Chapter Text
Moonlight lit a path between the trees, which Sam took to as quickly as he could without jostling the weight on his back. It was dangerous to continue walking with limited mobility like this, but Sam felt the need to put as much distance between himself and the battle field as fast as possible. Some risk had to be taken.
The weight on his back was heavy, but not as heavy as it should have been. Ponk groaned and griped his arms around Sam’s neck tighter, adjusting his right leg tucked between Sam’s arm and chest. What was left of his other leg was stiffly pressed against Sam’s side, both Sam and Ponk trying to avoid loosening the bandages wrapped tightly against the wound.
“Are you hungry, Ponk?” Sam asked, opening up his inventory.
“Ooo, I’d love some pain au chocolat right now,” Ponk weakly joked. Sam held up a handful of golden apples left over from the battle. Despite what the gapples had been made for, Sam was glad he could offer some comfort to Ponk’s declining health and hunger bars. As he handed them over, he quickly side-stepped away from a spider.
“Could this work until we find some of that... uh pan chocolate?” Sam asked.
“Pain au chocolat, Sam,” Ponk corrected. He took the gapples and eagerly ate two quickly. “So where are you kidnapping me to, Sammy-wammie?”
Sam looked up at the sky and kept walking. He wasn’t really sure of the answer honestly. When the dust had settled from the final confrontation with the egg and all the other drama that got mixed into the fight, Sam was devastated. It was too much to process now, and would be for a while. But as Captain Puffy clapped his shoulder in tired success, all he had wanted to do was run home to Franny.
And then he has spotted Ponk. Strewn like a particularly handsome rag doll on the dirt, with no one else around.
He couldn’t leave him there. Not like last time. So he had offered a hand to Ponk, and Ponk, great and forgiving Ponk, had taken it. Sam was not embarrassed to admit he cried a bit in relief when he carried Ponk away to what he hoped was safety.
“Where do you want to go, Ponk?” Sam asked.
Ponk became quiet for a moment. Then, with an amusement that was wholly incompatible with the injury he was dealing with, Ponk spoke up. “Ohh-kay but don’t get mad okay? I want to see Foolish.”
Sam felt a wave of overwhelming emotion start to rise in him, threatening to push him into irrationality. He pushed it down with a deep breath. “If that’s what you want, Ponk.”
Ponk reached up and pet Sam’s hair and tucked himself closer into Sam’s body. “Thank you, Sam.”
Sam continued to walk-run through the forest until they finally left the biome. Calculating the trip mentally, Sam would need to head North for miles to reach Foolish’s summer build. Or he could head in the direction of the L’manburg ruins to get to a portal and take a shortcut. But, no, carrying an injured man through the nether was highly irresponsible.
“Sam, I think we should stop for the night,” Ponk whispered after another thirty minutes of walking.
“You can sleep and I’ll carry you, don’t worry Ponk,” Sam reassured. Ponk shook his head against Sam’s neck.
“We should sleep. A sleep-over? A cool sleepover where we change my bandages and we talk and gossip about anything except what happened,” Ponk insisted. “Please?”
Sam knew he couldn’t have resisted even if he were at full health, but he blamed his quick acquiescence to how tired he was. He gently set Ponk down on a tree stump at the edge of the forest and went about making a small shack to spend the night. Ponk, for all his big jokes and talk, looked awfully pale. He tried his best to sit straight, but Sam saw the tremors that came from the effort.
When the shelter was in place, Sam gave Ponk a few more apples. “I’ll be right back Ponk, I don’t have wool.”
Ponk nodded. When Sam came back with enough Spider web to craft into wool for the beds, he found Ponk slumped against the wall. His heart sunk as he crossed the few blocks seperating them. He knelt in front of his friend, wanting to shake him awake but his hands were frozen at this sides. Ponk’s skin had none of the rich skin-tone that shone with happiness on a summer day. Instead it was limp and pale, all of Ponk’s scars and minute wrinkles from a life of war and violence stood in darker and pitiful contrast. It reminded Sam of the last time Ponk had lost so much blood, from an injury Sam himself had inflicted on his dearest companion...
Why did Sam feel the audacity to attempt to rescue him from the battle when he was to blame for some of Ponk’s worst trauma? Did he really think Ponk could ever forgive him for what he had done?
Sam finally broke through his paralysis when Ponk snored loudly. Sam stared at his friend’s face, and laughed mirthlessly. He stood up and quickly crafted two beds. As gently as he could, Sam replaced the bandages on Ponk’s leg. Ponk woke up during the worst of it, but kept quiet. When Sam was done, he simply lifted his arm up and let himself be carried to bed.
As Sam laid down in his own bed, on the other side of the small shack, he heard Ponk eat another golden apple. How many of those would he need for the journey? Was the injury really severe enough to drain his hunger that quickly?
“Sam?” Ponk’s voice called out from two blocks away.
“Yes, Ponk?” Sam answered.
“You forgot to say good night, Sam.”
“You are so right, forgive me, Ponk,” he said with a smile, “Good night, dear.”
“Aw, good night, sweetie,” Ponk responded cheerfully.
And together they slept.
-
It wasn’t a restful night for Awesamdude. Dreams of the fight with worse outcomes attacked him. If he had been a moment too late, or maybe too early, would his friends and family be better? He dreamt of dying by jumping in and taking a blow instead of his friends. He dreamt of their disgusted reactions as his consciousness faded to black and the dream started again with someone new.
Tommy, in his dream, had the worst reaction. Sam had jumped between a swing of a diamond sword to his back, and Tommy only glanced at him with disgust before swinging down the Axe of Peace on Sam himself.
His dream version of Captain Puffy was the least hurtful. She had cried out his name and then berated him for being an idiot. It was probably the most true to life his dream was.
He dreamt of Ponk, or rather relived certain memories of Ponk. Ponk, trapped in a glass box with lava and a missing arm. Ponk, smiling brightly at Sam on a summer afternoon under the desert sun. Ponk in his deep red suit and glowering red eyes at the banquet, stealing his red beet soup with disdain. And finally, Ponk on a forest battlefield near where the egg had been transported, his leg missing from some unfortunate explosion or attack.
Why did war always have to come with explosions? Sam had grown up with a natural predisposition to love gunpowder and explosions as the creeper hybrid he is. But TNT had taken so much from the people he cared about, taken from him, had made Sam himself act with hazed fear and hurt people; now Sam could barely stand the scent anymore.
Despite the awful dreams, Sam’s natural internal clock woke him up right before the sun peeked over the horizon. Usually this was when he walked Franny, right before he had to do any work for himself and the benefit of the server. He sat up and glanced over to Ponk, who was sound asleep. With a sigh of relief, he realized Ponk looked less pale, some warm depth returning to his skin.
Sam checked his inventory for breakfast items. He had a lot of empty potion bottles, a few leftover potions of strength, about a half stack of golden apples, his Warden weapons and armour that he had stored away to better hold Ponk on his back, and some spider eyes from last night’s wool hunting.
Sam stretched his arms up and away until he felt a satisfying pop in his bones. He got up and walked over to Ponk’s bed, lifting his blanket to check on the bandages. With a startled yelp, Ponk flinched away from his hand.
“Sorry Ponk,” Sam appeased, holding his hands up in a no-harm-intended way. “Just checking your leg.”
Ponk’s eyes took a moment to blink his owl eyes back to normal, a carefully carefree expression taking the place of surprise.
“You should always ask if you’re going to sneak into someone’s bed, Sam! How am I supposed to know you’re not going to rob me?” He admonished with a joking tone.
Without thinking, Sam knelt by Ponk’s bed and reached a hand to Ponk’s mask-covered jaw. “I would never steal from you Ponk,” he said soothingly. “You don’t have any items I want,” He finished with an extra serious tone.
He felt Ponk grin wider under the mask before he heard it. “Oh, you. You already stole the most important thing and now you’re saying I have nothing else to offer, huh?” Ponk replied, holding Sam’s hand to his face and leaning into Sam’s touch.
Sam’s heart fluttered slightly at the words, aching to spill over and envelop his friend within his emotions. He took a deep breath to push it back to a manageable level.
“You are everything I could ever want, Ponkie,” Sam cooed, while gently rubbing his thumb across Ponk’s mask. Ponk closed his eyes at the touch, letting Sam’s hand explore his face. He swept his thumb across the yellow-brown-red camo mask, reaching the opening for Ponk’s eyes. He smoothed out the warm skin under Ponk’s eyes for a moment, before realizing how warm Ponk’s skin really was.
“Do you have a fever?” He thought aloud with alarm.
Ponk’s eyes opened slowly. He shrugged. “Possibly?”
“Why didn’t you say anything?!” Sam said, standing up and removing his hand from his friends face.
“Can’t exactly tell the temperature of things,” Ponk replied, covering himself with the thin wool blanket Sam had made for the bed.
Sam sighed. “I’ll be right back. Breakfast first, then I want you to drink water and have a golden apple before we continue walking. Okay?”
“Yessir, Sir Sam,” Ponk said with some barely hidden annoyance.