The Colors of Fortune

Coming Up On Black Cove

Keeping Ranboo out of trouble was no great trial to Technoblade, which relieved him. He brought the boy's meals down to him in the brig, once he'd eaten his own up with the men, ignoring the dark complaints from the pirates about wasting food on an unstretched neck. And keeping him at work was no trial either; Ranboo seemed to prefer business to silence, and he would often talk or sing to himself. Technoblade listened as well as he could, but he learned very little that was useful to him.

"An' what did you tell me, ama? Itsasoak arriskutsuak dira, Ranboo. Far too dangerous for one of your kind. Yet to the sea you went, and look where you are now." Ranboo scrubbed harder, unnecessarily so, at a shining beam of wood. "An' all your companions are dead. Dead, an' in the Angel's Locker. Dead."

Technoblade sighed internally and glanced back at the boy. "Ranboo." He said. Ranboo flinched, back in the present moment, and looked over his shoulder towards him. Technoblade sat down a little distance away from the boy. "You're better off right now than everyone else on your ship and that's what you should be focusin' on. Not what happened to all the others. There's nothin', not a single thing, you could've done to change their fates. Beatin' yourself up over that will only hurt you and will teach you nothin'. So what should you do instead?" He eyed the boy.

Ranboo's teeth gritted together. He kept his eyes downcast as he replied. "Focusing on myself is selfish. I should've-" but with a sharp hiss, he cut himself off.

Technoblade studied his face, remembering so many boy soldiers he'd seen before; boys forced into wars not their own, on their knees and wracked with grief, disheveled hair and eyes that pled for answers that would quell the living guilt tearing into their bones. Some found their answers, whether it was in the hand of a girl or at the tip of a bullet. Some never did, and looked for the end anyway. Technoblade sighed, running a hand over his eyes, brushing away his memories. "Okay." He stated. "Okay. Do you believe in the soul?"

Ranboo shrugged. "So what if I do?" The brush lay idly in his hand now, speckled with wood slivers.

"If you believe in the soul," Technoblade said, "what you're feelin' doesn't make sense. Souls live differently than bodies, right? They aren't killed with the hosts they inhabit. So why're you cryin' like they're gone forever?"

Ranboo shook his head with a scoff. "Now you're talking about immortality. That's a different matter from whether or not I believe in souls. I could believe that souls dissipate once their bodies die."

It was Technoblade's turn to deny. "If a soul died with the body, boy, that's not a soul. It's just the body. Souls are by definition a type of life apart from the body, Ranboo. They're not made of matter, but somethin' else. Somethin' that goes on after death, because death only affects the body. So do you believe in a soul?" He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the boy, on the stillness of his hands.

Ranboo did not answer. He just stared at Technoblade, his face set with pain. When the silence had stretched to a thin, trembling point, he still did not speak, but kept it there. Technoblade sighed.

"Fine, I'll say it." The words snapped into the air, breaking the tension. "Your crew mates are still alive. They're somewhere else, yes, but they're still alive. Stop actin' like their deaths in this world are somethin' to be mourned. They were just pushed out the door." He stood up. "You're in a house, Ranboo. We all are. They just left the house. Take that and stop-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Ranboo had suddenly leapt towards him. There was no warning cry, just a lithe body that slammed into his own and nearly felled him. Technoblade twisted an arm around underneath Ranboo and gripped his shoulder, trying to fling him off. The boy was holding tight, however, and was snarling horribly into his ears. "Infernuko txerri, nola ausartzen zara neri ez atsekabetzeko esaten."