#and yes pac here does help actually because he's worried the feds will vanish his friend too

[factorialsotherfandoms]

"Pac, just go to bed."

It was the ninth, or maybe tenth, time that Pac had heard those words in the last hour. He had his samples of concrete spread out across the road of the Favela, and continued to ignore Cellbit's frustrated pleadings.

What was Cellbit going to do? Eat him?

They'd already been through that before.

Perhaps Pac had finally driven Cellbit too far, as there was a frustrated noise. Rather than hear a knife being drawn, however, all Pac heard was a warpstone.

Which. Fine. Now, magenta or blue for the next house...

He had already built in green and yellow, Richarlyson's favourites, and his son loved all the other colours just as much.

Magenta, then, for-

Pac did not finish that thought, except to consider that it might be nice to let the eggs decorate the interiors when they returned; Pac had simply blocked up the small rooms, far from being in the mood for fine detail work. Even just thinking about his attempts at a clothes line were enough to make him frustrated all over again.

He should plant some flowers along the roadside, though. Richarlyson would like that - and Mike would smile at him for it, and-

It was hard to know if he should think of them, or not at all. Rather than think on that, either, he grabbed the magenta concrete, and got to work.

In building, there was no thought. Or, there was a lot of thought, but much of that was also instinct. There was just enough thought that he could not think about anything else, but not so much that he became tired of the act of thinking itself.

Pac's fingers hurt, but he ignored them, grasping his pickaxe to pull down a few blocks and move them a little to the left.

He might not know who he was without Richarlyson, and he certainly did not know what he was without Mike, but he could make something beautiful for them - he could prove that even if he was nothing without them, he had something to bring to them both.

It did not take long to finish the outline of the magenta house, practiced as Pac was. A few more blocks here, a few there...

Deep down, he knew that his placements were at best erratic, but he did not really know what else to do.

Perhaps if he started from the other side instead...

"Pac?"

Not Cellbit. Or - at Fit's voice Pac looked up, and Cellbit was there, but he had left Fit to do the talking.

"Fit?" Pac's eyes struggled to focus a little. "Why are you awake?"

"I could ask the same of you, my friend."

One minute Fit was across the road, and the next he was holding Pac's hands.

Which one of them was shaking? Pac did not know.

"Cellbit got me up, he was worried about you," Fit explained. "What's wrong?"

Pac glanced at Cellbit.

"I'm going home," he told them both. "Fit, he's your problem now."

Pac did not like being a problem, but he supposed he was. Usually he was merely Mike's problem, but...

"Everything," Pac finally answered Fit as Cellbit vanished in purple sparks.

"Here."

Fit opened his arms for a hug, and Pac fell into them.

"I can't stop," it did not take Pac more than moments to crack. "As soon as I stop building, I think about them. And I cannot think about them without wanting to shove my pickaxe through my skull, so I don't stop building."

The hug tightened around him, and Fit's fingers curled into his shoulder.

"I get it," Fit said. "But you need to sleep."

"How can I sleep when all I see in my dreams is them dead?"

Pac hated himself for knowing that dead was not even the worst of it - sometimes he dreamt the pair left willingly and of their own volition, that they had finally realised that Pac was /nothing/ and decided they were better off together. That, for all he could make, Pac had failed to make enough of a mimicry of a self to fool either his best friend or his son.

"I know how you feel," Fit could try and make his voice quiet, but it always carried deep and deeper into Pac's bones. "My sweet baby boy..."

And Pac knew, of course he knew, because every parent on the island was experiencing the same - Fit was even avoiding thoughts in the same way, hollowing out the desert and helping Tubbo with the new library and-

Well. They were failing to cope very, very much the same.

"Would you come back to mine?" Fit asked. "There's reason Cellbit could get me up - maybe some company would help me sleep?"

Pac knew that Fit slept with nobody nearby as a point of paranoia. Pac knew that this was not at all for Fit's benefit. Pac knew-

"Please? It would really help me."

Pac caved with a nod, abandoning the concrete to the road and to another day.