Chapter Text
The next thing Sapnap remembered was bright lights overhead, only for it to sink back into blackness. It felt like no time at all when he opened his eyes again, but this time he was in a white-colored room with a bed mimicking the ones you'd find in a hospital. Sapnap's eyes blinked slowly as his mind took note of everything around him in a painfully slow way.
"Oh, you're awake," a voice to Sapnap's right said, and Sapnap subtly flinched away from the noise. It didn't help that his head felt like it was exploding. His reflex to wince had long since disappeared, so he just turned his head to whoever was speaking to him. He remembered being stabbed, but his stomach didn't feel as bad as he thought it would.
A black mask was covering the person on the cot. The person had a masculine figure and a cast on two of his legs. He looked adjusted to sitting on his so-called bed. Sapnap couldn't help but evaluate the stranger, feeling almost like a stray cat bristling whenever another stray cat encroached on his territory.
"Sapnap, right?" the stranger said with a smile — well, Sapnap could hear the smile, even if the black mask obscured the person's mouth entirely. Seeing the mask, Sapnap noticed his own mask on his face. The Association really took the always wear a mask policy to another level. Sapnap wouldn't be surprised if he had almost died. He certainly had never gotten that injured before, and he had been sent to the Room on many occasions.
The only thing Sapnap managed to do was clear his throat, attempting to speak but finding his throat a bit parched. Instead, he nodded his head a little bit to reply.
"I'm Royal. It's nice to meet you, roomie." His voice was a calming baritone. It didn't remind Sapnap of anyone in particular, but it was comforting nonetheless. It wasn't Dream's voice, but it was a comforting timbre still.
Sapnap slowly blinked, seeing an IV connected to his arm, feeding him something — probably painkillers, now that Sapnap was properly thinking about it. "Nice to meet you too?" he replied in more of a question, surprising himself with how hoarse he sounded. There was no real way for Sapnap to look around to see if there were bugs or security cameras watching, so he forced his hazy mind to continue playing his role, the characterization that the Association had given him.
"And I've been wondering, is that a stab wound? None of the doctors answer me when I ask," Royal asked him.
Sapnap didn't trust his head to nod, not when he felt like his head was imploding. Instead, he replied, "Yeah. Got stabbed." Sapnap added after a moment of deliberation, "by the Blood God… and that sword hurts like a bitch."
"M'sorry that happened to you, Sapnap," Royal genuinely said, "If it's any consolation, the Angel of Death threw me off a four story building and that is why my legs are like," he motioned to his broken legs, " this . Well, I was more or less paralyzed a few weeks ago, so this is a huge improvement." Royal Sapnap couldn't help but laugh, even if his headache was growing and the pain in his abdomen was slowly increasing. He had thought that his use for the Association was over since he failed, but the Association still bothered to save him… and they saved Royal, who Sapnap had never seen in the news articles before… at all, and he'd been given the same courtesy.
Before Sapnap could dwell on his growing suspicion, the door slid open to reveal a familiar smiley face mask. Dream froze for a millisecond. It was such a subtle tell that no one else but Sapnap (who knew him better than the back of his own hand — he probably said this phrase more than he's even looked at his own hand, honestly) would be able to notice. With someone else in the room (and Sapnap knew that Dream couldn't reveal what he was feeling currently, but when his best friend came to his bedside and didn't hesitate to take Sapnap's hand to squeeze it, Sapnap knew that Dream had been worried. He probably either came as soon as he heard Sapnap was awake or this was a regular visit from Dream.
At least they could still pass off this closeness as parts of their personas, but it was probably tiptoeing a very dangerous line.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Dream greeted him evenly, not betraying any tone that would indicate that he cared about Sapnap more than what he needed to give, with a smile in his voice that sounded fake and a look in his eyes that looked like it came right out of acting class.
"Thanks, Dreamy-pie," Sapnap said with a shit-faced grin on his face (which could look like a half-smile for all he knew — Sapnap knew he was on heavy painkillers, after all).
Sapnap tried to match the level of acting prowess as his friend, but the calming effect of his friend was probably too noticeable to be passed off as a part of the act. Sapnap hoped no one noticed.
When Dream rolled his eyes and Sapnap dared to look like he found joy in annoying Dream. Sapnap tried to get Royal's reaction. Sapnap, and now Dream, were left vulnerable in front of a complete stranger who Sapnap was struggling to read, who Sapnap had never even heard of, who still needed to be vetted by Sapnap's instincts properly when he wasn't high on painkillers and his judgment was obviously impaired.
(All Sapnap could feel underneath the buzz of sleepiness and loopiness was an ever-present fear, the feelings of hands trailing up and down his body, the thought of being treated as less than human and being violated. The feelings that told him that he didn't like it, that he didn't want it, that his body was reacting to something he didn't want. He didn't know it was wrong. He only knew he didn't like it… until he watched the movies and found out that what he was experiencing wasn't good , wasn't normal , wasn't okay . But he wasn't in the Room with sedatives forced into his bloodstream. He was in– he was here. In a hospital. Like the movies. It was okay. He was okay. )
His best friend seemed oblivious to Sapnap's internal conflict. Dream continued without a care, "I was waiting for you to wake up to tell you the news. We've received an apartment. I'll text you the address when you get discharged. 404 and I have already claimed our rooms." Sapnap was about to have his eyes fall out and his jaw dislocate because he couldn't have been unconscious for long enough that they got an apartment . They had been heroes for barely any time in the grand scheme of things and both of them had been expecting a huge wait for that step.
(Part of Sapnap thought that they'd just never give them somewhere else to live, to keep an eye on Dream and Sapnap.)
"How long have I been out?"
"Three weeks," Dream immediately replied. Sapnap laughed at first. Because it had to be a joke.
It wasn't.
Sapnap frowned at Dream. "Oh… you're actually serious," Sapnap said. There was no way that Sapnap hadn't missed a lot of things. Maybe Dream and 404 got closer while Sapnap was unconscious— maybe Sapnap was replaced entirely by 404 which could very possibly have happened because he didn't know how much he missed–-
S T O P .
He couldn't think like that. Dream was his best friend. His best friend wouldn't cast Sapnap aside for 404, someone they knew for a few weeks— but now Dream knew 404 for much longer while Sapnap was unconscious so they could be anything at this point and Sapnap wouldn't know.
Ignoring the burning insecurity bubbling underneath his skin, Sapnap plastered a smile that Dream immediately honed in as fake, or at least Sapnap thought that Dream figured Sapnap out considering the judgemental pop of Dream's knees when he shifted his stance.
Sapnap felt scrutinized, but they both knew that they wouldn't
couldn't
get into an argument in front of someone else — not when it could get back to the Association. Sapnap doubted that they'd kill Dream considering that there was no real way to get him out of the spotlight with no obvious injuries, but it would be easy to make Sapnap disappear.
They could just make a medical excuse, like something went wrong in his recovery that the doctors could do nothing about and therefore had to retire early.
But the looming threat of death was like a knife to their throat, making it impossible for either of them to make a move even if they wanted to.
"I need to get on patrol. Glad you're actually awake this time," Dream told Sapnap, staring directly into Sapnap's eyes, almost begging for Sapnap to get some sort of silent message. Sapnap wished he could say that he knew what the message was, but he had no idea. He just knew that Dream wanted to say something to him without their audience. Royal didn't seem malicious and his instincts weren't giving him any warning bells, but Sapnap didn't know why.
It could be the fact that his body grew used to Royal's presence. Y'know, since Sapnap was unconscious and all.
(A new hero, maybe? It was always a possibility.)
Dream turned his back, shoulders tense and Sapnap had no doubt that Dream wasn't looking forward to leaving Sapnap's side. He never liked when Sapnap had gotten hurt when they were training, so Sapnap maybe-nearly-dying may have made his mother-hen instincts dial up to an eleven. Sapnap gave him a short wave with the arm that didn't have an IV sticking in it.
His best friend didn't see the wave, but that was hardly the point.
The door slid shut, and Sapnap knew it would probably be a while until he saw Dream again. They had to make it seem like they were close, yes, but they also had to make it seem like they didn't actually care about each other. The different layers of how they were expected to act completely contradicted each other, but it wasn't like Sapnap could do anything about it. There were subtle tells that they had to hide from the Association.
Just in case they realized that the two of them weren't all they seemed.
He still didn't know if he could trust Royal or not. Every bone in his body saw him as a friendly face, but even with the heavy sedatives, Sapnap could only hear the voice in his head that told him not to trust Royal. It was a clash of the instincts that he had grown to trust. His body was tricking him, or his brain was — or maybe they were both right. Sapnap wasn't perfect. He was dangerous.
Sapnap was capable of a lot of things. He– he murdered a whole family and kidnapped children (like Dream, wide-eyed and scared, innocence wiped from their being because of blood on their hands) to live a life controlled by the Association. Sapnap was capable of it. It didn't mean he liked it, but he could do it. Royal could be the same way. Not good, but not entirely evil. Somewhere in the middle.
There was a large part of Sapnap that wanted to leave the evil behind, but everyone and their mother knew that the likelihood of Sapnap washing the blood of the people who were already dead to his hands was reduced to ashes. He didn't want to embrace the bloodshed, but there was no repentance for the evil he had committed to save his own skin. It was selfish, and it wasn't good — but he didn't go out of his way to kill, and that was something that he could acknowledge was in the area in between being good and being evil.
Sapnap's attention snapped to his roommate as soon as he heard Royal's intake of breath. "You guys got an apartment really fast," Royal commented as the monitors beeped consistently. "It took me almost half a year to get one."
So. Royal wasn't a new hero. Support team who got in the middle of a sticky situation?
(Honestly, he's pulling out these excuses from his ass. He had no idea what was actually the case. For all he knew, Royal was a hero-in-training, or at least that would be what the public would know them as. Maybe Royal was on a black ops team since those were in the movies and all? It could be so many different things. There wasn't one answer unless Sapnap got the guts to ask for one, and he didn't have those guts. Dream was the brave one. Sapnap had always been a coward.)
Something about this entire situation rubbed him the wrong way, but Sapnap didn't know what it was that was making his body tense and his mind seek out every exit in his vicinity, despite the fact he could barely move his body without wanting to wince. (They aren't allowed to show weakness.) Part of him wanted to summon a flame and kill Royal, because he knew that something about Royal's existence was a threat.
"So what do you do for the Association anyway?" Sapnap dared to ask.
(There was a part of him that felt primal fear when faced with this nearly crippled roommate of his, but had a casual conversation with a villain, the same one who had almost killed him. He hadn't even felt threatened, not really. He only felt a wave of protectiveness as he did his best to shield his partners from further harm. He didn't feel scared, yet he could feel the goosebumps on his skin rise in the presence of someone who was, for all intents and purposes, incapacitated. Sapnap didn't know why he felt scared. The Association never accepted any fear. It was weakness. Why was Sapnap feeling weakness? He needed to stop before they sent him to the R–)
He couldn't do the whole… murdering thing here though, not when they still abided by the Association's rules. They weren't supposed to kill each other — not like they were encouraged to do back in the facility. They were encouraged to spill blood. He was encouraged to scorch and reduce his opponents to ashes. If fire could turn into a bloody red, Sapnap's fire would've turned a bloody red a long time ago.
It made him feel sick to know that he had killed so many children like himself, whose names he hadn't even bothered to remember or take note of unless they were a threat against his spot as the best. Sapnap before Dream was an asshole, but he still didn't know, not really, if the Sapnap after Dream turned into something else. He still sacrificed every life to get himself and Dream to the other side and the worst part of it all was that Sapnap didn't regret it a single bit. He would do it all over again if he had to.
Every drop of blood on his hands would permanently be etched into his soul, and he didn't even regret it. He felt sick and he felt horrified with himself when he thought about the night he murdered an entire innocent family, but he would do it all over again.
Sapnap was a horrible, selfish bastard. He didn't deserve to live, but he was too much of a coward to stop living. He was too much of a coward to do anything but channel all of his bravery into protecting Dream, into taking the hits and the beatings, to acting as a fiery barrier between Dream and the rest of the world.
It might be a bit fucked up of him to acknowledge that he wouldn't hesitate to lay his life down for Dream, but pull away from sacrificing his life for anything else.
He was a coward. He was selfish. Most importantly, the primal instinct that they could never quite beat out of him kept screaming at him that Royal was dangerous. More dangerous than any of the Syndicate, more dangerous than the Teachers, than the Trainers, than the Resident.
Sapnap didn't know why.
(The other part of him told him to spill out every secret that he had to a stranger. Royal's entire demeanor made Sapnap feel safe, and safety wasn't something that Sapnap felt often.)
"Mmm," Royal contemplated aloud with a hum. He answered carefully, "I'm a hero from the seventh division."
(That didn't explain jack shit.)
Feigning ignorance to the confusion and dread pooling in his own stomach, Sapnap chatted with Royal for hours. They got along, surprisingly. It was easy for Sapnap to like Royal, even if he felt a sense of danger around him. Still, the easy-going nature of his assigned roommate was enough for Sapnap to feel a little relaxed, even if the part of his brain screaming danger out get out didn't let him relax fully. It probably didn't help that the flames burning underneath his skin were begging to be let out, feeling unstable from disuse — plus, even if his body was relaxing around Royal, his flames reacted to the tension and adrenaline-infused response that Sapnap felt. If he felt unsafe, the fire would beg to be let out to set the world aflame. If Sapnap felt safe, they would dial down to a simmer. It was probably the only reason that the fear response had never been fully trained out of him, even if he wanted it to be almost as badly as the Association did.
It took their many conversations to allow Sapnap's mind to come to the conclusion that Royal was safe (like Diamond, like Halo — and even they, unfortunately, weren't immune to the inherent distrust he had in everyone but Dream – even if the Royal situation was more out of fear than distrust). Slowly but surely, he had only enough tension in his body to excuse the instinctive drive to fight to survive, the instinct that was drilled into them from the first day they hit the mat.
Still, if Sapnap was attacked, he'd try to live. It was in his nature. He didn't know how to relax, to let himself be hurt. The only times he could think that he ever did was in the Room when he was drugged and helpless—
(His fire burned, screaming to protect Sapnap. But Sapnap could barely even blink without using all of the energy in his body. His fire burned, and his lungs filled with water as he was forced under again and again and again .)
Sapnap experimentally prodded at his fire, internally of course. It had been boiling over after the fire that the new hero trio had stopped just the… other day, or week, or month. (His sense of time is skewed, okay!) He had been gradually letting some of the flames out during patrol, but he couldn't necessarily go all out on a mugger who quivered at the very sight of a hero with gifts that could cause genuine damage, which was unlike most civilians and criminals who either had a mundane gift or none at all.
(Weakness is not tolerated. He could not show that his body was screaming in pain, from his fire being fueled overwhelmingly.)
Even if the Association sent him on missions to assassinate families, he could never be violent anywhere that the media or civilians could see him. They would brand him as evil, as unworthy of being a hero, and he'd be disposed of if he was no longer useful. He couldn't chase the high of letting free every subdued flame, no matter how good it felt. He wasn't a person, not in the eyes of the Association. Selfish wants had no place in his life, just like he could not — would not — lose his careful control over the fire bubbling underneath his skin. The fire was chasing him like a pack of rabid wolves, licking at his heels as Sapnap narrowly escaped them. Still, those wolves were Sapnap's wolves — the ones he tamed, the ones he loved. Those wolves were his.
Urging the fire in his veins to calm, if only for a little while longer, Sapnap cracked a poor joke at 404's expense, earning a laugh from Royal.
All gifted humans had one common perk: they had accelerated healing. Some more than most, of course, but the general consensus was that they all healed faster than the ungifted, the normal citizens. Sapnap would be out of here quick enough, just like how Royal had jumped back from being nearly paralyzed entirely in a few months. (Sapnap wouldn't be surprised if Royal had actually been paralyzed, and his body simply stitched itself together during surgery or whatever the Association did to keep them all alive and well.)
He'd be able to light a flame soon enough.
Sapnap would just have to be patient. He could not, under any circumstances, let a single soul alive know that it hurt to keep the fire contained inside of him.
If word reached the Association, it was a sure death sentence. After all, they trained the pain response out of him when he was old enough to take down someone twice his size.
—
It was only another two weeks before Sapnap was well enough to be discharged entirely. Royal seemed a little sad, if not regretful, that Sapnap wouldn't be around as much anymore. Sapnap barely registered the fact that he said the words, but he offered to come around and visit if not to keep Royal from going absolute batshit insane without a single person to converse with. Royal just gave him a grateful smile, and Sapnap wondered how his body even registered Royal as a threat to begin with.
He registered Diamond, Halo, and so many others as possible threats — because he was a paranoid fuck, mostly because of Dream… and yet he also had this part inside of him that said to trust them, but that voice was nowhere to be found. He couldn't even reach out to find that voice, the instincts that guided him throughout his life perfectly. His body reacted to the probable danger, and his mind was overthinking as normal, but he couldn't find the voice at all.
More or less, it had been the strangest couple weeks of his life. He was without the instinctive gut feeling that never steered him wrong, and it hadn't even properly come back until he was around Dream and 404 again. It was almost as if it had taken a vacation, deeming Royal's presence as acceptable conditions to take a night off (it was more than a few nights, but you get the point).
Royal had been friendly, funny, and even willing to answer any questions Sapnap had for him. Sapnap, as a rule, didn't talk about the Association around anyone but Dream — and the Circle as well, he supposed… they did join the club of sorts after all. Still, there was plenty to talk about without the Association. Missions, likes and dislikes (even if Sapnap was sure that everything out of their mouths were fake, scripted, and in their files), and pretty much anything that wasn't Association-based.
Sapnap still had no idea what the big deal was with the divisions, but for the sake of his newest friendship, he didn't ask. He assumed that he was in the first division… if the conversation at the Circle meeting (also known as: the only time Sapnap wasn't in the hospital during one of their meetings) was any indication. Maybe he wasn't, but he never exactly had the time to ask. Sapnap would be sure to ask Dream all these burning questions once they were behind closed doors.
There were a few things that he knew about the divisions. He knew that the… the youngest one of them, Turbo (if memory serves him correct, that was his name), was in the second division. Sapnap had no idea what they did in the second division, but Turbo had implied (well, flat-out stated) that the second division as a whole was brainwashed. If there were more divisions, it would be safe to assume the reason that the Circle had none among them was because their brainwashing ran deeper.
It was that, or they were divisions that were too separated to be able to make any sort of plans.
…what was the purpose of the divisions anyway? To divide them amongst themselves, to pit them all against each other? Was it to control them? What was the reason that they had at least seven divisions?
Sapnap knew that the facility had been organized rigidly, almost obsessively. He had expected it to be the same when he got out, but he had much more freedom out here. Yet, the rigid systematic aspect of the Association followed them everywhere, didn't it?
"Sap?" Dream called out as Sapnap startled to Dream's hand warming his shoulder. Sapnap hadn't even realized that Dream had even touched him. That– that was concerning. Were the doctors sure that he didn't have any brain damage from all of the blood loss? "I lost you for a moment there. You can't get lost."
Forcing his gaze to meet Dream's, Sapnap swallowed any urge to make a snappy comeback as he did for years upon years. It was harder now, though — since now, he knew what it felt like to be able to make those remarks without being immediately backhanded.
He didn't say a word because Dream's eyes reflected worry. His words, though carefully chosen, presented the worry on a platter to Sapnap.
No one simply zoned out from reality without consequences. It could get you killed, or worse… sent to the room. These were symptoms, no, these were reactions that had been methodically removed from their bodies through trial and error — through broken bones and bloodied hands. Reacting in the way that Sapnap had just done would've ended badly back in the facility. The ever-hovering fear didn't leave him (it never did), but relaxing the way that he had just done?
Sapnap was basically begging to get killed.
They weren't even, technically, out of the eyesight of the Association.
"I'm good," Sapnap replied, trying to project as much confidence and assurance as he could with his voice. "Just, my roommate. Gave me a lot to think on, that's all."
Dream's eyes surveyed him warily, as if he didn't quite believe Sapnap — but both of them knew better than to pry any further.
They'd get to it once they were safe in the privacy of their own homes, their own haven amongst the hell they called living.
—
The apartment was nothing special. They each had their own rooms, they had false identities with a civilian family that was very obviously Association-affiliated considering the meticulous way that the Association organized their entire operation.
Of course, people were flawed and the Association — as inhumane as they are, as inhumane they treat others — were no exception to the law of the world. People live, people die, and people aren't perfect. It's as written into the core of the world as gravity is on earth. The Association was flawed, and that was why the Circle managed to slip through the cracks.
(Maybe— maybe, maybe it was calculated by the Association, to give them all hope only to cruelly tear it away and leave them desolate, unable to escape hell. Or maybe they knew about the Circle and let them run around because it wasn't a threat to them, because they're confident that they could overpower hundreds of heroes scattered around the world.)
Sapnap had spent the first couple days going easy on patrol, careful not to rip any remaining stitches. At the very least, the Association had basically shoved him out of the hospital room and told him to not come back anytime soon for any reason. Sapnap didn't know how to do stitches on his own, even if it… looked easy enough — and he doubted that Dream or 404 could stitch Sapnap back together if he ripped any stitches.
At least most of the skin was healing together. That was the perks of the faster regeneration qualities that gifted people had. Even civilians with an innocent power like making water boil on command (and nothing else) had the benefits of faster regeneration, regardless of any outside factors.
It was probably why the hospital had less visits from gifted people than the non-gifted.
Anyway, Sapnap enjoyed the apartment. It wasn't grand by any means, but it was enough of a front that their neighbors thought the three of them were college students bunking together and sharing the rent. It probably helped that all three of them ordered take-out obsessively.
None of them knew how to cook. None of them had to learn. They weren't trained to cook, not like some of Sapnap's early classmates (before he was on track for heroism) who ended up going to a more… service based training, even if all Sapnap had to prove it was the fact that he swore that some of the people at Headquarters felt familiar to him. (Though, Sapnap is starting to think that maybe his instincts can be wrong. They seem to be getting wrong more often nowadays.)
On his off-hours (since they don't get vacation days, not like in the movies), Sapnap visited the hospital to see Royal. The hero was looking better and better each time, and Sapnap couldn't help but smile whenever the two of them got into another conversation. If Sapnap didn't know any better, he would say that Royal appreciated him being there — and Sapnap could swear that Royal did appreciate him being there, even if the signals were being crossed in his mind. One side argued with him, saying that what he was doing was dangerous and unnecessary while the other one just said that this was what friends did.
(One side told him that the Association was going to act if he kept doing this, and whatever they did, Sapnap wouldn't enjoy. The other side told him that they didn't care. This was the persona they were assigned, and they were never allowed to break character.)
—
It was a nice day. A great one, even. Sapnap had gotten the pizza from the delivery guy, gave him a stingy tip since their cover was, in fact, broke college students even if the delivery guy looked more and more ticked off every time he came by without receiving a good tip.
Sapnap was mid-bite of his slice when he noticed it.
404 looked as pale as a white sheet. Without those stupid goggles obstructing half of the guy's face, it was easy to tell that there was pure unadulterated fear coursing through his entire body.
All Sapnap had mentioned was the seventh division and Royal to receive the most extreme reaction that he'd seen from his normally clinically cold partner. Dream, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to the turmoil that 404 was going through. In fact, Dream didn't notice to the point that he casually took the slice of pizza in his hand to his mouth for another bite.
Maybe Sapnap shouldn't have mentioned this when they were eating lunch because he was half-convinced that 404 was about to throw up.
"You… your friend was from the seventh division?"
"That's what I said," Sapnap repeated slowly, trying to understand what was so bad about it. He knew that there was some sort of purpose with the divisions, but he couldn't imagine what was worse than being killers for 404 to be petrified of the seventh division.
404 cursed under his breath which was very much unlike him – his persona's penchant for not cursing being applicable just as much to 404's actual habits, and Dream looked up from his food. "Should we be concerned, 404?"
"Sapnap," 404 said, ignoring Dream entirely
which made a sick feeling of relief flood Sapnap's entire body
, "you
cannot
be friends with someone with the seventh division."
No matter how numb he felt about all of this, Sapnap echoed the only question that came to mind, "Why?"
"The seventh division? They're known to be Hunters," 404 explained as if that explained the questions that were very evident on Sapnap and Dream's face. To be fair, no one talked about whatever the fuck the Hunters were. Almost too quiet to hear, 404 whispered hoarsely, "They hunt. They hunt, they kill, and their prey are the heroes that try to leave."
Nothing but the sound of the AC sounded in their apartment. It was as if time had frozen for all of them.
"Fuck." Dream heaved out what sounded like a bitter scoff, "Sapnap, you can't even heal in the medical wing without causing trouble."
Sapnap felt something that almost made him physically recoil, but he ignored it — because they were trained not to flinch, not to show an ounce of weakness. Rather than acknowledging whatever the feeling was, he exclaimed defensively, "Look, it's not my fault that the guy was actually nice to talk to!"
From the look that Dream gave him, Sapnap knew it was time to shut up.
As if the exchange hadn't happened at all, 404 took his non-pizzafied hand and ruffled Sapnap's head despite the fact that the height difference was barely there. (That's a lie, but let him believe what he wants, okay?) Sapnap wrinkled his nose in disgust and pushed 404's hand away. Dream rolled his eyes, and leaned against 404's side casually — as if the conversation before had never happened.
Unnatural shadows moved at the edge of his vision. He didn't know if he imagined it. He never does.
He doesn't know if it actually happened, or if it was just a dream.
He bids his… friends goodnight and wills himself to sleep. He had to get good at it. The resting periods were never long in the facility and he needed every second he could grasp within his hands, even if now he definitely had much more time to rest than he did before.
(But he can't dilly-dally. They'll know, and they'll get mad. They always know. They always know and they put him back in the— no, these thoughts wouldn't put him to sleep. Think happy thoughts. Dream's wheezing laughter. 404's pouty face. Royal's light-hearted jabs.)
Sapnap woke up with a bedhead and the taste of morning breath. He saw rays of sunlight hit the carpeted floor of his bedroom. Almost on autopilot, he rose from the bed, made it to a standard that the Teachers would be proud of, went to the bathroom, and stared at the eye bags that seemed to be permanently etched on his face.
He hadn't slept well. He never did, honestly — but he had long since suppressed the screams. He had learned early on that if he screamed during the night, it only ended in more of his blood being spilled on the cold tiles in the Room. For a second, all he could see was the maniacal grin of the Resident as he looked down on Sapnap. Sapnap remembered the too-white teeth and the feeling of paralysis after the telltale pinprick of a needle.
(He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to go. He didn't mess up. He was good. He wasn't bad. He was good. He was getting better. Please. He doesn't want to go.)
Sapnap could've sworn he could see him behind him.
(Hands. Hands on his body. White-toothed grins and lungs full of water. Trails of blood dripping. Dripping. Dripping.)
Out of instinct, his body tensed and he prepared to put up a fight even if he knew he would eventually lose. He pivoted, ready to put up a fight even if the Teachers and Trainers would have him apprehended momentarily. He swung at empty air and his fist hit drywall.
(Put up a fight. One day you'll win. One day you'll be able to win. They like it when you fight. They're proud when you fight. They think that it means you're learning. You are learning. You're going to win. One day, you will win.)
Slowly blinking, he stayed as composed as he could manage before pulling his hand back. proceeded to rub his left arm on instinct.
He knew that there was nothing he could do about the faint scar lines on his entire body, but the Resident had specifically carved out a message on Sapnap's arm, one that he still didn't understand — one that still made no sense to him. It looked like nonsensical scribbles to him, but he remembered the excruciating pain and each deliberate slice in his arm.
(He can't even scream stop . He can't even move an eyelid to blink. He feels every single thing. He can feel the warm hand on his thigh even though the scalpel on his arm kept cutting and cutting and cutting .)
It was almost like he was back in that moment. Sometimes, if his eyes unfocused and he felt like he stared into nothingness, he would be able to see the sharpness of the Resident's tools glinting in the corner of his eye.
Sapnap pulled his fist, he ignored the pulsing pain and just stared at the mess he just made for something that wasn't even real.
He didn't know what was real or not.
Maybe he should just keep ignoring it. It wasn't an issue. He could put it in the box in his brain and never look back.
(He already put it in the box, and it was back. It always came back. He should just get rid of the key, but the key always just ends up back in his hands.)
Sapnap wrapped his hands and wondered distantly if this was what the Teachers were warning him about, if this was the weakness they were trying to destroy. Sapnap almost wished it had worked; he didn't like the feeling of weakness.
Sapnap made his way to training (and the nagging voice of Dream's lecture about safety) and he ran away from it like he ran away from everything. He was a coward and he knew it. If whatever it was was never acknowledged, then it wouldn't exist. He forced himself not to think about anything but the adrenaline of fighting even if his opponents weren't that great.
There was one hero that put up a decent fight compared to the rest. Maybe it was the fact that her touch disintegrated Sapnap's training clothes, but Sapnap snagged her from her hero partners to have more than the single spar. He didn't know how long they sparred, and Sapnap didn't even know who she was — not really. He'd seen her around, but she didn't seem popular enough to be mentioned in any news articles that Sapnap had read in his free time. When Sapnap and his newest sparring partner finally fell to the ground in exhaustion, Sapnap had a small feeling of comradery with a kindred spirit, a spirit that kept fighting until all of her energy was sapped from her.
"I'm Ender."
"Uh– 'm Sapnap."
"No shit sherlock. Everyone knows who you are."
Sapnap laughed.
("They hunt, they kill, and their prey are the
heroes that try to leave.
")
Turning his head to what he swore looked like 404, he blinked away the sweat that dripped onto his eyes. 404 was there, but he certainly hadn't said anything.
(Lock the box. Throw away the key.)