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"Why don't you come in here with him, Sammy ?" Dream had said to him, still holding the boy up by his hair.
Like a hunter to a buck .
"I could kill you, too! You can't kill me, but I can kill you! Isn't that funny ?" He laughed.
Sam grew to hate that damned laugh. When he closed his eyes all he could see was the broken, bloodied body of a child he would never get to call his own.
He would never deserve to call his own.
He was too weak to stop the tears from falling freely down his face then. He cried out from across the lava, what felt all at once too close and like a world away. All he could do was scream, wordless and anguished, like a wounded animal.
As the days passed, what he had said started sounding less like a threat and more like an out.
Sam feels light and hollow, as if someone’s scooped out his insides until he’s nothing. He throws his armor and keys carelessly into a chest outside the main cell. He tried writing a note but the words always ended up wrong and it always devolved into I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry so he hopes this chest tips people off that this wasn't a freak accident. The only thing he keeps on him, aside from a flask of fire res (it's to help with the heat, nothing more, he doesn't have any unhealthy dependencies on potions), is his sword. Warden's Will .
The irony that the Warden should die by his will when he has none left is not lost on him.
Dream seems surprised to see him without his armor, as if he didn’t expect Sam to finally crack. As if he wasn’t waiting for this moment.
Sam stares Dream down, searching for the anger he usually felt, but finds nothing in its stead. The warden's hands are calm and still for the first time in weeks as he holds his sword, handle pointed toward his prisoner.
Dream stares at him for a moment, before cracking a sick smile.
He laughs . He still has the audacity to laugh in his face.
"Heheh- holy shit , Sam! Did you really think I'd actually do it? I was just fucking with you!" He doubles over wheezing like he just heard the funniest joke in the world.
"Please…" His voice comes out broken and raw.
(He screamed and screamed until his voice gave out, echoing back at him in the high Blackstone walls of the courtyard. The still healing scars on his arms itched, begging to be torn open again as punishment for the crime of continuing to live and breathe with all 3 lives intact while his Tommy had that luxury taken from him.)
“No, I'm not going to kill you."
The warden glares. " Dream, I -"
"You what? Are you going to fucking order me to kill you? No! You're far too important. Would you really want to leave this job for someone else to suffer through?"
He feels a sob threaten to escape his body before swallowing it down. He’s just so... tired .
He just wanted to rest.
"But you can't, Sam." Dream's voice startles him.
Did he say that out loud?
"You have a job to do. What was the last thing you told him… Be strong, right?"
The warden crumbles, falling to his knees as the sword clattered beside him. He can’t stop the pathetic tears from streaming down his face as he begs his prisoner for permission to die.
"Y-you don't even have to use a weapon, use your hands, do it any fucking way you want just let me die -" He suddenly recoils at the feeling of arms around him (becoming hyper aware of the obsidian floor under his knees and distantly feeling as though the walls were much closer than they actually were) before he realizes, with horror, that Dream had knelt down and enveloped him in a hug .
Part of him wants to curl up and die right there or punch him or just get away , but a larger part, which makes him feel sick to his stomach, melts into him . It had been so long since he had any positive physical touch he'd take anything . He buries his face into his shoulder, muffling sobs the strength of which shakes his entire body. He wants to bury it all down but there's just something about the closeness that makes him too volatile to think about it. Some vestigial instinct from his mob side, that only serves to remind him how much less than human he really is.
With the way Dream shushes and coddles him, he feels like a child. He cries like one, he realizes, as the sobs start dying down into hiccups and sniffles.
Pathetic. Weak.
A moment of catharsis that was robbed from him, leaving only burning humiliation.
"It's alright, just let it out… wow, you even cry like him. If I didn't know any better, I'd think Tommy really was your son…" Sam chokes down another sob.
( Stop crying in front of him, he'll just use it against you like every other weakness you've exposed. )
"Tommy used to cry like this when I tried to leave him, y'know. He- heh, he would beg me to stay with him, and if I was feeling gracious I would. I'd rub his back, just like this, until he finally tired himself out… I guess he cried himself to sleep a lot. I had to teach him a lesson in being more independent, you know, he had to learn to be grateful I showed any kindness at all , but I guess it just means I got kinda good at this kind of thing."
He isn’t listening anymore. He barely registers the words coming out of Dream’s mouth. He closes his eyes for just a moment before he feels himself being shaken awake.
"Sammy…? Sam. Wake up."
He practically jolts awake at Dream’s voice in his ear, pushing him away on instinct, his heart beating fast and breath turning to smoke.
( too close too close too close and you’re falling through the floor- )
“Sam! Calm down, buddy-”
( Goodbye, buddy. )
“ Get the fuck away from me !” He looks around for his sword (his hands are shaking again, where is it? ). When he looks up, Dream is holding it, hilt pointing towards him. He quickly snatches it away, backing into the far corner of the cell, unable to quiet his hissing as he holds his sword in front of him. “I- I’ll fucking kill you-”
“That’s a lie, and we both know it Sam”
“And why shouldn’t I?? Why shouldn’t I after all that you’ve done ?!”
( After all that you’ve done to Tommy ?)
Dream smiles. “Because you know you’d be nothing without me, Sam.”
Something changes in Sam’s face, it must have, since Dream continues. “See? You know it. Deep down. You and I are inseparable. It’s why I can’t kill you either, y’know.”
“Sh- shut up…”
“Because a prisoner needs a warden…”
“I said-”
“...And a Warden needs his Prisoner.”
The silence between them sits, palpable and deliberate.
Sam takes a swig of the fire resistance potion he kept (coward, you knew this would fail, didn’t you ?), and leaves with the items he left in the chest, taking the chest along with him.
If anyone even wanted to visit, it’d be like nothing even happened here.
The Warden continues his rounds as usual.