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Ranboo sat down at the Syndicate meeting, hands shaking, nervous of the reactions that would unfold. He was going to be the one to break the news to them about Tommy. That he was beaten to death in a claustrophobic box at the hands of his abuser. His breath sped up. He hoped they wouldn't be too mad at him for potentially being the cause of the lockdown, that he could be partially to blame for the death of TommyInnit.
He took a deep breath and looked up from his hands. His tail curled around his wrist.
"Um, I have a bit of...bad news." His voice trailed off at the end.
"Hm? What's wrong, Main Character?" He couldn't bring himself to smile at the nickname Techno had given him.
"It's Tommy."
A silence fell over the room at the name of the boy. That's all he really was, a boy.
"What about him?" Phil asked.
"What'd he do to you," Techno's voice raised in panic.
"What? No, he didn't do anything to me, you know how he was locked in the pr- the prison?"
"Ranboo, what--"
"He's not coming out."
"So he got himself locked in there," Techno said, "about time he pissed Sam off."
Ranboo took a shaky breath, they still didn't get it. He'd have to say the words.
"Tommy's not coming out because he's not living." The sentence rushed out of his mouth in a single breath. He looked up sharply, gauging the room.
Niki was the first to speak up, "Tommy didn't die,"
Phil was next, "That's a good joke,"
Techno was last, "Serves him right."
Ranboo could look past the denial of Phil and Niki, but Techno? What Techno said made Ranboo's blood run cold.
"Techno, you can't mean that," his voice was soft, "right?"
"Well, yeah, I mean he had it coming." The man leaned back in his chair, relaxed.
"He was sixteen," Ranboo said, disbelief rampant in his voice, like at any moment he'd snap out of a nightmare.
"So? He's caused the same amount of problems to us," Techno continued, "He's a nuisance, anyway. Or was."
What the hell. Ranboo couldn't think straight. He couldn't decide if he wanted to run out of the room or yell at Technoblade. Luckily, Phil decided for him.
"Well, what's next." Techno started talking about plans for the Syndicate, while Ranboo's brain still reeled.
"Wait, Techno, let's go back to Tommy dying," Ranboo spoke up.
"Let's not, I don't wanna talk about him."
"I do, okay, and I wanna talk about your reaction, all of yours."
There was no going back now, he supposed. He didn't like conflict, but sometimes he snapped, and his mentor telling him a child deserved death? He snapped at that.
"Do you know how he died, can you tell me how he spent his last breaths?" Ranboo sat up, hands shaking in anger this time, not fear.
"No," Phil said, sounding uninterested.
"He died in a claustrophobic obsidian box to the hands of someone he hated. He was beat to death, with a potato. A potato."
Ranboo took a deep breath, now was not the time to break down.
"He went to the prison for closure. His last visit to his abuser."
"Who, Dream? He's hardly--"
"Shut up, Phil," Ranboo cut him off, "you wouldn't know, okay, you don't know what happened because you didn't care." Phil slumped back.
"I don't want to talk about a traitor anymore," Techno started,
"Oh, a traitor, a traitor." Ranboo spat. "If you had to choose between someone who'd been lukewarm to you at best or your best friend, Phil, for example," he pointed to Techno, "who would you choose? And, to make it worse, would you stand on the same side as someone who beat you up, every day for months, blew up your stuff, isolated you from everyone you cared for, would you side with them?"
Ranboo shook his head, not letting the others answer.
"No, you wouldn't."
"I didn't know-" Phil started.
"Yeah, because you didn't care. Everyone knows what happened to Tommy in exile, at least a little bit. Dream confessed to it himself. You don't know because you were ignorant."
Techno's lip curled. "Well, of course we didn't care, he betrayed us."
Niki spoke up, "Who really betrayed who?"
Silence fell on the room like a thick blanket, anger radiating from Ranboo and Technoblade, denial and disbelief from Phil and Niki. After a few seconds, Ranboo spoke up again, quiet fury in his voice.
"He was getting better, too." Phil looked up, a confused expression painted on his face.
"He had better coping mechanisms," Ranboo said as an answer.
"The knives stayed in the kitchen, Tubbo and I found less in the bathroom."
The implications of that sentence were heavy.
"Less blood on the sleeves of his sweatshirts,"
"Why'd you help him?" Techno's gruff voice snapped Ranboo out of his daze.
Ranboo stood up, his full 7 feet towered over the table.
"He was depressed, Techno, he was suicidal." Ranboo couldn't control what came out of his mouth, he was so blinded by anger, blinded like Techno who couldn't see past his own pride.
"I tried to help him because he needed to hear that he was worth living, that people cared. Every time I saw his scars I'd go home and cry, and when he saw the marks on my cheeks the next day, he couldn't comprehend that someone, anyone, cared for him enough to cry. He asked if I'd fallen, if I'd gotten hurt."
He had gotten hurt, not physically, however. Ranboo sat back down.
"I helped him because it made me happy to see new farms growing outside of his house, flowers being planted in the dirt. I liked eating cookies he made, I liked frosting the cakes he spent so long distracting himself with."
"I liked seeing him tinker with redstone like Sam, I liked seeing him read books like Techno."
It went unsaid that he copied other people's hobbies because he couldn't think of any.
Ranboo knew it was because all he'd known was war and pain.
Phil thought it was because he wanted to be like other people.
Techno thought it was because he was uncreative, a leech.
Niki thought it was because he was too lazy to think of anything else.
Ranboo continued, anger a bit more subdued, "He tried sewing, mostly to patch up Wilbur's coat, but Tubbo had to stop him because pricking his fingers with the needles had stopped being accidental."
The room was suffocating now, and Ranboo felt nauseous being in the same room as Technoblade.
He stood up, pushing his chair back in, and headed to the door. His hand hovered on the cold metal of the doorknob. Without turning around, he addressed those behind him.
"Phil, I'd call you heartless, but I know you care only for Techno. I'd call Technoblade heartless too, but he cares for those who believe whatever he believes and follow his every wishes. Niki, I'd call you heartless, but at least you used to be kind." He turned his head to meet eyes with Technoblade.
"If I didn't live with you and Phil, I'd leave the Syndicate." He opened the door and left, leaving behind a confused anarchist, a somewhat guilty father-figure, and a baker who had fire in her eyes, not her oven.
Ranboo walked to Snowchester.