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Limbo was an odd place. No one quite knew how it worked, nor what its purpose was in the universe. Some thought it was a resting place for people with unfinished business, some thought it was purgatory, and some believed it to simply exist as a liminal space.
Whatever your beliefs, most (that believed in it) could agree that it was a plane beyond the living realm. Its inhabitants weren’t quite dead, weren’t quite alive. They hardly even existed.
Most never escaped this realm. Limbo was infinite and so no one knew just how many souls resided there, but it was to be assumed that most people who died untimely deaths were forever stuck there.
Ranboo was of the belief that limbo was a punishment. Whether it was a punishment from a higher power, or from his own self, it didn’t matter. It was a punishment and it was eternal.
It didn’t have to be eternal. Ranboo had originally held hope that the punishment wouldn’t last long. Maybe a few months (equivalent to a few days on the SMP), but never had they truly believed that it would be eternal.
***
Salty ocean spray burned against the open wounds on Ranboo’s cheeks, causing him to whimper. He dropped down to the thankfully dry ground and curled up into a ball. No warmth or comfort was gained from this action. Ranboo’s body didn’t function in the same way it had back when they were alive and it became painfully obvious in moments like this.
Ice permeated their veins, and the uncomfortable chill never left their consciousness. They were cold and in pain but they couldn’t even regulate their body temperature. They couldn’t create an artificial sense of safety by taking refuge in their own arms.
They could barely feel their own arms.
Alive enough to feel pain, but too dead to feel any sense of comfort. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe they were too alive to feel the comfort of death.
The waves of the angry ocean lapped against the grass block that Ranboo was stationed at. He only curled further into himself, reminding himself that he wouldn’t be here for long.
***
As the days passed, Ranboo began to notice that the ocean current would regularly drag driftwood and the odd plant towards him.
He ignored it for a while, he wasn’t willing to get his hands wet while attempting to fish an old piece of wood out of the water. Especially salt water. The water didn’t seem to cut into his flesh here, not like it did in the living world, but it still hurt all the same.
And although he was no longer attaining new wounds, the old ones remained just as present as they had been when he had died. It was probably the worst part of this whole experience. The stab wound in his stomach, the parts of his face that his tears had burned through, none of it ever healed. They remained open, bringing as much pain as they had when they were first created.
At first, Ranboo had used this constant pain as an excuse to ignore the floating driftwood. They didn’t want to get even more hurt than they already were. This attitude changed as time passed though.
The more time they spent curled up around themselves, agony tangling itself through them, the more accustomed to the feeling Ranboo became. So slowly, after days of shivering in the same spot, Ranboo sat up.
He was shaky, clutching at his arms as if he was trying to hold himself together. The blazing sun danced across his vision, making him realise how out of focus everything was. Distantly, he registered that he was experiencing the same kind of blurry vision and dizziness as they did when they were severely dehydrated.
It made sense on the surface; they hadn’t eaten, slept, or drank anything since they arrived here. That wasn’t his fault though. He had no access to food or water, and he- well he wasn’t actually sure if he had fallen asleep at all during his period of lying near-motionless.
A stray stick drifted towards his tiny island, sticking out as the only thing within eyesight that wasn’t ocean or sky. Ranboo, throwing caution away, picked it out of the water as delicately as they could. They dipped two fingers into the ocean as they did so, creating a new wave of pain.
This type of pain was at least a change of pace from the stab wound still on fire beneath Ranboo’s dress shirt.
***
Ranboo‘s focus drifted in and out most of the time. The only time that he was truly keeping his attention in the one spot was when he had his memory book out.
The worn book had somehow crossed into this plane with him. Or maybe it was simply a manifestation of his original book. Who knew? All Ranboo knew was that they were more grateful for it than anything else.
It had drifted over to his island at some point. It was soaking wet from being carried through the sea but none of the pages seemed unuseable.
Ranboo had had to set it out in the beating sun for many days before it was fit for use. They used it as a way to tell the time at least. Another page dry? Great, that meant it had been around half a day since the last page and it was time to turn over to the next page in need of drying.
It kept them somewhat sane. It was a change of pace from the ever-reaching ocean, the repetitive waves and continuous rise and fall of the sun.
The book had already had writing in it by the time it washed up on his block. Oddly enough, it was Ranboo’s own writing.
It seemed to have the last couple weeks worth of his living memory recorded in it. It took Ranboo a while to realise that it was the exact same memory book he had last used in the living plane. It was a new book, a hand-bound one that Tubbo had gifted them for their birthday. The previous memory book had just been filled and so, a couple weeks before their death, Ranboo had switched over to the new one.
This had the downside of there not being much to read back on as a way to fill time.
Ranboo had taken to writing their thoughts in the book instead of just things he wanted to remember. There was nothing about this place that he felt he would want to remember in the future, but he had nothing else to do.
***
Flowers would drift towards his island at times. He’d been happy to see them. They were a splash of colour against the mind-numbing ocean, a welcome, refreshing change. The flowers had been a random assortment of species, coming and going with little to no discernible pattern. It was nice to have something surprising.
That was until they started getting repetitive too. Eventually, the flowers stopped coming in all different colours and shapes and species and started arriving only in bunches of forget-me-nots.
He tried to ignore them, but they wouldn’t leave.
And he meant that they wouldn’t leave.
If he threw them back into the ocean, another stem of baby blue flowers would eventually turn up at his feet again. If he simply ignored them, they’d stay surrounding him, in the corner of his vision.
The sight of them made his skin crawl.
The meanings of flowers was something that Ranboo had taken very seriously in the living world. They’d spent so long stuck in books about the meanings of as many flowers as were known to the world. There was a flower for every emotion, every situation, every hardship.
The meanings were also ever-evolving and so one flower could mean a hundred different things. What definition stuck with you really told you more about yourself and your mindset than it did about the flower.
Ranboo knew this as he twisted a curling blue petal between his fingers, and yet he ignored that voice in the back of his head trying to reason with him. It was the voice that sounded nothing like himself, the one that put him on the right track and made sure he was looking out for himself.
It reminded him of Tubbo.
Forget-me-nots. A flower also referred to as scorpion grasses and myosotis. It had many meanings. Promises, faithfulness, love. It could symbolise respect and unconditional love and the promise of not forgetting something or another person
To Ranboo, the definition that stuck with him, that said more about his mindset than the flower, was much darker. Forgetfulness, memory issues, loss of love.
They’d thought this in the living world too. It was why they’d hated the flower, even when it had been Tubbo handing them to him. Even when it had been Tubbo setting them up in a vase in their kitchen. They’d tried to love the flower then, since they knew it was one of Tubbo’s favourites, but it was no use.
The flower had always been a bad omen for Ranboo. A mocking display of all of Ranboo’s fears. The fear of forgetting those he loved, those he relied on and those who relied on him.
They were a promise to not forget and he couldn’t promise that. Even though he so badly wanted to.
So they sat, and they wrote, and they ignored the blooming bouquets scattered around them.
***
Tears dripped down Ranboo’s face. The warm water burned as it fell but Ranboo didn’t feel any worse than he had even when he wasn’t crying.
Their heart felt like static in their chest, simultaneously still and rushing all the blood into his ears. He scanned the page again. And again. And again.
He didn’t remember it.
The- the page that he had written when he’d first gotten the memory book, he couldn’t remember writing it. Or the event he wrote about for that matter.
That had only been-
Ranboo stopped short, racking his brain desperately for any whisper of memory that could help him. That could calm them.
They didn’t know how long it had been.
They’d been relatively certain that it had only been around a month but if they really were losing time like this forgotten page suggested then… then Ranboo didn’t know how long he had been in Limbo. How long had they been dead? How long had it been since they’d last seen their son?
Ranboo’s mind spun with questions and worries, panic rising within them. The memory book sat in their lap, the page that they couldn’t remember writing stared up at them innocently.
***
Since the realisation that he’d started to forget things again, Ranboo had taken to writing in his book whenever he thought of something that he didn’t want to forget.
That time he and Michael had gone for a picnic just outside of Snowchester? Scribbled into the book as quickly as Ranboo could write. The first time they and Tubbo had taken a tour of their newly built mansion? Written in as much detail as possible.
Ranboo tended to gravitate towards the happier memories when logging everything in his memory book. He ended up writing about his friends and family more often than not, although he made sure to write some of the bad times down too.
Those events made them who they were after all.
Ranboo spent a lot of his time in Limbo writing actually. They probably should have questioned why so many pens were drifting towards him from the ocean, but they were just too thankful.
Ranboo caught sight of a forget-me-not floating just left of him, dancing in the small waves that lapped against the island. They reached out and picked it up, watching as the sun dazzled upon meeting the wet petals.
The flower that usually filled him with dread and made him sick, was instead filling him with determination. A sense of resolve washed through them, causing them to clench their fist around the stem.
They wouldn’t forget. They refused. However long it took for his family to get to him, he wouldn't forget them in that time.
He delicately placed the flower in between the pages of the book, thumbing the petals softly.
Forget-me-nots were a promise to never give up, to never forget those you love.
“I promise.” Ranboo whispered into the wind.
He just hoped they wouldn’t forget him first.