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at age sixteen you were beaten to death by dream, locked away in the very same prison cell with him that was supposed to keep you safe from him. there is nothing poetic or beautiful or interesting about it. just a rotting corpse and a false god left behind in a dingy, overheated prison cell.
part of you wishes it could’ve been some big, grand catastrophe that shook the whole server and left everyone in shambles. mourning your life and finally showing that they did care in at least some capacity. the other part of you is glad nobody saw how you died, small and pathetic and begging.
you’ll never be able to forget the crunch of fists against your face or the crack of your skull against the pavement. violent flashbacks and phantom pains ensure that. the scar tissue spanning the left side of your face ensures that. the loss of sight in your left eye ensures that.
you don’t know what to do with yourself after being revived. you didn’t expect to be back. you don’t want to be back either. you’d rather go back to playing competitive solitaire with wilbur and taking to mexican dream about drugs, as dreadful as that experience was. anything is better than being back on the server.
but you had to come back, and so here you are. nobody likes you any more now that you’ve died and come back, in fact, some people probably like you less. whatever, you’re used to it, it isn’t anything new. however, the pain in your legs is new, though it certainly isn’t a good kind of new.
no, it just makes you feel stupid because now you need to use a cane when your legs start to hurt too much. it’s embarrassing, but the only other option is being carried and you have far too much pride to ever let that happen. so you stick to your cane, which is really just a big stick you found out in the woods near snowchester, but it works and that’s enough for you.
you know better than to try and make anything for yourself by now, dream beat that habit out of you a long time ago and it isn’t coming back. puffy says that isn’t a healthy way to think but you don’t care. if you want to keep your cane as a stick it can stay as a fucking stick. you don’t need fancy shit to get by, you never have and you never will.
(you ignore the part of your mind that still craves gapples, the gilded, sickly sweet fruit becoming one you relied on in your time with techno. so maybe there is one luxury you need, but it isn’t because you want to. they help with the blinding pain that comes with taking injuries, they calm you down. how are you supposed to stay grounded if you’re hurt?)
at the very least, you have your best friend again. sure, he’s married and he’s got a platonic husband and a child, but it’s fine. it’s all fine, you’re doing completely fine.
maybe if you tell yourself that enough you’ll believe it one day. probably not, but you try anyway.