"I have no reason to think he isn't a good person." (Dream flinching away, refusing to take his eyes off him. Shut the fuck up.) "—why is Tubbo wary of him?" 

"He, uh--so, during L'Manberg, he wanted to have me executed? And to have Technoblade executed." Ranboo's watching for any visible sign of reaction; when he doesn't see one he pushes on. "And before I joined, uh, he and Schlatt executed Tubbo."

That gets a reaction. 

"I— oh." 

Uh oh!!!!!!!! Time to pick up blocks and place them back down a bit to the right. "--Like I said, I don't really--I mean, it was a while ago? I wouldn't, um, judge Quackity for it, I mean--he and Tubbo were, uh, friendly after that, they worked together when Tubbo was president, it wasn't, like--I don't think they hate each other or anything? Just, y'know, Tubbo's got reason to be a bit nervous around him."

Shit. Okay, stop it, you're freaking him out. Q schools his face back into something approaching neutrality.

He's fine. He's so fucking fine and normal and not going to flip his shit because Ranboo doesn't fucking deserve to have to deal with that. 

"Right, yeah, that— that makes sense. 

Yeah. Obviously I wouldn't judge Quackity for it. We've all done things we regret." He kind of does not manage to sound like he doesn't hate Quackity for it. Whoops. 

"...Yeah." The fact that Q is trying to seem neutral about it makes it slightly less likely that he will do something profoundly stupid with this information? Probably?

Well, right now the thing he's doing is keeping his fucking mouth shut, not fucking making it worse, and going back to working on the van. 

Yeah. Okay. They can work on the van together. They can do this.

Ranboo considers and discards saying something more about Quackity and/or Tubbo a few times and then decides against it; if Q is going to do something stupid, it probably won't help, and if he's not, it's not like Ranboo was entirely emotionless when he received that particular history lesson from Tubbo. Instead he asks, "Hey, man, you got any spare wool? There's more at the spider spawner if you don't, just, it'd save a trip."

"Hm? —yeah, I do." Not, like, a ton, but he's usually got extra left over from sewing projects. Ranboo can have it.

When he gets back to Kinoko and is alone he is going to have some sort of breakdown but for now he's totally, totally fine.

“Cool cool.” Then he can finish up the picnic table! Pause to see if Q wants to talk about anything before he says goodbye?

He doesn't, really.

...but he probably should. 

"I'm— not going to tell anyone you told me. In case that's, in case that's relevant. Thank you for telling me, I'm glad I know, I'm, I'm not going to make you regret it." 

Ranboo startles and then visibly relaxes. "--Oh! Okay, that's--that's good. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I—" and then, whatever he was going to say, he thinks better of it. "You're welcome. Bye." 

"--Oh, um, bye!"

Yeah, sorry Ranboo, that was probably weird. But also Q's pretty sure Ranboo doesn't want to be here for this. When he's sure he's alone he stops and pushes his thumbs into his windpipe until the cartilage gives way and it goes from painful-and-irritating to painful-but-satisfying, and then immediately chokes and coughs until his eyes water, and— 

(Schlatt and Tubbo never fucking met, he never had to get between them— he wants to think he'd have picked Tubbo every time and he knows which he'd pick if you made him choose right now but back when he was seventeen, when Schlatt was all he had— he doesn't want to think about this— he can't think about anything else—) 

He doesn't take the Nether back to Kinoko. He goes, instead, the long way so he has plenty of time to pull himself together, to Eret's museum. 

The museum isn't large by the standards of Las Nevadas or Kinoko Kingdom, but it's larger than Paradise, or some of the smaller buildings scattered around the Prime Path.

The central exhibit is a van with an on-fire hot dog on top. There are a few different maps; there's a wall made of black bricks; there's a large red egg, encased in glass and with a sign in front of it declaring it to be a REPLICA. There are three rooms, two of which are missing a fourth wall and are open to the people:
- another black-brick wall room, this one with five chests (labeled Tubbo, Eret, WilburSoot, TommyInnit, and Fundy) surrounding a wooden button on the floor
- a stone room, with a wooden chair facing a wooden button on the wall; the walls have writing on them, messy and all-caps and--not quite Wilbur's, but definitely close to it, or maybe trying to be?
- a red brick room with stone brick and wood accents, two windows, and shrubs by the windows

Downstairs there's more maps, along with--

Eret herself.

Well. It's something else to think about. That is what he wanted, wasn't it?

He can tell that all of these things have significance but it's hard to tell from looking at them what the significance might be. The writing on the wall in Wilbur's handwriting, even when he squints to read it, is little help. 

"...um. Hi?" he says to Eret. 

"Hello!"

Right. Now he has to explain himself. His hair's in a ponytail today, the lack of scar is clearly visible, but that's different from explaining yourself. 

"I'm Q, I got to the server about a month ago. And I, uh, keep falling into pits of unfortunate missing context, and— it would be nice if that happened, uh, less often, rather than more? So I asked around and was directed here." 

"What do you want to know about? I can try to answer your questions, I can show you around the museum, I can show you around the, uh, the SMP as a whole--?"

"I don't actually know that I know enough to have more specific questions, I went around the museum and— it's clear that everything here means something and is probably historically important but I don't know what any of the historical importance is." 

"That makes sense. I should probably have books explaining these things. The center of the museum is the camar van, which is from L'Manberg." They press a button on the door and it opens for a moment; they slip in, but if Q isn't on top of it, he'll have to press it again. The inside of the van has brewing stands for potions, which he may or may not recognize.

He does not, in fact, recognize the potion brewing stands. He does keep his hands to himself. 

"Books might help more for someone who isn't me, my vision's kinda fucked. —What are these?" 

"Brewing stands, they're for making potions. This caravan--excuse me, camar van--is where the L'Manberg revolution started."