Archive of Our Own

These days, everything’s silent, gray.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling—every single still perfectly new brick—all just that same unending gray.

Even he’s gray, the pink of his skin and the harsh orange of his clothes and the copper bound to his body all washed out by the low light into monochromatic shades. It’s only gotten worse, the longer he’s been stuck in here—and how long has it been? There’s no lights-out down here, no regularly scheduled meals. He’s fairly sure he’s not sleeping regularly either, not when the Law had done something to the lights, adjusting them to just a little too bright to rest and just a little too dim for him to keep his eyes open for long without a headache building.

Honestly, it’s really rather impressive. Baablu doesn’t think he’s ever hated a kind of light before, and especially not this much.

And everything’s still fucking gray. He’d call it boredom, maybe, but boredom’s too mild of a word for it.

There’s nothing for him to do—nothing he can do, not when food was measured carefully enough that he’s barely healed from the last time he’s tried to break out, and the cell across from his is empty this time. No Fantst for company, nothing. The guards barely even look his way, much less talk. It’s just the same gray everything, the overwhelming quiet, and the slow buzzing building at the base of his skull, unmeasurable day by unmeasurable day.

Or—well. That’s sort of a lie. Of all the senses he still does have, it’s really just touch left, and isn’t that sad? His final companions from now until his slow decay or his more likely execution date were nothing more than the scrape of cold rough stone, the threadbare mattress and blanket, and the deep ache that’d bloom whenever the buzzing got too loud and the only thing that could chase it away was by the dig of his blunted claws into the bruises still bloomed stubbornly over his skin.

He fucking hates solitary. He hates that it can make him resort to that, that kind of animal desperation, like a fox gnawing off its own leg in an attempt to escape, only he can’t, and he hates it. He’s just stuck.

He’s going to go insane at this rate.

What he’d give for a change of pace or a voice—anything really, to break the suffocating silence.

“Yo—Baablu? Holy shit—”

Oh, fuck.

Never mind.

He’d give almost anything, because that voice?

He recognizes that fucking voice.

Immediately, Baablu can feel his ears pin themselves flat against his head, and he spins, fast enough that his chest complains, the ache of his bruises flaring back up.

Through the bars, that still horribly familiar lopsided smile—a smirk, really, there’s no other word for the expression and especially not on his face—flashes back at him.

Boosfer lets out a laugh, genuine glee curving up his eyes. Baablu only barely manages not to flinch at the volume of it, the sound too loud for the silence still lingering in the corners of the cell. “No way you’re actually in prison, dude. Holy shit,” he says, grinning as if he’s never seen anything funnier, another laugh marring the end of his sentence. “What did you even do?”

Too much, too much. If there’s a single phrase to describe Boosfer, it’s too fucking much, and it’s been true from the moment Baablu first met him—what? How long has it been? At least a year ago?

He can feel his tail lashing behind him and he snarls, backing up a step, then two, even as his leg complains, a sudden spark of jolting electricity up his nerves that’s nearly enough to make him stumble. “Fuck off.”

Boosfer pauses at that, smile dropping as an expression flickers across his face. If Baablu didn’t know better, if it’d been almost anyone else, he’d call it surprise—or even hurt, maybe—though it’s all wiped away in the blink of an eye and replaced by a kind of sharpness he’s never seen before as Boosfer suddenly straightens. The trident in his hand twitches, and Baablu’s eyes dart to the clean points of it, glittering in the low light. Warily, he backs up further, until the wall’s pressed against his spine, some instinct buried deep inside warning him away, away.

“Ah,” Boosfer says, voice neutral in a way that immediately has Baablu’s metaphorical hackles raising. “Right.”

But he doesn’t get much farther than that, not when he’s suddenly interrupted.

“I see that you two already know each other.” Lettuce steps smoothly into view, those flat green eyes sliding to him, slow and calm, and Baablu has to do a double take, because what? How has Boosfer gotten the goddamn Law on his side?

There’s something immensely unfair about it all, Baablu thinks.

“I wish we didn’t,” he hisses, winding his tail around his leg before he can accidentally hit it against the wall too hard.

Boosfer’s gaze, still strangely sharp and almost knowing, lingers on him for another second, before it finally flicks away, something in the line of his shoulders unwinding, posture relaxing.

Somehow, that doesn’t make the growing feeling, heavy and uncomfortable, that something’s wrong, off, dissipate.

“It was a long time ago,” Boosfer says cheerfully, that unnatural intensity suddenly all but gone. He flicks his hand dismissively, the enchanted tines of his trident darting a little too close to Lettuce’s eye. To his credit, Lettuce doesn’t flinch, but it takes his attention off Baablu as he shoots Boosfer a warning look.

“I see,” comes the response, controlled and neutral. Baablu’s seen Lettuce furious before, burning with that self-righteous kind of fury he seems full to the brim of, but he’s never seen him this plain annoyed.

“And—!” Boosfer holds up a finger before Lettuce can continue, trident swinging to clang harshly against the bars of Baablu’s cell, the sound grating, “if idiot one’s here, that means idiot two is also here, yeah?”

Baablu can feel his eye twitch.

He hasn’t changed.

Of course he hasn’t changed.

“Will that be a problem?”

“Oh, no.” And there. Again. That fucking smirk. “No, no, not at all.” Boosfer’s eyes are flat, a terrible contrast with the sharpness of his smile. “Why would it be a problem?”

The smallest frown flashes over Lettuce’s face, but he seems to acquiesce. “Alright. Well. You know the schedule. I feel like I should warn you, though. No matter what your history was—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Boosfer interrupts again, rolling his eyes. “I got this, don’t worry. You don’t even need any extra guards, you know. Like, I'm probably better than all of them and they'd really just get in the way, so how about this.” He pauses, as if enjoying the manufactured dramatics. "You get rid of your guards, and I get to be alone with them for absolutely no reason at all. Thoughts?"

Lettuce’s eyes narrow. “Unfortunately,” he says, with exaggerated calm, his voice trembling with poorly concealed anger for a second, “I’m not going to leave you alone with prisoners, especially not when you know each other.” And wow. Baablu can’t believe he’s feeling almost a sense of kinship with LettuceK, of all people, right now. “Do you think I’m stupid? I don’t trust you, and we’ve—” Lettuce lets out a short ironic huff of a laugh “—we’ve already had one prison break, and these two nearly got away during that. Do you really think I’ll risk that again?” His hand lifts, settling on the hilt of his sword.

Boosfer just clicks his tongue, unimpressed. “Well,” he says, humming, drawing out the word for far longer than he has to. “You think I like them? Just move your guards to the front or whatever. It’s not like I can mine them out anyway. Didn’t you already check my inventory?” He tilts his head, smile reappearing. “Or do you not trust your prison to do its job?” His voice drops to this kind of mocking understanding. Lettuce's eye visibly twitches. “I mean, it does makes sense, I guess. You’ve already lost three high value prisoners, one of whom was Parrot, your biggest competitor, by the way, and you almost lost these two when they’re not even smart—”

“Okay!” Lettuce’s ears are flat, the corner of his mouth pulled up into a near snarl. “Okay. Fine. Do what you want. Just know that if anything happens…” he trails off, but whatever threatening air he’d been trying to go for dissipates the moment Baablu glances back at Boosfer, who’s still grinning, not a hint of fear in every line of his body.

“Aye, aye, captain.” Boosfer salutes lazily, two fingers flicking out from his temple, and Lettuce tracks the motion, narrow-eyed. He looks like he’s seriously considering biting him, and honestly? Baablu can relate. “Whatever you say. Your guards are blocking the only way out anyway. I couldn’t try anything even if I wanted to because they’re good enough to stop me, right?” Boosfer leans in, the smile on his face ruining the innocent look he’s going for. “Right?”

Lettuce breathes in, then breathes out, slow and controlled.

Then, without another word, he turns on his heel and stalks off.

“Aw, c’mon,” Boosfer calls after him, straightening to lean against the wall of Baablu’s cell, twirling his trident in his head. “You’re no fun.”

“You’re annoying,” Baablu informs him, possibly unwisely, given that Boosfer is apparently his guard now, but the words are up and out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

Boosfer turns his head to meet his eyes, an eyebrow raised. “Wow,” he says, sardonic. “Really? I chase Lettuce away and—yeah. You know what?” He heaves a sigh, voice dropping down to a mutter. “It’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine! I’m used to this.”

Baablu narrows his eyes. There’s a part of him that is glad Lettuce is gone now, but he refuses to feel grateful, not when it’s Boosfer, and not when there’s any way in any dimension that he’d done it out of just the kindness of his heart.

“What do you want?” The words come out smaller than he intends, more tired, and Boosfer visibly pauses again, eyes flickering.

Under his scrutiny, Baablu can feel his bad leg complaining, the muscles nowhere near strong enough for how tense he’s been holding himself for the last few minutes, and so, eventually, despite how pathetic it feels, he lets himself slide down the wall, pressing a hand to the stone and letting the chill chase away some of the roaring heat beneath his skin.

Boosfer watches all the while, eerily silent.

That unease starts to creep back, the longer he says nothing. And it’s been a while, but this, Baablu still knows. Boosfer is a lot of things, but he’s never quiet.

Something’s off about him, this kind of uncanny valley effect that has Baablu’s skin crawling.

Still, against his own common sense, he lets out this noise, half of a sardonic laugh. “So, uh,” he tips his head, just a bit, “are you gonna say anything? Or—”

The iron door clicks open.

Baablu startles, and he tries to scramble up, away, but Boosfer’s faster and not beaten half to death, and there isn’t much he can do when Boosfer yanks him up onto his feet with surprising strength, hand hooked neatly onto bands of copper bound to his skin. The rough treatment reopens all of the aches he’d finally started to quiet and he nearly stumbles into the wall, stopped only by a jerk that pulls this half-strangled yelp from his mouth.

“Woah! Hey, wait—chill! Dude, chill, chill, chill—”

A cold prick at the hollow of his throat has the words dying on his tongue, and there’s a moment where Baablu’s breathing freezes, because oh.

“Shut up.” Boosfer scans him, eyes back to that frighteningly empty state, even as they flicker quickly to the door.

He’s serious, Baablu realizes. For once, that childish arrogance is gone, that carefree self-importance, and that’s—

Baablu might die here.

He really might, and if he does, it’s going to be Boosfer who takes him out, of all people, and for what? For simply running off one night all that time ago when he’d first realized exactly what kind of person Boosfer was? Baablu hadn’t known he’d be this petty.

God damn it. What an ignominious end.

Boosfer frowns, making this sharp scoffing noise Baablu nearly flinches at. “Curse of—really?”

Evidently, the very sharp weapon at his throat isn’t enough to stop Baablu’s instinct of shooting himself in the foot. “And Mending and Unbreaking, yeah.”

“Hm.” Boosfer clicks his tongue again. “Still can’t believe you let yourself get caught,” he adds, a strange kind of humor twisting his words. And with that, he pulls back, releasing Baablu, the unexpected lack of pressure leaving him stumbling for a step or two.

What?

Despite his bewilderment at just being let go, his mouth is already moving before he can stop himself. “Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to get caught.”

Boosfer barks a laugh at that. “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, bro.” He tosses something, his trident resting loosely in his hand now, tail swishing slowly from side to side. “Here.” It drops to the ground, glinting strangely in the light, and Baablu pauses, suspicion roaring back full force.

“What do you want?”

“Oh, so you don’t want to heal?”

Baablu’s hand hesitates, hovering over the carrots. Boosfer smiles back, flat and almost taunting, even as he takes a step forward.

He snatches them before Boosfer can get any closer, tucking them away as he struggles back onto his feet, braced against the wall.

Something flickers across Boosfer’s face at that, quick and fleeting, too fast for Baablu to really categorize, but slow enough for him to spot it, at the very least. His tail twitches, the tip of it looping around his ankle.

Then, he relaxes, expressions smoothing away. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” The clank of armored boots on stone starts to bounce through the corridor, and Boosfer tilts his head towards the sound. “There it is,” he mutters under his breath. “Don’t say anything.”

“Say wha—”

Boosfer swings his trident before Baablu can finish his sentence and he doesn’t even get time to react before the haft is slamming into his bad knee with pin-point accuracy, his world going violently white.

By the time his vision clears, he’s on the ground, breathing fast and rasping in his ears.

“—doing anything,” Boosfer’s saying, offense clear in his voice. The sharp tines of that trident dancing dangerously close to Baablu’s face as he gestures.

“It doesn’t matter,” comes the terse reply. There’s the sound of the iron door opening again, and Baablu forces himself to look up in time to see another guard, face shadowed, cross their arms. “You might not have any morals, but we do, and if you’re with the Law, then you abide by our rules. Step away from the prisoner.”

“Ouch. And how dramatic,” Boosfer adds, rolling the r out for far longer than he has to, accent changing into something mocking. Then, he sighs, stepping away from Baablu and letting the light from the hallway spill in onto his face. “Fine, whatever. It’s not like he’s worth it anyway.”

“Fuck you,” Baablu wheezes, slowly picking himself up, pain radiating out from his leg.

In the doorway, Boosfer pauses. Just for a moment, before he’s stepping back, letting the door slam shut between them.

Baablu holds his gaze all the while, ears pinned back, and again, he finds himself feeling not unlike a cornered animal, snarling and snapping, a wild thing brought low. It’s not fair that Boosfer’s free, not when he’s worse.

At least, in the end, it’s Boosfer who looks away first. “Enjoy,” he says, unnaturally soft all of a sudden. With that, he disappears, the small windows given by the iron bars too small for Baablu to track him for long.

God. Baablu fucking hates him.

He waits, ears straining for the sounds of footsteps, and it’s not until they fade into nothing that he bothers trying to move.

Finally alone again, he thinks, a kind of dark humor coloring the thought. What a monkey’s paw kind of wish. He finishes his struggle upright, limping along the wall with it as his crutch until he can collapse on his bed.

Blowing out a breath, he stares at the ceiling, still too new to even have cracks for him to count, and he tries his hardest to ignore the headache growing behind his eyes.

“Hey.” The word is drawn out, lilting, and ah fuck.

He’s back.

Baablu sighs, turning to face the wall, away from the door, the sheets rustling with the movement.

“Aw, come on,” Boosfer says, annoyingly cheerful. His armor clinks softly as he presumably leans against the bars. “Baablu? Don’t ignore me.”

Already, he can feel his headache from…presumably yesterday, starting to bloom again. He heaves another sigh, reluctantly sitting up. “Dude.” Boosfer grins when Baablu meets his eyes. “What do you want.”

He hums in response, tilting his head, considering. “Come here.”

“Why?” His leg pulses with phantom pain, even if the golden carrots he’d gotten earlier had done their job, healing away the worst of the bruising and easing the limp until it was pretty much gone.

“Just—” Boosfer makes a gesture, “Just come here. Trust me.”

Baablu scoffs. “And why would I do that?”

“Why not?” For just a moment, Boosfer’s head turns, his eyes darting down the hall before they’re flicking back. “I healed you yesterday, didn’t I? C’mon, I’m not gonna do anything bad.”

Baablu eyes him, wary, but he reluctantly obeys, creeping to the front of his cell, his skin crawling as Boosfer scans him with those still too-sharp eyes. “It’s kinda hard to trust you, you know,” he grumbles.

Boosfer ignores him. “You look better.”

“No thanks to you.”

“What? What do you mean, no thanks to me? I gave you those carrots, didn’t I?”

Baablu clamps down on the urge to snarl in his face. “Yeah,” he says, tail lashing behind him, “after you beat the shit out of me.”

And for some reason, that seems to take Boosfer aback, something startled darting across his face. “But I—” he starts. “I didn’t—” His mouth clicks shut, ears twitching back. “Right.” Like a switch, his voice empties of emotion. “Yeah. I forgot.”

“Yeah,” Baablu mimics, “you forgot.” He backs away slowly. “You done now? Or are you going to keep harassing me?”

He can see Boosfer hesitate, and again, he’s the first to look away.

Well. Fine.

That’s good enough for him.

If he eventually picks up the food dropped carefully through the bars later, when there’s no longer a shadow at the door of his cell, then it’s really nobody else’s business, is it?

“Baablu.”

He startles, whirling. Boosfer just smiles, chin propped up on one hand.

“Oh, my God.” Baablu groans. “Seriously?”

“What?” A laugh mars his words. “You miss me?”

“Fuck no.” He sits on his bed pointedly, even as Boosfer leans forward, threading his arms through the gaps of the iron bars. “Bro, why are you even here?”

Boosfer just shrugs, light and easy, as if he hadn’t practically gotten chased away yesterday. “Technically, I work here now,” he points out. He flicks a hand, a golden carrot pinched between his fingers all of a sudden. “Here you go.”

“What?”

Boosfer raises an eyebrow. “What, what? It’s just food.”

“Yeah, but…” the words die on his tongue, the rapidly becoming familiar what do you want catching in his throat.

“Dude. You want it or not?”

Something in him bristles at the indignity of it all, but…

“Fine.” Baablu catches it easily enough when Boosfer tosses it, strangely accurately, for how his range of motion’s reduced, and he tucks the item away, letting it vanish from his hand. Then, he pauses. “What are you—” he cuts himself off. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this? Or—actually, better question. Why are you even here? Don’t you hate working for other people?”

At that, Boosfer stills, tilting his head. “What do you mean?”

“Like—” Baablu pulls the carrot back out. “Why? What do you—what’s your motive here? Win me back over or some shit?” He scoffs, hands curling, claws digging into the mattress. It’s a motion that should have gone unnoticed, but he watches as Boosfer’s eyes flicker down to it anyway. “Because, I gotta say, it’s not gonna work, you know.”

It’s getting startlingly easy to—maybe not catch him off guard. That’s not the right phrase. But this is already the third time in a row where Baablu’s seen him do this, turn quiet and subdued, an abnormal serious.

It feels wrong.

The silence drags on, still and unsettling, until—

“What did I do?”

Disbelief sparks, bright and burning at the base of his skull. “Dude, are you serious?” The laugh the claws its way out of Baablu’s mouth nearly startles him. “Do you not remember? Or have you never, I don’t know, ever looked at yourself?”

“I don’t—what did I do?” He looks genuinely lost. “Like I—I really don’t know—”

“What, you just gonna tell me you don’t know everyone hates you? I don’t know why Kier and Dev ever stuck around for as long as they—”

“What?” Boosfer’s gone completely still. “What did you say?”

Baablu can feel his ears twitch back, even as he opens his mouth in some snarling mockery of a smile. “Oh, that’s a sore spot, huh? I didn’t think you cared.” The words feel unstoppable now, but it’s not as if he really cares, not with this frustration bubbling under his skin, hot and angry. “But for what it’s worth, I’m glad they didn’t bother coming back after you ditched them.”

And maybe that’ll do it, he thinks rather viciously, as Boosfer flinches, finally backing away from the bars. Maybe that will actually chase him away, will teach him that cornered things still bite and snap at fingers stuck through into their cages.

He doesn’t need to keep going, point driven home in this new soft spot Boosfer’s somehow developed, but then he thinks back, to all of those dismissive remarks, to that carelessness and arrogance, and. Well. It’s not as Baablu’s ever claimed not to be cruel before.

“I bet you don’t even remember, right?”

Boosfer’s mouth opens. Closes. His skin’s taken on a kind of ashen tone, like the blood’s been drained from his face.

“What was it?” His voice is small.

Baablu shrugs. “Fuck if I know. Some small disagreement involving that End civ Parrot built.”

“Oh.”

There’s really no other explanation for it this time, when Boosfer turns. He runs, and its only that Baablu’s suddenly just so fucking tired that he doesn’t bother calling him a coward for it.

He’s right.

When Boosfer appears in front of his cell the next day, he doesn’t say anything, just quietly drops another golden carrot through the bars, eyes cast off to the side as if he’s afraid to meet Baablu’s gaze.

That’s fine.

Having to look at Boosfer’s face, at the atrociously loud orange threading through his armor, is already interaction enough. He doesn’t want to have to deal with talking to him anyway.

It’s the same for the next day.

And the next.

The buzzing’s starting to come back.

There’s some commotion that passes outside his door, but he doesn’t bother checking what it is, just leans his forehead against the cold stone and tries to chase the humming away.

And the next.

He can’t tell if the worst part of this is how he can always see Boosfer standing there, the edges of him visible around the corner of the iron bars, or if it’s that he’s starting to debate talking to him again.

God damn it. He’s going to go insane in here.

He’s got probably around six days worth of food in his inventory by the time he finally cracks.

“Yo, Boosfer.” His voice rasps a bit, rusty from the few days of disuse, and this close to the door, Baablu can see him jump.

“Oh, holy shit—"

Without preamble, Baablu cuts him off. “Why are you here? Like, genuinely?”

Boosfer’s eyes narrow, though his mouth twitches, like he’s trying his hardest to hide his delighted expression. “Why not? Why wouldn’t I be?”

For a moment, Baablu just stares at him. “Really? The Law?”

A shrug. “Just felt like it,” he says, loose and casual. “I heard you and Fantst got stuck in here somehow and I wanted to come see it for myself, you know?”

“You—” Baablu stops. “What? Huh?”

Another shrug. “Dunno if you heard about the election thing going on, since you’ve been stuck in where for a while, but long story short, Lettuce offered me a position. Blackmail, bought out my vote, whatever you call it.” Boosfer gestures vaguely, his trident re-materializing in his hand as he leans on it. “Not very honest politics, if you ask me, but it worked.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” Baablu replies with a snort. “And ask you? About honest politics? Seriously?”

Boosfer barks out this laugh, caught halfway between startled and borderline giddy. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Ha, ha.” He waves him off, eyes rolling. “You’re hilarious.”

“Thanks, I try.” Against all odds, a laugh starts to bubble up in Baablu’s chest too. It’s not helped by the way Boosfer starts snickering either, tail swishing almost playfully from side to side.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He sobers—or, tries to, though the smile lingers. “So, anyway, how did you and Fantst get caught in the first place? I thought you two were more slippery than that.”

Baablu can feel his eyes sharpen into a flat glare. “Thanks,” he repeats, sarcasm drenching the word this time, before he sighs. “The Law is just everywhere, dude, I don’t know. Fighting off an army is kinda hard, you know. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried—”

“Bro—Seriously?” Boosfer lets out this almost wheezing laugh. “That’s what you get for trying to beat Minute and Wemmbu in PvP.”

“You know about that?”

“Fantst told me.”

Baablu perks up. “Fantst?”

“Uh-huh.” Boosfer waves his trident away, pulling out some bread, tearing a chunk out. “Your cells are right next to each other, you know,” he says around a mouthful of food. Baablu makes a face, leaning away slightly. “He’s fine, by the way. Why did you guys even think spawning that many dragons was a good idea?”

“I don’t know. We—wait. Huh?” It feels like his brain is lagging, though if that’s from the solitary starting to get at him or this weird version of Boosfer he’s still rather ambivalent about, he can’t really tell.

On his part, Boosfer doesn’t react at all, eyebrow still raised, as if he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary. “The dragons?”

“The—” Baablu shoots him a look, because wow. Subtle much? Briefly, he considers pushing, but when he looks for it, it’s hard to miss the way he holds Baablu’s gaze just a little too long and the tail now half coiled around his leg. So, instead, he lets it drop, filing the moment away instead. “The dragons?”

Boosfer tilts his head, shit-eating grin growing on his face, and Baablu can already feel himself starting to regret saying anything. “What about them? Wh—” He audibly bites back a giggle, unsuccessfully. “Why are you asking me?”

“Oh, wow,” Baablu says over the sound of Boosfer fully giving in to the laughter, voice deadpan. “Yeah, thank you.”

It takes him half a minute to calm back down, and Baablu’s suddenly struck with the realization that he really does look different like this, all of his previous ego and arrogance mysteriously drained out of him. “Hey, look,” Boosfer says, shrugging, a grin infecting his words as he pretends to wipe tears from his eyes, “you asked.”

Baablu doesn’t bother responding properly, just rolls his eyes, his own smile tugging on his face stubbornly.

It’s surprising, really, that any silence involving Boosfer could be comfortable—or silent at all to begin with—but he doesn’t say anything, just watches as Baablu sits down in the corner just below the bars, back to the wall. There’s something in his eyes, light and unfamiliar, that Baablu can’t quite place, not before Boosfer looks away, staring down at the floor as if the brick pattern’s the most interesting thing there.

Strange, strange, and stranger.

It’s also unnerving how quickly Baablu’s gotten used to this, he realizes, to this version of Boosfer, and he’s not quite sure whether or not he should listen to that little bit of him that sees all this and marks it all as genuine.

Probably not, but he also can’t help but think back to how their last few conversations had ended with Boosfer slinking away, almost like a kicked dog of some kind.

Feeling bad for him is a step too far though. Baablu has standards, thank you very much, though he’ll allow himself to feel conflicted at most. For now. Until he figures out the reason for the change in demeanor, maybe.

And there is another startling change. Boosfer’s eyes keep shifting, darting from the neatly patterned floor to Baablu and back down when he notices Baablu still staring at him intently, which is…new.

Hmm.

Yeah, definitely new. He looks uncomfortable, which is not something Baablu’s ever seen Boosfer look like, though the impact of this is somewhat lessened because that’s probably the  third time at least this week…? He’s still not sure. His timekeeping has been rather reliant on the rotation of guards, and he’s fairly certain that the rotations aren’t all that consistent either.

He keeps staring, smile naturally dropping off his face, and sure enough, Boosfer suddenly straightens, backing up and away.

“Be right back,” he says, hurrying off before Baablu can respond.

For a moment, all he can do is spring back to his feet, disbelief clogging his tongue, because seriously?

That’s all it takes?

“Huh,” he whispers aloud to himself. There’s still an echo of warmth left imprinted into the wall and the iron bars when Baablu touches them, and if he strains hard enough, he thinks he can see the flash of green and orange down the hall. “Interesting.”

Whoever this new Boosfer is, he’s surprisingly easy to read.

That’s useful to know, he thinks, tucking the information away, and briefly, he lets himself wonder if there’s anything he can do with it.

He might be annoyingly easy to sway, but if there’s something Baablu refuses to be, it’s stupid, especially not when an opportunity was so nicely dropped into his lap.

He’s still turning it over in his head by the time Boosfer shows up again. It’s mostly because he still has absolutely nothing to do in prison, but at the same time…

“You’re back early,” Baablu says, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Boosfer shrugs. “What can I say? I got bored. Also the night shift’s better. More aura, no? Like Batman.”

Baablu rolls his eyes hard enough he nearly sees stars. “Dude.” He gets a grin for it, wide, teeth bared. “If you ever had any aura, your armor immediately ruins it.” At that, Boosfer’s smile drops as he looks down at himself, still obnoxiously orange, and he makes a slight face, before that expression’s replaced by that all-too-familiar smirk that Baablu knows means he’s about to hear something stupid.

“What do you mean? I think it looks nice.”

Yeah, there it is. “Orange isn’t even your color, you’re green.”

“And?”

“At least—I don’t know,” Baablu gestures emphatically at him, “coordinate or something!”

Boosfer leans forward, his tail flicking back and forth, propping his chin on a hand, face up close to the bars. “Says the guy who’s pink and also wearing orange. Bro—” he lets out a small laugh, head tilting, “you cannot be judging me.”

“Hey, I’m like this against my will.” He taps his horns, still too light and too bare without his crown. Boosfer follows the motion, eyes lingering for a moment, mouth twisting up with something almost ironic.

“True,” he says, drawing out the word. “You do look kinda bald.”

Baablu raises an eyebrow. “Sorry?”

“Hey, I’m just telling the—” Both of them freeze, the tell-tale hum of a death emanating from Boosfer’s communicator. He pulls it out, and this close, Baablu can see the surprise that flashes across his face, before he almost seems to shut down, a switch flicking, draining the emotion and replacing it with that strange intensity Baablu had seen from him just a few days earlier.

He can feel himself shift, immediately wary, his weight on his back foot. Carefully, he asks, “What happened?” Boosfer ignores him, spinning on his heel, pearl suddenly in hand. “Boosfer?”

“Stay here.”

“What? Wait, B—”

The sharp snap of teleportation interrupts him, leaving him staring at a flurry of fading purple sparks.

Almost as if on cue, two other guards rush past, swords out and flashing in the low light.

Must have been one of their deaths, then, if they’re worried like this. Another prison break maybe?

He’s honestly surprised that anyone had dared try, with the shitty copper armor bound to them and the fact that these guards clearly weren’t normal Lawmen.

Oh, well. Baablu sits down on his bed, head tilting back so he can stare up at the ceiling. It’s not as if any of this will affect him, not with his sentence of “rotting away in solitary forever” hanging over his head. Who else was worth breaking out? Not Blurpenstein—whoever that guy really was. Lomedy, maybe, but Lomedy was never going to see these cells, and that would mean it’s probably FlameFrags currently kicking down the Law’s door.

Yeah, Baablu’s not going to get his hopes up.

Idly, he hums, counting the bricks of his ceiling.

That’s the same as always. A perfect hundred-ninety, and twenty half bricks from the way the pattern alternated. All smooth, clean edges that he’s already memorized because of how often he’s stared—

The lights flicker.

Baablu jolts upright.

What the hell?

The dim lighting returns after a second—nothing like last time, when Spoke had shown up with darkness at his heels, but there’s—

There’s someone moving in the walls.

Quietly, Baablu stands, backing away from the back of his cell, coiling his tail around his leg to keep it out of the way, and sure enough, he picks up the soft click and shift of redstone. The smooth stone swings open, casting a beam of light, bright enough he has to blink from how unused to it he is, and someone steps into his room.

He can feel his ears flatten, and he takes another step backwards, then another, when the suit of armor, clean of personalization but shimmering with enchantments, starts to move towards him. “Who—”

“Baablu, shut up.”

He can feel his mouth drop open. “Boosfer?”

Invisible claws clamp down on his wrist. “Don’t,” comes the quiet hiss, as Baablu starts being tugged towards the no-longer-so-secret door. “Don’t move.” Something breaks at his feet before he can reply, and he nearly flinches.

“Wh—” He looks down at himself and he’s met with nothing but the faint shine of the enchantments on the copper and the curl of an invisibility potion off his skin. “What? Boosfer—” He digs his heels into the ground, pulling his wrist free surprisingly easy. “What the hell? What are you—”

“Look,” comes the interruption, “we can talk about this later or whatever, but if any of us get caught right now, we’re fucked. Do you wanna get out of here or not?”

This is too much.

With everything else—the conversation, the food, the company—there was always at least something a little familiar about it all, and was always that quick switch back to the persona Baablu was familiar with, but this? Too much.

There’s almost nothing identifiable as Boosfer about this person aside from the sound of their voice, and even then.

Keeping his voice low, he hisses back, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Dude—” an exasperated noise. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

“Who else do you think I could be!? That God of War person? Come on, bro.”

“That’s not what I—You know what I meant!” Baablu shakes his head. “And why should I trust you?”

Surprisingly, Boosfer barely pauses at that. “I don’t care if you do,” he snaps back, “but its me or staying here. And hey, by the way—how’s your relationship with Wemmbu and FlameFrags again?”

“Actually not that bad,” he shoots back nearly without thinking, before his brain catches back up and he has to bite his tongue, because unfortunately, he can see Boosfer’s point. Baablu doesn’t really know either of them all too well, and certainly not well enough to be on particularly good terms with them, but he knows enough to know that they both have the subtlety of a raging bull running through a china store, and it would probably take two hits for Baablu to die. Three, if he’s being generous. And so, he relents. “Fine. But I’m not—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Boosfer’s hand finds his again, and he starts to tug Baablu towards the secret passage insistently. “We’re getting Fantst next.”

This time, he lets it happen, stumbling out into the too-bright corridor.

Redstone clicks again as he’s blinking the sparks out of his eyes, and when he looks up, he sees Boosfer tuck a torch away before haphazardly shoving a broken lever back onto the wall. When he notices Baablu staring at him, he shrugs, new armor scraping softly with the movement. “Mining fatigue, you know?”

“I’m honestly more surprised you know any redstone,” Baablu replies, trying to shade his eyes, only to realize that it doesn’t really work when he’s invisible. “God damn it.”

Boosfer snickers quietly at that. “What, I’m too stupid for it?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

There’s a brief pause before he replies. “Ouch.” His voice is just a little bit too quiet and Baablu side-eyes him. The armor doesn’t give anything away, but the way Boosfer turns down towards the hall does, and—well. He did kind of expect that. “Fantst is down here, by the way.”

Right. Not the time to be passively analyzing exactly how easy it is to pick apart whoever it is wearing Boosfer’s face and voice. Baablu hurries after him.

“Okay, but what’s your plan after getting us out of our cells. Do these tunnels go to the surface? Or…”

“No, but, uh—” a brief pause “—wow. Nah, the Law’s going to be too busy to worry about us, don’t worry.”

“What? What do you mean?” Baablu grabs at his shoulder, spinning him around, earning a surprised yelp. “So you don’t have a plan?”

Boosfer shrugs him off, his arm-braces floating up in the air in some gesture of surrender. “Of course I do! It’s just helped by the fact there’s like five Lifestealers just absolutely going to town on the Law right now, calm down.”

Baablu blinks for a moment, brain catching on the unfamiliar term. “Lifestealers?”

“I—” Another pause. Then, softly, under his breath, “Right, you wouldn’t know about that.” Baablu narrows his eyes, but it’s not as if Boosfer can see it. “Don’t worry about it. Here.” He stops in front of another alcove, the lever above the indent in the wall already broken too. “I’ll just do the same thing I did to you and then we’ll all be out, okay?”

And sure enough, another potion flickers into existence in Boosfer’s hands. Baablu shakes his head. He’ll come back to whatever the hell a Lifestealer is later. “Dude, how many invis pots do you have?”

“Eh.” Boosfer shrugs again. “A lot. I stole them from Lettuce, don’t worry about it.” He jams a redstone torch into the broken lever socket, the shifting of pistons cutting off any response Baablu might have come up with.

The stone swings in again, and—

“What the hell?”

He can feel himself perk up. “Fantst!”

“Wha—Baablu!?”

“Dude, holy shit, be quiet—”

Baablu ignores Boosfer, pushing past and into the cell—only to practically crash into Fantst. Stars burst in Baablu’s vision, bright and colorful, and he tries to stumble back, but his leg catches on something, and with a too-loud clang of copper on stone, the two of them topple over into a pile of tangled limbs.

“Ow,” he hears Fantst whine from beneath him.

Baablu groans, rolling off to the side and picking himself up, blinking sparks from his eyes. “Dude, oh my God.” Fantst sits up, rubbing his head. “Why were you so close to the door?”

“The—” Fantst stops, and it takes a second before there’s offense flickering across his face. “What? How was I supposed to know there was a—” he stiffens. “Oh, hi, ominously armored invisible person.”

“That’s Boosfer.”

Fantst’s head whips around fast enough Baablu winces. “That’s Boosfer?”

“Yo.” The potion breaks open at their feet, the echo of it almost like an explosion, and Baablu can see Fantst twitch at the sound before he flickers out of visibility. “And you two call me loud, holy shit.”

Baablu raises an eyebrow. “You do know why, right?”

“Fuck you, bro,” Boosfer shoots back immediately, something hitting Baablu lightly in the back of the knee. “Whatever, it’s—” a muffled boom rattles down the hallway, and simultaneously, all three of them freeze. “Oh, shit. Time to go.”

“Wh—Did something just blow up?”

Ah. Right. Baablu shrugs as he hurries to the door, yanking Fantst back onto his feet along the way. “Wemmbu.”

“Oh.”

That gets a laugh out of Boosfer, at least, as he swipes his torch off the wall, the stone grinding back shut again. “Man, I still can’t believe he built that shit here too. Is he just really good at trapping people at coords or what?” They swing around a corner, and Baablu has to slow down before he crashes into the wall. “Up the ladder.”

He’s winded by the time Boosfer hauls him up and out of the thin shaft and holy shit has prison been bad for his endurance. It takes him a second to catch his breath enough to speak. “Trapping? What?”

He gets a strange look as Boosfer finishes fishing Fantst out too. “That’s how those cannons work, no? I mean, I’ve never built one, but they fire on pre-determined coords, right?”

Fantst pauses, leaning against the wall. “You know redstone?”

“Yo—Hello?” Boosfer’s voice echoes, loud, bounding down the empty hallway, and given that they’re all still invisible, the fact Baablu can actually picture the offended look Fantst is probably getting is really rather impressive. “I had to reroute like half the door redstone with mining fatigue, by the way, what do you m—no, no, it’s fine.” Boosfer turns away slightly, sighing. “It’s fine! It’s fine,” he mutters, “I do this to myself.”

Baablu leans over, almost conspiratorially. “I asked that too, earlier,” he whispers.

“Right!?”

“Oh, fuck you, I should have just left both of you to die.”

“Yeah, well.” Baablu eyes Boosfer’s still empty hands—or the rough positions of them, at least. “Why didn’t you then?” That, predictably, seems to throw him for a loop. Wow, Baablu’s getting real good at this, isn’t he?

A beat of uncomfortable silence.

And finally, “Charity.” Boosfer laughs, the sound of it just a little forced, the echo awkward and heavy as it stumbles down the empty hallway. “You know, you two just looked so sad and pathetic in prison that I just had to—”

“Since when did you do anything nice because you just felt bad for us?” There’s that same wary curiosity in Fantst’s voice when he cuts in.

“Or,” Baablu mutters, “anything nice in general?”

He takes just a moment too long to reply. “What? I can’t even be nice now? Jesus. Fine, I just won’t do anything for either of you two ever again, I guess.”

Baablu sneaks a glance at Fantst, who rolls his eyes in response, and he sighs. “Whatever.” He can see the bend in the hallway beyond Boosfer, and he points. “Let’s just go.”

Their invisibility runs out just as they stumble down the steep sandstone walls into a river, the sound of fighting and explosions fading to a hum that can barely be heard above the water, and that’s when Boosfer finally stops, turning slightly to let Baablu and Fantst catch up. “There’s a base nearby,” he explains while they catch their breath, already wading into the river. “We should be okay there.”

“Dude,” Fantst wheezes, bending over. “When the fuck did you get so fast?”

For some reason, Boosfer snorts like that’s funny somehow. “Eh.” He leans against his trident, the haft shimmering where it meets the water. “Long story. Hold on.”

The river’s cool, and Baablu nearly gives in to the urge to dive in and let the current wash all of the dust and stale prison air clinging to his skin away. Nearly. He still has his pride.

Fantst, however, clearly has no such reservations as he throws himself in. Boosfer doesn’t seem to notice the splash or the noise, too busy rummaging around for something. “Too bad I don’t have any more tridents,” he mutters. “But here.”

Baablu barely has the time to react before Boosfer’s tossing something at him, glinting gold in the sunlight. It hits his chest, dropping into his hands, and for a moment, he can only blink down at it. To the side, Fantst catches his own item and gasps, clearly delighted. “My hat!”

“You…” Baablu trails off, running a finger over the gem set into his crown. It’s surprisingly clean, polished, the scratches he knows he’d gotten on it before he’d been captured all buffed out. “What?”

“I what?” Boosfer blinks at him, innocently, his tail swishing through the waves slowly.

It takes a moment before Baablu finds the words. “Where did you even get these?”

“Oh. I found them,” he replies flippantly. “Lettuce shoved them in some dusty supply closet. Pain in the ass to f—” he cuts himself off with an unconvincing cough, and Baablu can only stare at him, eyes wide. “Yeah. Found ‘em. Figured you’d want them back.”

“Holy shit.” Fantst’s already put his hat back on, some hidden line of tension draining out of his shoulders. “Thank you!”

Boosfer smirks—and he looks genuinely proud for a moment, before he shrugs it off. “Yeah, well, wasn’t hard. Figured I’d just pick them up.” Baablu keeps holding his crown, careful not to dent the gold.

“But why?”

“I just said—”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not!” Boosfer’s tail quivers briefly. “Bro, look, all I’m gonna say is that both of you look bald as fuck and I’m like, three seconds from bleaching my eyes out. So do us all a favor and put that shit back on. Please,” he tacks on, tapping his trident against the shoreline. “Anyway, can we go now?”

Baablu narrows his eyes, because damn it. There’s no way that this is Boosfer—not the one he knows, at least.

“Alright,” he announces instead of replying properly, crossing his arms. “We’ve escaped. Yay. Now explain.”

Boosfer lets out a kind of disbelieving laugh, ears flattening towards his head. “What?”

“You heard me. Explain.”

“Explain what?” Fantst, somehow, hasn’t floated away due to the current or to happiness yet. Baablu sighs, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes at him.

“And here I thought you’d finally developed a survival instinct,” he mutters. Ignoring the indignant Hey! and the splash of water he gets, Baablu refocuses. “Explain.”

Boosfer jolts slightly at the attention, before he laughs nervously. “You gotta be more specific, bro.”

This time, he does roll his eyes. “Who are you? Why should we trust you? Because you’re definitely not someone I know.”

“…Jesus. You’re mean,” Boosfer mutters.

Baablu scoffs. “Did you hit your head or something?” He gestures vaguely at Boosfer, the crown in his hand flashing in the sunlight. “Since when did you do this? Since when were you—” he searches for the word, the taste of it stinging as he forces it out, “—nice?”

“Well, if you don’t want me to be nice, then I just won’t do anything, I guess. That what you want?”

“You just said that, like fifteen minutes ago,” Fantst suddenly pipes up, still barely anything more than a hat and a half a face above the surface of the river. Boosfer makes a face, like he’d bitten into something sour.

Then, he sighs, shoulders slumping. “You guys aren’t gonna believe me,” he says, tail wrapping around his leg as he fidgets with his trident.

If Baablu keeps rolling his eyes, he swears they’re going to pop out of his head. “Try us.”

So. Baablu doesn’t really believe him.

“Did you hear him?” His grip on Fantst’s wrist is nearly bruising. “Do you seriously believe that shit?”

Fantst just hisses back, “Why shouldn’t we? You got any other explanation why he’s all weird and nice now and apparently doesn’t know basic stuff about the world?”

Baablu nearly throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know! Maybe he ran into Wemmbu and got his head caved in enough times that the totems finally healed something wrong!”

“You know I can hear you guys, right?” Boosfer’s voice filters in from the tree he’s sitting in, his head popping out of the cover of the leaves. “Told you guys you wouldn’t believe me,” he adds, a smug little edge to his words. Baablu throws a convenient rock at his face, and he disappears again with a yelp. “Rude!”

“Come on,” he says, looking back at Fantst. “You can’t believe that bullshit about realms and world-hopping or whatever, right?”

Fantst gives him a look. “And you think that this is somehow less believable than Boosfer just suddenly not being a horrible asshole to everyone all the time?”

“I can still hear you, I hope you know that.”

“Shut up!”

“Jeez, you two really are in sync in every fucking universe.”

Baablu seriously debates throwing another rock, but stops himself, turning instead to raise an eyebrow at Fantst, who only shrugs. “I did say all the time, didn’t I?”

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he says, dropping his voice back down to a furious whisper. “Say I believe him and you. What then? Should we just say, ‘Oh, yeah! We believe you. Anyway, bye! I hope you have fun exploring our world before you get to leave and go back to not being a fugitive all the time?’” That has Fantst hesitating, but it’s Boosfer who, after a moment, cuts in.

“I don’t know how to leave.”

“What?”

His head emerges from the canopy again. “I don’t know how to leave,” he repeats. “Normally, I could just go back to the Hub, or since this world’s hardcore, I could just kill myself to forcefully leave, but this is a closed world.”

Baablu blinks. “Kill your—okay, first of all. What?”

“And second of all,” Fantst jumps in, “what the fuck?”

Boosfer just shrugs, dropping down out of the tree. “Rules of physics or whatever you call them are different in most realms, but that’s not the point.” He waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry your little heads about it. It’s not your problem. Here.” He shoves two boxes at them, hard shells dyed pink and blue respectively.

Hesitantly, Baablu takes the one offered to him. “What’s this?”

It’s impressive how quickly Boosfer’s face can change to offended. “What? You think I went through all of that hard work breaking you two dumbasses out of prison just to let you die in the wilderness?”

“Holy shit.” Fantst is already digging through his shulker box. “Baablu, there’s a full set of gear in these.” A totem glints in his hand, and Baablu—

He just stares at it.

“Impressive, right?” Boosfer sounds smug. “Did you know there’s a bunch of secret spy tunnels underneath everything? Our dear leader Lettuce loves having secrets, apparently. Anyway, you can go away now.” He makes a shooing motion at them. “Just don’t die, yeah? Or else you’ll let all my hard work go to waste. It was a pain in the fucking ass to steal half of that.”

He can see Fantst about to thank him—again—and before he can stop himself, Baablu’s dragging him off to the side. “Say I believe you.” The edges of the box cuts into his palms, and he’s sure it’ll leave a mark if he checks. “Say I believe the bullshit about realms. But how do you explain this?”

Fantst jerks away, still clutching the totem. “Why is it so hard for you to believe it? Weren’t you the one saying ‘oh, he’s acting so weird,’ and ‘oh, no way that’s actually Boosfer’? Well, clearly, he’s not the one we know!”

“And weren’t you the one who’s always telling me that we should never trust anyone?” Baablu stabs his finger into Fantst’s chest, who flinches, ever so slightly. “Don’t make me seem like the paranoid one when you know full well what he’s done and how this world works.”

“What do you want us to do then? He broke us out of prison, he found our stuff, and he stole from the Law and you heard him. He said he didn’t want us to die.” Baablu’s crown is heavy on his head, the weight of it no longer quite as comforting as it had been moments earlier. “It just feels…mean,” Fantst finishes lamely.

“I don’t really care,” Baablu says, as blunt as he can. “Look, we got out of prison and we have gear. Great. He hasn’t said that we owe him anything, and if we’re smart, we should just do what he says and run off with what we have now. We’ve done it before. What’s so special about him? He didn’t have to help us, and we don’t have to help him. That’s what you always used to say, isn’t it?”

Another flinch. “But—”

“But what? He wants us to leave. He said so himself.” Baablu pauses. “You don’t actually feel bad for him, do you?”

Fantst opens his mouth. Closes it. Then, right before Baablu can take his victory and drag the both of them away from either a heavily brain damaged Boosfer or some supernatural shit he plans to be far away from when it inevitably blows something up, Fantst says, “Don’t you?”

Baablu’s ears flatten before he can stop himself. “No.”

Clearly, Fantst doesn’t believe him, judging by the sudden smug smile on his face as he ignores the scowl thrown his way. “You do! I knew it.”

“Fine. I feel bad for him. But that’s mainly because he keeps looking all sad and pathetic for like, no reason at all.”

“Like a kicked dog,” Fantst nods sagely, stroking an imaginary beard.

“Like a—what? No?” Baablu whips his tail around, and Fantst lets out an indignant noise when it smacks into his knee. “And you look dumb. Stop that.” That gets him a glare that’s about as effective as being threatened with a burnt chicken leg, before Fantst’s eyes shift past him and through the brush.

Boosfer’s still in that little clearing, trident held loosely in hand and—

Hm. Maybe it does say something about this whole…situation if Baablu had expected him to stay. It’s not as if he’s looking in their direction, but the Boosfer he’d known would have left already—stormed off, if he thought they’d abandoned him, or simply walked away, because it wasn’t as if he cared particularly about them.

When Fantst finally looks back, something uncomfortable slithers into Baablu’s chest, and he finds himself breaking eye contact first. “Fine,” he sighs, crossing his arms. “It’s not like there’s any other way to check if he’s telling the truth or not by following him.” He ignores the way Fantst brightens. “And besides, if he’s that rich, we might as well try and swipe some of it. Not like he’s using it anyway.”

“I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe,” Fantst informs him cheerfully, as if he wasn’t the one who spent weeks obsessing over whether or not Wemmbu had been to trick them into a false sense of security despite him clearly being a prisoner like them.

Baablu nearly says that out loud, but Fantst is already bursting back through the underbrush. “Boosfer!” Raising his voice over the startled yelp, he opens his mouth to continue, only for Baablu to yank him to the side, barely in time as an axe slams into the tree behind where his head had just been. “Oh.”

His voice is a little high, and Baablu smacks him over the head. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he mutters, pulling Fantst behind him. Then, raising his voice, he announces, “We’re coming with you.”

Boosfer, eyes wide and hand still outstretched, stares at them for a moment, his disbelief, among other things, clear on his face. “You’re what?”