Work Text:
Ranboo is missing, and Wilbur owes him an apology.
The two of them hadn’t seen each other in…. prime, how long had it been? Months? Ever since Wilbur’s disastrous plan and the explosion that ended it, Wilbur hadn’t been able to get Ranboo’s smile out of his mind.
Wilbur had a list of apologies to work down, and right now, after all the work he’d already put into it, Ranboo was at the top. The only issue was that the guy was still gone.
One of the newcomers on the server (he assumes, at least, he didn’t recognize them) points him towards Snowchester. Wilbur’s never properly looked at the town itself, only ever catching glimpses across the water from the prison. Now, though, his feet sink into the thick snow drifting over to the wall, piling itself until it seems like frost creeps up the stone.
Maybe if someone lived here still, the wall would be getting cleared. Now, though, Snowchester resembles a ghost town. Wilbur remembered Ranboo talking about Snowchester back at Wilburger, a whisper of a smile crossing his lips as he’d talked about Tubbo building it.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone in any of the houses. Maybe it didn’t just look like a ghost town.
If Ranboo is truly in Snowchester, he’s not in any of the smaller houses. Every single one of them stands empty and cold, some abandoned seemingly mid-activity, food sitting in long-extinguished furnaces and pets sitting in boats. Even the torches, supposed to be eternal, are starting to stutter. Wilbur turns to the building overshadowing all the rest of it: the mansion, three stories tall and clearly a maze internally. He’s almost of half a mind to just leave, honestly, before he remembers that this may be one of his only chances.
Glowstone dust is sprinkled across the ground in front of the doorways, left open and cleared for the cold air to fill the building. Maybe the lack of warmth would have disappointed Wilbur if he’d really felt the cold since he died. It’s more dulled for him now than it ever was before, and it makes his little Snowchester quest just that much easier, even with only his coat for warmth.
The quartz and birch mansion floors are dusty around the edges, clearly left neglected for months. If Wilbur didn’t know any better, he’d say the place was abandoned. The trail of bright red carpet, brand new, leading up the stairs, however? Well, it says otherwise. Someone is here.
Looking closer, there are speckles of bright green and red dashed on the steps, smudged in places as if someone had tried to wipe them away and then realized they wouldn’t budge. In others, they stay in perfect droplets, preserved like the same person had stopped trying. They settle into cracks in the logs of the railings, in between the planks of the stairs, even into the carpet trail in places.
Heading up the stairs, following the carpet, Wilbur thinks he might be able to hear footsteps in the distance. Maybe they’re his own echoing off the walls of the empty mansion, but they’re worth a little look, even if they are nothing.
The sign at the end of the carpet trail reads “Aimsey house” and while Wilbur has no clue who Aimsey is or why they live in just one room of this massive mansion, one of the doors is open. The room is empty, stripped of everything but a flowerpot in its center, and kneeling next to the flowerpot is a figure partially draped in a sheet. While it covers the back of their figure, it’s clearly pulled off their face, thrown back over their head as they tuck a lone red tulip into the pot.
There is a bloody handprint smeared across the doorway, red with green smudged through in places.
Maybe the boards outside the door are creaky or maybe Wilbur is just too noisy on his own, because the figure pauses as soon as he steps into the doorway. Quickly, two hands reach up and grab the section of the sheet thrown over their head, pulling it back down. They stand up, turning their head toward Wilbur, and oh.
Split dyed cloth, black and white, with red and green eyes painted on where they should properly be. Wilbur thinks the pupil and iris colors on the green eye got swapped. It’s a detail he doesn’t know if he should be noticing.
He’d found Ranboo, even if he seems to look different now.
Despite the seeming panic, his voice is steady as he speaks. “Wilbur? Why are you here?”
Wilbur swallows. Something is wrong here, he thinks. “I’m just here to talk with you. An apology, if you’ll accept it.”
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, because before turning to him, Ranboo pulls on a chestplate. He’d been unarmored before. Wilbur wonders what had changed.
(Maybe it was Ranboo’s death, he thinks to himself. You got him killed. You forced him into the situation where he lost his first ever life. Of course he wouldn’t trust you anymore.)
Despite the armor, there is no blade in Ranboo’s hands: no axe, nor sword, nor even pickaxe. He doesn’t even pull on a full set of armor, even though Wilbur knows he has one. Ranboo had mentioned it during longer Wilburger shifts: he always kept at least one set of armor on him, because if it rained he needed a helmet, if he ended up walking through snow (and he always did) he’d need boots, if he ended up in the water for some reason he’d need the leggings and the chestplate. That, as well as the general danger of the entire server and the people who populated it. Ranboo only wears the chestplate, though. Wilbur realizes that the sheet covers up enough of the rest of him that even his face isn’t visible. Maybe that was armor of its own now.
“Come back later, maybe? Not really a good time for me,” Ranboo says.
Wilbur’s fingers ghost over the handprint on the door, finding it long-dried in place, immovable. “Are you sure? I’ve been looking for you for a while already, you’re more difficult to locate than you seem to think.”
Something in Ranboo, under the sheet, seems to still. “I think you’d be surprised. It’s not like I move around much.”
“You’d be surprised how out of the way Snowchester can seem to some, especially when they haven’t exactly gotten a tour of the area in a while,” Wilbur says. “I’m here, though. I’ve found you.”
“And why, exactly, did you find me, Wilbur?”
“I did say I just wanted to apologize, Ranboo,” Wilbur says, taking a handful of steps into the room, towards Ranboo. “For everything, you know. Especially-”
Ranboo cuts him off. “We don’t need to talk about that.”
“And why exactly is that? Ranboo, I killed you. That’s something I need to say sorry for. Because of me, you lost a life. Even if it wasn’t on purpose, that was something I did.”
“And which of the two of us made the choice to step onto the pressure plate?” The figure under the sheet crosses his arms, and Wilbur thinks he might see… something, under there. At the very least, the suit is ripped in a way that Ranboo would never have allowed before Wilburger. He had always been picky with that kind of thing, avoiding stains and tears alike. Nothing was allowed to damage his suit.
“Well, you did, but-”
“Exactly. You don’t need to apologize. I killed me. There. End of story. You don’t need to apologize, you can leave, everything is fine.” Ranboo seems to almost snap at Wilbur for a moment, and it’s such a sudden departure from the typical flat tone of his other words that day that he’s nearly taken aback for a moment. He seems to recover himself quickly, though, snapping back to the same more-normal voice. “Now you can go, get out of my mansion, whatever.”
“That was your first life, wasn’t it? The first time is always a shock. You can never really quite tell how it’ll feel, and I’d say it gets easier for future ones but it never really does. Just… are you alright, Ranboo? I know it’s been a while but it can be rough…” Wilbur trails off as he notices Ranboo staring him dead in the eyes. He doesn’t do that. He never does that, enderman genetics and all that. The painted marks meet Wilbur’s own.
(A drop of red rolls down his left leg, leaving a trail down his suit pants as it rolls before adding to the tiny mess of droplets in the area.)
“That was very much not my first, and, as I already said, I’m fine and you can leave now. ”
…Not his first. Living on this server, Wilbur shouldn’t be surprised. Death is thrown around like confetti sometimes here, often without knowing what would stick.
The question still stood, though: second or third?
Looking at the sheet, remembering the ripped suit underneath, Wilbur has a sickening feeling that he already knows the answer to that question.
“Are you dead, Ranboo?”
The room freezes for a moment, the Snowchester air finally chilling everything inside until with a single movement the ice breaks. Ranboo slumps down below his full height, twisting painted eyes down to the floorboards.
“I should have known there was no point hiding it from you,” he says, “and I don’t know why I bothered to try it again.” With a sigh he removes the chestplate he’d so frantically pulled on, revealing-
Well, Wilbur’s not quite sure if he can believe what he’s seeing.
There’s a full gash carved through the front of the sheet. Through the cloth, the edges spread out red and green, matching Ranboo’s eyes. Blood. Some of it has clearly dried, but other patches stand out clearly against the rest, droplets beading just to fall and hit the ground. If he looks hard enough through the slice, Wilbur thinks he can see actual flesh, black and white and even darker red and green.
He’d like to say he was nauseated, but after everything he’d seen, it was just another entry on the scale of tragedies. He’d compared himself to Ranboo, once. Now it seemed like their ghosts had ended up with matching wounds, except where Ghostbur had hidden his, Ranboo left his in the open, almost like a reminder.
It was Ranboo’s blood on the stairs. It was Ranboo’s handprint smeared across the door. It was Ranboo who was still dripping and dropping specks of green and red onto the wood.
“Oh,” Wilbur says. Something must be showing on his face, because Ranboo sighs and turns away. Not as obvious and yet still showing clearly against the black and white cloth, there’s a second opening, smaller, perfectly sword-sized, without the obvious spreading blood.
“I told you to leave. Several times, actually. You didn’t. So, congrats, now you know.”
The only thing Wilbur can truly think to ask is “How long?”
“Nearly five months.”
Late November, right around Wilbur’s anniversary, maybe a few days after at best.
“Ranboo, I’m-”
“If you’re just going to apologize again you can leave right now.”
Phil had said something about not forcing anyone to accept apologies, right? He needed to give them space. He needed to give Ranboo space, and that meant talking about something else, right now. Wilbur couldn’t shake the thought that he was responsible for this, though. If he hadn’t forced Ranboo into the impossible position of choosing between his friends, maybe the kid would have been in the first place Wilbur had checked, all the way back in the Arctic. He wouldn’t have been dead for five months without Wilbur checking even once.
Five months was quite a bit over twelve years in limbo, after all. Wilbur knew better than most what kind of effects that could have on someone’s mind.
“It wasn’t… me, was it?”
“No.”
“So then…”
“Finally, someone on this server who doesn’t pay attention to major events,” Ranboo says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Please, you’re telling me you haven’t heard? Everyone was there, even people I didn’t recognize. Every one of them watched.” One hand comes up to touch the wound, and Wilbur notices for the first time that Ranboo’s hands are gloved. The fabric comes away sticky and colored.
“Ranbus.” Wilbur offers a slight smile with the familiar nickname, stepping slightly closer to the ghost. “Are you actually alright?”
Painted eyes come back around to meet Wilbur’s brown, Ranboo physically spinning from where he’d turned away. Maybe, under the sheet, Ranboo’s looking at Wilbur, searching his face, looking for any hint that Wilbur’s fucking with him. “I’ve been dead for five months. I’ve been in this mansion, alone, for three and a half of those. The one person who ever tried to treat me like a normal person was killed for it. But no, I’m fine. Definitely. Completely.” Ranboo sighs, turning away and taking a step, seemingly moving to run a gloved hand through his hair before remembering the sheet. “When I died, my soul and mind separated. The soul, the half of me that could feel, went to Limbo. The other half- me - stayed here, with the body that was left over. The more he feels, the more he fades, and my job right now is to keep that from happening for long enough that someone actually bothers to care.” He looks down at his hands. “I thought they’d care more than this,” Ranboo says quietly. “Nobody’s even tried.”
Honestly, Wilbur should probably be able to relate, seeing as he’s the only one who’d been revived after being dead for longer. When he’d died, though, resurrection wasn’t even an option. When he’d begged, banging on the walls of his train station, nobody heard him screaming. He knew nobody would hear, even if he’d hoped. Neither he nor Ghostbur had ever been at risk of fading away during that time, and Wilbur was pretty sure neither of them was at risk now when their positions had long since swapped.
“Would you want me to try?”
Without even looking at Wilbur, Ranboo replies, “And how the hell would you be able to do that?”
“I don’t know.” Ranboo slumps in place, trying slightly and unsuccessfully to hide it. “It would be better than nothing, though. You said nobody else had even bothered, yeah? Here’s one person.”
Wilbur’s spent too long looking at Ranboo and seeing a reflection of his former self looking back: anxious, nervous, but with goals far larger than he could achieve. Once, Ranboo had been a friend, and then Wilbur had set up the trap that he’d died in. Now, it was the least he could do, wasn’t it?
It feels like forever before Ranboo looks back at Wilbur. “I don’t know how much longer he can stand it. If you can’t do it, at least let me know so I can, well… brace myself, before the end.” It’s the closest to a please do it Wilbur’s going to get, he thinks, and he’ll take it.
He’d entered Snowchester’s mansion intending to give an apology. Wilbur is going to leave it intending to save a friend. Wasn’t that better than any apology would ever be?
“Alright. I can do that, Ranboo.” Wilbur gives the ghost a little smile, taking a step back towards the door. “If I’m going to figure this out, I’d better get going, right?”
“Yeah. Go find Dream or whatever you’re going to try. Just… thank you, I guess,” Ranboo says, the last part seemingly forced out through closed teeth, almost as if the little admission of thankfulness was paining him.
Wilbur remembered what Ranboo had said about emotions. Maybe this conversation hadn’t been such a good idea in the first place, but if it had never happened, maybe there wouldn’t have been a chance for any of this.
He rests a hand on the room’s door, running a finger over the smeared handprint, long dried into the wood. Ranboo’s blood, something he’d hoped he’d never have to see. (Not again, at least. Not after what had been left after Las Nevadas.) “I’ll see you around, then. And I’ll let you know if it fails, or if I need you.”
“Alright, Wilbur.” Those painted eyes seem to follow him everywhere he looks. Despite their multicolored nature, they still seem empty, soulless.
In Ranboo’s case, he supposes the last part may be true right now.
Wilbur closes the door behind him when he leaves. Even if he doesn’t know how a resurrection would work, he’s pretty sure he knows who would.
~~~
Ranboo hears the door click shut behind Wilbur and finally lets himself relax from how tightly wound he’d been the entire time. Despite his death, he still needed to breathe, and he was pretty sure he’d been forgetting to do that this entire time.
One person. One person was trying. That was infinitely better than the none who’d been putting in the effort before this. They’d left him in the mansion alone, abandoned to inhabit a home he’d never truly had, and they didn’t even bother to try.
Nevermind that. It wasn’t worth it to think about it anymore. He’d already done enough damage to his soul, both with that specific topic and with Wilbur’s conversation.
Pulling up the sheet and taking off a glove, Ranboo can see his skin noticeably fading again. That was nowhere near a good sign. One day the color would all be gone, and then there wouldn’t be a single ounce of hope left. It would just be him remaining, no chance of a reunion. No soul, no emotions, ever again.
Ranboo just hoped the loss would be worth it if it happened.
He’d set the ballroom up, just in case. If he had to die, it would be on his own terms this time.