Chapter Text
Sam woke up to fifty pounds of fur smacking him in the face.
He startled, stumbled to awareness as he struggled to breathe from the newfound weight on his chest. It took a few moments for his vision to clear up enough to see what was right in front of him, but his lips quirked up in a small smile as Fran sat, self-satisfied, with her paws pressed against his collarbones, looking for all the world like she was priding herself in her win.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." He ran a hand through the fur on her head, got a bark in return. The smile dropped, however, when his brain - still foggy with sleep - began to drag itself into awareness, bringing with it a whole slew of unpleasant memories that largely made him want to crawl back under the covers for another week, please.
Fran barked again, headbutted him insistently, and he pushed away the thoughts with a bleary shake of his head. As much as he wanted to avoid his responsibilities, experience had taught him otherwise, and what was he without his duty, now?
He was halfway through the process of putting on his armor when he realized, hands falling from the straps they had been readjusting, lips pulled into a thin line.
Oh.
Right.
Fran barked again, probably noticing his hesitance, making a point of ramming her head into the backs of his legs again when he stood still for a little too long. Sam stared at his hands for a moment, then another, before going to undo the fastenings of his netherite chestplate and hang it back up on the stand.
He wouldn’t be needing those for a while, would he?
“Hey girl.” He kneeled down to scratch Fran by the ears, smiling softly when she closed her eyes in satisfaction. He usually didn’t have any time to spend with her, not with him needing to check on the prisoner in the morning to make sure he would be ready for Quackity’s visits at noon and his afternoons usually filled with his work at Las Nevadas and on his own bank and keeping the prisoner alive-
Sam breathed out a little too harshly, reaching for the Warden’s communicator he kept tucked in his chest pocket. The same words stared at him in the morning light, clear and damning.
Dream was slain by Quackity using [Warden’s Will].
It had been an accident, in the end. He hadn’t been listening well enough, Quackity’s shouts blending with Dream’s ragged screams making up the same painful two-note song that filled most of his days, when the cell - steadily growing in sound for the past hour, as Quackity (inevitably) became more desperate and the prisoner (inevitably) forwent any attempts at holding back his pain - suddenly went silent.
The quiet itself was enough to raise his hackles, have him reaching for a pearl as he clicked open his communicator; the quiet “Sam?” from Quackity only made them rise more.
By the time he reached the other side, his communicator was already buzzing with the notification he’d already known would appear, and Dream was lying still with a sword shoved through his chest.
---
Sam hadn’t really reacted, when he first realized. He set upon the task of cleaning up the aftermath much the same way as he approached everything nowadays, quick, efficient, and methodical. He sent Quackity away to wash off the worst of the blood, not bothering to follow him across the lava; it’s not like there was any prisoner that could take advantage of the loosened security, anymore. With the winged man gone, he resigned himself to the job of dealing with the remains of the prisoner.
In the heat of the lava, the body hadn’t even cooled yet, the blood flowing from it- him- whatever, still warm to the touch. Sam eased off the cracked remains of the mask, heart momentarily seizing at the sight of the face underneath it; gaunt, pale, and stretched in memories of pain that it could no longer feel, it- he looked anything but peaceful. His eyes were still blown open in fright, bright green eyes long-dulled, a smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose and cheekbones thrown in sharp relief from the paleness of his skin. Even with the scars on every visible inch of skin, he looked- young, like a scared kid, expression tortured even in death, and Sam could feel echoes of horror beating against his skull like a heartbeat. With a slightly shaking hand, he closed Dream’s eyes - the man was dead. It was the least he could do.
He must’ve spent a solid few minutes carefully bandaging each cut and gash, still sluggishly weeping blood - not that it meant anything, with him dead, but it felt - necessary, to at least give him this much dignity after death. He was covered in blood, some of it fresh, most of it not, but after wiping away the worst of it from his skin (his hair and clothes had been a lost cause for a long time), he almost looked- human. It wasn’t a perfect image; he was far, far too still to be anything like the Dream that Sam remembered, and there were more bandages than exposed skin, at this point, skin paper-white against the black of the obsidian floor and the air still thick with the smell of blood, but if he squinted a little he could almost imagine that Dream was only sleeping. That nothing had happened.
Nothing had happened.
Or at least- nobody could know what did happen. Not with Dream’s death meaning that the information of the revival book was lost forever, not when his death would open up a whole can of worms that both he and Quackity would be better off not having to deal with for the rest of time, thank you very much. Keeping it all a secret wouldn’t be that hard, all things considered; he could turn away visitors with the excuse of preventing something like Tommy’s death from happening again, and it’s not like anyone was particularly preoccupied with thinking about the conditions of the prisoner. He and Quackity would have to think of a better excuse in the future, but now wasn’t the time. All he had to do was get Dream’s body out of Pandora and away from people’s prying eyes; everything else could come after.
Picking up Dream took less effort than he expected; even though the man was a deadweight, he hardly seemed to weigh anything in Sam’s arms. Making their way out of the prison was much harder, but with a few well-placed enderpearls and the abuse of quite a few guard mechanisms, they were out under the night sky. It was a clear night: the moon nearly full, the stars bright and twinkling; it was the kind of night that Dream loved, once.
He bit back the thought as soon as it came. Dream was dead and those days were gone. There wasn’t any point of thinking about them, now.
He ended up carrying the man to a patch of forest against the beaches behind the prison, burying him without much fanfare and pulling out a piece of cobble to serve as a shoddy headstone. It was a small and lonely grave in the middle of a woods that no one ever visited, the cobblestone dull and easy to miss. Only Sam would know where it was.
He told himself that he didn’t care as he left, tridenting across the bay towards the community portal so he could finally go home and rest. It didn’t matter; hardly anyone had bothered visiting the man when he was alive. What would change with him dead?
Distantly, thunder rumbled.
---
It was strange, to have nowhere to go, reminded him of the early days when it was just him and Fran exploring and hollowing out the mountain for his base one block of stone at a time. He figured that it was about time that he and Fran went on a proper walk, anyway, and so after a light breakfast they were off - Fran running in front in leaps and bounds, tail a blur as she greeted every tree and rock by the house with the eager overfamiliarity that only a dog could have, Sam staying back and whistling whenever she came a little too close to harassing a fox or chicken or whatever mobs were out in the early morning. Every once in a while, she would run back, shoving her face into his hands as if to check in and say hello, and he would give her a couple assuring pats before she rocketed away again.
He definitely should’ve been doing this more often; a small rock of guilt settled in his gut at the sight of Fran’s clear exhilaration at being outside of the same four walls. Her room was as nice as he could make it - food and water kept in abundance, an assortment of toys scattered all over the floor, her bed covered in a collection of blankets she had claimed for her own - but with everything going on, he really hadn’t had the time to bring her on long walks and play with her as he should have. She looked happier than she’d been in months.
He looked up; Fran was in the process of running back towards him, again, and he opened his arms in anticipation of a flying ball of fur smacking him in the chest once more, when she froze. Paws digging into the grass, her head cocked to the side as her ears swiveled, pointed up and alert at some sound that Sam couldn’t hear. Her muscles tensed, and he stepped closer, hand reaching forward-
“Fran, don’t-”
Fran darted off into the forest, a white streak disappearing in the underbrush, and Sam muffled a yell as he moved to chase her. Her sprint sent fallen leaves flying up into the air, a trail of dust and destruction following her as she dashed deeper into the trees.
“Fran, get back here, what are you doing, stop running!”
Completely ignoring him, Fran continued to run ahead, turning suddenly to the right and sending Sam scrambling in an attempt to follow. Ducking out of sight past a collection of thickets into what appeared to be a sunlit grove in the middle of the forest, she gave a sudden, triumphant-sounding bark.
“Fran, you really can’t be running off like this, girl, I don’t even know where we are-”
He froze.
Fran, bright white in the sunlight, was wagging her tail as she panted, tongue lolling out of her mouth, muzzle seemingly split in a wide grin. Her dark eyes looked up at Sam, bright and intelligent, and she barked again when he looked at her as if to ask him if he was proud of her discovery.
Just behind Fran, translucent in the light, stood a figure. They were short - only coming up to Sam’s waist, if that, and wore an oversized light-green hoodie that reached halfway down their hands and khaki shorts. Their hair seemed windswept, blown around by some nonexistent breeze, defying gravity as it floated in a messy halo around their head; they turned towards him, freckled cheeks immediately breaking out in a blinding smile.
“Sam!”
He watched, numbly, as the kid stumbled forward, tripping on nothing as they crashed into him, arms immediately going to wrap around his legs tightly. They looked up, shoulders shaking with small giggles, mouth open to show a gap-toothed grin - one that was far, far too familiar.
“Dream?”
“Hiya Sam! Didja miss me?” Dream giggled again, still looking up at Sam, and he felt something dark and cold, almost like guilt, rising in his throat as he met his gaze.
Dream’s eyes were pitch black.