Chapter Text
"Fuck."
Tubbo pins Ranboo to the tree, fingers wrapped around the head of an arrow-shaft. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, 'boo, I'm sorry -"
Ranboo howls as he shoves the arrow deeper - shoves it through, until it juts out the other side of Ranboo's shoulder. Tubbo's fingers are cautious as they snap the head - trembling, working too fast - but the howl - it was animal.
It was loud enough that the hunters won't be far behind.
Tommy is scanning the treeline even as Tubbo drags the now-broken shaft back out of Ranboo's shoulder. "They're coming," he says, voice tight with terror, and they all know -
"A second," Tubbo snarls, and he lets the arrow drop. "Come on, 'boo - turn."
Ranboo moans, a rough, agonized sound, and sobs as Tubbo tries to keep him upright.
"Fuck - shift, 'boo, I can't carry you -" But they can't leave him behind, either, and that - that means he has to shift - "Please -"
Something must get through the feverish haze, because Ranboo shifts - meets his eyes - and then seems to wibble, faintly, as his body twists and morphs -
The squirrel is a lot more carryable than Ranboo, which is good, because the effort of shifting is enough to exhaust the fae. He drops, limp and helpless, into the soft cage of Tubbo’s fingers, and is still.
"Run!" Tubbo shouts to Tommy, who obeys without even looking, trusting Tubbo to have Ranboo. Tommy isn't as fast as Tubbo - but he's bigger, bull-rushing through branches that would catch Tubbo up, hand raised across his eyes to protect them from briars -
There are angry shouts behind them, and the whistle of an arrow thudding into a tree, and Tubbo runs.
He - doesn't know where he's going. He keeps to Tommy's track, making use of the broken, snapped-off branches - a path of least resistance as he forges through the woods. His legs are burning - so is the rest of him, but he can't risk turning into a wolf, not if it will shred the rest of his seeming like so much spiderweb and leave him defenseless if they do find another camp.
His whole chest is on fire when Tommy disappears, yelping, and too fast to react, the world falls out from under him.
Tubbo tumbles with a shout, curling reflexively in on himself, shielding Ranboo with his body as he bounces off jutting rock and hard, root-packed soil. He wails - louder than is safe, certainly, but it won't matter much if he can't get to his feet to run -
He isn't expecting to land on soft, densely green grass, strewn about with tiny, yellow flowers.
It only cushions the fall a little bit - impact drives the air out of his lungs, and he's trapped by his own weakness, breathing heavy as he struggles to get himself together, listening to the shouts - human shouts, angry and threatening, but the humans don't seem eager to follow them down.
"Get up," Tommy hisses, already on his knees, and Tubbo - can't -
Not until the whistle-thud of another arrow impacts a few feet away. That's - plenty of motivation, and he rolls sideways, scrambling to the back wall where the human's arrows for sure can't reach.
The humans - could, probably, but they don't try. Instead, they tarry above, on the surface, shouting and jeering as Tubbo's ears pound with his heartbeat -
"They're scared," he says, quietly, holding Ranboo's trembling squirrel-form close to his chest. "They - they're going to find their courage sooner or later, if we don't come out -"
"Then we don't give them a chance." Wolf eyes are better than a human's, in the dark, and Tommy points to a tunnel that it only takes Tubbo a moment to pick out of the gloom. "Come on."
It's - terrifying. Risky. The world is dangerous, and cruel, and there are all sorts of terrors that lair in caves and tear young wolves apart, Tubbo knows.
There are plenty of people on the surface who would do the same, though, and so he nods in silence, and follows Tommy as the larger were slips quietly into the dark.
-----
The cave is - green.
Verdant, actually, despite the endless gloom. There are thin veins of redstone, here and there, but not much - just enough light to see by, as they make their way deeper. Ivy hangs from the ceiling in long, coiling cascades, dark-green and heavy in the moist, cool air.
It’s quiet. There’s none of the constant movement of the forest above - no breeze to rustle leaves, or animals calling in the canopy, or humans on their heels. Instead, there is the drip and trickle of water, echoing just beyond the edges of sight, ink-black where it runs across the rock.
They move slowly, but without daring to stop entirely. Still - deep underground, it’s easier to relax. Tommy would hear, surely, if anyone approached - Tubbo would be able to make out voices against the silent stone.
And then they round a corner, and the room opens up into a broad, high-roofed chamber.
There’s the sound of running water, in the distance - not just the trickles they’ve been hearing, but a cascade, like a river underground. The soil is loamy underfoot, still dense and sweet with grass as they make their ways into the center of the room.
Tubbo isn't sure what he's expecting. It isn't -
"A mining outpost, maybe?" Tommy says, tugging a tarp off a few barrels of supplies. "Abandoned - here, let me light a torch -"
And - as far as Tubbo can tell, it is a mining outpost. At least - there are piles of ore scattered around, broken down and ready to be refined. There's a tent, too, pitched in the middle of the grassy, high-roofed cavern as if it were in a sprawling meadow instead - it's got a bedroll inside that Tubbo gratefully appropriates for Ranboo.
Who looks awful.
He's trembling. All over, the movement trailing down his tail and whiskers and obviously unwell. There's a heat to the tiny body that isn't like a mundane rodent - too warm by far, like a little cinder in Tubbo's hand. His eyes are glazed, black and distant, and Tubbo can't help but feel terror squeeze around his chest, because -
"Poison?" Tommy asks, before he has to say it. "On the arrow?"
"Yeah," Tubbo echoes, mouth dry. "Shit."
Only one of them has any healing magic, and it isn't Tommy. Isn't Tubbo, either.
"Fuck," breathes Tommy. He digs through his bag with a desperate sort of haste. "I've got - apple -"
He holds it out, and Tubbo doesn't bother looking for his knife - he just splits it in two, cleanly, and then again, until he's got barely a sliver in his hand -
It's small enough that he can shove it between Ranboo's teeth. The rest of the apple crumbles away to ash, magic expended, but it's enough - enough that the worst of the trembling fades, and Ranboo at least seems to rest more quietly as his body sags in relief.
"Thank the moon."
"Is that - enough, do you think?" Tommy's voice is quiet. "I mean - he still looks -"
Bad. Tommy doesn't have to say it. Ranboo looks awful - the fur around his wound is matted, even though Tubbo can see the hole sluggishly closing, and the skin around his mouth is deathly pale.
“What else can we do?” Tubbo asks. “I mean -”
They’re out of resources. Town had been - they had planned to be there for a couple days, at least, before the humans had caught onto the edges of Ranboo’s human seeming and ripped it apart with enchanted iron. They had planned to buy supplies.
"We can rest," Tommy murmurs. "I mean - the humans aren't going to follow us down here. We'd hear them coming."
And there are four different tunnels, at least, leading off their current room. If anyone comes for them - they can run.
They've been doing it for long enough already -
It's stupid. They're working themselves into a corner. They should keep running - there's something off about the camp, something beyond even the thick, soft grass growing at depths no light has ever touched -
But Tommy looks bone-tired. Tubbo feels it - not just weariness, but an awful, aching exhaustion that saps his will to get up - to even live, if living longer means exerting any kind of strength or effort.
"I'll look for food," he says, because at the very least they should have something for Ranboo, when he wakes up. "You - just listen, okay? Keep an ear out."
It isn't the most successful hunt he's ever had. All that turns up in the camp are a few potatoes, half moldered by time, and a stray onion. Tommy looks at them reluctantly, and offers, "At least it's not an active camp?"
And Tubbo - he can't help the laugh, awful and barking and scared, because he doesn't know what to do. Neither does Tommy, obviously, for all that he's tried to keep the tremble out of his voice.
"At least," Tubbo agrees. And then - "You didn't hear anything?"
Tommy shakes his head. "Not - coming," he says. "But - there's a ringing, in the tunnels. Like someone's mining - really far off."
They should go.
"We should stay," Tubbo says, anyways, knowing that if Tommy says to go he'll follow. "I mean - this is probably the best we could hope for, with Ranboo hurt. It's dry, at least."
"Yeah," Tommy says, sounding unconvinced. He pauses for a moment - and his ears have always been sharper than Tubbo's, but in the momentary silence, Tubbo hears it, too. A distant, echoing sound, metal-on-stone. "We'll stay."
Tubbo lets his shoulders sag, relieved.
"I don't have the energy for a fire, tonight," he says. "In the morning -"
"In the morning," Tommy agrees. Then: "Help me pull the tarp out? We can bed on it."
It's heavy - but rest is so close that Tubbo can taste it, and so he helps Tommy untangle the tarp from over the barrels, and shake out the worst of the dust, and fold it up to give them a little more distance from the damp grass and soil.
They curl up on heavy, time-mouldered cloth, Ranboo tucked on the sleeping mat and breathing slow but even, and Tubbo sinks into black sleep before he can even think to post a guard.
----
He is too tired to dream.
----
There is the gentle heat and hungry crackle of a fire when Tubbo wakes up.
He stirs quietly - it's rare that Ranboo is up before him. Before them - he can smell the soothing warmth of Tommy curled against him, feel the weight of him. The other wolf grumbles as Tubbo starts to move -
And remembers where he is.
And opens his eyes.
There is a man - no, not a man, Tubbo isn't stupid - watching them from across the fire.
Tubbo makes eye contact, and goes perfectly, perfectly still.
The creature cocks its head, and behind the delicate glass of its visor, its eyes crinkle with what might be a smile. There's something cool about the expression, a little too distant - a little to glowing, eyes frosted with pale power.
Ranboo is curled, small and very, very helpless, in its hands. It isn't moving.
Tommy is, though - he shifts, and starts to rise, and Tubbo can feel the very moment that he, too, remembers where they are.
"Tubbo -" he starts, and sees their visitor as it turns to regard him, and freezes, the words clotting like river ice on his tongue. He shrinks back, against Tubbo, and Tubbo knows he's not the only one to feel the rising, soul-deep terror numbing his limbs.
"I don't want to hurt you yet," the creature says, in a voice that is human and also unmistakably not. It rings true, in a way that is all too chillingly familiar -
- it sounds like Ranboo. It sounds fae.
"I will not harm you, if I can avoid it," it says, with a voice that cannot lie and must be very, very specific with its truths. "I do not want to harm you, unless you intend harm to my friends."
It doesn't bother to tell them that it's capable of harm. It doesn't need to. Tubbo's mouth is as dry as desert sand, as he tries to swallow - or even just to pull his eyes away.
Finally, he manages. The creature blinks - it doesn't need to - and he wrests his gaze away, downward, dropping to all fours in submission and a show of not-a-threat. Tommy, beside him, isn't so lucky - the creature's gaze traps him longer, keeping him helpless as it considers him.
"You're a child," it says, as if it's taken it a moment to come to that conclusion.
"Yes," Tommy says, helplessly, voice cracked and terrified. "I - yes -"
"Both of you are?" Tommy tumbles forwards, released, and Tubbo can feel the prickling weight of the creature's gaze turning on him. It's - not a rhetorical question, he realizes after a moment.
"Yes," he manages. And then, because few creatures of the fae have patience for rudeness, "sir."
He realizes a moment too late that he might've made a mistake, there, but the creature doesn't seem upset by the assignment. It hums, and the prickling awareness recedes, replaces by the warmth of the fire flooding back through him.
There is quiet, for a moment, except for the crackle of flames.
"Did you realize, I wonder," says the creature finally, "that you had strayed onto my server?"
The words are like shards of ice in Tubbo's chest. He's stammering denials before he can think better of it, before the words even fully register, because they are - all three of them - dead.
Fae are - dangerous. Creatures born of magic, of rules, laws graven in the earth and air and water and incomprehensible to anything as mortal as a wolf - and they guard what is theirs jealously. Flowers, trees, rivers, songs - to trespass on the claim of a fairy is a death sentence, the moral of a thousand thousand stories. To wander onto a server, already sacred claimed ground...
And they cannot lie.
"I'm sorry," he manages to stammer, and beside him, he can hear Tommy's own pleading apologies. "We - I swear we didn't know. We had no idea, we were chased -"
It's no excuse. Not to a fae - they know that mortals are liars, and there is no innocence in an unknowing slight, and as the fae rises, Tubbo knows that all three of them are dead -
He isn't expecting the hand that touches his throat to be gentle. Inhumanly cold, but - not painful, yet.
"Sh," the fae murmurs, and he falls silent except for choked, shuddering sobs - Tubbo isn't stupid enough to disobey. "If you fled here seeking shelter, I will not harm you."
The words do nothing to stifle the panic in Tubbo's heart, but the fear does nothing for him - he's helpless, trapped.
"You came here with one of my kin," it continues. "Ranboo. They're injured."
"We were being chased." Tommy has the strength, at least, to repeat it. "There's a town, through the forest, they found out he was a fae - they shot him -"
"Ah." It falls silent, as if considering that, and Tubbo manages to steal a glance at Tommy.
He looks stricken. Terrified, as his own eyes meet Tubbo's, as the fae walks back to its seat by the fire, and strokes Ranboo's fur, and contemplates them, and Tubbo understands perfectly, because -
- there's no love lost, between wolves and fae. Too mortal for the fae to bother with, unless they need a toy, and it's easy for were to pass unnoticed in human lands - easy enough for them to be turned into scapegoats when a fae's plan goes astray, or for them to ally with the humans and turn on unsuspecting fairy.
But then -
Tommy still looks human, tooth-blunt and scared. So does Tubbo, and it's a thin thread of hope, if the fae decides that they belong to Ranboo, or that they've served it by bringing Ranboo here, or to let them live for some other inscrutable reason.
Tubbo clings to it, when the fae shifts again.
"They've been poisoned," it says. "You knew?"
"Yes, sir." Tommy's voice is very, very small. "We - neither of us are healers. We gave him an apple - we can't fix him."
It could decide that they are murderers. It could kill Ranboo itself, and the thought makes Tubbo's shoulders shake. It could do something else.
Pale blue magic - fae magic - gathers on its fingertips, sinking into Ranboo's broken body like a pool of light.
"I can fix it," says the fae. "They'll need a few days to recover, nothing more. I've already burnt out the poison."
Tubbo doesn't know whether to fall to his knees and grovel in gratitude, or to wait for the but -
- which follows, all too quickly, as it rises.
"You are, of course, my guests," it tells them, with the authority of an admin and the unquestionable truth of a fae. "If you'll come with me?"
It isn't a question, and Tubbo meets Tommy's gaze wild-eyed as they both scramble to their feet.