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His feet cemented themselves into the ice, and a deafening, electronic buzz began to chafe in his ears. He had no choice to stay stock still as his fate, golden halos orbiting their smiling face, reached out with pale fingers. XD mercilessly dug their nails into Tubbo’s eye socket, and Tubbo’s lips parted in shock. Immediately, agony rushed to claw out of his mouth, but any hint of a scream lodged itself in Tubbo’s throat, and his lungs were filled with sticky putty.

XD rooted his nails in deep, boring into the tendons keeping the unfortunate eye in Tubbo’s skull. With a sickening squelch, XD slowly pulled the eye from Tubbo’s head, a bemused, callous grin smearing his lips all the while. Agony exploded through Tubbo’s skull, whitehot and unfathomable. It violently pulsed through his head, and as XD gave one last yank, severing eye from owner, Tubbo heaved, the paralysis shattered, and he went crashing to the snowy beach beneath him. XD laughed something Tubbo couldn’t hear, and in a blinding flash of white, the Deity was gone- not that Tubbo had the capacity to even look for them.

He could not hear himself when he screamed.

He pressed his palm against the gaping wound, and his stomach lurched when he felt the flesh that had been ripped away. Pain writhed through Tubbo’s entire body, the mechanical buzzing in his ears drowning out the waves crashing on the beach, the wind rustling the trees. Tubbo stuffed his knuckles into his mouth, hoping to quiet his agonized sobs, but they only loudened into wails soaked in unimaginable pain. Blood spurted from his empty eye socket, hot and sticky, slicking his hands, face, the powdery snow, and world spun and stretched before his single eye, dragging Tubbo further into a realm so painful, he did not know where reality began and agony-induced thought ended. Only the festival could rival this sickening agony, the act of flesh being stripped away by someone endlessly more powerful than Tubbo, and through his delirious, distorted thoughts, Tubbo thanked XD that there was no fire this time.

Curled into a fetal position, uncontrollable tremors wracking his body, blood warming his hands, inexplicably, prayer came to Tubbo’s mind. Prime, he whimpered in his mind. It wasn’t meant to go like this. If I can’t survive this- save Ranboo. For Michael. And tell Tommy I’m sorry. The prayer rang feeble in his own ears, a desperate, pathetic cry for help. Surely he would die from this. Surely his last moment would be spent grovelling in agony in the wake of a callous, unforgiving God.

Far off, as if calling Tubbo from a deep slumber, Tubbo thought he heard somebody screaming his name, and crashing footsteps echoed dizzily through his ears. He sobbed through torn breath. Was this salvation?

“Tubbo!” They wailed faintly, horror splitting the cry, and Tubbo foggily wondered if he recognized their voice. A figure kneeled in front of him, distant and swimming- it was Wilbur, fear in his fiery eyes, bags shoveled deep beneath his thick lashes. No, that wasn’t right- the hallucination swam and distorted before Tubbo’s eye, and suddenly there was Tommy, his normally electric-blue eyes dulled to gray, his long, ratty hair spilling over torn, muddied clothes, exhaustion and hurt lining his face. Tubbo cried out to him, but once again, the vision morphed, and the straw color of Tommy’s hair sank into raven black, and Quackity knelt before him, a canyon carved into his left eye and upper lip, a frightening, unwonted hostility lurking in his chestnut eyes. Tubbo squeezed his eye shut, and sobbed wordlessly.

The person clutched Tubbo to their chest and lifted him effortlessly, but those hands were not Wilbur’s, or Tommy’s, or Quackity’s.

They were Ranboo's hands, warm and grounding, yet unbearably hot against Tubbo’s skin. He was talking, no doubt stuttering out a panicked request for explanation, and Tubbo did not offer any, simply grabbed at Ranboo’s white blazer, watching crimson seep into its threads.

“I tried to save you,” Tubbo keened through agony, “I- fuck. I tried to- to save you.” in response, Ranboo’s voice swam in Tubbo’s ears, but darkness closed in faster than Tubbo could understand what they were saying.

He woke up in fits of agony and torrenting guilt. Each time, the sickeningly sweet taste of healing potion on his lips for the next few… hours? Days? It felt like months, but it could surely not be so. Ranboo would not live til the first of January. Recollection of the time trapped in bed wafted in and out of Tubbo’s head as if notes in an unfamiliar song. Michael in the hallway, asking in broken English, “Bee okay?”, Tommy holding a whispered, angry conversation in the doorway with Ranboo, and most frequently, Ranboo sitting by the bed, clutching Tubbo’s hand fervently, cheeks slicked with sizzling tears.

Tubbo tried to push out of bed time and time again, but each time, a pair of hands led him back to the blankets, gently shushing him- Ranboo, Tommy, Phil- it seemed to be somebody different every time. Yet Tubbo arose the next time anyways, the first question on his lips always being, “Is he alive?” He was met with quiet reassurances, soft words, but they all seemed so paper-thin.

No matter what Tubbo did now, some day he would wake up, and the answer to that question would not be given with words. It would be given with shifted eyes, murmurs outside of his room, pitying expressions.

Ranboo would die. Tubbo would be powerless to stop it.