instead of finding a better solution, they evacuated the lab of everything important and let the surrounding area suffer. Somehow, it was Dream. Even if he couldn't prove it.
Tubbo pushed away the sofa, kicking up more dust, and pried at the floorboard with his chipped fingernails, and eventually wedged it open. In a space under the board was an old leather briefcase that fortunately wasn't locked, or else Tubbo would be out of luck. He heaved it out of the hole in the floor, which it just barely managed to fit through, and opened it up.
On the inside was an engraving of the owner of the briefcase, who Tubbo didn't recognize, but it was safe to assume it belonged to the same person that owned the house. Carefully wrapped in scraps of an old shirt was a black portable radio. The radio was a surprise, but even more astonishing to Tubbo was the full jar of honey, which had to be worth a pretty penny. He couldn't remember the last time he saw a honey bee that wasn't hatched in a lab.
The other things were an odd assortment of basic survival wares. A lighter, a first-aid kit that was smaller and more compact than the one in the bathroom, a fur-lined coat which had been out of season for about 16 years now, an electric flashlight and it's charging port, as well as a smaller battery operated flashlight which surely had corroded batteries by now.
A view into the past, no, someone’s past. Another one of those unidentifiable emotions again. The feeling of years gone by in a blink, time capsules being forgotten, people continuing to live despite everything, despite it all. The feeling that everyone you’ve ever encountered and never will all live their own lives on their own time. At the same time, it was empty malls, days that were too quiet, and finding an outdated coin in the dirt. He didn’t know the name on the engraving, but he wished he did.
Tubbo closed the briefcase. It was useful, that’s for sure, but not now. Not right now.
Instead, he tucked it into the corner of the living room, at the side of the sofa which he pushed back in place over the replaced floorboard. He kept the fur lined coat out of the briefcase and examined it. It had several pockets, inside and out. He checked them for money, anything, but it didn’t seem like the coat was very used, which made sense. It was too damn hot for that.
So he took the coat and laid it out on the floor in the corner like a blanket. He took his backpack and arranged it like an uncomfortable, lumpy pillow, and made sure the empty stunner was placed by his head so he could grab it quickly if anything happened. Not that he could fire it, but a threat is better than nothing.
Soon the only light in the house came from the glow of the night lights. The dust had finally begun to settle, creating a thick film over everything. Tubbo wasn’t quite sure just how long he could stay here. If there was anything he had learned from traveling in between stays with Tommy’s family, it was that remaining in one place too long could be dangerous. He couldn’t go to any of his usual spots for fear of being found, and Tubbo did not want to be found by anyone who was not part of his unofficial family. Besides that, the adrenaline from waking up in a crater had worn off, and there was no way Tubbo could physically bring himself to find another place to sleep for the night. The painkillers he found could only do so much.
He would have to wait to get back to Tommy’s house, but he needed the rest. He knew that was where he needed to go, though. Maybe they had made it out and went back to the house to hide out for a little while. Maybe they didn’t even know he was alive. But he had to get there, he decided. He had to know they were still alive, maybe even waiting for him.
And so, he settled down to sleep next to the sofa, in the corner, hiding away from the world.
That was, until he heard the creaking of the back door. The one door that, of course, he’d forgotten to lock.
He was alert in an instant, but he didn't move. The way he was laying allowed him to see the rest of the room easily. Tubbo was suddenly glad he was careful.
He intently watched the entrance to the hallway across the room. The creaking continued, moving slowly along the floor. Each step sounded careful and deliberate, yet still landed heavy on the old worn out floor. Whoever was in the house clearly knew they were somewhere they weren't supposed to be, but then again, so was Tubbo. Then, after what seemed like an age of holding his breath, the figure appeared through the hallway.
Tubbo wasn't sure what he was looking at, at first. The figure in question was tall. So tall, they had to stoop over to fit under the low ceiling. There was hardly any light to distinguish what they looked like other than that. No evening light shone through the closed curtains, an obvious universal sign that someone was staying here, and did not want visitors, but the intruder didn't seem to understand that. Or worse, they didn't care.
There was one sure thing about the stranger in question. They weren't human. Not in the way that Techno or Wilbur, with their pig-like features, were different from other humans. This figure was just not human. Alien, one might say.
They crept across the floor of the living room, pressed against a wall. Once it seemed they had surveyed the place for any life and found nothing, the intruder sank to the floor and breathed a sigh of relief, obviously feeling safe for the first time in a while. Tubbo saw this as an advantage.
"So, you come here often?" Tubbo said from his corner, his sarcastic words seeming more like an announcement of his presence. The intruder screamed and jumped up, hitting their head (horns?) on the ceiling and hunching over again, holding their hands to their head. Tubbo seized the opportunity and grabbed the Stunner he had set out, and jumped to his feet as quickly as possible without making himself sick. He pointed the gun at the intruder, and even though the Stunner was empty, the person in front of him didn't know that.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean— I didn't know someone was here. I should leave—" they said, and Tubbo would think that they were bluffing so they could get away, if only they didn't sound so genuinely freaked out.
"Yeah, you should. The curtains were closed," Tubbo cut them off, his gun still trained on them. "Why did you even come in?"
"I…" they mumbled. "It’s about to rain and I don't know where to go. The door wasn't locked so I thought— I thought it was abandoned."
Tubbo wasn't sure what to make of this. Everyone knew the curtain rule, unless they were from out of town or perhaps a nicer neighborhood. If the curtains were closed, you did not go into that house. If they were open, either no one was home or they were friendly or naïve enough to share their shelter. If the curtains were gone completely, well, someone probably stole them to use as blankets. Tubbo had made sure to close every curtain in the run down house.
"You don't have any weapons?"
"No!" they quickly responded. "All I have is… is right here in this bag," they said, and slung something that looked like a duffel bag off their shoulder, then set it on the floor in between them and held their hands up in surrender. It seemed so ironic. This giant of a person, an alien , who had to be seven feet tall at least, seemed terrified of Tubbo, a kid covered in lopsided bandages, a kid who had to lean against the sofa to make sure he didn't fall over.
Tubbo had two choices: trust the stranger was telling the truth and risk being mugged, or turn the stranger away. He was certainly wary of this person, but he knew if he did the latter, it would eat away at him, knowing he might have just turned away someone in need of shelter.
"Okay," Tubbo said, lowering the Stunner. "I want to make sure though. Can I check your bag?"
"I… uh, yeah."
Using his gun to loop through the strap, Tubbo pulled the bag toward himself, keeping an eye on the stranger. Now that he could see it closer, he could tell it was some sort of canvas medical bag. He unbuttoned it and rifled through its contents, which strangely only consisted of a mess of papers, as well as a leather-bound journal, stuffed with more pages from other books in between it's own messy pages. He briefly considered opening up the journal, but then thought better of it. Strangest of all was the surgical scissors he found at the bottom, as well as a jar of some weird alien plant. Nevermind the plant, who carries around surgical scissors?
He pocketed the scissors to avoid getting stabbed in the future, closed the bag back up, and pushed it back to the stranger.
"What's your name?"
The tall one seemed to pause, considering, before they said, "Ranboo."
"Where are you from, Ranboo?"
The tall alien seemed genuinely confused. "I don't—I'm not sure."
"You're not sure?"
"Well, biologists call it Enderia, or, I guess you’d call it The End? But I don't… really remember it," Ranboo said, fidgeting with the ends of their sleeves.
"The En—hold on, are you an Enderman? "
Tubbo's curiosity was piqued. It was dark enough that he couldn't see what the stranger looked like at all besides the fact they seemed to take up more of the room than anyone Tubbo had ever known. Strange shapes cast themselves along the walls in the little luminescence coming from the dim strips in the wall. Enough light to discern shapes, but little enough light to distort those shapes into something odd. In order to see his new house guest better, Tubbo reached over and turned on a lamp on the end table.
Now that Tubbo could see them clearer, it only raised more questions.
They really were as tall as they seemed, and they looked to be divided into two halves, black and white. The pattern on their skin reminded Tubbo of the old photographs of cows in the history books he'd flipped through as a kid. Almost no part of them seemed human, but the best Tubbo could describe them as would be human shaped.
Their clothes were ragged, but that wasn’t uncommon. Tubbo didn’t even want to think about the shape his own were in. They wore a dark blue flannel over a shirt that used to be white at some point. Really, the only strange thing about their attire, besides the fact that it somehow fit loosely on someone as tall as them. Or why an alien was wearing tattered human clothes.
Ranboo startled a bit at the sudden light in the room and looked away, hugging his knees closer to his chest. "Yeah, I am."
Tubbo decided to take the leap and put two and two together. It wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge, but word gets around and Kristin had told him about the xenobiologists working on bringing back the Enderian subjects that had been found in cryo pods. Tubbo didn’t know how much of that was true, since Kristin often joked around a lot, but he decided to take her word for it. "So, you're from that lab that blew up, yeah? The XD Research Facility ?"
The alien tensed, and though they still didn't look up at Tubbo, their eyes kept jumping between focus points, nervous. "I mean, I wasn't really planning on telling anyone that, but, yeah? How did you know that?"
Tubbo just stared at them—an Enderman on the Overworld like a fish out of water—blankly and said, "Lucky guess."
Ranboo shifted uncomfortably where they were sitting, and Tubbo got the sense that they really didn't want him to ask further. So they deflected, "You didn't tell me your name."
Now it was Tubbo's turn to look away, this time in embarrassment. In his need to analyze, to find any reason to tell this invader to get out of the house so he could just be alone and safe, he acted a bit too much like an interrogator.
"Oh! Shit, sorry. I'm Tubbo," he said, his cheeks feeling warm from the embarrassment.
"Nice to meet you Tubbo," Ranboo said. Tubbo would beg to differ seeing as he had practically just scared the shit out of them, but they seemed to mean it.
"Right, well, Ranboo, you… you can stay here tonight," Tubbo decided aloud. "If you were lying though, I still have this Stunner, which is definitely loaded." He winced internally at the comically blatant lie.
They breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Thank you so much, really," and it seemed to Tubbo like they held the world in their eyes. What kind of life must they have had to be this scared?
A light pattering sound came from the roof, growing louder with each second. Tubbo groaned and laid flat down on his coat-blanket pallet on the floor. The rain was here.
Ranboo crept up from their spot on the floor to the window, cautiously pulling back the curtain to see. The light from inside illuminated the raindrops closest to the window and Ranboo looked on with wide eyes.
“What’s the matter? Never seen rain, Big Man?” Tubbo asked.
Ranboo shook their head out of their thoughts. “Not really..? I mean, I’ve never seen it in person. There aren’t windows in the wing of the lab that I stayed in. And… I really shouldn’t go out in the rain. Bad idea.”
Tubbo tilted his head to the side. “Why not?”
“It’s water," they said, as if that explained everything.
Tubbo just stared blankly at Ranboo.
Ranboo stammered on, “I get, uh— Water burns Endermen. Our skin is really sensitive and it’s, like, too acidic.”
“ Water is too acidic? ”
“Well… yeah.”
“It’s not an acid.”
“I don’t make the rules, man,” Ranboo said. They rubbed the back of their neck and tapped their foot on the floor. “I just know: water? Ouch.”
Tubbo was confused. "What do you drink, then?"
"I can still drink just water. It really just burns my skin, nothing else," Ranboo said, rolling up the sleeve on their right arm. "I got water on my arm one time and it kinda ate the scales away." They held out their arm as if saying, See?
Tubbo stepped a bit closer and they were right. Large but very thin scales covered their arm like armored plates. In a small patch, however, where there should have been healthy scales, there were damaged scales and scarred skin.
He glanced back at their left side, which had no scales at all. What happened to get rid of that many scales? It had to be something pretty distressing, so Tubbo didn't ask.
"So stuff like lemon juice and all that would kill you on the spot, yeah?"
Ranboo let out a snort of laughter, "Pretty much, yeah. I think if I even looked at a glass of lemonade I would disintegrate."
"Wait, so what about like, soda? Does that burn?" Tubbo once again felt bad about all the questions, but he was just too curious and Ranboo for whatever reason didn't seem to mind.
"I don't really know, and I'm not looking to test my luck."
A flash of light and thunder crackled outside, interrupting the only decent conversation Tubbo had had in a few days. His hands shot to his ears and he jerked back from the window. Though Tubbo's ears had stopped ringing after a few hours, that feeling was back, drowning out the rain and the concerned deep voice saying… something.
His eyes were squeezed shut while somewhere off in another world he felt a hand pensively placed on his shoulder. He felt unsteady on his feet, swaying until the hand that didn't feel real led him a few steps back to the sofa. The air seemed thick and threatened to press down on him and he was trapped; both under the ghost of concrete and dirt, and his own moment of fight, flight, or freeze. And he had chosen to freeze.
He had to think. Where was he? If he breathed, would his lungs fill with debris?
"—bo?"
Tubbo let out a slow, shaky breath. It was not full of concrete.
More thunder rolled in the distance. Tubbo just counted the seconds as he breathed; he was aware of that now. Too aware of the air and how it hasn't been clean air in ages, but aware that it wasn't the air of a building that had collapsed damn near on top of him.
"Are you—are you alright?"
It took focus and effort, but Tubbo opened his eyes. The threadbare, scratchy carpet hadn't moved, and the walls lit up with dim glowing strips remained almost frustratingly in place. He slowly nodded his head and though he had to force it, he mumbled, "'M okay." The words tasted bitter in his mouth.
The alien, Ranboo, hummed at this, as if they weren't sure what to make of Tubbo's short answer. They were standing with their hands awkwardly clasped together a few steps away, giving Tubbo his space, which he was grateful for.
The burns on Tubbo's face began to sting. Sting from the salty tears that agitated them as the weight of everything came crashing down. A weight that Tubbo would just be forced to pick back up and put back on the shelf as if nothing had happened. His family could be dead and there's a stranger in a house that's not his and there's not a damn thing he can do.
Correction: Tubbo never really did learn to stop crying. He just learned how to hide it.
He wiped away a tear from his one good eye, so as to not concern Ranboo any more than they already were. It would be awkward for them to have to console a stranger.
The only thing Tubbo could think about now was how tired he was. He left the sofa and half-heartedly gestured to Ranboo, You can sleep in there , pointing to a room down the hall hoping they would understand and he curled back up on top of his bundle of blankets in the corner. Ranboo understood what he meant after a confused look and rambled, "Are you sure? I can sleep on the couch in here and you could have the room, I mean, I'm the one who barged in here."
It took effort and really focusing on the words, but Tubbo said, "I like the sofa better. It's easier to keep watch and make sure no one else tries to get in." It was a lighthearted jab at Ranboo, but it was true. This area obviously wasn't the safest, especially with all the lurkers, and besides, sleeping in the living room just reminds Tubbo of the old days when he would sleep over at Tommy's.
Strange. Late sleepovers were already “the old days.” Had it been a day? A week since he had slept comfortable on a sofa or a bundle of blankets on the floor with friends close by? He couldn’t tell anymore, and it was strange . When do you realize that things aren’t going to be the same? Is it all at once, or is it slowly realizing the little things that you can’t go back to right away?
Ranboo's gaze fell to the floor and their tail curled around their own leg. "Sorry for — just… Thank you. For letting me stay here, I mean."
Tubbo nodded, and mumbled, “Sure, big man,” and with that, Ranboo was on their way to their room. Tubbo lied, though, about sleeping on the sofa. A little white lie, of course, but something told him he shouldn’t have that comfort. He’d rather sleep on a coat on the floor with a backpack as his pillow than wake up on the sofa in the morning and, for just one second, think that he was safe.
The exhaustion seeped back into his bones, and though he would like to say he stayed vigilant just in case his new housemate wasn’t as harmless as they seemed, he passed out on the spot.