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“Karl?” Sapnap calls up, his voice echoing through the wooden hall. He steps forward, mushroom soft under his feet as he listens for his fiancé.
He hears shuffling upstairs and begins the climb up, invitation clutched in hand.
He reaches the top of the staircase and glances over to where his fiancé stands. Sapnap frowns slightly at the way Karl is gripping one of the bookshelves, causing it to creak gently, breaking the silence. As Sapnap approaches, he can see Karl’s eyes flit from book to book in a desperate search that he knows he will never understand.
“Karl?” He asks again, softer this time.
Sapnap has found him like this many times before. The worst times are when Karl is panting from the effort of his search, books laying on the floor, his hands darkened from hurried scribblings in his journal. Those are the times when he has to be reminded of his own name. Those are the times he calls Sapnap by other names, like James, or Mason.
Sapnap lets out an anxious sigh and gingerly places a hand on Karl’s shoulder.
“Karl? Can you hear me?”
Karl twists away at the sudden touch. After all this time Sapnap still hasn’t figured out the best way to alert him to his presence. Karl recoils sharply and pushes away until his back is pressed up against the bookshelf. Sapnap holds in a breath as he watches his fiancé scan his face.
“Sap…?”
Sapnap sighs with relief. He remembers him. He reaches his arms out for Karl to step forward into an embrace.
Shakily, Karl collapses into his arms and Sapnap rocks him gently side to side. He wants to know why Karl gets like this, but he knows better then to ask.
He knows he won’t get an answer, but he wishes he had a way to erase the fear and confusion from his fiancé’s eyes. Until he can figure out how to help, he has to settle for offering up comforting words and reassuring touch.
They stand like this for a while, Karl clutching tightly to the coarse fabric of Sapnap’s shirt.
Finally, Sapnap takes a step back, still holding him at an arm’s length.
“Everything alright Karl?”
Karl gives a small smile and nods sheepishly. He notices Sapnap clutching something in his left hand, scrunched up from being held against Karl.
“What have you got?”
Sapnap lets go of Karl and slowly begins to flatten out the paper.
“It’s an invitation.”
“For what?” Karl moves so he is beside Sapnap, looking over his shoulder at the invite.
“My dad is having a Banquet. Everyone is invited. He just gave me this outside.”
Karl freezes up again.
“It’s called the Red Banquet.” He continues. “Him and his Eggpire friends are putting it togeth-… Karl?”
Karl was back at the shelves, pushing books aside desperately.
Sapnap walks closer to him with a frown. Had he triggered this with something he said?
“The… Red Banquet…” Karl was muttering to himself now.
Sapnap sighs reluctantly. “Did you want to be my plus one? It might be fun.”
This seemed to snap Karl out of his crazed search. He whips around suddenly to face Sapnap.
Sapnap smiles up at his fiancé “You like parties, right Karl? There hasn’t been a party in a while.”
“Don’t go.”
The smile is wiped from Sapnap’s face.
“What?”
Karl rushes forward and places his hands on Sapnap’s shoulders, his eyes burning intensely as though they bore into Sapnap’s soul.
“Don’t. Go. We can’t go.”
Sapnap gingerly takes hold of Karl’s elbows and tries to loosen the iron grip he has on him. He smiles nervously.
“If this is about having nothing to wear, I actually have a nice suit that I never got to wear for-“
“No. We’re not going.”
The silence between them grows icy and Sapnap wants to be angry but he knows Karl is barely himself. He’s noticed how the man stands dazed and confused some days, how his laughter barely reaches his eyes anymore, how he gazes across the land they’ve carved out for themselves and looks more lost than he’d ever been before.
“Ok.” Sapnap sighs lightly.
Karl searches his eyes rapidly, trying to figure out if his fiancé is lying. Sapnap shrugs him off his shoulders gently.
“We don’t have to go. I promise.”
Karl continues staring for a moment before nodding. He turns back to his bookshelves and begins scouring the spines for something.
Sapnap doesn’t care what. He turns and walks out of the library, out of the house.
He’s met by a cool breeze as he exits the large building, invite still clutched in hand.
He paces around the large pond at the heart of the kingdom and after a moment tosses the scrunched-up invitation into the water. He watches it float along the surface until finally it is submerged under the water and sinks peacefully to the depths.
Sometimes Sapnap feels like that invite. Trying to keep afloat but ultimately drowning in things he didn’t understand. Not important enough to hold onto.
Sapnap lets out a weak snort at the comparison of himself to paper.
He walks deeper inland, out into the forests that he Karl and George had traversed together. Each hill and outlet is familiar to him.
Finally, he comes to the gazebo where they had celebrated his birthday. Bright flowers litter the grass and fish swim lazily about in the nearby pond. Sapnap’s eye is caught by a single mushroom that was carefully planted under the shade of a low tree.
“In our Kingdom, this is a flower” Sapnap had laughed as he and Karl placed it in the dirt.
Sapnap forces himself to look away.
He reaches the wooden gazebo and slowly circles around the table in the middle.
“Happy Birthday Sapnap!” Karl, George and Bad had yelled. Callahan jumped up and down in excitement and Sapnap raced George to grab as many slices of the cake he had made with his father as they could.
Sapnap smiles sadly at the memory as he places a hand on the rough surface of the table.
He deserves to be angry.
He decides he is angry.
He kickes the table lightly.
Nothing.
He got no release from the tap on the wood, it just alerts him to how tired he truly is.
“What’s happening to me.” He murmurs to himself as he collapses onto the wooden decking, head falling into his hands.
He thought Karl was the only one that had changed, now he realises he had been transformed by the events of the past few months.
Not too long ago he had been a soldier, respected by his friends and feared by his enemies. After the wars died down, he had retained that reputation, yet Karl and Quackity had still fallen in love with him despite seeing what he was capable of. Despite being on opposing sides at times.
‘Where are they now?’ Sapnap thinks with a sniff, lifting his head to face the rising moon.
He hasn’t seen Quackity since they fled their old home in El Rapids and Karl barely knew who he was most days.
Sapnap pokes at some dirt with his foot as he thinks about his friends.
Dream. Dream was the one who had made him a soldier in the first place. Not that he had been opposed to it, but it was supposed to be fun. He was so caught up in the thrill and adventure that he hadn’t noticed his own friend’s decline into cruelty, not until it was far too late to help him.
Sapnap didn’t think he could feel a pain more constricting on his chest then the pain he felt as he geared up to save Tommy and Tubbo from Dream.
His heart had been thundering in his ribcage that day, as he stepped in front of the two young boys he had once fought against, shielding them from his friend.
He was worried that his weakness would be obvious to Dream, that he would somehow hear the frantic beats of his fearful heart. Instead, Dream had looked at him with a look of shock that made Sapnap nauseous to recall.
Then his face changed to betrayal as Sapnap handed Tommy a pickaxe.
Dream spared him no more glances after that.
He had to look away as Tommy raised the axe above his head and brought it down on the man that Sapnap had once considered a brother.
Sapnap frowned. Dream was still his brother. Despite the hurt he felt when he saw Beckerson sitting in Dream’s Vault of Attachment.
But then Sapnap had felt the constriction tighten around his chest once more, weeks later, when he stepped into the obsidian walls of the prison.
Dream refused to speak to him, so focused on Tommy, so certain he would escape. There was no trace of the man he had known in those eyes.
It was then that he had promised death to him.
Sapnap knew things would be better with Dream locked away where no one would have to see him again. His pain was still immeasurable when Dream hugged him close as he left the cell, for a moment he was himself again. Before Sapnap could react, he was outside the cell and back under Sam’s watchful gaze.
That night he didn’t sleep because every time he closed his eyes all he could see was his brother, scribbling into a notebook, face tinted with an orange glow from the lava that bubbled just outside of the box.
He promised himself he would not try and visit Dream again after that, it was too painful.
Sapnap leant back under the cover of the gazebo. Tears had pooled in his eyes as he relived each memory. He wiped them away and let out a shaky breath.
At least he still had George.
Or did he really have George?
He hadn’t been brave enough to talk to him about Dream. Even as they had sat close underneath the first mushroom of the Kingdom, waiting out the rain, they had sat peacefully and silently, letting Karl fill the air with pointless chatter.
So much remained unsaid between the two of them. Sapnap couldn’t tell if George was upset by how Sapnap had been the first to swing his sword at Dream in the vault, or how he had cut himself off from the SMP entirely, or maybe George also wanted to forget everything that had happened and start again.
Sapnap wants to ask George where he went when he thought no one would notice. What he was thinking when he wandered the SMP with a dazed look on his face and not even a sword in his pockets. He would never walk around without any tools or armour in the past, back when it was just them and Dream, building the community house together.
Sapnap sat up again, he shook the thoughts from his head. Those times were long gone, not even the community house remained.
‘Some community’ Sapnap thought to himself, cynically.
The moon began to sink below the hills and the faint glow of the morning rose up across the sky.
Sapnap got up with the intent to return to the Kingdom.
‘But for what?’ He asks himself. ‘The only other citizens are two men that walk around like they are balancing on the line between fiction and reality.’
Sapnap felt guilty for thinking about Karl and George this way. This must just be how they cope with everything. Escaping into some fantasy.
Sapnap scowls again as he paces the dewy grass, stepping carefully around vibrant flowers. He needs grounding too.
It’s hard to see his friends so aloof each day, only for them to vanish the next, leaving him worried, biting on nails and walking the length of the empty Kingdom over and over until they return with little to no explanation.
Who does he have when they leave him all alone?
Sapnap halts in front of a small tree. Absently he crouches down and looks underneath.
The mushroom that Karl had given him on his birthday still sits there. This time he allows himself to gaze at it, recounting how happy he had been.
‘Things don’t have to be like this.’ He decides.
‘I need balance.’ He thinks as he returns to Kinoko Kingdom.
‘I want stability.’ He packs his tools and gear.
‘I can do something about this.’ He pauses as he passes by the library, Karl’s figure is collapsed over a book, gentle snores carry through the air. The library is torn asunder in his wake.
‘I don’t have to work through this alone’ He walks on and heads out into the bright sunshine, towards the greater SMP.
‘I’m going to hold onto what I have.’ He passes by desolate ruins and crumbling homes. Old friends give him cautious waves as he moves through the land.
‘And I’m not letting go.’ He reaches El Rapids and comes to a halt.
The steely determination that had been firmly set on his face suddenly falls away. He looks over the small craters where El Rapids once stood, welcome board peeled away, and faces scratched out.
El Rapids is gone. Just like everything else.
Sapnap huffs angrily as he turns away, his determination returns. This is just another reason to carry out what he came here for.
‘I need to find Quackity.’