Archive of Our Own

A warm, sunny sky shone down on two sweating people, settled around a workbench beside a mountain-hidden base. 

The grass was thick and untrimmed around their feet and the wind claimed a few leaves from the trees with its breezes. If they’d have sat down in silence, they might have caught sight of a rabbit hopping among the trees, or heard the buzzing of a bee. 

Metal parts—an oval body with a missing square for a screen, some legs, a couple of arms and a lot of fingers of varying designs and versions, meant to be used realistically and tinkered with to hopefully perfection—glinted on the table.

Well, not all of them were on the table. 

The roundest part of all—a complete sphere except for an opening at the bottom to allow future wires and parts into the hollow space inside and a rim around the opening—had been picked up. 

“There’s no way this isn’t netherite, there’s no way. Ahh…” The weak, playful cry was accompanied by a sudden jerk of the metal as Ponk readjusted his grip. The thick heat protectant gloves probably made keeping a grip more difficult. “Why is it so heavy? When did you start hating me, Sam?”

At the sudden movement, Sam pulled the spark away from the plate’s surface so as not to make a random line in the malleable metal. 

“I know, I’m sorry,” Sam laughed, muffled under his mask and crinkled eyes hidden by goggles. “I warned you it’d be heavy! And I’ll be done in just a second.” 

They weren’t proper goggles for working with hot metal—he’d left his good ones at the prison, but George had left a pair of his large, silly round ones in Sam’s house long ago. He never saw enough of him to have a chance to return them, so they were with him to use. 

Ponk had laughed so hard when Sam put the comical, big thing on in what had been a joke, and at the reaction Sam didn’t feel like taking them off. So now he was just… wearing them. 

“No, I know you.” Ponk shook their head, fighting down a smile. “I know you painted the most condensed netherite in the world white for me to hold, Sam. You want my arms to fall off. You can’t fool me.” 

Hidden by his altered gas mask--heat-resistant and immune to any possible sparks—Sam instinctively opened his mouth to tease back but was struck with the bit of truth in the comment. Because technically… 

“Actually, it is the same reinforced iron I use for the prison. So there is some netherite in here.” 

“I knew it!” Ponk gasped, visibly struggling to keep a smile away from their gaping. “It’s all part of your plot.” 

Sam laughed from where he knelt on the grass, elbows resting on his table, keeping his hand steady as he made the depressions in the metal. 

The rest of the time he was tinkering with the metal parts on the table itself, but the table was wooden with an iron covering, and he wanted to keep the sparks away from it. A layer of iron wasn’t the most dependable thing and he didn’t want to risk setting the wood on a fire or just damaging the surface of his work table. Iron melted much faster than netherite and iron alloy. 

So, the solution was to work on the head away from the table, and while he could have dragged it to another surface, it was easier just to hold it away for the brief time the task required and so Ponk was lifting it up for him. 

They’d been bursting with excitement to volunteer themselves as his assistant when Sam mentioned he’d be working on a robot earlier in the day. It was a pleasant turn of events. Who was Sam to turn that down?

He was halfway through the design already—a quick process, the only real worry was making sure not to mess up drawing square shapes free-hand and to make sure a spark didn’t randomly fly off and burn someone. 

He was just engraving a creeper’s mouth and eyes on a raised plate he’d melded onto the orb, meant to mimic the piece of paper Tommy scribbled and stuck to Sam’s face when he first did his “Sam Nook” voice. 

He couldn’t be at the hotel forever, much as he wanted to duplicate himself so he could be. He had a prison to guard, but somebody had to still be there at the hotel to guard the endearing little danger-seeker that was TommyInnit. 

Otherwise the kid might… there was a lot of things Tommy could get up to unsupervised. Where to even start? 

So somebody had to be there for him. 

And who better than an actual Sam Nook? Nobody better. 

So he was being built right now, out of a metal tough enough to withstand life with Tommy. 

But it wasn’t painted white, of course, the netherite was just so minimal it didn’t noticeably alter the color. It might’ve added a tiny bit of weight but nothing a person could actually distinguish. 

“Almost done,” Sam assured, knowing Ponk’s arms would probably start to tire. “Let me know if you need to set it down for a second.”

“I’m okay. But damn, Sam.” Ponk exhaled out their nose, corners of their mouth lifted. “That rhymed. But wow. You’re making Tom Nook out of the creepy, scary prison iron?” Just making a bit out of the fact Sam just mentioned. “Does everything you do involve the prison now?” 

It was said with a smile, and it was clearly lighthearted… but when Sam glanced up, the red in Ponk’s eyes jolted him into a tense new world. 

He was not with his Ponk. 

He was with a Ponk who’d sold himself to a demented, strange egg that stole his soft, wonderous eyes and replaced them with bloodshot infection. 

The sunlight suddenly paled, highlighting the unnatural red flush in Ponk’s skin. 

Sam’s smile in response was short-lived and a battle to summon. 

It was amusing, technically. The teasing was funny. He knew that. 

The joke may have landed, but it didn’t settle right. 

(It didn’t settle right like the swirling red disease never settled within Ponk’s eyes. 

It didn’t settle right like the tiny squirming vines hidden underneath Ponk’s hoodie never settled in Ponk’s flesh, and if it got too quiet, Sam could hear squishing and—)

“No, it just means I had extra.” The actual answer to obvious teasing came out blandly, and he watched something drain from Ponk’s face as the mirth was rejected. “I wanted to make him strong anyway. Tommy will kick him in the shins at some point and I don’t think that should be the death of Sam Nook.”

Almost as an olive branch, the last sentence had an edge of playfulness, but in an act of karma Ponk only nodded in acknowledgment and a somewhat heavy silence fell.  

After too long a pause, Sam added, trying to take the weight off the atmosphere, “His name is Sam Nook, by the way.” Ponk had called him Tom. A crime. “Sam is the best name.”

“Narcissism! Cute.”

Sam exhaled out his nose at the comment, relieved at the light response to the initiation. “Yep. And done. He is cute. He’ll be really cute once I paint him.” 

He rose to his feet with a light grunt, back way too wrecked for someone his age after too many nights of dozing off onto blueprints on his chest and curling up in some nook in an unfinished building project and crashing into his prison desk—prison…

Ponk lowered it back onto the table, gently as not to crack the iron plate, cracking her knuckles and stretching out her arms. 

With a step back that sent plants crunching under his boot, Sam examined his handiwork. 

His squares weren’t perfect, but it was nothing really noticeable. It was somewhat charming, even. 

Oh, if he’d been more confident in the type of style it would take, he could have done like, scribbles to resemble a child’s drawing. Like Tommy’s actual drawing had been! But he didn’t trust himself to pull it off. 

He’d have to give him ears, too, but that needed to be last, because first he needed to take measures to make sure hard hats would fit on Sam Nook’s head with ears. 

“You worked faster when you didn’t have to tilt it all over on the table,” his partner commented, absentmindedly poking at a robot arm. “I can hold it when you paint it, too.”

“No, that’s okay. That’ll take longer.” Ponk’s arms would simply disintegrate. 

“Well, that’s okay. I can take it. I’m the best at holding stuff. I am just cracked at the craft,” Ponk paused for dramatic effect, “of holding stuff.”

“Yeah?” Sam chuckled. Well, Ponk said it was okay. “Hmm, okay. But—”

“Are you going to paint it now? I’ll just pick it up again.”

Maybe Ponk was pushing a bit too far because things had been so stretched between them and she wanted Sam’s approval. 

Maybe Ponk was really just fine picking it up. 

Well, no. It was just holding something, of course there couldn’t be anything deeper in picking something up. Approval? What? 

Sam dipped his head. “If you’re sure, I can go get the paint.”

“Sure.”

And so Sam did, pulling out the jars of thick dyes and the brushes. He’d have to be careful to make sure it looked uniform and didn’t end up peeling or something. 

Metal didn’t take color easily, which is why it really had to be painted rather than dyed. He couldn’t just throw some colors and iron in a furnace. 

The main part of the head would be brown, like fur. The raised plate would be green and the impressed facial expression would be black. He could do further details—like lighter browns 

“Upsie-daisies!” Ponk swooped it into the air as one would a child and they both laughed at Sam’s panicked instinctive grab for it. 

“Please don’t break Sam Nook’s head.”

Ponk’s eyes glinted with a teasing light. “Call him cute again and I might.”

Oh that was kind of flirtatious, wasn’t it? 

Color warmed Sam’s cheeks and he looked away, ignoring Ponk’s laughter. 

He should have said something back—a joke about Ponk being jealous of a robot version of him was right there—but nothing would form. 

(It should have felt familiar, but it felt too new.) 

He went to work as a distraction. Brush bristles thick with the brown color, Sam carefully brushed a line, slow and meticulous. 

And it was fine for maybe a minute—Sam painted a fourth of the “fur” part, perhaps, suddenly struck by how good of an idea it would be to just get a layer of actual fur or fluff and slap it on the sphere, but he was too far in now. 

And, he admitted, it was a quicker process when his elbow had more free space and wasn’t right up against the table and it was easier when he only had to focus on the color and not keeping it from shaking in his own grip. 

The head, slowly becoming somewhat recognizable as Sam Nook, was starting to drift down, signifying Ponk probably needed to set it down for a moment soon. 

But as Sam’s paint was spread closer to the plate in a final stroke before he called for a break—

“Ah!” There was a squeak as Ponk’s gloves slipped against the smooth surface, running with drops of the dye that melted near the surface of the still-hot metal, not yet cooled from the expression-making process. 

Sam noticed it too late. He hadn’t seen it melting. 

The paint killed the minimal amount of friction Ponk had, and he fumbled with it as it stubbornly slipped and the center of gravity went all over, trying to hook his hands under the opening as Sam yanked the brush away. 

“Ponk—“

When he retracted his hand to get a grip somewhere else, one of Ponk’s arms only supported it alone for a second, but the second was all it took for gravity and muscle fatigue to drag the head down and Ponk’s hand with it, thumping them both onto the table, Ponk’s arm twisted at an awkward angle. 

A heartbeat for registering. 

Well, no dents. It was not on the floor. Hadn’t squished another part. That could have been worse, really. In fact, everything was fine, even as Ponk retracted their hand with a loud pained hiss—

Except…

Uh… 

Ponk’s pointer finger remained where it was, wedged under the sharp rim of the opening and completely severed clean from his hand. 

Just laying there. 

There was a solid heartbeat of silence before a cacophony of shocked laughter and shouting started. 

“ Ponk !”

“Sam! Sam ! Sam! Sam !”

“Ponk! You’re—uh—” Sam’s hand was slapped over his face, mask forgotten and palm bending at strange angles to somewhat lay across it. His shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughs. 

“I know, I know!” Ponk laugh-shrieked, “Ah! My finger !” and instinctively tried to point to it, which left them gesturing with nothing but a stump and only emphasizing the situation. 

A pool of blood was gathering on the table. 

Two situations could be carried out: Ponk casually dies right away and enjoys a fresh, ten-fingered body. Or, they treat the stump, Ponk pogs through the pain and goes on with their life and takes the risk that the situation or monster of a player who takes a canon life kills the nine-fingered body and ensures the default body is the same way—forever respawning back into the nine-fingered version because that’s how they died. 

It was almost certain that Ponk would casually die before anything canon, but the right choice was clear to both of them, unspoken among the screeching, panicked laughter. 

“Here—here!” Sam, ever a genius, was digging through metal parts, knocking tons of fingers onto the grass in beautiful irony. “Oh—oh—here—”

“Sam, I do not have a finger, Sam, Sam, I am meant to have a finger there—” He was shaking the bleeding hand with his good one, howling and giggling in pain. 

“Ha—oops—okay, got it, let me just, uh—“Sam grabbed a random hunk of metal, scurried around to Ponk’s side of the table, and just…went to town on Ponk’s head.

S lam! Slam! Slam!

Yes, the epitome of a rational man. 

His heartbeat spiked as he hunched to bring the part down and down upon Ponk’s head with rapid, adrenaline-fueled and laughter-slowed blows. “Die, please, Ponky, don’t mind me— ha— ”

“Sam!” Ponk screeched, grinning, trying not to instinctively fight back and continuing to shake their wrist to occupy their hands. “You silly man, you have a sword, Sam!” They snorted the very good point as Sam continued tediously killing them manually, but Sam was pretty committed at this point and it was kind of too fun all around to stop. 

Ponk made the laughter even worse, making faces between the blows, going cross-eyed or sticking out their tongue, or dramatically shaking the bleeding hand with an exaggerated look of horror, and Sam struggled to keep his form correct as his stomach threatened to hold him over with laughter. He wanted each blow to be hard as possible to kill her as quickly as he was capable. 

Soon the faces stopped as pain alone clouded Ponk’s facial expression, and within the giant gash in their forehead leaked a stream of blood that ran all the way down to their chest, dulling Ponk’s eyes with every drop, and her body fell slack, vanishing before impact with the ground. Excess scraps of clothing and their pockets emptied onto the ground like a pile of leaves. 

Sam was left all alone to process, adrenaline coursing with rapid speed throughout him. 

“Shit!” Sam laughed, wiping a brow of sweat from his forehead, turning the gesture into one to cover the sunlight as he peered into the open entrance to the base. 

Within seconds, Ponk stumbled into view, inaudible with the distance but visibly hysterical with laughter, even more so as it settled in for her, waving with a freshly respawned, five-fingered hand. 

Technically , if one sat down and considered it, it wasn’t an entire laughing matter—the laws of the land were bound to the whims of forces no one could truly pin down and explain and that didn’t even remain consistent server to server and city to city. 

When you die, who holds your soul in their hand? Who decides whether it fractures or remains whole? Who decides that’s the death that rips away a life? Even with non-canon deaths, who decides what wounds scar and can’t be healed in the respawn? 

Hard to say. Deities. Admin rules. The universe. The will of yourself. The will of other players. The severity of what happened. 

Even when it was a complete accident with no canon death intentions, there was a chance Ponk’s body couldn’t have regenerated the severed limb. There was a chance the accident would have ripped his finger from his body permanently. 

But it was exponentially slim and so there was no reason to worry. 

Sam waved back, and they mutually dissolved into a final bought of tear-leaking, falling-to-the-floor, adrenaline-draining laughter that came only after one lost an entire fucking finger and then got their face smashed in by their partner, all without consequences. 

The next morning, when the grass folded underneath his heavy boots and with his eyes adjusted to the blinding sunlight, a crow’s beady eye turned towards him for a split second, making a judgemental decision from where it stood among the grass. 

Sam blinked at the strange, intelligent look in its eyes, wondering if it was one of Phil’s and if he’d have to play a game of karaoke and caw-deciphering to see if it had a message. 

But no. Raven black wings thrust forward to take flight, the bird’s head ducking down to pluck up a prize laying on the ground near a leg of the table. 

Sam always thought it was a worm. There was no reason for it not to be. 

Bodies didn’t just stay. That’s not how it worked. Ponk’s finger vanished with his body with the death. Because it was part of his body. And he died. It wouldn’t just be there , that was insane. Ponk had his ten fingers back. To have the one from before… they’d all know if casual corpses hung around. 

But… 

Sometimes he remembered the look in the bird’s eye and the flash of its long, fairly thin cargo within its beak, and the bloodstain that trailed off to the edge of the table like the finger had been nudged off. Like a bird peak was prying at it. 

The trail of blood that he knew (did he know?) hadn’t been there when Ponk respawned and waved to him. 

And in bed he would lay awake, and sometimes, he wondered. 

The future rolled around, and Ponk did not have to deal with nine fingers.

She had to deal with five and the stump of what used to be her arm. 

Sam’s future was mechanical and planned out, the way he liked it. 

He went to work, sometimes he ate, and he slept, either in the prison or at his house. 

Sam slept easy after becoming the monster of a player that took Ponk’s next canon life. He slept easy after permanently changing Ponk’s anatomy. 

(Perhaps being awake and living with it wasn’t as easy sometimes, but at the end of the day, it was not his burden to bear. He had laid his rules clearly. No traps laid within them, only clear consequences he could never simply waive away.

Because the prison protocols kept no lovers.)

Sam slept easy with Fran in his bed, a beloved pile of warmth at his feet, legs, chest, or if she was feeling particularly like nearly suffocating him and then looking at him with innocent unknowing eyes, his face. 

Sam usually slept easy with Fran. 

Tonight he was unwillingly dragged into consciousness by a low aggressive noise that reverberated through his chest. 

“Fran?” He managed before he was fully awake, blinking against his pillow and rubbing at his eyes, the world fuzzy and drowsy. “Fran?”

The part of his brain that was responsible for sound must have kicked in, because the growling suddenly rivaled the volume of a screaming train.

He bolted into a sitting position, mentally running through the locations of items that could be used as a weapon that were around. 

“Fran.” 

Painfully slowly, his eyes began to adjust.

She stood between his legs, outline barely visible in the dark. He could see the dark swish of a tail. 

A small shudder ran down his back, her growl off-putting and loud in the silent room, even spookier coming from such a good-tempered elderly girl. 

“Fran?” Was she having a bad dream? She was awake and standing, so she shouldn’t be, but maybe she’d just woken up...

The warning growl continued, low and wild and serious. 

Blinking sleep from his eyes and clouds from his brain, Sam shuffled to sit up further, careful not to move his legs to disturb her, fearful blood pumping alertness through his body. 

Fran shifted on the bed, and with his adjusting eyes, she could see she was lowered, her hackles raised, head lowered and peering off the bottom of the edge…

Snout pointing towards the ground and head moving at a slow, particular rate…

Like she was watching something. 

Like there was something in the room with them. Something she didn’t like. 

What?

Sam pulled his legs to his chest gingerly and arose, quiet but quick, pulling a trident from under his pillows. (He never slept without it these days, the prison could be breached at any time, he needed to be ready—) 

He used the trident to slam the wall’s light switch on, shouting his scariest war cry with a wild swing at—

Nothing. 

Nobody in the room. 

Sam scanned the room for anything out of place, wondering if it was possible for someone to dive into a hiding spot in the time it took him to stand up and turn on the light. (Not unless they were pumped full of speed potions instead of blood.)

Maybe it was Tommy. The kid had a long history of petty burglary. 

He hoped it was Tommy, actually. Mad as he would be, it would still be nice to see the teen up to his usual chaotic self.

Fran’s head had stopped its path once the lights came on and was checking around more freely now, lips curled in a snarl, like they were both looking for the same thing she’d seen. 

Wow, that was reassuring, that she’d lost what she was watching, too, and now they were both wondering where it was. Gee. 

He wanted to make some sort of whispered joke to her—like I bet it’s a tiny bug causing this, isn’t it— or if it’s a baby zombie I’ll make sure to call up and sacrifice Philza but his mind was too unsettled to produce it. 

Sam listened closely before creeping out of the bedroom and down the hall in silence, Fran hopping off the bed with quiet ease to follow him. He kept one hand on the top of her head to signify she stayed quiet to stop her from alerting any potential intruder.

A soft, muffled thud rang through the house.

Oh. It came from the bathroom.

Sam finally let himself breathe, the fuzz that came from a brain begging its body to go back to sleep starting to overtake his mind. Just plumbing being weird. 

He opened the door, just to be sure, and—

And—

Found his mirror. 

A tapestry of bloody handprints dripping across it, trails of blood invading every object on his sink and leaking onto the floor. 

The sight threw him backward, a jolt running through his body and striking his heart. 

Fran was in a frenzy upon the sight, barking madly and racing up and down the halls, chewing on the edge of the door, standing on all fours and trying to rest her paws on the cabinet, barking, barking, snarling, barking, like she’d developed rabies at the sight of it. 

“I’m dreaming,” Sam finally said with empty belief, numb to Fran’s frenzy around his feet, even as she pulled and bit for his attention. “I am having a dream.”

His fingers twitched to perform a test—to push against his palm, to pull out his communicator and see if he could read, to intertwine his fingers—but something in his gut made him decide against it. 

He was dreaming, so he didn’t want to check. There was no point. 

(What would he do if the reality checks passed?)

He pulled Fran away, and he made his way back to bed.

The sun was out by the time he fell back asleep. 

He woke up and skipped the bathroom in his morning routine. He just—didn’t have to use the restroom. Or wash his face. 

He was just really hungry and couldn’t wait for some bread and streak, right?

Or, no. He just really wanted to clutch Fran to his chest in the covers, scratching her ears, pretending not to notice her unusual edge.

Looks like they’d both had bad dreams that night. 

But it was a new dawn—an unusually late dawn--actually, probably noon, to be accurate. 

“Let’s go eat.”

Caffeine would be his meal, but Fran’s bowl was empty since last night.

He wasn’t grateful the bathroom door was only a crack open, hiding away the sight of anything inside, because there wasn’t anything inside, but sure, he took notice of it.

His kitchen was just as he left it, messy and tidy all at once, and he grabbed a bag of dog food and a clean (dusty, neglected) mug. 

He leaned against the counter, lingering unease settling (settling into a knot, but settling) as he watched Fran dig into her meal. 

(She’d take a bite, stiffen and raise her head, ears forward, head turning every which way, before lowering for another mouthful until the process started again. Feeling unsafe. Keeping watch. Nervous. Unsteady. 

Aware of something he wasn’t.)

“Maybe I should get out today, Fran.” Sam started for no reason, in between mouthfuls of burning liquid he should have waited to cool but couldn’t bring himself to. “I think I might… I think it could be a good day to gather some resources. I think it’s a good day for that. I—”

Movement caught his attention. Slow movement that had snuck up upon him like a shark.

An arm. 

Fur pressed against the side of his leg. 

An arm crawled across his kitchen floor. 

An arm crawled across his kitchen floor, fingers curling and uncurling to drag itself along. 

He was frozen as it made its way into a hole under a drawer. 

A bloody trail smeared across his tiles in his wake. 

And Fran, pressed against him, was growling. 

She was also trembling in fear. 

“GAH!”

His shriek was not enough to encompass the horror that came from reaching into your armor and having your fingers come back wet.

He dropped the chest plate to the ground, red drops coating the inside splattering onto the floor, and Sam barely managed to jump away as an arm, like a disturbed mammal in a den, shot out in one direction and disappeared before Sam could register. 

“Leave me alone !” 

He kicked the netherite chest plate with all his strength, hurting nobody but himself, but he couldn’t breathe, nonetheless care. “Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone! Stop it!”

Every kick threatened to break his toes and only leaked more blood onto the carpet. 

He picked the chest plate back up, slammed it onto the ground, and stormed out without another look at it.

It had been days. He thought it was over. He thought it was fine. 

It kept fucking showing up.

“You can’t be in the bathroom,” he said to the squirming arm in his toilet, squinting. “Out of my toilet or I will—you know what—on you where you lay. Get out.” 

He was kind of relieved at this appearance. 

Now this—this was too ridiculous to take seriously. 

Because come on. A toilet? Oh, how scary. 

It was squirming and splashing like a bug—

Sam stamped on an actual bug crawling around in the floor, shrugging after he saw nothing on his floor or the bottom of his slippers. Nothing there, then, just a piece of fluff, probably. 

He opened his mouth to talk to the arm some more, because how could he be tucking disturbed by this shit in his toilet? It’s disgusting. It was like Fran as a puppy sneaking off to steal toilet water drinks like her life depended on it. 

Except as it writhed in the pool, tiny bits of dark red flesh drifted off from the open wound on the stump.

Before Sam’s eyes, the water turned crimson with blood, pouring from the stump like it was boundless. 

The arm was completely submerged by the murky, disgusting red color under the water, the only indications it was still there being splashes and red droplets spraying out from its movements. 

It was squirming in a frenzy now. 

Fingers brushing at the toilet bowl edges, like it was trying to crawl out. 

It no longer felt silly. 

Sam slowly backed up, deciding to hold it until he got to work. 

Tissues wadded up against the wall, squishing against black dots with legs and coming back blank. 

Moving black fuzzies on every shirt he shrugged on. Thrown to the floor in a panic and kicked at until his knees ached. 

Sleeping. A lack of. 

Crawling on his legs.

On his arms. 

His face. 

Jerking him away and marking his flesh swollen and flushed from clawing at it, trying to scratch out the feeling. 

Scurrying dots vanishing deeper into the covers whenever he pulled a sheet away to slip inside to rest. 

Recently, he’d taken to pacing.

With every step, he could pretend he was squashing the little creatures beneath his feet. 

(If he stilled for too long, he could feel them crawling in his stomach, and he knew they had nested within him.) 

“Sam? Sam?”

Sam settled against the other side of the lava, leaning his back against the wall. 

Dream’s voice was slimy as always, but there was a strange cocoon of unease and disconnection that kept Sam free of the usual shivers upon hearing it. 

He simply stared into the lava. 

“Are you bringing me more potatoes?”

Sam dug through a pocket and pulled out a small, left-over potato. Hmm. 

He hurled it through the lava wall, only charred crumbs landing on the ground if any of it made it to the other side at all. 

“Rude,” he heard Dream mutter, letting him know he must have seen a crumb of two. “You’re terrible. Is someone visiting me?”

“No.”

“I mean—are you sure?”

“What?” Sam coughed, stifling it as much as possible. He’d long since lost his gas mask. “Of course I’m sure.”

“So… what’s up? Are you letting me out?”

The word came out robotic and mechanical. Too tired for the typical anger and disgust. “No.”

“Okay… so what’s going on?”

The only sound made was the scrape of his armor against the border as Sam slid down to sit and rested his arms on his knees. 

Dream waited far too little before he gave up and just went off. 

“You wanna hear about the—you’re not… Wait, Quackity’s not with you, right?”

The hint of fear in his voice nearly flickered something in Sam back to life. “He’s not.”

“You wanna hear about what I’m writing? It’s another song.”

How pathetic was this. 

It was all Sam could think about as he sat there, listening to Dream screech a terrible melody of hell. 

How could something be so fucked up to send him to Dream as an escape? 

How? How? 

(Ponk was the answer.)

(NO. Don’t assign The Arm to Ponk’s name. Don’t make that connection. Not yet. Not yet.)

Lava bubbled. 

The lava bubbled and popped. 

And popped onto his leg. 

He hissed in an exhale and yanked his pant leg down, vaguely remembering he should be wearing full armor right now. 

“Sam?”

When he looked down, the burn was patterned perfectly after a handprint. 

It knows. A target. A target on his body. It was coming. It knew. It was there already. It was with him. It was inside of him. It was coming.

“Dream? Dream? Dream?”

“Sam?”

“Dream? Dream? Dream? Dream— Dream— “

“…Sam? Is this a name gam—“

“Dream? Are you doing this?”

Handprint. His eyes watered with disuse. 

Handprint. 

Handprint.

“…Doing what?”

“ This. You know, don’t you? You’re the admin. You could, couldn’t you? Are you?”

“What?” Light, tittering laughter. “Do what?” The slightest growing edge of anxiety. “I didn’t do anything.” 

“The—the—the—Revive Book, Dream?”

The handprint of the dead, the dead that hadn’t died forever but part of them did and part of them came back but came back wrong but it shouldn’t be like this and it was wrong and it was coming. 

“Is that—don’t tell me.” His breath was strangled in his chest. “Please tell me that’s not what it does.”

Death will be permanent. 

With revivals like that… would it really be better? 

“I… I…” Amused confusion. “I can’t even—what? Huh?”

Something began to part from the lava, and Sam could barely register a fingernail before the world was blurred and rushed and he heard Dream from their growing distance asking him why he was shouting but he wasn’t sure he had a body to shout with anymore. 

“ There’s no bugs !”

Sam slammed his pillow into his wall, something that was supposed to unravel tightening as feathers and wool tore free from the fabric. 

“There can’t possibly be this many FUCKING bugs!” 

Slam. 

Slam. 

Soft, fluffy guts vomited onto the floor, floated in the air, landed on his nose. 

A sneeze. 

Sam was standing here, destroying his bed over imaginary, fuck you, imaginary bugs, and he was sneezing. 

Something about that heightened the gravity underneath him. 

A collapse to the floor. 

“There are no spiders in this room,” he said, shoulders hunched and shaking. “There’s no ants, or… or…” whatever they were. No, whatever they weren’t. Because they weren’t real. 

They were everywhere and fake. They had to be. 

And in the corner of his room, tiny black blurs scurried across his floor. 

“Puffy,” Sam’s voice shattered at the word, heart pounding in his chest. 

The bell that rang at the opening of the therapy office’s door nearly broke itself with the force of Sam’s barge inside the building. He couldn’t really hear it. There was always a ringing in his ears, anyway. “Puffy. Puffy.”

Her eyes were wide and glued on him, sucking in the sight of every minuscule moment he made, but there was something blank and empty within them. Like he was gazing into a doll’s eyes. 

“Sam?” She asked, a slight panicked bleat to the sound. 

“Puffy!” Apprehension melted away at the Puffy-like concern, and he stumbled forward, knocking into walls and tables and sending papers and picture frames plummeting to the ground. He grasped onto the opposite end of her desk, leaning all his weight on it, clutching on for dear life. He loomed towards her and she never even twitched. “I need help. Puffy, I need help. I need help. Can you help me?”

“Sam,” she said, those uncharacteristic eyes still fixed on him, “of course I can help you.”

“Puffy…”

Her eyes widened impossibly further. Like buldging round plastic eyes attached to her sockets only connected with the thinnest drop of glue in the back, liable to pop out any moment. 

“Take a seat.” 

And as she said it, her mouth opened wide, without moving to form the words, and a hand slowly emerged from her throat, two fingers beckoning him closer. 

Tripping over the chair. Wide eyes extending out of the socket to follow him. Scurrying on his knees, tripping on paper every time he tries to rise, incoherent noises ripping from his throat like the whimpering of a baby. 

He passed another Puffy on the way out, throwing himself into the side of the doorway to avoid contact, getting a sore shoulder and a “Sam?” but there was no time to talk. 

The arm was trying to get him. He knew it. 

Beckoning him closer. The crawling. 

What would happen when it reached him? 

He had to keep going. 

“I didn’t want to,” he told Ponk the next time he saw him. “Ponk. Ponk. Ponk!” Sam was stumbling, the world was spinning, anad his slow was slowly, slowly leaving, being pulled out from a  “I’m sorry, Ponky , I had to! I didn’t want to.”

“Uhh…” He watched in a haze as Ponk froze on his tracks and shuffled back, holding out their hands in confusion. “Sam?”

“Please make it stop,” Sam stumbled into them and grasped onto their shirt, trembling as they felt hands instinctively clutch him back to keep him up, “please. I’ve done my time. I’m done! What do you want from me? What do you—“ Burying his eyes against Ponk’s (stiff, horrified ) chest was the only way to keep the tears away. 

“Sam?”

One hand out of the two squeezed. 

Two… hands… clutching him back… 

“No!” He jerked away, flailing upon the stones and the dirt on the path, throwing his arms out wildly. “No! Leave me alone!” 

Ponk’s missing arm was around his shoulders—like a scarf or—or a parrot—

Waving at him from the wrist. 

Ponk paid no mind to it, only staring at him. 

Sam yanked himself back, stumbling onto the road. 

Keep going. 

Keep moving.

No rest. No sleep. 

No arms. 

“Wh—I didn’t do anything! Excuse me? What’s going on? Sam ?” Ponk. Ponk. Ponk. 

Ponk, their own detached, blood-leaking arm steady around their shoulders. 

Her eyes were wide and swirling with a storm. Ponk was a storm. 

Moving and sometimes cold and sometimes warm and raining and angry and beautiful at the same time. 

Eye of the storm. 

“An eye next?” He called over his shoulder, just barely holding back giggles. “Eye of the storm?” 

“Sam? What are you talking… Sam?”

Sam? Sam? 

If the arm could speak, it had spoken. It was calling his name. 

(A thud upon the ground. It had moved away from Ponk and was on the path.) 

Sam sprinted. 

“Take it!” 

He rammed his shoulder against the Egg, unable to bite back a cry as it went protectively hard and obsidian-cases at the impact, fading back to a normal red by the time he had pulled away to prepare another blow. 

So long ago he’d bitten into his arm to satiate his body, used as fertilizer for an egg, and to tear out the vines already inside his flesh. 

He’d wanted to live. He’d wanted to escape the Egg. 

Now sweat was running down his neck in lines, and his lungs were burning, and he was a spectacle, because he could see Bad watching him with surprised pleasure, but he didn’t care. 

“Take it!” He rammed himself into the egg with his teeth-scarred arm, again and again. “Take it! Take it! You want it, take it!” 

“I’m so glad you’ve finally seen the value in the Egg, Sam,” Bad beamed, head following each repetitive movement into the Egg Sam made. 

“I’m giving it my arm, Bad,” Sam wheezed, wiping sweat from his forehead with the arm he wanted to keep, leaning against the curved surface with trembling feet, singled from the red heat of the floor below them, sending up heatwaves and dizzying Sam’s brain. “Why won’t it take it?”

He tried to chop it off already, and maybe he still should. But Fran whined at the scent of blood and wouldn’t stop rubbing against him so he had to leave, he had to make the sacrifice somewhere, because an arm for an arm. Surely what it wanted. 

“Let’s ask the Egg, Sam, okay?” The demon’s arms were held out so invitingly, so comforting a grand gesture. “I can help you, buddy. Let’s go visit the Egg up close, okay?”

“Okay. Yeah? O-okay.” 

Dizzy. 

Sweaty. 

Tired. 

Scared. 

Bad held out his palm for Sam to take, and Sam reached back for it—

And the Egg, even with all its volume, could not whisper in displeasure over his screaming, and Bad’s smile never wavered even as Ponk’s arm, held firmly in his grasp and offered out to Sam like an extension of his limb, tried to wriggle out and escape. 

“Hey, Foolish.” 

If Foolish noticed Sam trembling where he sat, wooden table shaking underneath him, he was too polite to mention. 

“Hi, Sam!” Bright and cheerful as ever, slowly dying out as dead green eyes found his. “You okay?”

Sam swallowed, searching for something he wasn’t sure he would be allowed within Foolish’s face. 

“You used to be a totem of death.”

“Yeah?”

“How does it work? Death?” Sam pushed on before Foolish could answer the question, head spinning with fantasies and ideas. “Could you kill me?”

Foolish tensed up, a darkness in his eyes but a tilt to his mouth like he thought Sam was joking. Or like he hoped Sam was joking. “What?”

“Could you kill me?”

He burst from his spot on the bench and send himself swaying with dizziness. “Just—do it? Could you?

“I’m... Sam, why would I do that?”

To free him. 

“Could you?”

“I guess? Not really because I was a totem of death but because I can—lightning you, but… Why? I’m—I’m not going to.”

Sam spun around at the rejection, urgency and hurt pounding in his chest all at once. 

He could feel it, in the twitch of his own fingers. In the tingle of his own muscles and blood. 

Ponk wanted him to pay, and if she had to turn his own body against him, she would. 

(She was.) 

“Are you okay?”

“When I die—when—when I die, can you… I want to be buried—“

It didn’t matter where he rested. 

“Fran eats best in the mornings and late afternoon. She chews on chair legs because she’s hungry, not for fun, but she’ll rip cushions and couches for fun. Walk her when—”

“Sam?”

Great. His time with Foolish was over already. The arm now speaking through him. Why couldn’t he have had more time? Why wasn’t he ever allowed more time?

With a great big shove to the deity’s chest—he’d shrunk his form down to Sam’s level—and with a head start at his stumble, he bolted. 

Sleep did not come easy. 

But sometimes it came without consent. 

And when it pushed him to collapse, Sam barely made it to his bed. He allowed himself to remain above the covers, only folding his arms above his chest before his body shut down on him. 

(Arms folded, like a corpse.)

When he dreamt, he was in a small box.

It was a prison, but not Pandora. 

It was small and cramped, and his back was broken in multiple spots from how he had to hunch. 

He was in a coffin. 

But he was only a bystander. 

As he stared down, 

Ponk’s corpse, lying peacefully beneath him, Sam kneeling on his legs at the end of the box, came into view. 

Little worms crawled in and out of their skin, leaning holes in their wake which slowly gushed a dark red crimson, threatening to drown Sam as the liquid rose. 

But they weren't… those weren’t worms.

They were fingers. 

And the shock didn’t quite wake him, but something else certainly did. 

When Sam sat up, and locked bloodshot eyes with himself in the mirror, he could not scream, for there was a hand over his mouth.