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The day after Technoblade proclaimed himself as Ranboo’s teacher, he woke the kid up at the crack of dawn. Ranboo slumped out of bed, groaning…
And found himself at the mercy of running laps, push-ups, and Techno’s harsh critiques for the next six hours.
Ranboo tried his best not to complain, knowing this was part of how Techno showed his lo—er, showed that he did not hate someone. (Ranboo knew Techno didn’t love him. Techno loved Phil, and no one else. Which was fine. Their relationship was one built on years of having no one but each other to rely on, of knowing every part of each other’s souls in a way no one would ever understand. Ranboo’s relationship with them was one of weird neighbors, who might become acquaintances, but it would be a long time before they were ever friends.)
But, regardless of the exercise being good for him, Ranboo’s body was not built for it. He collapsed at least five times over the course of the session, and Techno had to pull him up and talk to him sternly until he could do whatever the task was again. He was grateful that Techno didn’t laugh at him—he already had enough mortification from himself, thank you.
At the end of the session, when Ranboo was thanking the gods over and over that he couldn’t sweat because he’d be burned to a crisp if he could, Techno clapped him on the back, sending a wave of dizziness through him. “We’ll start swordfighting tomorrow.”
“Sword— what?” Ranboo gasped, still trying to get his lungs to work normally.
Techno grinned, wry and amused. “You gotta know how to fight, kid. Can’t have you dying on my watch. Also, swordfighting is a good skill to have in general, especially if you’re living out here, where there’s no mob regulation.”
Ranboo knew he was right, he did, he just…
Really didn’t want to know how to fight. He hated being aggressive. It made him feel itchy and weird, like bugs were crawling all over his skin. (Like water was pouring over him, cracking his body and turning him into the dry side of a planet.) (He didn’t know why. He knew it wasn’t because he was a pacifist, but rather came from the same reason that he was a pacifist. Whatever that was.)
But Techno was relentless. No matter how many half-hearted protests Ranboo gave, he still woke the kid up every morning, at an ungodly hour, gave him a weapon, and started firing off methods and tactics and positions.
Ranboo got decent at everything he learned—in that first week it was swordfighting, knife-throwing, and archery—but he also felt something terrible growing inside him, something that made him feel sick every time he picked up a weapon, that pressed against his nose and eyes and threatened burning tears. (He didn’t want to be aggressive. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He didn’t want to be another Dream, he didn’t want to be another—)
Techno didn’t seem to notice. He just pushed Ranboo, pushed and pushed and pushed until—
The dam broke.
Ranboo dropped the sword he was holding, and Techno just barely managed to avoid impaling him with his own—Ranboo had been in the middle of a parry. Now, though, he collapsed to the ground, covering his mouth as bile threatened to spill out and tears pressed against his eyes again.
Techno sighed, crouching in front of him. “Get up, Ranboo.”
Ranboo cringed back, and felt the familiar sting as tears started dripping down. He wrapped his free arm around his middle, staring at the ground in front of him, between Techno’s mudstained boots.
Techno pursed his lips. “Come on. Up.”
Ranboo shook his head frantically. “I can’t,” he gasped quietly.
“Yes, you can. I’ve literally seen you do it before. Come on, kid, it’s just sparring.”
Ranboo shook his head again. “No, it’s—I—you don’t understand!” The tears were coming faster now. He’d have scars later, he could tell.
Techno sighed again. “What don’t I understand?”
(The dark thing that lived inside him the words and the rage that had consumed him he couldn’t remember but could at the same time someone keeping him violent keeping him contained in the anger—)
“I can’t be that,” he whispered.
Techno’s red eyes were sad. “No one’s asking you to,” he said, almost gently—almost like the way he spoke to Phil.
And yet…
“You are,” he breathed, removing his hand from where it had clenched around his mouth, wiping away tears before they could scar more than they already had.
Techno’s eyes filled with something—as if he were realizing something bad—and he looked at the ground, then back up at Ranboo. “Do you want to be done for today?”
Ranboo nodded silently, not trusting himself to speak without sobbing. Techno stood, sheathing his sword and offering a hand to Ranboo, who took it and pulled himself up. They walked back to the compound in silence.
That night, Ranboo couldn’t sleep. He kept tossing and turning, unable to calm himself down. (His mind filled with images of a dark room, both his panic room and yet not, a faceless thing grabbing him, hurting him, trapping him, a sword pressed into his hands and he didn’t know if the person giving it to him was Techno or not.)
Around midnight, he got so restless that eventually he got out of bed, pulling his cloak over his shoulders and stepping into the cold, snowy night. He tromped his way through the powdery snow, to Techno’s and Phil’s house. Hopefully, they were asleep, and he could just make some tea and be off to bed.
He wasn’t that lucky.
He slipped in through the front doors, closing them carefully behind him to avoid making noise, and crept through the living room towards the kitchen, where Phil kept his handmade tea bags.
He froze when he heard voices from the kitchen, and saw a light peeking through the doorway.
“...what to do, Phil,” Techno was saying in an uncharacteristically distressed voice. “I didn’t think I was doing something wrong.”
“You didn’t know, mate,” Phil replied, softly. Ranboo imagined that Phil was holding Techno’s hand right now, squeezing gently.
“Yeah, and that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Techno growled, and there was a quiet thump—a foot or a fist? “I never know. I can’t stop until it’s too late. It’s the same pattern every time.”
Phil sighed. “It’s not your fault. It was never your fault.”
Techno scoffed, but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, quiet, pained, “I just— he looked so scared, Phil. And I-I don’t know if it was because of me or something else. And I can’t ask, you know I can’t.”
There was silence for a moment. Then, “Do you want me to handle it?”
“Please?” Techno’s voice was quiet, pleading. Ranboo wished for half a heartbeat that Techno could trust him enough to sound like that in front of him. He banished that thought from his mind. This was Phil and Techno, and he was already an intruder. He didn’t need more reason for them to not like him.
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Phil said, and there was a small, barely-audible sigh from Techno. Ranboo crept out of the house before he could be spotted by the other two.
He didn’t get much sleep that night.
The next day, Techno didn’t wake him up. Instead, he stepped outside when the sun was high in the sky, and saw Phil out with the dogs, his burned black wings stark against the blue sky. He saw Ranboo and grinned, waving. “Hiya, mate!”
Ranboo waved back, walking over. “Hello.”
Phil watched as two of the puppies roughhoused, rolling around in the snow and barking, their entire back ends waggling. “Techno told me what happened yesterday,” he said casually. “Wanna talk about it?”
Oh. They were having this conversation, then. Ranboo really did not want to have this conversation. He opted for saying nothing.
It was silent for a few moments. Then, “No one likes picking up a sword, Ranboo.” Phil sighed. “Even Techno. That’s why he’s out here—because he never wanted to do it again, not in the way he was. It’s okay if you’re nervous, or if you hate it. That’s normal.”
Ranboo shrugged, shuffling his feet in the snow. “I just… fighting is—” he sighed, frustrated. Why couldn’t he find the right words? Why couldn’t he remember the right words? “I don’t want to-to like it, because doesn’t that mean I’m a bad person?”
Phil’s mouth quirked. “Techno likes fighting for the sake of it. He likes the exercise, having something to do. Does that make him a bad person?”
Ranboo shook his head. “No, I mean…” he pursed his lips, then glanced up at Phil, feeling his eyes grow teary once again. “I don’t want to be a killer,” he whispered.
Phil’s eyes grew sad. “Oh, Ranboo… is that what you’re afraid of?”
Ranboo nodded. He crossed his arms around himself, suddenly shivery, though not from the cold. He froze when he felt arms wrap around him. Then, slowly, he relaxed into Phil, letting his eyes slip closed, something inside him soothing in the warmth.
“You’re the last person on earth to ever become that,” Phil whispered to him. “And I know Techno goes too hard sometimes, and it can be scary, yeah?”
Ranboo nodded. “It’s just—” he sniffed. “What if I get good at all of it? What if—what if I get too good, and—and I get violent, and it’ll be worse because I know how to hurt someone now, with whatever I want, and—”
“Shh…” Phil murmured, holding him tighter. “That’s not going to happen.”
“You can’t know that,” Ranboo replied, feeling a sob building up in his throat.
Phil pulled back, looking up at him, smiling sadly. “I do. Do you want me to help you?”
“With what?”
“Being less afraid.”
Oh. That would be nice. (That would be beautiful, that would be—an unknown feeling, something he’d never experienced, not that he could remember, it would be the most magical thing in the world.)
“Yes please.”
Phil led him inside the main house, to the living room. He sat cross-legged on the thick, fluffy carpet, and motioned for Ranboo to do the same. Ranboo obliged, swallowing nervously.
“Close your eyes,” Phil murmured. “Put your hands on your knees.”
Ranboo did so, his vision enveloping in darkness that was—comforting. Like instead of a void, it was just a curtain, and behind it he could hear Phil, knew he was there. (That he was real.)
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Meditating,” Phil replied. “I do it before I go into battle. Helps clear the mind. And it’s good for you.”
Suddenly, Ranboo understood how Phil could be so ruthless in a fight, and yet so kind at the same time.
“Ranboo, I want you to relax.” Phil’s voice was even, calm, quiet. “Let your thoughts flow. Like—you can hear them, but don’t listen to them. They’re there, but you don’t have to acknowledge them. Just let them pass.”
Ranboo tried—he really did. He tried to let his thoughts go by, like a river, but thinking of a river made him think of water, and water meant pain, and pain was caused by weapons sometimes, and oh he knew how to use those and what if causing pain became a pleasure for him what if he started to like it oh gods what if what if what if he was spiraling he needed to stop spiraling but—
“Ranboo.”
Ranboo’s eyes shot open and he found himself staring at Phil, who was still smiling at him, his voice still even. His blue eyes were open, too, full of a gentle kindness.
“Sorry,” Ranboo whispered, feeling small.
Phil shrugged. “S’okay. It’s hard, letting go like that. I still have trouble with it sometimes. And the point of this isn’t to make you just—not feel fear ever. It’s so you can distance yourself from it. You can be afraid, but this will make sure you’re not clouded by it. That you can still use your judgment. So you can understand that whatever you’re afraid of isn’t the weapon in your hand, and you can deal with it accordingly.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get there,” Ranboo admitted, smiling wryly.
Phil chuckled. “Meditating is like learning to use a sword. It takes a fuck ton of practice, but someday you’re going to look back and see how far you’ve come.”
Ranboo nodded. “Thanks, Phil.”
Phil smiled softly at him. “Tell you what. Why don’t we do a little bit of meditating every day after your training with Techno? He probably won’t mind.”
Ranboo nodded. “That’d be—nice.” Really nice.
Ranboo’s days after that were much better. He still woke up at ungodly hours of the morning to train, but the meditating sessions helped him calm down. And Phil was right—he started seeing a difference in himself. He was able to make his mind wander a little now, and his hands stopped shaking as much when he held a weapon for too long. He was smiling more, and more genuinely.
Techno didn’t apologize for a while (when he did, it was sort of random, a quiet, hesitant outburst that left Ranboo speechless at the nervousness in Techno’s voice), but he was a lot more careful. He didn’t push as much, and there was a sort of relief about him, something in his smile whenever Ranboo showed up on time for their sessions. And he seemed to have a sixth sense as to when the fighting was getting to be too much, and he’d lay off, suggesting a break or ending early so Ranboo could get (extra) meditation time in. Sometimes Techno would join Ranboo and Phil, and they’d just sit in companionable silence, the only sound their breaths and the fire crackling in the hearth.
Ranboo felt something change inside him, as he learned to fight and to keep himself calm. He started becoming more… aware, of the nature living outside the house. Like it was starting to live inside him, too.
That feeling grew stronger and stronger, until one day, when he and Phil were sitting outside on one of the rare days it was warm enough to do so, he dug his clawed hands into the frozen dirt by some impulse. He didn’t realize what he’d done until he opened his eyes and saw he was holding a mound of dirt, topped perfectly with snow like a chocolate cake.
Phil was staring. “Ran—“
Ranboo blinked at the dirt. “I… did that?” It came out as a question.
Phil let out a small, incredulous laugh. “I think so, mate.”
Ranboo let out a little laugh. “I did that.”
(He’d never done it before, hadn’t thought there was enough enderman in him to do it, but now he could and maybe, maybe it had been the fear blocking him not whatever he was and it didn’t matter now because he could, he could, he could—)
“Should we tell Techno?” Ranboo asked after a moment, still staring at that block in wonder.
Phil grinned. “Nah. Use it to your advantage. Catch him off guard.”
Already, the image of throwing a grass-dirt mound at Techno while they were sparring was taking over Ranboo’s mind, and he smiled at the thought of that chaos, no matter if it was rather tame and harmless.
His life was so much better now, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.