Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s not chained to the hospital bed he wakes up in, which surprises him, and when he asks where he is, people actually come to answer.

They also ask him a lot of questions. Mostly, they want to know what he remembers, but he has no idea what they’re talking about.

They remembers that their name is Ranboo. 

The people look like doctors, but their faces all feel blurry. When he raises a hand and touches the mask still on his face, one of them explains they couldn’t get it off. They say something about it fucking with his head and being tapped into his spine, and that they couldn’t secure an airway when they rescued him, and obviously he can’t eat … they ramble about tracheotomies and G-tubes and Ranboo loses the plot thinking about a man on a gurney that they were forced to slice open.

Then someone is ushering the doctors out of the room. Ranboo thinks this man looks about the same age as himself, but it also occurs to him that he doesn’t know how old he is. The man encourages Ranboo to lay down, guiding his shoulders to the mattress again.

“Fucking idiots.” He says dismissively. “Listen, what matters is that you’re safe. All that shit is over, and you’re back. You’re safe.”

Ranboo stares up at his face and wonders if they’re meant to know it.

At first the doctors seem hesitant to let Ranboo out of the hospital, but after his fourth panic attack/flashback induced by the equipment and the talk of the doctors, someone must get into a fight about it. Ranboo doesn’t think he’s meant to hear them shouting, laying dazed in the hospital bed with a sedative racing through them and someone sitting at his bedside holding their hand. It’s not the same man from before, but another one who comes to talk to Ranboo often. Neither of them ask Ranboo the kind of invasive questions the doctors do. They’ve both told Ranboo their names at some point, but Ranboo needs to be reminded of most of these things often, or else they just slip away again.

The other one is doing the yelling. Ranboo can recognize his voice, at least. The man at his side is rubbing the back of Ranboo’s hand, and he too seems to be listening to the shouting.

After that, Ranboo leaves the hospital. There’s a house and a room that is his, though he’s not clear on where they are. He asks and the answers are either vague or don’t stick. 

Those two men stay close to Ranboo much of the time. The one who was there when Ranboo woke up is about as tall as Ranboo, and loud, perpetually. The other is shorter than Ranboo, and also loud, but when he is quiet, it seems like it’s just for Ranboo.

It’s not that Ranboo is never alone. The two of them do give Ranboo space. But when that space becomes too large, a gulf of emptiness that threatens to swallow them up, they find they aren’t alone, and one of these two fish Ranboo out of it. 

He wakes up in the night screaming a lot. While he was in the hospital, they would get someone to try and calm him, remind him where he was, and then sedate him when they failed. But his friends — Ranboo thinks they’re his friends, anyways — come to him now. And when they fall asleep beside him, Ranboo has fewer nightmares.

He ends up back in the hospital after his friends find him trying to smash his head open on a mirror while the mask flashes wildly. They’re restrained, tied down, which only makes them start screaming hysterically until they have to knock Ranboo out to stitch up his hands and face.

Everything fractures after that. They see and hear Showfall everywhere, and he can’t move when he wakes up. He screams until his voice is gone, berating Showfall for its sick cruelty, and begging for them to let him die.

A new figure appears at his bedside. Ranboo hasn’t seen them in Showfall’s game before. This man reads. Ranboo thought the stories would be terrible, twisted, things about The Hero and the people he got killed. There are heroes in the stories the man reads, in that same steady voice. But it’s not awful. They fight strange beasts and meet oracles and wear crowns. One of the stories talks about a river that takes memories. Ranboo thinks that would be a blessing, to forget what he’s been through. But then he recalls that could just make him Showfall’s perfect piece again, and he chases away all thoughts of Lethe by sobbing and begging the walls to let him die until they sedate him again.

“ — obviously isn’t fucking working.”

“As long as he’s a danger to himself, we can’t,”

“Like shit! He’s terrified every time he’s conscious, he doesn’t think he’s safe!”

“His mental state is understandably fragile,”

“You discharged him before because he was getting fucking triggered! Being restrained is obviously making it worse.”

“He’s blatantly suicidal, you’ve heard him. This is for his safety.”

“But not his fucking sanity.”

“Our psychiatrist is monitoring him.”

“And they’re doing jack shit!”

“What do you propose, then? Putting him in a padded room? I don’t think that will help.”

“Discharge them, let us help them.  If they’re somewhere safe and familiar, they’ll be okay.”

“There is a high chance of him hurting himself or hurting one of you.”

“We’ll handle it. If we need backup, we call for it, but let us try.”

“…we’ll discuss it with the team.”

Ranboo wakes up in his bed.

Or at least, the place he has come to know as his room and the bed considered his. His friends are laying next to him, and he’d almost think all his recent ‘memories’ were one long nightmare if not for the fact that he can feel the stitches in his hands when he flexes them.

But he knows where he is. His friends greet him when they realize he’s awake, and he’s okay.

He’s okay.

It’s hard to draw while his stitches heal, but he tries.

They draw the others.

They draw the creature from the cabin and the carousel of people. His therapist points at a drawing of the Nice woman.

“What’s that?” They ask, gesturing to the shading under her eyes.

“Her makeup.” Ranboo answers. “It’s running. It was all over her face.”

“Did she cry?” 

Ranboo gives his therapist a strange look. “She cried the whole time.” Isn’t that obvious? But the therapist’s look tells Ranboo it isn’t. 

They stare at each other. “Why do you draw her smiling, then?”

“I don’t—“ Ranboo objects, but looks at the drawing again. He stands in his room that night and plasters the walls with every drawing he’s done of the woman in the red suit, and she smiles lightly at him in every one.

Ranboo scratches out and erases every smile and wakes up in the morning surrounded by images of her hysterical, sobbing fear. His friends are disconcerted, despite trying to hide it, but Ranboo is relieved to remember what was real, and not the rose-coloured version.

One afternoon, Ranboo draws themself. They end up throwing red paint over the drawing until it’s blotted out and bury themself in the corner of their closet to hide, staring at the paint (the blood) on their hands.

Their tall friend finds them there. But he just asks to come in, to which Ranboo vaguely nods, and he sits next to Ranboo in the closet and starts talking. He fills every silence with something, and Ranboo appreciates that. 

When Ranboo feels ready to get out of the closet, he’s helped up. He looks his friend in the face, for a second — for barely a second — he thinks he remembers.

His friend doesn’t seem to mind the paint on him and asks if they should set the painting on fire.

Ranboo laughs. “I’m pretty sure that might be dangerous, we can’t just light fires in here — no, it’s just trash. Sorry about the carpet.”

His friend shrugs. “Eh, it’s paint.”

(When the paint is cleaned away, Ranboo thinks it’s probably more for his benefit than anything. At least he won’t mistake it for blood.)

Next week his room is plastered with drawings of Mousetrap, and his friends don’t question it. They just ask if Ranboo wants to come play Mario Kart with them.

“Yeah, I’m coming.” Ranboo says, closing his sketchbook.

“I’M PLAYING PEACH!” His loud friend bellows as he darts down the stairs.

Ranboo’s quiet friend rolls his eyes and waits until Ranboo joins him. “You get first pick, he’s just being a bitch.”

“Nothing new.” Ranboo says with a smile, and they go downstairs together. 

Chapter Text

The mask is working again.

But there is no show, not yet. The Hero is not where he is meant to be. The people around him speak and move, but they are not part of the show. 

So the Hero waits. 

They take him somewhere. There are doctors, and questions, but the Hero is not waiting for them. 

There is a woman here with the two men who sit and watch the Hero. She is sitting next to the dark-haired one when another person shoves open the door and tells them there is a problem.

The Hero knows it isn’t a problem. 

Showfall is here. Showfall has come for their Hero.

The Hero goes to get up, starting to speak, to call for those who are surely looking for him, but before he finishes a word, the tall one punches him in the throat.

The sound turns into a choked noise and the Hero’s body fails him and he hits the bed again.

“—why the fuck did you hit him—“

“I panicked! I fucking panicked!”

“We need to do something — they can’t — they can’t just take him.”

“—m, help me. We’re on distraction.” 

“What do we do?”

“Make sure he doesn’t flip out.”

The dark-haired one is holding the Hero’s shoulders. The woman is at the end of the bed rapidly … writing?

“What are you doing?”

“I have a plan — just — give Ranboo your jacket, put the hood up.”

“ Why?” But the dark-haired one does so, sitting the Hero up and putting his arms into the sleeves. The Hero doesn’t fight it, but allows it to happen. He puts the hood over the Hero’s head, something wounded and fearful in his eyes as he gazes at the Hero’s face.

“You get in the bed. Give them to me.” 

The two are urgently talking as the woman takes The Hero’s arm and the man sits on the edge of the bed. 

The woman leads the Hero to the door and briefly peeks out.

“Good luck.” She tells the man. 

“Keep him safe.” He answers wearily, then looks at the Hero. “Please come back to us.”

The Hero stares at him until the woman tugs his arm and they slip out the door.

There are loud voices somewhere close, but the woman keeps a tight grip on the Hero’s hand as she drags them down the hall.

There are other people around, but everything is bright and white and rushing past as they weave through the halls. The woman pushes open a stairwell door and ushers the Hero in front of her.

“This way.” She grabs another landing door and gestures for the Hero to go.

They are walking hurriedly down the hall when someone shouts “HEY!”

The woman’s grip on the Hero tightens, and she begins to sprint. The Hero follows suit.

The Hero is losing track of where they are in the winding halls, whipping past confused and concerned faces, and being dragged around another sharp turn when his temple collides with the corner where the walls meet, hard.

All of his momentum is immediately halted, his hand ripped away from the woman’s, and he’s thrown to the floor in heap.

…

The world comes back into focus. 

Ranboo is gasping for air, head suddenly pounding, as a woman throws herself to her knees next to him.

“Ranboo — fuck. You have to get up. Come on, please, Ran,” 

She hauls Ranboo to his feet, holding him tightly as he sways, and halfway down the hall she shoves open a door and drags them inside.

It’s a broom closet, Ranboo thinks, as they sink to the floor holding their head. Blood wets their fingers.

The woman falls next to him and shucks off her outer jacket so she can press it to the cut on Ranboo’s head.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” She assures. “Fuck, the mask is off — Ranboo? Are you with me?”

“I’m here.” Ranboo mumbles. The woman looks like she could cry.

“Thank fuck. Oh my God.” She hugs Ranboo awkwardly while still putting pressure on their head. “What happened? They said you just — the mask light came on and you went away. That you wouldn’t respond to anything.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t — I don’t know.”

“Alright. It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re back.” She orders Ranboo to hold the jacket to his cut while she uses some of the janitorial equipment to wedge the door shut. Then she sits down again, with Ranboo laying their head in her lap so she can check his head and they can rest.

“Are they going to find us?” Ranboo asks quietly.

“No.” She answers firmly. “They won’t.”

She sounds certain. It makes Ranboo feel safer, even though there’s no evidence that she’s right.

There are sounds in the halls from time to time, but the woman never tenses, so Ranboo remains largely relaxed. She shakes Ranboo from time to time and talks to them, asking them questions to check that they’re lucid and not in danger from their head injury.

She checks her phone, too, but Ranboo doesn’t know how long it is before she grips it tight and sighs in relief.

“They’re gone. We’re safe.” She announces. 

Ranboo sits up slowly to not jostle their head wound. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Let’s get you some painkillers and like, a blanket or something.” She says as she helps them up.

When they return to the others and Ranboo’s friends see that he’s back to himself, they both hug him tight and look so relieved they could cry. 

A nurse comes to check on the cut on Ranboo’s head and their friends refuse to move from their side while she does so. The woman sits nearby and smiles at all three of them.

They all get to go home that night, and Ranboo falls asleep on the couch between his friends while a movie plays.

(Talks about getting the mask off them have a renewed intensity.)

“Was there a child there?” Ranboo’s therapist asks one day

“What?” The question confuses them.

“Well, I’ve noticed a series of objects in your drawings, and I was wondering if they were connected.” The therapist looks at their notes. “A dollhouse, a tricycle, a rocking horse, Matchbox cars…”

In their mind’s eye, all Ranboo can think about is Charlie.

The two of them stood opposed to each other in the cabin, but the discovery of the objects that made the place lived in sort of … crept into Ranboo’s head and his heart and he can’t stop thinking about it.. Charlie told Hetch that the cabin was where he was from, and seemed to remember nothing before it. Ranboo shook Charlie awake from where he sat behind a computer and took his hand. (Ranboo tells Charlie to leave the axe. They think now of the boarded-up door and want to beg and sob for why they did such a foolish thing.) 

Ranboo can’t do anything but stand frozen in fear as Charlie screams, and dies, again. 

Ranboo can see Charlie’s blood on their trembling hands as they reach for the glass of water sitting next to them.

“No.” Ranboo says, and their voice sounds so distant it may as well be coming from another person. “No child.”

This time, it’s supposed to work. They’re going to get the mask off. 

Some old instinct makes Ranboo tap SOS against the table while the anesthesia sweeps over them and drags them under.

He’s not chained to the hospital bed he wakes up in, and this time, he knows the people who are sitting beside him, waiting for him to awaken.

They smile, as bright as when they first met Ranboo again, and they tell Ranboo that it worked. 

Ranboo gets to see their own face for what, to them, feels like the first time.

There are scars, scratches both old and new, and marks where the wires inside the mask once sat. Their nose is a little crooked, like it was once broken. It’s mostly the outer part of the mask they were able to break down, with the back part against his neck still in place and wires running from it to the back of his jaw, the wires boring into his skin thankfully mostly hidden by his hair.

Ranboo can’t stop touching his face, tracing the scars, his lips, his nose, just to know that they’re real. That there is one less thing standing between him and the world.

Also, his friends produce an entire tub of ice cream from one of their bags and say it’s all for him as a no more stupid fucking mask celebration.

He gets a stomachache afterwards, but it was so good that it makes it worth it.

Ranboo trawls through missing person reports. He starts locally, then expands. (He sees his own more than once, cached on websites and forums, and stares a bit too long at the picture. He’s not all that different, and he's seen pictures from before, shown to him by his friends, but they still feel like a different person.)

He passes out on the kitchen table three nights in a row before his friends hold an intervention.

Ranboo looks for Charlie’s face everywhere and just can’t find it. He even tries reverse-image searching some of his own drawings of Charlie, but there are no hits, everytime.

One day, his shorter friend finds Ranboo in the corner of his room after Ranboo threw his phone out the window. When asked why, Ranboo explains that he heard Hetch talking to him.

Every electronic in the house gets stacked into a pile. They take Ranboo to stay a few days with another friend, the woman who Ranboo hid from Showfall with at the hospital. She already has a bag full of electronics that she gets out of the house as Ranboo comes in.

No evidence is found of outside access or hacking, so when nothing else happens, Ranboo goes back home.

It doesn’t stop happening, however.

It’s always when Ranboo is alone, and there’s never any way for them to prove what they heard. Their friends don’t doubt them, but the doctors are discussing seriously if this is real or not. Ranboo would be upset if they didn’t have their own doubts about the reality of what they’re experiencing. If Hetch knows where Ranboo is, why just mess with them? Why not kidnap them again?

For now it seems their question will go unanswered.

Chapter Text

Ranboo starts searching their room for cameras. Then the house. Everywhere they go, they look over their shoulder. Their friends keep having to gently tug their hands away from their face, because they unintentionally rub at their scars and healing cuts when they’re anxious. 

They have a public breakdown after they become convinced a cameraman has been following them all day and refuse to leave their room for the four days following. They spend the time wallpapering the place with sketches of Showfall, the wire creature, the employee drones and the cameras, and the main control room.

Ranboo knows their friends are worried. He can’t sleep, either, just draws with shaking hands or dissociates until he passes out wherever he is. Sometimes he wakes up quickly, but if he’s out for upwards of an hour, he always wakes up tucked into bed.

“How am I alive?” Ranboo asks his tall friend during this period.

“What are you talking about?” His friend asks.

Ranboo points at the drawings on the wall, to a moment that appears like some kind of gruesome crucifixion. “How did I survive?” He asks.

His friend doesn’t seem to know how to answer. “I don’t know, man. I just know that you’re here now. Do you want a PBJ?”

Ranboo eats the sandwich, declines a soda, and drinks water instead. It feels a little better. They draw wires on their arms in red pen that night and the blotches of ink are like slime, or blood. Everyone keeps saying that it would be weird for Ranboo to have been inflicted with red-green colorblindness, but that’s not how it works and Ranboo knows that. They just don’t know how to explain it. 

On the fifth day, their friends cajole Ranboo into at least sitting on the porch, which Ranboo manages. He sees his therapist the day after, though he spends most of the session looking for cameras in the room, which actually doesn’t seem to bother his therapist all that much. They don’t force Ranboo to stop, and at times help, though they’re respectful enough not to overstep. Ranboo finds himself worrying that he should’ve found that behavior suspicious later, but settles on deciding that at best, their therapist is just trying to work with him, and at worst, was just trying not to set off a breakdown. The worst case scenario doesn’t involve this all being an elaborate Showfall trick because Ranboo doesn’t let it involve that. 

“Aren’t you that guy?” A stranger asks Ranboo while he’s standing in front of a bakery display in the supermarket. His friends are less than a dozen yards away arguing about bagels. Ranboo stares at the stranger.

“Are you like — are you good?” The stranger asks, suddenly looking wary. They look around, which prompts Ranboo to do the same. “You’re — you’re on a missing poster.”

Oh. “Not anymore.” Ranboo answers.

“No, this one’s like — new. Are you here alone?” They step closer and Ranboo steps backwards. “Should I call the cops?” 

“I’m — I’m fine.” Ranboo says nervously. “I’m not missing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did someone hurt you?” The person urges, reaching out to grab Ranboo’s arm. “It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Ranboo yanks away from the stranger in a blind panic, his ankle catching on a display as he steps back and sending him sprawling. The stranger yelps, but Ranboo is already scrambling to feet in a rush, doing anything possible to get away. His friends realize something’s wrong when they hear the commotion. His tall friend beelines for the stranger, and his short friend comes towards Ranboo. His hands are raised, palms open,, like he’s approaching a dangerous animal.

Ranboo ends up crying on the floor of a supermarket public restroom while his friend holds him and pets his hair. 

That night, Ranboo is half-asleep between his friends as they whisper about what to do.

“There are new missing listings.”

“If we didn’t, then it’s—”

“Can we call the cops? Tell them he’s not missing?”

“What if they’re in on it? Fuck, what if they’ve always been in on it? And the hacking is them finding us?”

“Fucking — I don’t want to think about that.”

“But we have to. We have to think about if it’s the difference between keeping Ranboo safe, or, or. The alternative!”

Someone lays a hand on Ranboo’s shoulder and rubs a circle there with their thumb.

“There’s a difference between — between caution and paranoia. His paranoia is bad enough without us making it worse.”

“…”

“It’s gonna be okay. It will be.”

“I’ll fucking kill them to protect Ranboo if I have to.”

“I know. Me too.”

Ranboo wakes up three times that night screaming for Showfall to let them die, but they get back to sleep every time because of the patience and support of their friends.

One afternoon their short, dark-haired friend sits down in front of Ranboo.

“I have a question.” He states.

Ranboo looks at him expectantly.

“What’s the first thing you think of when I say dog ?” 

“Uhhh.” Ranboo is being stared at, examined, for the intensity of their answer, though they don’t know why. “Barks?”

“Do you picture a dog?”

“I mean, I can.”

“Is it big or little?”

“Uh. Medium?”

“But thinking about dogs is fine.” His friend checks.

Ranboo is confused. “Yes? Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I was trying to check if you had dog trauma I didn’t know about.” He explains.

“I don’t think I do.” Ranboo considers. “Not that I can think of. Why?”

His friend drops a pile of pamphlets and paperwork in front of them that all read something or other along the lines of psychiatric service dogs and you.

“You…want to get a dog?” Ranboo says slowly as they leaf through it.

“I just think it might be a good idea. To help you.” His friend explains. “Think about it?”

“Sure.” agrees Ranboo.

Ranboo ends up meet-and-greeting with about four or five dogs before they end up with Lottie. Lottie is a gentle giant, a massive black-and-white Great Dane who is tall enough to set her chin on the kitchen counters. Several jokes are made about Lottie fitting Ranboo in terms of height. 

The bowl they get has a timer feeder, because Ranboo’s short-term memory may not be as shot as his long-term, but he’d rather not risk the dog going hungry. There’s a dog bed put down in Ranboo’s room, but on the third day Lottie climbs into bed with Ranboo and he doesn’t make her get down.

It does make it a little tighter on the nights that Ranboo’s friends stay with him, but they both love Lottie.

Ranboo does like having Lottie. She’s big, so she commands the space around Ranboo easily and keeps strangers away from them, and her size also makes people look at her and not stare at Ranboo themself. She’s way better at remembering where Ranboo has left stuff than he is, and she lays on him when he has an anxiety attack and goes to get one of his friends if he disassociates for too long. Lottie’s company is steadfast and easy and good.

It’s a regular day: a good day, even, before they get jumped. Before Ranboo gets jumped, specifically because it’s not his friends that they want. Just Ranboo.

One minute Ranboo is listening to their friends having a joking argument about some television show, Lottie padding along at their side, and the next, something hits Ranboo in the back. It’s not hard, it’s not a push, but it jabs into their skin and in the next second, all of their nerves are alight with electricity.

There isn’t any time to scream. Ranboo crumbles with no control over their body as they hit the sidewalk seizing. They can hear — they can hear —screams. Screams, crying, and, “ just a little, to see how you can handle it,” the mask flashes wildly “ to see how you can handle it” where are they? where are they? they are running towards the button and charlie sobs and screams and dies and “ to see how you can handle it, Ranboo,” the audience wants to kill them, they want to kill them, “ Ranboo,” they can’t see, they can’t see, “ Ranboo,” “Ranboo,” 

“RANBOO!”

The prongs of the stun gun are ripped out of their back. Ranboo is facedown on the pavement, muscles still spasming, and Lottie is standing over him growling and snarling in a way Ranboo would not have expected this gentle creature to be capable of. Ranboo can hear the sounds of fighting, and Lottie lunges at someone who gets too close.

Ranboo can vaguely taste blood and they’re not sure if it’s from their mouth or they broke their nose again. They can hear their friends shouting and cursing, and then Lottie is nosing their palm with her wet nose. She whines and barks, a sharp, alerting sound, and then Lottie is licking Ranboo’s cheek.

“Ranboo! Fuck, shit, fuck.” Someone grabs them by the shoulder and rolls them over, hands catching the back of their head to prevent them from smashing it on the pavement. Ranboo blinks blearily into the bright sunlight and sees the face of their tall friend, which breaks into relief when they see Ranboo is conscious.

“It’s okay.” He tells Ranboo, though something in his voice shakes. “It’s okay. We’re safe.”

In urgent care they find that Ranboo’s nose is not broken, and besides bruises, they aren’t injured. There’s an interesting story concocted to explain why his friends have been in a fistfight and Ranboo’s been electrocuted that doesn’t involve the attempted kidnapping at all. Ranboo thankfully is saved from having to explain it themself, as their dazed state is not an act. Lottie growls before anyone touches Ranboo except their friends, unless one of them or Ranboo tells her it’s okay. 

Ranboo asks to carry a knife after this, and their friends okay that before Ranboo even has to explain that they killed a Showfall employee before and they can be trusted with it. 

That night they all fall asleep together. 

Ranboo’s dreams are far, far from peaceful.

Two days later they go somewhere new. Ranboo’s friends say that this is a safehouse and Showfall won’t be able to find them here. There are two men here, and Ranboo remembers one of them. He’s the man that read to Ranboo while they were in the hospital. He assures Ranboo that Showfall isn’t getting past him. 

Ranboo would like to believe that, and though he avoids questioning it aloud, the men seem to know that he’s uncertain. They don’t seem offended by it, at least.

When Ranboo wakes from nightmares the third time that night, the man comes to read to him again. That becomes routine, and Ranboo sleeps better than he has in weeks; since he began hearing Hetch’s voice.

Chapter Text

There’s faded wallpaper in the new room that Ranboo moves into, and they’re given permission to paint directly on the walls if it pleases them.

“Ain’t worried about property value here.” says one of the men dismissively. This is the newest person Ranboo has met, and through no fault of his own, Ranboo has absolutely no trust for him. But he takes up the chance to paint. 

He has brushes, but chooses to use his hands. He doesn’t know if he was an artist before; his friends have never exactly given an indication one way or another. But something about putting his experiences in front of his eyes again helps Ranboo, and it helps him distill what exists of his memory.

He walks the edges of the room and drags his hand against the wall and paints red and green wires snaking around. At the center of it is a gap, something Ranboo can’t exactly paint because he didn’t see it.

He does paint the box. There’s black paint under his fingernails for days after he does, and he picks at it and picks at his cuticles until they bleed. 

The gap in the paint is for him. He considers painting the mask in the space, but ends up sitting on the countertop in the bathroom and paints on his own skin. He traces the outlines of the scars across his face to create the mask again and smears red marks across his cheeks with his thumbs. Then the wires around his throat, his wrists, up his arms.

He scares the shit out of his friends when they find him.  When they recover from the shock, they ask a lot of careful questions about why exactly Ranboo is doing what he’s doing. They seem to be trying pretty hard not to be judgemental. Someone says that acrylic paint just probably isn’t great for human skin?

Ranboo wonders if they are human anymore.

He stands in the doorway to watch Ranboo paint sometimes, but today, he comes in with a stricken expression. He points at the face of the nice woman.

“I knew her.”

Ranboo stares at him for a long moment, and then stares at the face of the woman once more.

Maybe they should apologize. Should ask her name. Should tell him what became of her. Ranboo should do all kinds of things. 

But instead they say, “I just stood there when she died. I didn’t react. I didn’t even feel anything.”

They expect to see a reaction from him. Disgust, maybe, that Ranboo stood by. But his expression just slowly flattens into a grim acceptance.

“What happened to her isn’t your fault.” He says with a shake of his head.

“She sobbed and begged for help. I didn’t even think about going to her.” Ranboo tells him. Does he not hear them? Does he not understand what Ranboo did?

“You weren’t in control.” He dismisses.

Ranboo had felt in control. They’d felt in control for all of it, really. They didn’t know the difference between themself and the Hero at any point, and even now, they aren’t sure they do. 

The man doesn’t stay. Ranboo dips his fingers into black paint and emphasizes the running makeup on the nice woman’s face, and then spends the rest of the night drawing her shoes, her feet, what she looked like when she was felled and begging for help and the last thing Ranboo saw of her.  They paint the gun the Puzzler brandished, which took her life. 

One of their friends comes in very late at night and tugs Ranboo up from where they’re sitting by the wall, forehead resting against it, dozing and grieving. He walks Ranboo to bed, takes off their shoes, pulls up the blanket, and lays next to them until they fall asleep.

Ranboo dreams of candy and gunshots.

His therapist has told him that giving his system a bit of a shock can be a good way to fight a spiral. Like taking a cold shower. 

So that’s what Ranboo’s doing, watching the bath fill with water. He’d made Lottie stay out, because the bathroom is tight enough without a giant dog in there too.

At some point Ranboo finds themself sitting in the water fully-clothed and they reckon that this is not what their therapist meant. The water started lukewarm and is getting cold fast. They turn on the showerhead.

Ranboo feels like they’re chasing something, in their mind, and they try to draw closer to it, but it keeps feeling just out of reach.

Ranboo takes a breath and slides back to put their head underwater. 

Their hair floats around their face, and the world sounds immediately different. Ranboo’s hands are curled over the edges of the tub to keep them steady.

There are flashes. White lights and clear water and wires boring into bone and jaw and spines until every nerve twitches like puppets on strings. The waters of Lethe wipe clean his memories and leave him hollowed out, drowned by it, and a hand taps the glass in front of his face with a smile, and the Founder murmurs, “ you will be so perfect,”

Hands grab Ranboo by the shoulders and drag him up. Ranboo gasps for the air the moment they surface and then instinctively they claw at whoever has hold of them. They must hit home, because the person reels back, dropping Ranboo, and they splash back into the cold water, realizing they’re shivering violently. Lottie is barking.

“— need some help in here! Fuck, ow, Ranboo, I’m sorry I scared you, but Jesus,”

Ranboo sits frozen, not knowing what to do, and someone else is coming in now and he panics.

Ranboo doesn’t know how many of them it takes to wrestle him out of the freezing water, only that he fights because he has to fight, he will be damned if he ever does nothing again, and he can’t let himself be damned. Eventually someone has arms wrapped around his chest, pinning his limbs, and Ranboo hears screaming.

They only realize later that it was them screaming.

Ranboo doesn’t get out of bed the next day, vacillating between shivering, crying, and dissociating. Lottie stays tucked against his side at every moment like a giant space heater, and one or both of his friends are always there. 

“Where is he?” Ranboo asks hoarsely at one point during the day. “Where is he?”

“Where’s who, Ranboo?” His short friend brushes Ranboo’s hair out of their face and puts his hand on Ranboo’s cheek.

“Him.” Ranboo says helplessly. In their mind’s eye, he dies, he dies over and over, but Ranboo remembers his hand in their’s … 

“He’s okay.” Ranboo’s friend whispers. “It’s okay. He’ll be here.”

Is that true? Ranboo doesn’t know.

When he’s more himself, they ask why he sat in the freezing water like that. Ranboo doesn’t remember. One of his friends tries to determine who Ranboo was asking for while he was in the throes of his breakdown. Ranboo doesn’t remember asking for anyone at all.

There’s a package in the mail with no address on the label, just their name.

There’s a VHS tape inside.

Ranboo puts it on in the middle of the night when no one else will be around and it plays Showfall Media Presents: The Spirit of the Cabin.

Eventually the tape ends, and the sun comes up. Ranboo doesn’t remember. When they tell the others what happened, they find no tape, and no package. Nothing to prove it was ever there at all.

Chapter Text

Ranboo’s friends swear they know how to make cookies. Ranboo questions this, and they proceed to razz them about the fact that there’s no one Ranboo even knows what goes into cookies. Ranboo retorts (jokingly) that they can’t discriminate because he has no long-term memory. They ask what Ranboo ate for breakfast five hours before and take the resounding silence as confirmation that since short-term is also out the window, the two of them are the cookie making experts.

They don’t have to remind Ranboo that cookie dough is fucking fantastic, because Ranboo starts eating it just of his own accord. Thirty minutes later, Ranboo is waving a broom in the air near the smoke detector as it insistently beeps and the ‘cookies’ have been reduced to hunks of blackened ash on the trays coming out of the oven. 

Ranboo suggests they just enjoy the cookie dough next time. 

The day after they try to make brownies and the hellish concoction they bake gets thrown out into the yard for the birds. 

“Let’s make popcorn instead.”

“Like we can’t possibly fuck that up.”

(Ranboo makes the popcorn, and does not in fact, fuck it up.)

Ranboo wakes up one morning and feels … weird. But it’s weird in a way that’s new, somehow. 

They walk out into the kitchen and announce that they’re dying.

His tall friend squints at him. “You think?”

Ranboo shrugs. “Something’s … weird.”

“Cryptic. Weird how?”

“Just. Weird!”

Ranboo sits down and a game of twenty questions is played to try to zoom in on what exactly is so weird, but Ranboo is at loss for explaining it and doesn’t have anything to compare it to. Finally, his shorter friend starts to reach out, then pauses, making sure his action is telegraphed. Ranboo nods and he touches his hand to Ranboo’s forehead.

“I think you’re a little warm.”

The conclusion is reached that Ranboo has a low-grade fever and probably the flu. There’s some mild fretting all around and also a lot of taking the piss out of Ranboo for announcing their impending death when they just have the flu. 

“In my defense, the only experiences I have to base it on would warrant that—'' Ranboo argues before a blanket is dunked onto their head, silencing them. 

For once they can appreciate being taken care of while they’re lucid, so they don’t put up much of a fuss.

“Do they — Ranboo, do you have any vaccines?”

“They couldn’t fucking unvaccinate him. That’s not how that works.”

“We don’t know that! What if they get rabies!”

“People don’t — people don’t just get the rabies vaccine. That’s not one of the childhood vaccines.”

Ranboo sips the tea he’s holding, as he’s buried under several blankets on the couch now and listening to this inane argument. “Maybe I already have rabies.” They suggest, setting off cries from their friends.

“FUCK, WE’RE ALREADY TOO LATE.”

“No, but like, are you vaccinated?”

Ranboo gives him a look. “Literally how would I know.”

“I don’t know! Shit. You’re gonna die out there. We should’ve asked the doctors to like, check, while you were in the hospital.”

“That is also not how vaccines work.”

“THEN WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS.”

The lamenting continues until Ranboo starts laughing so hard that he has a coughing fit. 

(The sickness passes fast, and Ranboo sleeps better on NyQuil than he normally does, so he can’t say it was all bad.)

Ranboo’s dreams are always out of control, nightmarish things. They are horrible creatures given form that crawl from the shadows of the worst things he’s seen. They erode the barrier between real and fake, a tenuous thing that Ranboo feels as if he has to rebuild daily in order to keep track of reality, and even then, his memories erode just as fast, sometimes.

All of this to say that Ranboo never has any agency in his dreams, so when he wakes up and he sees the mall — just the empty mall — he waits for something to happen.

Nothing does.

Ranboo stands up, and his hands shoot to his face. The mask is back, the heat from the lights steadily burning his skin, the mask itself latched back on with its barbs into the sites on his cheekbones that were just healing, making Ranboo hope that he wouldn’t look like a once-muzzled dog forever.

He turns and finds himself in front of the storefront made into props storage and he goes right inside; he searches until he finds a knife that had a familiar weight in his hands. He carves steadily through the wires of the mask, not caring how he shocks or burns his fingers, just carves until the wires go slack and he peels the metal from his face.

It’s awful and bloody and Ranboo doesn’t want to see how much of his skin goes with it. He gags as he pulls, there are fucking wires going down his throat, and he retches as he tries to pull them out, dry-heaving. When there’s enough length that he can slice them with the knife, he does, as much as he can manage without having to stick the knife in his mouth. His hands are shaking and he’d surely hurt himself if he tries to find the wires’ source.

The blood coating his hands and sleeves is green.  

There’s an axe on the floor. This time, Ranboo takes it. He abandons the mask and goes to find the control room.

The place is empty, and largely dead. As Ranboo goes for the screens, axe raised, they come to life.

“Hello, Ranboo.” Hetch says.

Ranboo snarls and swings; the screen shatters against the blade of the axe, glass flying.

But all the TVs are alive. Ranboo keeps going, cleaving through the wires, denting and tearing at the black box mounted against the wall.

“Yes, alright. Get it out of your system.”

Ranboo rips the place to shreds until they’re breathing hard, not sure if it’s sweating dripping down their face or more blood.

“Where the fuck are you.” He demands breathlessly. “Get out here and face me.” 

Hetch chuckles. “No, I don’t think so. Do you feel better?” 

“Why did you do this to me? WHY?” Ranboo shouts, kicking over the desk chair and glaring down at the monitor where Hetch looks back at them.

“I didn’t choose you.” Hetch responds. “That isn’t my role to play. But I understand that you had a lot of promise.”

“ PROMISE? Is that what you call it, what you call it when you’re looking for people to torture?” Ranboo shouts back. Anger and adrenaline burns a path through his every vein and Ranboo has never felt more alive. “Just — explain. EXPLAIN IT.”

“What is there to explain, or did they really leave your head that empty? You were chosen to play a role, the same as those around you. Showfall creates experiences, entertainment, and you played your part well. You were a very compelling Hero. Are, a very compelling Hero. People like to root for you.” Hetch shrugs. “Otherwise no one would put in the effort to find you again, after your little vanishing act.”

“I’ll die before I do this again.” Ranboo immediately fires back.

“You always do say that.” Hetch murmurs.

Ranboo freezes and stares, so stunned and overwhelmed by the way his heart drops that he can’t breathe. “W— what?”

“Most people eventually give in. You never do. Again, it’s why you’re compelling.”

Ranboo shatters the monitor before he even knows what he’s doing, and sprints out into the halls. It’s dark, and he doesn’t know where he’s going. He swears he keeps seeing the light of an exit sign in his peripheral vision, but it’s gone when he turns his head. So Ranboo runs, keeps running, until he stumbles through a door and he’s standing in the cabin. No, on the set. He knows it’s a set, but when he tries to turn towards the nonexistent fourth wall, he keeps finding himself facing a different one instead.

“The audience isn’t your enemy, Ranboo.” Hetch is going on. “Ironically, they really seemed to want to help. Especially at the end.”

“They killed me!” Ranboo yells, shoving through the door into the kitchen and then into the basement.

“Not until you asked.” Hetch tells them. “They gave you what you wanted.”

Ranboo starts swinging the axe at the wall feverishly. “LET— ME —“ He screams with every hit of the axe. “ GO!” 

He wakes up to Lottie licking his face, heart racing. Ranboo stares at the ceiling, instinctively patting Lottie until she sits at his side and whines. Then he touches his face, checking, but he comes away with no blood, just dog drool.

“Thanks.” He whispers to her, and Lottie rearranges against his side.

It was just a dream, Ranboo tells themself. It was just a dream.

“Okay, I’m going to your left side now. Might sting a little, the antiseptic.”

“Alright.”

Ranboo appreciates that everyone is careful not to scare them, particularly when there’s a need to touch them. The new allies Ranboo and his friends have come to are definitely self-sufficient people, and have offered their help in caring for Ranboo’s healing physical scars. The older of the two, the one most unfamiliar to Ranboo, is gentle, and Ranboo is coming to trust him based on that. He’s also not scared of the wires and the places they weave in and out of Ranboo like the doctors at the hospital were. The older man just takes it in stride and even succeeds at times in extracting more of the wires the doctors had left. 

There’s still many of them left. There’s an entire series of wires along with the metal piece mounted against Ranboo’s neck that the doctors had been too wary to remove because of proximity to Ranboo’s spine and brain. 

But both of their new allies are less scared of that, too. They don’t treat it like a bomb, and while they clarify they aren’t neurosurgeons, they have no fear about investigating the technology.

The elder is cleaning the scars on Ranboo’s cheeks while the younger of the pair, the man Ranboo remembers reading to him, is behind him, carefully removing the cover from the node at the back of Ranboo’s neck. Ranboo’s friends are close at hand to keep Ranboo calm, but honestly, they feel okay.

“I should be able to find and disconnect the power source.” The younger says conversationally. “Which should prevent it having any ability to remotely reactivate. And I’m just as sure as last time that there’s no GPS functionality in it.” 

Ranboo can’t decide if the VHS was real or not, and therefore, whether or not Showfall knows where they are. But it’s better to know they aren’t being tracked live either way.

The older man says, “Alright, finished right here. Just a last check.” and presses a band-aid onto Ranboo’s cheek. 

Behind him, the other says, “Oh- ho, this is interestin’…”

Something tugs , not physically, but in Ranboo’s mind, and he sits up abruptly, head snapping up to attention and back going ramrod straight as he clutches the arms of the chair. Hands immediately grab the sides of his face and steady his head.

“Woah, woah — Ranboo, are you with us? What the fuck was that?”

“I dunno, it was weird, I didn’t—“

“You’re gonna hurt them!”

“No, no, he knows what he’s doing.”

“I’m not going to hurt them.” His voice is deep and deadly calm, serious. “I won’t. Ranboo?”

Ranboo’s eyes go searching and he catches the faces of his friends in front of him, both looking alarmed. He tries to minutely nod, but his head is still being held fast.

“Sorry, mate, I know, I know you hate it. I’ll let you go as soon as I have the okay.”

“Okay.” Ranboo whispers. “I’m alright. It — I’m alright.”

Someone takes his hand.

“I can snip these wires.” He hears from behind himself. “Hand me — thanks. Okay. Ranboo, just take a deep breath for me.”

Ranboo tries his best to obey, and in the middle of his breath, he’s jolted like a puppet with its strings cut. His head is kept still, but other hands support his shoulders.

“We’re done. We’re done, it’s all done. You can let him go.”

The hands on his head draw back, and someone gently touches his cheek. 

“You did a great job, seriously. It’s gonna be okay.”

They’re able to extract the newly-dead wires from what remains of the mask and detach them from where they’re wired into Ranboo’s jaw. It’s not a comfortable process, but Ranboo feels so much lighter when they’re gone.

“—boo, wake up. Wake up.”

Ranboo’s eyes shoot open, and Lottie jumps slightly next to him. His hand goes up to grab at what’s above him, but another hand takes his carefully. 

His short friend is leaning over his bed. “It’s okay, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s here, just — you have to get up, okay? Can you get up and get dressed quick?”

Ranboo releases his friend and sits up, squirming to get his legs free from Lottie’s weight as they roll out of bed. “What is it?”

“They found — it’s — you just need to come see, okay? To identify someone.”

Ranboo pauses as they pick up hoodie, Lottie having just leapt to the floor. “I, a — what? I don’t understand.”

“It’s a lot to explain.” His friend waits until Ranboo is comfortable in his dress and takes his hand. “Just come with me. Please. 

And Ranboo trusts him, ultimately, so he follows.

Charlie is sitting in the kitchen with a mug of cocoa between his hands and looking shaken as hell. If not for Lottie behind him and his friend at his side, Ranboo thinks he would collapse to the floor at the sight.

As it is, Ranboo stumbles, catches himself on the table, and then literally falls into Charlie’s arms. Charlie slides out of the chair and the two of them end up a tangled mess of limbs on the floor as they hug and Ranboo sobs into Charlie’s shoulder.

He tries to apologize over and over, but Charlie tells him to stop, to not worry about that, and at some point Charlie is crying too. 

“I’m never letting you go again.” Ranboo manages through his tears.

“Fucking, amen to that.” Charlie splutters.

And they don’t let go ‘till long after the sun is up. 

Chapter Text

Compared to Charlie, Ranboo feels like a ghost.

It’s not that having Charlie here is bad by any metric, and it isn’t like Charlie isn’t also horrifically traumatized by the time he spent with Showfall. Presumably, Charlie was there for a lot longer than Ranboo as well. But Charlie has some sense of time, doesn’t lose himself staring into space, and participates in conversation better than Ranboo does. Charlie seems like he might be a functioning member of society, even. 

He does have episodes, moments. Panic attacks and times where he recoils even from Ranboo. Those are the worst, because Ranboo knows how much of Charlie’s blood is on his hands, and when Charlie screams for Ranboo to get away, it’s like being back there again. It’s like Charlie is strapped to the table sobbing while Ranboo apologizes over and over and there’s so much blood. People have to drag the two of them apart, even while some part of Ranboo still wants Charlie close. They’re relegated to opposite ends of the safehouse while they freak the fuck out until it abates or they pass out.

But Charlie’s memory functions, even if his past is emptied out. He doesn’t have to check peoples’ names on the daily, or ask four times in five minutes what time it is. Despite how many times Charlie was presumably ‘reprogrammed’, Ranboo is the one who is fried, nearly beyond recognition. 

Comparing them is stupid, Ranboo knows. But with Charlie here, he feels so grounded at times, and Charlie is largely a constant in the memories he does have, so Ranboo has some basis for when he’s losing it, and it happens a lot.

On two occasions in the two weeks after Charlie’s reappearance, Ranboo forgets that Charlie is even here and relives the reunion twice. The true first time, the real time, does come back to him, but more than ever Ranboo is afraid of waking up and remembering nothing after the black end of the last episode. 

He doesn’t know if that’s because he fears losing what little he has, or because this all really could be a dream. Usually he tries not to entertain that thought, but it’s been haunting him as of late.

…

Lottie licks his face. Ranboo pats her, but Lottie insistently licks him again, and again, and again.

“Okay, okay, yes, yes, girl, I’m paying attention.” Ranboo manages, trying to push her off. “What?” 

Lottie trots toward the door and looks back at Ranboo expectantly.

“Are you trying to make me — socialize and not spiral?” Ranboo asks. He talks to his dog a lot. 

Lottie is still looking and licks her jowls.

“I’m up, I’m up.” Ranboo says as he gets up and follows her. “Good girl.” He murmurs as he follows her to find out what his friends are up to.

They all end up painting their nails. Ranboo chooses black, Charlie chooses yellow, and Ranboo’s friends both choose a sparkly confetti. Charlie does Ranboo’s nails, and lets Ranboo do his, assuring them that he doesn’t care how steady Ranboo’s hands are. 

Charlie wants new clothes, and honestly, Ranboo could use them too. Going to a shopping mall is obviously out of the question, so they end up in a huge thrift store instead.

It’s the first time Ranboo has gotten to see the women from the hospital in awhile. She gives Ranboo a massive hug, and Ranboo holds her just as tight. Ranboo then introduces her to Charlie, and also Lottie. She can barely contain her excitement as she checks if she can pet Lottie right now, and squeals happily when Ranboo gives her the okay.

Charlie blinks as he watches. Ranboo just smiles a little.

She leads them through the thrift store with supreme confidence and ushers them into trying on all sorts of clothes. Charlie gradually gets comfortable, but Ranboo is twitchy. (Change your appearance, he remembers. Looks are not what they seem. People walk past him and for a second they seem familiar, but when Ranboo turns to get a better look, they’re no one.)

Ranboo’s friend throws a jacket into his face, and Ranboo fumbles for it.

“Try it on!” She encourages. Ranboo tugs it on as Charlie steps out of a changing room to show something off.

The jacket is pretty comfortable. Ranboo thinks for a moment they see blood on the floor, but no one else reacts, and then they blink, and it’s gone.

“Ran, try this next—”

Ranboo’s waiting for his companions to finish checking out, aimlessly running his hand over Lottie’s head as his thoughts drift. They were apparently going to a coffee shop after this. Ranboo’s friend wanted to find out what kind of coffee Ranboo liked and swore she’d get it within three guesses. 

This is the first time Ranboo has been out in public since they went into hiding. Everyone swore this place is out of the way, that there was no inkling they were being actively followed, that none of their investigation has turned anything up. Showfall is out there, sure, doing the same things they do. But maybe they’ve decided Ranboo is more trouble than he’s worth.

But Charlie is here too, now. Two of them, together, two of Showfall’s assets on the run and two of them to corroborate the other’s story. No one was going to believe Ranboo on his own, even with his strange, inexplicable scars: who would believe his utterly shot memory? But Charlie is here now too, and together, maybe they could be a threat.

It would be easy. It would be far too easy for someone to come and tap Ranboo on the shoulder, and lead him out. Ranboo’s too faceblind nowadays to know the difference half the time. How easy it would be to pull a van up to the curb and throw him in it, before anyone could —

“Ranboo?”

He blinks.

Charlie is looking at him. “Ready to go?”

Ranboo adjusts his grip on Lottie’s harness. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He walks out with his friends as she starts chattering about coffee.

They’re perched at a table in the coffeeshop, Lottie laying under Ranboo’s chair. Ranboo hasn’t even lifted his cup to have a sip when his friend points at his cup.

“ Oh my God is that what I think it is.”

Ranboo turns the cup to see there are numbers written on it.

“I … what?” He says eloquently.

His friend whips around and starts eyeing every barista behind the counter. “Which of them was it? Who handed you your cup?”

Ranboo looks at the workers, but to be honest, he hadn’t been paying attention, and he’s averse to eye-contact to begin with. “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

“It’s a phone number, Ran! One of them thinks you’re cute!”

Charlie is clearly trying not to laugh. Ranboo kicks him under the table.

“Are you gonna do something about it?” She presses.

“I don’t have a phone?” 

“You can use mine!” She has her phone on the table instantly. 

“Ranboo’s getting a hot date .” Charlie says, and Ranboo kicks him again.

“Am not.” Ranboo objects. He wears something to cover the lower half of his face while in public, usually, and a hood, to avoid people staring. He’s not sure how someone would decide he’s ‘cute’ from … his eyes, apparently, but meeting new people is very low on Ranboo’s list of things to do.

They mostly lay off the teasing once the focus switches to the Top Three Guesses for Ranboo’s Type of Coffee. 

Ranboo’s friend does in fact get it within the first three guesses, and the correct answer was hot coffee nearly black with just a bit of creamer. Charlie steals one of the other drinks, an iced concoction that’s loaded with sugar, and Ranboo’s friend is incredibly smug that she was right.

(Ranboo throws out the cup with the number written on it and tries not to look over his shoulder.)

Lottie starts nudging Ranboo and he pauses what he’s doing to look at her.

“What?” Lottie doesn’t stop even when she has his attention. Ranboo rubs her ears. “What’s up? I’m okay.” Ranboo privately searches their own head, but they feel fine.  They don’t think there’s anything wrong. 

Lottie whines. 

“Okay, okay, sure.” Ranboo lets Lottie lead him, and she noses his legs until Ranboo sits down in the middle of the floor, folding his lanky legs to sit criss-crossed. 

Lottie lays down right behind Ranboo, her back against his, her chin on Ranboo’s knee.

“I don’t really know what we’re doing.” Ranboo tells her.

There’s a gentle knock on the doorframe — Ranboo’s bedroom door is open, and his tall friend is standing there.

“What’re you doing?” His friend queries.

“I have no idea.” Ranboo admits. “Lottie just insisted.”

“Well, if Lottie insisted,” 

As his friend steps in the doorway, Ranboo suddenly feels dizzy and has to brace his hands against the floor. 

The world tilts and Ranboo slumps sideways when the seizure starts. If not for Lottie, his head would have probably hit the floor.

Awareness comes back to them slowly.

They’re laying on the floor, and there’s pressure against their side. There’s people talking. 

“—call a fucking ambulance or some shit?”

“No, I don’t think so. It was short, yeah?”

“I yelled right when they collapsed, so, I think.”

“It was a minute and a half. That’s not an emergency.”

“Has it happened before?” Do they know that voice? Do they know … any of these voices? They’re only getting about every other sentence.

“—could’ve been having absence seizures without anyone knowing.”

“What the fuck.” Most of these voices sound upset. Really upset, and worried. “Are you sure he’s okay?”

“Just give him time.”

A warm hand touches his face, and Ranboo twitches, nose wrinkling slightly in surprise.

“Ranboo? Can you hear me?”

Lottie starts licking his face, and Ranboo opens his eyes to see Charlie above him.

“Hi.” Ranboo whispers, and utter relief floods Charlie’s expression. He runs his hand through Ranboo’s hair.

“Hi.” Charlie repeats. “You need a haircut.”

Ranboo tries to smile, and someone laughs.

“I keep trying to tell him that!” One of Ranboo’s friends insists.

There’s other murmuring that Ranboo doesn’t catch, but Charlie’s still there, watching him.

“Can you … talk?” Ranboo asks.

“Talk?” Charlie considers. “About what?”

“I don’t care.” Ranboo mumbles. “Anything.”

Considering they spend the majority of their waking moments together, there isn’t a lot Charlie can tell Ranboo that Ranboo doesn’t already know. So he starts retelling the television show he was watching last night after Ranboo fell asleep, and Charlie’s actually a great storyteller, so it’s pretty compelling. 

“Ranboo, do you feel okay to sit up?” Charlie pauses his storytelling as someone else speaks.

“Um … yeah, I think so.” He feels more there than he was when he first woke up. Multiple sets of hands reach in to help, and Lottie sits up too, and everyone braces Ranboo as they’re pulled into a sitting position.

The elder of their new allies is holding a penlight, and flickers it over Ranboo’s eyes briefly. 

“Okay. Looks alright. Do you know what happened to you, Ranboo?” He asks.

Ranboo shakes their head a little.

“You had a seizure.” He explains. “It was short, only a minute and a half. You’re probably going to feel sore, and your head is gonna be hazy. But I don’t think it’s anything serious. We just need to watch and see if it happens again.”

Those are words. Ranboo hears them, and they think they get the shape of them. They must nod, as they try to catch up. 

“Why don’t we get you into your bed?” He suggests. 

Again, hands are on them, gentle, trying to help, and Ranboo is too confused to want to fight, but it’s overstimulating and he’s thankful for when he can curl up on familiar blankets. Lottie settles protectively at his side, and someone pulls a blanket over him. 

Charlie is humming. The song sounds almost familiar, but it drifts out of reach like smoke and slips through Ranboo’s fingers.

The touch is suffocating, in Ranboo’s dreams. It isn’t the warmth Ranboo has grown used to, but something much more clinical and cold. 

He can’t move. He’s strapped into an apparatus not dissimilar to the electric chair from the warehouse, limbs paralyzed and a contraption holding his head perfectly in place. There are needles prodding at his neck and the base of his spine, and yet he’s somehow numb to it. His fingers twitch with artificial electrical impulses as they test to see what they can make him do. 

“— could be suited for. Put up a hell of a fight, though. Even now, look at the brain wave readings.”

Murmurs.

“You think he can hear us?” A laugh.

“Not that it matters if he can.”

There’s the sound of movement, shoes on a tile floor, a door sliding, metal against metal, all kinds of ambiance Ranboo can’t quite discern.

“ I know what role is for him. ” This voice should be familiar, Ranboo thinks, though they don’t know why. “ You will be my Hero, Ranboo.”

Red lights fill his vision, and then —

And then he wakes up.

There’s familiar voices around him — actually familiar voices this time. Someone picks up Ranboo’s wrist and slides something onto it.

Ranboo squints at it.

There’s an array of bracelets on his arm that weren’t there before. The beads are fat and round, some in shapes like stars or hearts, and a rainbow of colors. Most of them have letters, too. 

There’s RANBOO, CHARLIE, and LOTTIE on one wrist, and his other friends’ names on the other.

Beneath ‘Lottie’ there’s also a series of four that read COPE, SEETHE, MID, PLUS L. 

(Ranboo doesn’t completely get that joke, but they had repeated it the other day and made their friends laugh until they cried.) 

“Are you guys making friendship bracelets without me?” Ranboo mumbles.

There’s a few noises of surprise. Charlie smiles at him. “You can still make some. Do you like what you’ve got so far?”

“Yeah, I do.” Ranboo sits up carefully and looks them over again. “Hand me the beads, I’m gonna make you two wear bracelets that just say mid.”

His friends gasp in mock offense. “But not Charlie?!” His tall friend demands

“Charlie isn’t mid.” Ranboo insists.

“You’re a fucking CRUEL MAN, RANBOO—”

Chapter Text

In the dark hours of the morning, curled up in each other’s arms, Charlie and Ranboo talk about what they remember. They play a game of real or not real to the best of their capacity, while dancing around topics that would trigger them to the point of a full breakdown. It’s not the easiest game to play, but it’s relieving to finally be able to get an answer sometimes when it comes to did this happen? Sometimes the two of them even manage to laugh at the absurdity of some of it. They’re usually tense laughs, but it’s better than nothing.

Right after Charlie’s arrival, Ranboo had frantically rearranged the drawings plastered on his walls. He’d taken down the ones he thought would be the most upsetting for Charlie to see, and wallpapered over the worst ones painted directly on the walls. But Charlie examines it all in his own time, gently picking up the corners of some papers to see what’s hidden beneath.

“There are more.” Ranboo says one night while Charlie is studying the walls.

“Can I see them?” Charlie asks.

So Ranboo takes stacks of them out of the closet, haphazardly arranged into folders, and Charlie leafs through them.

“They’re awful.” Charlie says, then immediately clarifies. “Like, they’re really fucking accurate. I didn’t know you were an artist.”

“I didn’t either.” Ranboo shrugs from where they sit, hugging their knees and watches Charlie. “I just started one day because I wanted it out of my head, and on the page worked for me.”

There are lots of Charlie’s face, and Charlie stares at those for long periods of time. Every drawing is from Ranboo’s perspective, so Ranboo imagines Charlie is entranced by seeing himself through Ranboo’s eyes. If his sense of self is as fucked as Ranboo’s, it’s got to be a lot to take in.

Eventually Charlie puts the drawings down and comes to sit by Ranboo, draping his arms around them. Ranboo hugs Charlie, arms around his middle, and Lottie comes to lay at their feet. 

Ranboo paints Charlie again the next day, but he paints Charlie as he is now. He paints Charlie smiling and laughing like he means it, paints him petting Lottie, paints him with the bracelets on his arm that match Ranboo’s.

It’s the first time Ranboo has drawn something that isn’t from Showfall.

Ranboo wakes up from a nightmare of the masked drones trying to kidnap him again. Charlie holds him as he explains it with a shaking voice.

“You can kill them, this time.” Charlie tells Ranboo. “If you don’t, I will.”

It’s grim, but it does comfort Ranboo. When they fall back asleep, they dream the same dream, but Ranboo stabs the masked figure until they collapse.

For them, it’s not a nightmare.

They’re having a picnic on the roof, and Ranboo gets off easy with his only job being setting up the blanket. (He doesn’t help make the food because that’s a fifty-fifty chance of him getting upset in some way, which unfortunately is not helped by Charlie’s presence. He’s choosing to frame it as getting off easy and not having to do any work because it’s a more positive spin than ‘I can’t prepare food or else I have a meltdown’. The ‘positive spin’ thing is a tip from his therapist, and Ranboo makes a lot of jokes about having cooking-show-trauma privilege.) 

They all sit on the roof amongst the rooftop garden set up there, mostly planted with vegetables. The food is good and the air is fresh, and things feel … things feel good, Ranboo decides.

Life is far from perfect. But this is pretty good.

The sun is starting to go down by the time they begin cleaning up. They’re all still joking and teasing, and Ranboo turns for a moment as they nudge their friends to enjoy the view. They’re elbowing each other and goofing off, and in one moment Ranboo is smiling at the sunset, at his friends, and the next he simply overbalances.

In the split second that Ranboo tips forward and his foot trips on the ledge at the side of the roof, Ranboo just sees the ground two stories below. They stare into oblivion, and it stares back, but it doesn’t frighten them. Ranboo has seen far past oblivion and it’s hard for it to scare them when they’ve already been through a waking hell. 

Honestly, Ranboo ascribes to that one morbid proverb: dying is easy. Living is harder. 

The rush of terror, the fact that they don’t want to die, comes late, and at the same moment it hits, someone grabs Ranboo by the back of his shirt.

Ranboo’s arms pinwheel wildly, and they zone back into the aborted shouts and swears behind them as they’re yanked back onto the roof. Someone catches Ranboo, and they look up to see the face of the storyteller.

This is how Ranboo has come to think of their allies here. The healer is the latest person Ranboo has come to trust, an easygoing older man that is phased by little. His friend is the storyteller, who visited Ranboo for the first time in the hospital all that time ago with his books.

The storyteller sets Ranboo on his feet now, steadying him.

“You alright?” He asks.

Ranboo nods. “Y-yeah. I’m okay. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Charlie takes Ranboo’s hand and everyone gets back downstairs safely.  The next day, Ranboo goes up to the roof while the storyteller is up there gardening. They stand awkwardly, wanting to say something but not knowing what. 

He turns his head briefly to glance at Ranboo. “You wanna weed the potatoes with me?”

“…sure.”

And thus Ranboo learns how to weed a garden. He’s tired and covered in dirt when they’re done, but it’s not bad work. And the storyteller, their friend, gives Ranboo something like an approving smile before telling them to go get cleaned up before dinnertime.

The week after isn’t nearly as good. Ranboo has migraines on and off, and Charlie has three awful days in a row. On the fourth day, he and Ranboo get into a vile screaming match. Ranboo has no idea what he’s saying for most of it, and for half of it, his mind is seeing Hetch instead of Charlie. It’s a struggle to pull them apart, and Ranboo is dragged away kicking and screaming by his friends while the other two have to restrain Charlie. Even then, Ranboo shouts at his friends for awhile as they try to calm them and prevent them from leaving the room. Once Ranboo’s rage subsides, he sinks to the floor crying. His friends hold him until he’s too tired to be upset any longer.

Ranboo isn’t sure what has woken them in the middle of the night, blinking blearily at the ceiling. Next to them, Charlie shifts. 

Ranboo rolls over. “Charlie?” He mumbles in confusion.

Charlie sits up abruptly, and Ranboo registers that he’s breathing hard. Ranboo reaches out a hand to touch his arm, and Charlie whips around, eyes wide when he sees Ranboo.

Everything goes wrong in a split second. Charlie lunges at Ranboo, and his hands close on Ranboo’s throat. 

Ranboo grabs Charlie’s wrists instantly, but Charlie is significantly more built than Ranboo, and in a test of pure strength, Charlie will win everytime. It has to only be a few seconds at most as Ranboo digs their nails into Charlie’s skin, but with Charlie’s wild gaze above them, it’s some of the most frightening moments of Ranboo’s life.

Ranboo writhes, throwing the blankets off and disturbing Lottie at the end of the bed, then finds purchase with his feet against Charlie’s stomach and kicks him as hard as he can. One foot shoves into Charlie’s abdomen, and the other slips up and catches Charlie in the chin.

Charlie recoils, letting go of Ranboo, and Ranboo kicks again, pushing Charlie off the bed. With a bang, Charlie hits the floor in a heap, and Ranboo scrambles for the foot of the bed in a panic as Lottie jumps up and begins barking.

There’s no plan in Ranboo’s head, only blinding terror and the instinct to survive, but as they turn their head to see what Charlie’s doing, he’s scrambling away too. The wildness in his eyes has given way to horror and guilt. 

“Charlie --” Ranboo starts to say, but Charlie is up and out the door in a moment. Lottie’s barking subsides and she immediately goes to check on Ranboo, who can just sit and stare.

Ranboo’s not alone for more than a few beats before someone is hurrying in to check on him.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” He repeats. “Is Charlie okay?”

“Someone else went to him. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Ranboo’s sure. It’s not themself they’re worried about.

Charlie refuses to come back to Ranboo’s room, and the others try to soothe Ranboo and tell them to go back to sleep. His friends offer to stay with him, though he declines. But Ranboo lays in bed staring at the ceiling until the loneliness is too much, and he rolls out of bed, gathering a pillow and his comforter into his arms.

Charlie is passed out on the couch in the living room. Ranboo doesn’t disturb him, just arranges his things on the floor close by, and lays down again, Lottie flopping next to him.

It’s easier to go back to sleep when the last thing he sees is Charlie.

When he wakes up in the morning, he’s not on the floor anymore, but arranged on the couch. Charlie is with the others in the kitchen, and brings Ranboo breakfast before Ranboo’s even fully up.

Ranboo says a soft “thank you,” and the way Charlie smiles back at him tells Ranboo that Charlie understood what Ranboo was trying to say. That they were trying to make sure Charlie knows that Ranboo is not afraid of him.

They sleep next to each other again that night, with no incidents.

Chapter Text

A comforting hand is drawing through Ranboo’s hair in a steady pattern as the others talk. There’s a damp, cool cloth draped over Ranboo’s forehead while their face is half pressed into their pillow.

“-- have anything to do with the seizure?”

“It just sounds like regular migraines to me. Lots of reasons for migraines.”

“Less surprising with everything their head’s been through.”

“...some kind of medicine to help.”

“--the painkillers we have are already strong as fuck.”

“-- haven’t probably had time to kick in.”

“Ran? How are you feeling?”

The hand in his hair pauses and Ranboo just makes a wordless, unhappy sound. The soothing touch begins again.

“Come on, let’s let him be, the noise ain’t gonna help.”

“ ... invest in some light-blocking curtains so we don’t have to pin blankets to the walls, maybe ...”

The voices start getting distant. Ranboo curls in on himself more, and as he absently tries to chew on his nails, his hand is tugged away.

“We got fidgets for this, man. Promise it’s better to not chew your fingers up.”

Ranboo just makes another unhappy noise. It’s like there’s fucking daggers in his head, and the pain is particularly centered on his right eye and in his jaw, which just serves to aggravate his regular scars and aches. He spent all morning pressing the heels of his palm against the orbitals of his eyes until the others had made him stop in fear of him rubbing his eyes to the point of hurting them. He keeps trying to work his jaw like it will lessen the pain, but it only provides a mere moment or two of relief before it all comes back worse. It’s hell, and the pain muddles his head, making things feel worse than they’ve been in awhile.

“It’s gonna be okay.” Charlie. At least he’s here, close by. “The meds should help soon. Just try and rest.”

Ranboo supposes they can try. What else are they going to do, anyways? They’d probably pass out if they tried to get up. They doze and let the haze take them. 

There’s static. There’s static in their brain. There’s static in their brain and in their mouth and in their ears. Their head is pounding and the lights in their eyes are so bright that they feel like they’re burning, and they flinch away, only for something to yank them back into position.

It feels like there are strings wound around them, up and down their limbs, digging into their skin and rearranging them like a puppet.

Ranboo yanks against them, and they dig in and burn and he begins to bleed. The strings are as fine and sharp as fishing lines, burrowing into his skin. They thrash, and the wires yank him up, away from any ground, and then he’s slammed into a wall so hard his head spins and the wires animate and wrap around his limbs until Ranboo can’t move, until his circulation is cut off, and there are spikes wreathing his head, waiting for him.

Ranboo starts screaming.

“ JUST LET ME DIE, LET ME DIE—”

Ranboo wakes up to someone shaking his shoulder carefully. His mouth is dry and as soon as he opens his eyes, he just wants to close them again. The room is dark, but not dark enough, and the pain still constricts his skull.

“I know, I’m sorry. We just really want you to eat something. Can I sit you up?”

Ranboo is propped up against pillows and hazily blinks. 

“Come on, just a bit.”

A spoon is maneuvered towards him, and he opens his mouth. The broth is warm and goes down easily enough, and Ranboo doesn’t have to muster enough coordination to feed himself. 

He’s laying down again. He’s cold, whatever he’s laying on isn’t as soft. There are no dreams, but he’s being watched. He’s being watched closely but half the world is frozen without the Hero to bring it alive and bear witness to it living and breathing. There’s a weird smell to the cabin, musty like mothballs and dust, but something else. It must be the slime. It gets everywhere, into everything, and it stinks like iron and death — because that’s what slime smells like. 

He sees the demon for a moment. It haunts his dreams just for that split second, and then the Hero forgets what he wasn’t meant to see. But that glimpse of ghouls and blood gets into his head anyways, and he chokes down the smell, the taste, the awfulness of it.

He’s kneeling on a tile floor. He can’t hold himself up, so someone is doing it for him. Other hands have pulled his hair back from his face and he’s retching, coughing up bile that he can’t tell the color of: green or red. He’s shaking violently, though from the cold or the nausea or something else, he doesn’t know. It hurts to cough or swallow, and it’s too bright. Ranboo moans and wants nothing more than to lay against the freezing tile and not move.

It’s cold where he dies. It’s cold when the power is turned off and his blood has gone room temperature as well. It’s cold when they cut down his inert body, wrench the shrieking metal open to drop him to the floor. To cart off what’s left of him for rebuilding. 

He wakes up crying and screaming and he doesn’t recognize the faces above him. His head hurts badly and he scrapes and claws at the mask until they force his hands away from his face and he sobs until they knock him out again.

His head hurts. Everyone is shouting at him as he tries buttons and levers and the detonator is there, so close, all he has to do is grab it, but he can’t. He can’t move, he can’t even reach for it. All he can do is flex his fingers like he can break out of this control.

His head hurts. He rubs at his eyes to try and make it go away until something cool touches his face. He isn’t sure if it’s water dripping on his cheeks or if he’s crying.

There are gentle hands. He’s sitting in the bathtub, but the water is warm, and there’s music playing somewhere in the distance. Someone’s hummimg under their breath as they carefully rinse out his hair.

“I know I said you needed a haircut, but I think you look fine.” They murmur. “For the record.” 

Ranboo lays their head against the person’s shoulder. Charlie smiles at him.

He’s painting. He’s painting Charlie in green. Everything keeps getting away from him, though, and he keeps having to look for his paintbrushes. Someone keeps asking why, but Ranboo doesn’t know. Ranboo has to grab Charlie by the wrist to try to get him to stop moving already. The green-red-green is everywhere, running down Ranboo’s wrists, and Charlie is screaming. Why did he do that? Why did he do that?

He feels like he’s been bedridden in his dark room for days, but maybe it’s only been hours. Ranboo needs to get out of here. But sitting up feels out of the question. Someone is reading to him. Don’t look back, they read. Or all will be lost.

██ ██ is there. “Wake up, Ranboo, wake up.” Names and faces are slipping out of their mind again, but Ranboo sees him and at least remembers him vaguely. “It’s okay, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s here, just — you have to get up, okay? Can you get up and get dressed quick?”

Ranboo is standing, confused, looking for a hoodie.

They are downstairs and Ranboo nearly collapses and there is Charlie. 

██ ██ is there. “Wake up, Ranboo, wake up.” Names and faces are slipping out of their mind again, but Ranboo sees him and at least remembers him vaguely. “It’s okay, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s here, just — you have to get up, okay? Can you get up and get dressed quick?”

Ranboo is standing, confused, looking for a hoodie.

They are downstairs and Ranboo nearly collapses and there is Charlie, limp, not moving. Ranboo screams.

██ ██ is there. “Wake up, Ranboo, wake up.” Names and faces are slipping out of their mind again, but Ranboo sees him and at least remembers him vaguely. “It’s okay, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s here, just — you have to get up, okay? Can you get up and get dressed quick?”

Ranboo is standing, confused, looking for a hoodie.

They are downstairs and Ranboo nearly collapses and there is the nice woman. She’s holding a revolver and she points it at Ranboo’s head. She’s sobbing as she puts her finger on the trigger.

██ ██ is there. “Wake up, Ranboo, wake up.” Names and faces are slipping out of their mind again, but Ranboo sees him and at least remembers him vaguely. “It’s okay, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s here, just — you have to get up, okay? Can you get up and get dressed quick?”

Ranboo is standing, confused, looking for a hoodie.

They are downstairs and Ranboo nearly collapses and there is Sneeg.

Sneeg is there. 

Ranboo wakes up and Sneeg is standing there.

Sneeg takes Ranboo by the hand.

Ranboo needs fresh air. Ranboo needs to see the world outside to know he’s not trapped. Sneeg has his arm wrapped around them, walking them carefully down the steps.

It’s dusk, the last rays of the sun falling across the world. 

They get to the end of the driveway when a bang rings out so loudly that Ranboo cries out, ears ringing, and covers his ears. Sneeg lets him go and he loses his footing, elbows scraping the pavement.

There’s another bang, and someone is grabbing him. The eyes above him are dead. They grab him by the collar and Ranboo screams again, his voice sounding a million miles away. 

There’s a third deafening bang, and there’s a bullet between Sneeg’s eyes. His body falls half on-top of Ranboo and his blood seeps into Ranboo’s shirt. Lottie has her teeth in Sneeg and is trying to haul him away, off Ranboo.

Ranboo is again swept up into someone’s arms, shouting in confusion, desperation. They carry him back into the house. 

Ranboo wakes up and it’s like surfacing from being underwater. Charlie is passed out next to him as Ranboo rubs his face, arm slung over Ranboo protectively. Lottie’s head raises when Ranboo shifts.

There are heavy blinds covering the window. Ranboo slips carefully off the bed so as to not disturb Charlie and peeks outside to watch the sun rise. 

Then Ranboo curls up next to Charlie and goes back to sleep.

There’s static. There’s static in their brain. There’s static in their brain and in their mouth and in their ears. Static of a television rerun as the titles play.

Showfall Media Proudly Presents: The Mastermind of the Warehouse. 

Chapter Text

There’s a brand on Charlie’s shoulderblade. When Charlie gives them permission, Ranboo sits behind him and carefully traces it. It’s clearly very old, and blends in with Charlie’s other freckles and scars. It’s an odd shape, something like a four, Ranboo thinks. He draws it to show Charlie, and Charlie just shrugs.

It’s not as if its origin is truly a mystery.

After three days of being horribly sick, Ranboo woke up lucid and well enough to be out of bed for at least a little while. The light sensitivity from their migraines seems to have gone away, so the windows can be uncovered and opened, and the fresh air does wonders for clearing their head. 

Ranboo can’t stomach much more than toast and juice, still, but they play fetch with Lottie and listen to the storyteller read about the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. Their other friend comes over, and she brings a present in the form of a weighted blanket, which Ranboo actually finds rather comforting. When they doze off, Charlie carries them upstairs wrapped in it.

“This blanket is fucking heavy.” Charlie mutters to someone as he maneuvers himself and Ranboo up the stairs. 

“You’re the one that volunteered to carry them.”

“ I didn’t know the blanket would add twenty pounds.”

“Yeah, well — careful, Lottie, hold on. Charlie’s got them, don’t go under his feet.”

As Ranboo is laid down, they remember something they were going to say to Charlie, so they try to fight the exhaustion enough to speak.

“I saw him.” Ranboo mutters blearily. “I saw him, Charlie. It was him … I think he was my friend, before…he said he was…he said he was coming back for me…I saw…”

The light above Charlie’s head casts shadows on his features. His mouth moves, but Ranboo can’t make out the words.

Ranboo wonders if Showfall branded them, too.

When Ranboo wakes up in late afternoon, the others are talking about moving out of the safehouse and going somewhere else. Ranboo’s not really clear on what the options are, and honestly, he’s not especially clear on where here is. Directions confuse him, and most places he’s been exist as a single oasis in his head, disconnected from all the others. Ranboo just wants to be somewhere away from Showfall. Familiar is better, because the longer they’ve been somewhere, the better it sticks to his brain, and everytime he suddenly feels lost he panics.

Lottie rests her head on his chest.

“Have someone been walking you?” He murmurs to her, scratching her ears.

“Yes.” One of his friends says. “Though she’s a big drama queen about leaving you alone, even when you’re asleep.”

“She’s a good girl.” Ranboo asserts.

“She is.” He agrees.

Ranboo misses the rest of the conversation when nausea rolls over him and he’s hustled to the bathroom to gag over the sink. He catches sight of his reflection in the mirror. His hair really is getting long, and the bags under his eyes are so dark they look like bruises against his pale skin. His scars are healing, but there’s a few new band-aids plastered on his cheeks.

When Ranboo touches them, his tall friend says, “You scratched yourself by accident while you were out of it.”

Ranboo meets his friend’s eyes in the mirror and sees healing scratches on his face too.

His friend squeezes Ranboo’s hand gently when he sees the horror cross Ranboo’s expression.

“I didn’t — I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean it.” Ranboo whispers.

“I know you didn’t. I promise.” He takes Ranboo’s hand and puts Ranboo’s palm to his cheek. “We can match a little.”

Ranboo wants to pull away, demand how they can possibly be trusted if they’re going to hurt their friends, but his friend’s hold is firm. He’s not holding Ranboo against his will, but he’s making a point.

Ranboo rests his head on his friend’s shoulder.

“Are we safe?” Ranboo asks.

His friends hug him close. “Yes. We are.”

Ranboo searches for a new spot on the walls to paint. They find a painting of an employee drone in a black and white Showfall mask, and they make that their canvas. They paint over the markings on the mask to expand the white square and their base, and then they paint Sneeg’s face.

Ranboo is fanatical about getting the details right. They spend half the day on it, and keep getting gently pulled away by their friends to take breaks, to have some food or some water or just to take a walk. Someone is always in the room with him, too, but no one interrupts Ranboo besides these essentials. Everyone seems to understand that Ranboo is trying to focus. Also, Ranboo imagines they want to encourage anything that gets them out of bed. As they’re recovering from their sickness, they know they should feel less tired, but they don’t. Most days they don’t want to do anything besides laying in bed, and they don’t know why.

But today they paint Sneeg.

They paint the chainlink that was between themself and Sneeg, in this one moment caught in their mind. A moment that Ranboo can now recognize as Sneeg waking up and breaking out of Showfall’s mind control.

In those precious few moments Sneeg had, he walked up to the barrier, and promised Ranboo he’d be back for them.

Knowing what Ranboo knows now makes what came after all the worse, as is the fact that he doesn’t remember much about Sneeg. But they must’ve been friends, must’ve known each other, if Sneeg would’ve made that promise.

Right?

They see their therapist and psychiatrist, and there’s lots of talk about medication doses that Ranboo doesn’t track very well. It leads to them getting bloodwork done, which is a hell of an experience. Ranboo hates the waiting room, hates being in public, and wishes Charlie could have come. The medical environment, even one as casual as this, is extremely triggering to him, and Ranboo’s friends are working as hard as they can to comfort Ranboo during this in Charlie’s stead.

Ranboo clutches his short friend’s hand while the needle is put into his arm, and his tall friend carefully braces a palm on Ranboo’s chest in case they startle. The nurse says something about Ranboo having easy veins, and Ranboo feels nauseous.

When it’s over, Lottie puts her paws up on Ranboo’s lap, and he hugs her.

They get ice cream on the way home.

But whatever the doctors see in the bloodwork, they don’t like, and Ranboo is landed in the hospital again, albeit just for ‘observation’ and ‘more tests’. It’s terrible, is what it is, because Ranboo hates to be parted from Charlie, and Charlie already braves the environment for the length of visiting hours. Ranboo’s friends bring all kinds of things to try and make the room feel less sterile and more like home — his blankets, pillows, stacks of his sketchbooks, photos of his friends to stick on the walls, books, and toys for Lottie. Tending to Lottie’s needs to go outside does a lot to help Ranboo get out of the room everyday. It’s bearable, but Ranboo doesn’t like it.

The others are downstairs getting food, leaving Ranboo, Lottie, and the healer together in the room when the nurse pops her head in.

“You have some new visitors!” She says brightly. “Your parents are here!”

Something in Ranboo simply … disconnects, when he hears the words and can hardly comprehend them.

The two strangers who enter are all smiles, expressions sharp enough to cut, and they rush to Ranboo’s side in such a whirlwind of loud voices that Lottie jumps up and growls in warning, attempting to body-block them.

Ranboo orders Lottie down in a haze, and Lottie hesitates, like she can taste Ranboo’s dread.

The woman grabs Ranboo by the shoulders and pulls him into a hug, babbling on about missing him. Ranboo feels strangled, and Lottie starts nosing at the woman immediately. When she lets Ranboo go, she just absently pushes Lottie back and clasps her hands on Ranboo’s cheeks, a motion that makes Ranboo go rigid from head to toe. His hands close on the woman’s wrists defensively; she’s still talking, but he’s not hearing her.

The man pries Ranboo’s hands off of her like it’s nothing and goes in for a hug next. 

Ranboo can’t breathe. Ranboo can’t breathe.

Lottie jumps up onto the bed and lays on Ranboo’s legs, and her grounding weight is probably the only reason Ranboo can even vaguely comprehend the scene around him. The woman tries several times to shoo Lottie off the bed and fails each time as Lottie resoundingly ignores her. The woman  settles for sitting at Ranboo’s side, always touching him, gripping his hand or petting his hair or fingers ghosting along his cheek. She rubs her thumb along his scars and just laughs lightly when Ranboo flinches away from her exploratory touches on the wires.

The man is talking to the healer, Ranboo thinks. The woman is talking and talking and talking to Ranboo and his head hurts. She doesn’t seem to care that Ranboo isn’t (can’t) answering her. 

They’re underwater, near to drowning. The woman’s eyes are piercing blue and her smile is sharp at the edges. Her nails are too long and scrape against Ranboo’s skin and the man’s hold is too tight, too possessive, and his voice is smooth and deep.

Their faces are pale as masks and their eyes are empty and Ranboo tries to shove away, but they hold him fast.

There’s a rapid beeping, somewhere in the background. An alarm starts going off. Everything is suffocating and there are more people in the room now, and their harried talking is making Ranboo’s ears ring, and someone tries to push Lottie off him and Lottie leaps up, barking in their faces as she stands between Ranboo and them.

Ranboo doesn’t remember pulling their knees to their chest. Their hands are covering their mouth and their breath is hot on their face, shallow and coming fast. 

“ Don’t — don’t touch them, let them—”

“— panic—”

“— that’s their fucking service dog, for God’s sake,”

“Get that mask away, I don’t care if it’s oxygen— ”

Ranboo is facedown in their pillow in the fetal position and Lottie is half-laying on them and snarling at anyone who tries to touch them. They’re dying , they feel like they’re dying, they want to go home, they need to go home — they need Charlie. Where is he? They need Charlie, they need him.

They don’t even know it when they started sobbing and begging for Charlie out loud. Their vision is too blurred to see anything and every harrowed breath hurts their chest and their throat. 

They only know when Lottie shifts to let him through: when Charlie’s voice is there.

“I’m here. Ran, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Ranboo clings to Charlie and cries in his arms until they pass out.

There’s a lot of conversation and a lot of arguing. Whenever something gets too heated, people are ushered away from Ranboo’s bedside. Charlie never leaves. No matter what happens, Charlie never leaves. 

Other doctors come and try to talk to Ranboo, but he doesn’t want to talk to strangers. Charlie turns them away. Charlie stays and keeps them safe. 

The smiling strangers don’t come back. Ranboo hears them arguing too, but Charlie and Lottie don’t let any strangers touch Ranboo. 

“—not letting this go to fucking court. They’re an adult, if they don’t want someone in here, then that’s it, right?”

“Those people are arguing about it.”

“Is there any real proof they are who they say they are? Because those aren’t Ranboo’s parents.”

“It’s not going before a judge. We’re not letting this go that far.”

“— need to disappear again?”

“…talked about moving. This is another reason.”

“ — trying to get them to sign paperwork.”

“That’s why one of us needs to stay.”

“Someone else needs to be legally written down as having power of attorney.”

“We should ask them who they want that to be, shouldn’t we?”

“We will.”

“…get out of this place. It doesn’t help them.”

“The tests look good, right?”

“—hasn’t had another seizure, so they’re not too worried.”

“— leave as soon as possible.”

“Can’t challenge us in court if we’re off the grid.”

A young man with dark hair and dark suit is the first stranger admitted to the room since Ranboo’s violent panic attack. The healer and the storyteller know him somehow and say he’s only here to help. The man says a lot of things about filings and the power to make decisions and executors and living wills. But the only important bit is when he asks Ranboo who they’re ‘appointing’, and they point at their tall friend and short friend in turn. Ranboo was prepared for this, as it was explained to them before. Ranboo has to sign something, as do his friends and this lawyer.

Ranboo is discharged from the hospital twelve hours later. Charlie cries when they finally drive out of the parking lot, and Ranboo holds him tight.

In Ranboo’s nightmares, a needle is jammed into his neck, by those strangers, by rats in masks, like they always were. The woman with the nails sharp as claws hugs Ranboo so tightly he can’t move as the man shoves his head to the side for access to his throat and shoves the syringe in. 

Ranboo wants to scream, but he is held frozen and still. Ranboo can see now, see their dead drone masks pretending to be smiles. Ranboo can see now, the cameras on them, the drones sitting limply. Ranboo is a doll to these things as they put him in a wheelchair. Ranboo is a puppet to these people as they run for their life through the mall.

There’s screaming — no, howling, Lottie howling as they tie her leash to the bed to keep her from following — there’s screaming for help as they push Ranboo out into the hall and they are helpless to protest. There’s screaming for them to react, to do something, as the mask chokes Ranboo and they stand stock still.

Ranboo’s head falls back and they watch the lights go by in steady patterns, blinding them each time. The hands of the strangers burn where they touch, branding Ranboo’s skin with handprints and wire burns. They speak sickly sweet to the nurses and to the paralyzed Ranboo.

“We’re taking him home.” They say.

welcome home, hero, they whisper. homecoming special. 

Hetch has Ranboo by the throat and drags him down a hall while Ranboo kicks and tries and fails to scream. Hetch slams Ranboo’s head into the wall over and over until Ranboo stops struggling, and the wires come to life to nail Ranboo to his cross. Hetch turns the camera towards them. 

The strangers dump Ranboo into the trunk of the car like trash. Hetch is holding the black and red mask im his hand, and wires hang from it, moving and roiling like living tentacles.

Hetch presses it again Ranboo’s face and it burrows into his skin, and jaw, and skull. The wires go down his throat and into his veins and Ranboo can’t scream. 

They voted for you to die, and the box slams closed.

They voted for you to die, and the box slams closed.

They voted for you to die, and the box slams closed.

Ranboo wakes up screaming, writhing beneath their weighted blanket. They weep against Charlie’s shoulder in the backseat of the car until someone produces something to make Ranboo have dreamless sleep. It’s a temporary measure, but one Ranboo is grateful for nonetheless. 

The new medications get rid of the migraines. Nothing stops the nightmares. 

Chapter Text

There’s a thunderstorm brewing when they arrive at the new safehouse. Ranboo is passed out on Charlie’s shoulder, as they’ve been for the last few hours. Charlie waits with them in the car for a few minutes as the others start to unpack essentials, and once a sweep of the house has been completed, Charlie gently lifts Ranboo into his arms and carries him inside.

Charlie is fairly strong, but Ranboo is particularly light. They may be tall, but they’re skinny, though they’re thankfully putting on weight these days. 

Lottie stays close to Charlie’s side. Since the bedrooms aren’t made up yet, Charlie just lays Ranboo down on the couch, burritoed in a blanket. 

Charlie asks to help unpack, but everyone tells him it’s fine, to just relax. There’s the unspoken implication for him to mind Ranboo as well, and Charlie accepts the task. He’s stressed as fuck, and he won’t complain about listening to Ranboo’s peaceful breathing. Lottie lays her head in Charlie’s lap as the others work.

Charlie feels like absolute hell. The last several days have been harrowing, even before the incident at the hospital. It took all of Charlie’s will and then some to handle the hospital environment, if only to be with Ranboo, and being away from them also took its own toll. 

And then came the terror of knowing that Showfall was still on their tail. Or at least, the assumption. Ranboo’s friends admit to not having heard Ranboo discuss their family a lot in the Before (before Ranboo disappeared), but they’re both utterly certain that the people who came to the hospital were not Ranboo’s parents. Hell, even if they were, Charlie wanted to kill them for how they’d burst in and treated Ranboo. The fear that had haunted Ranboo’s eyes in the days after, the way they flinched at even the sound of strange voices in the hall — Charlie had watched them feverishly draw Showfall’s rats in their sketchbook over and over, ripping the pages out and crumbling them into balls to throw to the floor, and at times Ranboo had just felt so far away, and Charlie could only stand sentry at their side and be there to guide Ranboo back.

Thank fuck they had the resources to run. If those people had tried to take Ranboo, Charlie would have — he would’ve done anything to stop them. Anything.

The rain is starting to fall, pitter-pattering on the roof as thunder rumbles in the distance.  

Ranboo twitches in their sleep, hands tensing and fingers fluttering. Charlie takes their hand and soothes them, running his fingers down the back of their hand to their knuckles in a calm, repetitive motion.

Charlie doesn’t see Ranboo’s hands as hands that hurt him. No, Charlie can only think of the way Ranboo held his hand at times while they ran through the mall. He thinks of their brief moments of free thought. He thinks about the fact that Ranboo did not have to stop and snap him out of his trance, and lost precious time in doing so.

Ranboo chose Charlie, and Charlie returns that choice every single day.

When everything is inside and the truck is unpackaged, the rain really starts coming down, and there’s a fireplace that someone has set up and sparked a flame in.

“Charlie, are you hungry?” Someone offers.

“Yeah, I’ll have something.” He’s handed a plate after a few minutes and absently eats from it. 

Lottie sits up, and moments later, Ranboo stirs.

Charlie immediately sets his plate down so he can twine his fingers with Ranboo’s. He runs his thumb over the back of Ranboo’s hand as their eyes slowly open. 

“Hi Ran.” Charlie murmurs.

“Heyy.” Ranboo mumbles back. “What’s up…”

“Not much.” A sound from Lottie makes Charlie look over, and Lottie is promptly eating the hot dog from Charlie’s plate. “ Hey, wait, Lottie—”

As the storm rolls through that night, Ranboo and Charlie lay next to each other in bed. At first, they were going to claim separate rooms, but neither of them are inclined to be apart. There’s extra space in the house if they ever need it, but right now, they bring all their things to the same room. It’s the attic room they’ve made their’s, and it’s spacious, and the angle to the room gives more space for Ranboo to paint. 

“I’m sorry I made you do that.” Ranboo tells Charlie. “I know that the hospital, that … I’m really sorry. You didn’t have to.”

“It’s okay. It was more important for me to be there with you.” Charlie replies. “And it’s over, and we’re safe, so that’s all I care about.”

“I’m still really sorry.”

Charlie hugs Ranboo tight, and Ranboo hugs him back. Charlie knows he can’t alleviate all of Ranboo’s guilt, but he can show Ranboo that it’s alright, and demonstrate his trust in them. They spend the evening looking at stuffed animals online, because at some point while Ranboo was in the hospital there had been a conversation about Build-a-Bears. The idea had been sidetracked when everyone remembered that malls were a very strict no-go, but the others swore they were going to make this work. So Charlie and Ranboo rank the stuffed animals on the website, with Charlie’s favorites being several of the frogs and Ranboo lamenting the lack of a dog that looks like Lottie. 

Ranboo wakes up in the night and shakes Charlie, asking to walk around the new safehouse with him. They explore all its corners together, getting familiar with the place. Ranboo is half-asleep by the time they’re done, and the two of them hold hands as they go back to their room and crash again. 

“Hey Charlie.” Ranboo says as they’re tucked beneath the comforter and the storm continues.

“Yeah?”

“M’glad you’re here.” Ranboo touches their forehead to his.

“Me too.”

They barbecue for dinner the next day. Charlie can see Ranboo out the window, being taught how the grill works while Charlie is organizing things inside.

It’s not long before someone comes to stand across the counter from him and asks, “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” Charlie immediately gets a look, and he huffs.  “ What?” 

“I just think you should talk about it, man. It’s no good to keep it to yourself.”

“I’ve got therapy and stuff.”

“And talk to your therapist, yeah, you don’t have to talk to me. But I still think it’d help.”

Charlie sighs, his eyes catching Ranboo out the window again with the others.

“You gotta worry about yourself, too, man. Ran’s okay.”

“But are they?” Charlie insists.

“If they aren’t, they aren’t only relying on you. But be a little selfish, yeah? Worry about yourself. You should.”

Charlie stares down at the countertop. The problem is, he doesn’t know how to be selfish because he doesn’t know what he wants. Doesn’t have any sense of self to cater to. He won’t play a villain or a  victim, so where does that leave him? Sidekick? Supportive side character? 

Brother, his mind whispers. Friend. Just Charlie.

“Maybe you have a point.” Charlie allows. He gets a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“You got it, man. Want a soda?”

So Charlie cracks open a soda and plays a make-shift game of horseshoes in the yard. When the food is ready, Ranboo is beaming with pride for what they’ve managed. The group gives a toast and enjoys the food and the stars as the sun goes down.

At the advice of his therapist, Charlie works on figuring out ‘who’ he is. He tries all kinds of activities and hobbies to see what he likes. He can stand watching the TV for short bursts, especially when no tapes are involved and it’s all modern streaming instead. (Whatever signal they have out here is triple-encrypted, apparently, letting them get television, radio, and enough internet for telehealth calls.) He learns a wide array of card games from the others and he’s shit at chess, but he’s learning. Painting doesn’t intrigue him the way it does Ranboo, but he likes to watch Ranboo paint. 

His favorite is to go rambling in the woods. The old safehouse was secluded, but there were neighbors. Now, they’re in the middle of nowhere. Charlie finds a certain freedom in exploring the woods. Lottie loves it, though Ranboo can only stand to go so far. The others accompany Charlie sometimes, and Charlie gets adept at recognizing his surroundings and navigating.

(He carries an axe and a handgun whenever he leaves the house. He never needs them, but he will never risk it.)

Under the trees and listening to the birdsong, Charlie thinks; and a weight is always lifted from his chest. 

One day, some of the others come back from a resupply trip, but Charlie is shooed out from the kitchen when he tries to unpack the groceries. The excuses are unclear, and Charlie is foiled everytime he tries to catch a look.

That night, after dinner, Charlie is made to sit in his chair and close his eyes.

When he’s told to open them, there’s a cake in front of him. There’s lit candles, and no text on it, just decorations.

“We don’t know your birthday, but we just wanted to do something …”

“It’s half vanilla and half chocolate because we couldn’t agree what you’d like.”

“I tried to make them get Happy Charlie written on it but I got out-voted.”

Ranboo touches Charlie’s shoulder. “We just talked about birthdays recently, sooo… it doesn’t have to be your birthday today, but it’s your choice. We can still celebrate.”

Charlie blinks tears from his eyes and wipes his face. “Yeah man, you know, why not. As good a day for a birthday as any other.”

They sing a terrible and off-key rendition of Happy Birthday to Charlie and enjoy cake and coffee. There’s a forced session of party games as well, including a game of charades that Charlie absolutely wrecks. He makes Ranboo laugh so hard they cry, and it’s the best birthday Charlie could have ever asked for.

Almost a month has passed since their arrival at the new house when Charlie wanders into the living room after a shower one evening as a news bulletin plays.

Charlie feels frozen as the newscaster talks, as a picture appears onscreen.

He turns and runs upstairs to wake Ranboo.

“—boo, wake up. Wake up.”

Ranboo’s eyes shoot open, and Lottie jumps slightly next to him. His hand goes up to grab at what’s above him, but another hand takes his carefully. 

██ ██ is there. “It’s okay, nobody’s hurt, nobody’s here, just — you have to get up, okay? Can you get up and get dressed quick?”

Ranboo releases his friend and sits up, squirming to get his legs free from Lottie’s weight as they roll out of bed. They get a hoodie, confused. “I, a — what? I don’t understand.”

“It’s a lot to explain.” His friend waits until Ranboo is comfortable in his dress and takes his hand. “Just come with me. Please. 

They are downstairs. Ranboo almost collapses.

There is Sneeg.

The picture on the television is Sneeg.

Chapter Text

Ranboo sits in the chair, still as they can manage, as their friend brushes through their hair.

She chats as she does, saying she’s cut her own hair a thousand times before and that she’ll make sure she only takes off a little, but she knows Ran likes their hair.

It’s too quiet in the house. It’s just Ranboo and Charlie, plus Ranboo’s short friend and her. The others are out, pulling off whatever it takes to retrieve Sneeg.

The television reporter had called him a John Doe who appeared at a county hospital, and asked for the public’s help in identifying him. Ranboo had felt glued to the TV, pressing their hand to the glass and fighting an impulsive urge to punch through it, to shove their hand right through into the world on the other side, to reach him. 

All they had tasted was static.

( This is a labyrinth, their nightmares whisper. And there is a minotaur in its heart.)   

Ranboo and Charlie hadn’t participated much in the plans that had been forged. Ranboo knew there was no chance of him going, but it hadn’t staved off the frustration. He’s spent time painting, throwing a cacophany of black and white and red against the attic’s walls, using his hands to create the shape of a Showfall drone that he made into a knife-throwing target. He practiced until he could not miss, brain constantly replaying the moments where Sneeg had attacked the other man in order to ensure Ranboo survived when the walls closed in. There had been no self-preservation in Sneeg then: only intention to save the Hero.

Seeing the weapons being prepared for their mission had also brought up bad memories: Ranboo recalled  a weight familiar, pushed into their grip, a thing they cannot bear holding. Their fingerprints are burned into a murder weapon, and despite any instinct that might scream for it to be brought to bear against their captors, their muzzle prevents that. The mask burns brighter against their skin like a cattle prod to keep them back from unwanted thoughts and unwanted actions. There is a script, and the Hero plays by it. The Hero does not harm the other players, unless played out in a comedic manner. 

( This is a labyrinth, and there is a minotaur in its heart. )

The sound of the scissors makes Ranboo jolt in their seat, and she puts a careful hand on their shoulder.

“I’m gonna start, okay?”

“Okay.”

They don’t like the quiet sound of the scissors blades as they cut, and have to force themself not to turn their head to try and watch (because that will really fuck up their haircut). It reminds Ranboo too much of half-hazy memories of tools and instruments he could never see, too close to him. 

It makes his jaw itch, and Ranboo rubs their scars as she cuts. 

(They think of Sneeg slicing through a wall that was not with a pair of scissors, and then being dragged away while Ranboo stood and did nothing.)

“Okay, I just did a little bit on the back. I’m gonna do your bangs now.”

It’s not as bad when Ranboo can see her. Her touch is always exceedingly gentle, and her voice is calming. 

At one point, Ranboo’s eyes meet her’s, and the smile she gives them is so warm.

Eventually she sets the scissors down and declares, “All done.” She does not offer a mirror, but Ranboo hesitantly asks, and she obliges without letting her expression become surprised.

Ranboo rarely likes to look at themself, but when they look in the mirror, despite all the dread they’ve felt since seeing Sneeg on TV …

They smile, just a little, and she smiles too where she leans on Ranboo’s shoulders.

“Thank you,” He tells her, and means it more than they can express.

That afternoon, they line up cans and bottles in the yard as targets and throw rocks. At some point, Ranboo mentions practicing knife-throwing, and she demands that Ranboo show off. All of them swear to secrecy and take turns trying it. Then Charlie chucks his axe at a nearby tree and the group freak out in excitement over his success.

The metal cans largely survive the abuse, but the glass shatters. When they’re cleaning up, Ranboo finds themself staring too long at the shards. Their short friend sees them and comes over, gently cupping his hand over Ranboo’s, and takes the glass from their hold before helping them straighten up.  

(Ranboo paints the maze as they see it, and all paths lead to its heart.) 

Again, there is a gap in their murals, and it is waiting for what fits in it.

Showfall was always careful in the way they shaped the clay they brought into their hands. They knew the rat-race they were creating and it was always intended. The Hero is not foolish enough to believe they’ve jumped the rails, even now.

This is a labyrinth, and there is no minotaur. Only the Hero Showfall made.

Charlie and Ranboo are allowed to see Sneeg three days after they’ve rescued him. They’re pressed up against each other in the backseat of the car, too nervous to even speak, driving to this secondary location away from the safehouse for the sake of everyone’s paranoia. 

Ranboo doesn’t know the details of everything that went down to get Sneeg out of the hospital and into their hands. All they can think about is how they felt when they first woke up in the hospital, and the fear and confusion they felt, and they don’t want Sneeg to be that lost.!Ranboo is scared that Sneeg will not be the way they remember. They have so few memories as is, and they think Sneeg was their friend, beneath the brainwashing. And all Ranboo wants is for their friend to be alive. They don’t know what they’ll say.

When they are ushered into the room, everyone gets very quiet and steps back as Ranboo sees Sneeg. Ranboo is holding onto Charlie’s arm for dear life, and Sneeg is alive. 

Sneeg cracks an exhausted smile. “Hi,” he says, as if there was nothing else to say.

“Hi.” Ranboo whispers, their own voice cracking, and then they step forward, hesitating even as they reach for Sneeg.

Sneeg reaches back as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, and their fingers twine together. Ranboo lets go of Charlie and comes to Sneeg’s side.

Sneeg’s hands come to rest on Ranboo’s shoulders, and then he throws Ranboo to the floor, with his hands closing on Ranboo’s throat in the next moment.

Everything fractures, and there are screams and hands and touch and blinding panic and adrenaline.. Sneeg holds Ranboo down with one hand and swings at someone else. Someone shouts, “ KNIFE!” Ranboo claws at Sneeg’s wrist and they can’t breathe, they can’t breathe, spots in their vision, and suddenly Sneeg yanks them up halfway and flips them over and then —

Black. Blood in their mouth and the horrible crunch of their nose against the floor. Yanked up by their hair and then pain, blinding, the repeated crunching of their broken nose. Over, and over, and over, until Ranboo is limp against the wood and can only smell and taste blood and the screaming is so loud it may as well be nothing, ear-drum bursting until it circles around to silent. 

Whatever survival instinct animates them is so automatic that Ranboo doesn’t feel their own limbs moving as surely as if they were being puppeted. They drag themself forward a few lengths before a hand closes on their foot and hauls them back, and they scrape for leverage enough to feel wood splinter and stab their palms and for their nails to crack where they rake against the floor.

Then Ranboo is released, and someone is over them, grabbing them under the arms and dragging them away from the mass of people. The last thing Ranboo can see before being dragged out the door is Lottie with Sneeg’s arm locked between her teeth.

Ranboo tries to help, scrambling for some leverage on the floor with their feet, but the world comes in flashes turned off-kilter and they can’t do much more than kick weakly. Someone is stumbling out of the room after them, also seeking escape.

Ranboo sees the ceiling. They see a flicker of their short friend’s face, expression wild. 

Charlie collapses to the floor next to Ranboo, and there is blood on his hands. Ranboo pushes themselves up on their elbow and suddenly Charlie’s panic spikes again and Ranboo’s short friend is throwing himself in between them and bodily drags Charlie away from Ranboo as he cries and screams.

Ranboo’s friend is screaming for help down here. Ranboo is laying on their back and the ceiling is made of static.There’s blood running down their front and soaking the front of their shirt and they can’t breath right, forced to gasp for air through their open mouth. 

Someone is gently putting their hands on Ranboo’s chest, asking questions, trying to wave their hand and get Ranboo’s attention, but all Ranboo hears is screaming.

Ranboo is concussed, and has a severely broken nose, accompanied by a black eye. Charlie has several wounds from the knife that Sneeg somehow smuggled under everyone’s notice. Ranboo’s friends are all roughed up, and Lottie’s teeth are stained with blood for days after.

Charlie apologizes later to Ranboo, and to their short friend, for what happened, but Ranboo’s friend tells him not to worry about it. Ranboo knows that it was them that Charlie reacted badly to: with a knife wound on his stomach and Ranboo staring at him in horror and confusion, it’s not hard to know what was in Charlie’s head. 

In Ranboo’s dreams, there is a labyrinth lined with wires and red lights. Hetch hunts him like an animal, and Sneeg and Charlie are but clay forms with white masks. Hetch grabs him and has him by the throat and drags him down a hall while Ranboo kicks and tries and fails to scream. Hetch slams Ranboo’s head into the wall over and over until Ranboo stops struggling, and Sneeg slams him face first into the floor until Ranboo can’t move, and Sneeg is dead because Showfall is in his brain and Ranboo’s friend is dead and gone.

Ranboo wakes up and stumbles to the bathroom to dry-heave. They sink to the floor, unwilling to try to entertain their blurry reflection, and Charlie has to come get them and walk them back to bed. Ranboo doesn’t know why they’re crying, but Charlie wipes the tears from their cheeks as he tucks them back in. 

“I killed him.” Ranboo tells Charlie.

Charlie says something. Ranboo thinks it’s something like the labyrinth did that. not you.

But what Ranboo knows and Charlie doesn’t, is that the labyrinth was always in them. 

Ranboo’s head feels like shit. They catch a glimpse of their reflection once and become more avoidant after that. They look like hell with how badly their face is bruised from the assault, and they hate the daily check to make sure their nose is healing in the right position.

“What’s wrong with him?” He asks at lunchtime, and it’s obvious what they mean.

“We think he’s still brainwashed.” The healer finally says. The storyteller is on guard duty with Sneeg. “It didn’t show up until you and Charlie walked in, so it’s probably only to do with you two. He doesn’t even seem aware of the brainwashing the rest of the time.”

Ranboo just stares at their hands where their palms are flat on the table, fingers wrapped with a half dozen colorful bandaids.

“Does he remember anything?”

“He’s talked about pretty much all the same stuff you and Charlie have.” He confirms. 

“What did they make him do this for?” As if Ranboo doesn’t know.

The healer shrugs, and Ranboo feels frustrated, like the truth is being kept from them. “He certainly wasn’t going after either of you with an intent to capture you.”

Of course not. Showfall doesn’t need them alive to use them. But Ranboo doesn’t say that out loud.

“Can I try something?” They ask instead.

That night, when the healer and the storyteller switch off on guard duty, the storyteller brings Ranboo a piece of paper.

On one side is what Ranboo wrote earlier.

Hi

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you back then

I’m glad you’re alive

I missed you

R

And on the other:

I missed you too

And I’m sorry too

Are you ok? And Charlie?

Ranboo almost cries when they read it. The storyteller lets Ranboo squeeze his hand as Ranboo chokes out,

“He is alive.”

Chapter Text

“— sure nothing else hurts?”

Ranboo swats the healer’s hands away, tired of even the gentle touch exploring the bruises on their face, trying to discern if any other bones were cracked when Ranboo was injured.

“I’m sure.” Ranboo grumbles. Their patience has been thin lately, and they blame it on the concussion, but everyone knows better. At least they all forgive Ranboo for it. “Can we be done now?”

“Yes, mate, we’re good.” The healer withdraws, and Ranboo fixes their newly-trimmed bangs to shield their face again. Now freed, they go back to taking up their vigil.

At first, the others had dissuaded Ranboo from sitting outside Sneeg’s door. They worried about something happening, about whatever control Showfall had of Sneeg.. But Ranboo refused to stop, and the others chose to back down. 

So Ranboo sits next to the locked door, pulling another page from their sketchbook and writing

Im back before sliding it underneath.

They hear bedsprings creak as Sneeg gets up, and a soft thump as he sits on the other side of the door. The note comes back.

wb dude

Next to it is a cartoonish drawing of a character with a spade-shaped body, a creature Sneeg has made up and taken to doodling.

Ranboo draws Lottie beneath it. Lottie herself is laying at Ranboo’s side peacefully. 

Are you bored?

The paper slides.

eh ive got some books and some cards and shit it could be worse

there isnt cable here right

Ranboo snorts: No tv here no

that fucking blows what do you guys do , Sneeg writes. 

This isn’t the place we’ve been living. Ranboo has already been coached on not revealing too much, given that Sneeg is ‘compromised’, but this fact is nothing. And I don’t like watching TV anyways. Charlie does sometimes but I don’t .

what do u like to do

Paint , Ranboo responds.

can I see? 

Ranboo scribbles a brb and gets up to go find one of their watercolour paper sketchbooks. Their primary subject as of late has been Sneeg, which is maybe a bit awkward. But Ranboo brings the whole book back with them anyway. 

The storyteller has been sitting near the door, not concerned about Ranboo’s conversation. Now, Ranboo offers the book to him.

“Can you…” they gesture at the door.

“Sure. Go down the hall, though.” The storyteller states, though Ranboo is already retreating to go hide around the corner, well out of sight.

Lottie stands guard as door lock clicks. They wait until the storyteller calls them back, the door secured, and they take up their spot again and wait while they hear paper flipping from inside the room. 

wtf since when are u an artist

these are scary good

Charlie said almost the same thing when I first showed him lol

Theyre beautiful

And awful at the same time

Yeah I know. But it makes me feel a lot better.

I’m glad it helps

Can you draw something for me?

Sure, I guess. What do you want?

Can u draw u and Charlie

Like you are now

Ranboo holds the note in his hand and thinks about the request for a long, silent moment.

Drawing Charlie is easy; Ranboo does it plenty. But they don’t like looking at themself in the mirror, and they don’t draw themself. 

But Sneeg asking is … different.

I can try. I know I can do Charlie fine, but I don’t really draw myself.

thanks

also I know theres no internet here but can I get a gameboy or something

I’ll ask

A jailbroken Gameboy Color is procured for Sneeg, and Ranboo makes up an area for painting near his door. Charlie sits with Ranboo, mostly writing notes back to Sneeg about Pokémon while Ranboo struggles over painting. They start every attempt with themself, and ultimately, Sneeg gets several of them pushed under the door even though they are unfinished, inaccurate, or end up with half of Ranboo’s face blacked out.

Sneeg still likes them. 

There’s a hand mirror amongst Ranboo’s painting supplies, but it sits face-down except for the fleeting moments that Ranboo can stand checking their reference.

Charlie is able to help, at least, telling Ranboo things about the shape of their chin and nose (current injuries notwithstanding). 

The others are working on a plan, on something, anything to be able to help Sneeg. One afternoon, a test is planned, and though everyone assures Ranboo they don’t have to do it, Ranboo says they will.

Sneeg is thoroughly restrained this time when Ranboo comes in. He’d agreed to it, too, while in his right mind and able to say he didn’t want to hurt Ranboo.

Charlie has his arms locked around Ranboo, and the storyteller is poised half in-between Ranboo and Sneeg, with Lottie also guarding them, tense and alert. 

The light goes out of Sneeg’s eyes the second he sees Ranboo and Charlie. He smiles, but it’s a dead thing, and horribly familiar. Ranboo remembers a hat fixed up Sneeg’s head and his apparently cheerful compliance, and that’s all he sees now.

Sneeg talks like everything is fine, but tries all moments to convince the others to let him out and for Ranboo and Charlie to come closer. Both requests are thoroughly denied. In this state, it’s unclear if he remembers the first attack, just blowing it off when asked. Any questions about Showfall receive similar vague responses. 

The longer it goes on, the smaller the room feels. Ranboo swallows thickly and interrupts the storyteller.

“Sneeg, you died.”

Sneeg shrugs as best he can while handcuffed to a chair. “Eh, I got better.”

“No, I mean it. You died, you — you died so that I’d survive the challenge, and, and, again, after that... What happened to you after that?”

Sneeg tilts his head, that uncanny smile still dancing on his lips. “You know, man. I got better.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Ranboo insists.

“Literally the same thing happened to you, come on.” The familiar note of irritation is back in Sneeg’s voice. “The ratings for the box scene were sky-high, but obviously committing to the bit was too much for them.”

Ranboo is gripping Charlie so tightly that his knuckles are white, and his head hurts with the memory of — the memory of — 

“They brought you back. And they brought me back.” Ranboo states shakily.

“They do it all the time, duh.”

“How?” The healer cuts in. “You don’t just bring people back from the dead.”’

Sneeg rolls his eyes. “I’m not a fuckin’ scientist, I’m not the guy to ask.”

Lottie growls. She’s been wound-up since they came in, ears up like she was just begging Sneeg to try something again. Sneeg, to his credit, doesn’t seem to want to risk that even in his brainwashed state.

“We can be done.” Charlie suggests, clearly focusing on keeping his tone calm. “Right?”

“You can be done whenever you want.” The healer answers. “Ranboo?”

Ranboo carefully lets go of Charlie and takes a step closer to Sneeg, with Lottie promptly bumping Ranboo’s legs to stop them.

“If I went with you, where would we go?” They ask.

“Back, of course.” Sneeg answers like Ranboo is stupid for not knowing.

“Back where?”

Sneeg just gives Ranboo a look that says get a load of this guy.

“Why did you attack us before?”

“They’ll have to reload you both anyways. It’s not like they need you coming back alive.”

There’s something tight in Ranboo’s chest, so tight and nauseous it hurts, and they are trying to step forward again, reaching for Sneeg, and they don’t know what they want to do but it possesses them anyways and — and Charlie grabs them by the back of the shirt, and Lottie shoves at them, and the storyteller grabs Ranboo by the arm. It’s not a violet grab, but it’s far from gentle, and Ranboo instinctively tries to yank away. They almost trip over Lottie, but Charlie wraps a strong arm around their waist and hauls them back.

Sneeg’s dead eyes just follow Ranboo the whole way. Ranboo shouts at Charlie, at the others, tries to grab the doorframe and get away, but Charlie just keeps pulling them. Charlie drags Ranboo the entire way out the backdoor until they’re in the yard. Charlie brings them down to sit in the grass and dirt and Ranboo screams themself hoarse while Charlie holds them close.

The storyteller hands Ranboo a folded note hours later. It just has a stick drawing of Lottie and one of Sneeg’s Pokémon on it, but Ranboo knows a peace offering when they see it. They flip through sketchbooks until they find a drawing of Sneeg lit up by the ambience of the laser room, and slide it under the door in return.

They go back to their vigil the next day, and everyone acts like nothing happened.

Ranboo’s friends finally work out a way to make the plans for Build-a-Bears work. A process is arranged for doing it gift-exchange style, and everyone gets to pick a stuffed animal for someone else. It’s decided to involve Sneeg, too, and Ranboo has a feeling that the drawing of names was maybe a bit rigged to make it work out.

Ranboo chooses a green T-rex for his tall friend, and advises him on picking a frog for Charlie, ending up with a blue and purple tie-dye frog. Charlie picks a possum for Sneeg and makes sure it’s adorned with little bows on its ears before it’s given over. Sneeg (with Ranboo and Charlie’s aid) picks a blue-spotted cow for Ranboo’s short friend, and he picks a fox for the mastermind of it all. Ranboo knew she would end up with them, somehow, and they receive a stuffed dog that perfectly resembles Lottie, somehow, tiny collar, harness, and all.

It’s a good afternoon. Everyone’s delighted with their gifts, and Ranboo’s friend is overjoyed and smug that her pick of the dog was perfect. They decide together to name the stuffie ‘Baby Lottie’ after almost picking ‘Lottie 2 Electric Boogaloo’.  ‘Lottwo’ is shot down early on. 

Ranboo sleeps with Baby Lottie hugged to his chest that night, and Charlie’s frog also pinned between them. The next day, they do their best to draw that for Sneeg. It’s easier, since Ranboo’s face is hidden by the posing. Sneeg returns a drawing of a stick figure on a bed with a misshapen, oval thing laying on it. But the oval has bows on its ears and an arrow pointing at it labeling it as Sneeg’s possum.

Im not half the artist u are but u get the point

He writes underneath.

Ranboo pins the drawing on his wall next to the bed so he can look at it every night after. 

Chapter Text

They try and read, trawling for missing person reports again, or hunting down old media that Sneeg vaguely remembers, but find themselves constantly putting their head down, body calling for rest and sleep. They get up from the desk to curl up on their bed and sleep for what feels like hours and hours, only to wake up a mere fifty minutes later and feel odd that the day drags on. The dreams they have while dozing this way are fractured and make their head feel stuffed with cotton upon awakening. 

The ache settles in the back of their jaw, their throat dry, and they go back to their research until the haze drags them away again.

In their dreams, they are fit and styled and pose like a doll. Hands check the mask and brush their throat, freezing cold, but Ranboo can’t flinch away. Fly-aways are smoothed out, and someone smiles at them before closing Ranboo’s eyelids with their hand.

“ Showtime, my Hero,” they whisper.

A phantom pain burns down Ranboo’s spine when they wake up again. They take a shower to try and wash away the touch, and they’re in there so long that Charlie comes to check on them. His knock makes Lottie lift her head from where she’s laying on the bathmat.. The water has long since turned cold, and Charlie comes in to help Ranboo dry off and subsequently warm up. 

Ranboo prints pictures of Sneeg from missing person reports and social media posts that night and slides them under the door so Sneeg can look at them. They’ve been trying to jog Sneeg’s old memories as much as possible — he seems to have a few, compared to Ranbo’s blank slate, and it’s the healer’s theory that stimulating these memories will help overcome Showfall’s brainwashing.

Sneeg writes back about the book he’d been given the other day.

Was just as annoying as I remember from high school lmao, I do not recommend

Ofc of all the books to sear itself into my brain it’d be the stupid great gatsby

Ranboo adds it to his mental to-read list anyways, just in case he read it in high school and hated it too. 

The talk of old memories makes Ranboo’s friends bring up more things of Ranboo’s past. They say they’d go and find more of Ranboo’s old things if they could, but the whole being-in-hiding thing means it’s not entirely an option. Instead, they tell a lot of stories, and while some of them sound plausibly like things Ranboo would do, or that they and their friends would get into, Ranboo finds none of it actually familiar. 

It makes Ranboo jealous of Sneeg’s memories of a high school English class. At least he has something.

Ranboo has been learning, or relearning, technically, sign language for the times when he’s nonverbal. His friends know a fair bit of it and say that Ranboo used it sometimes before. It’s nice, honestly, to know that it’s not something induced by his trauma from Showfall, it’s just something about Ranboo as a person that has persisted. He’s adding to that by learning tactile sign as well, and though his mind doesn’t recall the language he learned before, some muscle memory exists in his hands.

All their experiments show that Sneeg loses his sense whenever he sees or hears Ranboo and Charlie. This is why the notes work, but talking through the door doesn’t, and this is how Ranboo works on another idea. This takes a lot of convincing, but eventually, the others relent.

Something feels awful and familiar about seeing Sneeg blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair. The healer and the storyteller stand at each side of Sneeg, tensed for actions.

Ranboo sits at Sneeg’s side in silence, and takes his hand, pressing a hello into his palm. Then he traces out the letters one at a time, showing Sneeg the sign for each letter in turn.

“Hi.” Sneeg says quietly. “ Hi, dude.”

Ranboo sits there at Sneeg’s side for hours, teaching him fingerspelling in tactile sign, learning how to converse. Charlie sits on Sneeg’s other side, practicing as well, and neither of them want to leave.

“It’s okay.” Sneeg tells them. “There’s tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Ranboo repeats, then freezes, staring up at Sneeg’s face, fingers over Sneeg’s palm.

But Sneeg only smiles gently and gives Ranboo’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll keep my schedule free.”

Charlie has to cover his mouth to smother his laugh.

Ranboo lays in bed that night thinking of that moment, and wondering, wondering if it was a handhold. 

They choose to believe it is.

It’s not the last peek of the real Sneeg that they get. The more they fight to jog memories, to be with him, the more glimpses they get. Ranboo and Charlie and Sneeg talk about memories for hours, and Ranboo draws things for Sneeg to hang in his room, and the hints keep coming. Moments where Sneeg sees them and hears them and is nothing more than their friend.

It’s hope: a sliver of hope, but it only makes Ranboo try harder.

There’s talk about moving again. This place was never meant to be permanent, only a rendezvous, but wariness of Sneeg being compromised meant they have yet to move back to the safehouse. Ranboo is in favor of going back, honestly, because he liked that house and he wants Sneeg to come with them, though Ranboo is picturing the best case scenario where Sneeg is no longer guarded and confined twenty-four seven. There’s also talk about whether they’ve been stagnant here too long and how best to throw Showfall off their trail: that talk makes Ranboo feel sick and leads to him curled up on the bathroom tile while his tall friend rubs his back and murmurs comforts.

The rain is so cold it feels sharp against their skin. They raise their face to the sky and persist even through unconscious flinches and shudders, just to feel the raindrops slice them and drip down their chin. The water makes the sparks jump farther, drawing arcs, making their nerves come alight and their muscles spasm like a puppet on knotted strings being knocked around. The cold is slower than the electricity, smothering, filling their lungs slowly but surely until there are less spasms and heat and all the more shivering, curling in on themself and hollowing out. There is a tug at their inner elbow, the familiar feeling of a slim needle drawing their blood out. A hand on their chest to keep them back should they try and fight. The blood drips to the grass and the tile and begins to puddle there, diluted by the sheets of rain the storm is dropping, but the blood itself is hot and live and does not stop. It pours down their arms and pools in their palms and drips in arcs and streams off their fingertips until the stains on their hands will surely never go away. The rain comes down the whole time, and the tides rise to their ankles, to their calves, the current dragging against them as they wade through death itself. When there is no more blood left to draw out, they collapse to their knees, soaked in the flood around them, and their emptiness is replaced by electricity, by shocks and wires fed into their veins. When they begin to fight it, a hand grabs them and shoves their face under the horrible water. It stings their eyes and nose and throat and they are hauled back only to scream again, and the torture is repeated until they fall slack, strings cut, and sink downwards into the black.

Ranboo is getting dressed when Charlie goes, “ Shit, dude,” and they turn to look at him after tugging their shirt on. “Are you okay?”

Ranboo searches for a reason they shouldn’t be. “Yeah? Why?”

“There’s — there’s a burn on your back, right at the top of your spine. It didn’t look old or healed.” Charlie explains, eyes full of concern. “Can I…?”

Ranboo nods, and Charlie carefully pulls the collar of the shirt down to see. Ranboo feels his hand brush their skin, and then Charlie yanks his head back with a hiss.

“Fuck, one of those wires is loose, ow, that shit is live. Can you not feel that?!”

When Ranboo focuses, they finally notice. There is pain. “I guess I was blocking it out.” It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s phantom, sometimes, and this seems so minor that they must not have been paying it mind.

Ranboo is all too aware of the sensitive burn now though, even as the others are careful in caring for it and going at the wires that remain. It’s hard to not squirm and twitch through it all. 

“I’m gonna work out a way to get the rest of these wires off you.” The storyteller says. “It’s about time.”

Ranboo just wishes they could let the pain fade into the background again, and be able to forget it. It’s worse when it haunts their every waking thought.

Ranboo is just thinking about how they miss their and Charlie’s attic room when they come into the living room and Charlie whips around at the sound of their steps with an expression like he’s seen a ghost.

“Charlie?”

“What are you doing here?” Charlie demands, and his voice is — it’s his voice, but it’s not his voice. It’s more aggressive, gravelly, and angry: the voice for playing a demon.

Ranboo’s hands immediately begin to shake, and he steadies himself with a hand on Lottie.

“Charlie.” Ranboo repeats, trying to sound calm. “Charlie, it’s me. It’s okay.”

“ It’s me, he says,” Charlie mocks. “You ain’t supposed to be here!”

“Look at me, Charlie. Look, it’s — there’s no mask, a-and, Lottie’s here, there’s no Showfall — this isn’t the cabin. This isn’t the show. I’m right in front of you.” Ranboo doesn’t know what to do they don’t know what to do. Charlie’s eyes are absolutely wild and he looks liable to run at Ranboo at any moment. There’s movement in Ranboo’s peripherals, but they’re too scared to take their eyes off Charlie.

“Nah, you know what, it’s gonna be slimey Beetlejuice with the steel chair,” Charlie states, and Ranboo’s heart skips a bit as Charlie grabs the dining chair he’s standing next to.

Ranboo throws themself to the floor as the chair sails past, shattering against the wall. Lottie starts barking sharply, and adrenaline floods Ranboo’s every sense and one thought encompasses their mind: run.

Someone surges into the room, and Ranboo catches a vague glimpse of their tall friend charging at Charlie, hands against his chest to keep him back, as Ranboo scrambles to their feet. Someone else runs in, eyes on Charlie as well as Charlie shouts and fights.

Ranboo’s hands throw open the deadlock on the back door, and they sprint into the dying sunlight without looking back.

Is that what would have happened, Ranboo wonders, if they had chosen the forest and its mysterious monster as a lesser evil and fled from the empty door frame?

That’s a moot point, of course. If that forest had been real, anyways, Ranboo had not been making choices for themself. They were only ever going to stay on the rails of the show, and on the far-off chance that they had broken free right at that moment? Showfall would have just hunted them: hunted them through the woods like an animal. 

They still feel like a hunted animal, after the sun has gone down and they are well and truly lost by the time their reason comes back to them.

Lottie didn’t manage to follow, it seems, leaving Ranboo horribly alone in this nowhere.

The trees are spread out, and the grass grows as high as Ranboo’s waist in places. Ranboo didn’t even have enough sense to mark in their mind which direction the sun had set, though it’s not like knowing which way is north helps them. They don’t know where the fuck they are, they don’t know which they way came from, and despite the fact that only their friends should be looking for them, they whip around at every rustle and crackle in the dark expecting a white mask and Hetch’s laugh.

The temperature drops once the sun is down, and though Ranboo thinks they’re supposed to stay put to make it easier to be found, the idea of becoming a sitting duck violently rebels against their instinct to survive. 

Eventually they find a hollow at the base of a massive tree that seems an alright place to try and shelter, and not completely in the open. They’re exhausted, freezing, and they know their brain is playing tricks on them. They keep thinking they hear someone, or see something, and Lottie isn’t here to help them confirm what’s real and what’s not, but Ranboo is still in the middle of the woods, alone, not rescued or kidnapped, so it all has to be fake, right? It all has to be hallucinations. Ranboo is alone, and that’s almost the worst part. When was the last time they were well and truly alone? They may have felt alone wandering the mall, but they weren’t. There was always a camera on them, and Hetch was always watching. 

They don’t hear themself shouting at the camera to go away, to turn off, until their throat starts to hurt from yelling. They stare out into the black at the dancing shadows and can’t even feel worried about drawing attention to their location. 

Maybe anything is better than being alone.

There are lights amongst the trees. 

Ranboo isn’t sure at first if it’s in his head, or maybe lightning bugs, or maybe anything else, but the lights are shifting and bouncing in a strange way that brings their attention to them over and over. 

He thinks he hears a bark, but he’s writing all those kinds of sounds off right now. The voices, too. 

One of those voices stands out, however, and that’s what makes Ranboo sit up, and slowly rise from their hiding spot. 

The light is getting closer. 

It’s the shadow of the massive dog that makes it to Ranboo first, Lottie barking and calling attention, nudging at Ranboo insistently, as if to demand if they’re alright, sniffing them all over. The light briefly blinds Ranboo, and they shield their face with their arm, blinking rapidly to try and clear their vision. As it washes over everything, Ranboo sees the relieved expression of Sneeg.

Ranboo just stares at Sneeg for several beats, and decides that whichever Sneeg this is, they don’t care.

They throw their arms around Sneeg and hug him tightly. He hugs Ranboo just as tightly, Lottie pressing against their legs.

“I’ve got you, buddy,” Sneeg murmurs. “I’ve got you.”

Chapter Text

Sneeg explains, walking back through the dark woods holding Ranboo’s hand and his jacket around Ranboo’s shoulders Lottie carefully escorting Ranboo on their other side, that hearing the commotion and Ranboo’s fear seemed to have flipped a switch in him. It’s the clearest he’s felt since his escape. Sneeg confirms as well that he remembers actually escaping, too, not being set free, though he acknowledges there’s no way to know if his memory is reliable in this case.

When Ranboo starts to get tired enough for their gait to lag, Sneeg offers to carry them, and pulls Ranboo up into his arms in a bridal carry. Ranboo lays their head against Sneeg’s chest as Sneeg grumbles.

“Jeez, what the hell are they feeding you,”

Ranboo mutters, “Food?” As a half-unsure answer, which makes Sneeg laugh. It’s a real, genuine laugh, making a smile appear on Sneeg’s face, and it’s maybe one of the best sounds Ranboo’s ever heard.

Sneeg has a walkie-talkie on his belt, having used it to earlier to tell the others they were coming back (apparently there had been some mandate about talking in code in case they were being overheard, and Sneeg had rolled his eyes just for Ranboo’s amusement as he parroted the silly codenames), and he says something again that Ranboo doesn’t quite catch. Ranboo just dozes against Sneeg, not even lifting his head when there are other voices or the temperature change when they’re indoors again.

The thing that does wake him is hearing Charlie’s name. He stirs, reaching to wrap his arms around Sneeg’s neck to better balance himself.

“Is he okay?” They ask right away.

“He’s … he’s alright.” His short friend answers, but his tone is far from sure. “He’s upset, but he’s not alone.”

Ranboo frowns. “I want to see him.”

“I don’t think that’s the best thing right now.”

“What do you mean?” Ranboo looks from him to Sneeg. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” his short friend hastens to say, “That Charlie is upset, because he tried to hurt you, and he’s not completely calm right now. When he’s calm, you can see him, but in the meantime, I think we need to get you warmed up.” 

This is the first time Ranboo notices himself shivering. Ah. That must be why Sneeg gave Ranboo his jacket. 

Sneeg and Ranboo’s friend seem to exchange some kind of look, and they take Ranboo down to Sneeg’s room. Ranboo requests the door to stay open, and once he clarifies it’s because he knows it locks from the outside, his friends agree. They help clean Ranboo up and someone brings clean clothes before Sneeg throws his comforter at Ranboo, and then his possum as well. Lottie leaps onto the bed, and when Ranboo opens his arms to Sneeg, Sneeg lays with him, hugging Ranboo close.

There’s the sound of loud voices elsewhere in the house, and more than once it makes Ranboo start to get up before Sneeg gets him to lay down again.

“Bitch, I’m trying to make sure you’re not hypothermic.” Sneeg grumbles. “Can you make my job a little easier?” His tone isn’t angry, though, it’s fond more than anything else, so Ranboo just wriggles closer to Sneeg. 

He doesn’t even realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes up, and it’s still dark outside. Most of Sneeg’s window is covered, cardboard taped over it and bars, too. Ranboo sits up, pulling free of his friends’ arms hastily, and swings himself over his short friend’s legs to get up. This disturbs the others immediately, and Lottie raises her head.

The door is closed. The door is closed, and Ranboo grabs the doorknob and stumbles as they swing the door open, half expecting it to not open at all. They blindly reach around the door, feeling at the locks, the open deadbolt.

“Ran,” says his short friend in a sleepy voice. “Ranboo,”

There are voices elsewhere in the house still. Charlie sounds upset. Ranboo is following after the sound even as there’s noise behind him, too. Lottie trots after them.

“Ranboo, wait,” Sneeg says, but Ranboo needs to find Charlie. 

In the living area, the shattered pieces of the chair Charlie threw are still strewn across the floor. There’s quite a visible indent in the drywall where it hit, and Ranboo stares at it, thinking about how that was nearly his head.

“Ranboo, hold on.” Sneeg and his short friend are hurrying to catch up. Sneeg pauses only a foot from Ranboo. “Are you good, man?”

“I want to see Charlie.” Ranboo says, still staring at the damaged wall.

“I don’t think he’s up for it right now.” Sneeg answers. “It’s late. Can we go back to bed?” 

Ranboo lays still until they’re sure the other two are asleep, and this time, when they get up, they do so carefully. Lottie watches, but Ranboo holds a finger to his lip to tell her to stay quiet, and she does. 

The house is silent now. Ranboo finds the storyteller’s toolbox in one of the lower cabinets and sits in the dark hallway with a screwdriver, taking apart the locks on Sneeg’s door.  

All Ranboo can think about is that they won’t be in any more cages. 

When he’s finished ripping out the locks, he paces the room until exhaustion rolls over him and a hint of the sun is peeking over the horizon before he climbs back into bed between his friends and passes out.

“…scared the shit out of us. Just glad they’re okay.”

“Thank you for trusting me.”

“…I can ping the locations of the walkie talkies anyways. If it was an act, you weren’t getting away.”

“Wow. Comforting.”

“…sure that there isn’t going to be … relapse?”

“The trauma and conditioning each of them experienced is … different creature … Charlie’s never been violent before …”

“Not that Ranboo has told us.”

“They — they would be honest. And this scared them worse than we’ve seen in awhile.”

“… have to get moving anyways.”

“ — separate vehicles? Just in case.”

“I’m gonna make some food, anyone want?”

Ranboo sleeps through the morning and wanders out of the bedroom with Lottie sometime in the afternoon. Charlie is at the table eating lunch, and Ranboo wants to run to him, but something in Charlie’s eyes makes them freeze.

“Hi.” Charlie says, and his voice is hoarse and exhausted. 

“Hi.” Ranboo can sense the eyes of the others on them. “I missed you. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Charlie smiles. It’s a tired smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Me too. Hungry?”

Ranboo sits across the table from Charlie and feels a thousand miles away. 

Charlie doesn’t appear to want to be touched, which is fine, but Ranboo thrives on warmth and contact and wants nothing more than to touch Charlie and know he’s real. The space between them sets off Ranboo’s paranoia, and they keep rubbing their palms against their pant legs, struggling to ground themself with some kind of sensory input. After lunch, Ranboo latches onto Sneeg like a clingy koala bear, but can’t sit still draped across him.

“You’re wriggly today.” Sneeg huffs at one point, and Ranboo freezes and tries to be still to not annoy him. It’s beyond difficult, but Sneeg appears to notice and starts bouncing his leg, which is a degree of stimulation that helps. 

Ranboo misses his weighted blanket. The others are chatting and listening to the radio, but Ranboo’s ears are ringing and they feel detached from their body, slowly losing it. Things gradually go weightless. The bouncing of Sneeg’s leg gives way into a different rumbling sensation. Tires jump over a pothole and they’re jostled around on a cold metal surface. Their head aches and something is wrong with their nose. They can’t move. Something fuzzy is in their head and their wrists are tightly bound together, so much that their hands don’t feel part of them, just all pins-and-needles. 

They should be able to see, but keeping their eyes open is hard. Everything shudders and their head smacks against something cold and hard and they lose sense for awhile. The hands on them are careless and the chair is cold and the table is cold and the straps are too tight and something plasticky is being shoved into his mouth and the lights are so bright they burn and they can’t remember, they can’t remember, he can’t remember, who is he —

Ranboo comes to laying on the kitchen’s tile floor with Lottie on top of him and Sneeg’s hands cupping either side of his face. Whatever Sneeg is saying, Ranboo doesn’t catch, but his voice is calm and steady, a rock in a storm.

Sneeg spells HI into Ranboo’s palm. Ranboo shakily signs it back.

I’m here, Sneeg signs.

You’re here, Ranboo repeats back.

Charlie is sitting on Ranboo’s other side, still with space between them, petting Lottie between her ears and watching. When he catches Ranboo’s eyes, he flashes the sign for I love you, which Ranboo returns. 

Most of Ranboo’s art supplies are back home (the safehouse is home, isn’t it?), but he has some things here. He cuts open the small tubes of acrylic paint and empties their contents on a makeshift palette, using all of it to coat his hands and then paint the walls. He didn’t ask if he could paint the walls here. He does it anyways.

It’s mostly black and white and gray, and the darkest mud color Ranboo can make by mixing up everything else. Sneeg walks in to find Ranboo and the room covered in paint and stands in the middle, turning around and examining it.

“I don’t get it.” He finally admits.

“It’s about light.” Ranboo answers. 

“It’s mostly dark black.”

“Exactly.”

Ranboo elects to be completely unconscious for the process of (hopefully) removing the last traces of the mask. While being knocked out is still not something that comes without anxiety, the idea of being awake is fucking terrifying, and there’s too much risk of Ranboo panicking and trying to fight, injuring themself or others in the process.

They trust their friends, and for this, something that they want and that is for their health, they have to.

If they dream during the DIY-surgery, they don’t remember it later, although Sneeg and Charlie say later that Ranboo woke up upset originally. They don’t recall at all.

“There’s a mark on you. Like mine.”

Ranboo is standing in front of a mirror, a second hand-mirror in their grip, steadfastly not looking at their face, but at the brand burned into the back of their neck, a shape identical to the one on Charlie’s shoulder.

“I have it too.” Sneeg volunteers, tapping his chest, over his heart. “Here.” 

Ranboo lowers the mirror, having seen enough. Knowing that out of everything, that it wasn’t enough to alter their minds, to dress them like dolls, that Showfall needed them branded like animals —

“At least my hair covers it.” 

Chapter Text

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Charlie admits while they’re sitting on the porch in the dying sunlight. “Again.” He adds, not looking at Ranboo or Sneeg.

“You haven’t,” Ranboo says, but the words crumble in their mouth like the dry lie it is. “I trust you,” they say instead, something easier to justify.

“I don’t.” Charlie’s knuckles are white. “I don’t trust myself. I don’t know what I am. I think Showfall changed me over more times than they did you guys.” 

“What?” Sneeg looks baffled by this remark. “How would you know that?”

“They remember Ranboo.” Charlie states, gesturing at the house, at the idea of the others. “Ranboo found a missing person’s report for you. But there’s nothing about me. Nothing at all.”

The implications of that hang heavy, and the silence is smothering.

“You’re our friend.” Ranboo finally says. “And it’s okay. I’ve … I’ve done worse than you have.”

“And I’ve done the worst of all of us.” Sneeg puts in, clasping his hands and purposefully looking at Ranboo’s face. Ranboo averts their eyes. “The blame olympics can be over now, okay? We’re with you, Charlie. We’ll figure it out.”

Sneeg offers a fist, and Charlie gives him the fistbump. 

Ranboo sits with their knees tucked against their chest as the three of them watch the sun set. 

Charlie doesn’t want to sleep next to Ranboo or Sneeg yet, but he falls asleep first later. As they walk him to his room, he mumbles,

“I just think the worst thing I can be is your monster.”

“You aren’t.” Ranboo tells him as he lays down. Sneeg slides Charlie’s glasses off his face and sets them aside. “You aren’t, Charlie.”

The woods in Ranboo’s dreams are hungry, dark and deep, and whatever fear pursues them into it drips with blood. 

Lights. They white out the Hero’s vision, so completely that it’s a flash-bulb reset, like being teleported to a different land. He stands still and waiting.

████ ██. To him the word is still and empty. The mask grows hot against his skin but the pain is so common it fades into the background just the same as the massive eyes that watch him.

Action. The strings are pulled, and it all begins.

The sand is coarse and scrapes as it flows through his palms. The slime sticks and congeals on his fingers and stains his clothes and cut is called when a hand takes the Hero by the throat and drags him down close to the slime-washed bed and his jacket is a lost cause. He smacks his head twice on the way down to the floor and all they worry about is stripping off the ruined costume and throwing a sheet over the unruly patient. 

“Reloading for them both.”

“This one’s fine.”

He hasn’t moved since his strings were slashed and there is slime — slime — slime — slime — slime — slime in his hair now too, leaking from his scalp.

“Precautionary.”

Lights. They white out the Hero’s vision, so completely that it’s a flash-bulb reset, like being teleported to a different land. He stands still and waiting.

████ ██. To him the word is still and empty. The mask grows hot against his skin but the pain is so common it fades into the background just the same as the massive eyes that watch him.

Action. The strings are pulled, and it all begins.

The sand is coarse and scrapes as it flows through his palms. The slime sticks and congeals on his gloves and the apron saves his clothes from the worst. The body under him is still and silent and they don’t like it when the Hero reaches the end of the script because it wasn’t right. 

“One more time, from the top.”

And the electricity lights up his every nerve and he can’t even scream and grips his brain like a vice and shreds the wires twisted into his bone and if he could only die —

She brings clothes. No one is sure it’s safe to take Sneeg anywhere to pick his own, so she brings a whole box and lets him pick whatever he wants from it. They end up strewn across the floor as the group sorts through them. Lottie happily sprawls across her lap and lets her give belly rubs the whole time while Ranboo is exploring the fabric textures, trying to ground themself. They know the fog they’ve been feeling is post-concussion symptoms, but it’s miserably similar to the disassociative haze they’re regularly in and out of, and it’s not helped by Charlie’s recent up-and-down mental state and the (unfortunately understandable) suspicion towards Sneeg and the potential for the resurgence of his brainwashing. 

There’s a white-and-pink sweater in the pile that feels nice and soft, and everything feels a bit better after Ranboo pulls it on. She reaches over to help them tug it down without bothering the healing wounds on the back of their neck.

Sneeg withdraws a baseball cap from the box, and both he and Ranboo still. Charlie notices that right away, looking at the hat and then at his friends.

Ranboo wonders if Charlie remembers. Sure, he must remember Sneeg wearing a hat, but Charlie was bleeding out when Sneeg tried to escape, and those terrible, frozen moments might not be something that came back to him. Ranboo themself didn’t know the truth of what happened in the carousel until later (until some of their memories came back while Hetch prompted them to beg for life, or death, whichever strong words came to mind, whatever the capricious audience might find the better entertainment —). 

Sneeg looks at the hat for a long several moments, and then he turns it around and puts it on his head. Something about it feels right.

“It looks good!” Ranboo’s friend chimes in. 

“Thanks,” Sneeg returns, and goes back to the box of clothes.

The plan is to leave separately, to take different routes back to the safehouse, and to take every precaution to ensure no one is followed. Charlie, the healer, and Ranboo’s loud friend leave first. Sneeg, the storyteller, and Ranboo’s short friend are set to leave last. This leaves Ranboo and her sandwiched in the middle. (Somehow the others have become greater flight risks, more chance of them having a dangerous relapse in a confined space where someone beyond a driver could be needed. Lottie will have to be backup for Ranboo.)

But Ranboo feels okay. Their friend asks what music to put on, and Ranboo lets her choose, and the upbeat pace and her excited singing are a good way to keep Ranboo grounded. Ranboo themself is relieved to finally be going home. Charlie has been doing better, and Ranboo hopes Sneeg can be convinced to move into the attic with the two of them. They want to have their friends there, close, for them to be together again.

“Stop tailgating me,” she complains as she drives, glaring at the car behind them in the mirror. She gives Lottie a little smile when she glimpses her where she’s seat-belted into the backseat with this special belt for her harness. “Get off my dick.” She huffs. “Okay, I’m gonna take the next turn, get away from this guy, and then we’ll just reroute for like, two blocks.” 

The light is green, giving them the right of way. Ranboo is looking in the side mirror at the red car behind them, and neither of them see the black SUV until it hits them.

The world spins, blurs, the seatbelt goes taut and digs into Ranboo’s shoulder until it hurts, and everything is black and white and pounding metal screaming they are throwing Ranboo into the back of the van and something fuzzy is in their head and their wrists are tightly bound together, so much that their hands don’t feel part of them, just all pins-and-needles, and Hetch has them by their hair, and by the throat and drags him down a hall while Ranboo kicks and tries and fails to scream. Hetch slams Ranboo’s head into the wall over and over until Ranboo stops struggling, and the wires come to life —

Something doesn’t make sense when Ranboo opens their eyes. (Showtime.) It takes several beats for them to figure out that the car is upside down. They’re dangling from their seatbelt, surrounded by the car’s airbags. They squeeze their fingers to their palm a few times, digging their nails in, trying to wake themself up to the situation at hand.

Then they find the seatbelt release, although that drops them head over heels to the metal below in a strange somersault, jostling their aching body. They don’t know if they’re injured, or if they’re just not feeling it. 

“Ran? Fuck, Ran — are you okay?”

They look up and see their friend blinking at them, expression terrified as she hangs from the driver’s seat.

“I think so.” Ranboo answers. She starts fumbling for her seatbelt, and they say, “Let me help.”

Ranboo gets an awkward grip around her waist that helps to lower and flip her back onto her feet once she’s freed. 

Lottie barks, and Ranboo crawls into the back of the car to free her next. She licks their cheeks, seeming relatively unharmed.

Ranboo turns around to find his friend kicking open the passenger door. It takes several attempts before the twisted metal comes from, screeching as she shoves it aside. “Come on. We have to get out.” She climbs out first, and Ranboo ushers Lottie after. Then she takes Ranboo’s hand and helps pull them free.

Ranboo stands up on shaky feet. There’s blood on his friend’s face, but she’s moving to the car’s trunk even as the vehicle is smoking. Ranboo slowly turns around, staring at the scene. Their car is wrecked in a ditch, utterly totaled. There are other people pulling to the side of the road nearby, probably coming to ask if they’re okay.

“Where’s the other car?” They say aloud. Because they think they caught the smallest glance at a black car, but it’s nowhere to be seen, and something that feels wrong.

She rescues their bags from the back, slinging her’s over her shoulder and giving Ranboo their own.

“I don’t know, but I don’t know that that was an accident. We need to go.”

“Go?” Ranboo feels they have to have missed something. She locks their arms together and starts away from the wreckage. Ranboo falls in step with her despite their confusion. “I — I don’t …”

“We’ll call the others when we find somewhere to hunker down.”

Ranboo looks over their shoulder in time to see another car pull up near their own, coming to a sudden stop only a few yards off from it.. When the first person gets out, there’s a glint in their eye that makes Ranboo stiffen. 

He whispers his friend’s name urgently and she glances back.

“ Fuck.” She grips Ranboo’s hand tightly. “Run.”

She says she has a friend she trusts who lives nearby, and he’s pretty open when they appear on his doorstep looking like hell and she makes him swear up and down he won’t tell anyone they’re here.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” He asks warily, eyes flickering over them. His gaze keeps on lingering on Ranboo, who is curled up on the couch, Lottie protectively standing between them and the stranger.

“It’s a long story.” She says. “Do you have a first aid kit? I have some stuff, but if you don’t mind…”

He doesn’t mind, and provides some things for them, before going to put together some food. The entire time he stares across the kitchen counter at Ranboo. 

She checks them over, and while everything hurts, she says it doesn't seem like anything major, though she’s concerned for their head. 

“You need to stop getting concussed.” She huffs. “I’m gonna make you start wearing a helmet all the time.”

“It’s not my fault.” Ranboo protests as she cleans scrapes on his legs. 

“I know.” She assures. “I’m not mad at you. Promise.” 

She thinks her ribs are bruised, so she ends up laying on the couch with a bag of frozen peas on her chest for awhile. Her friend comes back with two plates, and something flashes in his eyes.

“ Ranboo.” He says suddenly, almost accusatory, and it makes them tense. “Holy — I thought you were— I haven’t seen you in…”

“They don’t remember.” She cuts him off. “It’s a really long story. But they don’t remember anybody.”

She exchanges a long, silent look with him, and Ranboo just pulls his knees close and tries to disappear. He wants to let the exhaustion sweep ofer him, let his mind go away, but the adrenaline makes everytbing too bright and real and present and frankly, fucking nightmarish. It’s too much like — it’s too much like — lights, and cameras, and people —

“Ran.” She whispers, running her hand through their hair. “I know. I know. It’s going to be okay. Sneeg will be here soon. Okay? I’ve got you. Breathe.”

In. Out.

“Like that. Good job. I’ve got you.” 

In. Out.

“Here. Just take a few sips of water for me, okay? Mhm? There you go.”

In. Out.

“—ott, thank you. Here, I’ve got a blanket for you. Lottie’s here too. Breathe.”

They breathe.

“No, just — stay here.”

“What? I want to see that you’re leaving safely.”

“It’s not personal, but you need to stay.”

“I’m worried about you. You sound like you’re involved with, I dunno, the mafia.”

“I’m not in the mob. I’m protecting — I’m trying to protect you, and Ran.”

“And what about you?”

“I really am sorry I can’t explain more.”

“They don’t look well.”

“We were literally in a car wreck.”

“That’s not what I mean, they don’t …  they hardly look like themself . Where did they get all those scars?”

“…I’m really sorry I can’t tell you more. But it’s not mine to tell. Just let us go. Please.” 

Sneeg’s warmth envelopes Ranboo. They have no voice to speak, but Sneeg doesn’t try to make them talk. They remember the others talking, the storyteller’s grim expression, Sneeg murmuring to Lottie. But they doze in Sneeg’s hold and let the adrenaline finally leave and let themself collapse into themself. 

When they get home, Sneeg helps Ranboo out of the car, and Charlie comes running out of the house to meet them. Ranboo melts into the safety of their arms, held tight by Charlie and Sneeg both, and there’s not much else they would ask for in this moment. 

Chapter Text

When the windshield shatters, glass sprays in their face and scratches their exposed skin. The airbag deflates like a pierced lung, and a black-gloved hand grabs at their wrist and pulls. They’re hauled free of the seatbelt by force, crying out at the crunch of bones in their hand and the burn as the seatbelt scrapes against barely-healed wounds on their neck. They fall to earth and glass shards beneath them make their palms weep blood before Hetch grabs them by the throat and throws them to the grass in front of the smoking car.

“The Hero, our Hero, had a great fall,” Hetch sounds amused as he stands over them. “But all Showfall’s people, and all Showfall’s men, we can put the Hero back together again.”

They start to tell Hetch to get away, but he clamps his hand over their mouth. “Ah, ah. Have you ever heard of a silent protagonist?” 

They try to yank away, try to get their teeth a grip against those hands, but Hetch grabs them by the jaw, pressing his fingers hard against a spot he knows their mask used to dig into, and they shriek.

“I think you need to keep this, though.” Hetch remarks conversationally as he puts a knee on their chest to keep them in place. “They’ll want to hear you scream.”

He ties their hands together, tight enough to make the rope dig into their wrists, and uses the rope as a grip to drag them across the dirt. 

They can see the shape of their friend still trapped in the smoldering car, dangling from her seat. They try to fight, scream, but Hetch stuffs something in their mouth hard enough to make them gag. 

Everything goes black.

It’s hard to stay awake, and it’s hard to stay asleep. Everyone keeps arguing about whether they need to visit a hospital or not because of the car wreck, but Showfall is too close. 

Ranboo is hearing Hetch again.

They keep looking for cameras, too. Sneeg finds them standing on a chair trying to check the attic rafters and picks them up around the waist, lifting them down.

“Dude, your balance has been fucked lately. Don’t stand on chairs.” He tells them seriously.

But Sneeg doesn’t get it. None of them get it. 

The others have to drag Ranboo off the TV the next day when he tries to put his foot through the screen.

“They’re never going to stop!” He screams as they try to get him to sit down. “They’re never going to stop looking! This is never going to end!”

He keeps checking the doors for locks. Sneeg’s door was locked, and Ranboo gets up a dozen times a night to make sure there’s no deadbolt on the outside of the attic door. Charlie and Sneeg patiently usher him back to bed when he’s done every time.

But none of them get it.

“This will not end,” Hetch says. Even death is not an escape.

Sneeg is tired of the way everyone looks at him.

To be fair, it’s not actually everyone, and not even all the time. He’s just fucking frustrated. Charlie has been doing better, and the familiarity of this safehouse seems to help, but Ranboo’s been concussed for what sounds like the third time or something recently, and the others keep talking about this post-concussion syndrome. Ranboo’s closest friends, the ones who have been with Ranboo since his rescue, say that this isn’t unlike what Ranboo was like right after being rescued, and he got better. Sneeg doesn’t really feel any better, seeing how Ranboo has been confused, paranoid, and upset at almost all hours. It makes Sneeg yearn for notes under doors, for being parted, if that would be with a happier and more lucid Ranboo. And with all of this, Sneeg still gets suspicion from the others. He knows it’s justified, knows that he’d rather they be prepared for the worst than risk him hurting Ranboo or Charlie, but Sneeg won’t. He won’t be made to hurt his friends. 

A nest of couch cushions and blankets has been made in the living room; Ranboo is draped across Sneeg and Charlie’s laps one afternoon, with Charlie trying to make tiny braids in Ranboo’s hair.

“What did they do to him,” Sneeg mutters when Ranboo’s been still long enough that he feels confident they’ve dozed off.

Charlie gives Sneeg a quizzical look.

“He’s fucked up, man. What did they do to him that they didn’t do to us?” Sneeg goes on. 

“Cut him a break.” Charlie tells Sneeg. “He’s on zero-days-since-last-traumatic-brain-injury.”

“That’s not what I mean. They said that Ran was like this when they got rescued, were they coming off concussion city then, too?”

Charlie can only shrug. “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”

“I just don’t get it. We’re not the same way.”

“Yeah, I don’t think we get any points in the lucid column, considering you’re coming off being violently brainwashed and I got possessed by flashbacks of demons past pretty recently.” Charlie points out. “I don’t know, Sneeg. I wish I knew how to help more.”

“I just hate seeing him like this.” Sneeg admits. Sneeg wants to be able to fight the thing that’s hurting his friends, or at least be able to try. The most Sneeg can do now is exactly what Lottie does: herd Ranboo away from things that might hurt them, give them the meager comforts possible, and wait. The others watch like a hawk to make sure Sneeg isn’t about to snap, and Sneeg has to sit helplessly and wait for Ranboo to find their way back to reason. 

“Did you really just …” Charlie begins, and there’s something in his voice that makes Sneeg look up at him. “You woke up. When you knew Ranboo was scared.”

It’s guilt on Charlie’s face. Sneeg knows that he dreams about the blood smeared across the floorboards from where Sneeg had attacked Ranboo, that he can’t forget what his hands did to them. So Sneeg imagines that Charlie is having a similar experience.

“Yes.” Charlie already knows this. “I don’t know how. But I did.”

“They hurt me, before.” Charlie is staring down at Ranboo. “And I trust them, entirely, I do, I don’t hold any of that against them. But they’ve never really tried to hurt me. Even after everything. But I …”

“Hey. I’m gonna tell you the same stuff people are telling me.” Sneeg puts a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “We aren’t what they tried to make us. None of us are killers. Being mind-controlled doesn’t count.”

“Yeah.” Charlie doesn’t sound so sure, but Sneeg pats him and Charlie shifts closer, so Sneeg puts his arms fully around Charlie’s shoulders and hugs him tight.

Sneeg walks into the attic and finds Ranboo sitting criss-cross in the center of the floor holding a dusty Rubix’s cube. It prompts some vague memory in Sneeg, but before he can say anything, Ranboo looks up.

“Mix this up for me?” They ask, tossing it at Sneeg. It’s a shit throw, and Sneeg has to take several quick steps to the left to grab it. Confused, he quickly moves the pieces around before tossing it back.

Ranboo promptly misses the catch by what has to be a country mile, but Lottie dutifully picks it up and brings it to them.

Sneeg watches with increasing disbelief as Ranboo realigns the colors, finishing the cube in what has to be at most thirty seconds.

There’s a stupidly wide grin on Ranboo’s face when they hold it up to show Sneeg.

“How are you just doing that?” Sneeg wonders.

“Mix it up more this time.” Ranboo requests, so Sneeg takes it and commits to fucking it up, folding his legs to sit across from Ranboo.

He hands it back, and Ranboo gets to work. It’s under a half a minute later that Ranboo holds up the finished cube again.

“Yo, what the fuck. Why are you a Rubix cube wizard? Hold on.”

Sneeg goes to the attic door and shouts, “ CHARLIE C’MERE YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!”

Charlie comes hurrying up the stairs a few minutes later, expression bewildered.

“Mess up the cube.” Sneeg points, and Ranboo offers it to him.

“What does this—” Charlie asks.

“Don’t ask, just do.” Sneeg directs.

Charlie twists the cube around aimlessly for a few minutes and then gives it back to Ranboo at Sneeg’s direction.

Half a minute later, his jaw is on the floor also. “Sorry, what?”

“I bet I can do it faster.”

They eventually end up downstairs with the others and pass the cube around all afternoon, but no one comes anywhere close to doing it as fast as Ranboo, let alone faster. 

“It just makes sense.” Ranboo says with a shrug when Sneeg asks how the hell he can do this. “I just look at it.”

“I am worse than a guy with a concussion at the Rubik’s cube.” Charlie complains. “I can’t believe this.”

Ranboo ends up fidgeting with the cube constantly, to the point that Sneeg demands they get another one so he can practice too. He asks Ranboo to teach him, but catching on is not an easy task.

“Just — see, so with that side pattern like this, you just—”

“That was way too fast, dude, you have to go one twist at a time for me.”

“Okay, I’ll go back. Hold on.”

“THAT’S STILL TOO FAST—”

Other games are dug up, but finding board games they can all play is an interesting challenge. Not for any reasons of trauma or whatever, but just that they all have very different likes and dislikes.

“ Ranboo, I swear to God, you are cheating at Monopoly right now and that’s a capital crime,” 

“I’m not! ”

“No, I’m looking over your shoulder, you are so fucking wrong, dude.”

“It’s probably the dyslexia, I’m shit at games like this too.”

“The — what?”

“The — what do you mean, what?”

“Dyslexia?”

“Holy shit, did you not know you’re dyslexic?”

“How was I supposed—”

“HOW WE WERE SUPPOSED TO KNOW—”

“They remembered they were GAY so we assumed they would know they were DYSLEXIC, OKAY—”

The first time, they refuse to do it.

The mask shocks them. The mask shocks them until they are on their knees sobbing next to the table, begging for it to end, and the Puzzler tells them that all they have to do is pick up the scalpel.

The first time, they hesitate to do it. 

They hesitate so long that something is choking down on their throat and their spine and their brain, forcibly directing their motions. 

When they look in the mirror, there is a Y-shaped scar on their chest and a scalpel gripped so tightly in their fist that they can’t feel their fingers. There’s blood running down their face and through their hair and soaking the collar of their shirt. There is the shadow of something haloing their head, black as night, and someone says, test number one and it clamps down like the maws of a fucking tiger and the agony is beyond words. The box weighs their ragdolling body downwards and hits the floor with all the weight of a guillotine blade. The blood is in their mouth and nose and their brain shredded, and they choke, and choke, words running to static, stimuli turning to smoke and pain, any remaining awareness immediately amputated until only this is the world.

Until the box is forced back open, their body tied up to the cross, and a voice says test number two, and it repeats.

Chapter Text

There’s a lake in the woods that Charlie leads them to. They leave their socks and shoes and outer layers on the bank and wade in to swim. Charlie and Sneeg’s brands and scars are on full display. Ranboo doesn’t go too deep, but they take a breath and plunge themself under.

They open their eyes and take in the murkiness. Everything is quiet, distant. They have flashes of white lights and clear water, but they focus on here and now instead. Their hair floats around their face, aimless in the weightlessness, and they paddle just enough to stay steady, to not sink or float. There is a peace in this, like a mikveh, a Lethe they chose and not one that seeks to drown all they are.

They turn their face towards the sun and surface. 

Sneeg is standing close by, the water just above his waist, clearly watching. Ranboo gives him a thumbs up and Sneeg returns it, pushing off of the silt to swim around.  

Later on, Charlie and Ranboo take turns tackling Sneeg and climbing onto his shoulders, towering above the water until he eventually dunks them in. They have a picnic at the lakeside and watch the minnows while Lottie tries to chase frogs, all three of them warming up wrapped in towels. Ranboo twists and twists the Rubix’s cube in their hands and when the sun goes down during their walk home, Sneeg wraps an arm around Ranboo’s shoulders without having to be asked, making sure they feel secure until the lights of the house finally come into view. 

There’s a monster in the walls. It is carried in the perpetual electricity buzzing through every inch of the place. The sound of it is so loud that Ranboo doesn’t understand how no one else can hear it, how no one else pays it as much mind. Ranboo describes it to Sneeg and loses track of their own words until Sneeg’s face has gone so pale that Ranboo’s friends need to step between them. 

“It was security,” Ranboo says as his tall friend draws him away. They’re looking past Sneeg — Sneeg doesn’t look well. “And it — I saw it, and you, and your — there was so much blood,”

There’s a monster in their veins. It is carried in the responses between neurons in their brain and the very iron of their blood. Ranboo rubs at the crook of their elbows to make their veins stand out more, ever-afraid that there are wires there that they cannot see. They keep yanking wires out of outlets and they keep looking for cameras. The others try to keep them from climbing onto furniture and appease him by looking as Ranboo directs them.

They tune the radio to static and Hetch tells them things that don’t bear repeating. 

“ You have a choice to make, Ranboo,” he says. “And so does your audience. Because we’re really struggling to let things lie, hm?”

The storyteller finds them there, tears on their face, and Ranboo watches them unscrew the back of the radio and rip out the wires before he carries Ranboo up to bed. 

The house is beginning to grow full of the group’s belongings; no longer a place waiting in empty silence for temporary occupants, but a home. 

Ranboo is getting quite a collection of fidgety toys, things like the Rubix’s cube and little keychain clickers, and other simple, stimulating things to help them find calm or to train their memory. They’re shit at the memory card game, but they work on it. There’s sensory sand, with a soothing texture between their fingers, and more and more games and things for them all to do together. Sneeg and Charlie find entertainment in certain electronic things, but Ranboo chooses to avoid them altogether. They need things grounded and tactile in their hands, nothing of the flashing lights and vile impulses and things that take root inside (and upset the light-sensitive parts of their brain). 

They paint TVs, however. The house has a basement that has more canvas space, and Ranboo paints televisions and cameras. He paints the monster with the television for the head, cameras leering with the shape of cyclops-like beings. 

They paint it again: the control room, the wires, a black box with a static screen and a halo of blood over the empty space where a person would go. They create it on the floor and stare down at it when the scene is mostly shaped. Their hands and arms are splattered in paint, probably their face and clothes too, if they looked.

Ranboo lays in the center of it, among the painted wires, and breathes.

“Make your choice, Hero.”

Ranboo is floating on his back in the lake, soaking in the mid-day sun, when they hear a gunshot.

They try to lunge into an upright position and promptly slip beneath the water’s surface before they can start to tread water and come up spitting and coughing. They don’t know whether to dive or to swim for shore, eyes scanning for Charlie and Sneeg, and then someone has him by the back of the shirt and Ranboo yelps and starts to fight before he realizes it’s Charlie. Charlie pulls Ranboo along bodily, arm around his waist, not letting go even when they get into the shallows. Sneeg is by the treelines, frantically waving for them to hurry. He steps between them and the threat of the open air, shielding them and rapidly throwing their towels at them before hustling the group out of sight.

There’s a buzzing behind Ranboo’s eyes and rattling in their skull and a lump in their throat they are struggling to keep down, crouched in the brush with Charlie’s hand on their back protectively. They’re on their hands and knees at first, but have to press a palm to their mouth to keep themself silent and still and not throwing up in sheer terror, forehead to the spiky grass and dirt. Their throat is raw and half their instincts scream to run, but they can’t think clearly enough to even know where to go. There’s touch, warmth and pressure -- they aren’t alone, Sneeg and Charlie are here, they aren’t alone, they aren’t alone, they can’t be alone — they aren’t alone because someone is here, someone is searching —

Hands try and rearrange the towel wrapped around them, an attempt to halt their shaking, but all Ranboo can hear is static and their own harsh, panicky breathing, coming in short, painful gasps. 

Another gunshot rings out and the flinch races through their whole body. The others are pressed closer, trembling as well, and his vision is going black in places and a firm hands reaches around to press against his sternum and the voice sounds too damn much like Hetch when it orders,

“Breathe, Ranboo.” 

They’re pushed over onto their back, pupils dilating in the sunlight, and their hands are pried away from their mouth and set against a warm surface instead.

“I’m here, hey, I’m here. You need to breathe. Please, breathe, Ranboo, breathe with me.”

Charlie’s face is wreathed in light, shadowing out the details of his features and his expression twisted up in fear and worry. His wet hair is pressed to his scalp and his glasses aren’t on. 

In. Out.

Lottie is licking their face. She whines, almost indignant.

In. Out.

“It’s okay. They’re chasing a deer, it’s not — it’s not us.”

In. Out. 

“I called —  They’re coming to meet us.”

In. Out. They squeeze their eyes closed and rattle with the breath they haul into their lungs.

In. Out.

Their chin rests on Sneeg’s shoulder; he cradles Ranboo’s head gently with one hand, the other arm keeping Ranboo up as they walk. Ranboo stares blankly into their wake, feeling Lottie brush up against their bare feet from time to time as she trots between Sneeg and Charlie, herding them closer together at times. She’s plenty protective of Charlie, and is growing more protective of Sneeg by the day. She understands, despite everything that has happened, what Sneeg and Charlie mean to Ranboo. 

There are other familiar voices. Someone offers to take Ranboo’s weight from Sneeg, but Sneeg declines. A blanket or another towel is tucked around Ranboo’s shoulders, and Sneeg readjusts slightly, hiking Ranboo up a bit higher against him. 

He dreams, later, of being shot, of the red-hot pain of a bullet ripping through his being. It eviscerates bone, muscle, sinew and wires alike, setting every nerve on fire. They stumble through trees, prey to the rifle-carrying drones on their tail, until the metal jaws of death close on their foot and they’re dragged back into those grasping hands. It is so easy to be stuffed and taxidermied for display, restrung into a palatable puppet. There never was a choice, after all. Everything led to the same ending.

I was scared, Ranboo types. It took awhile to figure out how to facilitate therapy in a way that was safe for everyone involved, and this was the best solution. Really scared

Their therapist sympathizes and says they’re glad Ran’s friends were there. 

I had a nightmare

About being hunted

Has that happened before?

Yes

Too many times. 

I’m tired of being helpless

Their therapist talks about ways for Ranboo to exert more control over their life, about more activities to help their brain and their strength and everything else.

But there is still a rage kindling in them: a desperation to not be prey anymore. 

Their choice is to fight.

“Ran, it’s better for you to avoid getting sick, like, that shit knocked you down hard last time, and your body’s been through enough recently.”

“I sleep between both of them every night, it’s a little late to worry about exposure.”

“But if you’re not sick yet, then we can take precautions.”

Ranboo wraps his arms around Sneeg’s shoulders and wriggles closer.

“Dude, he has a point.” Sneeg points out, voice a bit hoarse.

Ranboo shakes his head and rearranges themself between Sneeg and Charlie.

“Yeah, I don’t think we’re winning this.” Charlie remarks.

Ranboo feels like it’s the least they can do. All they wanted when they were sick was Charlie, and their friends take care of them, so — as long as they have the ability, they want to help Charlie and Sneeg. They don’t know why they didn’t catch whatever cold grabbed a hold of their friends,, but they’re not going to question it. 

His contribution to making soup only goes as far as standing in the kitchen while his tall friend is at the stove, as it’s all they can manage. The act of cooking is still more triggering than it is not. But they can bring snacks and blankets and games and be there to comfort. When Charlie wakes up from a frantic dream and digs his fingers into Ranboo’s shoulders with a grip tight enough to hurt, repeating, “Something happened, something happened, you did something to me here, you did something to me here,” Ranboo carefully holds Charlie’s wrists and talks him down while silent tears roll down his face. 

Ranboo sits in front of the covered bathroom mirror later and thinks about Charlie’s expression, remembering standing in the prop room and being unable to breathe, to speak, being wrenched about by the wires in his chest and lungs and throat — but he doesn’t have a panic episode about it, so he may as well call that progress.

Sneeg just gets clingier. He hates to have Ranboo out of his line of sight, and is most comfortable when Ranboo is in arm’s reach. He wakes up from exhausted naps more than once immediately reaching for Charlie and Ranboo and starts searching if Ranboo isn’t close by. This, at least, Ranboo can do. This, Ranboo can help, and he won’t argue it. 

Charlie falls asleep on his shoulder one night, and Sneeg dozes off with the ancient-ass laptop he’s acquired still open in his lap. Ranboo leans over, putting his index finger to the trackpad to shut it down. But a flashing on the open page draws his attention, and suddenly the advertisement changes, all black and red, and it’s them. Masked, bloody, part of the mask cracked off on the left side of his face, strung up, and the text strobes quickly, burning. 

SHOWFALL MEDIA PRESENTS: EPISODE 3

Ranboo slams the computer closed so fast that they swear the plastic cracks, and they fling it to the floor. Lottie sits up in alarm, looking towards the sound, and there’s a pain in Ranboo’s chest when he tries to breathe. 

Lottie whines and gently tries to climb further up from the end of the bed, but Ranboo just flings himself facedown into the pillows between Sneeg and Charlie, trying not to hyperventilate loud enough to wake them. Lottie lays half on-top of them, licking at his cheek as best as she can as Ranboo shakes.

“And you’ll see so much more.”

Chapter Text

When Sneeg gets up, he’s soaked in blood. Wires and insides are hanging out, and he should be dead, but he isn’t. The wires are still humming, live, when he touches them, to scoop them and his guts back up and in, but he rips off the hat forced onto him and focuses anyway. 

Sneeg finds Charlie, laying on the floor in much the same way, while dozens of inert drones stand all around, radiating out from a bright red button. Charlie is breathing hard, pupils blown out, his intestines green-and-red and wires all over.

Sneeg grabs him by the shoulders. “Charlie. Charlie, get up.”

Charlie sucks in a wet, shocked breath, and his hands close on Sneeg’s wrists. He tries several times to form a sound and fails, but his eyes focus.

There is a sound in the distance, agonized and horribly familiar.

Sneeg drags Charlie to his feet, stumbling, and they make their way to the source. 

The control room is horribly, eerily silent, and the cameras are cut, and there is blood dripping onto the floor. The revulsion that crashes across Sneeg is so strong he physically flinches, and he nearly falls down when Charlie collapses to the floor. Sneeg sweeps in to clamp his hand over Charlie’s mouth only moments before Charlie begins screaming at the sight before them.

There’s so much blood. Ranboo is covered in it, from what they can see, and it’s pooling on the floor below their feet. Unlike them, Ranboo looks so whole beneath that layer of violence, enough that Sneeg could almost convince himself it was alright if not the black void crowning them. 

He grabs the back of Charlie’s shirt and drags him along.

“Get up. Get up, come on.” Charlie is choking on air and flails trying to grab at  Sneeg’s arm for balance. 

Sneeg has no tools and is forced to rip at the wires with his bare hands. He directs Charlie to brace Ranboo, and when he yanks the power source for the box free, Ranboo slumps into Charlie’s arms, making Charlie struggle not to let that bloody weight throw them both to the floor. 

Charlie is barely holding back sobs, breathing through his teeth and hugging Ranboo tightly. Sneeg turns around, scanning the room for threats and exits and weapons and tools and anything at all they can use, sidling up to Charlie so he can put an arm around Ranboo’s body too. 

“Come on. We need to go.”

There’s a window seat in the attic, looking out dingy, fogged-up glass out onto the forest. Ranboo sits there for hours at a time, forehead against the window, staring out at the warped view and thinking of too much and nothing at all at the same time, aimlessly twisting the Rubik’s cube in his hands. 

He’s tired. He’s tired when he lays down at night and he’s tired when he gets up in the morning. If not for the fact that he shares the attic room with Charlie and Sneeg, he doesn’t know that he’d bother getting up everyday. The fatigue is overwhelming and seems utterly never-ending. Their friends keep asking if Ranboo is alright, and they tell the others yes, they’re fine, they’re okay, just a bit tired, and there’s no one the others aren’t noticing that trend. But Ranboo doesn’t wake up screaming, and isn’t disassociating more than normal, decent days — they just feel trapped in some rut they can’t see the walls of.

Sneeg’s been having troubles walking, some old leg injury he sustained acting up. The healer found an old extra cane for Sneeg to use, and it’s been helping. Sneeg has truly settled into Ranboo’s group of friends, and the old suspicion is ebbing away, hopefully for good.

Charlie has been having a lot of therapy appointments, but he says it’s been good for him. His memory of his time with Showfall is more fractured than Ranboo originally knew, and some of that has been coming back, but Charlie’s working through it. He goes out for long walks in the forest in the mornings and it’s another reason for Ranboo to sit in the window seat, to wait for a sign of Charlie’s return.

Ranboo feels lost and unmoored, like he’s been stalked in the valley of the shadow of death and doesn’t even know the shape of what is on his tail, waiting for him to lay down so it doesn’t even need to do any work. 

It should make Ranboo want to run faster, but that's hard without the energy to do it. 

Maybe it’s not even worth it to worry about maintaining a sleep schedule if he’s tired anyways, but sometimes it’s a relief to stop thinking and to stop experiencing time and turn off his brain for awhile. If he does that while he’s conscious, it makes people ‘concerned’ and makes Lottie climb on him. Lottie has been extra attentive recently, Ranboo feels, and he knows she’s just trying to help. Sometimes she lays her head on the pillow next to them and they just stroke her ears and think of nothing else. That isn’t so bad.

“He has a mask, too.” Sneeg states.

Sneeg has been watching Ranboo paint, something they haven’t done as much recently. There are certain drawings that Ranboo will display and some he won’t — this is one of Hetch that he plans to stuff into his sketchbook and hopefully not look at it again. Even while pretending to die, Ranboo doesn’t know what Hetch really looks like, and he chooses to not even try and guess.

“Yes,” Ranboo agrees, though uncertain of why he needed to say it at all. 

“You never saw his face? Who he was?” Sneeg presses.

Ranboo shakes their head. “He — why does it matter?”

For a second Sneeg looks at Ran with an expression that when directed at other people often means are you stupid? Sneeg saves his standoffish nature for people who aren’t Charlie (who is sitting nearby) and Ranboo, who blinks at him now, reading Sneeg’s confusion.

“The masks control people.” Sneeg recites the fact. “He’s like us.”

Ranboo’s expression blanches, and his fingers curl on the paper, beginning to crumple it. “ No. No, Hetch isn’t like us. He tricked us, he got us killed — he’s one of them.”

Sneeg’s expression is soft, soft in the way it only is for Charlie and Ranboo and specifically soft in a way he reserves for Ranboo alone. “Ran,” he starts gently, and Ranboo knows that’s a tone for when they’re panicking, or angry, or not lucid, and Ranboo is very lucid right now. 

“Stop.” He grabs the pad of painting paper and hugs it to his chest, wanting badly to physically flee. “I don’t — no, Sneeg, I know what you’re saying, but you didn’t even meet him. You don’t know.”

“I’m just saying.” Sneeg says stubbornly, meeting Ranboo’s gaze calmly. “We all got made to do things we didn’t want. If he was willing, like the Puzzler, or whatever, why was in that mask? Maybe he was our friend, once.”

“Shut up.” Ranboo snaps. Charlie is swiftly encroaching on the conversation with concern on his face. “Hetch isn’t our fucking friend. He’s our enemy.” 

“I’m just saying,” Sneeg repeats, and Charlie reaches out to touch Ranboo’s shoulder and they’re trembling. Because Hetch is a monster, their monster, and Hetch’s grip on their throat, banging their head against the doorframe until they go limp, becomes Sneeg’s hand in their hair yanking on their scalp until their nose is broken, and Hetch’s voice is haunting them from every corner with no one who can say that it is or isn’t real. 

Things come in flashes. The paper is tearing. A hand in their hair. Screaming. Ranboo’s sneakers beating against the walls of the tight attic staircase as he writhes in Charlie’s arms and Charlie struggles to move without spilling them both to the ground. He’s dropped onto another bed and there’s weight pinning him down and the mask is flashing and Ranboo is so fucking tired.

Chapter Text

They stand in the cold aisle of the convenience store blankly gazing over the labels of the drinks in the fridge whilst their friends are arguing about what crisps are best one aisle over. Ranboo is wearing a faded pair of overalls that they were told were their own.

“We didn’t want it all to get thrown away,” His short friend had explained haltingly. “When … I mean, we had to empty your place, and we didn’t wanna donate it all, so we put it in storage.”

They’ve been careful to only bring a small handful of these belongings at a time. Something about not overwhelming Ranboo. None of the objects feel familiar, though, and it felt a bit too much like putting on a dead man’ clothes.

The overalls aren’t uncomfortable, at least. 

Ranboo’s not sure how they lose the time, but one second their friends are arguing and the next, their tall friend is nudging them with his elbow. 

“Hey, see anything you want?” He opens the fridge door to grab a pack of sodas and starts trying to get one free. 

Ranboo’s short friend hisses, “Stop, can we please pay first—” And tries to grab the can from the other’s hand. A dancing keep-away begins, circling around Ranboo, who raises their hands up uncertainly and starts turning and turning to try and track the ridiculousness.

At some point Ranboo manages to escape with the basket and goes for the register. The person sitting there looks supremely bored, and Ranboo keeps their eyes low, immediately feeling nervous beneath the stranger’s gaze. He’s wearing a cotton mask across his face, hiding the bandages and healing scars since they only removed the mask two weeks ago. It’s unpleasant to have the fabric against his skin, but it’s preferable to anyone seeing his face, anyone wondering, anyone recognizing —

Ranboo mechanically puts the basket up on the counter and the cashier begins scanning the items. They know where the camera is that points at the register and at the doors, and they’re fighting the need to look directly at it. 

Bing. An item scans. A camera flashes.

Bing. An item scans. Lens flare.

Bing. The power is on.

Bing. Where is the alarm coming from?

A hand clamps over the front of the mask and forces them backwards, sinking down until their back hits some threadbare cushion. They’re still, locked in place, eyes wide until the same hand shifts up to close their eyes, and everything goes black while people murmur somewhere close by. Preparation and talking while they’re a blind and trapped doll, waiting for its curtain to rise, and does anyone care that he can even hear them? He’s scared, or he would be if such a thing was allowable, because all of that is tucked away dormant currently. Can’t waste it all before the show has begun.

“Cash or credit.” The cashier repeats in a bored tone, and Ranboo jumps, fumbling for the wallet in his pocket. He can hear his breathing far too loudly with the mask pressed against his nose and mouth. Their hand shakes as they push a twenty dollar bill across the counter and grab the plastic bags, turning swiftly away. The cashier makes a weak, half-assed attempt to remind them about their change, but Ranboo is seeking their friends with a single-minded determination — driven, however, by fear, by a choking terror that the aisles are going to wind into an endless maze devoid of life and they can’t breathe, they can’t breathe, and they whip around a corner and nearly knock down their short friend, who stumbles and goes, “Oh, shit,” before looking into Ranboo’s face and going “ oh, shit,”

And this is how Ranboo ends up sitting on the tile floor with his mask yanked down and head between his knees while he hyperventilates, soothing hand on his back, someone trying to coach him in breathing and grounding. 

They beg to get out of the store as soon as possible, and escaping from the dim hum of the fluorescents into the sunlight does a lot for Ranboo’s state of mind. The three of them end up sitting in a line on a parking block, Ranboo’s friends flanking him, and bust into the snacks they just picked out. His tall friend offers to crack open a soda for him, which Ranboo mostly just takes tiny sips of but he appreciates the gesture anyways. 

They sit there for awhile, his short friend’s hand still resting on his back, talking about anything that isn’t random traumatic flashbacks and losing time and amnesia. 

His tall friend suddenly frowns and pats down his pockets. “Oh, fuck, where’s my wallet—?”

Ranboo touches his own pocket and produces it. His tall friend stares.

“Did you fucking — when did you pickpocket me? ”

“This morning.” Ranboo answers.

“Before we even went out?!”

“Yes.”

“What the fuck, man,”

His friends want to go on a run and sure, Ranboo thinks that would be fine. Exercise is supposed to be good for a person. They don’t expect it to be so fucking grueling though, as the three of them quickly find out that Ranboo is not in very good physical shape at all. Ranboo remembers running, remembers doing a lot of it, but apparently adrenaline and desperation was making a world of difference, because he feels like vomiting after barely five minutes and his friends are debating about when in life a person can develop asthma. His chest burns, and when he closes his eyes he sees drones chasing them and the shape of a person at his side, the person he can’t leave behind —

He has to sit under the shower later, too wrung out to even want to stand. He blinks and the water seems to go from warm to freezing instantly. Only after getting out and collapsing into bed does he find out he was actually in the shower for a half hour.

Time keeps slipping through his fingers, but then again, so does everything else. 

He’s supposed to be eating more, because the doctors had said a lot of things about being underweight and how it was dangerous for his health. Frankly, things had been easier when the mask meant he needed a feeding tube. Now, remembering to eat, let alone the act of sitting and doing it, is more than enough of a task. If not for his friends, he’d probably never manage it, especially given that making food only involves triggering memories of the cabin. 

His tall friend brings him a plate while Ranboo is sat down studying the cardboard box full of belongings that’s been burning a hole in the rug and in his mind. 

“Thanks,” they murmur to their friend. He folds his legs as he sits on a nearby desk chair.

“You don’t have to open any of this stuff, if you don’t want to.” His friend tells them. “I know it’s probably … well, it’s all shit, I get that.”

Ranboo snorts. “You can say that again.” 

“It’s all shit!” He echoes as Ranboo hesitantly flips open the box.

There’s a blanket laid on the top, and Ranboo sets it down on the floor to see what’s underneath. Trinkets and mugs and all these tiny things of a life well-lived, and all of them belonging to a stranger whose face Ranboo (sometimes) wears.

There’s a book with a black cover, the light catching the outline of a maze-like design on. Ranboo picks it up, weighing the book in his hands and noting the bookmark left inside.. When Ranboo starts flicking through the pages, there’s writing in the margins. Commentary scrawled across the pages up until the bookmark, and after that, nothing but strange formatting and a variety of changing fonts that seem to have been purposefully printed. 

Ranboo’s not even sure the handwriting is familiar.

Chapter Text

Her sleeve is damp as she uses it to clean his face. Its color changes, too, the shade twisting with every slow blink of his eyes. Green. It’s supposed to be green. He reflexively reaches up to wipe her tear-streaked cheeks as she helps him. 

He tries to say something to her, but it comes out weakly, his breathing too shallow to support the words. She steadies his chin with her other hand, fingers splaying against the metal mask. No one else touches it, unless he needs maintenance. They act like it’s not there. She doesn’t flinch away from it, though, nor do her eyes slide off of it. She simply regards it with practicality.  

He hisses as she presses down on a cut.

“You’re okay.” She tells him. “Just for a minute, so it stops bleeding.”

She tells him regretfully she has nothing to use as a bandage, but he waves her off and uses his own sleeve to help clean her face. 

“We’re both a bit of a mess, aren’t we?” She teases. He manages a smile. 

When the cuts on his face are torn open again and then eventually stitched up with a cold, detached bedside manner, all he can think about is trading the sharp, tight stitches for just a moment of her warmth. 

The light is tinged blue and swims with the movement of the water as it reflects on the length of the tile floor. Shapes move through the tank, and the two of them are but silhouettes against it. 

“How long?” The man asks, tugging on the hem of his purple shirt. 

“Four more minutes. At best.” He replies.

“Guess we can’t ask for better.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I remember,” the man begins hesitantly. “I think I remember, anyway. I think we’ve been here for years.”

He doesn’t answer, just puts his palm against the glass and observes the healed scars marring the back of his hands. One of his fingernails is cracked. He’s not entirely sure when that happened. 

“So everything I remember has to be gone. But what else am I supposed to hold onto?”

A shadow drifts in front of them. He rests his forehead against the glass and his companion takes a shaky breath.

“How—”

“Three minutes and twenty-four seconds.”

“Okay.” The man takes a deep breath. “But I don’t always remember how long it’s been. I guess it’s because I don’t want to. Easier to let them take that.”

“It’s not like them to miss any of it.” He points out. This perturbs the man, and he frowns. “Maybe it’s on purpose.”

“What purpose could…” The man puts his hands against the glass and slowly lowers himself to sit on his knees. “Hope, I guess.” He says scornfully.

He sits down next to the man. “Two minutes.” He warns. “Maybe that’s a mistake. Giving us any hope.”

“It just makes the fear more compelling, I think.” The man sighs.

They lapse into a silence watching the water as the reflections dance.

“One minute.” He reports.

“We should just get it over with.” He huffs. “You won’t remember this.”

“No. They’re careful.”

“I’ll try, then.” The man takes his hand and sets it against his own neck. “We’ll call it hope.”

The person in front of him is speaking, but his ears are ringing. Half the words are drowned out in that painful static, so high-pitched it turns into particles in his vision that briefly skip across his vision and blind him. There’s pins and needles in his hand.

The man has grabbed him by the shoulders. His jacket is so bright that it pierces through, a vibrant orange. He’s nearly shouting now, things about perception and filters and ████ ███ ██.

████  ██ ███ ████ █ ███ ████ ██ ████

████████ ███

He’s laying on the floor with vicious, burning pain racing through his jaw and spine and pulsing in his head. He spasms, chokes, and faces swim above him, that orange still begging to be seen. 

“████████ ██ ███,” and he cradles him in his arms, and all he hears is, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and static.

Sneeg is clutching a body.

Sneeg is sat on the floor of the cage and there is a body laying across his lap, and he wishes he could convince himself that it was merely a person asleep, but his gut twists as he sees Sneeg touching its arm and talking to it like it has the capacity to listen, and he knows better.

The concrete block scrapes his fingers when he tries to use it to break the lock, and he narrowly avoids dropping it on his foot. He swears the dead eyes are following him around the room. The body’s eyes are closed, but they’re following him. 

The eyes follow him when the carousel spins. People laugh while he’s forced to stare at it ahead of him. There’s sobs, too, sobs and laughter overlay and he is frozen on the other side of the wire and inside his own cage. 

Sneeg is smiling at the corpse. Sneeg is smiling at him.

Sneeg winds his fingers through the cage to say, “I’ll be right back,” 

And the body is still watching him.

He’s losing time. He can’t keep track of how many times he wakes up sprawled on cold tile or in the tight, uncaring arms of another drone dragging him down the hallway. The line between dreaming and waking is thinning out too rapidly to tell the difference. He loses words when he is spoken to and entire moments and frames of the world passing by before him and he can’t tell why anymore. The mask sometimes tries to shock him back to clarity, or what passes for clarity these days, but sometimes that works and sometimes he wakes up facedown on a table with fresh burns splaying his veins open. He’s losing time and he can’t get it back.

He’s sitting on the edge, kicking his feet into space, and the woman next to him is doing the same. 

He looks at her and the smile she gives him is ████. The smile she gives him is nice. Her hair is freshly bleached, thin and damaged from the constant reprocessing. They change her look almost every time they recast her, and sometimes, more than that. They want her to look nice. 

They don’t do the same to his hair, not usually. It’s getting to the point where they’ll cut it. When it starts to curl too much, they use heat until it goes perfectly straight and flat and fried again. 

In that way, they match at least, him and her. He misses her two-tone hair, she misses his curls. They remember what the other likes. 

This isn’t going to last; it never does. But he’ll take what he can get. Her hand is quite warm when her fingers wrap around his, enough to make him wonder if he’s cold to her. There’s blood on her teeth, he aimlessly notices. They want her to be nice, but she isn’t. It’s what he loves about her. 

There’s a pair of drones laying behind them, he sees them and recalls how they got there. This is a stolen moment, of course, and even better that they took it for themselves. He squeezes her hand.

“See you next time,” She whispers with that blood-rimmed smile as the sounds of approaching boots bangs out thunder on the floor.

“Do you remember your dreams?” Their therapist asks that day.

“No.” Ranboo answers. “I guess it’s probably better that way.” 

Chapter Text

They make it to the props shopfront.

Sneeg carries Ranboo behind the counter while Charlie yanks the gate back down and does whatever he can to create a barrier in front of it. The mall is largely dark, and Sneeg just cradles Ranboo in his lap, uncaring that blood is getting everywhere. Reason says that he should worry about if blood loss is going to kill them. It seems like a hysterical concern to have in a time like this. 

Ranboo should be dead, Sneeg knows. They should all be dead. Not all of the blood on Sneeg is Ran’s, after all. Sneeg was shoving his guts back inside himself not twenty minutes ago and by all rights should still be a corpse, but he isn’t. Charlie isn’t. Ranboo isn’t.

The mall is too quiet, but Sneeg doesn’t believe that’s going to last.

Ranboo is breathing, albeit insensate to the world otherwise. Sneeg thinks his eyes are closed, as best he can tell through all the blood and what that contraption did to them. 

Charlie clatters around prop storage for a long while. Sneeg peers through the glass counter to try and follow his progress, though he can only make out Charlie’s silhouette in the dim lighting. Eventually Charlie crawls behind the counter as well, dropping a bag full of supplies down and gripping an axe in his hands. He looks like he’s been crying.

“Come here.” Sneeg orders, opening his arms. Charlie comes to press against Sneeg’s shoulder and Sneeg wraps his free arm around him. Charlie doesn’t put the axe down. Sneeg won’t ask him to.

“Do you think the lights will come back on in the morning?” Charlie asks quietly.

“I don’t know.” Sneeg admits. He’s not sure what time it is, even. It was dark outside the doors where he — where he — 

It can’t hurt to rest for a time. Sneeg needs to think, needs to figure out what they’re going to do, and he prays that Ranboo wakes up. 

“Sleep for a bit, Charlie.” Sneeg finally says. “I’ll keep watch.

“I don’t know if I can.” Charlie admits quietly.

“At least close your eyes. I promise I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

Charlie pushes the axe into Sneeg’s grip, and Sneeg pats the back of Charlie’s hand as he takes it. Then Charlie wriggles until he’s mostly horizontal, pillowing his head on his arms. “There’s, ah, there’s a first-aid kit in the backpack there.”

Sneeg hums in acknowledgement and shifts to pull the bag over and tugs the plastic kit out. He knows that if he’s really keeping watch, he should lay Ranboo down next to Charlie, keep the axe in his belt, and be prepared. But Sneeg can barely stand to let Ranboo go, so he keeps them close as he tries to clean what wounds he can clearly see. Sneeg thinks about rationing and then lets it go, focusing on doing what he can to simply bandage the bloody and mangled skin on Ranboo’s cheeks and chin and face. The mask is largely shattered, though not freed from the wires attaching it to Ranboo. Sneeg removes what he can safely, clipping off broken LEDs and twisted remnants with a pair of tweezers and a lot of focus on keeping his hands as steady as possible. 

Sneeg feels very distant from himself. Survival is the only thing he can possibly concern himself with, right now. The thing that finally motivates him to even get up is running out of bandages on the roll that came in the first-aid kit. Sneeg eases Ranboo to the floor next to Charlie and picks up the axe before he ventures out from cover.

Sneeg instinctively looks for cameras. Charlie was ahead of him, as all visible cameras have been smashed apart (presumably by axe), and there were quite a few hidden ones Charlie somehow found. Sneeg still feels watched, but it’s impossible to say if that’s a founded fear or not. (It’s always founded, his inner voice says. This is Showfall. ) 

He scrounges for another first-aid kit, or at least something to rip apart into bandages. He gets both and brings it back behind the counter, restocking the bag with them. 

Sometime later he wakes Charlie: returns the axe to him and lays down, putting his arms around Ranboo again. 

“I told you.” Sneeg murmurs, cradling Ranboo’s head. “I told you I was going to come back for you.”

The dreams don’t go away, but Ranboo doesn’t always wake up screaming now. They wake up between Charlie and Sneeg, Lottie flopped over their legs, and they look at the rafters of the attic ceiling and know where they are. They categorize things by their senses, by touch, taste, sight, smell and sound, and while the dreams don’t go away, they are easier to cope with. A facet of the background. It’s a bit like walking out of a gothic horror painting every single time he wakes, but Ranboo is well aware that in this situation, beggars can’t be choosers. 

Today they’re planting tomatoes in the garden. Lottie chases squirrels and Ranboo preps the dirt rows while the storyteller takes the pots of baby plants out of the back of the truckbed. The sun beats down on them and makes it sweltering, but Ranboo likes this work.

They talk, mostly just about the plants, and at once point as the storyteller positions the next plant in the hole Ranboo dug, he looks at them.

“Are you happy?” He asks.

Ranboo blinks, sitting back on their heels. “Like — right now, or…?”

“Are you happy in general.” He clarifies.

“Oh. Have I never said?” Ranboo tries to think back, but while their memory is better, it’s still largely a fruitless task. “I am. I’m happy.” They state. “I’m very happy.” 

“Good.”

The healer dangles the keys to the jeep in front of Ranboo’s face. Ranboo stares at him, still processing.

“Do I — what?”

“I said, d’you wanna take it for a spin?”

“I’m — I have head trauma epilepsy.”

“Sure, but it’s not officially diagnosed.” The healer shrugs.

“I can and do violently disassociate at random times.”

“Eh.”

“I’m pretty sure all the meds I take say something about not operating heavy machinery?” Ranboo tries. 

The healer claps them on the shoulder. “Listen, mate, I’ll take the wheel and hit the e-brake if we gotta, but it’s middle-of-fuckin’-nowhere off-roading. We’ll be fine, and you’ll have fun.”

“…only if you’re sure.”

The healer grins wickedly. “I’m sure. Up you go.”

Ranboo’s friends scream wildly from the backseat the entire time, Lottie howling madly wedged between them. The healer has to keep a hand on his hat and laughs maniacally despite how Ranboo sweats the first time they’re coached into doing a donut in the middle of the field. Ranboo is wary of speed, but the more they drive, the more comfortable they get. The jeep has great handling, and with the laughter and the wind whipping through their hair, the world is flying past in the best way. Someone hits the radio on and pumps the volume until Ranboo feels the bass in their bones. They catch a glimpse of themself in the rearview mirror smiling in a way they didn’t quite know they were capable of.

As the sun starts to get lower in the sky, Ranboo looks over at the healer.

“Hey,” they begin. “You’d better have directions, because I have no idea how to get home.”

On the way back, Ranboo’s short friend recalls that in the past, Ranboo was unfairly good at parallel parking. Upon arriving home a parking spot is promptly marked off with two barrels and Ranboo is summarily given no choice but to try. They warn the others that any damage is not their fault.

(They get into the spot perfectly on their first try.)

Chapter Text

It’s a support group, and the first time they’ve been out in public in … awhile. She’s seated in the back, in case Ranboo needs her. There’s a pistol in her boot, Ranboo knows. He had watched the storyteller go over its use with her before they had left, painstakingly reminding her of the safety, trigger discipline, stance.

Lottie is under Ranboo’s chair, half-dozing. It’s her calm that soothes Ranboo the most. If there was any inkling of danger, Lottie would be alert, so as long as Lottie is calm, Ranboo knows they can be calm.

It’s a bigger group than Ranboo had initially expected. Mostly Ranboo has just been listening, and the others talk about trauma, and some of them about dealing with memory loss. That’s why Ranboo’s here. Because too much lately he’s been caught up in fearful rumination about whether or not he’s the same person he used to be, or if memories do really make a person different, and Showfall killed the first Ranboo, and then dozens and dozens more of them since. Ranboo’s friends had tried, had done their best to understand, but only Charlie and Sneeg had any sort of handle on it. Even then, Ranboo is much more shaken by it than them.

The storyteller had said he’d work something out. All sorts of precautions had to be taken, for them to go out in public, and Ranboo’s got a fake name here and his scars well-covered, to limit the chance of anyone recognizing him. The healer and the storyteller had scouted the place out in the days before, and they’re in the parking lot now. 

Ranboo doesn’t talk at the first meeting, or the second, or the third. The precautions become routine. The other members of the group greet them and Lottie, and Ranboo is given polite openings to speak up, but they decline. Ranboo doesn’t know the faces of any of the people in the group. Sometimes, he sees in them the faces of the others from Showfall. He wonders if the man in orange did have a family, and if they ever learned what happened to him. 

The first time Ranboo does speak at the group, it’s haltingly, with struggle. He has to cover his face, so he doesn’t see the people looking at him, so he can hide himself more even with the mask already on. 

“I ... worry. I worry that -- that the person I used to be is dead. Really dead. My friends, they tell me it’s okay, but I know that they’re ... they’re looking for their friend. They’re looking for the person they used to know. And I’m worried that ... that I killed that person, that I helped do that. I’m a wreck, I’m not -- I’m nowhere near the same person, but I mean, if I really am completely someone new...then I don’t know what to do.” 

Ranboo is struggling not to cry during the confession. Lottie stood up at some point, and now she’s pressing her wet, cold nose to Ranboo’s palms, and it’s remarkably grounding. Ranboo is scared that if they look at the other people in the room now, that -- that their faces will have changed. 

But there’s an understanding murmur coming from the others. People agreeing with those thoughts, with those fears. 

“You don’t have any duty, or anything like that -- you don’t have to be anyone but yourself. Maybe you don’t quite know who that is right now, and that’s okay. But you’re you. You’re the person you are right now. No one wants, or has any right to expect, anything else. You never have to be anyone else.”

The hot tears on Ranboo’s face then are much more relief than they are fear.

Ranboo doesn’t realize he’s rubbing a spot on his neck until Sneeg gently takes his hand and draws it away, cupping it between his own. They blink, taking in Sneeg’s expression.

“Does it hurt?” Sneeg asks gently. 

Ranboo resists the urge to pull away from Sneeg and touch their neck again. “No, not really, just ...”

They remember the mask digging in there, scraping his skin when he moved, until he didn’t feel it at all anymore. A permanent pain that faded into the background until the mask came off, and then it was  just an ache, no longer weeping, but Ranboo has never quite realized they were touching it before. 

Sneeg reaches out to carefully set the pad of his thumb near the spot. Ranboo trusts him, but something about hands at his neck makes them -- makes -- it --

“You’re sure?” Sneeg has lowered his hands and it doesn’t even seem like he realized the way the touch had made Ranboo’s thoughts begin to skip and blur. Lottie is pressed tight to Ranboo’s side as they remember how to breathe again.

“Yeah. Just ... an old ache, I think.” 

They’ll just have to learn to ignore it again.

They’re sitting around the kitchen table when the storyteller’s phone rings. He answers it with a lazy hellooo, and instantly, there is sobbing on the other end. 

Ranboo watches the storyteller’s face freeze over. 

“Tell me what happened.” He orders calmly.

She hiccups. “They — they came to my house,” Ranboo hears. “I shot someone. I shot someone, and I got my bag, and I ran to my car. I already — I already ditched it. I think I lost them, and this — this is a payphone, I took every precaution, I didn’t want to — I couldn’t endanger all of you, too, but I didn’t know who to call — ”

The storyteller has stood up from the table and Ranboo hadn’t even been aware that they were trailing him, locked in on overhearing the conversation. Charlie is walking behind Ranboo, just in their peripheral vision. 

“You did everything right. Do you know where you are?” The storyteller is always so calm, and usually, it’s soothing, but Ranboo is barely swallowing panic right now. Showfall is still looking. Showfall found his friend, who else might they find? Ranboo thinks of Showfall surrounding their house, setting it to the torch, dragging out bodies. Would they kill them all, or would people be taken to reprogram? Would Showfall find use for every one of them? Ranboo cannot go back. Ranboo can never go back. There is no mercy left to truly set them free, the box proved that, because they’re still here, they’re still here and they’re afraid.

“Ranboo.” The storyteller says their name like he’s been repeating it, and Ranboo abruptly locks in on his face. “It’s fine. We’ll get her back safe.”

“Promise?” Ranboo whispers.

The storyteller lays a heavy hand on Ranboo’s shoulder. “Promise.”The storyteller, the healer, and the short one leave together. Ranboo sits in the attic window for hours, even after the sun goes down, and waits. The others try to make conversation with him, but he refuses every attempt in lieu of sitting sentinel. Sneeg eventually goes to bed, and Charlie passes out in the chair he’s in. Ranboo’s tall friend sits nearby and lets the silence be.

All Ranboo can think about is how tired they are of waiting, of how exhausted they are from just sitting aside. They’re too fragile to fight and sometimes, they think, if not for their friends, they’d have walked back into Showfall’s hands a long time ago if only because the world at large has so little for them anymore, in this state they’re in. It’s not a train of thought Ranboo thinks they could ever admit to their friends; some things just scare the others too much to say.

An unconscious part of Ranboo’s brain registers the sound of a car coming down the drive before they do so consciously, because they’re halfway down the attic stairs before the others remotely stir. Lottie is on their heels as the mumbled, startled voices of Sneeg and Charlie carry behind them. 

Ranboo does his best to steady his tremors as he unlocks each of the locks on the front door and hurries out into the yard. They’re all getting out of the car, and his short friend is at her shoulder, and Ranboo has never seen her look so destroyed, expression so haunted. 

He just runs straight to them. Her expression is both relieved and exhausted when she sees him, throwing her arms around him. Ranboo hugs her close as she chokes out a sob.

“Fuck -- oh, fuck Ran, I’m sorry, I --” 

Ranboo hugs her tight, putting his head down on her shoulder as Lottie weaves around their legs, whining. She cries, tears dampening Ranboo’s shirt, and Ranboo can’t let go.

They all get her settled in the house. The healer fretfully cooks and Lottie climbs up into her lap to help comfort her. She stammers her way through a retelling of events, of the Showfall drones pushing their way through her front door and their horrifying silence, all of them masked and saying nothing to her even as her demands became louder and more hysterical. When they had tried to take her, she had used the pistol the storyteller had given her, taken her packed bag, and fled. 

She describes driving for hours with no direction, no plans, just to make sure they weren’t on her tail anymore. She’d ditched her own cell phone out the car window miles before and in her shell-shock, she had no idea how long it had been before she was able to find a payphone.

Ranboo’s friends stay with her until she’s able to settle down, Lottie remaining at her side. Ranboo walks through the house following the storyteller’s voice until he finds the storyteller and the healer watching a news report on the television about a house fire, and the person presumed dead in the house.

That’s her face, on the television.

Ranboo had wondered if Showfall would frame it that way. Dead, missing, or fugitive? 

He didn’t think dead as a choice was a good sign.

Someone at group is familiar.

Ranboo knows that face; rather, he should, he thinks. The person doesn’t speak, and isn’t given any particular attention by the others. But Ranboo knows they’ve never been here before. Not that Ranboo is anything but fully face-blind, except -- he knows. He knows that face.

She isn’t here with him today. His tall friend is in the back of the room with a handheld game console that has the volume muted. 

Ranboo doesn’t speak during group. He just stares at that face, desperately willing the neurons to fire, for the memories to connect. He tries to cast his mind back, but as always, every face is blurry, difficult to discern. He draws pictures of them all constantly, but ultimately it comes to nothing, nothing at all in his damn fried brain --

As the meeting finishes, Ranboo rises from their seat immediately. Lottie raises her head, but Ranboo is calm, so she is calm, and vice versa. 

He’s standing in front of them. “Hello. Do I … do I know you?”

They smile.

“Hello Ranboo.”

And in that voice Ranboo hears: hello, my hero. you will be so perfect. 

The Founder offers Ranboo a hand. 

“Let’s talk.”

“—my, mate, hello, are you in there—”

“THAT’S MY ANIMAL CROSSING, COME ON—”

“Stop yelling — I was just checking if you guys were ready to go.”

“Yeah, I—” A horrible, long beat. “Where’s Ranboo.”

“What the fuck do you — what?”

“Lottie — Lottie, girl, hey, hey, what are you — where’s Ranboo? Why isn’t — why wouldn’t she have gone with them, I —”

“Stay here, stay with Lottie. I’m calling the others.”

Chapter Text

Watch the gap.

The world outside the window looks real enough, but when the Hero opens the door, it all becomes Hell.

The Hero closes the door.

When did they get into the kitchen?

Watch the gap.

The eyes are wide and unblinking, glinting with a deep light, and form shadows from which rises the demon. The world changes when the Hero is or isn’t looking. 

Do they know that voice?

Watch the gap.

The cinderblock both does and does not hurt as much as the Hero reckons it should. Is there a miniature of them, inside of that dollhouse?

The bolt-cutters were useful. Weird place to find bolt-cutters. Will he need those later?

No, probably no.

Watch the gap.

Ah. Shit. The bolt-cutters.

There’s slime — slime — slime — there’s no slime in here. No demon. Just a room.

It’s time to sleep. Yeah, he’s just going to lie down for a minute. It’s fine. The Taken is left locked in, unperceived by the Hero. A little nap.

Watch the gap.

It’s funny, when the demon dies. Play the laugh track. 

What’s outside the door now? The Hero doesn’t know, but it’s time to go. 

It’s time for —

Watch the gap.

Episode two.

It hurts. There’s a lot of time lost in the opening to the shorted-out neurons of the Hero’s brain. But Showfall’s Hero always persists! Cue the laugh track!

Watch the gap.

There’s slime — slime — slime — slime — on the Hero’s hands. In him? No, silly Hero! Why would you do such a thing? We’ll have to blame you for the mess! In him, how ridiculous, cue the laugh track, the screaming is too loud.

Watch the gap.

The Nice woman’s voice doesn’t sound the same. It’s much clearer without the distraction, the distortion, the tears. The scene is much smoother without the excess. It’s a bad day to be —

Watch the gap.

They play the game faster this time! The Nice woman doesn’t live long; the shot comes sooner. The gun dangles from the Hero’s hand. How comical, in the hands of our hapless, blameless Hero. 

Watch the gap.

Are things all they seem?

Watch the gap.

Well, that doesn’t seem like it’s the right way to go.

Watch the gap.

It all starts to blur together, with those beautiful, rounded, sanded-out edges.

Watch the gap.

“Ranboo, if you’re hearing this…”

Watch the gap.

Ranboo looks directly into the camera and feels nothing except the most potent and sickening dread.

>>> SHOWFALL MEDIA

DO NOT WATCH THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL.

RESTRICTED FOOTAGE.

CAT: FNDR PRS ARCHIVE

DO NOT WATCH THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL.

The mall is fucking huge, and Ranboo is barely suppressing a panic attack.

Hetch is barely making any sense to them. It’s all Ranboo can do to make the hacker’s words align straight in his brain. He’s awake, in this hell,  and helpless, tasting iron and metal in his throat and Hetch promises the mask comes off later, but it makes it so much harder to breathe.

They can’t stop looking at the camera as it follows them, even as Hetch tells them to not pay it any mind. Ranboo glances, again and again, just to remind themself that it’s there and they can see it.

The place is the same. Everything is transformed by Showfall’s hand, and Hetch keeps talking about a heart. 

There’s an exit, but — 

But the others.

Hetch won’t tell him how long he’s been here; but he insists the others are alive, even though all he seems to really want to lead Ranboo too is these stupid passwords.  

Ranboo is scared. In many ways, it’s refreshing to be able to feel that fear at all, but — but God, he’s fucking terrified.

There’s enough of him awake to be afraid, and to be angry. Angry because that camera keeps tracking him, at the eyes who are watching, ravenous for their suffering, and if an audience has been here they whole time, if they’re still here — then this is THEIR FAULT — not Ranboo’s, it’s their’s. The viewers can’t want anything good for him, so Ranboo has to do this. He can do this.

Hetch is yelling at him as the alarms begin to sound. 

There was an exit. Where was the exit? The drones are awake, security is out — too many eyes watching him and oh, God, Ranboo’s going to fucking die here.

At least Ranboo and Charlie can die together, if they can’t find their way out.

“STOP WATCHING!” Ranboo screams into the webcam on Charlie’s computer before all but pitching it back onto the set. There can’t be a show if there are no viewers — if they would turn it off, wouldn’t this be over?

Ranboo grabs Charlie by the hand and they run. 

Ranboo’s lungs burn and he doesn’t know how he’s drawing in enough air around this fucking mask. Has he ever wielded a knife before? He doesn’t remember, but he shoves it in his belt with enough ease that he suspects it’s not the first time. Their thoughts rattle wildly off their skull, and they don’t think they can feel their hands entirely. Charlie won’t stop talking, but Ranboo doesn’t know what to say most of the time. 

Walking back through the sets makes a cold dread twist his insides. The lit exit signs are a taunt made just for them; the stench of blood a long-since familiar friend. Hetch describes the depth of Ranboo and Charlie’s losses, and for the first time since waking up, Ranboo feels the immense hollowness in their insides. The emptiness of their brain. Nothing there.

Hetch hands him a quest. What can a hero do except take it? 

Everything rings at an odd, discordant tone. Hetch gave them a map. Ranboo stabs the first drone they see and still, they feel nothing at all.

The end is near now. Charlie’s dying screams are not new, either. The Hero runs for his life.

Ranboo wakes up lashed to the girders of the server room wall, head ringing with whatever hit now has blood spilling over their lips, fresh air leaking in through the cracked mask. Hetch is somewhere out of view, talking about roles and experiments, and a jolt goes through Ranboo at the mention of the Founder. Fresh blood is drawn into his throat with a hitching breath and Ranboo coughs violently before he tries to weakly interrogate answers out of Hetch. The hacker, the traitor, is nothing but supremely self-satisfied and exactly as unhelpful as he was while pretending to help Ranboo.

They yank at the wires holding them tight, feeling jagged edges cut into their skin, but it’s not enough to do real damage. There’s some kind of metal contraption around Ranboo’s head and neck, and they honestly consider if slamming the damaged mask into the square metal noose is a sensible plan or not. If Ranboo had tried to save Charlie, perhaps the security monster would’ve left him with a mortal wound, and Hetch’s ending could be ruined. There has to be something. Anything to end this here and now.

“I don’t want to join the cast!” Ranboo screams and begs. “I don’t want to keep doing this!”

Hetch monologues as if Ranboo were a piece of furniture.

“Let’s let the live audience pick.”

Ranboo stares into the eye of the camera, pain still lancing through his head and frying half his thoughts before they come to clarity, but his eyes blaze where they meet the camera’s view. If there really are people behind it — then they are all Ranboo has left.

“There is still so much I want to make that you would be perfect for.” Hetch informs them, and Ranboo is just the broken doll in Hetch’s hands.

Ranboo struggles not to sob. Through the fear, though, he recognizes his one hope left: if he’s going to get what he wants, if he’s going to be set free -- he needs to put on a good show. 

“LET ME DIE!” Ranboo screams, puts everything he has into it. If this is who he is or what Hetch and Showfall made him, he doesn’t know, but if this is the gun that Hetch has put into his hand now, then Ranboo wails as best he can in order to put the gun in his mouth. “PLEASE, JUST LET ME DIE!” It rips up his throat to the point of hoarseness.

“Has he earned his rest? Or do we want to see him play again?” Hetch smiles. 

“I saw everything --”

“And you’ll see so much more.” Ranboo’s chest aches as he hyperventilates. “The audience has voted ... for you ... to die.”

With a final, ragged gasp, Ranboo whispers, “Thank you,”

And it all goes black. 

When Ranboo wakes up, their tall friend is in tears knelt before him, speaking at a rate that Ranboo can’t catch, but they think he’s been trying to rouse them. Ranboo begins to sit up and is caught halfway through the motion when they find themself handcuffed to a handrail in an unused room in a dusty corner of the building. Their tall friend makes a hysterical phone call and yanks fruitlessly at the handcuff while reassuring Ranboo that backup is coming. 

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? What the fuck happened? I’m so sorry, I looked away and -- I didn’t think -- fuck --”

Ranboo doesn’t know what to tell him. They can only stare, try to catch up, and realize they have no answers at all. 

Watch the gap.

Chapter Text

Their tall friend hasn’t let go Ranboo’s hand yet. He grips it like Ranboo will slip away entirely without it, his tremors shaking Ranboo’s hand in turn. He’d tried the handcuff a few more times before turning his head and screaming at such a volume that the name and the world are blotted out by it. “TO—” 

His hands rest on Ranboo’s chest, tears on his face. Ranboo thinks he’s been crying for awhile.

The doorway is filled by the frame of his short friend gripping Lottie’s harness handle; Lottie darts away immediately and plunges into Ranboo’s lap. 

Their short friend rubs his eyes quickly, then turns his head to look down the hall and is yelling too. 

They’re both talking to Ranboo as more feet come down the hall. Ranboo weakly signs answers to their questions: are you okay (okay), are you hurt (no), what happened (I don’t know), I’m so sorry (fine, it’s fine). The last thing isn’t a question, but it happens over and over before the healer and the storyteller come flying in.

The storyteller breaks the handcuff chain, leaving the cuff itself still around Ranboo’s wrist and promising it’ll come off when they get home. The healer urges them all to get moving, because they can’t loiter now. Someone begins to ask if Ranboo can walk, but the storyteller doesn’t wait and simply heaves Ranboo up. They clasp their arms around the storyteller’s broad shoulders and let it happen, noticing the angry red marks on their right wrist where they must have been pulling on the handcuffs at some point.

The parking lot outside support group is devoid of anyone except them. It’s light outside, giving Ranboo absolutely no sense if any time has passed or not. The storyteller deposits Ranboo in the backseat, with his tall friend and short friend scrambling in on either side as Lottie rests at their feet. The storyteller tells the healer to get them the hell out of here once everyone’s seatbelts are buckled.

There are questions in the healer and the storyteller’s eyes, visible to Ranboo when they catch their gazes in the mirror. Ranboo feels sort of numbed, distant from himself, and his voice doesn’t come, so he slowly signs responses to whatever they do ask.  

The only thing keeping Sneeg from sprinting across the lawn when they get home is her hand on his arm. Next to Sneeg, Charlie looks a mess, eyes red and with one of Sneeg’s hoodies pulled on. Inside, Ranboo is pressed between them on the couch and the questions start up again. Are you hurt?  ‘I don’t know’. What happened? ‘I don’t know.’ Do you remember what happened? Awkward silence as Ranboo’s fingers stutter. What’s the last thing you remember? ‘Watch the gap.’

Ranboo briefly loses themself in a distanced train of thought about their outer layers of clothes being stripped off to ensure there are no injuries hiding, until they snap back to Charlie squeezing their hand and Lottie laying on their feet, both reminders that that would never happen. Their friends aren’t going to treat them like a doll.

Food is put in front of him, but if Ranboo eats, he doesn’t remember. Virtually the next thing he knows is standing under the shower head, hot water cascading through his hair and down his back, knowing Lottie is waiting patiently on the other side of the shower curtain and his tall friend is sitting in the hallway by the cracked bathroom door.

The mirror in the bathroom is covered, because Ranboo can rarely stand to look at his reflection, but he yanks the cover off and wipes away the steam to examine his cheeks, the skin on his face and neck.

The scars there are mostly healed. They ache like they’re new, bloody and weeping, but the worst of them are just harsh, raised red welts that will never really go away, and the best are partially fading. Ranboo’s lips are cracked and chapped from him absently chewing on his inner lip and cheek, but the wire burns don’t stand out much anymore. 

It’s difficult to bend enough to see the brand on the back of Ranboo’s neck, but it feels the same.

Except for the bruise on Ranboo’s wrist, nothing is different, or at least, nothing that Ranboo can remember properly.

Sneeg refuses to sleep that night until Ranboo does, but Ranboo finds them stuck staring at the ceiling for so long that it becomes unnerving, and far too reminiscent of a scene too close to Ranboo’s mind. Sneeg can’t know that, but — 

Ranboo eventually closes his eyes and fakes sleep, if only for Sneeg’s sake.

The storyteller doesn’t ask questions in the garden, just shoves gloves and a spade into Ranboo’s hand and directs them towards rows that need weeding. If the storyteller is a bit too aggressive with his tools, and Ranboo’s hands too shaky, what of it? Neither of them remark on it. 

The sun is high in the sky when Ranboo sits, wiping sweat off his face and feeling his head spin. He starts to sign to the storyteller that he thinks he needs water when the world goes blank, and wakes up after the seizure to his throat feeling ripped raw and the others murmuring about missing med dosages and chalking things up to dehydration. Lottie is huddled against Ranboo’s chest, and he runs his fingers along her fur, back and forth, pushing against the natural way the hair lays and then smoothing it down again. Her ears flick lazily like there’s nowhere in the world she would rather be.

Hetch had said they would get the mask off after they got out. Hetch had been lying. Even with it off their face in time, Showfall had long since taken their image, their freedom, and rendered Ranboo faceless forevermore. And that doesn’t matter when Ranboo can still taste blood, can still feel the wires wrenching open his jaw, woven around his teeth and down his throat, gag reflex heaving against it every once in awhile and failing endlessly until it becomes a dull sense of suffocation and nausea perpetually haunting them. Even if on the outside the scars are healing, on the inside, Ranboo still feels it all.

This is what leads to Ranboo knelt over the toilet at one AM shoving their fingers down their throat to try and throw up, like that will divest whatever is left of Showfall’s electricity inside him. Whether or not it makes sense isn’t the point — he’s choking on the wires and he needs them out. As bile begins to overtake the metallic taste, a scant bit of relief courses through them just as a firm grip closes on their wrist and pulls their hand out of their mouth.

It doesn’t stop them beginning to retch and cough, but not much more than spit comes up. Ranboo tries to brace and yank away instinctively, but Sneeg doesn’t let him go. Sneeg steadies his free hand on Ranboo’s back to prevent them from tipping back.

“Hey.” Sneeg says, “Hey man, it’s alright. Easy.”

In lieu of an answer, Ranboo coughs for another minute while Sneeg pats his back, releasing his grip on their wrist. They feel all kinds of watery once the coughing abates, lucid enough to know what they were doing was stupid at best and start to fumble an apology into Sneeg’s palm in tactile sign, only to stutter when they realize they’re pressing their disgusting, saliva-covered fingers into his hand. Ranboo starts a little and begins shaking their head, preparing to pull away, but Sneeg lays a gentle hand on their arm.

“It’s okay. Promise.” He reassures them. “No big deal.”

Sneeg guides Ranboo to their feet and they wash up together. Ranboo looks at the sheet covering the mirror and reaches forward to briefly push it aside, gazing owlishly at their own face.

No mask. No wires. Just scars, tired eyes, and bangs growing out again.

“You okay?” Sneeg checks.

Ranboo lets the fabric drop and their reflection vanishes.

He reaches to take Sneeg’s hand. ‘Yes,’ they sign. ‘Think so’. Or they will be. 

They’re looking at the fan blades spinning. The others are arguing about whether or not to change safehouses again. There are some fair points on both sides; no one’s asked Ranboo their opinion. Mostly, Ranboo thinks that’s because they aren’t meant to be listening right now. The only one of their friends they can see is the healer. He’s standing in the doorframe, fidgeting with the necklace chain he wears, eyes going from the others in the kitchen and back to Ranboo laying on the rug letting themself be hypnotized by the fan. 

The healer might know Ranboo is listening. He’s a hard man to read and he’s been a mess of anxiety recently, which Ranboo empathizes with. He’s not stopping the others from talking, just tosses his opinion in from time to time.

“So they know where we are. They clearly aren’t making a frontal assault.” He points out. “If we upset everything by moving when we don’t have to, what’s the point?” 

“They could change their mind at any time.” The storyteller answers gruffly. “I’d feel a lot better if they had to put more work into attacking us.”

The white noise of the fan is changing shape. One moment Ranboo is splayed on their back and the next, they’re standing in waves.

The water is cold enough to demand attention but not enough to cause Ranboo to recoil. Somewhere, waves crash against the shore, but from where they stand Ranboo can see the water reaching all the way to the horizon. It laps and pulls at his ankles, and Ranboo has to brace a bit to not be tugged forward a few steps. He digs his feet into the sand as the water streams past, then reaches forward again. It spills up around his ankles as Ranboo gazes at the gorgeous and clear blue sky and the distant line where it meets the sea. 

It’s calm and infinite as the wind flows through Ranboo’s hair. They take a long deep breath in, tasting salt and freedom, and —

“What do you think, Ranboo?” The healer asks, and Ranboo is laying on the rug with his  head pillowed on Lottie’s back. The healer  is looking directly at them now, giving Ranboo their full attention. The others murmur with varying levels of surprise now that they realize Ranboo is listening. Some of them peek around the doorframe as Ranboo sits up.

‘I want to stay,’ they sign to the healer. Showfall has taken enough. This is home now, and Ranboo doesn’t want to lose that too, not again.

“Alright.”

They’re following Lottie in their dreams, but she’s just out of reach, trotting ahead and leaving Ranboo falling behind. They can’t call her, no matter how they try to summon their voice, and Ranboo starts to run, only to skid to an abrupt stop when a shape forms out of the fog — not Lottie, but the Founder.

Ranboo barely keeps their balance, arms pinwheeling, anything to keep their distance from the Founder, who looks at them with a gaze as placid and unreadable as ever. 

“You were not perfect,” the Founder says, slowly moving closer. “That was okay.” The Founder reaches up, as if to touch Ranboo’s face, and Ranboo grabs their wrist, squeezing tightly like he could crack their bones. 

The Founder’s eyes study Ranboo thoughtfully, all too pleased to mentally pull them to pieces and see what makes them tick.

“I will create something perfect,” the Founder vows.

And Ranboo wakes up.