Chapter Text
Ranboo stared at the open memory book on the table in front of him, his fingers trembling as he turned the page. So many of the words were foreign. Yet they were undeniably his handwriting— they had to be. Who else could have written them?
(It had been getting worse lately. He found himself clutching his memory book possessivly, straining to remember if anyone had ever taken it, borrowed it, even asked for it, even for a moment.)
The room was dim, the only light coming from the faint red and green glow of his eyes. Tubbo and Michael were asleep upstairs, leaving Ranboo alone in the deafening silence of his thoughts.
Another flip, another page of half-remembered notes and cryptic runes- like something out of an enchanting table. Some notes were straightforward—"Dream was possesed. He did nothing wrong?"—while others, one in particular that repeated over and over again in poorly scrawled common, up, down, and sideways over that latest entry, made his stomach churn:
'Let me out.'
Ranboo slammed the book shut, his chest tightening. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something—or someone—was in the room with him, looking over the shoulder, reading tbe same words, judgeing him.
Earlier in the night he had jumped at every shadow. Now he forced himself not to look at them. Or the words. It left precious little to look at but himself, which wasn't much better as he contemplated his twisting claws.
“Calm down,” he whispered, the words feeling like sacrilege in the silence, mind providing a mean-spirited laugh at his expense. “It’s fine. It’s just the enderwalking. It’s just my memory issues.”
It wasn't Dream. It wasn't anyone else either. It was just in his own head.
But even as he thought it, he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. And the memory of Dream’s possession by a dreamon still bled through in fresh ink.
Dream had been dangerous, yes, but it hadn’t been his fault. It had started with gradual slips, or so he'd been told. Gradual changes in behavior. Blackouts.
The pages of notes, more than he usually takes, trembled up at him from under his long fingers.
Ranboo knew: ultimately, Dream had lost control entirely, twisted by something else, something other than him, a second invader in his body- into something near unrecognizable. Was... was it not just him, the things Ranboo did when he couldn't remember? Could... could something similar be happening to Ranboo?
The book held no answers, only questions and demands he didn't remember writing.
Something about that didn't quite fit, like his brain was an empty round hole and the words were a square peg. They twisted and twisted, and perhaps, worst of all, even contorted into the in the shape of his very worst fears, they didn't quite fit.
So where exactly did that leave him?