Chapter Text
Tubbo feels heavy in his sleep and he tries to shift positions, but he finds that he’s unable to. He opens his eyes in a squint, only half awake. Alex is carrying the boy as they walk through a bright corridor. Tubbo glances at the people walking with them in the emergency room. He sees officer Puffy and officer Techno, he sees a nurse and a doctor, he sees a hospital security guard, and he sees another woman. He notices the expression on the woman’s face. It’s a mixture between grief but also joy. This all feels like some sort of strange dream and Tubbo can’t seem to keep his eyes open for much longer. He closes them and drifts back into a deep sleep.
The next time that Tubbo wakes up, he finds himself in a bed huddled close to Alex. He opens his eyes and sees only white for a moment. He winces and rubs his face uncomfortably. After a few seconds his vision clears. Sitting up, Tubbo takes note of the bandage on his knee. It itches, having already started to scab. He also notices a blue band around his wrist, his name and information written in black ink on it.
Looking over at his papa, Tubbo sees the bruises on Alex’s neck starting to fade. He looks peaceful so the boy figures it’s best not to wake him. There’s a smaller bed to the right of them, untouched and unused. Tubbo climbs onto it and finds that it’s far more soft than the one they used in Room. Despite its comfort however, Tubbo can’t imagine himself sleeping without the comfort of Alex close to him.
He steps down and shivers at the sharp cold of the floor but he continues onward towards the large glass windows that take up a majority of the wall. The hospital suite is on one of the top floors of the building and Tubbo is in awe at the view in front of him as he peers down. There’s a park but it doesn’t look like many people are out walking. The sky looks gray and there’s a light sprinkle coming down from the clouds. Tubbo starts to realize just how far the ground is and he begins to panic. His breathing quickens and he scrambles back into the bigger bed.
“Papa! Papa!”
Alex’s eyes shoot open, fear taking over his senses before he realizes that everything is alright. The want to protect his son lingers as he pulls Tubbo in for a hug and plants a kiss on his head. “Good morning, dormilón.”
Tubbo already starts to feel better in the hold of his papa, his body slowly easing. “Are we on another planet?”
Alex gives a light chuckle and shades his head. “Nah, it’s the same one. We’re just in a different spot.” He thinks for a second about how he should go about explaining their current situation. “It’s a bedroom but in a hospital. We’re not sick though, we just have to stay here for a bit.”
“How long?” Tubbo asks with worry in his voice.
“Not long,” Alex reassures. “Abuela came to visit us last night. She’ll come get us once the doctors say we’re okay.”
“And Abuelo?”
“He was away because of work, but he’s on a plane right now to come home.”
Suddenly the hospital phone rings and Tubbo gasps. Alex is quick to reach over and answer the call, ending the disruptive ringing.
“Hello?” Tubbo listens to Alex speak. “Yeah, just right now.” The boy seems confused as to who his papa is talking to. “That’d be great. Can you bring it in 20 minutes?” What does he want this mystery voice to bring? “Okay, thank you.” Alex hangs up the phone and gets out of the bed.
Tubbo follows his papa into the bathroom and watches as Alex steps in front of the sink. “Hey Tubbo, c’mere.” The boy complies and Alex hoists him up onto his hip. “Look, that’s us,” he states as they both look into the mirror above the counter.
The two of them look like a mess compared to the clean, antiseptic walls. Their hair is tangled and their pale skin doesn't make them look any better. Tubbo can’t help but stare at Alex’s eye, his scar running deep from his eyebrow to his lip. He remembers when he found out how Alex got the scar in the first place.
“Papa, will he find us?..”
Alex’s smile turns into a frown and he sets Tubbo back down on the ground. “No. He will never find us. I promise.” It’s a promise that he’ll do everything in his power to keep.
Moving away from the sink, Alex finds the shower and turns the water on. Tubbo looks around the bathroom confused before asking, “where’s the bath?”
“This is a shower. It’s like a bath but more splashier,” Alex explains.
Tubbo shakes his head. “Bath before bed, that’s the rule!”
“There are no rules now. We can do what we want.”
Tubbo finds that unnerving. A world without rules seems chaotic and too unrestrictive for his liking.
The two sit on the bed dressed in white robes. Alex brushes out Tubbo’s wet hair as the boy stares out the window, finishing just as there’s a knock at the door.
“Papa, the door’s ticking!” Tubbo scurries to hide behind Alex as a man walks into the room.
“It’s okay, he’s just a doctor.”
“Hello there,” the man greets while a nurse rolls in a cart behind him. “I heard that everyone is awake.”
Tubbo looks down at the bedsheets, refusing to make eye contact with the doctor. Alex rubs his back in an effort to comfort him.
“Hi, Toby. How are you doing?” The doctor waits for a response but only receives silence. “You must be hungry.”
“Here, they brought us breakfast,” Alex points out as the doctor brings over the cart from earlier, the nurse having already left the room. “Let’s check out what we have.” Sitting on the cart are two plates with plastic lids covering them, each holding the same breakfast items: pancakes and fruit. Alex removes the lids and Tubbo stares at the strange food cautiously.
The doctor flips through a few papers before continuing on to more urgent matters. “I have some goodies for the both of you.” The doctor takes out two pairs of sunglasses, one clearly smaller than the other but the frames seem to be less tinted. “These will make you more comfortable if you need to go outside. The good thing is it’s cloudy today, but I still don’t recommend very much light exposure for the time being considering your..” the doctor gestures to Alex, or more specifically his scar. “..current state.” Alex understands and the doctor hands him a bottle of sunblock and a surgical mask next. “These are for Toby.”
Alex looks at the mask questionably, hesitant as to its purpose. “Is it really necessary?”
“There’s a lot of germs in the air. Germs that he hasn’t been exposed to yet,” the doctor informs. “It’ll help keep him from catching anything, at least until he gets a few of his immunizations. Oh!” He hastily reaches into his lab-coat pocket and gives Alex a bottle of pills. “My colleague recommended these for the pain in your wrist until we can schedule a surgery. We’ll also take a closer look at your eye before we do that, but we don’t have to do that right away. Just the sooner the better. Did you also consider what we talked about earlier?”
Alex tucks the pill bottle away in his robe and helps Tubbo cut into his pancakes, the entire stack now covered in syrup. “I did, but um.. I really just want to go home.”
The doctor nods his head in understanding but his face appears to be disappointed in a way, or perhaps more so sad. “Okay. You know my view. I just think that with everything you two have been through, it would really help ease his transition—”
“I know,” Alex interrupts. “Thank you, really, but I’ve made up my mind. Nothing happened to Tubbo, so he’s gonna be okay.. right?”
There’s a still in the conversation and the doctor considers his next words carefully. “The most important thing you did was get him out while he’s still plastic.”
The three of them suddenly hear voices, muffled but getting louder. The voices seem to be arguing and Alex looks around the room before standing up from the bed. He seems overwhelmed by both anxiousness and excitement. He walks towards the door just as it opens.
“…Papi?..” Alex stands there for a moment in disbelief before running up to a middle aged man with brown hair and a short beard. The two embrace each other in a hug before breaking down into tears.
A woman with long black hair walks in behind the man and turns her attention to the doctor. “I’m sorry, we just couldn’t wait any longer..”
“Don’t worry about it,” the doctor gives the woman a nod before exiting the room.
The woman notices Tubbo on the bed. He’s curled in on himself, hiding his face in his hands and pressing his chin close to his knees. He looks terrified so the woman stands back and gives him space. “Hello, Toby. Thank you. Thank you so much for saving our niño.” The woman begins to weep and Tubbo peeks between his fingers.
He swears that he’s seen her before, but he can’t quite remember where. He moves his hair out of his face so that he can get a better look and notices that the woman now has her arms wrapped around Alex as well. Are these the abuelo and abuela that his papa had been talking about?
Tubbo’s suspicions are confirmed a few minutes later when Alex finally breaks away from the hug. He sticks his hand out to his son and Tubbo creeps towards the adults, still choosing to hide before his papa timidly.
“These are your grandparents, Tubbo. You don’t have to be afraid, they won’t hurt you.” Alex runs his hand through Tubbo’s hair and the boy inches closer. His grandparents smile at him warmly.
Later in the afternoon, Alex and Tubbo decide to get some fresh air on the hospital roof. Tubbo sits on a wooden bench wearing a thick oversized jacket, sunglasses, and a facial mask. He watches Alex who jogs from one end of the roof to the other, dressed in a royal-blue tracksuit. He has on his own pair of sunglasses, but still seems physically irritated despite the cloud coverage preventing the sun from shining through.
Tubbo looks uncomfortable as he wipes at the sunblock on his face. The new shoes on his feet also seem to be a burden since he’s not used to wearing them yet. He gets up from the seat and runs to Alex when he sees his Abuelo and his Abuela walking towards them.
Alex picks Tubbo up, concerned for a moment before realizing that his son is just being shy. He sits Tubbo back down on the bench and hugs his parents again. There’s a clear closeness between the three but they break from the hug after a few seconds to take a seat beside Tubbo.
Alex wipes away tears as he listens to his father speak. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here last night. I was out of state and I couldn’t get a plane until four in the morning.”
“It’s okay, Papi. I know how hard you work. The good thing is you’re here now.”
There’s a beat of silence. Both of Alex’s parents seem tense, but his father moreso. He looks down at his hands before continuing. “Alex I.. Kristin and I lied about me being away on a business trip.”
Alex is stunned for a moment, both because of the lie but also at the fact that his father just addressed his mother by her first name. “I don’t understand.”
“I live there now,” his father explains.
Alex looks between his parents, still not sure how to handle the news. Kristin grabs his hand and offers a sympathetic look. “Mijo, there have been a lot of changes since you’ve been gone. Sam and I.. losing you was really hard on us. We didn’t know how to.. He and I…” She can’t seem to find the right words to say but she doesn’t need to. Alex knows what’s going on now.
“Um this is—” Alex takes in a shallow breath. He feels like the world is starting to spin, or maybe it’s just his world falling apart all over again. “—this is a lot to take in.”
“I’m sorry, Son. Truly I am. The lawyers, the detectives, everyone told us to assume that you were dead.”
“Everyone except me,” Kristin corrects.
“Everyone except your mother.. They said that in less than a year from now, they would have declared you dead.” Sam lets out a sob. He lays a hand over his eyes to hide his tears and Kristin takes over the conversation for him.
“We had different opinions on the matter. I wanted to keep looking but Sam felt like it was time to move on. Alex please don’t hold that against him. After so many years most of us were beginning to lose hope. The police were starting to give up and the media had already forgotten.”
Alex can feel tears of his own streaming down his cheeks. He has a countless amount of questions rushing in his mind. Had they really given up on him? It’s his fault that his parents divorced? They assumed he was dead?
“I’m so sorry, mijo,” Kristin apologizes for both herself and Sam as she wipes her tears. “We didn’t know how else to tell you. They said that we should talk to you together.”
Kristin looks upset to put it lightly. She looks almost ashamed and Alex debates pulling her in for a hug, but he feels motionless. He’s unable to process everything so soon.
Sam manages to find his voice again. “The doctors said that there was this other place to.. yknow, because it’s challenging to—”
“Challenging?” Alex cuts in “He has no idea what challenging is! He has no idea what we’ve been through! Nothing will ever compare to that!”
Tubbo flinches. He was barely paying attention to the conversation before and all of a sudden he hears yelling. It scares him until he realizes it’s his papa who’s being vocal.
“I told him we’re going home,” Alex clarifies bluntly. “Unless you’d prefer us—”
“Of course not!” Kristin rubs Alex’s hand reassuringly. “But if you’re coming home so soon.. there’s something else you should know. After Sam and I separated, there was someone else, someone you already know actually.”
Sam speaks quickly before Alex has a chance to say anything. “Phil is a good man. Your mother is much happier now. It’s a good thing.”
Tubbo tugs at Alex’s jacket feeling distressed. The rooftop is becoming too big for his liking. Alex turns to him with a frustrated look and Tubbo let’s go.
“I’m sorry, this is just too much to handle right now.” Alex reaches down and picks up Tubbo before heading back to their hospital room.
He feels like he’s about to have a panic attack and he doesn’t want his parents to see him in that state. He almost doesn’t make it back to the room, nearly breaking down in the middle of the hallway, but he forces himself to keep going. Finally closing the door behind him, he sets Tubbo down and rushes to the bathroom. Locking himself in before sliding to the floor and letting it all out. This is not at all how he imagined life would be after he made it out. Maybe it wasn’t so bad in Room.