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Ranboo spent his time watching people come and go from limbo. Mexican Dream would visit him every now and then, but it was never frequent. All he could do was watch the shore as others appeared, and then promptly disappear as they were revived.
He spent years watching the water at his feet, avoiding all the splashes the sea made. Years stood on a single grass block, nothing but the ocean and the occasional phantom pains of his other half in the living world. He was scarred all over. The water of his tears and the ocean painting him in red irritated skin. The pain didn’t bother them anymore, it had been too long.
Today was no different to any other. He watched the shoreline as Mexican Dream ran about, monologuing probably. He tended to do that a lot. The occasional boat ride they’d share when he remembered his existence was just constant talk of the party he was planning. The party that has been years in the making. Boo didn’t mind though. The company was a nice escape.
However this day became far different than Boo could have ever expected. There was a surplus of people flashing into limbo all at once. People he knew, pets he had seen, just all at once. They all stood there in confusion. Ranboo waited until they would disappear. As they all would do eventually. All but him. But it never happened. The hundreds of people and animals stayed. Ranboo waited days, almost months, but they never got revived. They mingled with one another, friends holding friends in grief of the world they lost. He couldn’t understand why there were so many of them, surely Dream wouldn’t have let this many villagers and animals die on his watch. Yet here they all were.
There was the occasional child that would dare swim out to him on his lonely grass block, but they never stayed long. At least now there is more to watch than just Mexican Dream.
In all the time he watched and talked to the people who would come out to him, he could never understand what happened to make them all die in synchrony.
“There was a flash of light”
“An almighty boom shook the sky and the earth”
“Constant ringing”
“It felt warm for a second, and then nothing”
“I swear it was them damn aliens”
He elected not to believe the last one.
He hoped in all his watching he would see his friends again. He missed Tommy and Jack and Phil and Foolish. Yet they never appeared. Tubbo was nowhere to be seen either. Ran had told him Tubbo wasn’t happy with them at the moment and probably blamed himself for them dying? Ran wasn’t too sure but that was what his new friend Aimsey had said. Boo didn’t know Aimsey, but if Ran liked him then Boo would too.
Over everything, he hoped Michael was safe. He at least trusted Tubbo to look after him.
Eventually, most of the people moved on, and he was left lonely once more.
Boo was watching the water lick at his pink-scarred toes when he heard a cry. He looked to the shoreline and searched for the source. He heard it again, a child was calling out in distress. The spray of the sea had made his eyes a little foggy, but he would never fail to miss the small pink form in the distance.
It raced toward the waters edge, two chickens following in tow. Ranboo let out a strangled scream, clawed hands clasping his mouth, at merely the sight of the child.
“Michael…” he breathed shakily.
The child saw him and called to him, “papa!” he stepped closer to the water, hooves touching the sea, and screeched out a gut wrenching scream as it burned his skin.
Ranboo’s heart clawed at his chest.
“Michael no! Step away from the water!” he yelled as best as he could, throat far too dry for proper speech.
It worked, and though his son still screamed in pain, he moved away from the shoreline.
Ranboo watched in horror. His son sat on the white sand across from him tears streaming down his all to small face, foot steaming from the burn, while his two chickens comforted him the best they could. Boo was trying to figure out who would be such a monster to kill his child and send him to limbo. Michael didn’t deserve that. He deserved to grow up in their family home once the war was over. Move out one day and have a family of his own. For primes sake, he had only just learnt to walk properly and now he was dead. And so Ranboo cried for his dead son, silent tears burning his already scarred cheeks.
He watched as Michael cried for his dad, his papa. He watched as he reached his little arms out, clutching tightly to his little plastic gold sword they gave him for Christmas one year. Boo couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t reach out and hold his son, his baby boy. He could do nothing but sob and feel his cheeks burn. And Michael, too small to understand, only waded deeper into the water, wanting his dad more than anything. He was burning too. They both cried, they both called, and neither could do anything to help the other.
Michael eventually fell asleep, the pain of the burns tiring him out enough to send him to a restless slumber. He lay his little head on the soft feathers of Benson, the chickens curling around his small toddler frame, but it brought no comfort to Ranboo. Once Boo was sure Michael slept, he wailed. He wailed to the sky, to the sea, to whoever could hear him. He wailed for his son. The pain of the ocean too great to travel to the shore without damaging Ran. He wailed and he prayed. He prayed to Prime, asking her to grant him access to the shore for his child. He prayed to the Blood God, asking for his child to be protected from all harm he couldn’t protect him from. He prayed to the Goddess of Death, pleading with her to take his child back to the living, back to where he was wrongfully taken from. He prayed for Mexican Dream to return. Or any one of the villagers to return. So they could help bring him to the shore.
All the silent prayers never returned with an answer, and as the days continued, and the father and child were kept apart, burning in the vastness of the sea, the universe wept for them.