#somebody pls check on ranboo he's not fuckign okay

[onecanonlife]

Sam checks on Ranboo. What he finds doesn’t make him feel any better.

(word count: 1,508)

--------------------

This is potentially not a very good idea. Sam doesn’t much like interacting with people, these days, and he certainly doesn’t seek people out. Everything always seems to go wrong when he does. Every connection he still has has been used against him. Better not to have them. Better to just—focus on his job. That’s what he’s here for. Even if—

No.

But the thing is, if he doesn’t do something about this, anything, he’ll hate himself even more than he already does. He can’t get Ranboo’s voice out of his head, shaking and desperate, his whole frame trembling as he asked, no, begged Sam to lock him away. If he doesn’t check up on the kid himself, if only for his own peace of mind, he won’t be able to function. So that’s how he finds himself here, in the tundra, and he’s definitely not dressed for the weather, but that doesn’t matter, not when he has a goal in mind.

He passes by twin cottages, no sign of anyone within. Probably a good thing—he has no desire to speak to Phil or Technoblade. Ranboo’s house is just behind theirs, dug into a mountain, and there’s no indication of life there, either, but that doesn’t have to mean anything. He could be out. Could be… doing something. He wishes the idea didn’t fill him with so much dread.

He might be at Snowchester, but the thing is, Sam just came from Snowchester. That was the first place he checked. Tubbo said he hadn’t seen him since yesterday. Yesterday. The whole thing happened yesterday. Sam doesn’t like that Tubbo hasn’t seen him since yesterday. Tubbo seemed pretty unconcerned, but Sam’s pretty sure he has no idea that his husband spent about half an hour trying to persuade him to put him in the prison. As an inmate. For—what did he say? A few years.

Sweet Prime.

He knocks on Ranboo’s door and receives no response. Calling out garners the same lack, so Sam presses the button and lets himself inside.

“Ranboo?” he calls again. “It’s just me. Sam. I wanted to check in with you? See if you were doing okay?”

He’s not sure how Ranboo will react to him. They don’t know each other very well, to be honest, and any hope that Sam had of acting as a parental figure to the minors on his server dissolved as soon as he failed Tommy so horrendously. He’s looked at with suspicion, now, and he deserves it. He deserves it for more reasons than one. So if Ranboo wants him to go, he’ll go, but he needs to at least lay eyes on him. Make sure he’s alright. Or—he’s not sure alright is the right word. Not after yesterday. But everything’s relative.

He still gets no answer, so he checks upstairs first. There’s no sign of him, and he can’t tell if the bed has been slept in. So he heads back down, and down the ladder, moving slowly, cautiously. He’s never been in Ranboo’s house. He doesn’t want to break anything. And he also doesn’t want to seem like an intruder, even though he’s definitely intruding at the moment.

Ranboo’s basement is kind of a mess, but it’s an organized kind of mess, a clutter that has a reason to it, once he looks for more than a few seconds. Chests along one wall, brewing stations along the other, a sugar cane farm, and it looks like a few villagers have set up camp, though they don’t appear to be here right now. For a long moment, Sam doesn’t think that anyone is here at all, and he takes a few steps forward, almost losing his balance on the third. He frowns; there’s water all over the floor, and what looks like a few shards of glass. Did Ranboo break a water flask?

And then he sees him, curled up against the far wall, legs hugged to his chest, face buried in his knees.

“Ranboo?” he asks. Ranboo doesn’t react. “Hey, are you good?”

Ranboo makes no sign that he knows he’s there at all, so he advances, still slow, still cautious, and crouches at his side. He’s not sure what to do here—does he touch him? He doesn’t want to touch him without permission. But he’s worried that he’s hurt in some way, either physically or mentally, and he can’t check him for injuries if he stays in that position. So, gently, he reaches one hand out and brushes it against Ranboo’s shoulder. When he doesn’t respond to that, he places it down just a little more firmly.

“Ranboo?” he tries again, and this time, Ranboo stirs, raising his head, blinking blearily, and it is a struggle not to gasp, not to outwardly show his dismay, because Ranboo’s face is covered in burns, angry and inflamed, stretching down in twin lines from his eyes, and—that’s right. Enderman. Water burns him.

So the water on the floor—?

“Sam?” Ranboo croaks, and he sounds barely cognizant. Mostly just confused. “What’re you doin’?”

“I was worried about you,” he replies. “Ranboo, are you—” He doesn’t know how to finish that. Obviously, the kid isn’t okay. But he doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s not—he’s not good with kids. Not good with keeping them safe. Recent events have made that much very clear.

Ranboo’s pants are damp. There’s water around him; he’s sitting in a puddle of it.

“Jeez, Ranboo,” he says. “That must hurt. You wanna—I don’t know where you keep spare clothes, but do you wanna change out of that?”

Ranboo stares at some distant point over his head.

“I needed t’know,” he says, his voice slurring, barely understandable. “I tried t—I had to. I have to.”

A horrible suspicion rises. But that can’t—he wouldn’t, would—?

No.

“Ranboo, did you do that on purpose?” he asks, and he tries so, so hard to keep the horror out of his tone, but he doesn’t think he succeeds. He wants to be wrong. Please, Prime, let him be wrong. Because if he’s not wrong, that means that Ranboo left him yesterday, and he came back here and—

“Had to,” Ranboo repeats, distant, and Sam finds himself suddenly blinking back tears.

“Okay, that’s—” he says. “Why would you—oh, god, Ranboo, why would you do that? It’s not—you weren’t punishing yourself, were you?” It can’t be that. He needs—it can’t be that. But the way Ranboo was acting, the way he was insisting that he’d done something worthy of being locked away for, something he couldn’t say anything about—if he couldn’t get the punishment he wanted, would he resort to this?

Is this his fault?

“Answers,” Ranboo says, completely nonsensically. “Needed—” He cuts off. Turns his face away.

And Sam comes back to himself. He can’t make this about him. Not right now. Even though his stomach is churning, guilt and horror crashing over him in waves, and he wants to have a bit of a breakdown over this, honestly. But he can’t break down, because that helps no one, and that certainly doesn’t help Ranboo, and he’s not going to be able to get him to open up, either. If Ranboo hasn’t trusted him enough to tell him things before, he’s not going to start now.

But he can help him in the moment.

“Okay,” he says, even though it’s not, not at all. “Okay, how about I just take you upstairs, then? Get you somewhere a little more comfortable?”

“Mmkay,” Ranboo says after a second. Quiet, still kind of confused. Sam has no idea how aware he is of what’s going on. But he’s got his permission, so he hooks one arm around Ranboo’s back and the other under his legs, and he lifts him. As tall as he is, it should be hard, he thinks, but it isn’t. He’s very light.

Worrying. Very worrying. But there’s nothing he can do about it right now.

He gets Ranboo up the ladder, and then up the stairs. Into his bed. He thinks Ranboo falls asleep, but it’s hard to tell. The kid doesn’t have eyelids.

He stands there for a moment, and feels the crushing weight of a situation he can do nothing to solve, once again. He doesn’t know where to go from here. Ranboo isn’t going to tell him anything. Maybe he’s right not to. Sam doesn’t think of himself as particularly worthy of trust, these days. So there’s nothing he can do except keep an eye out, really, and hope that at some point, Ranboo will let someone in. Even if it’s not him.

He stands there for a moment longer.

“God, Ranboo, I’m so sorry,” he says.

And then he leaves. Guilt is an anchor tied around his ankle, another burden to carry.

But he doesn’t think the Warden can solve this one. And he doesn’t think that Sam can solve much of anything at all.