Butterfly Reign

24. It's So Easy To Say That Word

Ranboo is no stranger to broken bones; pain is a familiar symphony to him, a song ingrained into the deepest part of his head. Give it a few weeks and his ribs will no longer feel like they're being stabbed at every tiny movement, but time doesn't heal mind in the same way it does broken bones - panic consumes Ranboo every time a blur of blue flashes within angle of his vision, wisps of wind akin to a coolness of a knife against his throat.

He didn't tell anybody about Theseus attacking him. Techno asked if he wanted to call for a physician when he gets to the palace, but Ranboo couldn't, not without questions occurring about the secrets patterned as scars across his chest.

"Don't," he strangled out.

The things that the two brothers were yelling at one another over his trembling figure came to him in a blur; he remembered vividly that Techno sounded angry for him... and yet he seemed to be almost relieved at his answer.

"Phil has enough on his plate now... Let's keep it between us for now, alright?" he said, in a restrained, curt tone that Ranboo was too shaken up to decipher or argue against. Techno promised to bring him an ointment for his bruises, but then Theseus disappeared, and people started talking about an assassination attempt... in all the turmoil, the older prince never came to check up on him.

He wants to talk to Tubbo about what happened, but his friend acts quiet the whole morning, picking at the dirt stuck underneath his fingernails and avoiding looking in Ranboo's eyes. Tubbo excuses himself shortly after breakfast, and as Ranboo watches him go, words forming in his throat turn into a heavy lump. For eight years, he had only the darkness to confide in, but never it has hurt this much to be alone.

He knew, deep down, that he shouldn't have gotten used to this: being listened to, to have people talk to him in voices laced with concern, to being cared for. In a single moment of the crown prince's fury, Ranboo was sent back to fearing his own shadow, tiptoeing around with his every word and movement to avoid undeserved wrath. It's like the last four years had never happened at all, and he is the same scared boy, curled up crying over his maimed and bleeding arms. The dream was sweet while it lasted but now it's time to wake up and face the truth: he is nothing, and maybe he's not meant to be anything beyond that.

In a few months since his first arrival, Ranboo learned to call the palace home, but suddenly it feels the same as it did that very first day: eyes watching him from every chipped brick of stone columns, threatening and condemning, and panic multiplying like echoes bouncing off far walls. Ranboo twists the handle of the closest door and all but falls through.

Languishing light of a cloudy day enters the room through half-opened curtains, barely enough to etch a round table out of the dark, along with monochrome figures placed on top of a gridded board - somebody's abandoned game of chess. Blissfully, the room is empty. The ringing in Ranboo's ears, so much alike to the thunder of waves against a rocky shore, dissipates in sizzling seafoam. He slumps against a wall with a shaky sigh.

"Good morning."

Ranboo scrambles to his feet. A dark-haired man reclines in a deep armchair, sitting so still that he seems to be fusing with the darkness around. A pair of tiny round glasses is settled on the hump of his nose; light strikes the lenses in a way that Ranboo ends up staring in his own lost expression.

"Morning-" Ranboo gropes the door for a handle, "I didn't realize that this room is already occupied- I'll leave now. Sorry."

"Wait," the man says. "Ranboo is your name, am I correct?"

Ranboo freezes, shoulders hiking up. He forces them to slump into something less defensive, one hand still ghosting over the handle.

"Who am I talking to, again?" he asks cautiously.