Chapter Text
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe…
Sam’s gauntleted hand gripped his shoulder, steering him further backwards towards the very edge of the obsidian cell. The creeper was seething, ironclad claws digging into his mangled flesh as he was held up towards the lava wall, feet just barely scraping against the bloodied ground. “Where the hell did he go, Dream?”
“I don’t—I don’t know, Sam!” Dream wheezed, kicking out weakly at the creeper hybrid holding him (in vain, of course, his strength had long since been depleted, but some part of him had still felt the need to make the effort). Sam wasn’t strangling him, yet his breath was still coming shorter, faster, frantic gasps that were barely pulling in air. “I don’t know where he went! He just—he disappeared!”
“You’re lying,” Sam’s grip tightened, and for a second, Dream was convinced his bones were going to snap. A boa constrictor was the only image that came to his mind, slowly squeezing harder, and harder, till his body turned to pulp. “He can't just have disappeared, Dream. Where did he go?”
The heat of the lava was singeing against the fraying threads of his prison jumper, sending sharp twinges of pain shooting up his spine. It was hard to imagine that mere moments ago he’d been soaking wet. “He just did! I swear he did! I don’t know where he went, Sam!”
“Do you seriously think I’m going to believe that?” The Warden finally pulled him away from the barrier, throwing him back onto the ground. His body slammed against the obsidian with a pathetic thunk, screaming ripping from his lips as his skin made contact with the searing hot netherite blocks embedded neatly within the floor. “Tell me the truth, Dream, or I’ll tell Quackity you’re still here and let him finish what he’d started before Technoblade escaped.”
Dream swallowed, internally cringing at the threat as he pushed himself as far back as the cell would allow, jagged wall digging uncomfortably into his back. “You—you wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” And suddenly the creeper hybrid was looming closer, armored form silhouetted only by the ghastly reflection of lavalight. It took everything in him not to flinch (pathetic). “Need I remind you who’s in charge here, again? I let him in once. I can do it again.”
“You wouldn’t.” Dream was pleading, now, his voice slipping into that saccharine tone he only ever used before Sir had started bringing in the shears. Sam couldn’t just—Sam couldn’t let Quackity come back, he couldn’t, Sam knew how mad Quackity would be—Sam knew what he would do if— “He’ll—he’s going to kill me! You can’t let me die, Sam. That’s—your job is to protect me!”
“My job is to protect the server from you, Dream. That’s not the same.” Sam’s hand reached again to grab his shoulder—his same shoulder, Dream couldn’t quite suppress the whimper of discomfort—pressing him harder against the obsidian wall. “Quackity won’t do anything unless I tell him. Let’s not forget who made those weapons in the first place.”
Dream didn’t think he’d ever forget the way Warden’s Will looked engraved into the netherite sword.
“Still!” The blond—he was pretty sure he was still blond; he’d heard of Marie Antionette syndrome before, but he hadn’t been able to look at his reflection anywhere to check, Sam had never let him—pushed futilely against the armoured arm holding him down. “He—you can’t let him know, Warden—Sam—please!”
Something about that last part must’ve resonated with Sam, because his grip slackened, just enough for Dream to squeeze out of the vice-like grasp and slide down to the bloodstained floor with a desperate gasp. The creeper took a step back, surveying him through the fogged up screen of his gas mask (smoke, Dream thinks, but he can never be sure with Sam anymore). “Do you really think he’ll kill you?”
“Wha—of course I do! You literally heard him!” Dream didn’t know what Sam was playing at here, tone decisively devoid of any indication of intent, and for reasons that he couldn’t possibly currently comprehend, it made him shrink back even further. Sam wasn’t supposed to react like this. He was never supposed to go this far. He— “He’s been wanting to kill me since the very first day! If you bring him back, you—you’re just giving him a reason to!”
“Quackity’s not going to kill you, Dream.” The creeper leaned forward, towering frame crowding Dream against the already spaceless obsidian wall. The prisoner swallowed, weakly, throat dry (from screaming or otherwise he couldn’t tell) as he resisted the urge to look away; anywhere but the man looming in front of him. He wasn’t—he wasn’t weak, not like that, no. He couldn’t let Sam think he was scared. “Quackity listens to me. He’s not the one you should be afraid of.”
The implications of that sentence were so blatant, so absurd, that it actually startled a laugh out of him.
“Oh, so what, you’re gonna—you’re gonna kill me now?” The words bubbled out of his mouth before he could even think to stop them. Dream practically doubled over, breathless wheeze echoing across the tomb-like cell (gods, his ribs were really starting to hurt again, he’d have to figure out how to reset them after Sam left—). He glanced back at the creeper, grinning through teary eyes. “What, are you—are you going to torture me? Where are your shears, Sammy? Aren’t you gonna—”
That was a mistake.
Sam’s trident slammed into the wall next to his head, sending the prisoner flinching back, muffled whimper clawing its way up his throat. The creeper grabbed him by the hair, twisting his body back at an impossible angle (a familiar angle too familiar too—) with a low growl. “Mind your tongue, prisoner, unless you want to give me another reason to cut it off.”
“You—you wouldn’t do that.” Dream forced his voice to stay still, steady, disassociated from the subtle tremor that had started to wreak his frame (don’t apologize he couldn’t apologize he couldn’t let Sam think he’d won something by hurting him). “I know you, Sam, I—you don’t have it in you. That’s why you get Quackity to do all your dirty work, isn’t it? It’s because you’re scared, Sam. You’re too scared to lift a single goddamn finger!”
Sam’s demeanor darkened, grip on his hair tightening almost imperceptibly, tilting his head even further back. His neck ached in protest. “Careful, Dream, it almost sounds like you miss him.”
“I don—you know what I mean, Sam!” He wished irritation would leak into his voice, wished he had something he could suppress here, something than the pathetically ingrained fear that had been so thoroughly beaten into his bones. His breath wasn’t coming in right. Something about the angle “You’re not going to bring Quackity back because you’re a coward, Sam! You know he’s going to kill me! And you know there’s nothing you can do to stop him!”
Sam studied him for a long moment, then, metal plated chest heaving with laboured breaths, smoke wreathing out of his mask and leaving the air smelling something faintly of sulphur. Dark green eyes flickered over his expression once, twice; dragging over the contours of his facade in a way that left him feeling awfully naked in a way even dissection hadn’t. A low, quiet chuckle escaped him. “You’re right.”
And then he let go.
Dream fell forwards, strangled gasp slipping from him as he caught himself, hand and knees, on the merciless obsidian floor. “What?”
Sam had moved back, his attention entirely away from Dream, digging for something deep inside his inventory. The prisoner couldn’t help but feel the sharp knot that had been tightening in his stomach snake up his torso in a sickening motion, compressing his lungs in a way that had nothing to do with his lungs. This wasn’t part of the plan.
“If I’m a coward, Dream—” the creeper hybrid pulled out a potion (weakness, he could recognize it easily, the instinctive hitch in his breath telling more than the color of it ever could), holding it up to lavalight as if he were ruminating what to do with it. Showing it off, he realized with another nauseating jolt. He was toying with him. “—then you shouldn’t be worried anymore, right? Because I’m not going to do anything.”
“W—wait, Sam, what are you—” Dream recoiled further away (as if he could move any further) as Sam began to move forward, the jagged edges of his spine digging into the obsidian, bending like chainmail. The prisoner curled smaller, eyes wide and lips twitching back into their subconscious, panicked smile as his manacled arms came to wrap around his tattered torso. “Sam, Sam, you—you don’t need to—”
“I think I do.” The Warden took another step, his armored hand wrapping around the blond’s throat to pin him back (a useless action, really, he was already as close as he could possibly get), taloned fingers digging into his disfigured flesh. Not squeezing, not yet, not until he raised the glass bottle high above Dream’s head. “Stay still.”
Dream thought, at least, that by now he’d be used to potions.
Quackity had used them often enough, whether—whether Dream was being too squirmy or too loud or too defiant—shattered glass lost to the sea of blood and bile that had come to coat his consolidated misery like a stinging balm. It was easier, Sir had said and Dream had agreed, when he was subdued.
There must’ve been a difference, then, Dream mused as Sam brought the vial down on the side of his head, between poison administered while screaming and while in silence.
The world tilted downwards, purple obsidian spinning into red that splattered soundlessly as gunshots against it. Dream couldn’t realize when he’d fallen, but his body still hit the floor with a watery thud nonetheless; a sharp jolt of pain ricocheting through his limp lying body in stagnant ripples.
Belatedly, he could see Sam stepping over his motionless legs (hah, he’d forgotten about those), netherite-clad green blurring dangerously around the fractured edge of his vision. Dream opened his mouth, maybe to say something, to call out, all unacted upon as tongue lolled helplessly across his remaining teeth in refusal to make a sound. The movement was dizzying. Or maybe he was just dizzy.
Sam was still moving, wasn’t he? The creeper had gotten out another weakness potion, not hitting him with it this time—the bottle shattered against the floor near his head, bitterly musked aroma making him twitch. And now he was going further, towards the wall of lava conceding the end of his cell. It was so bright—his pupils shrank against the cacophony of color, head pounding in protest; it hurt Dream to look at it, why was Sam…?
Oh. He was leaving.
“S…” A pained wheeze shuddered through him. Dream twisted towards Sam’s direction, the action alone as though his whole figure had been coated in tar, his leaden limbs dragging at the thought of movement. That was wrong. His body wasn’t supposed to… Lidded eyes craned up to land on the creeper’s receding frame, waxen lips contorting at the effort of making words. “You’re not… you’re not gonna bring Quackity back?”
The Warden paused, for a moment in eternity, back remaining turned towards the prisoner. Dream couldn’t see his face, not—not anymore, never—but he could’ve sworn that if Sam would’ve held still even a second longer, he would’ve laughed (he never laughed anymore, really. how unfortunate. neither did he). “I don’t need to, Dream.”
Dream no longer knew whether he was to be pleased or disappointed by the answer.