Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tubbo, I’m scared-” 

“No, I know, but it’ll be okay, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I promise, okay?” 

“On Benson?” 

“Y-yeah. I swear it on Benson. Okay, get comfortable- what’s wrong?” 

“Just in case anything happens…I love you.” 

“Love you too, bossman,” Tubbo whispers under his breath, eyes flicking to the unassuming cargo box beside him. He keeps one hand on it in the busy spaceport, knowing he’ll feel any vibrations in the metal in case anyone tries to touch it. 

“What’d ya say?” the blond teen in front of him, Tommy, pipes back. 

“Nothin’,” Tubbo responds, a little too quickly. “Just, uh…kinda thinkin’ out loud. This is a crazy good ship.” He gestures to the worn yet majestic ship in front of him and Tommy, lights from the spaceport glinting off the metallic sides. “Syndicate class?” He’s not lying at all, Syndicate classes were somewhat of a legend around his old shipyard. Everyone knew what one looked like, but nobody had ever seen one. Look at him now. 

“Hell yeah!” Tommy cheers, pumping one arm as he looks back at Tubbo. “Syndicate class all the way. Captain got one of the first ones outta the factory. Oh, I already messaged him, told ‘im we’d be picking you up as a passenger. You’re almost all clear. Long as you’re willing to do some work around, help us out with our cargo, we’ll take you where ya need to go…within reason,” he adds as an afterthought. 

“It’s no problem,” Tubbo assures him, one hand toying with the rough, purple-black stone pendant on his necklace. “I’m good with machinery and medically trained as well, so I can help with those things.” 

“Straight shot?” Tommy asks, head cocking to the blaster holstered to his leg. 

“When I need to be.” 

“What’s your cargo?” 

Tubbo’s breath freezes in his chest. “Uh, sentimental stuff. Just…couldn’t bear to leave it all behind. It’s nothing dangerous.” People can say what they will about him, but he hates even half-truths like this. One day, it’ll kick him in the ass. 

He silently prays that this, the most important thing he’s done in his life, will not be the time.

Tommy nods in understanding. “My brother’ll probably take your blaster for the first cycles we’re up just for security shit. He’s a lil… hypervigilant sometimes.” He splays his hands for emphasis. 

“Probably what’s kept you alive so long, yeah?” Tubbo jokes. 

“Ah, shut up.” Tommy strides over and presses a few buttons on the side of the hull, laying his hand flat on a scanner and smirking as the cargo bay door opens. “Welcome aboard the Esbi’ai, Tubbo. Come meet the rest of the crew. Want me to help you with your luggage?” 

Tubbo rolls his shoulder under the duffel bag and presses a few buttons on the side of the cargo box, activating the hover jets on the bottom as he cranes his neck to look inside the cargo bay. “I got it. Just tell me where to put it.” 

The bay is looming. It could almost double as a gathering space, Tubbo thinks as he walks up the ramp, guiding his crate with one hand. The floor is grated metal; if he drops something small down here he’s never getting it back. A set of stairs leads to a catwalk that wraps around the whole area with closed doors lining the suspended metal walkways and then down to a second flight. Straight ahead is a large open doorway leading into a dark hallway. The rounded industrial lights are flickering a little, bright and yellow-white and hung by chains from the ceiling. About forty or so crates, looking almost identical to the one at his side, line the walls. A ball hoop hangs from one of the catwalks with an orange ball just below it. There’s a pair of unlaced boots with the tongues hanging flat near the base of a set of stairs, and a few scribbled notes on small pieces of colorful paper stuck with magnets to the banister. 

It looks cobbled together and humble, it looks homey, it looks lively. 

“Great! You can put the crate right here with the rest of ours, just keep your bag until we get to the guest quarters. Prepare for the interrogation.” 

“Uh-”

“I’m joking, big man,” Tommy laughs. “Eh, not really. But c’mon. Time’s a’wasting.” 

Tubbo makes a mental note of where he slides the box, and recites the serial number again(29347561), wincing as he deactivates the hover jets and it thuds to the metal floor of the Esbi’ai’s cargo bay. The door grinds shut behind him with a sort of finality, replacing any and all natural(or at least natural-ish) light from the spaceport with the yellow-white lights of the ship. 

He breathes out a sigh. 

No going back now. 

He’s blocked just as he’s about to enter the hall from the cargo bay to the living quarters of the ship by a tall, broad-shouldered, pink-haired, very muscular man. Like, damn. That amount of muscle should be illegal with how scary it is. The man, who can’t be older than his early twenties, has a red leather jacket on, which only serves to make him more intimidating. 

“Uh…”

Tommy reaches up and gives the man’s shoulder a casual pat as he squeezes through the open door with a, “Hey, Techno.” 

The man doesn’t respond, leaning into the frame and giving Tubbo the suspicious glare of a lifetime. 

…aaand Tommy’s left him alone with Techno the Muscle Man. 

Great.  

“What’s your name?” Techno asks, a small piece of pink hair falling into his eyes from where it’s drawn out of his face in a braid. 

“Tubbo Un’descor,” Tubbo answers immediately, biting back the urge to add a sir at the end. 

“You ever been arrested, Tubbo Un’Descor?” 

“Uh, n-no.” 

Techno lifts an eyebrow, flicking his head to get the hair from his eye. “Why don’t you sound sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?” Tubbo shoots back. “Tommy said he messaged ahead. With how ‘hypervigilant’ he said you are, I doubt you’d even have let me on the ship if you hadn’t looked up my name and Confederation records beforehand. I know you know that I have no criminal record. You wouldn’t have let me on if I did.” 

Techno stares at him, frowning deeper for a moment, and Tubbo’s breath turns to ice in his lungs as he thinks that he just wasted the best chance he had at pulling this off but then Techno lets out a laugh and opens his mouth to expose gold-capped lower canines in something oddly reminiscent of a smile, calling into the hall behind him, “I like this one.” 

“Fuckin’ told you!” Tommy yells back. 

Tubbo goes to walk in and Techno holds out a hand. “Blaster?”

“Oh, right,” Tubbo fumbles with the holster before unhooking the sheath from the straps wrapped around his thigh and hands his trusty blaster, sheath and all, to Techno. The lack of weight makes him feel bare somehow, and he drums his fingers on his leg as Techno inspects his blaster. “Can I, uh…” 

“Yeah, go ahead,” Techno waves him in, eyes still scanning over every inch of his blaster and gun sheath. “I’ll give this back to you later. And, uh…I know Tommy already kinda said my name earlier, but I’m Technoblade.” 

“Good to know.”

As he slides past Technoblade into the dark hallway behind him, Tommy sticks his head out of a room at the far end, far too cheerful for the tense conversation that just happened. “You survived!”

“No thanks to you,” Tubbo grumbles lightheartedly under his breath, shifting his duffel bag so it rests on a different part of his aching, stinging shoulder. 

“Eh, I knew you’d be fine,” Tommy scoffs, eyes flicking to Tubbo’s bag. “Uh…do you wanna put that down? I can show you our guest quarters.”

“Please.” 

The guest quarters are small, not small enough to be cramped but small enough that Tubbo could probably lay down on the floor and have his head and feet touching the dark grey metal sides. It may not be wide but it’s long, the bunk bolted to the wall on the far end. It looks almost like a bunk bed, the top ‘bunk’ being a shelf. A metal desk and a chair whose cushion looks quite well-loved are shoved to the side near the bunk, bolted to the wall and the ground. 

“Here ya go!” Tommy gestures grandly to the room. “Just dump your stuff in here cuz I gotta introduce you to our captain. You can unpack after we lift off.”

“Good to know,” Tubbo grunts as he hefts his bag onto the desk, rolling out his shoulder and brushing his fingers on the empty air where his blaster used to be. “We ready?” 

“Yup.” Tommy smiles and grabs onto the sleeve of Tubbo’s beloved bomber jacket, tugging him out the door as he yells out, “PHIL!” 

It takes them a few minutes to actually reach the cockpit, and when they arrive, Tubbo almost has to take a step back; an almost dizzying amount of buttons, monitors and levers are spread across a set of panels that makes him think back-

The fear that he’d killed them- 

No. 

There was no death. Everyone is fine. Not was, is. There will be no death, not if Tubbo can help it. And he’s doing all he can. 

“Hi Phil!” Tommy calls, shocking Tubbo out of his mental chastise of himself. He brings his hand down from the pendant around his neck, the rough texture of the purple-black stone imprinted on the middle of his palm. He didn’t realize he’d started clutching the thing in his daze; he shakes his head and wipes his hand on his pants. “I brought Tubbo!” 

The pilot’s chair turns around, revealing a blond-haired, 30-ish man perfectly framed by the lights and buildings of the spaceport behind him in the window. He’s wearing a green jacket with colorful patches sewn all over the sleeves and a pair of black wings painted right over his heart. He stands up and walks over to Tubbo, hand held out in an easygoing offer. “Hey, mate. I’m Philza, the captain. It’s nice to meet you.” 

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Tubbo responds easily, shaking his hand. 

“Where’d you wanna go? We’re on our way to Kinoko and we’ll make a couple stops along the way, so it shouldn’t be much trouble to drop you off somewhere in that sector.” 

Kinoko. 

Kinoko is his best bet, seeing as asking to be dropped off at a planet known to be controlled by a less-than-law-abiding citizen would be odd. 

Kinoko and Nevadas are in the same star system…

“Funny, that’s actually where I’m headed,” he says without a beat. 

Captain Phil’s bright green eyes shine as he smiles, the uncanny feeling of sudden transparency shivering its way down Tubbo’s back. “Great!”

“I can pay for this with whatever you need, I don’t have many credits-” 

“Anything you can help with is fine, mate. We’ll be doing two cargo deliveries on the way so help with that’ll be fine. It’s at least a week, week and a half from here to Kinoko with the stops we have to make, so I hope that’s alright.” 

Cargo deliveries. 

He has to get the box out of the cargo bay as soon as possible. He cannot lose it. 

“Fine with me, I’m happy to help!” he parrots, hoping nobody can hear the tremble in his voice before he clears his throat. 

“That’s great! We’re just waiting for my other son to get back from the markets and then we’ll take off, so if you want to make yourself comfortable, feel free!” 

The sooner he can get the crate into his room, the better. 

He excuses himself from the conversation as fast as humanly possible without being too suspicious with something about trying to take a nap before liftoff, ‘long trip’ and whatnot(they have no idea), walking as calmly as he can to his guest quarters. He keeps the door to his quarters open just a crack until he can’t hear footsteps or voices near him and then he bolts. 

His heart is pounding in his ears as he sprints almost silently towards the cargo bay which is blessedly, thank the Void, empty. 

29347561, 29347561, 29347561- there!

Tubbo presses the buttons on the side with both hands to activate the hover jets and drags the box through the hallway to his quarters, slamming his elbow into the button that opens his door so hard he’s sure it’ll bruise and tugging the box through. 

It fits through the doorframe. 

It fits and he slams the button on the inside of his wall to close his door, locking it just to be safe. 

He doesn’t stop to breathe until it’s right up against his bunk, fitting perfectly between the head of his bed and the desk. 

He collapses cross-legged on his pillow and lays his head on the cold metal of the box lid, closing his eyes and trying to take deep breaths to ease the adrenaline. The pendant hits it with a clink, bouncing a few times before it settles against the metal side. He lays a hand on the lid as though comfort can be felt through metal. 

“I’ve got you,” Tubbo whispers. 

He ignores the slight burning of his eyes and sits up to press a button on the side that dislodges the lid, shifting it to the side once the small hissing pop and cloud of thin steam signify it’s unlocked. He sifts through a couple of folded blankets and towels and a small collection of holo-pucks, pausing slightly when he sees two haphazardly-sewn-together lumps of fabric of stuffed animals sewn together with a child’s clumsy hand. He lifts the fist-sized balls of scrap fabric out and onto his bed, then the false bottom of the crate, folding the fabric-covered metal and shoving it in his duffel bag. Finally, he presses a large red circle in the upper right corner of the screen below it. 

A set of vitals pops up. 

Tubbo scans them as fast as he can, heart pounding. 

46 bpm. Blood oxygen level at 93%. 

Normal levels for someone who’s asleep. 

VITALS NORMAL, the screen says. STASIS NORMAL. VARIABLES WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS. PATIENT STABLE. 

He sighs with relief. 

Below the screen that reads VIEW? in hovering Gallatic, Tubbo hesitantly presses a button reading CONFIRM. 

The screen flickers away to allow Tubbo to see for the first time in ages-

“Hey, Phil! Wil’s coming back!” 

He panics with a jolt and slams his hand back down on the CONFIRM button that now reads CONCEAL VIEW , making the screen flicker back into opacity. Within a minute, the crate is back together like it was never disturbed in the first place, sans the small stuffed animals and the false bottom. He picks one of the stuffed animals up as his heart tries to thrash its way through his ribcage and he tries to catch his breath. 

He lays down on his bunk, holding the handmade toy above his head. 

It’s a faded, shapeless yellow blob made from a sock stuffed with whatever soft things could be spared with the opening sewn shut. Black stripes are dyed into the fabric, carefully scribbled on with a stolen marker. Six legs dangle beneath, made of flimsy, threadbare black fabric whipstitched to the bottom. It only has one wing: a dirty white semicircle sewn onto the top. Its companion was torn off long ago, lost in a chase; the remnants of the fabric are still visible under the stitches. He’d never gotten around to replacing it. He’d had more important things to do. 

Still, it’s Benson, and Benson has been with him for too long for him to just abandon the thing in his old quarters for the next tenant to find. 

He wasn’t exactly lying to Tommy when he said that he couldn’t bear to leave some of this stuff behind. 

Tubbo sighs and brings his arms down, closing his eyes and resting Benson on his stomach as the cargo bay door grinds open. 

Next thing he knows, he’s blinking awake and someone… Tommy is knocking on his door, spouting that they’re about to take off and he should be in the cockpit. 

“You can come and meet Wil, too!” he yells, always seemingly excited about something. 

When Tubbo stumbles to the door and opens it halfway, he doesn’t have to fake the bleariness in his eyes as he looks up to meet Tommy’s excited blue ones. 

“Sorry for waking you up,” the blond says as he winces in sympathy. “But Wil’s back! And we’re taking off, so you should probably strap in.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Tubbo yawns. “Be there in a minute?” 

“You got it!” 

Benson goes back on his bunk. He avoids looking at the crate or the dark blob of the second stuffed animal on his pillow. 

He didn’t even get a glimpse. He just has to know, he has to see…

He can check later. 

Someone new is sitting in the cockpit beside Technoblade, strapping themselves into the chair as Captain Phil presses buttons and preps the ship for takeoff. 

“I got a couple of things Q will probably want when we get-”

“Wilbur,” Captain Phil interrupts. “This is Tubbo. He’s hanging on with us ‘til we get to Kinoko, gonna help us with cargo. Tubbo, this is Wilbur, my other son. You might be working with him a bit as he’s our resident chemist.”

Wilbur twists around in his seat, letting go of the strap he was holding and letting it smack Technoblade in the torso with a dull thud. He’s got a mop of curly brown hair and sparkling eyes and can’t be more than five years older than Tubbo. “Oh, hey! You’re who Tommy won’t shut up about.” 

“Shut yourself up, bitch!” Tommy shouts back, not unkindly. He adds a middle finger to punctuate his statement. 

“And stop hitting me with your buckle,” Technoblade grumps. 

“Not my fault you always sit next to me,” Wilbur says back. “Hey, Tubbo, find a seat and get strapped in. Taking off from this port is always the worst. It’s so damn crowded.” 

The ship begins to tremble as soon as Tubbo slides into a free seat in the cockpit and snatches a seatbelt. Tommy’s trying to stifle his excited laughter, Wilbur and Techno are excitedly chatting about… something, and Captain Phil is pressing buttons, calling out for everyone to be ready before he pulls a lever. 

The engine roars to life, and Tubbo wonders if he’ll ever be allowed into the engine room. He’d love to get a look at that- no. 

This is not for him. 

The pendant bounces on his chest as the Esbi’ai tilts back, whacking his sternum in a chill-fingered phantom heartbeat. 

He can’t keep a breath full of muted excitement and relief from catching in his throat as they lift off and rocket away, away, into the expanses of space. 

He’s off. 

They’re off. 

The hardest part of his mission is officially over. 

Chapter Text

Tubbo slides the door shut behind him. 

They’re solidly coasting now, stars shooting past the cockpit windows. For the first time, Tubbo feels like he can afford to appreciate them. It is only his second time in the vast vacuum of space, but the novelty is still fresh enough in his mind for him to have spent a few extra minutes marveling at the seas of stars and galaxies passing outside the reinforced glass in the cockpit windows. A part of him laments the fact that the guest quarters don’t seem to have a window. 

He couldn’t exactly focus on how beautiful the stars were when he was piloting a ship for the first time and hyper-focused on robbing technical government property. Despite the fact that the aforementioned ‘government property’ is a person. 

Speaking of them…

Within a matter of moments, Tubbo’s door is locked, the lid is off of the crate and the loose contents are on the floor. 

The vitals and messages look the same as they did last he checked, and the feeling of relief in Tubbo’s chest is indescribable. 

He clicks the view button without a second thought, and as the screen flickers away, he has to catch his breath because of the amalgamation of emotions hitting him like a sack of sand being swung at his ribs. 

He never got a chance to get a good look at them in the midst of everything, not really.

Ranboo is curled up in a ball, dressed in a pair of simple shorts and a tank top. Their shaggy hair and the cloth float around him, frozen in the gunky, clear blue liquid of the cryo-freeze chamber. 

Ranboo is alive. Ranboo is not awake. 

He can still see the goosebumps on their arms, interspersed with pale scars in every shape possible: circular, lines, even starburst. They’re thin and wan, the outlines of bones visible through pale skin. The black sticker on their neck that connects to the vitals reader he hooked up tugs against a pinkish blotch of even more scar tissue. The clear tube giving them breathable air is wound over their shoulders and plugged into the side; Tubbo remembers with a shudder  having to shove it down their throat after they’d passed out. The only reason he’d been able to do it without gagging was repeating the mantra that this was the only way they will survive. That, and a part of him, ashamedly, trying to pretend it was only an especially thin pipe he was threading at the shipyard. 

There’s so much that’s so… different about Ranboo since the last time Tubbo really had a chance to look at him, even disregarding all the scars. His hair is slowly growing out white against the familiar black it’s been for years, but only on one side. Tubbo can’t really tell, but he thinks that Ranboo is somehow even taller, the lanky bastard. The circles under his eyes are the deepest ones Tubbo thinks he’s ever seen…and that’s saying something. 

Tubbo bites down on his lip as his eyes sting. One hand hovers over where Ranboo’s head is as the other goes to Ranboo’s necklace around his neck, squeezing the purple-black pendant so hard he knows it’s going to leave marks. 

“Tubbo, I’m scared-” 

“No, I know, but it’ll be okay, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I promise, okay?” 

“On Benson?” 

“Y-yeah. I swear it on Benson. Okay, get comfortable- what’s wrong?” 

“Just in case anything happens…I love you.” 

“Love you too, bossman,” he sighs, swallowing back a sob. His whispers are still choked as he sniffles and reaches across his pillow to pick up Benson’s companion: the black threadbare sock blob that Ranboo had made, proclaiming vehemently that yes, it was a cat, Tubbo, and no, it didn’t look like a ballsack, shut up.

“Here,” he chokes out, placing the handmade stuffed animal atop the glass window just above Ranboo’s shoulder. “It’s Enderchest.” 

Benson and Enderchest are back together. 

Ranboo hadn’t been allowed to bring Enderchest with them. 

A bang on the wall and a barking laugh pierce through the walls, stabbing through Tubbo’s mind and jolting his whole body like he’s touched a live wire. Someone shushes someone else and Tubbo winces. 

Right. He’d come in under the excuse of sleeping. 

Phil had turned a suspicious eye to him initially when he’d excused himself to his quarters again, but he hasn’t looked at himself in a good few cycles. With the amount of sleep he’s been getting lately, his eyebags might even rival Ranboo’s. 

Hey, at least he doesn’t look homeless anymore! he thinks with a humorless smirk. 

Ranboo totally would’ve slapped him for that. Shit, he might even slap himself for that, it was terrible! 

…and exactly the kind of terrible humor Ranboo appreciated. 

Ranboo would’ve pointed out that they hadn’t technically been homeless in a while, before humming and saying, ‘Well… you definitely still looked like it.’ And then Tubbo would’ve shoved him, and they both would have laughed. 

Tubbo’s hands shake as he takes Enderchest off the clear top of the cryofreeze box and he pauses right before he presses the CONCEAL VIEW button. 

His eyes linger on the person he remembers, more than father or mother or anyone else who didn’t matter because they didn’t care enough to even show up, as family. 

Even though they’ve changed so much. 

A stuttering breath enters his lungs. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, turns away, and presses the button. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Tubbo wakes up with a jolt of electricity through his veins at the sound of someone banging on his door. 

For a moment he thinks he’s been discovered, this is where it ends, they’re going to throw him out the airlock and Ranboo will never get to know a life outside of that place, they’ll never see each other again- 

“Wake up, big man!” Tommy booms. “Time for breakfast!” 

“Tommy!” Wilbur scolds, voice equally as loud. “Don’t yell to wake him up! You’ll scare him!” 

“Not any more than your face will,” Tommy fires back, laughter barely concealed. 

“Wow, real mature, Tommy.” 

“I am simply the peak of maturity, Wilbur. You could never understand.”

“I am so much more mature than you-”

“Bitch.” 

Wilbur’s indignant gasp makes Tubbo shove a fist over his mouth to disguise his snort of laughter. Tommy ignores Wilbur’s sputters and bangs on Tubbo’s door again. “You awake?”

“If I wasn’t before, I sure am now,” he calls back. 

He can hear Tommy’s wince through the door. “Aw, sorry-”

“Don’t be, it was funny,” Tubbo reassures, rolling out of his bed and nearly faceplanting on Ranboo’s crate before he stumbles to open the door. Judging on Tommy’s face once he does, his hair must be spectacular. “I got free entertainment.” 

Tommy immediately points to his brother(?). “Wilbur’s fault.” 

“You little-” 

“It’s fine,” Tubbo laughs, interrupting Wilbur’s attempt to try and wring Tommy’s neck. Tommy takes the opportunity to shove Wilbur off, and Wilbur walks away with a laugh and a not-so-subtle middle finger pressed up behind his back. “Um…where are the showers?” 

When he sits down at the nearly empty table twenty minutes later, gaze lingering at the window and the stars flinging themselves past them at supersonic speeds, he can’t remember the last time he’d felt so clean. At the shipyard they had showers, sure, but everything was always covered in a thin layer of grime no matter how hard you scrubbed and the five-minute allowance of time barely got anything off. 

“So, Tubbo,” Captain Phil starts, and Tubbo’s back straightens a little as he stares directly below the man’s eyes. “Once you’ve grabbed something to eat, I can debrief you about the next couple of days. Sound good?”

“Yessir.” 

“Oh, there’s no need for that, just call me Phil,” Captain Phil dismisses as he puts a metal plate of cooked breakfast rations in front of him. Tubbo takes a hesitant bite and then digs in as the captain continues with, “It makes me feel old, and I already get enough of that-” 

“S’cuz you are old, Phil,” Technoblade mumbles, head down on the table, a steaming thermos loosely gripped in his hand. 

“-with these little shits around.” he finishes. “Anyway, we have to start stopping the day after tomorrow for cargo drop-offs, and we’ll need your help for that. Now, as a fair warning…” Cap- Phil leans further into the table and Tubbo pauses stuffing his face, glancing up with his fork halfway to his mouth before he slowly lowers it. “There may be bandits who will try to steal our cargo. However, we know how to handle them, so they should not be any danger to you.”

Tubbo blinks. 

That is…a lot to unpack. 

We know how to handle them… have they been attacked by bandits before? What are they transporting that warrants stealing? 

Y’know what? 

He has bigger things to worry about. If he gets shot at, he can shoot them right back. He’ll steal his pistol back from Technoblade. He’s a damn good shot when he has to be. 

His fingers drum on the straps around his thigh he put on from muscle memory, leg feeling empty without his blaster’s familiar weight. 

“...okay.” 

“We’ll make sure they don’t bother you if they show up, ‘cuz part of your pay to us is helping with the cargo.” 

“Okay.” Not enough. “Thanks for the, uh…heads-up.” 

“It’s only fair, mate,” Phil says as he smiles comfortingly, effectively diffusing at least some of the tension. “Our first stop is the day after tomorrow, but we’ll get there real early in the morning. If you’re asleep, we’ll wake you up. If not, one of the insomniacs-” Techno grumbles in response, “-will come get you. ‘Till then, uh…” he spreads his hands. “Feel free to wander around. If a door’s closed, knock, be sure to leave the cockpit be…oh! Wil can show you our medbay. Tommy told me you had medical training, is that right?” 

“Yeah, I’ll do that.” 

“You’ll do what?” Wilbur calls. 

Ah, speak of the devil. 

“Can you show Tubbo around our medbay once you and Tommy are done prepping the cargo?” 

“Well, then I can do it now, ‘cuz we’re done,” Wilbur says as he walks into the room. “Tommy’s in his room. You just about ready, Tubbo?”

“Yup.” His plate is empty, and his stomach is satisfied, if a little overfull. He doesn’t know how his new life’ll be on Nevadas, and his every waking moment will be spent either taking care of Ranboo to help him recover or building up their new life. He needs to take what he can get. 

“Shoo,” Phil says good-naturedly. “This is important, I’ll take care of breakfast.” 

Wilbur all but tugs him through the doorway and down a hall towards the cargo bay that he hasn’t been to yet, calling back a “Thanks, dad!” in his wake. 

Soon, they slow down, and Wilbur turns and leans against an open doorway leading to a silvery-white room with a few cots and screens, blocking his way. “So. Why are you here?” 

“What do you mean?” Tubbo all but groans, still somewhat mentally exhausted from Technoblade’s interrogation yesterday. 

“You’re starting a new life, tryna get somewhere exciting n’ whatnot. Why not fly directly from Pogtopia-” 

“How’d you know-” 

Wilbur smiles knowingly and points to his growing grin that’s the direct opposite of Tubbo’s dropped face. “Got that accent. But why not fly from there directly to your new destination? Why come to SMP first? Seems a little out-of-the-way to get to Kinoko.”

Tubbo blinks, still trying to wrap his head around how Wilbur knows the accent from a backwater planet like Pogtopia so well that he can pinpoint Tubbo from being there so easily. “Well…hiring myself out for passage is less expensive than buying a full supply of plasma fuel for a tiny ship that probably won’t even make it where I wanna go, y’know?” 

Wilbur nods. “Fair. Welp-” he bows extravagantly, ushering Tubbo into the room that smells almost overwhelmingly of antiseptic and clean. “This is the medbay. I’m pretty much the only medic for the ship since Phil’s too busy captaining and Techno and Tommy are usually the ones getting hurt, so any help you can bring’ll be great.” He motions around, opening up a few drawers in a small counter with a sink. “Bandages are here, gloves are there, potions are over here and we need to make more, plasma’s here and so’s the IV stuff, heart monitor’s there between the cots, uh…yeah. Any questions?” 

“Not really. Can I look around?” 

“Oh yeah, feel free. One of the few things Techno does do in here is keep a pretty strict inventory, so…yeah. Just don’t break shit, I guess.”

“Thanks, this’ll be good,” Tubbo says, already experimenting with the heart monitor’s sticker sensor on his wrist to see how the machine works, running a finger on the side of the monitor to look for a button. 

In a few seconds, his heartbeat is pulsing on the screen with his blood pressure up in the corner, 110/70. Wilbur whistles impressively and Tubbo jumps a little. 

“I thought you’d left,” he breathes. 

“What can I say? Your little experiment intrigued me,” Wilbur explains. “Plus, nobody here’s been able to set it up that fast. Took me ten minutes my first time.” 

“Well, yeah, if you’re not used to it, but a lot of this tech is pretty similar,” Tubbo blurts before he can think. He chews on the inside of his lip. 

“Oh yeah? Where’d you learn this stuff before?” Wilbur prods, eyebrows quirked like he’s more than a little excited to glean any information he can about Tubbo’s life. He can feel his heartbeat spike and knows Wilbur can see it. 

“I worked on a shipyard in Pogtopia. If a ship has a medbay with one of these attached you gotta make sure it works, yeah? ‘Else you won’t get paid.” 

“This one’s all good!” Tubbo called out, replacing the pad on the sticker sensor and shoving it back into its compartment. 

“Hey, what if we sneak one of these onto Elisia and ask her about that night she snuck out to spend with Kora last week?” his coworker asked jokingly, and Tubbo shoved them good-naturedly, laughing as he did so. 

(Tubbo’s hand shook as he tried to get the sticker sensor laid flat onto Ranboo’s neck, breathing a sigh of relief when a heartbeat appeared on the screen, chest seizing a little with just how slow it was.) 

“Yeah, true,” Wilbut concedes. “Money can get hard these days, what with all the restrictions the Confederation’s putting on stuff. I swear, sometimes it’s like they don’t even care about its citizens,” he finishes, mumbling under his breath. 

Tubbo snorts humorlessly. 

“Something funny?” The bite in Wilbur’s voice is palpable. 

“Nah, I get exactly what you mean.” More than you know, Wilbur, he thinks bitterly. More than you know. He rips the sticker sensor off his wrist and sticks it back on the pad, ignoring the stinging of his skin from the adhesive as he tears off the sanitary plastic and turns back to Wilbur. “Anything else I need to see?”

Chapter Text

The rest of the day is mostly uneventful. After Wilbur walks him out of the medbay, Tommy drags him to a common space close to the cockpit and is astonished when Tubbo tells him that no, he’s never played chess before. He is immediately sat down on the ground and taught the rules of chess, beating Tommy first try- mostly thanks to Technoblade miming how to move some of his pieces behind Tommy’s back when he looks away for a split second. 

“What the fuck- how are you so good at this?” Tommy yells, moving his king out of check for the fourth time this round. 

Tubbo can feel Technoblade’s smug grin across the room, hidden behind a datapad. 

“Hey Tommy, do you know where Dad put the cups? I think he reorganized the kitchen again,” Wilbur asks, poking his head in. In a flash, as soon as Tommy turns his head, Techno is waving at Tubbo, pointing to his rook once he gets his attention. Tubbo smiles conspiratorially and nods. 

“They’re probably in the cupboard below the rations-”

“Hey, Tommy?” 

“Yeah, Tubbo?”

“Checkmate.”

“WHAT THE FUCK-” 

Tommy demands another rematch. 

They play until Wilbur’s snores shock them from yet another game where Tubbo is about to check the king(Technoblade’s been a great help while he was getting off his feet, but now he has a reputation to uphold and, as Technoblade had put it, ‘carry the burden on his shoulders alone’). 

(He doesn’t know how he feels about that statement.) 

(He decides to ignore it and try not to take it out of context.)

“What time is it?” 

“You missed lunch while you were busy getting beat, Tommy,” Technoblade deadpans, not even looking up from his datapad. “Phil said he’d bring food in after you lost your second knight this past match.” 

“How the shit do you remember that-”

“Check.” And this time, he did it almost all by himself. 

“You bitch.” 

Tubbo’s cackling, he can’t help it. Tommy scoots his king to one side and huffs. 

“There, I’d like to see you get me with the bishop now.” 

“Checkmate.” 

“How the fuck did you do this?”

“My queen was right there! How did you not see it?”

“Beginner’s luck,” Tommy huffs, pouting. “I’m gonna see where Phil is with the food.” 

After he leaves, Technoblade calls to him. “Hey.” Tubbo turns towards him, a little apprehensive, but he smiles, gold-capped canines glowing in the fluorescent lights. “Good job, kid. You got an eye for strategy.” 

Somehow, despite looking the exact same as he did yesterday, Technoblade is a little less intimidating. 

“Thanks,” Tubbo says, trying to pretend he can’t feel his face heating up a little. 

“‘ELLO, BITCHES,” Tommy calls, balancing a tray of what looks like sandwiches as he pretends to kick the door in. Wilbur snorts himself awake, kicking out and almost falling off the couch, much to Tommy’s amusement. Technoblade just says ‘L’ and moves on. “I bring food!”

After his initial flinching shock, Tubbo joins in laughing. 

It isn’t until late in the evening, after trying and failing to beat Technoblade at chess a couple times(resulting in matches that are the opposite of drawn out and Tommy laughing at him a lot) that he gets any time to check on Ranboo. 

45 bpm. Blood oxygen levels at 93% still. That’s good. It’s looking good.

VITALS NORMAL, the screen says. STASIS NEAR NORMAL, WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. VARIABLES WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS. PATIENT STABLE. 

Tubbo’s stomach is suddenly back on SMP, thousands of star-miles behind and the distance growing every minute. 

… near… normal? Acceptable parameters? 

His hands are shaking as he lowers himself to the ground of his quarters and grips at his hair, chest tight.

The stasis is deteriorating. 

So soon? It hasn’t even been two days since they’ve been in there and the stasis has begun to deteriorate? That can’t be possible. He’d expected it to last at least three days longer before having any kind of deterioration, plants were still fine at this stage (that doesn’t mean it’ll work for people) so it has to be okay, it has to. 

It can’t, it can’t, this can’t have all been for nothing.  

This is supposed to be the best available technology for cryo-freeze pods, and Tubbo modified it himself for it to be able transport Ranboo instead of some random-ass creature for a zoo, he wouldn’t have messed it up that badly. Not with this much on the line. Especially since he couldn’t see another way to get Ranboo out undetected. 

His scalp stings, and when he pulls his trembling, calloused hands away from his head, a few split-ended short brown hairs litter them. 

He sighs, brushing his hands on his pants and resisting the deep-set urge to do nothing but stare at Ranboo and hope for the best until they eventually get to Nevadas. 

Just a few more days. Then he’ll take care of Ranboo as long as he needs to be taken care of. It’s the least he can do for how much he endured. For how long Tubbo failed to save him. 

Just a few more days, and he can hug Ranboo enough to make up for the years they were gone. 

Nobody will touch them. He’ll get them from Kinoko to Nevadas, build them a little shack there, get a good job to pay for their safety and supplies, and they’ll be away from the Confederation forever. Out of their clutches. 

He grabs the black blob of Enderchest from his bed and grips it for a moment, studying the wilted ears and sewn-on whiskers and stringy, fraying tail of the smallest comfort Ranboo was forced to leave behind. 

The pendant seems heavy around his neck, like the small rock is made of dense steel instead of a light stone.

He can’t tell if he’s glad they weren’t allowed to take Enderchest with them, because he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to get it out as easily as the necklace. He was able to keep Enderchest safe for them, and now they’ll be alright. They’ll be fine. 

Ranboo will not die. He will make sure of that. He’s already defying the odds by doing all of this, he can defy them a bit more. 

It’ll be okay, it’s such a minor amount, maybe…maybe it’ll stay that way! Maybe it’s just getting used to the environment on the ship, then the stasis will restabilize. Maybe there was a slight change in the cabin pressure and it’s accounting for that. There’s hundreds of perfectly harmless ‘maybe’s that could be the cause. 

They will be alright. Everything will be alright. 

Maybe, if he thinks it enough, he can will it into existence. 

He’s probably just overreacting anyway, fluctuations are normal. It’s just…scary. It’s scary when it’s Ranboo. 

Tubbo sighs again and closes the vitals window, sliding the lid back on Ranboo’s crate and falling into his bed with Enderchest still in his hand and his day clothes still on, bomber jacket still smelling faintly and comfortingly of the shipyard. Oil, grease, metal, heat, dust. The closest to a home he’d found since Ranboo left.  

He closes his eyes.   

Chapter Text

His bunk in the shipyard is cozy enough, and there’s nobody as young as him there, so he gets a small room to himself. There’s enough space for all of Ranboo’s stuff he had to bring from the shop, and enough signal for him to get their messages, so he’s satisfied. 

He collapses on his pillow with a small poof. The nice pillows are a definite plus. It’s pretty much the only clean thing in this cabin, but he’ll take what he can get. The paycheck can take care of the rest later.

It’s odd, trying to fall asleep without the familiarly chilled and lanky weight of Ranboo beside him- but suddenly there he is, sitting cross-legged on the floor like nothing ever happened. 

Tubbo sits up with a jolt. “Ranboo?” 

“Hey, Tubbo.” 

“Holy shit-” Tubbo launches himself at Ranboo, tackling them with a hug they apparently didn’t expect as the two of them are now a tangle of limbs on a thinly carpeted floor. “What are you doing here?” he asks, laughing and grinning so wide his face might split apart. “I thought you were supposed to be at-”

“Wake up.”

Tubbo blinks. “Huh? W-wake up? What are you saying, I’m awake, I’m right here-” 

“No, no no- I need to wake up, this is just a nightmare, I- Tubbo, help me! Help!” 

Before his eyes, Ranboo morphs, shrinking into himself, cheekbones hollowing, blood dripping from his nose and ears as cuts slice themselves into his arms and he curls up into a ball with his hands in his hair. Tubbo clambers back, aghast and horrified. 

“Help me!” They wail, sobbing and clawing at their head. “Help me, Tubbo, please! Where did you go? Why aren’t you helping me?” 

Tubbo reaches forward to cradle Ranboo, to comfort him somehow, to try and patch up his wounds and wipe away the blood, but his arms go right through his body. “I am, I- oh Void- I’m trying-”

“Are you?” 

“Huh?” 

“Are you awake? Phil’s made breakfast and we saved a bowl for you!” 

Tubbo thrashes his way out of bed, head narrowly missing Ranboo’s crate, and collapses on the floor, legs tangled in the blankets. The pendant is clutched in one hand so hard it’ll leave marks, his other hand must’ve had Enderchest as the blob of a stuffed animal has rolled across the floor. 

He groans, curling up on the floor. That hurt. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get bruised. 

“Uh…you good, Tubbo?” Tommy’s voice asks. 

Tubbo raises a hand to the clasp on the back of his neck and breathes a sigh of relief that it’s not damaged. “Yeah, just…fell.” 

“Alright, well, come out when you’re ready! I wanna show you the best fuckin’ part of the ship.” 

And no matter what, Tubbo will not, under any circumstances, pass up a deeper tour of a Syndicate-class ship, so he tries to shake off his nightmare and get ready, but his hands still tremble slightly when he opens the door. 

“C’mon!” Tommy’s practically bouncing on his fucking toes, ready for liftoff. “You can eat on the way there.” 

They make a quick pit stop in the kitchen with an awkward wave on Tubbo’s part and a frantic snatch of a bowl on Tommy’s before they run down the halls, feet clanging on the grated floor as they get deeper and deeper into the ship. Finally, Tommy brushes aside a curtain and grins at Tubbo, breakfast bowl forgotten in his hand. “Welcome to the engine room!” 

Tubbo’s eyes widen as he wanders in, and he gasps in not-so-muted delight. 

The engine room is large, with arching ceilings and metal walls painted a dark brick red surrounded with windows on both walls that show the stars racing freely past them. One corner has blankets and a hammock in it with a lantern beneath, but once Tubbo’s eyes find the engine, there’s no going back. 

The engine is huge. It’s a round cylindrical mishmash of rapidly rotating parts that generates enough power for the whole ship to function, surrounded by a railing and a platform for the engineer to stand on as they work, and it looks amazing. 

A glowing core of green liquid, the plasma core, is whirling around the outside of the cylinder, leaving a luminous trail of light behind it. Coppery wires are poking out every which way, looping out of the machine and diving back in again. The metal cover’s drawn all the way back. There’s hand-labeled buttons and switches on a panel beside the engine, the oxidizer pumps are the only silvery shapes on the thing against the copper and they whirl around so fast Tubbo can’t even see what shape they are, it’s absolutely covered in enough grease to drown in, it’s haphazard and clumsy-looking, it runs like a dream come true, and it’s the only thing keeping all of them alive and in the sky. 

“It’s beautiful,” Tubbo breathes, white-knuckled hands gripping the railing. 

“Hell yeah, it is,” Tommy agrees. “Best place on the whole damn ship.”

“Hoooly shit, is that a radion accelerator core?”

“That it is, my friend,” Tommy says smugly. “With the-”

“A-level radiation blocker and everything, yeah, it has that weird green film on it,” Tubbo says absentmindedly, peering into the gaps between the whirling of the engine to see the glowing yellow core. 

“Wil told me you worked in a shipyard,” Tommy says, and something in Tubbo’s chest hisses and hardens just a little. “Did you ever work on a Syndicate-class before?” 

“Nah, but everyone talked about them, they were practically a legend,” Tubbo comments. It’s not his fault he knows, he probably would have told him anyway, he tries to reassure himself. 

“Is that why you picked us?” Tommy asks, and Tubbo stiffens. “The ship?”

His jaw dropped as he spotted the characteristics of the back engine port that had been seared into his head by the diagrams and excited ramblings of the older workers at the shipyard. 

Holy fucking shit, that could only be one thing. 

A Syndicate-class starship. 

He let out a small, amazed chuckle, one hand firmly on Ranboo’s crate beside him so he could feel if anyone tried to touch it. 

Tubbo made an excited beeline towards the back end of the ship, soon noticing a blond-haired teen sitting in a chair just off the ramp. They were half tinkering with something metal in their hands, half hawking an offer of passage to people who could pay for it. 

“I’m not, like, offended or anything, big man,” Tommy tries to console. “I didn’t mean it like that, I was just curious.”

Tubbo hesitates, nods minutely, and stares back into the whirling wonderfulness of the engine, staring at the whirling bits of silver on the copper mass. “When did you replace the oxidizer pumps? They look new.”

“Last cycle, I got sick and couldn’t maintain ‘em when I was meant to, and they were fuckin’ old anyway, so after a couple days when I was better I came to check on ‘em and they just-” Tommy throws his hands in the air. “Blew right off. See those dents in the wall?” He turns and points to an area in the brick red walls, and Tubbo turns to see two deep oxidizer-pump-shaped dents in the metal, wincing in sympathy before he catches a glimpse of Tommy’s face; he’s smiling faintly like he’s trying not to laugh. “One caught me in the face,” he comments absentmindedly, brushing a hand over a faint horizontal scar on his cheekbone that Tubbo hadn’t noticed before he continues. “We were sitting fuckin’ ducks, Wil had to take a shuttle and fly to the nearest planet to buy the first compatible oxidizer pumps he could find, I installed ‘em as fast as I could, then once we could land I fixed ‘em up properly. It’s been runnin’ like a dream ever since.”

“Oh, we had a customer once who brought in his ship saying something was super wrong with it and it wouldn’t work, as soon as we got on the ship, the oxidizer pump did the same thing, just blew off, but one of the other workers tried to catch the damn thing on instinct-” 

“Holy shit, really? Was he okay?” 

“His hands were fine, but it ripped his gloves clean off. Pinned ‘em to the wall and everything. It was hilarious. It turned into a big joke around the shipyard, everyone got him work gloves for his birthday that year.”

Tommy smiles conspiratorially. “Oh, I am definitely getting some ideas for Techno’s next birthday.” 

“What do you mean, what happened?” 

“Well…it involved a great many potatoes.” 

“Potatoes?” 

“Oh, Tubbo. Tubs, my friend, let me tell you the story of the time Techno literally went to war over a few fuckin’ potatoes.” 

They stay in there the rest of the morning, leaving for lunch and then going back, Tommy and Tubbo exchanging stories of funny things that happened while they were working on ships. They relax in the corner Tommy’s made for himself, Tubbo gaining a few bruises on both his body and his pride from catapulting him and Tommy off the hammock and onto the floor as soon as he sits on the thing. It’s hilarious, and they spend the next ten minutes laughing before swearing to take the occurrence to their graves. 

Tubbo doesn’t want to ignore the warm feeling in his chest every time Tommy calls him his friend. 

And when Tommy says, almost offhandedly, “I know you’ve only been here for a few days, but you fit right in”, well. He tries to pretend his eyes aren’t watering as he stares into the magnificence of the engine, the silver rotating around and around as the radion core glows a neon, almost cheerful yellow-green. 

His nightmare of Ranboo begging for his help lies nearly forgotten in the back of his mind. 

Chapter Text

Footsteps outside the door wake him before the knocking does. 

“Hey, Tubbo?” Wilbur. “We’ve landed. We gotta unload the cargo.” 

“‘Kay,” Tubbo croaks, rolling over and wincing at the feeling of the stone pendant digging into his sternum. “Be there…” He yawns, faceplanting back into his pillow. “...in a minute?” 

“Take your time, man, I still gotta wake up Tommy. You can head to the kitchen so we can touch base.”

Tubbo snorts at the connotations. Tommy does strike him as the type of person to be hard to wake up in the morning. “Got it.” 

Within five minutes he’s ready, resting a passing but solid hand on Ranboo’s cold crate when he walks by as though they can feel it through the metal and cryo-liquid. It’s oddly reassuring, but it doesn’t shake the feeling in the base of his gut that something’s just not right. 

He takes a minute to check on Ranboo’s vitals, and they’re the same as yesterday. He resists the urge to look at how they’re doing, because he knows he won’t want to leave and he has a job to do. They likely won’t look any different anyway. So he slides the lid of Ranboo’s crate back on, resting his hand on the cold metal lid and taking a deep breath before he leaves his quarters, shutting the door behind him. 

The Esbi’ai isn’t humming like it does when it’s in space, so they must’ve landed while he was sleeping. When he stares out a window on the way to the kitchen, he sees a bright morning with a high sun on a desert planet. He knows rotation time is different on more outer planets, but according to the Esbi’ai’s clock(and whatever planet they have it set to match), it’s near five in the morning. There’s no reason to get up to do a trade that early. That’s just whack. 

So whack, in fact, that once he gets to the kitchen he walks straight into Phil, who was attaching a holster to his hip before Tubbo body-slammed him. Oops. 

“Morning, mate!” Phil chirps as he clicks the holster to his belt, entirely too chipper for this time of morning. “I have some tea, if you’d like it. Might help you wake up.” 

“Uh, sure. Thanks.” 

Phil turns around to the table as Tubbo rubs at his eyes, trying to hide how he’s yawning. His eyes feel like weights, he really needs to actually wake up so he doesn’t do a shitty job- 

Phil turns back around, a steaming mug in one hand, and Tubbo’s blaster and roughed-up holster in the other. 

Tubbo’s eyes freeze on his blaster, then flick up to Phil, disbelieving. 

“What are you doing?”

“Just to be safe,” the man says. “Better have it and not need it, y’know?” 

“You…trust me with this?” 

“I trust Techno’s judgment of you,” Phil corrects. “Besides, you seem like an honest kid. And it’s better safe than sorry on a deal like this.” 

Phil might as well have just plunged a dagger into Tubbo’s chest. 

Tubbo swallows, pretending he can’t feel the lies he’s told the crew surrounded by half-truths weighing down his lungs like rocks. 

He takes his blaster, attaching it in his holster to the straps around his leg in no time flat. It’s almost second nature to put them on by now, he’s glad to have it back where it belongs. He never stopped putting on his holster in the morning because even if he only used the damn thing for power tools that day, as Phil said, it’s better safe than sorry. The familiar weight of his blaster is somewhat comforting in a backwards way.

Phil’s warnings about the bandits echo around the growing fog of anxiety brewing since he checked in on Ranboo last night. The tea–a soft, sweet flavor he hasn’t had before–may wake him up, but does nothing to calm the worsening maelstrom in his chest and stomach. 

It’s just a cargo drop-off. That Phil’s giving his blaster back for. 

No pressure. 

After a few silently awkward minutes, Wilbur drags a yawning and stumbling Tommy in by the arm, and Techno meanders into the kitchen like it isn’t ass-crack-of-the-morning o’clock. Tommy looks like Wilbur not only dragged him into the kitchen, but out of his bed, too; his blond curls are all stuck up on one side and he’s still got marks from the folds of a blanket imprinted on his cheek. Techno, meanwhile, looks just as put-together as he does every morning, the only difference being the shiny silver blaster strapped to his leg in an echo of Tubbo’s under the table. 

Wilbur’s just complaining under his breath as he dumps Tommy into a chair and doesn’t see the sleepy middle finger a slumped-overTommy gives him after he turns around to get coffee. 

Once they’re all mostly awake(mostly meaning Tommy), it’s time to debrief. The plan is pretty simple and straightforward: their clients will meet them just outside the mouth of the cargo bay and they’ll bring the crates out. After that, it’s just a matter of exchanging credits and then they all can be on their way. 

“We all ready?” Phil says cheerfully. Tubbo nods sharply, Wilbur gives a thumbs-up, Techno  stands up and readjusts his blaster, and Tommy just yawns. 

“Ugh- Tommy come on-” 

“Wilbur, be nice.” 

“Yeah,” Tommy slurs, pushing himself upwards. “Lis’en to Phil, dickhead.” 

Tubbo smiles and shakes his head at their antics as he follows up the small crew on the way out to the cargo bay. 

Techno punches a button and the cargo bay door slowly screeches open, exposing a gaggle of people on the horizon. 

They have just enough time to get the designated crates down and on the ground outside the ramp before the group of people, all of them wearing bandannas and masks that cover their noses and mouths, ride in. Phil immediately goes and greets them, shaking hands warmly with the man seeming to be the leader. 

Technoblade is tensed, arms crossed, looming behind Phil like a Pogtopian storm cloud. Tubbo can’t know for sure, but he might be standing purposefully a foot or so behind Phil on the ramp so he can look taller than he actually is to the crowd below. Wilbur’s standing a few feet behind Techno, directly behind Phil and looking as though he might be trying to be intimidating too…except for the fact that Tommy’s yawning again and leaning on his left shoulder as he pokes him, trying to get him to at least look more awake. 

And Tubbo is lurking in the background close to the outside wall of the cargo bay, leaning on the corner, not knowing where to go or what to do. His fingers twitch on his hip just above his blaster. 

Technoblade rolls his shoulders out and glances around the crowd of people, sizing them all up. 

There’s at least fifteen people in front of Phil, some dragging hover sleds for the crates, some standing in similar positions to Technoblade; all of them have guns strapped to their sides. One glances up towards the bluffs surrounding them before having their foot stomped on by a comrade. 

Tubbo frowns. 

He leans forward to glance across the small valley up to the bluffs himself and a rock drops into his stomach. 

There’s a small glint of silver poking from one of the scrawny bushes up on the bluff, and it looks to be aiming straight towards Phil and Technoblade. 

He straightens to see if he’s seeing something, maybe it’s a rock, a piece of scrap metal- but no, there’s a head and a black brimmed hat behind the glint of silver. 

Something drops into his stomach and the tension in the air wraps iron arms around his lungs and squeezes hard. 

Shit. 

It’s a gun. 

Tubbo’s eyes fly to Technoblade, Technoblade has to have seen it, he’s gonna warn Phil and get them out of there, right- 

Technoblade is glaring down at the person who just stomped on the other’s foot, head tilted to the side like he wants to look up but doesn’t want to take his eyes off them for fear of what they'll do when he’s not looking. Plus. he’s too far down on the ramp; Tubbo can barely see the gun from where he’s standing and he’s practically inside the cargo bay.

Tubbo’s eyes widen with the realization before he tries to school his expression. They’re in trouble is an understatement. 

Technoblade can’t see the gun. 

Tubbo slowly, trying to make it seem natural, walks his way to Wilbur and leans on his other arm, mirroring Tommy much to Wilbur’s confusion. Hopefully, to someone in the crowd of bandits ahead of them, it looks like just another tired crew member trying to take a nap on a friend. 

“Tubbo, what the hell are you-” 

“Bluffs,” he whispers, resting his hand on his hip right above his blaster in what he hopes is a casual way. “Up to the left. Gun.” 

Wilbur tenses, eyes creeping to the bluffs. Tommy’s eyes fly open and his chest freezes. Tubbo sees the man talking to Phil nod in conversation and close a fist on his hip as Phil looks away for a moment to gesture to the cargo. 

Tubbo could cut the tension in the air with a knife; it feels like a band stretched to its limit and nobody knows when it’s going to snap and hit someone in the face. 

There’s a small click. 

Technoblade’s head turns, but before he can do anything, Wilbur yells “PHIL, GET DOWN!”, lunges forward and leaves Tubbo and Tommy to stumble as he tackles Phil to the ground. A bullet, not a blaster shot, a bullet flies down from the bluff and hits the cargo bay door with a high-pitched metallic thunk. The shot goes wide and another one is fired before Tubbo and Technoblade yank out their blasters and fire up the bluff, a small spray of red and the bush catching fire signaling someone hit their target. 

There’s yelling and people screaming in pain and lasers flying, Tommy’s yelling for Wilbur and Phil before he runs into the cargo bay to get a blaster of his own, Phil’s flipped over and rolling Wilbur over(who’s barely moving), Technoblade is launching himself at the leader and Tubbo is aiming for anybody he can hit to incapacitate them, hands trembling as he squeezes the trigger over and over and over. 

He hates how familiar the trigger feels under his finger.  

Phil’s hands and clothes are covered in blood as he stands and without even a sideways glance, shoots someone in the neck. The leader is struggling fruitlessly against Technoblade’s chokehold, his bloodied friends groaning or unmoving on the ground. Phil roughly shoves his blaster up under the leader’s chin. 

Wilbur groans on the ground and Tommy skids over, gesturing for Tubbo to come help. He switches on the safety of his blaster, shoves it into the holster and flips Wilbur over, trying to figure out where all the blood’s coming from. 

“You’ve just made a lot of big mistakes, mate,” Phil says coldly down on the ground. “But do you wanna know what your biggest one was?” 

The man snarls, struggling more. 

Tommy’s got a hand over his mouth, tears rolling down his face as Tubbo pats around Wilbur’s side, fingers slipping into a rip in the reddened fabric of his shirt that wasn’t there before. 

“Help me bring him in,” Tubbo hisses to Tommy, who swallows with what looks like all the willpower he has and helps him hoist Wilbur up. 

Phil’s voice is the most heartless and least caring Tubbo’s ever heard it as he growls out one word. 

“Missing.” 

A blaster shot rings out and something collapses behind them. 

Tubbo fights the urge to glance back as he and Tommy race a limp and groaning Wilbur inside. 

Chapter Text

“Help me get him up.” 

Wilbur cries out as Tubbo and Tommy heave him onto one of the starkly white cots. As soon as Wilbur’s laid out flat, Tubbo runs to the cupboards and yanks out gloves, antiseptic, bandages, and a suture kit. He haphazardly dumps them on a tray and looks around for a towel.

“Get his shirt up, I need to see where he got shot,” he commands absently as he snatches up the first one he sees on the counter.  

A bullet. A bullet. 

Those are so outdated, they’re just about banned in Confederation-controlled areas. Blaster shots automatically cauterize the wound because of how hot the laser is so they’re much easier to treat, but bullet wounds can make a body bleed and bleed ‘til there’s no blood left. 

These guys must’ve really wanted Phil dead. 

“Holy shit, there’s so much blood,” Tommy breathes, voice choked. “Is he gonna be okay?” 

Tubbo’s never treated one of these before, but it can’t be much different from a regular cut, right? It’s just a bad one. A really, really bad one. 

Just stop the blood. Step one, stop the blood. 

Tubbo turns around, wiping his hands of Wilbur’s blood before peeling off his jacket and chucking it in a corner as he snaps on a pair of gloves. He doesn’t want that to get covered in blood. “Lemme see the wound.” 

“You didn’t answer my fucking question,” Tommy spits, sniffling as he moves out of Tubbo’s way.

There’s a groove about a quarter inch deep and as wide as his thumb cut into the flesh of Wilbur’s right side just below his ribcage. There’s no metallic traces of the bullet, just blood welling and pouring over Tubbo’s gloves.  

“Get me a bottle of water, the antiseptic, and a towel or something I can use for the blood,” he orders. “Good news, it’s not in there still. It’ll be a lot shorter than if I had to yank it out. Also good news, it didn’t hit an artery.” 

Good thing it didn’t, or else the whole medbay would be covered in blood. 

Wilbur’s far from full consciousness on the cot, which he’ll take over him writhing and fighting him. Plenty of people try to move around, and he’s even seen some people try to get up and have had to wrestle them down so other people can treat their wounds. That was usually his job in the shipyard’s cobbled-together medbay: holding the rowdier patients down so the older medical people could do what they needed to do. 

He’s cleaning out the wound with the damp towel and Tommy’s clutching Wilbur’s opposite hand when Phil bursts into the medical bay with Technoblade close behind. Wilbur jumps a little as he’s brought to greater awareness, crying out in pain and trying to curl up in a ball away from Tubbo, away from the pain. Phil immediately moves to his son’s side, trying to get him to calm down and untense so Tubbo can keep doing his job. 

Tubbo barely hears the sweet nothings Phil whispers to his son as he cradles Wilbur’s face, getting him to slowly loosen so Tubbo can dig in his side, now having doused the towel in antiseptic to clean it more so the wound doesn’t get infected.  

He barely hears them because Wilbur’s started yelling in pain through gritted teeth, sweat and tears pouring down his face. 

“Do you have anything for numbing?” Tubbo calls to Technoblade. 

A minute later, there’s the sound of a popping cap and then a syringe of thick, clear red liquid is shoved into his waiting hand.

Tubbo stares blankly at the syringe balancing in his hand, uncovered needle glinting in the medbay lights. “How do I-”

Techno just points to an area directly above the wound. 

Tubbo hesitates for a moment, then inserts the syringe and presses down on the plunger. The already coagulating blood clots almost immediately as the clear red liquid seems to stretch its fingers through Wilbur’s skin, then vanish. He watches in muted awe as the depth of the wound seems to shrink and Wilbur quiets down. There’s no more blood, no more nothing. 

He prods at the wound, marveling when Wilbur doesn’t even react. 

It’s a healing potion. He’d heard rumors of people actually killing for those in Pogtopia. 

He sets down the syringe as fast as he can without stabbing anyone, not wanting to touch it any longer than he has to. 

He digs through his memory for the lessons the designated medics in the shipyard, Kora and Elisia, drilled into his brain about how to stitch up lacerations like this. 

He got out the suture kit already, and his hands are steady as he pulls the thread through the needle. 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Steady hands. 

He makes short work of the wound and ties the plasticky thread tight, taping a medical patch over it for good measure. He reaches for the roll of bandages just in case- Wilbur seems like the type to try and move around after an injury, so maybe feeling the bandages around him will help with that. Plus, if he starts bleeding again, it’ll help keep everything together even better. 

Phil hefts Wilbur upwards so Tubbo can wind the bandages around his abdomen, and Wilbur’s eyes are half-lidded. He almost looks asleep. 

Tubbo takes a step back as Phil lays Wilbur’s limp body back down on the cot. 

Afterwards, he just…stands there, watching Phil and Tommy fuss over Wilbur, who looks bone-tired. 

Tubbo’s mind is no longer in focus mode; thoughts that bounced off his brain before sink in like the blood staining his clothing. His shirt is definitely ruined. 

A bullet. 

Someone tried to kill Phil(presumably) with a bullet. 

Those kinds of firearms are ancient technology, seemingly so obsolete they’re just about illegal in any Confederation-controlled area. 

So this place either isn’t Confederation-controlled, those people who ambushed them had a really good hold in the black market, or both. Probably both, since they were able to get their hands on that kind of firearm. 

They really wanted him dead. That, or he had something in those cargo crates that they really didn’t wanna pay for. 

Why? 

Why would they have a sniper aimed and at the ready at Phil? 

A sniper that Tubbo shot at. 

Shit, did he kill someone? 

There’s cooling blood on his hands, bright red against the cool green-blue of the gloves, drops sloughing off and falling on the floor with soft patters as he stands, frozen. 

Red.

Just like the spray of red from the bluff when the sniper got shot. 

Just like the spatters on the ground from a beating in a back alley. 

Torturing us. Help- 

“-ubbo? Tubbo, are you alright? Were you hit anywhere?” 

He blinks. 

His hands are still held away from his body, a small puddle of blood on the floor below his hands. Phil has his hands braced on Tubbo’s upper arms, eyes bloodshot and blond hair messy, shirt stained with red, red, red. 

Tubbo opens his mouth but no words come out. He’s just stood there, gaping like a fish on dry land with blood all over himself and his hands. 

“Are you hurt?” Phil asks again, voice softer. Tubbo shakes his head. “You’re sure?” He nods, swallowing. 

“I’m okay,” he whispers, sounding like he’s just been strangled or is slowly coming off of a bad illness. “Just…” 

“I know it’s a lot,” Phil soothes. “Why don’t you get cleaned up? We can regroup in an hour or so for takeoff.” 

Tubbo glances up to Wilbur, whose shirt has been balled up and thrown in a garbage can, torso covered in a blanket. He’s asleep, face still pained but mostly peaceful. 

“He’ll be alright.” Phil whispers, clearing his throat. “You really took charge there. Tommy told me you saw the gun.” 

He nods, still feeling the cold weight of the blood on his gloves. 

Then he violently seizes the end of one and rips it off his hand, then the other, throwing them into the garbage with Wilbur’s shirt. 

There’s more than enough blood on his hands already with Ranboo. He doesn’t need Wilbur’s there too. 

Chapter Text

“I think I killed someone today.” 

Tubbo’s sitting on his bunk’s pillow, elbows resting on the closed lid of Ranboo’s box, head in his hands. 

“I might have, but I- I don’t know.” 

His door is locked, his hands still pink and throbbing from scrubbing them raw under near-boiling water. 

“I can’t decide if knowing if it was me or Technoblade would make it better or not. Or if knowing at all would be better.”

He can still feel the ghostly stickiness of Wilbur’s blood on his hands and the smell of his familiar bomber no longer brings the same comfort, as it’s tainted with natural iron now. 

He changed his shirt. 

He’d almost gagged at the feeling of drying blood on his fingers when he did. The thing now sits in the garbage.

“I dunno why I’m so caught up on it right here, I mean…we got raided at the shipyard a couple times, and sure, I’ve shot people. They were being dicks, they fuckin’ deserved one less kneecap,” he laughs humorlessly, talking softly as though Ranboo can hear him. “But I didn’t kill any of them, I know I didn’t. One of us got the guy, and I don’t know who.” 

Life, gone. 

Was the sniper someone’s Ranboo? Was someone waiting for them to come home, only for their body to rot? 

His stomach starts to churn and he swallows hard. 

Stop. 

“N-none of us really got hurt except for Wilbur. I got some knocks and bruises, but nothing as bad as him.”

He turns and picks up Benson and Enderchest, placing Enderchest on the crate lid while he clutches Benson, feeling every lump of the fabric stuffing. 

“They had a bullet. Old-school firearm. I think they were aiming for Phil.”

How he wishes they were awake, he hasn’t had a Ranboo hug in so long. He could really use one right now. 

“Y’know, it’s your fault I could save his life,” he tries to joke. “I learned all this from first aid at the shipyard and just for you. You’re welcome, you lanky bitch.” 

Without Ranboo’s scoff of humor and the accompanying shove, it’s hard for the joke to land the same way it did. 

“I’m so fucking confused,” he whispers, resting his head on the hand with Benson in it. “Just… I don’t get it. Why would they want him dead so bad?” 

What has he gotten himself into? 

“Who the fuck are these people? Who are they to piss off someone who had access to shit like that?” 

His eyes burn against his will. 

He has one answer to his question. 

They are dangerous. 

He thought this part of the journey would be easy, but he escaped from the mouth of one beast just to stumble right into the stomach of another. 

And he’s been getting far too lenient. 

“You’ve just made a lot of big mistakes, mate.” 

The ice in Ph- Captain Phil’s voice is colder than the lonely vacuum of space as it echoes in Tubbo’s head.

How long until it’s aimed at him? 

It’s only been a few days since he left SMP with Ranboo. Captain said it’d take a week, week and a half-ish to get to Kinoko. One more week at most. Just one more. 

After they arrive on Kinoko, he’ll lay low, get a transport to Nevadas, and he’ll never have to see these people again. 

“Good job, kid. You got an eye for strategy.” 

Knock, knock. 

The knocks are slow, energy drained. 

Tubbo glances around his quarters, looking to see if anything mildly suspicious might be hanging around, but he knows he’s more careful than that, so he gets up to unlock and open the door. He tosses Benson and Enderchest into his open duffle bag of clothes on the desk just to be safe. 

Outside his door is Tommy, face red and blotchy and blue eyes looking hollow; Tubbo knew they had to regroup, but... 

“Is Wilbur okay?” Tubbo blurts, mentally slapping himself upside the head as soon as the words leave his mouth. What did he just tell himself? 

But if something’s happened to Wilbur…will they blame him? Do something to him? 

“He’s sleeping again,” Tommy mumbles. “I- can I come in?” 

“Uh…sure.” 

The door slides shut behind Tommy as he wanders in, spares barely a glance at the crate, and then stares at Tubbo, fists trembling. 

Tubbo hesitates, then asks him if he’s okay. 

That breaks the dam. 

Tommy’s eyes well with tears and he bites his lip. “I…can I hug you?” 

“Why?” 

“You saved my brother’s life, Tubbo, I’m giving you a motherfucking hug,” he blurts, then pauses. “If you’re good with that. Please. Let me thank you.” 

“...oka-” 

Tommy’s arms are around him in an instant and his chest is stuttering and the hug is suffocating in the best kind of way. 

It’s so different from Ranboo’s; their all-encompassing lanky limbs would be wrapped around him like a comforting web, they always ran a little colder than him, and their hugs always seemed graceful with not one arm feeling out of place. Tommy’s is all clumsy clutching force and warm gratefulness and words that can’t be put into words. 

And Tubbo’s frozen. 

“Thank you,” Tommy’s choking out into his shoulder; he can feel a small patch of fabric getting damp. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

Tubbo seizes him back, pulling him closer, fists entwined in the back of his jacket. 

A small, betraying part of him feels almost safe. He’s protected, wrapped in a warm, fierce shield. Ranboo’s pendant presses painfully but comfortingly into his sternum; he takes a deep breath and lets it out.

And for a single fleeting moment, as he and Tommy breathe together and they both pretend the other isn’t crying a bit, he thinks things might just work out. 

It’ll all be okay.  

~~~~~~~~~~

He’s reluctant to leave Ranboo alone to go and get ready for liftoff, but he knows he can’t help them unless he’s alright(plus, he wouldn’t be able to do anything with Tommy here anyway), so Tubbo leaves his room with Tommy–and a silent backwards glance at the door as it shuts behind them–to go buckle in. 

Technoblade and Wilbur are missing as Phi- Captain Phil shuts off a comm link and gets ready for liftoff, Wilbur for obvious reasons, Technoblade for less obvious. 

“Puffy said she’s got friends in the neighborhood, they’ll swing by and pick up the cargo so it goes to a better cause,” Captain says to Tommy, tensing a little when he sees Tubbo before relaxing noticeably, voice soft and kind and relieved as he asks “Hey, mate. How are you doing?” 

“You’ve just made a lot of big mistakes, mate-” 

“Fine,” he says shortly. “Ready to get off of here.” Ready to get out of here. 

“Yeah, I get that. Hey, Tommy, can you go grab Techno from the medbay if he’s gotten Wil ready for takeoff?” 

The breath making its way out of Tubbo’s lungs screeches to a halt in his throat, and his panic only grows when Tommy nods and leaves him alone with Captain Phil. 

“I wanted to talk to you, Tubbo.” 

Oh, void. 

The air in his throat turns to solid steel and plummets into his stomach. He swallows roughly (and very visibly) and forces himself to make eye contact with the captain, to relax his posture and try to shape his face into something less akin to terror. “Yes?” 

His hands are not shaking, they’re not shaking, they’re not. 

“I- shit, mate, I didn’t mean anything bad, I wanted to thank you.” 

The only thing Tubbo takes from that in the moment is that Captain Phil saw his panic and he needs to do a much better job at hiding his face. “Wh- Tommy already thanked me, you don’t need-” 

“Of course I do, you saved my son. You’re the reason I didn’t get shot instead. You were perceptive enough to look for the gun-”

“I was just in the right place-”

“-and warn Wil beforehand-” 

“What are you saying?” His tone is flatter and far less friendly than he’d like, but part of him doesn’t care. People dance around subjects far too much; he hates it. Just say what you need to. 

The other part of him remembers how the older members of the shipyard would have to step in to protect him whenever he apparently sounded a bit too snappish to a customer, because being a young teen meant he was an easy target. 

“I’m saying in no uncertain terms that I owe you my life, mate. So does Wil.” Phil looks a bit baffled, as though it should’ve been obvious. 

He can use that, he realizes with an eye-widening jolt. Just…as a backup. In case things go south. 

Think of Ranboo. Think of Ranboo and nothing more, no caring hands checking if you’re okay no ‘good job kid’ no protective and wordless warm hugs no silent solidarity no beautiful engine beautiful ship no ‘I know you’ve only been here a few days but you fit right in’, you cannot care for them you must not care for them- 

Think of Ranboo. 

“I-” He bites his lip, unable to get anything meaningful out of his mouth that wouldn’t give him away. “Were- were those the bandits you’d warned me about?”

The Captain’s expression hardens. “They were, though there were a shit ton more than we’ve ever seen or encountered. They tried to be smarter, but it didn’t do ‘em much good.” Phil turns and flicks a couple more switches. “We try not to ask too many questions if someone needs something, but this one we apparently didn’t ask enough. They just wanted the goods, didn’t wanna pay for ‘em, and were gonna sell them at a sky-high price to people who really needed them. We have a friend who’ll get them to where they’re needed most, but we still gotta head out for another drop-off.”

“Won’t that be a loss for you?”

The Captain shrugs. “She’s always willing to pay.” 

Tommy pokes his head in, face still a little bloodshot around his eyes. “Techno says he’s staying in the medbay with Wil.” 

“Alright, he knows liftoff procedure in there, I’m not really gonna worry about it,” Captain mumbles, shrugging as he turns around. “Do you two wanna get situated? I’m ready to get off here.” 

Tubbo’s hands tremble as he buckles himself in, buckle rattling in the lock before it finally clicks in. Tommy sits beside him, pointing out little things he forgets, though not unkindly, and leans his head back once Tubbo’s properly situated, looking thoroughly exhausted. Tubbo doesn’t feel much better; it may be technically early in the morning, but he’s had enough shit happen to last a week. Phil glances backwards twice, once towards the cockpit door that leads to the medbay, and once towards Tubbo and Tommy, before he presses a few buttons and switches some levers, bringing the beautiful engine to life with a roar and a smooth purr. The ship tilts back a little, the noise in the engine rising with the increased vibrations of the ship. Then, they rocket off, shooting through the atmosphere and away from the carnage they’ve left behind them. 

The blurry blots of stars in space aren’t as comforting and amazing as they once were. They seem almost suffocating now. 

He sits for an extra moment after Captain says they can unbuckle, staring out the cockpit window at the lines of light flinging themselves by the ship, rushing as fast as they can to get somewhere else though he knows they’re not really moving. Then, he undoes his safety belt, gets up and silently walks toward his quarters, only looking back once.

Tommy’s held in Phil’s arms, and Phil is shushing him softly. 

“You’ve just made a lot of big mistakes, mate-” 

He whips back around and speedwalks back to his quarters, only relaxing slightly when he’s shut in his room. 

Before, he was free. 

Now? he thinks as he locks the door behind him, turns off the lights, shucks his shoes and jacket, and faceplants in bed, burrowing under the blankets as he stares at the crate Ranboo’s cryo-frozen in. 

Now he’s just in a glass cage. 

Chapter Text

Tubbo jolts back to consciousness in the dark of his quarters with spatters of blood flashing behind his eyes and something deep in his gut telling him that something is wrong. 

He lays in his bed, panting hard and trying to scrape the red off the back of his eyelids that spatters every time he blinks, and runs through what could be the issue. 

Wilbur is fine, they’re off the moon, everyone should be in their own quarters, the medbay, or the cockpit- 

Ranboo. 

He flies out of bed to check if his door is locked(it is, of course it is), then runs to Ranboo’s box and opens it, all but stabbing his thumb into the button to view his vitals as he stands with his hands braced on the sides. 

A brick of sick anxiety thuds into the bottom of his gut, leaving him breathless. 

VITALS STABLE, the screen says. STASIS DEGENERATING, LEVEL 1%. VARIABLES NOT WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS. PATIENT STABILITY IN QUESTION. 

Tubbo’s stood there frozen, mouth slightly open as his heart pounds harder and harder in his ears. 

No. 

No, no, no no no no! 

He slams a finger into the view button, clutching at the side of the box with metal digging into his palms, uselessly wondering if maybe this is something he can fix, something he can solve- 

But he knows better. 

He knew the risks, but this was the only way! 

And there’s nothing he can do. 

Ranboo’s wan face glows up at him underneath the bluish cryo fluid. Their eyes are shut, their hair and clothes float around them. They could just be sleeping peacefully, frozen in zero gravity. 

If this goes wrong, they will never wake up again. 

Tubbo shoves himself back from the crate, curling up on the floor and sobbing quietly. 

He wishes he could just start the deactivation sequence now, pull them out of there and tell them they were finally safe and finally free from the damn Confederation and never let them go again. 

But it’s not safe. 

One hug and heartfelt thanks from Tommy doesn’t change his discovery of the fact that he’s in the belly of the beast, surrounded by very, very dangerous people. People bandits go after with guns. People who can go toe to toe with the bandits. People who shoot to kill. 

One cage to another, for Ranboo. 

He chokes out a whimper through all the tears, one hand over his mouth, the other wrapped around his stomach. 

Void, what has he done to them? 

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. Damned if he lets him out of cryo because he’ll be discovered, damned if he doesn’t because he’ll die. Right where he can see. And that is what all this was trying to avoid. 

Would it have been better? Which would have been better, trying to find Ranboo only to discover nothing but a body and an insincere condolence that only had the name changed from other people’s, or now, watching Ranboo slowly die in front of his eyes and not being able to do anything about it? Which is worse? 

He crawls over to Ranboo, vision blurry, as if he can tell that they’re actively dying from how they look in stasis.

They look exactly the same as the day they were first frozen. 

Damn the day the Confederation came for Ranboo. 

He heaves out another sob, choking on tears stuck in his throat, and slams his fist into the desk which makes it throb like none-fuck-else but he doesn’t care.  

“Here, c’mon, in here!” Tubbo wheezed, dragging himself and Ranboo along, body throbbing with newly forming bruises; he couldn’t tell if it was blood or rain dripping from his head. “The door’s unlocked.” 

“R’there places to hide in there?” Ranboo huffed, flicking soaked bangs from their eyes as they winced and held their ribs. 

“Guess we’ll…find out,” Tubbo muttered, nudging open the door with his hand as the world started to spin around him. 

Damn the day he ever took Ranboo into that shop for shelter. He could’ve looked harder, found somewhere different. Somewhere the Confederation never would’ve looked. The shipyard he’d ended up working at hadn’t been far away, he could’ve gone there, they would’ve been safe, the Confederation never would’ve dreamed of searching through the employees at some janky-ass shipyard for what they needed. 

Damn the day he saw this glorious Syndicate-class airship in the bustling port and decided it was worth a shot, that maybe being in such a large and cobbled-together ship that could still fly beautifully was a good luck charm of sorts.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, sounding like he’s been strangled, voice choking up and cracking more as he wishes and prays and laments how he can’t hold his best friend, his family in his arms and protect them like he promised. “I’m so sorry, Ranboo.” 

He settles for hugging the crate as best he can in a sorry substitute for the hug he can’t give his sibling. They can’t even hear him apologize for everything he’s done…for how he’s doomed them. 

He lays there and stares at the vitals screen, bright against the darkness of his quarters, until he eventually passes out on top of the crate, waiting and watching to see if that 1% ever ticks up to 2%. 

His dreams are haunted by an emaciated Ranboo, crying out and reaching for him as Confederation scientists circle above him like predators, holding needles and bloodied scalpels and ancient guns that are aimed and ready to shoot. Ranboo is always just out of reach, slipping through Tubbo’s arms every time he tries to grab him and keep him safe. 

Tubbo shuts himself in the bathroom as soon as he wakes up again so he can shower, ignoring the obvious crusted streaks of tear marks on his face in the mirror overtop his bruises of dark circles. The edge of the crate has been imprinted on his cheek in an angry red. 

Chapter Text

“Hey, mate.” 

The words make Tubbo flinch a little as he whips around in his seat at the table to look at the Captain. 

“Yeah?” he breathes, catching the concern that flickers over the man’s face when he meets Tubbo’s bruised eyes. 

“Could you go in and check on Wilbur? I think he’s healing alright so far, but I’d just like to be sure.”

Tubbo nods and immediately heads to the medbay, hoping the Captain can’t see how he tripped on the grated hallway floor in his haste to get away from him. 

Wilbur’s awake, sitting up with the assistance of a few pillows, and chatting happily with Technoblade when Tubbo walks shakily in. The only signs that he got shot yesterday are the bandages underneath his open button-down shirt and the slightly pale tint to his face. 

“Hey, Tubbo!” he says, voice a little scratchy before he clears his throat, glancing at the area around Tubbo’s eyes. “You, uh…how’d you sleep?” 

Technoblade rubs his face in his hands. “Why would you ask that.” 

“It’s polite!” 

“I’m fine,” Tubbo manages. “How about you?” 

“Well as I could, given the circumstances, but the potion really helped,” he responds, shifting beneath his blankets. “You here to look at it?” 

“Yeah.” 

Tubbo motions to Wilbur’s shirt before Wilbur holds a finger up. “Gloves?” 

“R-right, sorry.” 

Once he has the gloves on properly(there’s no blood, he’s fine), Wilbur lifts up the side of his shirt. Technoblade motions to try and help, but Wilbur waves him off. “I’m fine, Tech.” 

“You literally got shot.” 

“You know that’s not what-” Wilbur inhales a little, breath hissing through his teeth as Tubbo unwinds the bandages. “You know that’s not what I meant.” 

Wilbur and Technoblade continue to bicker over Tubbo’s head as he pulls over a chair with his foot and sits so he can get a better vantage point for the wound. The stitches are intact with slight bruising around the puncture marks where the needle went in, and there’s a little redness around the wound, but nothing more than normal. 

And it’s weird. 

It looks like it’s been healing properly for weeks, not a day. 

Wilbur seems to have noticed his silence and confused staring, because he looks down and asks somewhat jokingly, “What’s the verdict, doc?” 

“It’s healing…great, actually.”

“Yup, that’d be the potion,” Wilbur agrees before asking Technoblade in a whisper to get him more bandages. “Should be just another couple of days and maybe a shot or two more of potion and I’ll be good to go.”

The first thing that punches its way out of Tubbo’s sternum with his heartbeat is jealousy, and the second is fear. 

Do they realize how lucky they are? A wound like this at the shipyard…it would’ve taken months to heal, if it really healed at all. Him and all the workers there were lucky nobody brought a bullet-shooting firearm whenever they wandered into the shipyard after getting too rowdy at the bar. 

Any damage done can be healed in a few days with the push of a syringe. 

Tubbo knows he sounds like a whining child when he thinks this, but that’s not fair. 

He wonders where they got them. 

An idea tickles the back of his mind, is it possible he could steal one for Ranboo- he immediately shoves that thought far away. Technoblade keeps tabs on everything in the medbay, there’s no way he wouldn’t miss a potion going missing. 

But if it would help…how can he get it to Ranboo? 

“Uh…Tubbo?” 

Tubbo blinks and turns around to see Technoblade towering over him, holding a roll of bandages in one hand, pads of gauze and medical tape in the other, and wearing an awkwardly  expression that seems out of place on the towering, pink-haired force of muscle that is Technoblade. 

“This is awkward.” 

“Are you okay, Tubbo?” Wilbur asks, face concerned when he whips around. “You don’t look like you slept well.” 

“I’m fine-” 

“You have dark circles the size of a fucking moon, man,” Wilbur corrects, and Tubbo bites at his lips. “There’s no need to lie about it, yesterday was a lot.” 

There’s no need to lie about it. 

Oh, Wilbur. How naive of him to think that. 

One tiny, traitorous part of him thinks that might be true, and that part of him is buried six feet under in an instant. 

“-can tell Techno how to do it, you go rest, okay?” 

“I’ve got this,” he hisses through his teeth. 

And he does have it. He bandages Wilbur’s wound perfectly, almost mindlessly, ignoring the glances Wilbur and Technoblade throw at each other when they think he’s not looking. 

Wilbur clears his throat as Tubbo ties the final knot in the bandages and tucks the ends in. “Hey, why don’t you go rest? I’m fine.” 

Tubbo blinks as he looks up at Wilbur, raring to jump at the opportunity to go away. “You’re sure?” 

“Go ahead, someone’ll get you when you have to do the next drop-off,” Wilbur says nonchalantly, waving him off. 

“It will be Tommy,” Technoblade deadpans. 

He hopes it’s not suspicious how fast he runs out of the medbay. 

He barrels into his room, locks the door, and throws the lid off Ranboo’s crate, probably making enough noise to wake the dead. 

1%. 

Tubbo nearly collapses and passes out with elated relief right then and there. 

It’s still at 1%. 

Last night that number was the worst news possible, but now…it’s incredible. 

It’s still at 1%. 

He barely makes it to his bed to tug down a blanket and pillow, Benson and Enderchest falling and bouncing on the ground, before he curls up on the cold metal floor beside the crate and is out like a light. 

He wakes up underneath a counter, dazed and confused, face and head throbbing as something pokes at him. Everything hurts. 

“Hey! Wake up! How’d you get in here?” 

“We’re so sorry!” Ranboo’s voice says as their shape scrambles up and nearly falls over with a cry of pain as they clutch at their ribs. “Some people chased us a-and hurt us and we just needed a place to stay that was out of the rain-” 

“You willin’ to work for it?” 

Tubbo whimpers, touching his head and wanting to simultaneously gag and cry at the feelings of flaky blood and utter stinging pain throbbing outwards from underneath his fingertips because of the gash on his forehead. 

“Work for it?” 

“I ain’t aimin’ to lose money by takin’ a couple’a street rats in without pay,” the blurry lady says matter-of-factly, bringing what is probably her broom out from under the counter and planting it on the floor before leaning on it. “But I’ll letcha wait ‘til you can work. Ain’t nobody who can’t work should be workin’. I’m not that stone-cored.” 

“Th-thank you,” Ranboo breathes as their chilled hand touches Tubbo’s head and he cries out a little at the sudden sensation. They start to stroke his hair and he exhales, shuddering and curling into it. He hadn’t been expecting the chill to feel so good. “Um…what kind of work?” 

The woman starts to laugh as her voice distorts and Tubbo’s vision darkens at its edges, Ranboo’s hand tightening almost painfully in his hair. Something stabs sharply into his arm and he winces, eyesight dimming completely as the hand in his hair tightens and tightens until he swears he can hear his hairs being ripped out. 

Everything’s dark, he can’t see a thing, he can’t find Ranboo-

Something cold, hard, and hollow is pushed under his chin and he freezes, barely daring to breathe so he doesn’t trigger the wrath of whoever’s holding the gun. 

“What’s in the crate, Tubbo?” the Captain’s voice growls from somewhere behind him. Tubbo can feel his veins turn to ice. 

“You can tell us, you know that, right?” Wilbur coos from somewhere close as nails tighten on his scalp and he yells out through clenched teeth at the stinging. “There’s no need to lie about it.”

Ranboo cries out somewhere in the void in front of him him, sobbing and begging for help, but Tubbo can’t move no matter how much he wants to, there’s a gun under his chin and a cold floor on his right side-

He opens his eyes with a shuddery breath, eyes stinging and floor freezing through his clothes from where he’s curled up on the metal ground in a ball. 

He rolls onto his back, blanket tangled around him, right hip throbbing a little from being pressed into the floor. 

The hit he got from those idiots never did scar noticeably(it’s faint and easily hidden under his mop of shaggy brown hair), but sometimes he swears he can still feel it dripping blood down his face. Like now. 

Tubbo sighs, closing his eyes and resting a fist on his forehead, taking shuddery inhales.

He’s fine. 

Everything will be fine. 

He scoffs, eyes still closed. Who does he think he’s fucking kidding?

He winces at a sting of pain from his finger and opens his eyes to see that he’s bitten the thumbnail of his other hand to the quick and a bubble of blood is blossoming from the cuticle. 

Dammit, he thought he’d finally stopped doing that in the shipyard. Bitten nails are more than just a literal pain when you have to pry things up. 

He sighs, slumping into the ground. He allows himself one deep breath, then two to try and get his heart rate back to normal. He rolls up, the blanket cocooned around him, and then freezes with his eyes level with the lid of the box and the string of numbers, 29347561, stamped on the side. 

He never put the lid of Ranboo’s box back on before he fell asleep. 

They’re just…there for the world to see. 

And as he pushes himself up to his knees, the 1% merges to 2% in the blink of an eye.  

Chapter Text

“Tubs, are you okay? You seem a bit…” Tommy struggles for words as Tubbo slips into the hallway, making sure the door is shut tightly behind him. “Off.” 

“M’fine.” 

Tommy frowns at him for a moment before apparently deciding to let it go. 

The fact that Tommy’s got slightly bruised circles under his eyes in a tame echo of the ones under Tubbo’s doesn’t pass Tubbo by, but he doesn’t comment on it either. 

Tubbo’s thumb is still throbbing, though he’s not sure if it’s still bleeding or not. He still shoves his hand into his pocket. 

“Just a small cargo drop today,” Tommy comments offhandedly. “Nothin’ major.” 

“Great.” 

“It is on a Confederation-controlled planet, though.” 

Tubbo freezes in the middle of the hallway, breath turning to iron in his lungs and stomach dropping through space. 

“We know how to get around ‘em, though,” Tommy continues as he walks on forward, seemingly unaware of Tubbo’s barely concealed panic. “They won’t be a problem.” 

Tubbo’s mouth gapes for a moment before he nods and shakily croaks, “Good to know.” 

His mind races as he rushes to keep up with Tommy.

Confederation-controlled. 

It’s not like he hasn’t lived on a Confederation-controlled planet before, so he knows the rules and regulations…but he’s never been on one while he’s delivering cargo. He’s never been on one with Ranboo in their… condition that wasn’t a spaceport so busy any inspection of cargo was both inconceivable and unachievable. He’s never been fuckin’ anywhere but Ess-Sempi and this damn ship with Ranboo in their condition. 

He thanks his past self in earnest for dragging Ranboo’s crate out of the cargo bay as he stumbles into the kitchen behind Tommy. 

To his surprise, Wilbur is sitting next to a snoring Technoblade in the kitchen, sipping something from a steaming mug. He’s in a button-down shirt instead of his usual sweater, but otherwise looks perfectly fine. 

“Hey, Tubbo!” He waves, bringing his left arm up only a little, but smiling nonetheless. “Sleep well?”

“Uh- yeah, thanks. How’s the-” he gestures to his side in lieu of words. He doesn’t trust his voice not to break with all the… everything going on. 

Wilbur shakes his head with a smile. “Don’t mention it. And it’s doing well, thanks. Just about back to normal.” 

Captain Phil walks in and ruffles Wilbur’s hair, waving to Tubbo before he smiles and pokes at Technoblade’s head. “Wake up, mate. Got shit to do.” 

“Fine,” Technoblade grumbles, pink hair all in his face as he readjusts his position but doesn’t sit up. 

“Yeah, Techno, wake up,” Wilbur teases with his face half-inside his mug. He barely manages not to spill anything when Techno gives him a light punch to the shoulder as he sits up. 

Captain Phil pointedly ignores their antics with what looks like a lot of practice. “Tommy, Tubbo, come sit down, we gotta brief.”

Once the two of them are situated, Tommy slumped into one hand and Tubbo stiff as a razor, Captain Phil lays out which cargo they’re dropping off and to who, and most importantly, that the Confederation officials are going to inspect it briefly before they let them drop it off. 

“So, be sure to sort out the cargo bay, alright?” Captain Phil says with a laugh and a wink at Tommy, who rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Make sure it’s not a hot mess.” 

“Just messy enough?” Tommy asks, smirking. 

“Just messy enough,” the Captain agrees. “Can you help him, Tubbo? Techno’s gotta set apart the cargo.” Tubbo nods, and Captain Phil claps his hands together. “Right, let’s get to it!” 

Tubbo’s thumb throbs in his pocket, but he’s grateful for it as he and Tommy clean up the cargo bay. It keeps him in the present. 

Technoblade mumbles under his breath near the cargo bay doors, moving specific crates by picking them up or sliding them over and placing them in a neat pile close to the door controls. 

“It always surprises me how messy this place gets,” Wilbur comments with a smile as he leans lazily in the doorway to the rest of the ship. 

“You say that like you don’t contribute to the mess,” Technoblade grunts as he hefts up a steel crate and walks it over to the pile he’s making. 

“EW!” Tommy yells, and Tubbo looks up from pushing the crates Technoblade doesn’t choose back against a wall to see a combat boot go flying towards Wilbur and him barely managing to duck as it sails into the hallway behind him. “Pick up your shit!” 

“My point exactly,” Technoblade mumbles, giving Tubbo an affectionate eye roll he knows is directed at the other two before sliding the crate onto another one with a screech. 

“That’s not my shoe!” 

“Oh, are these not your socks too?” 

Tubbo cracks a small smile as he pushes his hip into a crate to slide it into place against the wall. 

“I don’t know what you mean, Ranboo, they’re not mine.” 

“I-I can see you smiling, Tubbo- get back here! You’re such a bad liar!” 

“Gotta catch me first!” 

“Wilbur, need I remind you that you got shot?” Technoblade drawls with a groan, making Tubbo jump a little. The utter exhaustion at their antics practically drips off his voice, but Tubbo swears he can see the upper corners of Technoblade’s mouth twitch like he’s trying not to smile. 

“Remind Tommy!” Wilbur screeches as he weaves around the cargo bay. “He’s the fucker chasing me around with dirty socks!” 

“Your dirty socks! I don’t even wanna touch these!” 

“Then why the fuck are you?” 

“Are you two almost done?” 

Two balled up socks fly through the air, one landing on Wilbur’s head and the other just missing his back. Wilbur picks one up to throw back at Tommy, but then apparently remembers that he did indeed get shot the other day and just tosses it. He still misses the crates Tommy ducked behind, and rolls his eyes at the guffaws and middle fingers Tommy throws his way around the large metal boxes. 

Tubbo’s bitten thumbnail throbs in time with his heart. 

“Thank you,” Technoblade grumbles, though his smile shows his glinting gold-capped lower canines. “We should be landing soon, so if you wanna buckle in for that, you can head into the cockpit. If not, you can probably ride it out in your room. I know I don’t wanna be around these idiots,” he directs the words at Tommy and Wilbur, who have ended their truce and are now playing dodgeball with dirty socks and curse words, “any more than I have to.” 

Tubbo gives him a thumbs-up and leaves. 

This is the second cargo drop. Finish this, then Kinoko and they’re off, then Nevadas and they’re free. 

Ranboo might not have that long. Unstable to 1% and now 2% deteriorated in, what, less than two days? 

It feels like someone has shoved his heart and lungs with a compactor and is squeezing them between the clamps. When he looks down at his hands, they’re trembling ever so slightly. His thumbnail hasn’t been bleeding for a little bit and the cuticle is lined with dark red. 

It’ll be fine. He’s lying to himself and he knows it. Ranboo is going to make it to Nevadas, and then everything’s gonna be perfectly fine. They might not even last the rest of the week. 

One problem at a time. Confederation first. Yes sir’s and no ma’am’s and stay quiet. 

And do not, under any circumstances, let them into the ship to see the crate in his room. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Tubbo paces as the Esbi’ai lands. That’s all he does. It’s all he can do. 

He paces his quarters, back and forth, back and forth, squeezing his fist in his pocket so he doesn’t bite his nails clean off, resisting the urge to rip the cover off Ranboo’s crate and watch. 

There is a fist around his heart, squeezing tighter and tighter. 

He has to- he feels like he’s walking on a power line pulled taut over the shipyard. One slip, one wrong move, and he’ll go careening to his death. He’ll snap his neck, or fall into the scraps pile and be impaled, or…or something. 

One wrong move, one discovery, and he wouldn’t really put it past the Captain or Technoblade to make him take a spacewalk. 

The fist is around his lungs now. 

If he’s caught, who knows what’ll happen to Ranboo. Will they take care of them? Will they wake them up? Interrogate them? Kill them?

Worse, will they turn him back in? 

He can’t go back. 

T-O-R-T-U-R-I-N-G-U-S-H-E-L-P-M- 

Ranboo cannot go back. 

They can’t- they can’t go back, not after everything they went through, not after everything Tubbo went through to get them back. 

Tubbo inches a hand out to his desk as he starts to tilt, not even realizing he’d begun to breathe hard even though he feels like he’s being strangled. 

He can’t go back he can’t go back he can’t go back they can’t be separated again they’re going to a Confederation-controlled planet next they’re going to get caught they’re going to get caught they’re going to get caught-

Tubbo coughs and starts choking on air, sinking to the ground beside Ranboo’s crate as he pounds his chest with his free fist to try and get some oxygen into his lungs, however metallic it tastes. 

The pendant bounces with it in a phantom heartbeat.

He can’t tell if he’s shaking or the ship is. Or if it’s both. 

He clutches at the pendant so hard he thinks he might break it if it weren’t Ranboo’s. If it wasn’t there for them all that time instead of him. 

It will go smoothly. Everything is going to be fucking fine. Maybe if he beats it into his head long enough, it’ll come true. 

He can’t tell how long he sits there, one hand practically glued to the leg of the table, the other grasping the purple-black stone pendant, until the ship stops shaking. 

Everything feels still and calm. Too still beside his body that’s still coming off of its own vibrations as well as that of the ship’s. 

He can’t resist the urge anymore.

He kneels and drags the lid off Ranboo’s crate, then stares at the vitals. 

Tubbo can feel the blood draining from his face as he slumps limply to the ground. 

The screen showing how close Ranboo is to waking up when they’re not ready flickers as the deterioration percentage blinks from 3% to 5%. 

Chapter Text

“What’re you carryin’?” the grey-uniformed officer drawls, boredly clicking the button on top of their stylus. 

“Food rations,” Captain Phil says shortly. “Got hired by a merchant to bring ‘em here to a store dealer.” 

“Mm-hm,” the officer says, obviously unbelieving. 

The cargo bay door is open, exposing a clearing of dry dirt and a Confederation outpost, but somewhere in the distance Tubbo swears he can see green. 

Trees. 

“I have Eret’s seal here, hang on,” Captain Phil mumbles, rummaging in his pockets. 

Wilbur retreated back to his room to rest. Techno is standing by the Captain’s side, slightly less intimidating than he was on the last planet they were on. Tommy is sitting on one of the catwalks high above the cargo bay’s floor, swinging his legs and leaning on the railing. 

And Tubbo is sitting on the bottom stair, hands in his bomber’s pockets, trying to stop them from shaking by balling them into fists, although that just brings up a new problem: he’s not entirely sure he can stop himself from punching the Confederation officer in the face if they make one wrong move.

“Yep, this is authentic,” the officer says, tapping on a tablet screen before handing something small and round back to the Captain. They pluck a small tool off their belt and press it on the outside of a box, scanning it. 

Tubbo’s nails start digging into his palms; he unconsciously shoves a nail in his mouth and starts biting.

Box after box is subject to the scanner, with no change in expression from the officer, until- 

“Alright, you’re free to unload.” 

“Sweet, thanks for your time,” Captain Phil says as the officer wanders back down the ramp and towards the Confederation outpost, feet kicking up dirt every time they step. “C’mon down, mate! We got shit to do.”   

Tubbo has to take off his bomber and tie it around his waist in the sunlight beaming down on him as he arranges and ties down crates on a wheeled trailer behind a four-wheel bike Captain Phil is going to ride into town. His t-shirt underneath is covered in old oil stains and his fingers are throbbing once again; he bit three nails to the quick without even realizing it before the officer left. 

“Trip shouldn’t take too long, half an hour?” the Captain huffs as he hefts the second-to-last crate onto the trailer bed. “I’ll be back soon, anyhow, I know Wil is desperate to get to where we need to go.” He wipes an arm over his forehead, then brushes a few stray blond hairs from his eyes. “How you doin’, Tubbo?” 

“Fine.” As a second thought, he adds a barely-there smile as he ties down one last crate, though he can tell it doesn’t really convince anyone. 

True to his prediction, the Captain gives him an odd glance as they all back away from the little four-wheeler(where it came from, Tubbo has no clue) and he vaults on. “Alright, well. See you in half an hour!” 

Technoblade waves and then yawns and heads back towards his quarters, mumbling about getting some sleep. Tommy turns around, he can tell because of the noise his jacket makes, but Tubbo’s already following behind Technoblade and making a beeline for his quarters. 

He’s back to the routine he’s developed by now: go to his quarters, lock the door, check if it’s really locked, open Ranboo’s crate, check the percent of deterioration. Pray it hasn’t increased. 

Gape in shock and horror when it has. 

8% flickers, then ticks to 13%.  

Tubbo thinks he might be sick. 

He jabs the VIEW button and stares at Ranboo, comatose, floating in the frozen blue stasis gunk. Correction- mostly frozen. The very bottom edges of the cryo-fluid have turned from the light electric blue into a darker shade that he knows means it’s thawed out. 

Can he fix this? 

How would he fix this? 

Would he just make it worse? Speed up Ranboo’s discovery and likely subsequent death? He can’t go back to them, he can’t-

What if- 

What if the Captain has Federation connect-

BAM BAM BAM. 

“Tubbo?”

He’s frozen. 

A thousand scenarios go through his subconscious while he can think nothing but no no no no. 

Confederation officers with the Captain-

Chains and needles and death and separation no no no-

He can’t breathe and his heart is pounding so hard he can hear it and feel the blood rushing through his face-

“Are you fuckin’ changing or somethin’?” Tommy continues. “We only got twenty minutes 'till Phil comes back. Come climb a tree with me!” 

“Uh- y-yeah! I’ll be out in a sec, bossman!” 

Tommy’s footsteps recede and Tubbo’s knees just…give out. He hits the metal floor with a thud that will certainly raise suspicions as well as bruises. 

His hands are shaking, his heart is still pounding, and he has to grab onto the side of Ranboo’s crate so he doesn’t fall over. 

He takes a few moments just to breathe, to try and slow down his heartbeat from sheer force of will before he jabs at CONCEAL, missing the button the first time with how much his hands are trembling. It’s like he just turned off a power saw after using it for a long time: he can feel the phantom vibrations through his arms even though he knows he’s set the tool down. The lid of Ranboo’s crate somehow seems to make even more noise than normal when he slides it back into place. 

Once he throws on a tank top to ease suspicions(and get rid of the stress sweat stains- gross) he wanders outside, boots making echoing footsteps on the hallway floor. 

Outside is just as blindingly light as he remembered, and he raises a hand to shield from the sun as he walks into the cargo bay. 

“There you are!” Tommy’s voice calls from outside the ship’s walls. “Was starting to think you got stuck in the bathroom or something!” 

“Let me guess- it was Wilbur?” Tubbo quips, regretting leaving his bomber jacket behind for the sole purpose of hiding his still-trembling hands. He’s glad his pants are long- they’ll hide the shaking of his knees and the fresh bruises he knows he just got. 

Tommy’s signature barking wheeze of a laugh echoes around the cargo bay. “How- how the fuck’d you guess?” 

“Call it instinct- where the fuck are you?” he asks, He’s already looked around the whole cargo bay, and there’s no sign of Tommy. 

“Out here!” 

Sure enough, as soon as Tubbo walks out of the cargo bay and his boots touch bare dirt, there’s Tommy, hanging by his knees from a spindly tree right next to the open door that towers the height of the bay door. 

“How the hell did you do that?” 

Tommy’s face is flushed red at his forehead from hanging upside down, providing strong contrast between that and his short mop of blond curls. “What, you’ve never climbed a tree before?” 

Tubbo scoffs. “No.” 

Tommy just stares at him for a few seconds, long enough for it to be awkward, before saying in a very matter-of-fact voice, “Tubbo, your life is fucking sad.” 

Tubbo stares at him for a moment. 

And then he starts laughing. Full on cackling, bent over with his hands over his stomach, almost madman laughing. 

Because of all the shit he’s been through, with how hard his life has been, with every sleepless night and new scar, with Ranboo and what they went through…

…of all that, him never climbing a tree is what pushes everything over the edge into sad. 

“Wh- where the fuck was I supposed to find one, bossman?” he wheezes. “In the shipyard? I climbed on ships to fix them, does that count?”

“Nope,” Tommy huffs, pulling himself up and gripping a branch as the blood drains from his forehead. “But at least you have some experience and you’re not gonna fall on your ass and die.” 

“Don’t talk too soon,” Tubbo huffs, wiping at his eyes. 

“Everyone needs to do this at least once, so get up here!” Tommy laughs, reaching down and holding out his hand. 

Tubbo glances down at it, then braces one leg on a branch, wraps his left arm around another, and grabs Tommy’s hand to pull himself up with a small smile. 

Chapter Text

Tubbo can’t make many more excuses for staying in his room all the time. 

Tommy’s started looking askance at him, and Phil’s asked if he was feeling alright. Wilbur sizes him up whenever the two meet and Technoblade, whenever he runs into him, will just glare like he’s thinking really, really hard. 

Tommy convinces him to venture out once they’re back up in the air to see the engine room again and the two of them race to see who can name more of the parts of the engine. Tommy wins, obviously, he is the mechanic for the Esbi’ai, but Tubbo gets a close second. He then gives him this… look, oddly filled with slightly veiled concern. 

And Tubbo ignores him, stammering out a question about the engine’s fuel intake he already knows the answer to. Tommy doesn’t try that again, at least not while he’s looking. 

It’s just- his heart pounds every time he’s away from Ranboo, because anything could happen. Anything could go wrong, and with how fast the stasis is deteriorating, he can’t risk it. 

Whenever he’s anywhere but his quarters, the only thing on his mind is the idea of that deterioration status number slowly ticking up, and up, and up.

It keeps ticking up while he’s not there, so if he’s there…he can at least monitor it, right? He- he has to be there. 

He doesn’t want Ranboo to be alone while this happens. They don’t deserve that.

He floats through the next two or so days, obsessively checking Ranboo’s crate every few hours, staring at their face like he can tell them everything is going to be alright. 

This fucking trip can’t seem to go any faster. 

He’s going stir-crazy in here, but there’s nowhere else for him to go where he’s free from everyone’s looks. 

So he memorizes every scar on Ranboo’s bare arms from looking at them so often, recognizes the fractals of ice crystals in the corners of the cryo-liquid on sight, and feels his heart fill more and more with dread as he sees the edges of the crystallized liquid round and then vanish into a darker shade of blue as the stasis continues to deteriorate. 

He can’t cry any more, he just wanders around feeling sick with worry. 

He’s only been able to eat so they don’t ask him why he’s not. 

Tommy starts beating him at chess. 

His hands shake when he checks Wilbur’s bandages. 

He holds his breath around the Captain. 

Technoblade, at least, gives him weird looks and then continues on with his life. 

Afternoon on the second day, Tommy drags him into the engine room again, saying he needs help retwisting and organizing some wires. And when he says ‘drags’, he means that Tommy all but yanks him from his quarters and pushes him into the engine room. He just about gives Tubbo a heart attack when he does so; it’s a miracle Tubbo was just pacing around and the cover was on Ranboo’s crate. 

Oddly, the stench of machine grease calms his nerves just the slightest amount. 

A mass of tangled silver and copper wires lays in a heap near the hammock in the corner that exhausts Tubbo just from the sight. 

“Holy shit, bossman,” Tubbo mumbles under his breath. “What is this?” 

Tommy huffs as he collapses into a cross-legged sitting position on the grated floor of the engine room. “Well…I talked to Phil about needing more wire, and he dug this mess from somewhere in a closet sayin’ we ‘had enough’,” He puts the last two words in overexaggerated air quotes and holds up two empty wire spools as he makes a face that is unmistakably a pout. “So…”

“So you decided to use me for free labor?” Tubbo jokes, folding his legs underneath him and sitting directly across from Tommy. 

“More or less,” Tommy yawns, smiling a little. “Hope you don’t mind.” 

“I might after seeing this,” Tubbo quips, lifting up a hunk of wire that looks like it’s almost knotted together with how fucking tangled it is. He’s almost relieved once he manages to pick out the end of a bit of copper wire. 

Finally, a problem he can solve. 

Tommy unwinds a bit of silver wire, and the two of them sit for a while as Tommy rambles about random things around the ship, like how Wilbur always plays his music too loud and how Techno slingshots his hair ties so often he can hit someone square on from 10 feet away, and how Phil always likes his coffee in one of three specific mugs. Tubbo’s content to stay silent, nodding and making a few noises to show he’s listening, but mostly focused on the task at hand. 

Over, under, unwind, twist through, pull, bend. Nothing exists except the wire and his fingers and the drone of Tommy’s voice mixing with the whirring of that wonderful engine. 

His chest isn’t wound as tight as normal, and he almost feels like he can breathe again. 

It takes him a moment to realize that Tommy’s stopped talking, and when he does, he just glances upwards for a moment, not moving his head or straying his hands from his task of untwisting a silver and a copper wire from each other. 

“What’s up?” 

Tommy’s electric blue eyes are filled with an odd emotion that Tubbo can’t completely decipher- but one that almost looks like concern. “Are you good, big man?” 

And just like that, the bricks drop onto his lungs again. 

It takes Tubbo a moment before he can manage to get enough air to let out a faint and confused laugh. “Wh- what are you talking about?” 

“You’re just-” Tommy sighs. “That run-in with the bandits fucked us all up.” He lets out a small laugh and bends a wire to thread it out from underneath another one. “I just wanted to- I don’t know. I hated living in places like that.” 

Tubbo frowns, hands finally freezing. “What do you mean?” 

Tommy shrugs and pulls a length of wire free, then picks up one of the empty wire spools and starts threading the end in. “I’m from a real backwater planet, it was fuckin’ awful. You never knew when someone was gonna pull a blaster and demand all your shit. I just got by ‘cuz I could fix shit up and run away when I needed to. When Phil showed up-” Tommy snorts. “I lied to his fuckin’ face and told him I was older than I was just to get a job and get off of the hellhole.” 

“...I thought the Captain was your father,” Tubbo says absently, picking a knot out of a few bits of wire. It’s harder than usual when half his fingernails are gone. 

“Lots of people think that,” Tommy reassures. “Wilbur and I kind of look alike too, so that doesn’t help shit, but Phil isn’t technically ‘related’,” he pulls out the air quotes again, “to anyone here. He basically is, anyway.” 

Tubbo hums. Just like him and Ranboo. Siblings in everything but blood. 

Ranboo’s pendant is cold against his sternum. 

“I don’t know how long I got away with saying I was sixteen as a thirteen-year-old, but once Phil found out…” Tommy shrugs, not looking up from the spool of wire he’s winding. “I didn’t want to go back. So I stayed. But that planet…” 

Something in Tommy’s voice changes and Tubbo pauses again, staring at the slight tremble making itself evident in Tommy’s hands. He pokes himself in the palm once, then twice, before he sighs and continues. 

“Was just a lot like where I’m from. Fucked me up for a bit afterwards, I guess.” Tommy stares up at him, piercing blue eyes shining in the light of the lantern he’d brought out from underneath his hammock to illuminate their little operation. “And from your reaction back there, it’s not the first time you’ve had to shoot at someone.” 

Tubbo freezes. 

Tommy seems to realize what he’s said and cringes. “Shit, Tubs, I’m sorry, that is not what I meant- I was trying to- aw, fuck.” He groans and slumps over. “I’m not telling anyone shit, Tubbo, don’t worry.” 

Tubbo shakily puts down the wires he’s all but detangled and stares over at the engine as it whirls around over and over again, silvery streaks of the oxidizer pumps streaking through like comets in the black vacuums of space. 

“...you’re right,” Tubbo hears himself whisper, then curses himself. Why would he say something like that? He can’t risk it. He can’t risk Ranboo. Ranboo in his room, frozen in that crate he shoved in there at the beginning of the trip. “Pogtopia was a little fucked up.”

“Must’ve been plenty fucked up for you to head out,” Tommy shoots back heatlessly. “But Pogtopia had those Confederation bitches crawling all over it. Logsted didn’t.” 

“What are you saying?” Tubbo all but spits, some unknown emotion filling his chest.  

“I’m saying I’m no fan of the fuckin’ Confederation,” Tommy responds, keeping his same heatless tone as he continues to work. “And the sooner we all get out of their clutches, the better.” 

Tubbo huffs a humorless laugh. “Tell me about it.” 

The conversation tapers off, but it isn’t awkward, not really. Not completely, anyway. 

After a moment or two, Tommy starts rambling about previous cargo runs the crew has been on, including one where Tommy himself had accidentally angered a swarm of stinging bugs on a jungle planet(“How the fuck was I supposed to know they keep their nests in the ground?”), one where someone had decided to pick a fight with Technoblade in a bar(“You can guess how well that one went, he picked the bastard up and pinned him against the wall by his arms like he was nothin’,”), and one where Wilbur had gotten flirty with a girl named Sally and then discovered she was in the con business- as did the rest of the crew when he showed up after a night out with nothing but the clothes on his back(“Even Phil was laughin’ a little bit. Wilbur’s ego’s too fuckin’ big anyway.”) 

And oh, the stories Tubbo could tell too. How Tubbo had tried to prank one of his fellow workers at the shipyard, high on the euphoria of Ranboo’s first message back, only to trip and fall into the bucket of water himself. How Ranboo had tried to braid wires for the first time but had forgotten to disconnect them first and had ended up shocking themself so bad their hair poofed completely out from their head and wouldn’t come back down(he still remembered laughing so hard he almost cried at them as they pouted).  

The two of them laugh, and when Tommy asks if he has any funny stories, Tubbo tells one of machinery malfunctioning and spinning people in circles. Which did happen. 

When he tells Tommy about the worker’s purple and pink-spotted socks(which were only seen because their shoes flew off from the velocity), Tommy doubles over howling with laughter; it only intensifies when Tubbo continues about how they got the worker down safely, but they couldn’t walk straight for a week and had half the customers convinced they were drunk because they wouldn’t stop coming in to work. 

When the two of them finally leave the engine room, the wire having been untangled and wound onto the spools hours ago, Tubbo feels almost normal again. He hasn’t felt like that in a damn long time. 

When he checks Ranboo’s crate, it’s with a sense of hope now. A faint one, but it’s still there. And Ranboo’s condition hasn’t deteriorated further!

He leaves for dinner with everyone else, and he finds that he has an appetite. He notices everyone’s looks, but they feel different now. More brief, less concerned. He even laughs at one of Technoblade’s particularly deadpan jokes. 

He even looks a little livelier when he checks his reflection in the mirror after he showers. Sure, his dark circles are really fucking big, but there’s a bit of color in his cheeks now and a sparkle in his eyes that wasn’t there before. 

He lets himself fall into bed, with Benson in one hand and Enderchest in the other. His hand with Enderchest is resting on Ranboo’s crate. 

His sleep is oddly peaceful when he falls into it. His only dreams are of him flying lazily through space, sometimes with Tommy, sometimes with Ranboo, and sometimes with both. He reaches out to touch the stars and laughs as the warmth filters through his fingers like water. 

~~~~~~~~~~

The crate ticks up to 21% as Tubbo sleeps.  

~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Text

21% is ringing in Tubbo’s mind when he staggers aimlessly into the cargo bay, looking for something to do that isn’t staring at Ranboo and wondering when if they’re gonna die. 

It’s like a wreck he can’t stop watching, but he has to look away or he’ll explode too. He has to figure out how to fix this, or at least slow the deterioration so Ranboo’s stasis doesn’t break down completely while they’re on the Esbi’ai. Maybe moving will take his mind off of things(he knows it won’t), maybe it’ll help him figure out a way to help(he has no idea where to start), maybe the stasis only breaks down when he’s there and he has to leave-

Okay, even he can tell that’s far-fetched. But that doesn’t stop his thoughts from perpetually whirling around like they're stuck inside an oscillator.

He is so lost in said thoughts that he runs straight into Technoblade, who’s staring at the remaining crates and mumbling under his breath. His pink hair is held back in a loose ponytail, and his red leather jacket is nowhere to be seen; he’s just in a loose black shirt and pants. 

“I’m sorry-” he says quickly, scrambling back and holding onto his nose because ow, he feels like he just ran into a brick wall. “I wasn’t looking where I was going-” 

“Yeah, I figured,” Technoblade huffs, and Tubbo can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He turns toward Tubbo and then gestures to the rest of the crates in the cargo bay. “Well, if you’re here, you might as well help me out.” 

“Alright, um…with what?”

“The cargo. There’s a crate missin’.” 

Tubbo frowns. “Missing? What do you mean, do you think it was stolen?” 

“I’m not sure,” Technoblade muses. “I don’t think it could’ve been. We only stopped twice. First time, we were on the ship right in front of the cargo, and the second time the crates were only left alone for a few minutes. You and Tommy were outside for almost the entire time, so you would’ve seen someone come in.” 

“Tommy came in to get me, so there was a window of time where the door was open and nobody was out there,” Tubbo offers.

“Not possible,” Technoblade responds, shaking his head. “Nobody could get on this ship, steal a cargo crate, and take off in less than two minutes. Not without makin’ a lot of noise.” 

“Yeah, that’s true…” Tubbo frowns. “And there’s no more clues?” 

“None at all,” Technoblade huffs. “Which is why this whole thing’s bein’ a pain in the ass.”

“Well, which crate was it? Maybe figuring that out will help?”

“That’s what I’m tryin’ to do.” Technoblade wanders to the wall of the cargo bay and picks up a datapad, pressing a button on the bottom and scrolling on it once it lights up. “I only figured out one was missin’ just now, so I don’t know which one it was yet.” His eyes widen once he reaches what he’s looking for and he circles an area on the screen with his finger. “Here, it should have this serial number. I took a count of all the crates before we lifted off SMP and wrote down their codes n’ whatnot, but I didn’t get a chance to inspect ‘em all. I think that’s the one that’s unaccounted for.” 

Tubbo takes the offered holopad and peers at the string of numbers that Technoblade circled. 

29347561.

“I counted off the ones we dropped onto that moon we were ambushed on, and we only left nine with Eret on the last planet,” Technoblade continues. “So that’s gotta be the last one left, but I can’t figure out where it would’a gone.” 

Tubbo’s eyes start to widen as the string of numbers on the side of Ranboo’s crate floats around in his mind. Of course he has it memorized by now, how could he not with all the time spent staring at it? 

2-9-3-4-

“Things did get moved around, so maybe I’m makin’ somethin’ of nothin’, but it doesn’t hurt to be on guard.” 

7-5-6-1.

Match. Match. Match. 

Tubbo feels the cargo bay start to tilt a little around him, and he shifts his foot backwards so he doesn’t fall over.

Oh no. 

They all match. 

“Do you recognize the serial number?” 

He’s going to pass out. 

It’s Ranboo’s crate. 

“Uh, n-no,” he lies, ignoring the spots on the edges of his vision as he tightens his grip on the holopad. “I didn’t really look at the serial numbers of the crates. Maybe it’s just hidden behind another one? We did rearrange some of them when we were cleaning out the cargo bay before we landed.” 

It’s Ranboo. 

“Yeah, maybe.” Technoblade sighs. “Alright, well, thanks for the help. You might be right, but I’d always rather make somethin’ of nothin’ than have it be trouble and I didn’t do anythin’ about it, yknow?” He holds out his hand for the clipboard, and Tubbo can’t stop his hands from shaking as he hands it back. Technoblade looks at him and frowns. “Are you okay?” 

“Huh?” 

“You look pale.”

“I’m- I g-got dizzy. For a sec. I’m fine.” 

Technoblade raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Alright, well. You’re clearly lyin’. Go lay down.” 

Tubbo has the uncanny feeling of being stabbed in the chest and it being a complete accident. 

Apparently he hesitates for too long, because Technoblade pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Look, I’ll tell Phil where you are, but he’s gonna sic his ‘mother hen’ self on you if he sees you like this, so-”

And Technoblade doesn’t have to get another word out before Tubbo walks out, breezing his way back into his quarters and locking the door behind him. 

He slides down the length of the door, stomach rolling and lungs barely able to get any air. 

There’s an odd sense of finality in the iron bands around his ribcage. 

This-

This is it. 

Technoblade’s smart. He’s smart, and he’s overprotective of his family. There’s no way he won’t be onto Tubbo within the hour. By lying to all of them, Tubbo’s proved himself a threat, and he knows how the Captain and Technoblade have dealt with threats in the past. 

“You’ve just made a lot of big mistakes, mate.” 

His hands are shaking. His whole body’s shaking. He shoves a knuckle in his mouth, then starts chewing on one of his nails. 

There’s no chance for escape, not unless he wants to take a spacewalk out in the black without a suit. 

And Ranboo wouldn’t survive. Ranboo won’t survive. Ranboo…won’t survive.

For the first time, he really admits it to himself without either shoving the fact down or trying to talk himself out of it. And it hurts. It hurts like hell, like he’s giving up on them. Because he is. But it’s true. 

Ranboo isn’t likely to make it. Not like this. And he can’t fix anything. 

He crawls to their crate, index finger bleeding like his thumb did, and opens it up just as the 21% melts to 34%. 

Ranboo has an expression on their face that screams of pain, and Tubbo doesn’t know how to help. 

He doesn’t know how to fix this. Ranboo’s in pain, Ranboo’s in danger… and he’s failing them. 

He scoffs harshly, bringing a hand up to his hair. Like he hadn’t already failed them.  

He’s still sitting there when Technoblade comes knocking at his door. 

“Tubbo?” 

His breath catches in his throat. 

“Techno told me you didn’t look too good, do you need help?”

“Told you he would mother hen.”

“Techno-”

He’s known this moment would come. 

“Tubbo, mate, are you okay?” 

His ears are ringing so much that he can barely hear his hyperventilating breaths over it. 

He hears a few more words, then silence, then more questions. 

He keeps hyperventilating. The world is spinning around him. He needs time to stop but it can’t. 

The Captain says something about coming in, and he can barely get his mouth to form a desperate yell of ‘no, wait’ before the lock on the door clicks and he lunges towards the door too late. 

The lid of Ranboo’s crate is off. 

Their comatose body and 34% are in full view. 

The door opens, and Tubbo can see on their faces the exact moment when the Captain and Technoblade notice Ranboo in the crate. 

Chapter Text

“You’ve just made a lot of big mistakes, mate-” 

For a moment, one single, heart-wrenching moment, nobody breathes. 

The kind face of the Captain merges from concern for Tubbo into confusion, then a look of understanding and betrayal melts into existence as his eyes flick to Tubbo, frozen with an arm braced on the desk to catch his fall and a hand tangled in his hair, staring at them in wide-eyed, animalistic fear. “Mate, what-”

Technoblade is much faster to react. 

In half a heartbeat, Tubbo is grabbed by the shirt collar and slammed up against the wall across from Ranboo’s crate with a yell of pain and a resounding clang, arms pinned to his sides by Technoblade’s iron grip. The man’s teeth are bared, gold-capped lower canines glinting maliciously as he growls, “What the hell is this?!” 

Tubbo can barely breathe, much less answer him. His head and back are throbbing from being slammed into the metal, and not a thought is going through his mind; there are no emotions other than panic. 

It’s all he can do to feel his heart pounding in his chest and not scream in fear at Technoblade  snarling in his face. 

“Techno? What’s going on?” 

His eyes widen, and he somehow starts to hyperventilate faster.  

No, not Tommy, please no-

“What the hell did you do?” Technoblade growls, and Tubbo wants to sob. 

Over Technoblade’s shoulder, footsteps echo down the hallway and he can see Phil working on the crate, pressing buttons that he recognizes as initiating the deactivation sequence. 

“Don’t-” he chokes out, trying to kick his legs. “They’re not-” 

“Techno, what the fuck? What the fuck are you doing? Put him down!” Tommy yells from just outside the door. 

“Guys, what-” Wilbur stammers, voice further down the hall.

Great, something in the back of his brain frantically spits. He has a full audience for his and Ranboo’s deaths. 

“They’re not what?” the Captain asks, voice cold as ice as he rises and turns around to face Tubbo. All at once, the struggle drains out of him. The Captain’s eyes are steel, metal like a blaster, metal like a bullet. “What aren’t they, Tubbo?” 

Tubbo gapes wordlessly, eyes blown open and mouth trembling, looking like a fish held up away from water that’s just in sight. 

“Wait, what’s-” Tommy gasps. “Is that-” 

“Tommy, wait, no, stay back-” 

“Wilbur, that’s a fuckin’ person in there-”  

“So, are you part of a ring?” the Captain asks casually. “Smuggling slaves for rich fuckers to the outer worlds?” Quick as a flash, the man reaches over to the mess Tubbo’s duffel has turned into on his desk and snatches up his trusty blaster, nonchalantly flicking off the safety with a terrifyingly, nearly silent echo. “Though I must admit, I haven’t heard of them hiring so young.” 

“Better at hidin’,” Technoblade hisses. “Didn’t quite take you for the human trafficker type. What were you gonna do with them?” 

“They already look half dead,” the Captain mutters. “Was all this just torture?”

“You sick fuck,” Technoblade says, pushing him into the wall again so hard he can feel the bruises blooming. “Were you just tryin’ to kill them?”

Was he- 

Trying to- kill Ranboo? Ranboo??

“How dare you,” Tubbo says quietly, voice dark in a way even he hasn’t heard before. 

And everyone goes dead silent.  

There are four pairs of eyes on him as he hangs there on the wall, all showing various levels of anger and confusion and…betrayal. 

All Tubbo’s fear has been replaced with rage, boiling in his head, in his blood. Rage is the only fuel he has, and fuck if it’s not trying to send him rocketing to the next system over. If he could set fire to Technoblade with his glare, it would be a conflagration. 

“How dare I?” Technoblade scoffs, incredulous. 

And Tubbo fucking snaps. 

“How DARE YOU!” he yells, lunging out as far as he can in Technoblade’s grip to meet the man’s stunned gaze as he seizes his muscular arms just below the elbow. “How dare you even think you know ANYTHING about what I'm doing here! How dare you think I want him anything other than alive! This was the ONLY WAY I could get them out of there without them being killed! Either he was gonna get out of the Confederation’s hands in a box or he would’ve been fuckin’ tortured for the rest of his life until he died and I never would’ve seen him again. You don’t know what you’re talking about because you don’t know what the fuck is going on here! So yes, how dare you!” He’s breathing hard, snarling as he almost spits his next words in Technoblade’s face, which hovers just a few inches from his own. “How fucking dare you.” 

Everyone is silent for a moment as Tubbo pants for breath, all in shock from his outburst. 

Technoblade drops him. 

He slides down the wall with a yelp, still gasping for air, landing hard and curling up a little as his knees give out from underneath him. He must look absolutely pathetic, on his hands and knees in front of the crew of the Esbi’ai. 

The purple-black stone around his neck swings back and forth, back and forth below him. 

“Get them out of what?” Wilbur whispers. 

“You’re on the run from the government?” Technoblade blurts, speaking through gritted teeth.

“...Tubbo?” Tommy’s voice cracks and Tubbo’s eyes fly to the utterly terrified expression on his face. And unless he’s dead wrong, there’s an ounce of sympathy in his eyes, swirled around with fear and betrayal. 

Betrayal. 

It stings more than he thought it would. He lets his gaze drift down, unable to meet Tommy’s eyes any longer. It hurts too much. 

“Mate,” the Captain says softly as he kneels to get on Tubbo’s level where he’s still crumpled on the floor. “What did you do?”

He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out but a broken and forbidden sob, one that should be saved for either Ranboo’s arms or when he’s alone. 

Not in front of everyone. 

Not like this. 

Because it’s the same question he’s been asking himself over and over every time he stared at Ranboo’s unconscious body frozen in a box of slowly melting gunk. Because with the stasis deteriorating, that meant too many things: he couldn’t accurately keep track of Ranboo’s condition and he wouldn’t know if they were dying or perfectly fine, they’d wake up too soon and be discovered and the two of them maybe killed for the deception by these dangerous people and maybe turned in, this whole thing couldn’t be for nothing he couldn’t fail them not again this was all his fault anyway-

“Hey-” 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he spits as he jerks himself upwards, curling into a ball that mirrors Ranboo’s position across from him and holding his hands towards the wall. His head is spinning and his chest aches with the telltale signs of not enough oxygen; his breaths come out of him in strangled wheezes. “I did what I had to do to get them out-” Another sob chokes its way from his throat. “I did what I could. I did everything I could.” 

“They were getting… tortured, you said?” 

The Captain’s voice is soft and- and understanding, it doesn’t make sense. And Tubbo finds himself nodding as he stares at the floor- finally, finally telling the honest truth, just without any words. 

He feels raw. 

“Why?” Wilbur breathes, pulling the chair out from under the desk and rolling it closer to the door before sitting on it backwards. He leans his head on his arms as though this is an analysis he needs to make, a judgement he needs to approve of before letting his cards away from his chest. Tubbo doesn’t know if he appreciates that, but then again…it’s the same thing he did to this crew. He’d be an awful hypocrite to not like it now. 

“That is a long fucking story,” Tubbo scoffs, sniffling and scrubbing angrily at his face with much more force than needed as if he could shove the tears that had fallen back into his eyes. 

“Well, then you’d better hurry up and tell it,” Technoblade huffs back, glaring down at him with an infuriated expression that pierces him to the core. “Because you have got a hell of a lot of explainin’ to do.” 

Chapter Text

“...I grew up on the street,” Tubbo admits, voice barely above a whisper. Captain Phil sits on one side of him on his bunk, and Technoblade on the other. Tommy sits criss-cross on the floor, absently playing with his boot laces as he stares just next to Tubbo with an expression that can’t quite be read. Wilbur is sitting backwards on the chair, resting his head and arms on the backrest. Tubbo’s arms are curled around his torso like he can shield himself from the impact of his words; he can tell Technoblade is one wrong word away from putting him in a headlock like he did the bandit. His arms and back are still throbbing; he can still feel Technoblade’s fingers around his biceps. “I don’t remember my parents. I was about ten when I met Ranboo.” 

“Someone stop that kid!” 

Tubbo tucked the misshapen loaf of bread underneath his jacket and bolted, weaving through crowds of yard workers and people who couldn’t give less of a shit. 

He was going to eat good tonight.

“Psst! Over here!” 

Tubbo ignored the voice and kept running- or he tried to, but two arms reached out and snatched the crook of his elbow. He tried to fight them off, but they wrapped their arms around his one and hauled him into an alleyway. 

“Hey-” 

“Shh!” 

Tubbo glowered but obeyed, pressing himself up against the wall of the alley behind a piece of pipe. 

“Where the hell did that kid go?”

“I think he went that way!” the high-pitched voice of the person who yanked him into the alleyway yelled. 

Tubbo froze. 

Did that person really save him just to sell him out?

Quick footsteps echoed back down the alleyway, and Tubbo curled his free hand into a fist, ready for the punch. 

“He’s gone,” the voice said. “And I- ow!” 

As soon as a face peeked into Tubbo’s vision, he let his fist fly. 

“The fuck did you do that for?” Tubbo squeaked. 

“I-I led him away!” the dark-haired kid whined from the ground of the alleyway, crumpled in a heap and holding their face. “I just wanted some of your bread!” 

“Why?” 

“Why what?”

“Why should I give you some?”

They looked up, frowning and holding their cheek. Their face was covered in a thin layer of grime and their clothes were tattered, matching Tubbo’s filthy face and clothes pilfered from wherever he could easily find them. The only strange thing about them was the tarnished silvery chain around their neck with a dark purple rock hanging off of it. “I-I can trade…?”

Tubbo made a suspicious face, but stared at the kid, who looked to be around his age. “Trade what?”

“I know a good sleeping place, it’s all high up so people usually can’t see. I can show you.”

Tubbo frowned, then flicked his overgrown hair from his eyes, brought out the misshapen lump of bread, and tore it in half. “Show me.” 

The kid smiled and caught the bread, immediately taking a big bite. “M’ nam-” They swallowed. “My name’s Ranboo.” 

“I’m Tubbo.”

“Well, c’mon, Tubbo! Let me show you!” 

Ranboo grabbed his hand and raced down the alleyway, dragging Tubbo behind. 

“And that was that,” Tubbo laughs, a little bitterly. He hasn’t sat back and thought about that first day in a long time. “It took a little bit, but…we became inseparable. We were a team,” he says softly, looking down at his arms wrapped around his chest and the pendant still hanging from his neck. “It was us against the world.” 

“Did you ever get off the street?” Wilbur asks softly, face filled with concern that feels oddly abrasive when Tubbo looks up at him.

“Duh,” Tubbo scoffs, “or else we wouldn’t be in this-”

Or else we wouldn’t be in this situation. 

“-o-or else I wouldn’t be bothering you right now,” he settles for. “But we got out.”

“How?” the Captain asks, voice soft. 

Tubbo opens his mouth and hesitates for a moment as he remembers the pain in his forehead, but then shakes his head with a humorless laugh and continues. 

“It wasn’t even on purpose. People just picked a fight with us, and-” 

“You’re gonna leave us alone if you know what’s good for you!” Tubbo stood with his fists at his shoulders, trying not to let the three older boys who were trying to corner him and Ranboo see the shaking in his knees. The rain from one of Pogtopia’s infamous storms was pouring down, soaking Tubbo’s clothes to his body and his hair to his eyes. 

“Tubbo, stop- w-we don’t want any trouble!” Ranboo tried to reassure. “Just- just let us go, and we’ll be on our way. We don’t want a fight.” 

“Yeah, you heard him!” Tubbo crowed. “Leave us be!” 

Ranboo was right, he didn’t want to fight, but he couldn’t just let these three goons take whatever the hell they wanted!

“How old were you?” Tommy whispers, and Tubbo blinks. 

“Um- thirteen, maybe fourteen,” he responds. “But those guys…well, we managed to get away eventually.” 

Eventually. 

“Where’d they hit you?” Tubbo whispered, trying to see between the hair plastered to his eyes from rain and blood. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t see one of the guys had a knife. 

“Side,” Ranboo whimpered. “It hurts.” 

Tubbo held out a hand and pulled them up, ignoring how his forehead throbbed with every beat of his heart. 

He didn’t know how long they stumbled through the maze of Pogtopia’s alleyways, pushing at doors to see if they could sneak into someplace and rest where it was dry. 

His heart leapt when one of the rusted doorknobs gave under his hand.

“Here, c’mon, in here!” he wheezed, dragging himself and Ranboo along, body throbbing with newly forming bruises; he couldn’t tell if it was blood or rain dripping from his head. “The door’s unlocked.” 

“R’there places to hide in there?” Ranboo huffed, flicking soaked bangs from their eyes as they winced and held their ribs. 

“Guess we’ll…find out,” Tubbo muttered, nudging open the door with his hand as the world started to spin around him. 

“Don’t remember much more,” Tubbo whispers, staring at the ground. 

He woke up underneath a counter, dazed and confused, face and head throbbing as something poked at him. Everything hurt. 

“Hey! Wake up! How’d you get in here?” 

“We’re so sorry!” Ranboo’s voice said as their shape scrambled up and nearly fell over with a cry of pain as they clutched at their ribs. “Some people chased us a-and hurt us and we just needed a place to stay that was out of the rain-” 

“You willin’ to work for it?” 

Tubbo whimpered, touching his head and wanting to simultaneously gag and cry at the feelings of flaky blood and utter stinging pain throbbing outwards from underneath his fingertips because of the gash on his forehead. 

“Work for it?” 

“I ain’t aimin’ to lose money by takin’ a couple’a street rats in without pay,” the pale shape of a blurry lady said matter-of-factly, bringing what was probably her broom out from under the counter and planting it on the floor before leaning on it. “But I’ll letcha wait ‘til you can work. Ain’t nobody who can’t work should be workin’. I’m not that stone-cored.” 

“Th-thank you,” Ranboo breathed as their chilled hand touched Tubbo’s head and he cried out a little at the sudden sensation. They started to stroke his hair and he exhaled, shuddering and curling into it. He hadn’t been expecting the chill to feel so good. “Um…what kind of work?” 

“Nothin’ yet, you two’re soaked through and bleedin’ all over my floor, and your friend don’t look too good,” she said as spots started dancing on the sides of Tubbo’s vision and his eyes began to flutter. “Git upstairs, and bring him with you. Shop can wait a few minutes. I won’t have nobody dyin’ in here.” 

Ranboo’s hand moved to his shoulder, and he shifted upwards before his eyes rolled up in his head and the spots took over his vision completely. 

He woke up to Ranboo curled into his side. The room was dark, the mattress lumpy, the blanket Ranboo was laying on top of was a patchwork of random bits of fabric, and there was something taped to his forehead under his hair. 

Ranboo hummed in their sleep and stretched an arm over him, and Tubbo could see they’d gotten a new shirt that was just slightly too long for them. 

Tubbo curled back into the thin pillows and Ranboo’s arm, the feelings of safety and care  washing over him lulling him into a gentle sleep. 

“But…she took us in. Nursed us back to health. She worked in a mechanics shop, so we kinda became apprentices there afterwards. We got settled, spent two or so years working with Nara…then they showed up.” 

“The Confederation’s presence on Pogtopia strengthened a few years ago, I remember reading about it,” Wilbur adds softly, wincing as he shifts. 

Someone’s hand touches Tubbo’s and he flinches, looking over at Captain Phil, who looks a little guilty. 

“Sorry, mate, but you’re really digging into your arms.” 

Tubbo releases his fingers from his biceps and is surprised at how loose it feels now. 

“He brought them there, actually,” he whispers, running his hands down his legs. He doesn’t know if it’s for the stimulation or to get the sweat off his hands or both. “The Confederation officers. They’d needed something fixed. And Ranboo was so eager to help. The officers asked Nara questions, they asked him questions. The next day, they gave him an invitation.” 

He should’ve known it was too good to be true. 

“Do you think I should do it?” Ranboo sat on the bed in the room that had become the two of theirs, fidgeting with their hands. “I mean…it sounds crazy good.” 

“They’re paying for you going to school, Boo!” Tubbo laughed, shoving the sadness inside him down where it didn’t have a hope of coming back out. “I think you should.” 

“But…” their eyes welled with tears as their head fell onto Tubbo’s shoulder. “It’s only for me…” 

“Don’t worry about me,” he reassured as he hugged them. “I’ll be fine. You can come back here after you’re done with your fancy schoolin’ and we can do anything you want.” 

“Promise?” 

“Promise.” 

“Swear it on Benson?” 

Tubbo laughed into his chest, pretending his eyes weren’t welling with tears. “I swear it on Benson.” 

Tubbo opens his mouth. Nothing comes out but an ugly sob before he manages to choke out, “I told them they should go. And they did.” 

He numbly hears himself explain how he left Nara’s store behind to find work at a shipyard. 

“Transmissions came at first, then they stopped. A-and after a few months of radio silence, I finally got a message.” 

‘dear tuBbo’

“It didn’t make any sense at first because it all just seemed- I don’t know. But it was just so off I couldn’t wrap my fuckin’ head around it.” 

‘i miss yOu lots. Things are not The same without yOu. hope life treats you well.’ 

“The way they were writing…they’d never written like it before . It just- it all was just wrong. Their letters had gotten more distant, but never like that.”

‘reMember to say hi to nara for me. i hope she gets the new shop soon.’

“They talked about things I’d told them had happened like they’d forgotten, and nothing made sense, but-” 

‘everything goes along, as it does. miss and love you. wanna see you again soon, please.’

“Then I realized-”  

-RANBOO’

“There was a code.” 

Tubbo stared up at the letter on his yard-issued holopad in disbelief, dread pooling in his stomach. This could not be right. Ever since Ranboo had learned to write, they’d reveled in using all the… everything properly. They’d never spell things like this. Everything was just whacked up! Something had to be wrong with them.

Were they sick? Injured? Had something worse happened?

He frowned at the letters in Ranboo’s message, eyes bouncing between the capitalized letters until they widened and he flipped over onto his stomach to squint closer at his holopad screen. 

B…O…TTOM. Bottom? 

Tubbo snorted incredulously, though the concern building in the pit of his stomach didn’t go away. Was this their idea of a joke? 

Then, he looked at the bottom of the page. 

There was a smattering of pixels almost like a smudge in the bottom left corner. And…a smudge wasn’t possible because all the messages were digital. 

He zoomed in on the pixels, further and further…until they turned into a string of letters. 

A-V-Y-A-B-Y-P-U-N B-Z O-L-S-W T-L N-L-A T-L V-B-A 

-YHUIVV

“Okay, what the fuck,” Tubbo mumbled. Was now really the time to go back to that phase they had while living at Nara’s? Ranboo had dug up a book on codes and become obsessed with the idea of secret codes, so the two of them had memorized every single one in it. There was one that the two of them had used most often, though, and he knew it when he saw it. 

He had to wrack his brain a bit to try and decode it, barely remembering how this specific one had worked- something about moving letters forwards from the coded message? 

He tried number after number of moving letters forwards, eyes stinging from sitting and staring so closely at his holopad as his clock ticked further and further into the night.

But when he finally decoded the message, Tubbo’s stomach dropped. 

T-O-R-T-U-R-I-N-G U-S H-E-L-P M-E G-E-T M-E O-U-T

-RANBOO

“So let me get this straight,” Technoblade huffs, looking a little pale. “Your friend went to a government-run academy…where they tortured the students?” 

“Techno-” 

“Forgive me if this sounds a little fantastical, Phil-”  

“Don’t believe me all you want, but it’s the truth,” Tubbo huffs, sending a side-eyed glare at Technoblade. “I wouldn’t make shit like that up, especially not about them.” 

“How long did it take you?” Wilbur asks. “I mean- to get them out?” 

Guilt fills Tubbo’s chest like molten metal. “Almost a year. They were there for five months before I got the message, and it took me eleven to come up with a plan that wouldn’t get us killed as well as everything I needed for it plus to get away, so…they were there for a year and a half, almost.” 

He buries his face in his hands with shame. 

“I don’t know what they did to Ranboo,” he stammers, voice tremulous and muffled by his calloused hands over his face. He almost feels like he’s hiding from everyone else in the room- like it’s safer there in his little pathetic bit of darkness if he can’t see them. “I only know what I’ve seen of them and what little they could c-communicate to me. But-” He lets out a shaky lungful of air and breathes, “It was fuckin’ awful.” 

It’s too much and yet not enough to describe it all. 

And it’s all his fault. 

“But then how’d you-”

A choked gasp cuts Wilbur off, and the whole room falls dead silent. 

Chapter Text

The sounds of coughing and gagging echo around Tubbo’s small quarters, making Tommy wince. Tubbo registers what it means a split second later, and whirls to Ranboo’s crate.

Ranboo’s head flies up, split-colored hair soaked and dripping in cryo-fluid, flinging it all over Tubbo’s tiny quarters. They’re spitting the clear blue liquid from their mouth, retching dryly as they rip out the breathing tube Tubbo had so carefully threaded down their throat with a violent motion that makes him cringe. Once they’ve recovered adequately enough to actually wheeze, they shake the fluid from their eyes, which whizz around a million miles a minute, running over each and every one of the people in the room as if they aren’t there. 

Nobody is moving a muscle but them as they cough harshly, but Tubbo can swear he can see his own heart pounding itself out of his chest. 

Their eyes finally land on Tubbo, then Technoblade.

“Ranboo?” Tubbo breathes, finally inching forwards on the bed. “Can you hear me?”

And then Ranboo starts screaming. 

They scramble forward out of the box, tearing the heart monitor’s sticker off and making it beep incessantly. They almost tip the crate over in their desperation and it topples back into place with an ear-shattering bang of heavy metal on metal as they shove themself in the corner made by the crate and the wall beneath his desk in what seems like less than a second, all while still keeping up an almost unbreaking note of absolute terror. 

Their screams are bloodcurdling and cracking and awful; Wilbur’s shoulders shoot up and Tommy clamps his hands on his ears and backs away as someone shuts off the heart monitor and Tubbo flies from the bed and onto the floor. 

“Ranboo- Ranboo, look at me-”

“NO-!” They’re flailing a little beneath the desk, wet feet slipping on the floor as they shove themself deeper into the corner, weaving their hands through their hair and pulling hard, rocking back and forth a little as they panic. “They’re gonna-” 

“No!” Tubbo tries to reassure, holding out his hands to try and calm them down as they continue to shriek and sob, their voice is already hoarse what did they go through what were they forced to go through? The first words he hears of theirs in too long are them screaming and protesting against unknown assailants doing something to them…something that turns Tubbo’s stomach with the fact that he doesn’t know what happened and doesn’t know how to help. “No, Ranboo, it’s okay! I’m here-” 

“I don’t want to- no, no, no no no-”

Tubbo’s eyes fly around the room for anything he can find that might help, anything, and his eyes land on Enderchest, who’s lying in a dark lump on the ground. He reaches over and snatches the thing up, then offers it out to Ranboo, who looks a moment away from actually passing out from how fast they’re hyperventilating. “Look, Ranboo! Look, it’s Enderchest.”

Ranboo’s hyperventilating slowly dies down, making Tubbo’s ears almost ring in the absence of noise, though they’re still making the loudest and most pitiful whimpering noises Tubbo’s ever heard as they breathe. “...En…ender…”

“Yes!” Tubbo could cry with relief, and he almost does as Ranboo’s eyes flicker to Enderchest in his hands and their breaths continue to slow. He can see their eyes taking in every detail of the stuffed cat they hand-sewed, with its lumpy body and falling-off tail and ears; he can see recognition start to light up in their face. “Yeah, it’s Enderchest, remember?” 

Ranboo’s almost glowing eyes finally meet his, and in all the chaos, Tubbo realizes that their eyes are now two different colors: one the green he remembers, the other a deep red that could almost pass for brown. 

It’s like something clicks for the first time in Ranboo’s panic-ridden mind when their eyes lock. 

“Tubbo?” he breathes, voice so tremulous it almost sounds like a sob. 

“Yeah, yes, yes, it’s me, bossman,” Tubbo says, laughing with relief. “It’s me, I’m here.”

“Y’r real?” 

Is he… real? 

Tubbo’s eyes finally overflow and his heart voice breaks as he answers. “...yeah. I’m real, Ranboo. I’m here.”

Ranboo launches themself out from under the desk using the wall as a springboard, slipping and nearly falling on their face on the slick floor, soaking Tubbo’s body in cryo-fluid and tears once they have him in their arms. Tubbo catches them, nearly falling onto the ground himself with the force of their tackle, Enderchest flying off somewhere in the room. They’re sobbing in his ear, breaths loud and wet and hitching, and he’s crying too, he doesn’t care that it’s in front of the Esbi’ai’s crew. 

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, voice thick with tears. “I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’m here.” 

Ranboo is almost wailing. “Tu- Tubbo they- they talk to me, they want me to-” 

“No, you’re safe now,” Tubbo shushes with a sniff. His clothes are soaked through and absolutely plastered to himself, and the chemical stench of cryo-fluid is never going to leave his nose, but he doesn’t care. One hand is threaded into Ranboo’s soaked hair as he cradles their head, his other is wrapped tight around their ribs, and Ranboo’s arms are woven around him in a chilled vice grip, and Ranboo is here, and Ranboo is alive, and Ranboo will be kept safe if it’s the last thing he ever does. “They’re not gonna get you, not while I’m alive. I swear it.”  

Ranboo sobs in his ear, and Tubbo just repeats their name in an awe-filled whisper over and over, they’re here they’re here they’re here and they’re alive. They’re alive, they’re breathing, their heart is pounding, their arms are tight around his back, they’re here. 

He got them back. 

Nothing and nobody exists but him and his sibling and sweat and tears and cryo-fluid dripping down their body and onto his clothes.

It’s okay. It’s alright. The words are almost a mantra as he murmurs them to Ranboo. 

And it might actually be okay this time. Tubbo doesn’t feel like he’s lying to Ranboo.

He could never lie to them anyway.

Then, Ranboo’s whole body flinches and their nails dig into his back at the sound of cracking knees. 

The noise makes Tubbo’s heart start to pound once again as his eyes fly open. 

Right. 

The crew of the Esbi’ai has been here the whole time. 

“Hi, mate,” Phil says softly. Ranboo’s breath hitches as their grip on Tubbo tightens even more and Phil hurriedly soothes them with, “It’s alright, you’re okay. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

Ranboo stays silent, nails still dug tightly into the back of Tubbo’s jacket, but they no longer feel like they’re trying to cut off Tubbo’s circulation. 

It’s an odd kind of silent, like he’s judging the situation and how it’s going to go, and how he should respond. He used to go that kind of silent all the time, but now feels…different. Tubbo realizes dimly as he takes a deep, hitching breath that he can’t tell how it’s different, he just knows it is. And he isn’t going to lie- that scares him a little. 

How different are they? What happened to them?

What did Tubbo do when he told Ranboo to take that outstretched hand that led to a monster he didn’t know would rear its ugly head at him?

Are things ever going to be the same?

“I’m Phil, I’m the captain here,” Phil continues, in the same quiet tone. “Me and my crew- we’re gonna help you as much as we can. Okay?”

Ranboo tenses, then wilts. They nod, bringing their nails out of Tubbo’s jacket and their arms out from around him, but staying slumped and a little curled up in Tubbo’s arms. Tubbo tightens his grip on them, hefting them upwards a bit; they must be exhausted. Their eyes flick up to the pendant around Tubbo’s neck and widen as they shakily reach up to roll the purple-black stone between their spindly fingers.

“This is my son Wilbur,” Phil introduces, and gestures to Wilbur as the man gives a little wave from where he’s sitting backwards on the desk chair. His face is a little pale, but he somehow manages to keep up at least a facade of a professional manner in the face of…everything that’s just happened. Ranboo is still absently rolling the pendant back and forth, back and forth, between their trembling fingers. They stare blankly at the purple-black stone, giving no indication that they can even hear Phil. “He’s our medic. He and Tubbo can make sure you’re okay, alright? We just need to make sure nothing’s wrong.”

Ranboo swallows, then nods again, still anxiously toying with the pendant, still not looking in Phil’s direction. “...okay.” Their voice is completely shot from screaming. It sounds so small. 

“Hand me a towel,” Tubbo croaks, and reaches up to the desk. Ranboo’s tank top and shorts are plastered to them, and he can see the goosebumps forming on their scarred skin from the chilly air of the ship he’s now grown used to. He sniffles; he needs to wipe his eyes and warm up Ranboo, and he doesn’t want to get any of the sticky, acrid cryo-fluid in his eyes. Their hand goes to the base of his neck and squeezes as someone hands down a towel; Tubbo’s too preoccupied making sure Ranboo’s okay to see who. “Yeah? What’s wrong?” 

“...don’ let go, Tubbo,” they whisper, one green, one brown-red eye both welling with tears. “Please.”

Tubbo scoops his arms around them and curls protectively over their whole body as best he can. He can feel them pressing their forehead into his shoulder; he can feel tears dripping onto his jacket. 

“I won’t,” he whispers back. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

Almost the whole crew helps usher Ranboo to the infirmary in their own little way. Tommy shucks his jacket and offers it to Ranboo once Tubbo’s gotten them to their feet, ignoring the slight whirling sensation he feels when he stands. They stare at Tommy’s slightly trembling hand offering the red flight jacket, looking him up and down without ever meeting his eyes with an unreadable expression before glancing at Tubbo. Then, wordlessly, Ranboo takes the jacket and brings it over their towel-covered shoulders with a soft, genuine smile. 

Tubbo arranges it over their shoulders, then looks over at Tommy, who’s staring at Tubbo’s shoes with a blank face. Tubbo’s eyes linger on Tommy for a moment, and something sad bobs to the surface of his sternum. He glances away, still holding Ranboo’s shoulders as the euphoria of having them back melts a little. 

The back of his skull is throbbing.

Phil opens the door and even goes to help Ranboo when they slip and stumble on their way out the door, but blessedly thinks better of it and ends up just hovering awkwardly. 

Wilbur talks quietly about the infirmary, what it looks like, the layout, and what he might need to do, but to Tubbo it sounds like nothing but static. 

Techno follows behind the little group, silent. 

Tubbo almost feels like he’s up against the wall again. He can still feel his jacket tightening in Techno’s fists; he’s sure the places on his head, shoulders, and back where he was slammed into the metal of his quarters’ walls will bruise. 

Tubbo keeps his arms around Ranboo’s shoulders and tries to keep Techno in his periphery without ever looking back at the man. 

It’s all he can focus on beside Ranboo stumbling, Ranboo leaning into his side, Ranboo breathing shakily, Ranboo being far too thin to be healthy, Ranboo clutching one of his hands in an ice-cold grip that’s only a little colder than it used to be. Because Techno’s footfalls are behind him, and he has to fight the rising feeling of claustrophobia in the back of his mind. 

There is a difference between being in a tight space and feeling boxed in. Right now, Tubbo is only feeling the latter. 

He hates it. 

Ranboo’s hand on his tightens as soon as they enter the infirmary. 

“It’s okay,” Tubbo reassures in a whisper as Wilbur shoos Tommy and Phil out and resigns Technoblade to standing at least outside the door so he won’t loom. “I’ll be helping. We just need to make sure everything’s okay.”

“I’m…okay.” Ranboo whispers distantly back, voice hoarse and grating. They stare at nothing but the medical equipment.

Wilbur closes the door behind and Tubbo can’t stop himself from giving an exhale of relief. It’s not a particularly strong shield, but it’s something. Away from Technoblade. 

“We’re just making sure,” Wilbur repeats as Tubbo settles Ranboo on one of the beds- the one Wilbur had been put on. “Tubbo, can you help? I’m still a little stiff.”

“Um…” He glances back to Ranboo, who’s staring down at the floor. Their hair is still mostly wet and sticking to their forehead; the half with a few inches of white roots is shining blue with the remnants of cryo-gunk. Their now-red right eye reminds Tubbo of the color of drying blood. It contrasts brightly against the white hair growing in on the same side of their scalp. They’re clutching at Tommy’s jacket that still rests over the towel on their shoulders. If not for the rise and fall of their chest and the slight shivering that’s overtaken them, they’d be a statue. “Sure.”

Wilbur snaps on a pair of gloves and it makes Ranboo flinch, but they don’t react further. They just stare off into space. 

Tubbo reluctantly chalks it up to the noise and moves on. 

“I didn’t know people were approved for cryo-freeze,” Wilbur mutters under his breath as he opens up a screen and starts scrolling. 

They’re not, Tubbo tries to say, but his voice has decided to give out. He opens his mouth again after he swallows and says, “It was the only way I could think of. I did my research.” 

“No studies found brain damage in animal subjects,” Wilbur breathes as he squints at the holopad, then nods. He scribbles a somewhat lengthy list down on a piece of paper he got from somewhere, then turns around. “Okay. I think I know what I need to look for.” Tubbo turns to help and the man holds up a blue-covered hand with a knowing but not unkind smirk. “Gloves?” 

“Right.”

Wilbur starts talking softly, holding up a scanner and a pulse oximeter and explaining what he needs to do as Tubbo pulls on another pair of blue gloves and walks over, ignoring the throbbing at the back of his head. 

As soon as he sees Tubbo, Ranboo freezes. Completely. He doesn’t look like he’s breathing. 

Then, they start to silently mouth something over and over. 

“Ranboo?” Wilbur asks, pulling over a stool and sitting in front of them. “Are you alright?”

Their eyes are distant, staring at nothing halfway between the edge of the other cot and the ground, as they breathe out the same sentence again and again. 

“...Ranboo?” Tubbo whispers. 

“Ranboo, can you show me you’re okay?” Wilbur repeats, reaching closer to wave a little in Ranboo’s face. 

Their eyes blow open and they flinch again, staring at Wilbur’s hand and still repeating the sentence as the blood drains from their face. Then, they sit ramrod straight, letting go of Tommy’s jacket. It falls to the cot with the towel, exposing their scarred arms covered in goosebumps.

Tubbo hesitates and then reaches for their shoulder, trying to reassure them somehow, maybe he’ll help better than Wilbur, but Ranboo’s mumbling only becomes harried and hyperventilated and loud. 

“Two by two hands of blue two by two hands of blue two by two hands of blue two by two hands of blue-“

They sound…they sound crazy. 

Did they snap while Tubbo was trying to get them out? Did he catch them in a few final moments of lucidity? Of sanity?

The Ranboo he knew is gone, he knows that. The Tubbo that Ranboo left behind has changed too…but how different are they? Has Ranboo lost their mind? 

What did the Confederation do to them?

“…Ranboo?” he whispers. 

They shake their head, entire body trembling. “No, no, I don’t want to tell them what I see-” their voice breaks and they choke out a sob. “I don’t wanna tell them what I see- two by two, the hands- the hands of blue-” 

Wilbur straightens a little with a small gasp and peels off his gloves. 

“Is this better?” he asks, spreading his bare hands where Ranboo can see them. “No more gloves.”

Two by two, hands of-

Tubbo lets out a gasp of his own and seizes the bottom of his gloves, all but ripping them off to get them as far from Ranboo as possible. 

Hands of blue. 

Hands of blue…gloves. Medical gloves, most likely. Two by two… two people. And with the scars all over them…

Gears are turning disgustingly fast in Tubbo’s aching head, and he hates every single conclusion his mind conjures up. 

“…no more blue?” Their voice is barely there, cracking pitifully. Almost childlike with how small it sounds. 

Ranboo sounds- fuck, he sounds broken. 

And Tubbo had just stood there like an idiot. He’s barely had Ranboo back for twenty minutes and he’s already made them panic because he reminded them of the literal torture they went through.  

Some brother he is, huh?

“...no more,” Tubbo breathes after chucking the gloves away. “They’re gone.” 

What has he done to Ranboo? What did they do to Ranboo, that they’d react like this?

Ranboo reaches out a shaky hand and grasps Tubbo’s wrist, tugging him down onto the cot with them. He lands hard from Ranboo upsetting his balance, almost bouncing on the cot. Once he’s properly seated and the world has stopped spinning, Tubbo hesitates again, then brings up the towel and drapes it back over their shoulders. He does the same with Tommy’s jacket. Ranboo runs their spindly, trembling fingers over the material of Tommy’s red flight jacket again and again as their breaths shudder. 

Ranboo leans into Tubbo’s shoulder as a tear rolls its way down their already bloodshot face. 

“I’m sorry,” Tubbo breathes, inching his arms around them. They don’t object, so he wraps his arms around them with a shaky sigh, tugging them in close. Not as tightly or desperately as before; this hug is meant to be welding to their cracks as much as Tubbo can manage. “I’m sorry we scared you.” 

“I don’t wanna tell them…” they whisper back. “…don’ wanna tell them what I see.”

“There’s just a few things I need to check, okay? And then I’ll leave you be,” Wilbur reassures. “I will need to check your eyes-” 

“Oh,” Ranboo blurts, straightening a little. “Eyes?”  

“Yup! I’ll just shine a light, nothing crazy,” Wilbur says, picking up a penlight to show them. 

Ranboo turns their face into Tubbo’s chest and sighs, ears turning a little red in the way they used to when they were embarrassed. “…okay.” 

Tubbo gives a look to Ranboo, wondering what they meant, but they’re obviously still disoriented and still have their face in his chest. He won’t ask until they’re more recovered; it’s not fair to them. He runs a hand down their head, stroking their still-wet hair, and can feel them relax a little into his chest.

Wilbur sanitizes his hands, and the examination begins. 

Wilbur, for all his ‘living-and-working-on-a-spaceship-with-his-family’-ness, has remarkable bedside manners. He holds up the pulse oximeter and explains exactly what it is, and when Ranboo asks if there are needles in a tremulous voice, he shows them that there are none. 

Another piece of evidence goes into the painfully pulsing grinder in Tubbo’s head that’s spitting out more and more gruesome conclusions of what exactly happened to Ranboo during all their time away. 

He tells Ranboo exactly what is about to happen regardless if they ask or not, keeping his voice soft but firm enough. He jots down the results of every scan with a small smile so that Tubbo can’t tell if they’re positive or if he’s just letting Ranboo think they are.

Tubbo doesn’t feel very helpful to Wilbur. He sits with Ranboo in his arms, explaining things further, keeping the jacket on their shoulders since it seems to soothe them, letting them squeeze his hand whenever something feels odd. 

Tubbo slowly learns every ache and pain in Ranboo’s body, that their now-red right eye feels a little dry and itchy, that their joints are stiff and a little hard to move from being cryogenically frozen in fetal position, that their throat stings and has a bit of damage from them ripping out the breathing tube in a panic, that the scarred skin all over their arms only has some feeling in it left, that their face is stinging wherever their tears fell, that they’re really tired and not really hungry and just a little thirsty.

There’s a knock on the door at one point that shoots Tubbo’s system full of adrenaline, and a fresh shirt and pants are there when Wilbur slips away to open it. Ranboo’s hand is white-knuckled in their grip on his own. They’re not any of the clothes Tubbo packed for Ranboo, but they still almost fit them. 

Wilbur turns around and busies himself at the counter while Tubbo helps Ranboo wrestle themself into the new clothes. 

There’s so many scars. 

Ranboo picks up Tommy’s jacket again afterwards and holds it tight over their shoulders, hands barely sticking out of the too-long sleeves on their borrowed shirt.

It’s when Wilbur mentions giving them a small dose of potion that things begin to unravel. 

“It would just be so you can sleep easier tonight, okay?”

Ranboo’s been drooping for the past ten minutes or so in Tubbo’s arms and is now practically using him as a pillow. Their eyelids had been fluttering, but as soon as Wilbur mentions a weakness potion, they snap back open. 

“You-” Their left hand shoots to a deep, circular scar on the back of their right hand and trembles slightly above it, like they can’t decide if they’ll cover it or not. “I- I-” They manage to twitch their head in the ghost of a shake before their eyes start to glaze over again. 

“Ranboo?” Tubbo shakes him a little, but he doesn’t show any indication of hearing. “Ranboo?!”

They’re limp in his arms, limp as the body they could’ve been. They’re awake, but they won’t wake up. 

“What’s wrong with them?” he whispers, head spinning. 

Wilbur stares in badly disguised shock for a moment, then scoops up a flashlight and flicks it into Ranboo’s eyes. “Their pupils are responsive, so they’re not unconscious, but they look- oh,” he breathes, understanding flooding his face as he turns off the light and sets it down. “They’re dissociated.” 

“They’re what?” 

“They’re like-” Wilbur frowns pensively, picking up Ranboo’s hand and giving it a squeeze. He gets no response. They’re perfectly limp. “Checked out from reality. Disconnected.”

“...people can do that?”

“In stressful enough situations, yeah,” Wilbur explains as he stands up and grabs a cloth to wipe off his hands. “If it’s bad enough, it can be what’s called a trauma response. Anything stressful happens, and-” he snaps his fingers. “They’re just…gone.” 

Tubbo feels the blood drain from his face as he looks up to Wilbur, still clutching Ranboo and keeping them upright against him. “Will they come back?!”

“Give them some time,” Wilbur reassures. “You can lay them down if you want so they can rest once they do come back to themself. You remember how to attach the heart monitor, right?” 

Tubbo nods, then blinks in surprise. “Where are you going?”

“Updating Phil, I’ll be back in a few. Let me know if anything happens, okay?” And Tubbo isn’t even able to protest, or ask about the updates for him since Ranboo’s his sibling, before Wilbur’s out the door with a holo-pad in one hand and the door is closing behind him.  

Tubbo’s left alone with his throbbing headache and his half-gone sibling. 

Ranboo is still limp in his arms, breathing slowly but steadily. If not for their eyes being open, he’d think they were asleep. If not for them breathing, he’d think they were dead. 

Tubbo takes a deep breath in and lets it out, wincing at the sharp aching of his skull and back. 

He moves Ranboo away from himself to lay him down but flinches at the feeling of nails digging into his hand. 

Ranboo is still staring blankly ahead, still apparently ‘disconnected’ from everything, as Wilbur had put it. 

But a part of him is still lucid enough to not let go. 

Wilbur comes back in to find Ranboo nearly asleep but still unresponsive on the cot and Tubbo still holding them as he draws the blanket up over the both of them. 

Wilbur glances at Tubbo’s hand and the nail marks in the back of it and doesn’t comment as he attaches the heart monitor’s sticker sensor to the inside of Ranboo’s wrist. He just asks if Tubbo wants help to take off his cryo-fluid soaked jacket. 

He doesn’t give Ranboo any potion. 

Chapter Text

Tubbo’s eyes are crusted together from sleep when he finally opens them. 

His entire body feels stiff and heavy, and he doesn’t remember dreaming. At all. 

Something beeps and he jumps a little, looking around for what’s making the noise before it sounds again. It’s steady, coming every few seconds, grating on his eardrums and not helping his still-aching head at all. The room is completely dark save for a few blinking lights and he knows it’s not his quarters. His arms are bare. There’s a warm and lanky body in his arms, breathing deeply in a way that seems foreign and yet so familiar.

It’s Ranboo. 

They’re alive, and here, and safe. 

He squeezes them a little tighter as the memories of yesterday come flooding back-

But where are they-

“It’s alright,” Ranboo’s tired voice murmurs. “It’s just my heart.” 

Tubbo’s mind flounders for a moment before he realizes Ranboo’s talking about the beeping of the heart monitor on the screen beside the cot they’re sharing.

They’re back. 

“Pretty sure your heart doesn’t beep by itself, bossman,” he jokes in a whisper, then his face falls. Maybe it might now. Who knows what the Confederation did to Ranboo. 

“No,” they agree airily, in the nearly silent tone of voice that can only be summoned in the dark dead of night. “I don’t think I’d like that very much.” 

“I can’t decide if it’d be annoying or funny when I scare you,” Tubbo shoots back, and Ranboo huffs a tiny laugh. 

That small noise makes Tubbo so much happier than he thinks he’s been since the Confederation took them away. 

“I’d make it annoying.”

“Yeah, I figured that, you ass,” Tubbo scoffs heatlessly, and when Ranboo laughs back into the echoing darkness of the medbay, it’s almost like nothing ever happened. 

Almost. 

Ranboo seems to be thinking along the same lines as they curl up a little tighter under Tubbo’s arm and the thin blankets of the cot. 

The medbay goes silent for a few minutes other than Ranboo’s shaky breathing and the steady beeping of their heart on the monitor. 

“...where are we?” Ranboo whispers, voice breaking. “I- I don’t remember here.” 

“We’re on the Esbi’ai,” Tubbo reassures as he rearranges his arm over Ranboo’s side. “Personal Syndicate-class cargo ship, crew of four. We’re headed for Kinoko, and we’ve been flying for about a week.” 

“...away?” 

“Away,” Tubbo repeats, trying to soothe them. “And you’re not going back, not if I have anything to say about-”

“It hurts,” they breathe, and curl up a little more, bringing their hands to their hair and beginning to pull. Immediately, Tubbo sits up, everything on high alert, ignoring the almost debilitating head rush. He tries to scan over their body but he can barely see anything.

What’s happened did he miss something did he trigger something are they gonna go away again and leave him there with a living body-

“What hurts? What’s wrong?”

“My-” they gesture wildly to their head, pale hands almost ghostly in the lack of light. The white bits of their hair reflect the lights of the heart monitor that’s beeping faster and faster; the cord attached to their wrist swings wildly between the monitor and the bed and makes Tubbo dizzy with the motion. “Too much seeing. Don’t wanna see.” 

“Just- c-close your eyes, bossman, it’s okay,” Tubbo reassures, moving to slip out of the bed and trying not to let Ranboo know the tightness in his chest. Maybe their red eye is hurting them more and giving them a headache or something, maybe they’re overstimulated, maybe they’re- maybe they’re something, but Tubbo doesn’t know what. “I- I can go find Wilbur, he can look at your eyes-”

“No,” Ranboo insists forcefully, and Tubbo freezes as they shoot an arm backwards and seize his wrist in a strangling, clammy grip. “You’re-” They choke out a sob and press their other wrist into their temple. “Don’t go, it’s- too much-”

“Are you sure? I can still get hi-”

“No- no, no-” 

“Okay-” Tubbo gets back under the covers and is just about knocked off the bed when Ranboo flips over and dives as much as they can into his arms. The throbbing in his skull peaks to a stabbing feeling that makes the medbay whirl around him, but Ranboo’s shuddering and close to tears with fear. He wraps his arms tight around them like he can hold them together, like they can anchor each other as he digs for whatever words he thinks will be helpful. “I-I’m here, I’ve got you, I won’t get him.” 

“I don’t wanna tell him what I see,” Ranboo chokes out into his collarbone, before letting out a tiny but heartbreaking sob. Tubbo winces as Ranboo digs their nails into the new bruises on his back from Technoblade slamming him into the wall, but they’re shaking so hard and seem so out of it he doesn’t want to tell them to let go. “He’ll try to- to take it.”

“He’ll… what?” Tubbo whispers, trying not to sound incredulous or confused, but his brain is spinning and he just can’t put two and two together! He’s the leader of their duo, the decision-maker, the fixer, the logical one, so he’s gotta know what he’s doing, but-

“He’ll take it!” Ranboo sobs, almost wailing into his chest. “That’s what they do, they say, ‘What do you see,’ and if you don’t give it they take it, they go in your head-” From there Ranboo dissolves fully into tears, any words he tries to say turning into incoherent mumbling. The noise echoes around the pitch-black, otherwise silent medbay.

Tubbo’s mind feels like he’s fishing for a tool in a box that he desperately needs but just isn’t there. 

What are they talking about? What the hell does all this mean? 

Fixing ships is easy. He knows how to do it. A part is missing, or broken, or malfunctioning, and all he’s gotta do is either patch it up or replace it and then everything’s as good as new, even if it looks a little more beat up. Sometimes all you gotta do is weld the sucker together and it’ll fly you anywhere in the ‘Verse. Take good care of a ship and it’ll take good care of you. 

Ships can be fixed. 

But people? 

A person’s parts can’t really be replaced, not on the inside. Sure, limbs can be lost, accidents happen, but there’s no way to put the arm, leg, or finger back on and have it be just exactly the way it was- it's gotta have a substitute that’ll never be exactly how it was. And that’s just for a person’s body. 

There’s no fixing a mind. Not really.

Tubbo can’t take out a welding gun and melt the bits of Ranboo’s mind that need fixing back together.

If Ranboo was only physically injured, he’d at least know how to fix that. He can put in a breathing tube, stitch up a gunshot wound, wrap a bandage, whatever. He’s done all of those things before. Blood isn’t that much of a bother to him- it’s almost like engine oil, but in a person…with much worse consequences for running out. Skin is like a ship’s hull, and a suturing needle like a welding gun….but ships don’t feel pain, not like people do, anyhow.

But Ranboo’s injuries aren’t all physical. 

Someone hurt their fucking brain. 

He doesn’t know what the fuck to do. 

“I’ll…m-make sure he doesn’t,” Tubbo hears himself say in a pathetic excuse for comfort. “You’re here, I got you.” 

Ranboo just sobs into his collarbone, pressing their wrists into their temples and mumbling under their breath about things being ‘too much’. 

Tubbo can’t stop a tear from escaping his eye, too.

He’s just- he’s helpless. 

He can do nothing but lay there as Ranboo’s crying starts to taper off. And so that’s all he does. 

He lies there. 

Ranboo takes a deep, shuddery breath and lets it out into Tubbo’s collarbone; the air is hot against his skin. “I’m here,” they whisper as if to ground themself. “I’m not there anymore.” 

Tubbo just holds them tighter against his chest so they can’t see his eyes threatening to overflow once more. 

Chapter Text

Tubbo didn’t sleep much, and he can feel it in his eyes. His eyes throb with his head, and his joints are stiff as hell from not moving the rest of the night. 

Ranboo snores softly and peacefully in his arms. 

And everything feels…different. 

Of course it’d feel different, he hasn’t been able to have any sense of normality in years because ‘normal’ was with Ranboo, and he couldn’t expect Ranboo to be the same after everything. 

Of course it feels different, he doesn’t have to hide Ranboo from the crew of the Esbi’ai anymore. He doesn’t have… anything to hide from them anymore. 

Why does he still care about their opinions of him? They were only ever a means to an end. 

Or at least, that’s all they were ever supposed to be. Now…now, they’re something different; he doesn’t know what.  

He doesn’t quite think he’s hit the fallout of his deception just yet, and he didn’t ever think he’d be nervous about anything other than physical consequences, yet here he is. 

He stares at Tommy’s red flight jacket that’s somehow still wrapped loosely around Ranboo’s shoulders. 

Tommy hasn’t said a word to him, not since…everything happened. His expression during the chaos back in Tubbo’s quarters still hurts. The expression of betrayal- fuck, it…it actually hurts, somewhere in his chest. It- 

It hurts like it did when Ranboo left. 

It isn’t supposed to hurt! But Tommy had shown him the engine room, taken him somewhere he was comfortable, away from everyone else, and- 

“Are you good, big man?” 

Techno had been worried about his health, Wilbur trusted- trusts?- him to help with medical treatment for himself, and the Cap… Phil had asked if he was okay. 

They- it actually feels like they cared. He doesn’t know if they still do, considering he literally smuggled an entire human into their home right under their noses and then didn’t tell them about it. That’s a big betrayal of trust-

Having it be worded as a betrayal in his head really slams in the consequences of what he’s done. 

But Ranboo’s out. Ranboo’s here, Ranboo’s alive, they’re helping take care of him. Despite everything Tubbo’s done. 

Tommy still helped Ranboo. They all did. 

These people don’t fucking make sense! 

But he’s got Ranboo, and that should be enough. They’ve always been enough…or at least, they always were before. 

So why does it still hurt? 

Ranboo shifts in his arms, humming as they readjust themself and taking a deep breath as they crack their eyes open. “Hi.” 

Tubbo just hugs them tighter for a moment before absently saying “Hi,” back. 

“You’re thinking a lot,” Ranboo says simply, yawning into Tubbo’s chest. “Are you good?” 

“Don’t worry about me,” Tubbo soothes, speaking too quickly. “How are you feeling?” 

Ranboo hums again, frowning a little. “I feel more…here. Still hurts, but…” They sigh. “Better. I’m really out?” 

“You’re really out,” Tubbo reassures. “You’re out.” 

Ranboo nods. “I know. It’s just…” Their breath hitches and they sniffle. “…hard to believe.” 

“I know.” 

They sit in silence for a moment as Ranboo wipes their tears on the pillowcase, then they jump a bit, staring at the door. “Someone’s coming.” 

Tubbo frowns. “How do you know? I can’t hear footsteps-”

Then he does. 

He sits up a little, shielding Ranboo from view before the door opens up, showing Wilbur and Techno. 

Techno? 

The man looks almost sheepish and like he’s trying to look as unobtrusive as possible- which is hard when he’s the crew muscleman. Still, he’s not in his leather jacket, and his pink hair is pulled back into a low ponytail with a few strands framing his face. 

Then it dawns on Tubbo what he’s trying to do. He’s trying not to look intimidating. What a prick. 

His back throbs at the memory of being slammed against the wall.

Joke’s on him, because it doesn’t work for either of them. 

Tubbo tenses, face darkening into a glare, bringing an arm up to further shield Ranboo from view. He feels Ranboo grabbing his arm and he looks back down-

Ranboo’s lying on their back, black and white hair spread in a messy halo around their head against the white bedsheets. 

They’re fuming. 

Their nostrils are flared, eyes dilated- Tubbo swears their red one is glowing a bit. Their grip on his forearm is shaking and tight enough to hurt. 

“You,” they growl. It’s a dangerous tone Tubbo’s heard rarely, if ever, and it sends shivers down his spine. Ranboo shoves themself upwards, reeling a little and grabbing onto Tubbo’s shoulder to keep their balance. “You hurt him.” 

Wilbur and Techno’s eyes widen at the same time. 

“Ranboo, wait-” 

“Why would you hurt him?” Ranboo cries. They would almost look pathetic- hanging off Tubbo’s shoulder, sweat gleaming on their forehead as they tremble from exertion- if not for the utter desperate rage in their voice. “He never did anything to you!” 

“Ranboo, stop, it’s okay-” 

“He was just trying to protect me! Why would you-”

“Ranboo!” Tubbo grabs their shoulders and they freeze for a moment, breathing hard. “It’s okay.”  

“It’s not-” 

“He didn’t know what was going on-”

“That doesn’t make it okay!” Ranboo shrieks, lunging as best they can past Tubbo and gesturing wildly to Techno who’s standing silently in the medbay entrance, and they’re really getting themself worked up. Tears are welling in their eyes, and Tubbo was right, both of them are glowing. He has to fight to haul them back as they continue. “He hurt you, he was gonna-”

“Ranboo, I know.” Tubbo says firmly, but not unkindly, bringing a hand up to Ranboo’s face to subtly wipe the single tear that’s fallen. “He thought I was a threat.” 

To his family goes unsaid, but Ranboo seems to get it. They blink, then deflate into Tubbo’s chest and nod. 

“I don’t want them to hurt you,” they whisper into his chest, sounding utterly heartbroken. “But he did.” 

Tubbo just wraps them in a hug and tries not to cry himself. 

His head hurts. 

When he looks back again, Techno is gone. Wilbur is the only one who stands there, eyes wide and looking worriedly at Ranboo. Then, the man shakes his head and fully walks into the room. 

And Ranboo doesn’t say a word as Wilbur checks on him. But he nods, makes faces- he’s awake, he’s not- away, like he was before. That’s gotta be something, right?

In the meantime, something about the whole interaction is gripping the back of Tubbo’s neck and won’t let go. He tries to ignore it, but it won’t leave. 

He finds himself staring at where Tommy’s red flight jacket fell off the bed and onto the floor. He can’t stand to see it there, it feels wrong. After a moment, he bends down and scoops it up, laying it gently on the pillows as Wilbur examines Ranboo and removes the heart monitor’s sticker. He can see the man’s eyes flick to him as he smooths out the wrinkles of the sturdy red material. 

“Well, you’re doing better than yesterday already,” Wilbur comments, almost like Ranboo will respond to him. “Are you feeling better generally?” 

Ranboo makes a ‘so-so’ gesture with their hand and head, then nods. 

Tubbo snorts over the thoughts racing in his brain. “Might need to be more specific, bossman.” 

The glare Ranboo gives him is a joking one, but it could still kill a man with the snark dripping from it. So Tubbo good-naturedly rolls his eyes(even though it makes the world spin) and shoves him, and Ranboo elbows him right back with a smirk. 

Even Wilbur can barely suppress a laugh. “You two definitely are siblings.” 

He gets up to leave, and before he can stop himself, Tubbo blurts out, “Wait.”

Wilbur freezes, looking curiously back at him. “You good?” 

Is this right to ask who is he to ask about him he can’t even think straight with everything going on but he just has to know-

Tubbo swallows hard, and Ranboo slips a hand into his to give it a reassuring squeeze, almost like they know what he’s about to ask will be awkward at the least and difficult at worst. 

“...how’s Tommy doing?” Tubbo whispers. Then, it’s like the plug has been pulled out on his words; everything just comes spilling out. “I mean, with all this. He looked- I dunno, fuckin’ in shock, I guess, yesterday, and I haven’t seen him yet, so-” 

“You wanna make sure he’s okay,” Wilbur finishes, an almost unreadable yet oddly thoughtful expression on his face. 

Tubbo worries at his lip-

And then nods. 

Wilbur looks at him, a little more pensively than usual, then smiles softly and nods. “I’ll tell him you were asking about him.” 

Then he leaves without another word, shutting the door behind him.

Tubbo lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and slumps over, starting to bring his hands to his hair and forgetting there’s a Ranboo still attached to one of them until they nudge him and make a questioning noise.  

“Jeez- fuck, Boo, you scared me,” he croaks, looking up at Ranboo’s now-mismatched eyes. 

They look down at him and raise an eyebrow, staring at him with concern. 

And how does Tubbo explain it? 

How does he explain the pain that went through him when Tommy looked at him that way, betrayed by Tubbo’s actions? He literally smuggled Ranboo on board- he broke their trust. Not to mention broke the law, but the law is the least of his concerns right now. 

How does he explain chess, twisted and untwisted copper and silver wires, climbing trees, beautiful engines, and hugs that feel like soldering iron without explaining how Tommy was there for him when he needed someone there? Without judgement(until this), and almost without fail. Tommy was there for him, Tommy trusted him. 

Trust ed him. 

And now Ranboo’s here, and things should be normal, but they’re not. He’s not supposed to need anyone but Ranboo; he hasn’t in a long time...longer than he can honestly remember. It was just him, and then it was just them two, and that was enough. 

It feels like he’s betraying Ranboo too by wanting to have Tommy as a friend-

Tubbo flinches, the thought punching him in the gut so hard he can almost taste bile as he finally realizes. 

Tommy wanted to be his friend. 

And now, after he’s burned that bridge before it can even finish being built, Tubbo thinks he wants Tommy as a friend, too. 

Ranboo sniffles out of the blue, snapping Tubbo out of his little spiral to look up at Ranboo and squeeze their hand. “What? What’s wrong?” Their mismatched eyes are welling with tears again as they stare down at Tubbo with a face full of heartbreak. “Do you need me to get Wil-”

In a flash, Ranboo shoots his arms around Tubbo, yanking him in and tucking him under his chin. One of his hands cradles his head just over the bruised back of his skull, his other arm snakes its chilled presence around his shoulders like he’s holding Tubbo together. 

Tubbo just sits there for a moment, mouth gaped slightly in surprise. 

It’s like a wave of warmth washes down his back, spreading from his head to his ribs. 

He’s missed his Ranboo hugs.  

He feels safe. 

Ranboo hugs him tighter as if to say ‘You are safe. It’s okay, you’re safe, I’m here.’ 

Ranboo’s here. He’s not alone. So why does he still feel lonely? 

Ranboo is finally here. He feels like he can breathe a little easier. 

And in the shelter of his sibling’s arms, with everything going on, everything that’s happened, and everything he has no idea about on top of the turmoil in his own head, Tubbo finally allows himself to break just a little bit. 

One tear escapes, then another. 

Before he knows it, he is sobbing without restraint into Ranboo’s collarbone, clutching at them wildly and desperately, like at any moment they could be taken away again. 

He swears he can feel Ranboo’s tears dripping into his hair. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries to say. Whether it’s to Ranboo or Tommy, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t really anyway; even he can barely understand himself. That doesn’t stop him from stammering it over and over into Ranboo’s shirt. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." 

Ranboo just holds him. 

“...it’s okay,” he hears them whisper, voice barely a croak over his near wails as he cries. “…I got you.”

Somehow, a slight part of Tubbo is actually able to believe them. 

Chapter Text

“Do you, um…know where the showers are?” 

Ranboo’s hoarse voice makes Tubbo jump a little, and he looks up from the engine  maintenance manual he’d been reading. Or trying to read. 

Someone left it outside the medbay door about an hour ago. No note, nothing to tell who put it there. 

He knows exactly who it was. He could see the head of curly blond hair in the tiny diamond-shaped window of the medbay door. 

It almost physically hurt to pick up, but he can’t deny it’s been interesting. He’s been stuck on the diagram of the cooling fans for ages, tracing the illustrations and memorizing where each wire goes so it won’t get sliced to pieces. It’s a beautiful engine. The words make his head spin too much, so after his eyes started throbbing and the words started blurring together, he just stopped trying. The diagrams are plenty interesting by themselves anyway. 

Technoblade slammed him pretty damn hard into that wall. 

“The showers? Um…” He glances to the medbay bathroom door, then to Ranboo, whose hands won’t stop shaking even if they’re gripping nothing heavier than a blanket. 

Their hair is also an absolute tangled mess and he can still see an oily glint of icy blue where the light shines on it. He can tell they’re uncomfortable from how they shift their shirt away from themself; having just clean clothes won’t do much if they feel dirty. 

“Do you think you’re good to walk?” Tubbo asks, hesitating a bit. 

Ranboo swings their feet over the side of the cot and pauses, then slowly inches their bare feet onto the floor. Tubbo immediately tosses aside the maintenance manual and stumbles over from where he was sitting on the countertop(Wilbur would probably have a conniption if he saw that, but whatever). 

“Do you need-”

Ranboo shakes his head, and with a gulp, pushes himself upwards. His legs don’t shake. Tubbo can only tell he’s straining to stay upright because of the sweat beading on his brow. 

Standing at their full height for the first time Tubbo’s seen them on the ship, Tubbo finally realizes that he was right- they did grow out in the…facility. They were only about half a head taller than him back then; now, they tower at least a head and shoulders over him. 

Tubbo had never in his life thought of Ranboo as intimidating. They were soft-spoken with a habit of wrapping themself in blankets with only their face poking out, and threw themself in learning anything they could. They were never the one throwing punches in street fights, Tubbo was. They tried to talk their way out of it while Tubbo protected them. 

The towering figure Ranboo is, head almost close to touching the ceiling, covered in scars with eyes that seem to glow in the dark…

Is almost intimidating. 

“Might wanna duck, bossman, you’re gonna hit your head,” Tubbo jokes, trying to ease the tension he didn’t realize had filled the medbay with his silence. 

Ranboo scoffs and gives him a slight shove, but Tubbo can see their hands trembling and takes one. 

“C’mon. It’s in here.” 

The medbay’s bathroom is small, nowhere near the size of the regular ones for the crew. But when Tubbo snoops in the one small drawer under the tiny hand sink, it’s fully stocked with soaps and whatnot. There’s just enough space between the toilet and the sink to squeeze through and get into the shower, which has a seat coming up from the bottom and a grey waterproof curtain that attaches to the wall with circular magnets about the size of his thumbnail. Tubbo could sit on that and maybe stretch his arms three-quarters of the way to the wall; Ranboo will be even more cramped. But he supposes it’s so someone who needs help could scoot themself from the toilet to the shower without getting up. Ranboo won’t have to stand for long if they can’t yet. 

This Serenity- class has it good. 

“Will you be good in here?” Tubbo asks, already kneeling down to try and find the soap Ranboo will need under the sink. 

They sit hard on the toilet seat, taking a deep breath in. “Yeah. I’ll call if I need something.” 

“I’ll be here-” 

“I know,” Ranboo interrupts, picking at their sleeves. Then, they look up with a smile. “Go read your engine manual.” 

“Shut up,” Tubbo scoffs good-naturedly as he stands(leaning against the wall to pretend he didn’t tilt a little) and haphazardly dumps an armful of various soaps and shampoos into the sink, then slaps a towel just beside the pile. “Want me to grab you more clothes from my room?” 

They pause, fixing him with a puzzled expression halfway through pulling their arm through their sleeve. “You brought my… old clothes?” 

“Yes, Ranboo, I one hundred percent kept your clothes from when you were fuckin’ sixteen and about two feet shorter-”

Ranboo rolls his eyes with a small laugh. “Okay, okay. I get it. Yes, I would like more clothes.” 

“Be back in a few minutes, then, bossman,” Tubbo says, ducking out the door. The door closes behind him, and a second later he can hear the shower starting. 

He looks up and stops dead in his tracks. 

The medbay door is open, and Tommy’s standing in the doorway with a bundle of fabric in his arms. 

The two of them lock eyes and it’s like every molecule of air is vacuumed from Tubbo’s lungs. 

Tommy’s got bags under his eyes again. His curly hair is cowlicked like he just rolled out of bed, and his army green flight suit is wrinkled. He doesn’t have boots on, just plain grey socks. He looks incomplete without his bright red jacket; he looks faded. 

He stares at Tubbo with a wide-eyed expression reminiscent of someone who just got whacked upside the head with a crowbar. 

Tubbo knows he doesn’t look good either. He’s still in his cryo-fluid stained clothes from yesterday and his boots were shoved somewhere beneath Ranboo’s cot before they went to sleep, leaving him in his own socks. He hasn’t eaten yet and the world hasn’t stopped spinning since he stood up in the bathroom, so he’s a little shaky, and his eyes and face are still bloodshot from him crying earlier. 

They stare at each other for a moment that feels like it’s got static electricity building through every blink. 

Tommy finally breaks the silence. “Um…Techno donated some more clothes-” 

“Tubbo?” 

“Um- yeah?” Tubbo calls over his shoulder, trying not to break eye contact with Tommy. “Are you okay?” 

“Is everything good?” 

“Is everything- what do you mean?” he asks, finally turning his head. “Everything’s- I mean, it’s-” 

He looks back to Tommy, only to see air and a pile of black, red, and khaki fabric on the counter just beside the engine manual. 

His face falls with his shoulders as the tension in the room drains out, leaving an odd feeling of emptiness in the air. 

“...yeah, Ranboo,” he stammers quietly, chest aching as he stares at the empty space where Tommy was. “Everything’s fine.” 

“...okay.” 

Tubbo manages to stagger to Ranboo’s cot before he collapses, barely catching himself on the edge and lowering himself to the ground before running his hands over his face. 

Tommy was right there, he was right there, and Tubbo- he never even said anything to him. 

Those bags under his eyes…Tubbo hasn’t seen them since after the bandits attacked on the first moon they landed on. When Tommy was stressing over Wilbur healing and how much that place reminded him of his old planet. 

Tommy’s anxious. 

Tommy’s losing sleep over him. More specifically, over what he did. 

He hears the shower stop and shakes his head, running his hands through his hair and sighing before he heaves himself upwards and goes to shut the medbay door. 

He only hesitates a moment before pressing the button. 

He numbly drops the clothes Tommy left in front of the door and gives it a small knock just so Ranboo knows they’re there. Then he goes right back to Ranboo’s cot as he hears the door open slightly and then immediately close, and falls backwards onto it. 

What did he expect? 

He shoves his hands over his face and lets out a growl. 

This whole damn thing is his fault, anyway, so why can’t he just fucking deal with it? Why can’t things just not be complicated, for once? 

He turns his head to the side and catches a glimpse of Tommy’s flight jacket on the bed, bright red against stark white. 

Why can’t he just not fuck everything up? It seems like that’s all he does at this point. 

A faint rattling echoes through the vents and it sounds like it’s coming from the direction of the engine room, but before Tubbo can spend any brainpower on that, the bathroom door slides open with a small cloud of soap-smelling humidity. 

Ranboo steps out in a pair of Techno’s black pants and one of his red shirts with a lace-up collar, barefooted, looking like a wet cat, and holding a hairbrush. The shirt hangs so loosely on their unhealthily thin frame it almost looks like they’re wearing a pillowcase. The fact that the shirt is Technoblade’s probably does nothing to help. Their hair is plastered to their face, hanging in their eyes and down their neck and soaking the collar of the shirt a darker shade of red. “Um…” they part half of their tangled bangs to peek at Tubbo with just their left eye- the one that’s still green. “...help?” 

Tubbo just sits up and pats the edge of the cot, gripping the mattress to try and keep himself upright. The blankets are a mess, nothing like the pristine medbay Wilbur had so proudly shown off to him so long ago(was it really only less than a week?). “Sit down, bossman.” 

Ranboo doesn’t sit on the edge of the cot- they sit on the floor with their legs perfectly crossed and their back ramrod straight against the bed. Their head’s at almost the perfect height for Tubbo to brush their hair at, so he just shrugs and scoots back to the end of the cot. Whatever makes them most comfortable. 

Fuck, Tubbo’s head is killing him. 

His hands are shaking as he reaches out to start brushing the tangles out of Ranboo’s hair. The repetitive actions help a little bit because he doesn’t have to think, he just has to not hurt them. 

Brush out the knots, from the ends on up. He’s done this before. Ignoring the scarring he can see on the back of their neck and feel on their scalp, it’s just like old times. The rattling in the vents that sounds like it’s coming from the engine almost becomes white noise in the background.

He’s a few minutes in before Ranboo grabs his left hand and yanks it down to their eye level, then looks back up over their shoulder at Tubbo bracing himself on the edge of the mattress to keep himself from collapsing on top of his sibling. 

Ranboo’s looking at his nails. 

He’d forgotten he’d bitten them down to the quicks. The stinging ache in almost every one of his fingertips has been the least of his worries for so long. 

The expression in Ranboo’s eyes screams of heartbreak as they stare up at Tubbo. 

Tubbo can’t find the words in his spinning, throbbing brain to respond, so he ends up just not meeting Ranboo’s eyes. 

They hold a wordless conversation there, with Ranboo shaking on the floor as they inspect every jagged bit of Tubbo’s bitten nails and Tubbo trying to will the world to stop spinning so he can actually attempt to function. 

He never was able to lie to Ranboo. 

“...you scared me, Ranboo,” he confesses in a whisper. 

“Gotta talk soon,” Ranboo hums back matter-of-factly, finally letting go of Tubbo’s hand and leaning back into the edge of the cot. 

Tubbo takes a moment to gather himself and swallow down his rolling stomach before sitting up. 

Fuck, Techno fucked him up.

He runs the brush through Ranboo’s hair five more times before there’s a knock at the door. Tubbo flinches at the noice. Ranboo doesn’t. 

A second later, Phil walks in.

Phil’s face is oddly soft as he pushes the medbay door’s button with his elbow. He’s balancing a tray in his hands with two bowls and two plastic cups. 

Tubbo feels like a caged and wounded animal getting ready for inspection at the market.

Ranboo seems to be calm and even brings up a hand to wave slightly at Phil.

“Hey, mates,” he says gently. “Figured it was time I talked to you about some things.”

Chapter Text

The words take a moment to register in Tubbo’s throbbing brain. But when they do, panic floods through his chest. 

He can see Ranboo worriedly glancing up at him from below. 

“Th-things like what?” Tubbo manages to blurt out. 

“Well,” Phil says, voice gaining a simultaneously chilly and sympathetic edge. “The truth, mate, for starters. I need the facts.” He sets the tray down on the countertop and fixes Tubbo with his steely eyes. “We got your story, but I need more of where you’re going rather than where you’ve been.” 

The truth.

It’ll be somehow stressful and relieving to tell, to have all the details laid flat. Hopefully. 

If Tubbo can sit up straight. 

He feels like all those years ago when he woke up beneath Nara’s countertop. The world’s spinning, there’s darkness at the edge of his vision, Ranboo is between him and the person in charge, he’s falling-

“You alright, mate-”

Tubbo swallows hard, pointedly ignoring the concern he hears in Phil’s voice as he heaves himself fully upwards. “Yeah. M’fine. What do you need to know?”

Ranboo looks up from the floor and Tubbo can tell they’re seriously eyeing the tray, but Phil’s standing in front of it with his arms crossed. 

“Well…everything,” Phil says simply, and the words are clipped but not harsh. “Everything you got. I need the facts, like I said. I don’t think any one of us was expecting this situation, but we’ve got to work together at this point. We can’t afford secrets, not with something as serious as this.” 

Why the hell does Tubbo feel like he’s being interrogated by someone’s dad? 

He is, but. Not the point. 

“Let me put it this way, Tubbo,” Phil says, and now he sounds like he’s in Captain mode. “You’re a fugitive, and so are they,” he lays out as he nods towards Ranboo, who’s grabbed the hairbrush and is running their thumb down the bristles over and over again, seemingly not paying attention. “And you’re on my ship, with my kids.”

In other (blunter) words, Tubbo existing on the ship with Ranboo is a threat to Phil’s family. Hooray. 

“So knowing the real truth,” he finishes, pinning Tubbo in place with his eyes. “Would be beneficial to all of us.” 

Tubbo’s head feels like someone took a hammer to the back of it, but Ranboo’s leaning back against the edge of the cot and is staring at him and he feels an old sense of protectiveness stir up that he hasn’t had to deal with in years. Because Ranboo was always the scrawnier one just because of how lanky they were, so they always got targeted in street fights and Tubbo was always the one throwing punches to protect them. And now they’re-

His eyes flick down to meet Ranboo’s as they run their fingers over the bristles of the hairbrush and he sees their hand stutter once. 

And now they’re different. Through no fault of their own- but everything’s different now and Tubbo can’t wrap his head around any of it. Or anything in general with this fucking headache. 

He looks back up at Phil, hardening his expression to a glare. “What are you gonna do when I tell you?”

And that seems to be the exact opposite of what Phil expected to hear. “What are you talking about?” 

“Well, it’s just like you said,” Tubbo croaks, trying to ignore how his vision has started darkening at the edges. “I’m on your ship with your kids with my sibling, and we’re both wanted by the Confederation.” He remembers first coming onto the ship and being interrogated by Technoblade and almost wants to laugh. He hadn’t had a warrant then, but he’s not entirely sure he doesn’t have one now. Part of him doesn’t want to know. “We are actively putting you in danger.”

“You’re actively in danger,” Phil shoots, arms crossed. 

“And we’re actively on your ship,” Tubbo snarks back. “If you ask me, you have an easy one-way solution to this problem we’re creating by being here, and I’m just trying to make sure you don’t take it.” 

“Nope,” he barely hears Ranboo mumble under their breath. “Stop, no-”

But he keeps going. 

“I want some kinda guarantee that you’re not gonna make us take a fucking spacewalk as soon as you hear what I have to say,” he spits, hackles all raised like the street dogs he used to see in Pogtopia’s alleyways as he shoves a finger at Phil. “Ranboo is not dying out here. Not after all this, not after everything they’ve been through. Not on my fucking watch.” 

And Phil just stares at him with a face made of steel. “You’re on my ship, you’re on my crew.” 

The words whirl around Tubbo’s brain along with the rest of the world(and is the medbay darker, or is it just him?). “What? What the hell do you mean-” 

“You’re on my crew,” Phil interrupts, voice firm and leaving no room for discussion. “So we are going to figure this out. But I need to know what your plan was with all this. Understood?” 

You’re on my crew. 

Phil, the captain, is saying to Tubbo, a random hire who smuggled his sibling aboard and is on the run from the fucking government, that he is on the Esbi’ai’s crew. 

Those words make one thing very clear for Tubbo’s fucked up, concussed brain: 

Absolutely nobody on this fucking ship has any shred of a sense of self-preservation. 

And almost every ounce of fight in Tubbo’s body drains from him- along with all the blood from his face. 

Ranboo looks up at him again. 

Yeah, he was right…the medbay is definitely getting darker.

“Yessir,” Tubbo slurs- 

Just before he topples over. 

He hears Ranboo cry out and it’s piercing, he could be sick right now with all the pain reverberating around his skull. He feels two sets of arms catch him before he falls off the cot entirely and onto the ground; he hits them with a thud that echoes through his whole body and makes him want to scream. Everything’s spinning and there’s black at the edge of his vision and-

“Tubbo? Mate, can you hear me?”

He just squeezes his eyes shut and lets out an undignified whimper like he’s a kicked dog as he curls up with his hands over his ears. 

Every sense of self-control has gone out the window because he can’t even think. The lights are too bright and they’re buzzing and he’s dizzy and his head hurts and it’s making his stomach churn and-

“Shit,” he hears Phil mumble. “Ranboo, can you- Ranboo?” 

Tubbo cracks his eyes open and freezes at the blurry sight of Ranboo on their knees on the ground, eyes blown wide open and breathing entirely too fast.  

“In his head,” Ranboo breathes, almost wheezing. “It’s all in his head, all in his head-” 

The noise just adds more to the overwhelming everything pressing in on Tubbo’s skull, so he just presses his hands harder into his ears. 

“All in his- wait-” 

A hand brushes the back of his skull and he gasps-

“Shit-”

He feels himself being shifted to lay on his back in the cot. He feels Phil move off the cot and hears rummaging in drawers. He keeps his eyes closed, because fuck-

“You can’t do that,” Ranboo whispers, voice full of fear. 

“What do you mean, Ranboo?” Phil asks. Calm but urgent. “Tubbo’s concussed-”

“Said it was safe,” Ranboo spits, and Tubbo feels their hands intertwine with his left one. “Can’t make him better.” 

“Mate, what? This will heal him-” 

“Not better?” Ranboo’s hand is shaking in his, and if his head didn’t feel like it was one loud noise away from exploding, Tubbo would open his eyes to see what’s wrong. 

“I have to give this to him, Ranboo,” Phil says firmly, though he still sounds sympathetic. “It’s the only way he’ll heal quickly.” 

Ranboo lets out a whimper like they’re crying, and Tubbo feels them lay down next to him. He can feel their whole body trembling next to him. “Only way?”

“I’m sorry, mate,” Phil whispers. “But that’s right.”

“That’s what they said too,” Ranboo whispers. “But you mean it.” Ranboo buries their face in his shoulder with a hiccup. “...do it.” 

A moment passes, then two, and Tubbo thinks his head might actually explode. 

“I’m gonna give you a potion, okay, Tubbo?” Phil says quietly. Tubbo can feel Ranboo’s arm thrown over his chest, holding him tight like they’re holding him down. “If you can’t talk, tap twice on the cot for an ‘ok’.”

Tubbo grits his teeth and pats his right hand twice on the cot. Ranboo whimpers again into his shoulder. 

Phil’s callused hand brushes his hair from his neck and a millisecond later he can feel a needle being pressed in, making him gasp and scrunch the sheets in his fist.  

Tubbo blacks out. 

Chapter Text

The first thing Tubbo is conscious of when he opens his eyes is that concussions fucking suck. 

The second is that Ranboo is hovering right over his face with an expression like he’s just come back from the dead.

All the rest of his senses flood in at once. He’s on his back on the cot. His head feels mostly fine; his temples are throbbing slightly, but it’s barely noticeable compared to the explosion his brains had felt like earlier. There’s a rattling sound coming from the vent that he doesn’t remember. The side of his neck stings, and there’s a bandage on it. Someone is being scolded faintly outside. Ranboo is crying. 

“Wait, hey- Ranboo-” 

“M’ sorry-” they whine as they bury their face in his chest and start sobbing. “I wasn’t sure it’d actually help-” 

Tubbo lies there for a moment with his hands in the air before he fiercely hugs them back, wracking his brain to figure out what he remembers- which isn’t much. “What happened?”

“He-” Ranboo sniffles, voice muffled because they’re still speaking right into his chest. “He gave you a potion.”

They spit the word out like it’s been covered in oil and set on fire in their mouth, and they just keep going.

“Said- said it’s the only way, ‘n I didn’t want to cuz that’s what they said too-”

“What are you talking about?” Tubbo whispers to the ceiling, the headache at his temples worsening just a bit because he’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to be doing mental backflips so soon after healing from a concussion. 

“‘No other option’, that’s-” Ranboo gulps hard and tightens his grip on Tubbo’s body. “Gotta listen first, or they do it anyway. Stick you and- and th’ first time it was to make me better.” 

Tubbo brings a hand to the back of Ranboo’s head. “Ranboo, that’s-”

“Tried to fight,” they say, almost in a singsong voice. “Little boy. Little mouse. Mouse bit the hand that feeds.” Their voice lilts, thick with tears, before breaking. “C-cats got the mouse.”

“Nobody’s gonna get me, Ranboo,” Tubbo whispers, trying to make it sound like he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t know what Ranboo’s trying to tell him other than it’s horrible. “It’s okay. And I’ll make sure they don’t get you.”

“He’s waiting outside,” Ranboo mumbles, and Tubbo’s heart stops. 

“What?”

“Captain,” they say. “Waiting. He’s gonna ask you questions.”

Tubbo grumbles, closing his eyes again. “Right. And he’ll need answers.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Tubbo sighs. “I guess I gotta give them to him.” He opens his eyes back up to the sound of something rattling in the vents. He frowns up at the noise. Anything rattling is a bad sound, and it brings him right back to the shipyard. 

Syndicate class, Syndicate class…rattling in the vents…

He gasps. “I gotta talk to the Captain-” He tries to sit up, but Ranboo is still clinging onto him, pinning him to the bed. “Ranboo, c’mon, I gotta talk to Phil-”

“No,” Ranboo insists. “Questions first.” 

“Ranboo-”

“I need answers, Tubbo,” Ranboo presses, tightening his grip on Tubbo enough not to hurt but to still make a point. “I need to know. Please.” 

Tubbo’s tossed into Ranboo’s shoes so hard he swears his head starts spinning again. 

They just woke up yesterday. After being separated from him for a year and a half. After being in a Confederation facility where they did who the fuck knows to them, but that included making them ‘better’, fucking up their brain, and messing with their eye. They were a lab rat for just about a year and a half, and maybe there were more with them, if their comment about the cats getting the little boy meant that. They got rescued by a bunch of strange people and saw Tubbo for a grand total of two minutes they probably don’t even remember, during which he put them in a box and they gave him their necklace before they got frozen.  

“Tubbo, I’m scared-” 

“No, I know, but it’ll be okay, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I promise, okay?” 

“On Benson?” 

“Y-yeah. I swear it on Benson. Okay, get comfortable- what’s wrong?” 

“Just in case anything happens…I love you.” 

And now they’re in a new strange place, in the middle of space with strange people, in a medbay after being a lab rat. They woke up and immediately started screaming their head off and panicking, for fuck’s sake! They’ve been poked and prodded by Wilbur. Tubbo’s been hurt and just collapsed from a concussion, and they had to watch him be given a potion by Phil, the captain and clear figure of authority, which clearly brought back bad memories. 

Yeah. It’s basic human decency. They deserve answers and an idea of Tubbo’s plan. He’s not gonna decide stuff about their own future without them knowing, not after all that. He’s not a monster. 

 “You’re right,” Tubbo whispers, hugging them again. “I’m sorry.” 

The rattling can wait. Besides, Tommy’s the mechanic here. This isn’t a client’s ship in the shipyard. Tommy’s taken care of this ship for years, from what he’s told Tubbo. He can be trusted to take care of his own home.

And Tubbo’s pretty sure Tommy wouldn’t want to see him anyway. 

The thought turns something sour in his chest, but before it lingers for too long, there’s a knock on the medbay door. 

“You alright, Tubbo?” Phil’s voice calls. “Can I come in?” 

“Yeah, hang on,” Tubbo says back. He sighs. “Ranboo, I do need to sit up.”

“...now?”

“Yup.”

They grumble a bit into his chest, then slide off. “M’not leaving.” 

“I’m not asking you to,” Tubbo grunts as he slowly scoots himself up, the medbay spinning a little as he finally gets himself upright. “Fuck-”

Ranboo steadies him before he falls on his face.  

“Thanks,” he breathes, and they respond by winding their arms around him, steadying him further with a hug. They’re not going anywhere, and Tubbo is glad for it. “You ready for the questions?” 

“Ready for the answers,” they reply cheekily, and Tubbo smiles. 

“You’ll get them, I promise,” he says, and then calls out to the door. “We’re ready!” 

Phil, to his credit, doesn’t linger. The door opens a second later, and Tubbo can see a head of brown hair leaving the area outside the medical bay. Wilbur. That must be who Phil was scolding when he woke up. Letting a concussion slip by is huge, but still. The man was preoccupied with Ranboo being a medical mystery. Tubbo guesses he can cut him a little slack…maybe. Concussions fucking suck. Never again. 

“How are you feeling, mate?” 

“Not on the verge of passing out?” Tubbo tries, then realizes that could mean anything from going to pass out imminently to perfectly fine. “A little headache, but nothing like before. I’m fine now.” 

“Yeah, it’ll take a while to fully go into effect, but it should help in the meantime,” Phil says, shutting the door behind him. His voice gets softer as he sits at the edge of the cot. “Ranboo? How are you doing?”

Ranboo hums, resting their head on Tubbo’s shoulder. “Better.”

Phil smiles. “That’s good. I’m sorry about all that, by the way. It might’ve been what was necessary, but it still wasn’t fair to you.” 

Ranboo’s head shoots up off of Tubbo’s shoulder and they stare at Phil like they can’t believe those words just came out of his mouth. 

Their head floats back down and they tuck themself securely back into Tubbo’s side, eyes wide and mouth slightly open still.

“Do you guys want to eat while we talk? I brought some food in here before…” Phil trails off awkwardly. “Everything.” 

Tubbo looks at Ranboo, and Ranboo shakes off some of their evident shock enough to signal for later, so that’s what Tubbo tells Phil, and he says it’s fine. 

They all sit there for a moment. 

Phil takes a deep breath, then lets it out. “I’m gonna need you to be honest with me when you answer these.” 

“I will be,” Tubbo assures, chest flooding with the guilt of all the secrets he’d kept. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” Phil says, “and I’m going to be as upfront with you as I can. But there is one thing that I want to make very clear.” His voice hardens slightly, just enough to put Tubbo on edge and make Ranboo’s grip on him tighten just a bit. “There will be no spacewalks. For either of you. You’re cooperating so far, so let’s keep it that way.”

A weight lifts itself off of Tubbo’s chest, and Ranboo relaxes a little. 

Tubbo nods his understanding. 

Phil readjusts himself so he’s sitting fully on the cot, crossing his legs to take up less space. This is what Techno must’ve been trying to do earlier- make himself seem less intimidating. His blond hair is tucked behind his ears, he’s just in his socks as well, and he hasn’t shaved in a few days, making him seem less like a captain and more, as Tubbo compared him to earlier, a stressed and tired dad just trying his best. 

“So, this entire thing was to get Ranboo as far away from the Confederation as possible,” Phil muses. “Correct?” 

Tubbo nods. “It was the only way I could think of getting them away undetected for as long as possible. Cryofreeze has been used for animals and plants-”

“But you’re the only one crazy enough to use it on me,” Ranboo says blankly, once again toying with their necklace as it hangs from Tubbo’s neck. When Tubbo stares back at them to protest, they just smirk at him. 

Tubbo just whips his vision back to Phil and flips his sibling off without a second look, and he can feel them laugh just a little. He can’t say that they’re wrong, exactly, but he sure as hell doesn’t wanna admit they’re right. “I made sure I did it right. I bought the best I could and modified it myself. I did my research. I had everything planned out.”

“Your final destination wasn’t Kinoko, was it, though? That planet’s crawling with Confederation,” Phil says, frowning a little. 

Tubbo just shakes his head. “It’s busy, though. Easy enough to hop on a transport and hop to where I needed to get us.” 

“And where would that be?” 

The one planet he could think of that’s outside of Confederation control. “Nevadas.” 

Phil’s eyes widen. 

And then, he starts to laugh. 

Chapter Text

Tubbo stares in shock at Phil as he laughs. 

“What the hell’s so funny?” 

Ranboo is silent beside him, and Tubbo’s just gawking at Phil, because what the hell? Last time he had an interrogation session with Phil, it had started out with a gun under his chin as he was pressed up against a wall. Now, the guy is laughing? 

“I’m sorry, mate,” Phil breathes, calming himself down. “But I haven’t been entirely honest with you in that aspect, either. Kinoko wasn’t our final destination for this run. Nevadas was.”

Tubbo stares off at the medbay’s counter to his right, an incredulous smile growing on his face. 

This is ridiculous. Why not? The ship he randomly got on is headed to the same place he’s going to escape the Confederation…a place that’s not exactly lawless, but certainly more wild and easier to get under the radar and stay there…

Something Tommy said a few days ago floats to the top of his mind. 

“I’m saying I’m no fan of the fuckin’ Confederation. And the sooner we all get out of their clutches, the better.” 

The drop-offs-

The bandits-

The knowing how to deal with the bandits-

Well. 

It’s a good thing Tubbo’s not on a ship with any particularly law-abiding folk, then. 

Tubbo’s gaze drifts back to Phil, staring pensively at him with a slight smirk on his face. “Well, I guess I picked the perfect ship for the job, then.” 

“That remains yet to be seen,” Phil says lightly, but all the levity of the situation sucks itself out of the room. “Because as it stands, I still have no reason to trust that you haven’t put my family in danger.” 

Family. 

There’s the reminder that Tommy and Techno and Wilbur aren’t just Phil’s crew, there’s something much more personal at stake here. And he’s seen what personal attacks get someone…a gun to the chin. He saw it once with the bandit, and saw it again yesterday with himself. Phil may have only flipped the safety off earlier, but that meant he was serious. Lesson number one of blaster safety(after ‘don’t shoot yourself’) is don’t turn off the safety unless you really mean it. He had meant it. He just hadn’t pulled the trigger. 

Tubbo reaches up and brushes the back of his head, which makes him wince just a little. The area is still tender to the touch. He can still almost feel Technoblade’s meaty hands around his arms slamming him up against the wall. 

He knows the crew of the Esbi’ai can hold their own. 

Tubbo once more gets the sinking feeling from so long ago- that he’s trapped in the belly of the beast. 

The question is, can he hold his own against them?

Does he have to go against them at all?

Again, something rattles in the vent and Tubbo glances up, barely catching Phil as he does the same. Ranboo is still wrapped around Tubbo’s left arm, no longer playing with their necklace that’s still hanging around his neck. When he looks back down, they're staring into space, glaring at nothing. Weird.  

Phil seems to be wrestling down concern when he looks back at Tubbo. “And I heard what you told us before Ranboo woke up. I believe you, which means, to put it mildly, you’re in deep shit with the law. You’re here, which means until it’s proven otherwise, you’re both with me. You understand the dilemma we’re in, mate?” 

Tubbo nods. 

He’s a danger. Or, more likely, Ranboo is the danger. And Phil is saying that he’s got another chance. Another chance to prove that he’s trustworthy. Despite the fact that Ranboo is technically ‘stolen government property’ and at the very least an active fugitive. He hadn’t been the one to take them out himself, but he’d still helped. That won’t change the fact that he probably has a warrant out by now to match Ranboo’s. His face’ll be plastered in every system from here to the edge of the galaxy soon if it isn’t already.

“You’ll stay here for now,” Phil decides, standing up. “Why don’t you both eat, and then rest? I’ll come by later to get the dishes. Potions don’t fix everything, so some sleep will be good, Tubbo.”

Tubbo nods. It’s been a long fuckin’ day. And he may not feel like his head’s gonna explode anymore, but it still hurts and he’d prefer it not to. 

“And you’ll have to stay here in the medbay until further notice,” Phil adds. “It won’t be for the rest of the journey, but consider it…temporary house arrest. And we still have to keep an eye on Ranboo’s condition.” 

Tubbo looks down at Ranboo, half-asleep–or at least, zoned the fuck out, and hanging off of him. They glance back up at him. 

“Did just come out of a freezer yesterday,” they mumble, shrugging. Tubbo almost wants to cackle, and he has to work hard to suppress a snort. 

“Do you have to put it like that?” 

“Yes.” Their answer is immediate, and they manage a small smile, but Tubbo can tell they’re exhausted. Sitting there, curled around him, in Techno’s too-big clothes with bags under their red and green eyes- they need food and rest. 

“Hey, it was a good fuckin’ freezer,” Tubbo jokes, then turns back to Phil. “Okay.”

Phil smiles and nods at the forgotten bowls sitting on the counter. “I’ll be back in an hour for those.”

His face flickers as he looks further at the counter, looking dark for a moment as his eyes flick back to the pair of siblings. He’s worried. It’s written all over his face. 

And as he leaves, he picks up the also-forgotten engine manual Tubbo had left before Ranboo’s shower and slips it into his jacket before shutting the door behind him. 

Chapter Text

The lights in the medbay are on the same night-cycle as every other room on the ship except when otherwise wanted, or so it seems. 

That, and Tubbo didn’t wanna push random buttons on the wall in the hopes that he found the one for lights, because of course the medbay can’t have a regular light switch, so. It’s dark. But that’s not why he’s woken up all of the sudden.

Ranboo’s not in the cot with him. 

It’s gotta be the middle of the night by now. Tubbo can’t remember falling asleep, or the lights in the medbay dimming, or Phil coming in to collect the dishes the second time. But everything’s silent. The only sound he can hear is that odd rattling in the vents, now accompanied by a creaking noise he’s positive isn’t just the ship moving around in space. He’s lived in this ship now for what, a week? He knows what sounds are normal and which ones aren’t. And that sound? That sound is the furthest from normal.

But he also can’t hear Ranboo breathing. 

They don’t snore, exactly, but they don’t sleep quietly either. So if the cot is empty and he can’t hear them breathing…

Tubbo curls back into the mattress and tries to relax. Maybe they needed the bathroom or something. Maybe they just needed to move around. They’re fine. They’re about as old as he is, he doesn’t need to be breathing down their neck all the time. 

But when about ten minutes pass and Tubbo doesn’t hear them, the now-familiar feeling of panic about Ranboo curling in his chest starts to rear its ugly head. 

He rolls over and opens his eyes and jumps with a yelp, heart pounding in his throat. 

Ranboo is awake, and apparently did need to move around. But instead of pacing around the medbay, he is just standing there, staring at Tubbo as he looms over the mattress. He’s breathing so slowly his chest barely seems to be moving at all.  

Also, their eyes are definitely glowing. 

“Fuck, man,” Tubbo breathes, slumping back into the cot. “You scared me.” 

Ranboo doesn’t answer. They don’t even blink. Their eyes just bore into him, glowing faintly green and red in the dark medbay. 

Their face is blank. They don’t even look afraid, it’s unsettling, it’s-

Tubbo’s stomach drops. 

It’s exactly the face they made after Wilbur offered them a potion and they went away. Disconnected. Whatever. Like they’re not even in their own body anymore. 

Tubbo swallows down the rising lump in his throat. “Hey, Ranboo?” 

No response. Just one slow inhale, one slow exhale. 

He reaches over and wraps his hand around their wrist. “Come on. It’s-” They don’t budge. “Nobody’s giving anyone a potion, nobody’s gonna get you. It’s okay, Ranboo.” He tugs them lightly. It’s like their legs have turned to solid steel. They just- stare. This isn’t like last time, last time they almost felt like a body, they were so perfectly limp. This time- they feel like- well, he doesn’t know, but it’s different and it’s wrong. 

Then, their eyes flick up. 

“Hey, Ranboo, lay back down, you need your rest- Ranboo?” 

Slowly, their head turns as though on a well-oiled swivel, and they look up at the vent. 

The vent that is letting out a rattling and creaking even louder than before. 

“It’s- Tommy’s handling it, okay? You don’t have to worry,” Tubbo tries to reassure. But they won’t budge. 

Ranboo stares at the vent for a minute or so. Then, they inhale sharply, ripping their wrist from Tubbo’s hand and slamming their palms over their ears. Their knees buckle sharply and they curl up in a ball with their feet flat on the ground. 

Tubbo lunges over to the other side of the cot, leaning over the edge. “Ranboo? Ranboo, hey, it’s alright-” 

Their head flicks up to him and they freeze. 

“It’s okay,” Tubbo tries to reassure. “We’re safe. We’re going away, we’re on the ship-” 

“The ship,” Ranboo whispers, almost under their breath. “The- the ship-”

“Yeah, Ranboo, it’s okay, we’re on the ship-”

“No, Tubbo, you don’t understand!” They burst, lurching forward and grabbing him by the shoulders. “The ship- the ship-” 

One loud creak sounding like metal bending to its breaking point reverberates through the medbay, and Tubbo’s heart stops. 

The Esbi’ai shudders. Everything in the shelves and drawers rattles, and Tubbo’s thrown violently on his side, almost hitting his head on the wall behind the cot and giving himself another concussion. Ranboo hangs off of the frame of the cot, which is fortunately bolted to the ground. 

Tubbo shoves himself up with a hand on his head, ready to climb out of the cot-

The distinct sound of everything around him powering down sounds from everywhere he can hear. 

Tubbo stares down at Ranboo, eyes blown wide open in panic. 

Everything is silent for one long heartbeat. 

Then, the alarms go off. 

Piercing, drilling into Tubbo’s skull, along with red emergency lights lining the hallway outside-

Ranboo slams their hands back over their ears, gasping loudly, obviously about to start panicking if they aren’t already. Tubbo lunges out of bed and doesn’t hesitate to pound the button to open the door. He flinches back at the full assault on his ears of the blaring emergency alarm. Fuck ‘house arrest’, they’re about to die. 

Something slams, someone lets out a growling yell, and footsteps pound desperately down the hallway. 

“Tommy?” Phil’s voice echoes under the alarms. Tubbo turns back and tugs Ranboo upwards and into the hall; their hands are still firmly over their ears, and there’s tears coursing steadily down their face as they gasp. “What happened?!” 

“The fucking engine!” Tommy bursts, running into Tubbo’s view. “Something- something blew, and I can’t fix it!” 

“What do you-” 

“I mean I can’t fucking fix it, Wilbur!” Tommy yells, though there’s hardly any anger in his voice, just fear. “Not by myself.”

Technoblade and Wilbur have appeared at the end of the hall behind Phil, all looking rumpled and like they’ve just been thrown out of bed by the alarms. Tommy’s standing in front of them, having obviously been interrupted on the way… somewhere. He’s not in his red flight jacket, and suddenly Tubbo remembers it’s spent the last few hours crumpled at the head of the cot, stuck between the mattress and the wall and lost in the chaos of his concussion. His blond curls are frazzled and some are dyed with engine grease. Tubbo tugs Ranboo further down the hall and realizes that Tommy sounds close to tears. He’s determined and focused, but still almost crying. 

He’s scared. 

Tommy whips around and stares at Tubbo. His eyes are hard and ringed with dark circles and he’s clenching and unclenching his fists. 

“If I don’t get the engine running, we’ll run out of oxygen,” Tommy huffs. “And if we don’t fix it right, it’s gonna blow.” 

“What broke?” Tubbo can’t stop himself from asking. He guides Ranboo all the way down to the rest of the crew. 

An engine. An engine is something he can fix. 

“Compression regulator,” Tommy says, swiping at his face. Tubbo can’t tell if he’s wiping off grease or a tear. “It blew apart, left shrapnel everywhere, and took a bunch of shit with it. There’s nothing we can replace it with right now-”

“So we’ll just have to jerry-rig it,” Tubbo mutters. 

“And you all have to get to the shuttles,” Tommy says forcefully. Immediately, his whole family bristles. Technoblade flinches, and Wilbur tries to protest, but Tommy just shuts them down. “It’s just a precaution. Trust me-”

“Tommy, this is life or death-” 

“Do you trust me?”

The alarm keeps blaring, and Tommy’s bathed in red light. 

Instead of answering, Wilbur seizes Tommy into a hug, and it only takes Technoblade and Phil half a second to pile in. 

Ranboo sniffles behind Tubbo and he turns to comfort them, but they’re wiping the tears from their face and steeling themself. 

Tommy pushes his family away. “Get to the shuttles, now!” Then, he turns to Tubbo, and his expression hardens. “You haven’t worked on one of these ships before, right?” 

“Me?”

“Do you see another mechanic?

His tone makes Tubbo’s chest hurt, but he bites back as much as he can. “No, but I know them inside and out.” 

“Well, I’ll take what I can fucking get,” Tommy mutters, sending pangs through Tubbo’s lungs. “You coming? I’d rather not die.”

Right. Life or death. 

Tubbo lets go of Ranboo’s arm, hugs them as fiercely as he can for just a second, then lets go and looks at Phil. 

Phil nods, and some sort of understanding passes between them that Phil will not allow Ranboo to be hurt if Tubbo isn’t there.  

“Ranboo, you gotta go with them-”

“No-” They’re starting to breathe hard again, and Tubbo has to leave them, and it hurts like hell, but if he dies so they can live, so fucking be it. 

“Stay with Phil,” he whispers. “Here-” 

His trembling hands go to the clasp of Ranboo’s necklace, the one he’s been wearing for them since they were rescued. The one thing they were allowed to keep with them through all the shit the Confederation put them through. The one they were wearing when they pulled him into the alley and he punched them in the face. What a way to meet his family. 

He finally manages to undo the latch and presses the necklace with its purple-black pendant into Ranboo’s shaking, scarred hand. “Here,” he says again. “I-In case anything happens.” 

Ranboo’s eyes are shining in the red light, and he knows he sees recognition in their face from when they passed the necklace to him, before they passed out and he put the lid on that box. 

“I love you,” they whisper, voice breaking. 

Tubbo musters up as much courage as he can, biting his lip so it doesn’t shake, and chokes out, “Love you too, bossman.” 

He seizes them in a huge hug, then gives their hand one last pat and them a final watery smile, then turns and bolts towards the engine room. 

Chapter Text

The engine room is a mess when Tubbo finally runs in. 

Tommy’s wrist-deep in the engine, working with what appears to be a wrench and a pair of pliers to pry something out of the engine. The only light is coming from the lantern Tommy had in his corner hung up on a hook in the wall near the dents he’d shown Tubbo and the slowly flashing red emergency lights. All of Tommy’s things in the corner have been tossed from shelves and are crumpled, caught by the hammock, or cracked on the floor. 

“You know these ships back and front?” Tommy barks, wrenching a piece of smoking metal from the engine and immediately going back in. “Could use some help in here!” His eyes flick to Tubbo’s feet and he grumbles. “You didn’t grab your fucking shoes?” 

“I was a little more focused on not dying,” Tubbo snarks, snatching up the engine manual he’d tried to read in the medbay. “How many modifications have you made to the engine over the years?” 

“Other than replacements?” 

“Yes!” 

Tommy huffs and lists off what he’s done- rewiring the accelerator core’s securings to keep it tighter, modifying the fuel switches to be faster, and connecting the compression regulator directly to the fuel cells to use them up slower. 

“We gotta take out the compression regulator at the least,” Tubbo mumbles as another hunk of twisted, smoking metal is dumped on the grated floor with a resounding clang. 

“It fucking exploded,” Tommy grunts, digging once again in the now-still engine, faintly illuminated by the accelerator core glowing. “We gotta replace the tubes if we want any chance of not dying before the fuel cells blow themselves up.” 

“Great,” Tubbo huffs, sprinting in his sock feet to the small bins of replacement parts. “I am not dying now.”

“Yeah, not now,” Tommy mutters under his breath. 

Tubbo’s about to ask him the fuck do you mean by that but they don’t have time. Just because the engine isn’t constantly rotating doesn’t mean the fuel isn’t burning. The engine also generates power for all the life support systems- some things they kind of need, like pressurization so they don’t implode and oxygen to keep breathing. Tommy wasn’t wrong when he said they’d run out of air and all die anyway if they don’t fix this thing. 

Tubbo bolts over with a few emergency fuel tube lines and almost dives into the still engine, almost hanging out of it as he pulls out one punctured rubbery tube, leaking sticky black fuel and shoves another one in its place as fast as he can before more starship fuel can pump itself all over him. He can barely breathe, and he can feel Tommy right beside him prying up more scorched and smoking hunks of metal. He forces his hands not to shake as much as he can as he screws in the ends of one tube after another, then vaults back and tosses the now-ruined fuel tubes on the ground. 

He can’t fuck this up. He can’t afford to fuck this up. Not when all their lives depend on it. 

Compression regulator is directly connected to the fuel cells now- 

“And you don’t have a replacement?” 

“Nope!” Tommy heaves a still red-hot piece of metal the size of his head over his shoulder and makes a face like he’s trying not to scream through his teeth as he shakes his hand out. His gloves are smoking. “Specialty fuckin’ piece, too expensive. You said we could jerry-rig it?” 

“I said we’ll have to,” Tubbo says, biting back his anger and fear as best he can as he drops to his knees in front of the engine manual. “There’s no way we can attach the fuel cells to the accelerator core-” 

“I am not attaching fuel cells to radion,” Tommy yells. “Are you trying to kill us all?” 

“No!” Tubbo yells back, staring back up at Tommy in shocked anger. “I was about to say it’s not safe! What is your problem?” 

As soon as the words come out of his mouth, Tubbo wants to shove them back in. 

Tommy whips around, jaw dropped in outrage. “My problem?” he bursts, incredulously. “My problem is that my home is about to fucking explode! My problem is that my family might die and I might die and I’m trying to figure out how to not fucking die and I’m stuck in here with you!” 

Tubbo can see the regret blooming on Tommy’s face as soon as he says that. 

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking hurt. The words hit like a crowbar to the chest. 

“In case you forgot,” Tubbo bites, fighting back the tears. “My family’s in danger too.” 

“And you put my family in danger to save them,” Tommy responds immediately, but half the fury’s melted from his voice. “And you lied.” 

“I didn’t-” Tubbo starts to protest, but the words catch in his throat. 

“And don’t say you ‘just didn’t tell the truth’ cuz that’s the same fuckin’ thing,” Tommy huffs, whipping back around. “Give me a wrench.”

“What the fuck else was I meant to do?” Tubbo spits, passing the nearest wrench to Tommy as he traces the fuel lines over and over in the engine manual. The emergency alarms are still blaring enough to give him another headache, and he’d rather not have a repeat of that anytime soon. If they can redirect the fuel lines…

“We gotta bypass the fuel lines or else we’re all gettin’ blown to pieces,” Tommy yells. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out!” Tubbo yells back. All they have to do is buy time. 

All they have to do is buy time. If they can just buy themselves enough time to get to a planet and replace the regulator-

“How close is the nearest planet?” 

“We’re not making it there in time-”

“Humor me, man!” Tubbo pleads. “Please.” 

“Few hours away, tops,” Tommy says.

“Even if the engine was at partial capacity?” 

“Not with the compression regulator busted,” Tommy grumbles, sounding more hurt than angry. “I connected it right to the fuel cells to keep the pressure perfect. System’s used to it now, so it’ll probably fuckin’ kill us all if we change it.” 

“No pressure,” Tubbo mutters. 

He blinks. 

An absolutely crazy idea blooms in the back of his head. 

Syndicate-class ships are built for long-haul traveling and cargo- meaning they’ve got emergency backup systems built into the necessary machinery. 

Like how the fuel cells can be burned at low capacity for six hours tops with no pressure regulation. The engine just has to be moving. 

All they have to do is angle the ship towards the nearest planet and get the engine moving. 

“Tommy,” he says. “This is gonna sound crazy, but I-”

“I swear to fuck if the next words out of your mouth are I need you to trust me I might actually punch you.” The air in the engine room seems to turn to solid ice. Tommy whips around and flings his gloves down to the ground, showcasing what looks to be an angry burn on his palm in the dim, flashing red light shining through the engine room. “You lied to my brother, you lied to my dad, you lied to me, Tubbo! All you’ve done is keep secrets! How the hell am I supposed to trust you with our lives?” 

“How the hell was I supposed to trust you with everything I had going on?” Tubbo explodes, shoving himself up from the ground and clenching his fists, staring Tommy straight in the eyes. “I can’t just tell everyone I helped break my sibling out of a government facility and that I’m on the run with them! Why the hell is that so hard to understand?” 

“It’s not, actually,” Tommy spits, storming off to his tools. “It all makes sense. Right from the start. I knew you were hiding something, I just figured you were like me so I didn’t push. But I still trusted you,” he says, ripping another wrench from a toolbox. 

I knew you were hiding something, I just figured you were like me so I didn’t push.

“For what it’s worth, I wanted to trust you too,” Tubbo grumbles, but he can’t stop his voice from choking up. “But it’s kinda hard when your sibling is slowly dying in front of your eyes and you can’t do anything about it.” 

He was utterly helpless. 

Tommy had made him feel human. Tommy had said he belonged here. And he ruined that. 

And that really fucking hurts to know that he burned that bridge before he could even really cross it. 

A wrench skids its way across the grated floor and stops just before Tubbo’s socked feet. 

“I wish we had more time to argue,” Tommy huffs. “But we’re all about to die. Are you gonna help me or not?” 

And as angry as Tommy sounds, Tubbo knows a peace offering when he sees one, however tiny it may be. 

“You willing to go out on a limb and trust me on this?” Tubbo says as he scoops up the wrench. 

“I’m not willing to die,” Tommy corrects him. “And I don’t think you’re willing to kill yourself or our families, so fine.”

Tubbo takes a deep breath and gets ready to explain his idea just as the ship shudders again and the engine room plunges itself into near-pitch black.