Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His mask broke with a bone-chilling crack, and with it shattered his last secret, his last hope of surviving. The enchantments laced into the cool white porcelain that kept it firmly stuck to his face fractured, revealing pale, milky green eyes, his scarred, fear-scrunched nose, his bared lips that barely covered long, sharp teeth, and most terrifying of all, the enchantment that suppressed all of his hybrid features vanished.

Cold terror washed through Dream when he felt the masking enchantments fade, felt the scraping, creaking sensations as his antlers regrew, as his ears sprung out, as all of his hybrid features materialized back onto his body.

His chest cracked and fissured as it split, followed by a repeated crunching when his ribs broke and poked out in a spiky cage protecting his organs. Dream's booming-drum heartbeat filled the tiny space of the cell, pounding through every other little scuff and scrape of fabric against obsidian and echoing firmly in his newly-sensitive eardrums.

His long, thin, tufted tail tore through his suddenly too-short pants and slithered out behind him, immediately curling fearfully around his lengthening, thickening legs. His arms stretched longer, sticking out from the already torn sleeves of his prison uniform, while his hands grew bigger and gained vicious-looking claws on the end of each of his fingers. The seams of his shirt strained, and a few even popped, when his shoulders broadened and his torso thickened, stretching the thick fabric to the max.

He even grew a full two feet taller, now towering an entire head over Quackity, even as he was on his knees.

"Oh, Christ!" Quackity recoiled, yanking his arms away from Dream's shifting body. Horror and disgust was smeared all over his face, and his shark-like teeth were bared defensively.

"¡¿Qué la chingada?!” The avian stepped back a few paces, eyes wide as he stared at Dream’s true form. He sputtered, obvious shock coloring his tone. “What the–wha–Are you a fucking warden?”

The avian's eyes danced sickeningly over Dream's body, obviously not needing an answer from the prisoner.

A slick smile slowly spread across his torturer’s face, like hot lava spreading over the ground, as obvious thoughts and ideas started to pool in his head. Quackity stepped closer, fingers twitching as he stared at the trembling figure of his victim. His gaze suddenly latched onto Dream's dull eyes, and a frown creased his brow.

"Wait," Quackity yanked the hybrid's head down with a hand on his chin, peering sharply at Dream's face. Dream forced his eyes to go vacant, hoping, no, praying, that Quackity hadn't seen him actually seeing.

"Are you actually blind?" The avian questioned incredulously. He jerked Dream's head closer, inspecting the cloudy orbs in Dream's eye sockets. "Like, actually, like a full warden?"

Dream managed a choked whine, panic and gut-wrenching fear twisting his throat until it felt like he was being strangled. 

"Answer me when I speak to you, Dream." His torture's tone turned his blood to ice, and he had to stop himself from shuddering.

"Y-y-ye-es," he finally managed to stutter out. Terror was clogging his throat, clogging his airways, and he could barely breathe. Dream was vaguely certain that he was going to pass out.

"Yes, what, Dream?" Quackity curled a hand around one of Dream's thick antlers and yanked, painfully wrenching Dream's head at an awkward angle. 

Dream yelped, stuttering out a weak "y-yes, Sir," and God, he hated it, hated being so easy to bend, hated being so submissive, but it had been beaten into him, and he didn’t think he’d ever get the opportunity to even try to recover from breaking and try being himself ever again.

Of course, Dream wasn't actually blind, like his fully blooded cousins. His eyes were just naturally dull and cloudy.

But…he'd been threatened with being blinded before, before he got the hiding enchantments on his mask, because he was half-warden and his tormentors thought it would be funny. Ironic. He'd gotten out of that situation unscathed, but…here, with Quackity? There was no getting out, here. Quackity could blind Dream, if he wanted. There was no one to stop him. Hell, now he might just gouge Dream's eyes out, just because he thought Dream was blind and didn't need them. Dream hoped and prayed that it wouldn't come to that. Hoped Quackity wouldn't think of that.

"How the hell have you been doing all the shit you've done, then? If you’re fucking blind? " His torturer hissed suspiciously, using the hold he had on Dream’s antler to tug him closer. Dream suppressed a whimper, and, shockingly, an irritated growl. Where the hell had that come from?

"E-echolocation. Hearing. Sm-smell." Dream blurted out the first possibilities that came to his mind, desperate to sell his newest bid for just a tiny, tiny chance of hope that Quackity would believe him.

"You've been smelling us?!" Quackity exclaimed incredulously. His grip slid from the antler, releasing Dream from the painfully awkward angle. "That's fucking creepy!" He took the bait, blindly believing Dream's lie. 

The avian's nose wrinkled, but he moved on all the same, eyes roving over Dream's antlers and ears, then moving down to his chest, where a soft teal glow was filtering through the overly stretched material of his shirt. The avian's hand moved to pluck at one of the wooden buttons, all of which were straining to keep both sides of the fabric together. Dream flinched.

Quackity dragged his fingers down the front of his bright orange shirt and tugged at it. Dream's heart sped up, the harsh sound echoing heavily around the small space of the obsidian cell. Quackity heard his pounding heart and almost seemed to brighten, a horrible shine lighting up his single working eye.

With a horrible tearing sound, the front of Dream’s shirt was ripped open, taking away the last of the hybrid’s weak protection against his torturer. Panic overtook Dream, and he scrambled back, as far as he could until his spine was pressed against the wall, but it was no use. Quackity followed determinedly after him, a wicked, overeager smile curling over his scarred lips as his eyes danced over Dream’s exposed chest.

The avian ran his fingers down his exposed ribs, fingernails scraping sickeningly against the bare bones as he seemed to admire Dream’s unprotected insides. Dream could see the cold glint of greed in Quackity’s eyes, and it truly scared him. 

Wardens were hard to kill, and that made their drops valuable. It made their antlers, their claws, their hearts, even their teeth, any little bits of their body that people could get their hands on, incredibly sought after. That meant–that probably meant that Dream, in Quackity’s eyes, was now nothing more than possible revenue. So, damn right Dream was scared. He had just been reduced from 'plaything' to 'merchandise.'

A cold finger prodded at one of his lungs, eliciting a sharp, choked yelp out of Dream from the almost jolting sensation against his delicate flesh. Another sharp jolt, more poking fingers, and then Quackity sucked in an awed gasp.

“Holy shit,” Quackity murmured, hooking a finger around one of Dream’s ribs and tugging at it. Dream leaned forward obediently despite his terror, silently cursing himself for the mindless action. His torturer’s next words almost had him suffocating, the weight of his own fear almost too much for him to even breathe. “Is that–That’s your heart,” Quackity breathed, as if Dream didn’t know his own body. "Like, actually your heart." The glow of his pulsing heart bathed his torture's face in a sickening teal light. The color was usually beautiful, comforting even, to Dream, but now it was twisted horribly, pulling ugly shadows on Quackity's scarred, eager face and clashing horribly with the light the wall of lava caging them in provided. 

Dream whimpered, flattening his ears and turning his head away as Quackity's hand inched nearer and nearer to his most important organ, the thing that fucking kept him alive. His heartbeat, already unhealthily fast, sped up to the point of pain. The booming, staccato thud seemed to drown out every other sound in the cell, and it was the only thing that Dream could hear. 

When Quackity’s fingers finally brushed against the frantically throbbing muscle, something in Dream reared its head up from some recently-buried part of his mind. Something dark, feral, and Wild.  

A heavy, twisted growl poured out of his throat, and suddenly, he was gripping his torturer’s wrist with a fist of thick, heavily armored claws so harshly that Dream could hear the man’s bones crack.

Quackity shrieked, both in pain and indignation, and then there was a netherite sword being swung at Dream’s skull. Dream tilted his head and let the deadly blade sink into his antler with a sharp tunk! His furious growl built up louder, and he used Quackity’s arm to brace himself as he pushed himself to his feet. There was an audible snap of bones, and Quackity’s screamed curse rivaled the volume of Dream's own feral vocalizations. Dream stretched up to his full height and was forced to hunch, suddenly too tall for the small cell when his antlers and shoulders scraped against the ceiling. The netherite sword was torn from Quackity’s grasp when he stood, too firmly lodged in Dream’s antler for it to be easily ripped free.

Quackity, meanwhile, was screaming into the ceiling for Sam to “Get him the fuck out of here!” and had pulled out a shield with his uninjured left hand.

Dream’s grasp on Quackity’s arm slipped off when the hybrid reached up to tear the sword from his antler, and it was thrown to the side with a metallic clatter. His torturer was backing away with the shield raised, eyes widened comically as they followed the path of his sword.

Suddenly, Dream pounced, diving towards the avian like a large, enraged bear. His clawed hands crashed through the avian’s shield, the brute power driving the blow crushing the rectangle of wood like a mallet to a block of butter and continuing to cleave a nasty series of deep gashes across the man’s side and stomach. Quackity had managed to turn, just in time, to avoid the potentially fatal blow, but was not fast enough to dodge it completely.

The thick scent of blood filled the cell, mixing in with the burning stench of molten rock and the lingering, heady smell of healing potions from the past sessions the avian had held with Dream. Quackity cursed again and stumbled away, shaking off the splintered remains of his shield and backing up to the bright, blinding orange of the lava wall.

“Go to the corner!” Sam shouted through the intercom, confusion audible in his voice. “What the hell’s going on in there?” Quackity didn’t deign to answer, seeing as their huge, furious, half-warden prisoner was currently attempting to eviscerate him.

Dream was too lost in his panic-driven instincts to rely much on thought and logic, so when he lunged towards Quackity with a bloodcurdling roar and outstretched hands, he didn’t think much of it when the avian dove underneath him and scrambled to the shallow pool of water in the back corner of the cell.

Dream’s hands dipped into the lava, to no effect other than a warm, almost burning heat surrounding his fingers, but he paid it no mind. He spun around, splatters of burning lava flying from his hands, and latched his focus back onto Quackity. The man was pressed into the corner, standing in the shallow pool of water meant for respawning in. 

The avian's thin chest heaved, and his unbroken hand was clutching at the wall behind him. He had nothing to defend himself with, a fact that made something inside Dream coil with pleasure.

His torturer had nowhere to go.

Dream lunged, and Quackity disappeared in a rain of potions and shattering glass. Dream smashed against the wall with an earth-shaking screech, deadly claws raking chips in the rough obsidian blocks. His assailant, his prey, had escaped. A displeased snarl had him baring long, razor sharp fangs, and his tail thrashed angrily behind him.

His inexplicable fury died out suddenly, leaving Dream feeling weak and strangely empty. He slid down to the ground, body shaking, and curled over his legs with a whimper.

What had just happened? What had he just done? Oh God, Quackity was going to kill him for real now.

Dream wanted to throw up.

He was so fucked.

Chapter Text

After that first attack, both Sam and Quackity were hesitant to enter Dream’s cell. When Quackity had respawned in the bed in the room next to Sam, shirt torn and hands shaking, red marks on his skin from what Sam could swear was a death wound, the avian had told him what had happened.

Sam had been very shocked to learn that Dream was a hybrid, and when Quackity had told the creeper that Dream was a warden hybrid, Sam had been floored, because what? How was that even possible? How on earth did Dream hide the fact that he was a hybrid from them for so long? Surely someone would have noticed something about Dream that tipped off his hybrid status, but apparently not. 

During the revelation of Dream’s hybrid status, as well as during Quackity’s freakout from nearly dying and losing his second life, Sam had realized something that nearly had his heart stopping in his chest. Something he had read once in a book about wardens. Though limited, that book had been the most up-to-date book on the mob, and was currently the only book with actual facts about them. The book had said that the warden wasn’t affected by lava. That it couldn’t be hurt by lava.

Sam had told Quackity of the fact with wide, slightly panicked eyes, and that had led to a mad scramble to the lava control system to see if Dream was still even in the cell. The wait for the lava to fall had been horribly long. Tension had turned Sam’s muscles to ice, and anxiety had his stomach twisting and turning in his gut. Beside him, Quackity was pacing fervently, chewing at his knuckles and muttering frantic nothings to himself. Sam didn’t even try to decipher what the man was saying. He was stuck too deeply in his own spiraling thoughts. What if they were too late? What if Dream was gone by the time they got to the cell? What would Sam do? 

A plan suddenly sparked in his mind. If word got out, the first thing Sam and Quackity would have to do was cover up the signs of the avian’s visits for the revive book. They couldn’t have Quackity’s extracurricular activities get out. It would ruin them both. Sam swallowed past a smokey cloud of soot in his throat. He didn’t think he’d be able to deal with the fallout from that.

The lava wall finally dropped low enough for the top of the cell to be visible, making both of the hybrids freeze in place. They watched in anticipation as it slowly sank lower and lower until the cell was fully visible. Sam’s breath stuttered, eyes dancing frantically around the cell as he searched for his only prisoner. It took him a moment, but he finally spotted Dream, a hulking figure curled up in the darkest corner of the cell. His tattered jumper blended in with the dark obsidian and wavering lava light, the orange color grimy and dull from all of Quackity’s sessions.

Oh thank Prime. Sam nearly crumpled to his knees. Dream was still there. Beside him, Quackity audibly thanked his own deities and dragged his hands over his face.

“Fuck,” Quackity muttered, snatching his beanie off to run his hand through his long hair. Sam couldn’t find it in himself to be shocked at the avian’s action. Quackity never took off his beanie. Sam felt too drained from the horrible rush of emotions to gush about the man’s hair reveal. “Fuck fuck fuck,” Quackity continued to mumble, turning to pace along the blackstone flooring again. Sam watched him for a moment as the man seemed to get more agitated. 

“He’s still here, Quackity. Why are you–what’s wrong?” Sam couldn’t help but wince at how blaisé he sounded, as if this were a situation to be casual about. Prime, it was anything but that. Quackity whirled around and marched towards him, cramming his beanie back on and pensively clasping his hands over his mouth. Words seemed to catch in his throat when he tried to speak, but he sucked in a deep breath and dragged them out regardless.

“S-Sam, he–I–,” Quackity cleared his throat, eyes zeroing in on Sam’s own. His hands dropped away from his scarred face and instead nervously twisted through the two rings he had on a chain around his neck. “Sam, he stuck his hands in the lava while he was trying to kill me. I–I don’t think he realized it at the time, he was too pissed, but–” 

Sam cut him off, understanding what Quackity was getting at. “If he realizes that lava doesn’t affect him, we’re screwed.” Quackity nodded frantically, biting at his lip as he tugged at his necklace.

“We-we gotta get him in chains, or something, Sam. I don’t–he can’t get out.” Quackity suddenly shoved the chain down behind his shirt and twisted around. “Drop the lava, Sam. We need to go find something to hold him down with.” The avian marched off, probably towards the room Sam used for storage. Sam did have a lot of iron in there. If all else failed, if they couldn't find anything else, Sam supposed that they could just make some chains themselves.

Sam glanced back over at Dream’s hunched form uneasily. They had to put that in chains? Fuck. Dream was…Dream was big. Even from the distance between the control room and the cell, Sam could tell that Dream was big. Bigger than Sam himself, even, which was saying something, because Sam stood at a solid seven foot and four inches tall.

Sam eyed the sharp antlers that adorned Dream’s head and shivered. All he could think of was getting gored by one of those while trying to get Dream tied down. He noticed, with a jolt, that Dream was staring at him.

No, not at him, Sam realized. His gaze was off by a few kilters, a bit too far to the left. Through the distance, he could see the milky white of Dream’s eyes glinting from behind his matted hair. Was Dream blind…?

Sam shook his head and flipped the lever to drop the lava. It didn’t matter. He had shackles to make. He turned and followed after Quackity, ignoring the heavy presence that burned against his back until the lava wall was out of sight.

ººººº

It had been a fucking bitch to get Dream in chains strong enough to hold him down, but after his first little tantrum, he seemed cowed enough by Quackity’s presence to not attack. Quackity figured that as long as he didn’t try to touch the warden’s heart, Dream would be meek enough for anything to be done to him.

What they had ended up doing was bolting Dream down in the middle of the floor. They put short chains on both of his wrists and ankles and attached them to bolts in the obsidian floor just a little wider apart than his shoulders were. He wouldn't be able to move his hands or feet any more than a few inches in any direction. On his neck was the thickest metal collar that they could make, along with the thickest chain they had made. This one was long enough that Dream was hunched over, but only just.

For the most part, Sam had to wrestle Dream (who was, in fact, taller than Sam by a solid foot and a half) down against the floor while Quackity installed the chains. Thankfully, the fight had already left Dream, and his struggles were half-hearted at best, and if he did get riled up, Quackity would stop his work to threaten the man. Whenever Quackity did that, Dream always froze obediently and went limp in Sam's grasp. It did make Sam slightly uncomfortable, but it was incredibly useful in keeping Dream down.

The only thing Sam had to worry about was keeping his hands away from Dream’s mouth, otherwise he would be losing fingers. The hybrid’s teeth were incredibly sharp, and both times he'd been snapped at, the wound had stung and bled profusely.

After that, all Quackity had to do was clap the shackles on Dream’s extremities, and they were done. The man wasn’t going anywhere. The only thing they had left unrestrained on Dream was the long, tufted tail, but Sam didn’t think Dream could do anything with it. Then they had left the cell, shaken, but triumphant. 

It was only two days later that Quackity had come back with an inventory full of tools and an ear-to-ear grin on his face. 

Despite Sam’s warnings, Quackity had decided that he wanted to go back into the cell with the unpredictable warden hybrid. Sam was seriously starting to consider that Quackity had some serious mental issues, or something. Even chained down, Dream was like a feral animal, and Quackity still wanted to go and interrogate him? The avian had to have a death wish or something. Nevertheless, Sam wasn’t going to stop him. If Quackity wanted to antagonize the monster they had chained up in the main cell, then so be it. It was Quackity’s own lives he was playing with, not Sam’s.

Chapter Text

It was only a few hours later that Quackity was calling for Sam to let him out of the cell, telling him that he was “done” with Dream for the day. Sam had lowered the lava as per request, and then had to wait as it bubbled down for Quackity to come back across. The avian seemed strangely…excited, and he was bloodier than usual. Sam chalked that up to the man trying to beat Dream back down into submission.

“Sam, every time he respawns, he comes back with his hybrid features!” Quackity grinned sharply up at the towering creeper hybrid and pulled out what looked like a pile of bones from his inventory. With a sickening realization, Sam saw that they were large, cyan-tinted antlers. Dream’s antlers. Some were cracked and fractured at the base, and others still had the pedicle attached to them, bits of flesh and blood and even hair clinging against the bone. Sam nearly choked. There were fourteen in total in the pile. Quackity had killed Dream seven times. How was Dream not dead? How were none of those kills not his final life?  

Sam voiced as much to Quackity, concerned. If the man went overboard and killed their prisoner, well. There wouldn’t exactly be a riot, but Sam’s methods and accountability would be brought into question. He didn’t want to deal with that.

Quackity chuckled, pulling more bloody parts from his inventory and continuing to pile them on the floor. Oh Prime, was that Dream’s tail? Sam’s gut twisted, and he stepped back, staring at the chunk of bloody, visible vertebrae that stuck out from the jagged base of the long, tufted limb. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the pile of body parts and even organs that Quackity was dropping on his floor.

“Qu-Quackity, what…?” Sam couldn’t voice the words. This was…this…

Sam wanted to throw up. He knew what this was. He knew what Quackity was doing. The stump where his own tail ended stung, and the scars on his throat burned.

Quackity’s functioning eye sparkled, and he gestured to the gorey accumulation heaped between them. Sam could only stare as blood started to soak down in the creases between the blackstone tiles.

“I…I know something…useful, ” Quackity paused, grinning slyly. Sam had an awful, awful idea of what the avian was about to say. He dreaded what he thought was about to come out of the avian's mouth. It was any hybrid’s worst fear, and even normal humans were wary of it.

“I know how to force respawn glitches, Sam!” Quackity suddenly crowed, shark-like teeth glinting in the redstone lamps lining the ceiling. Sam’s stomach dropped. Prime, what was wrong with Quackity?

A respawn glitch, or death glitch, as they were sometimes called, was an issue with somebody respawning and getting swamped with the residual void-magic of coming back. If you were stuck in the glitch, you would essentially be immortal, but not in a good way. Every time you died, whatever wound it was that killed you would disappear, but the pain would remain until you could get out of the glitch. If you were killed multiple times, the pain would build up until you were catatonic. Or until you went mad. Sam had seen both happen before. 

He wasn’t exactly sure how somebody could get glitched, but he knew it had something to do with intent. That’s how Cannon deaths worked, at least. If someone killed you, and they were intending to kill you, then you’d lose a life. If it was an accidental death, you would respawn just fine. A little disoriented, maybe, but fine. All Sam knew of how the respawn glitch worked was that you couldn’t intentionally kill the person, but they had to die enough for there to be a large accumulation of the Void to do…something. Sam didn’t know what the next step was. He didn’t want to know. 

It was something Sam had feared happening to himself, a long time ago, back when…

He shook himself. He was lucky that he wasn’t that valuable of a hybrid. He was lucky he was alive at all.

Sam shifted back subtly, hiding how sick the subject of harvesting parts from any sort of hybrid made him. Even if it was Dream they were talking about. Not even Dream deserved this.

“We’ve got an endless supply of warden parts, Sam! Isn’t that fucking ace?” The avian spread his arms out grandly, inadvertently slinging crimson droplets across Sam's blackstone flooring. "We can sell them and make a ton, dude! I've read that, if you can get them, warden drops can make some powerful potions. Sam, we have unlimited access to it all!"

Sam suppressed a shudder at the other man's words. He stood stiffly, looking down at his partner with disgust. As a hybrid himself, Quackity should know what he was saying. He should know the horrifying implications of what he was talking about. Harvesting. He wanted to harvest Dream's parts and sell them.  

Sam's hands shook around the shaft of his trident, and he hissed out a dark plume of hot smoke that drifted heavily from the vents of his gas mask. His throat felt like it was on fire.

“Do what you will, Quackity, but I want no part of it.” Sam managed, turning away and breathing deeply. As a victim of hybrid trafficking himself, he wasn’t going to participate in anything like it. It hit him too close to home. It brought back memories and thoughts that he didn't want. But…it was still Dream. Dream, who was a horrible person who had no morals to speak of whatsoever. Sam wasn’t going to go out of his way to help the man, not after all he’d done.

Behind him, he heard Quackity cackle gleefully as he scraped up his pile of trophies and scampered away to clean himself up from his session with Dream. Sam let him run off. Quackity knew the way out of the prison. He could let himself out.

As soon as he was sure the man was gone, Sam rushed himself off to his quarters. The cold metal of his mask felt like it was burning against his skin, and his ears were ringing. He couldn't breathe.

Sam slammed the door of his quarters shut and practically clawed his gas mask off with violently shaking hands. He tossed it across the room, gasping in choked breaths and sinking down against the automatically-locking door. His hands found his throat, and he clawed at the armored fabric around his neck until he managed to shred through it with his sharp nails. The effect wasn’t immediate, but he felt better with nothing around his neck. It reminded him too much of his old collar.  

Without his consent, Sam’s fingers wandered up to his throat and pressed against the clammy green skin. Sam shivered.

He traced the long, surgically precise scars stretching from the underside of his chin all the way down to his collarbones, hands trembling and breath still hitching. He couldn’t produce gunpowder, not anymore, not since…

Sam cut himself off, yanking his fingers away from his neck and tucking his arms around his chest. He could still produce smoke, and that’s all he needed. That’s all he needed. He couldn’t think about what—

He shook his head, cutting himself off again and whining faintly. He wished Ponk were here. Ponk always knew how to keep him from spiraling. He missed Ponk. Ponk would know what he should do in this situation. Ponk always knew what to do.

But Ponk was gone. Sam had hurt him.

His hands found his scars again, and his breathing hitched back up. What was he going to do?

Chapter Text

It had taken some monumental effort without Sam's help, but Quackity had moved the shackles pinning Dream's wrists to the ground up onto either side of the walls so that he was essentially being held upright by his arms. It probably put a horrible strain on Dream’s shoulders and knees, but Quackity didn't really care. With Dream hanging like this, the avian had better access to his chest cavity. As long as he didn’t try to touch Dream’s glowing heart, he was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted to the hybrid. 

Dream was restrained, after all, and pretty much couldn’t move anything other than his head and his tail. (The slender limb did pack quite a powerful punch, though. The first, and only, time Dream had whipped the avian off of his feet with it, Quackity had ripped it out of the hybrid's back, bone and all. Dream hadn’t tried doing that again when he respawned with his tail.)

Speaking of the respawns, it had taken a lot of research, but Quackity had found an enchantment that would bind someone to a physical object, like, say, chains. It made it so much easier for the avian when he dealt with Dream after that, because he didn’t have to force him back into the manacles every time Quackity accidentally (or purposefully) killed him. Dream would just respawn right back where he had died, chained up like the monster he was. 

Sam, for whatever reason, had been completely repulsed by Quackity's idea to make a sort of…farm? (Quackity guessed that it could be called a farm. A Dream farm, possibly. The thought brought a dark smirk to his face.) A farm from the drops he could get from Dream. Honestly, the profit that Quackity could get for a warden’s antler alone could probably set him up for the rest of his life. What he could get for a continuous stream of warden parts was something that even he had trouble fathoming. Why Sam didn’t want in on any of that, Quackity just couldn’t understand.

Currently, Quackity was headed towards the cell, a new…item resting in his inventory. Sapnap had helped him make it, and even though the fireborn was actually unaware of what Quackity was truly intending to use it for, the avian was planning to lie to Dream and flaunt the fact that Sapnap had made it fully intending to use it on the hybrid.

Despite his best efforts, Dream still wasn’t as obedient as he’d like, and Quackity was hoping that this would be the last straw that finally broke him. If Dream’s sense of smell was as powerful as the hybrid had implied it was, then he’d be able to smell his old friend’s scent on the tool when Quackity pulled it out, and accept the twisted truth that the avian was shoving down his throat.

After that, maybe the hybrid would be more compliant and stop trying to bite him. Honestly, Quackity had already pulled all of his teeth out twice, and the dumb brute still hadn’t gotten the message. He really needed to invest in a muzzle of some sort.

Quackity flipped the lever to lower the lava and crossed his arms, settling against the wall to wait. It would be a good couple of minutes before he could go across to the main cell, after all.

After the first time the avian had shown Sam everything he’d harvested gotten off of Dream, the creeper hybrid had all but cut off his involvement with the prisoner. He had even stopped feeding the hybrid, on the basis that the death glitch would keep him from dying of starvation. He still patrolled the prison, of course, but other than that, Sam avoided the center of the prison completely. Thankfully, though, the man had given Quackity full access to Dream’s cell, and had at least taught Quackity how to operate the levers around the prison. 

When Sam had said that he wanted no part of what Quackity was doing, he had apparently been completely serious. It still boggled Quackity’s mind, Sam’s decision. Was it the moral aspect of what he was doing that disturbed Sam? Maybe the fact that it was more than just plain torture? Quackity didn’t know. It’s not like Dream didn’t deserve everything Quackity did to him, after all. The man was a fucking monster.

The lava finally dropped down low enough for Quackity to pull out an ender pearl and toss it across the lake of lava that isolated the main cell from everything. His gut briefly tugged, and then he was catching himself from falling in the main cell. He wrinkled his nose. No matter how many times he pearled, he just never got used to the landing. 

Quackity took a moment to appreciate the imposing figure that Dream still made, despite the fact that he was chained up. Standing straight, Quackity’s head was dead-even with Dream’s shoulders, and the hybrid’s body was as thick as two people standing side-by-side. All four of his limbs were about as thick as Quackity’s own chest, and both the length of his tail and collective length of his antlers were longer than Quackity was tall. Huge claws longer than Quackity’s own digits dangled from limp fingers as thick around as the avian’s wrist.

Dream’s head was bowed, long, blood-matted hair obscuring his face, but his ears were flicked up in Quackity’s direction. The cattle tag, marked 001, dangled loosely from Dream’s right ear. The metal glinted in the light of the lava, as did the circular brackets that punched through the soft skin of Dream’s ear. 

Even though he was on his knees, Dream’s hips were even with Quackity’s own. Each of the hybrid’s knees were scraped up, his bright orange pants already torn and shredded. Quackity frowned. He just made those.

Quackity had gone out and made a pair of pants that actually fit Dream, because the hybrid’s old pair had been too shredded from his spontaneous transformation to hide much from Quackity’s eyes. The avian may have been there to torture the man, and now was there to exploit him for the value his body had, but he didn’t want to leave Dream like…that. It felt more wrong than anything else he had done. He also didn’t want to see anything when he visited Dream.

Dream had better appreciate how generous Quackity had been, to give him a brand new, freshly made pair of pants. Although they were slightly torn from wear and wayward blades, it was better than what the warden had worn before.

A new, startling development that Quackity had noticed with Dream were the wispy souls slithering around in Dream's guts. Quackity had learned not to touch those. The last time he tried, Dream had gored his side with an antler and snapped the chain on his right wrist in a feral rage.

Quackity had barely managed to scramble out of the way of the warden's huge, grasping claws before they slammed down on the obsidian where he had been knocked down. The impact had cracked the obsidian where his legs had been, and he had been forced to leave the cell before the other chains snapped and he got mauled.

Later, when Dream had calmed down and the chain had been repaired, Quackity had gotten a closer look at the souls residing behind the man’s rib cage. Dream had snarled at him in response and had nearly bitten the avian’s hand off with his viciously sharp teeth. In an attempt to placate the warden, Quackity had told him that he just wanted to look. Surprisingly, it had worked, and Dream had begrudgingly settled down enough for Quackity to inspect the wispy entities.

The first thing that he noticed was the fact that they curled around Dream’s organs with seemingly no rhyme or reason. They were a deep, transparent teal color, with dark eyes and open mouths that gasped out silent moans.

The second, more horrifying thing that the avian noticed was that they looked like people he knew. One was a ragged, jittering imitation of Tommy’s face, glitchy and torn and pale, but undeniably Tommy. Another was a sad, wavery version of Wilbur, or possibly Ghostbur, considering the deep blue eyes and watery tear tracks down its face. The third one was unfamiliar to him, but Quackity thought that it might be the Mexican guy Tommy had told him about once, the one that had tried to protect him from Dream while the teen was in exile. That tale had only led Quackity to believe more firmly in how despicable Dream was. He had taken all three of that dude’s Lives, just for trying to protect Tommy. 

Among the mess of glossy organs and faintly glowing souls, Quackity was sure that he had caught a glimpse of Lazarbeam’s soul, as well as Vikstar’s. They were both ragged around the edges, and seemed greyed out, unlike the other, vibrant souls. But..that couldn’t be right. They weren’t dead, were they?

They had to be. Quackity hadn’t seen them in months, and the souls in Dream’s chest seemed to be the people he had killed. He didn’t know why the Tommy and Ghostbur lookalikes were in there, though, because they had both been revived. Maybe Dream collected them regardless. Maybe that’s why he was able to revive people in the first place? Because he had their soul?

Quackity shook his head, snapping back into the present and ignoring the souls for now, moving on to his true purpose of being in the cell.

He pulled the object he had been holding in his inventory out and twirled it around, the metal rod making a whooping noise as it sliced through the air. Dream’s ears flickered at the hollow sound, but otherwise, the hybrid didn’t react.

Quackity rolled his eyes and caught the other end of the rod with his free hand. It hit his palm with a sharp smack, and he took the time to admire the shapely twist of metal at the end. A smooth, curvy letter ‘Q’ sat prettily on the end of the rod. Quackity grinned cruelly. 

“Sapnap helped me make this, y’know,” the avian perused, swinging the brand through the air again. Dream’s ears stiffened at his words, and his hands twitched, teal-tinted claws glinting sharply in the orange light. Quackity continued. “He thought that it’d be a nice touch, since you’ve already got the cattle tag.”

A low rumble built up, echoing around the cell, but Dream didn’t dare vocalize any more than that. He didn’t speak, not unless Quackity explicitly told him to. The fact pleased the avian greatly, because that meant he was getting closer to having what was essentially a monster properly trained.

“Shut it,” the avian snapped, and the growl immediately tapered off. Dream’s hands curled into fists, and his tail flicked agitatedly behind him. Quackity had the vague thought to chop it off again, but ultimately decided not to. He had other things to do today.

He dipped the end of the brand in the pool of lava at the edge of the cell, and a hissing noise filled the air as cool metal met hot, molten rock. He didn’t have to leave it in the lava for too long, and soon had a glowing, red-hot curl of metal to wield against Dream.

Quackity adjusted his grip on the handle of the brand, grimacing at both the heat he could feel radiating from it and the uncomfortable pressure it put on his forearm.

His wrist still ached from where it had been crushed by Dream, as well as the dark lines scored down his side, despite the fact that neither of the injuries were a Death wound. All of the pain should’ve gone away, but it still lingered. The only thing Quackity could think of to explain it was the sheer panic that had flooded his mind when Dream had attacked, or the fact that both wounds were caused by Dream.

He really didn’t want to give Dream that much credit, though, didn’t want to think Dream had that much inexplicable power. 

He slipped around behind Dream suddenly, cutting off his own thoughts, and hefted the brand. Dream’s tail froze in place, and then carefully slithered down and around his chained legs. His broad shoulders were tense, and his ears were trembling. Quackity's smile grew wider.

With his free hand, he reached up and tore at the ratty fabric covering the hybrid’s left shoulder blade. It tore easily, but it left a greasy residue in Quackity’s palm that he had to wipe off on the leg of his pants. Gross.

Finally, with a wide grin, he used both hands to raise the brand over his head, and shoved it against Dream’s skin.

Burning iron pressed into clammy flesh, and Dream screamed. This time, it wasn't one of his normal pained screams. No, this one had power, one that fizzed and buzzed the air with the sheer volume.

The sound literally shook the walls, and Quackity had to drop the brand and throw his hands over his ears before his eardrums burst. He stumbled backwards, spine hitting the obsidian wall, and had to slide down to the ground, head pounding with the overwhelming noise. His vision fuzzed out, and a warm liquid started oozing out between his fingers and down his jawline.

Distantly, he noted that the walls had stopped vibrating, but he was still too overcome with the loud, ringing pain plaguing his ears to do anything about it.

He couldn't see. Quackity could only hope he was far enough away from Dream to not get mauled as he shoved himself further along the wall with suddenly weak legs. The seat of his pants met slightly damp obsidian, telling Quackity that he was in the corner where the pool of water used to be. He had filled it in after realizing that Dream wouldn’t be needing it, but he never could get all of the water to go away, no matter how hard he tried.

He blinked rapidly, desperately trying to regain his darkened vision. His ears were still ringing, but he couldn’t hear anything else. Hesitantly, he lifted his slick hands from his ears and blinked again. Nothing. No sound.

Blurry colors, black and violet and orange, finally swirled back into focus, and he glanced warily around, trying to spot Dream. The big orange, blue and tan blob in the center of the room that was probably Dream didn’t move save for the deep shifting of what he assumed was his shoulders, and he was slumped down uncomfortably in his chains.

He must have passed out from the pain of the brand, Quackity figured. If he was still awake, Quackity would be dead. The chains wouldn’t have stopped the warden.

Quackity shakily pushed himself up and edged along the wall, keeping his unfocused eyes on the blurry shape of Dream. He wasn’t taking any chances. Soon, he found himself standing at the edge of the cell. The brightness of the lava pool hurt his eyes, but he shook the pain off. He needed to get out.

He could see well enough to throw the pearl across the chasm. At least, he hoped it went across, otherwise he'd soon be taking a bath in molten rock.

The pearl tugged at his gut, and then he found himself stumbling to his knees on cool blackstone flooring. His head still spun, and he still couldn't hear anything, but at least he wasn't in the cell with Dream anymore.

The complete, utter silence was unnerving. Quackity groaned, and though he could feel the vibration of his vocalization, he couldn't hear a single. Damn. Thing.

The avian pushed himself to his feet with another inaudible whimper. He needed to find some healing and regeneration potions, as soon as he possibly could.

Who knew that Dream could scream like a fully blooded warden?

Chapter Text

Quackity was cleaning blood out of his ears when Sam found him, not even ten minutes later. The actual Warden of the prison (the job variety, of course, not the hybrid) had evidently sprinted from wherever he was to find Quackity, because he was breathing harshly and his legs were shaking.

"What the hell was that?" The tall hybrid wheezed, nearly bending in half as he panted. He leaned against the wall, not even batting an eye at the blood-soaked rag in Quackity’s hands, nor the fact that Quackity was seated against the wall. In Quackity’s defense, he was still a little dizzy from Dream’s…scream? Sonic attack? He didn’t know what the fuck to call it. He just knew that it was fucking loud.

Sam straightened up, chest still heaving, and glanced around the hall that they were in. "It sounded like it came from everywhere!" His eyes were wide, and his short, pointed ears were flattened down against his skull. “It shook the whole building, Quackity!”

"Eh," the avian grunted, twisting his sword so that he could see his reflection better. His left eye was useless, so he had to do some strange angling to see his left ear and clean it out.

"I tried out a brand on the prisoner and, apparently, he can scream like an actual warden." Quackity grimaced and tried to shove the corner of the damp rag he was using into his ear canal. "Fucker burst my eardrums. I had to use a healing and a regen pot to fix them."

Sam’s eyes grew even wider, if that were possible, and he passed a hand through his hair. “Holy shit…” The creeper muttered, taking a few sudden steps away from the wall. Quackity ignored him for the moment and waggled the rag around in his ear canal. He was pretty sure that he had gotten all of the blood cleaned up, but the phantom feeling of it dribbling out of his skull still lingered. 

Quackity tossed the stained rag and his sword into his inventory with a grimace, glancing up at Sam. His vision was still slightly…weird, even though it had been a while since whatever effect had hit his eyes. Colors seemed to be a bit too…vibrant. Sam himself seemed to be an offensively bright green that almost hurt Quackitiy’s eyes, compared to his usual dull mossy green.

He frowned. His vision had better go back to normal soon, or Dream would be in for a very bad time when Quackity next visited the cell.

"You gotta muzzle him, or, or something. It shook the whole prison, Quackity. I’m pretty sure that it even shook the ground outside, too, cause I’ve already got three messages from some people who're concerned about the prison collapsing.” Sam fretted, poking at the communicator he had installed into his armband. 

Quackity rolled his eyes with a scoff, bracing his arms against the wall as he pushed himself to his feet. "Yeah, yeah, I'm already way ahead of you, Sam. I don't want to be fucking deaf again."

He grunted, shoving off from the wall and starting down the hallway. “I’ll see you later, man. I’ve got stuff to do.”

Behind him, he heard Sam mumble something else, but he didn’t really care enough to know what the creeper had said. He had some more pressing matters to attend to, like getting back to the main cell and finding a way to muzzle Dream.

He just had to prepare himself first, both mentally and supplies-wise, before he actually went into Dream’s cell. Otherwise, he might lose a limb, or some other important bodily function. Like his vision.

°°°°°°°

Quackity had to use half a stack of weakness potions to keep Dream down long enough to…muzzle him. He had thought it would require a lot, so he had come prepared with a little over a full stack, but he didn't expect it to take that many. It was a testament to how dangerous wardens were, he supposed. He vaguely wondered how many potions it would take to lay out a full-blooded warden.

A smirk slid across the avian’s face. He thought his way of shutting Dream up, permanently, was incredibly clever. He needed a muzzle that Dream couldn’t just tear off, and he needed a way to keep the hybrid quiet. So, what Quackity had done was stuffed an old, large wad of cloth in Dream’s mouth to muffle any noises that he might make and then proceed to wire his jaw shut. 

Since Quackity didn’t really care to try and learn the correct way to do it, and he since he was pretty sure that if Dream broke his chains again, he could tear off anything else he tried, the avian just punched thick metal wires through Dream’s gums and bone and stitched his mouth shut that way.

Quackity also had the foresight to enchant the wires with Permabind, the enchantment that made Dream's chains persist after death. Dream wouldn't be getting them out anytime soon, if Quackity had any say in it.

The avian finally leaned back, dropping the pliers, ice pick, and remaining bundle of wire into his inventory to inspect his handiwork. Everything looked…well, not good, technically, seeing as there was a steady stream of blood and saliva dribbling from the unconscious prisoner’s swollen-looking mouth, but the wires weren't going anywhere anytime soon, and Dream wouldn’t be able to scream (or bite) anymore.

Quackity absently wiped his bloodied hands on the front of his shirt and glanced down at Dream’s chest cavity. He then glanced back up at the prisoner’s face and still-closed eyes contemplatively. Dream was still out. The avian cocked his head, pondering. Now might actually be a good time to inspect, and maybe even cut out, the warden's heart…

He hadn’t been able to when Dream was conscious. Quackity had learned that was a bad idea when Dream’s mask first broke, but now…well, now Dream was very much comatose. He wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop the avian.

With a wicked grin, Quackity moved a bit closer to the hybrid’s torso, shoving his head to the side so that the bloody saliva wouldn’t drip onto his beanie. It didn’t really work, as Dream’s head just lolled back forward, but it was the thought that counted, or some other bull like that. Quackity was just glad he knew how to get blood out of clothes.

He reached into Dream’s open chest, past the sharply protruding ribs, and not so gently prodded at one of the huge, slowly inflating and deflating lungs. Dream didn’t react, which Quackity took as the go-ahead to begin.

He pulled a pair of shears from his inventory and carefully took hold of the warden’s huge, pulsing heart in his free hand, ducking a bit closer to Dream’s chest so that he could see a bit better.

One of the translucent blue souls silently moaned past his knuckles, and almost automatically Quackity let go of the heart and tried to grab it. The soul twisted through his fingers, an intangible wisp that he couldn't quite get a grip on. It disappeared back into the dark mess of organs before Quackity could inspect it much further, making him frown but otherwise dismiss it. The souls were another project for a different day.

Taking the heart back into his hand, he gently, ever so gently shifted the heart and brought the shears closer to the arteries, intent on snipping through the thick tissues and cartilage keeping it bound in the prisoner’s body. It only took a few cuts, and then the luminescent organ was free.

With a moist splat, the glowing heart thumped down into his awaiting palm, still beating even as its glow dimmed and it seemed to deflate. Violet-red blood pooled in his palm and dribbled down his wrist, leaving an odd, stained residue that stood out sharply from his tanned skin.

Dream jolted awake with a strangled choking noise, immediately making an aborted biting motion towards Quackity’s head that twisted off into a muffled, strangled wheeze of pain.

Quackity flinched back, instantly turning tail and darting for the edge of the cell. He hurled an ender pearl across the lava chasm as soon as he could pull one out of his inventory, discarding his dropped shears on the floor of the cell for now. He was not hanging around for the fallout of Dream realizing what Quackity had just done.

As he jolted into the control room, he heard the faint chh sound of Dream dying, and then the clatter of chains as the body of their captive disappeared. 

Quackity scrambled to the levers and threw down the one that would drop the lava. He had about two minutes, tops, until the prisoner respawned, and he didn't want to give Dream a target to see and come after when he spawned back.

The avian let himself lean back as the lava began to fall, and allowed himself a brief moment to laugh in both relief and joy. This time, he had gotten in and out of Dream’s cell without being injured, he had managed to permanently muzzle the monster, and he had gotten the most valuable drop he had ever seen, that probably anyone had ever seen.

The warden’s heart still resting in his hand twitched minutely, apparently still trying to beat for its former host. Quackity inspected it with wide eyes, not at all put off by the strangely colored blood that still occasionally squirted from the arteries.

It was still glowing, though not as brightly as before, and most of the violet-colored veins spanning most of its surface had lost their vibrancy. Despite this, it was still disturbingly beautiful, if one could ignore the fact that it was a literal heart.

Quackity just wished he could show it to Sam. It was so, so freaking awesome. He might now actually own the most powerful, most valuable item on the entire server!

He wondered what he should actually do with it. He only had one, after all. 

For now.

Chapter Text

In one hand he had a bone saw, and in the other he held a long, slender knife about as wide as one of his fingers. His goal today was to try and scrape off the strange blue stuff that seemed to be growing on Dream’s hair, antlers, tail, and shoulders. Quackity thought that it was some kind of skulk, or something, but he wanted to have a closer look at it before he started to sell it or anything. The bone saw was for his usual gathering of ribs and antlers, and maybe the tail, too, if Dream misbehaved.

After the long wait for the lava to fall, he pearled into the cell and landed skillfully in front of Dream’s slumped, hanging body. The warden wearily raised his head up in Quackity’s direction, for once his matted, greasy hanks of hair not completely curtained over his face.

The hybrid’s ears flickered, and his milky eyes twitched unpredictably around in his skull. Quackity took a moment to admire the faded aquamarine color Dream’s irises were. It was a very nice color, he had to admit. Most of the time, Quackity didn’t bother looking at the warden’s eyes, mostly because they were so high above his own head, and because Dream was blind, so it would be pointless, but today he didn’t really have to go out of his way to do so.

Quackity switched his knife to his left hand for a moment, preparing to grab something from his inventory, as a glinting flash of light reflecting from the lava seemed to catch one of Dream’s eyes, and suddenly, the hybrid’s gaze was locked onto the razor sharp edge of the knife. Quackity took a few steps forward, and then immediately those milky eyes were darting towards the avian's own.

Dream's faded pupils flicked back and forth between the knife and Quackity’s face, shrinking down to pinpricks in fear. They danced back to the knife and lingered, a terrified focus that Quackity was not used to seeing from the warden. It took Quackity an embarrassingly long moment to realize what was wrong, but when he finally did, anger flooded through him.

Dream could still see. He had fucking lied to Quackity.

The avian dropped the bone saw to the floor, grip tightening around the hilt of the eight-inch knife, and snarled.

“You aren’t blind, are you? Dream…did you fucking lie to me?!” The words ripped the air from Dream’s already struggling lungs, and he wanted to plead, no, no, he didn’t, this was just a misunderstanding, Quackity please— but his jaw was wired shut, and the sodden rag clogging his mouth and throat prevented him from making cognitive sounds. He could do nothing but garble nonsensical sounds and shake his head, chains too strong and unyielding for him to pull away as Quacity’s fingers snared on his swollen jaw, as the blade in the avian’s hand rose closer and closer to his face.

“How about I fix that?” His torturer spat, yanking Dream’s head down closer to the ground, closer to his own scarred face. “You shouldn’t have lied to me, Dream. You know that. You know the repercussions for that.” The words scraped painfully into Dream’s ears, and a strangled whimper escaped from around his clogged throat.

The slender blade glinted harshly in the orange lava light as it inched closer to his eye. Quackity’s feral snarl stretched wider, single gold tooth gleaming amongst the rest of the jagged white incisors.

Thick, watery tears started to stream down his cheeks, but he couldn't stop them. Couldn't stop this. 

He just wanted to go home . Was that too much to ask? After all he'd been though?

Despite the impending agony, Dream greedily drank in every detail, every feature, every color that he could see. After this…after this…he'd never be able to do so again.

Dream couldn’t even scream, this time. Not when his jaw was wired so tightly shut.

°°°°°°°°°

It was nasty, gruesome work that Quackity had to do, but he did it regardless. No one else was going to do it, and, well. If Dream wasn't ever going to cave and give him the revive book, Quackity may as well go ahead and exploit the man for other means.

With a scowl, he flicked a small, charred chunk of something off of his shirt, disgust smeared all over his features. He had just finished actually blinding Dream, since the hybrid thought that he could get away with lying to Quackity without any repercussions. The avian scoffed. Fat chance of that. There was no way Dream would ever see again, even if he respawned. Quackity had made sure of it.

He had gone so far as to pour lava in the hybrid's empty eye sockets, which almost did instakill him, but Quackity managed to keep him alive in the hope that his eye sockets would be too damaged by the next respawn to be able to reform the warden’s eyes.

Maybe this would actually break Dream…? Quackity hoped so. He was tired of wrestling with the huge man every time he resisted. Even though Dream was weak, and his muscles atrophied, he still gained an inexplicable strength from somewhere whenever Quackity crossed some unknown line. It was very annoying.

On another note, he had started to advertise the warden 'drops' he had. People were starting to buy them, which was very good. It was something that was becoming his main source of funding, since he didn’t have time to go out mining anymore, what with his overseeing of Las Nevadas’ construction, his city ordinances and other paperwork to fill out and write, his supervision of his growing market for warden drops, and his nightly visits with Dream. He probably needed to rest more. Silently, he pushed that thought away. Sleep was for the weak, and if Quackity was anything, it wasn't weak.

It would help pay for Las Nevadas, which was becoming very rapidly his most important project. He had Foolish building it for him, currently, and it was coming along great. He could use the items and valuables he got from the sales he got off of the warden items. He mostly sold antlers and ribs, some of the blue sculk-like substance he had skinned from the prisoner’s extremities, a few teeth that remained from before he'd wired Dream's mouth shut, and even the single heart he had managed to steal away with. (He wasn’t brave enough to get another one. Not yet, at least.)

He passed his sudden collection of warden items off as part of his newly-created warden farm. Some people were skeptical that he had managed to make a warden farm, but that was fine. It was better than telling them where he had actually gotten the items.

Quackity was quite happy with all of these new arrangements. While he was still a very busy man, and didn’t get much sleep even on the good days, he was becoming very successful.

He couldn’t wait to show his budding country off to his two fiancés, Sapnap and Karl. It was only a matter of finding them, now. He had no idea where they had gone. 

He wasn’t too worried about it. They’d turn up eventually.

ººººº

Sam was in the main cell to clean, and only clean, everything up. The smell of rot had gotten so bad that it permeated through the prison walls, and he couldn’t stand it anymore. His gasmask blocked it somewhat, but the scent still leaked through the cracks. He was done with it.

He didn’t want to look at the unconscious body of Dream as he cleaned up the ungodly amount of blood –it was caked centimeters thick in some places– and the few teeth and bone shards and bits of dried-out flesh and gore. The worst ones were the fresh chunks, still sticky and gooey and gleaming—

Sam had to pearl out of the cell for several minutes, just to catch his breath. When he went back into the cell, his gaze caught an actual, full glimpse of Dream, and then he couldn’t pull his eyes away.

It was his first time seeing the prisoner up close since he and Quackity had chained the man down, and subsequently, his second time seeing any kind of warden, hybrid or otherwise. 

Dream was still massive, but when he was kneeling, Sam’s head was about a foot higher than the warden hybrid’s own antlered skull. He was missing an antler. The left antler. Sam tried not to look too closely at the gaping, weeping crater where it had once been. The thick irons holding Dream down did not make Sam feel any better about being in here. According to Quackity, Dream had the strength to break his chains if he was provoked enough. The thought made Sam want to leave, right this instant, just in case he did something to set Dream off. He was warily afraid, and rightly so. Nobody in their right mind would pick a fight with a warden, even if the warden was a half-breed.

Since the last time Sam was in the main cell, Quackity had moved the bolts for Dream's arms to the walls on either side of him, making Dream hang in a sort of 'T' position and exposing his chest. Sam could see Dream’s organs, as well as what looked like wispy teal souls twisting around and behind them. Sam tried not to inspect anything too closely. Just being this close to Dream made him feel sick with guilt. He didn’t want to see any of the marks caused by his inaction against Quackity.

He caught a brief glimpse of Dream's face, dark with blood and grime and filth. He turned away just as quickly, stomach churning. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to know what Quackity had done to Dream. He was only here to clean the cell, and nothing else. Even still, Sam found his eyes gravitating towards the pitiful form of the hybrid. He just… couldn’t stop looking, even when he tried.

The man's shirt was a ragged mess of scraps hanging off of his shoulders, but the huge, only slightly-torn red-and-brown stained pants were new. Sam supposed that Dream's old pair had been too small and shredded, and had probably revealed too much, which is most likely why Quackity had gotten him a pair that fit.

If nothing else, it was… kind , of Quackity, to preserve Dream's decency. Sam was honestly surprised that the avian had the presence of mind to do anything like that at all. He was convinced that his …compatriot… had gone nuts, what with the way he had been acting.

The only people actively searching for wardens were the sort of folks that were downright insane, and Quackity had to be one of those mad folk, because while he wasn’t actively searching wardens out, he was actively torturing one. Sam was afraid for the man what kind of karma would come to bite him. Sam was afraid of the karma that would come for himself, too, for being a part of this, even if he wasn’t an active one.

Dream cut out a pitiful creature, slumped down among the chains holding him up, but even still, he was big. The fact caught Sam's attention once more, and he couldn't help but mull over it.

If Dream were standing, he'd be taller than Sam himself, a fact that Sam still had trouble getting over. Before the mask had broken, before Dream’s status as a hybrid had been revealed, Sam had been the tallest person on the server, aside from Foolish when the demigod was in his twenty-six foot tall form. It wasn’t often Sam found himself having to look up at somebody, and while he didn’t have to, currently, because Dream was chained down, the knowledge that he would have to still plagued him.

Sam stalwartly ignored how his musings about Dream’s height were how he was avoiding the topic of the torturing and, Prime, the harvesting. He didn’t want to think about it.

Grimly, Sam figured that it was probably a good thing Quackity had broken trained Dream before he shattered the mask. Otherwise, the hybrid would probably still be fighting them, and…

Sam's eyes darted over Dream's form. Even with how broken and bloodied he was now, even though he was chained down with the thickest irons that they could make, there was no way he and Quackity would be able to restrain the man if he wanted to attack or escape. It had been difficult enough to get him locked down in the first place, even if his struggles were half hearted and weak.

He doubted that they would be strong enough to even try, if Dream really, really attempted to escape.

Sam finished his cleaning quickly, and was gone from the cell before his thoughts could linger on such pessimistic ideas for much longer.

Chapter Text

Sapnap pulled the door shut behind him, absently focusing on the item in his hands. It was fairly heavy, about ten or fifteen pounds, and was made out of bone. There were three sharp tines decorating one end of the tinted ivory and a porous-looking pedicle attached to the other. In a way, it was pretty, but the only thing Sapnap could think about was the mob that the item had come from. 

A warden.

Sapnap didn’t know how the avian had done it, but he was now the sole creator, owner, and operator of a freaking warden farm. If Sapnap didn’t know any better, he’d say that his fiancé was insane for even attempting to do such a thing, but somehow, Quackity had managed it successfully. If nothing else, Sapnap was both impressed and proud of his chosen partner. Quackity had balls, Sapnap had to give him that. No one else in their right mind would even think about making a warden farm, but here Quackity was, the proprietor of the only one on the server.

“...Sapnap…?” A hazy voice drifted out from the living room, pulling the fireborn from his musings. Delightedly, Sapnap realized that it was George. He grinned, suppressing the urge to explode into a million questions and ask if George planned to stay out of his room for a while. He forced himself to stay calm as he walked into the living room, but couldn’t quite hide his elated grin.

"Oh, hey George.” While Sapnap was internally ecstatic that George had decided to get out of his room for a bit, he didn't want to point anything out. George might get defensive about it and retreat back under his covers for the next month.

He caught sight of his friend on their ugly mushroom-patterned couch, and his grin widened. “What’s up, man?”

George yawned, shooting Sapnap a spare glance before looking back down to a book in his lap. “I got hungry. And the couch looked comfy.” Sapnap nodded, absentmindedly tapping his fingers, and then brightened when he remembered what he had in his hand.

“Oh! Oh yeah, George, look what Quackity gave me!” Sapnap bounced forward, brandishing the antler at the perpetually-tired brunette. “He’s gone and made himself a warden farm! Isn’t that fucking awesome?”

"Quackity managed to make a warden farm?” George lazily rolled his head back from his book to squint at Sapnap, eyes latching onto the large, almost three-foot long, pale cyan-and-ivory antler his friend was inspecting almost instantly. 

Sapnap nodded enthusiastically, peering curiously at some strangely-shaped bumps and gouges in the tinted bone. "He gave this to me as an apology present. For missing our dinner with Karl."

"Oh," George blinked drowsily, reaching up with a hand to rub at a drooping eye. "Okay. That's cool, I guess." The other man's mouth stretched out into another yawn, and he set the book down on the small coffee table, turning over on his side with a small grumble. "I think I'm gonna…take a…nap."

Sapnap tried not to be too disappointed at George's obvious dismissal, but otherwise ignored it. He was used to George doing that. He was focused more on the warden antler. It had started looking… really familiar, but he just couldn't put his finger on why.

As he thought, his eyes drifted towards an oddly shaped gouge near the base of the antler and lingered over the strange mark.

He didn't think he'd ever seen anything like the antler before, really. 

He'd never actually seen a real warden up close. They were too dangerous to be around. The only one he had ever seen was Dream, whenever he felt comfortable enough to take off his mask and let his hybrid features show. It had been so long since he’d done that around them, though, not since… prime, not since before the first war. Not since Dream started to spiral over the loss of his territory. 

His thoughts turned and tumbled around his head as he compared this antler to what he could remember of Dream's. He didn't suppose different wardens would have too dissimilar antlers…

And then, out of nowhere, something clicked in his brain. Sapnap nearly dropped the thing at the sudden, horrifying revelation. He knew why it looked familiar!

"George," Sapnap breathed, staring intently at the sharp, trisected tines, at the cyan grooves running the length of the bone in his hands. Even the subtle patterns decorating the damn thing were familiar! 

George grunted at him disinterestedly, shoving his face a little further into the couch cushions. "What."

"George, I think this might be one of Dream's antlers." It took several seconds to register, but then George sat bolt upright from where he was laying and twisted around to look at Sapnap, alarm and confusion clear in his heterochromatic eyes. "What?" 

Sapnap nodded, distress painting his expression, and gingerly handed the antler off to the other. George grasped it with both hands, slender fingers curling around the textured surface, and inspected it closely. 

"Y-y'know how Dream had a notch in one of his antlers, the one he got from when he fell through one of the trees he was running on right off of a cliff? And you know how it was sorta shaped like a pig?" George nodded slowly, creeping vines of dread starting to crawl up from his gut and snare around the base of his throat.

With a shaking hand, Sapnap reached out and pointed at a three-inch long, distinctly pig shaped indent near the base of the antler.

George’s breath froze in his chest, because the mark was exactly the same as the one Dream had. He traced over it with shaking fingers, brain tumbling down in a haze of concerning thoughts and already forming terrible, terrible conclusions. Above all, denial hung heavily in his throat. It–it couldn't be Dream’s antler. There was no way the man would let anything like that happen to himself.

"Are you–" George stopped, and swallowed heavily. "How can you be sure it's from Dream? What if it's just a coincidence?"

Sapnap’s brow furrowed, and he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before breathing in slowly. "How-how can we be sure that it isn't? You and I both know that Dream doesn’t shed his antlers. What if…what if Sam found out about Dream’s…about his hybrid half? What if–if Quackity…” His throat closed before he could say it.

The words hurt his heart, more than anything Sapnap had ever felt before, but at the same time, they were pushing to burst from his throat. The very idea was crushing, but…he had to voice it. He wanted George to tell him that the idea was ridiculous, that he was coming up with dumb ideas. He oh-so desperately wanted to be wrong. “...What if…George, what if Quackity’s getting all of the drops from Dream? What if that’s what his-his farm is?”

George opened his mouth and made an aborted sound. “N…no, that, that can’t be it. That’s not possible. Dream only has one life left! There’s no way Quackity would be able to have that many parts if he was harvesting them from him!” George snapped, then stilled, fingers tightening so much that his knuckles turned white around the shaft of the antler. “He’d have to have killed Dream tons of times, and that’s…im…possible.” The brunette trailed off, eyes drooping from Sapnap’s own down to the smooth ridges of the antler. He swallowed, almost nervously, and murmured, “unless…”

“What, unless what!?” Sapnap pushed, wrapping a hand around George’s, and subsequently, the base of the antler. 

"You don't think…what if Sam and Quackity are forcing a death glitch?” George asked quietly, tone uncertain. The color in Sapnap’s face drained at his friend’s words almost immediately, and he yanked his hand back as if George's touch had burned. “You don’t—you don’t really think that, do you?” The fireborn’s voice cracked, and his fire-tinged eyes glistened in the froglights hanging throughout the room. 

Normal respawns hurt, but if you got caught in a death glitch, or respawn glitch…that would be so much worse . You could die over and over, without losing any of your lives, but you felt everything. Everything. Even when the death wound disappeared after the respawn, the pain would linger and keep building up and up and up, unless you could get out of the glitch, but even then, the ache would still be there. There was a chance it could stay for weeks, or even months. The worst part was, the glitched deaths wouldn't even show up on a communicator, so unless someone knew that you needed help, via word of mouth or by witnessing the glitch in action, you would be trapped. If Dream was in a respawn glitch, they wouldn't know for sure unless they saw him in person.

George bit at his lower lip and slowly, damningly, nodded. “I…I don’t want to…I hope to Prime that they’re not, but…”

He sucked in a shaking breath of air, and exhaled slowly. He didn’t want to believe it, but…he had a logical mind. He wouldn’t let himself believe in fantasies for long, and especially when they involved Dream. The real Dream, at least, not the one that met him whilst he was asleep. “How else would Quackity, of all people, manage to make something as impossible as a warden farm? Sapnap, Dream’s stuck in the prison, and there’s nobody but Sam in there to monitor what’s going on. What if they’re doing horrible things to him?”

Sapnap turned abruptly, pacing his nerves out as he circled the couch. His gaze would catch on the antler every time he passed George, and each time, he would feel a small, sickening flare of dread in his gut. That couldn’t be it, could it? Sam and…and Quackity, Sapnap’s fiancé, wouldn’t do that. They were all close friends with Dream, once, and no matter what the man had done, Sapnap didn’t think it would push either of his friends to do something so horrible.

Unless… George was right, of course. Everything Sam did in the prison was unmonitored. There weren’t any people to keep Sam in check, if he went overboard. As for Quackity…Sapnap hated to acknowledge it, but ever since Technoblade’s execution, the man had begun to spiral. Sapnap could almost compare his descent to Dream’s. Quackity had grown so obsessive that he rarely ever contacted either of his fiancés, but Sapnap didn’t know what he was fixated on. He’d asked the avian to talk to him about it, but he’d brushed the fireborn off and told him not to worry about it.

Sapnap held back a conflicted whine, dragging one of his hands over his mouth as he passed George once more. He stopped abruptly and whirled to face George, a fierce expression on his face even as his hands trembled. “I…I don’t know, George. I…we can’t make any assumptions, but… I can’t just let this rest. I need to know.”

“We need to visit the prison,” George murmured, gently running his hand over the antler. It had to be Dream’s. Dream had let his hybrid side out the most around George, and George was the most familiar with what the man looked like. This antler was absolutely one that had belonged to Dream. “We need to visit Dream, and…and if there’s anything awful going on in there…”

He looked Sapnap dead in the eye, gaze firm. “If that’s the case, we have to get him out. We owe him that much.” Slowly, Sapnap nodded. They did. At the very least, they owed it to Dream for not sticking by him as he began to deteriorate. Wilbur, the wars, god, even Tommy had sent him over the edge, and all Sapnap and George had done was stand by and watch. If there was any time to try and make amends, now would be it.

Dream had trusted George and Sapnap enough to show them his hybrid status. Of course, being Dream, he couldn't be just any hybrid. No, he was part fucking warden . Nonetheless, his two friends didn't have a problem with it. He was Dream, he was their friend, and nothing could change that. Not even now, when he was locked up in Pandora for all of the horrible deeds he did.

The both of them were sure all of what Dream did had something to do with the fact that he was part warden , one of the most aggressive, territorial mobs out there, but…they weren't going to say anything about it. They wouldn't tell anyone what they thought. It was Dream's secret to share as he saw fit, not theirs. Not that it mattered anymore, anyway. Sam, Quackity, and whoever else was running about the prison, knew now. That much was evidenced by the goddamn warden parts that used to be attached to Dream.

If Dream was being mistreated in the prison…they would have to put a stop to it.

Chapter Text

They devised a plan. Step one was reconnaissance. Either George or Sapnap would have to go and visit Dream in the prison, to see how the conditions inside were. If they were wrong (and God, George hoped that they were wrong) about Dream being… mistreated in the prison, then they’d just go about their day, happy in the knowledge that the notched antler was just a very, very alarming coincidence. If not…if they were right about what was happening, then they’d have to do something. Be it changing the prison’s management, a public execution, or even breaking Dream out, they were going to do something.

So that was why Sapnap was trekking along the Prime Path to Pandora’s Vault, armed with his sword, the antler, and a slew of potions. He knew that he wouldn’t get to take any of his items inside of the prison due to Sam’s security measures, but it made him feel better about confronting Sam alone. George had stayed home in Kinoko to see if he could think of anyone who’d be willing to help them with their… situation.

Dream had been in the prison for eleven months, almost a whole year. There was no telling what kind of condition he would be in when Sapnap finally saw him. Sapnap knew that he was preparing for the worst, he knew that he was being pessimistic, but he was worried.  

He stared up at the stories-tall compound as he grew closer and closer, a heavy feeling of unease bubbling underneath his skin. Even months before, when he had first brought Dream in, and then later, when he had visited the prisoner only to threaten him, Pandora's Vault just had this… aura surrounding it that put Sapnap off. It was… foreboding.

The fireborn stopped before a small structure centered in front of the Vault, peering carefully at the yawning entrance. He knew the procedure to gain access to the inside, he had messaged Sam about it yesterday, but it still seemed…dumb. Archaic. After all, why would someone want to talk through a speaker when comms existed?

“Sam!” Sapnap shouted up at the dark gatehouse the main portal rested in. “Sam! I need to talk to you!” He felt ridiculous, yelling at the impenetrable walls of the prison, but it was necessary to get the Warden’s attention. The hybrid had recently built the speaker system into the entrance of Pandora so that communication would be more ‘accessible.’ At least, according to Sam, it would be.

Honestly, Sapnap thought everything would be easier if Sam just used his comms like a normal person, but hey, what did he know, he wasn’t the one running the (possibly corrupt) high-security prison.

The intercom crackled to life with a grating buzz, and then Sam’s voice, seemingly exhausted even through the speaker system, filtered out. 

“Sapnap? You’re here sooner than I thought you’d be.” The whine of the speakers spawned an irritating ringing in Sapnap’s pointed ears, and he rubbed at one with a grimace. He’d been around too many explosions in his lifetime.

“I had some free time,” the fireborn groused, shaking his head vigorously to ward off the tinnitus. It didn't really work, but one could always hope.

He heard Sam hum over the speaker, the sound crackling and distorted. “Al…alright. Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll be right down.”

Sapnap shifted in place, a small frown curling over his lips. He hated waiting, but it was a necessary thing to do.

It took Sam nearly ten minutes to emerge from the small gatehouse, decked out in his gold-lined netherite armor, long, decorated trident in hand. Sapnap had to crane his neck to meet the creeper’s eyes, a small frown creasing his lips. He hated how damn near everyone on the server was taller than he was. 

Well. It couldn’t be helped. Not unless he got some platform boots, or something of the like.

"I want to visit Dream," Sapnap said as cordially as he could. Dream was right there, just inside the prison! He was so close, and the majority of Sapnap’s being was screaming at him to shove past Sam and investigate the prison himself. He held himself back, though, because that would just end up with him in his own cell.

Sam hummed, noncommittal. "Dream isn't taking visitors right now, unfortunately. Or for the near future." He checked something on the communicator attached to his wrist and huffed, tapping some message or command onto the screen. His eyes, black and gold underneath lidded green, drifted away from the comm to peer at the shorter man. An unidentifiable emotion was hidden behind the creeper’s bright pupils.

"What? Why not?!" A part of Sapnap was surprised, but another part of his mind flared up with suspicion. We didn’t even think of the possibility that I might be barred entry…

Sam sighed, the hand curled around his trident sliding down lower on the shaft. His grip was loose, unprepared. "He's been misbehaving. I have to enforce punishments somehow, Sapnap "

Sapnap flared, indignation fanning the coals of his already simmering anger. "You couldn't have told me that yesterday when I called you?!" His fingers twitched, sparks drifting from his palms, and he had to curl his hands into fists to keep from immolating right then and there. 

Sam stilled, short ears flicking back against the sides of his skull. “S-sorry, Sapnap. Dream tried to escape last night, and I didn’t have time to message you.” That was a lie. Dream hadn’t been able to really move for months.

The fireborn scowled, sharp fangs clenched in a facsimile of a smile. “Alright, fine. Whatever. I got a question for you, then.” He exhaled, silky trails of smoke slipping out from between his clenched incisors to drift through the air. “Why the fuck has Quackity been coming here every other day?”

Sam flinched this time, fingers tightening around his trident, and Sapnap knew he had him. See, he had watched the prison for about a week, before he had messaged the creeper hybrid about visiting, and what he had seen was Quackity arriving and leaving on his own, every other day or so. 

That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was, sometimes the avian was covered in blood when he left.

Sam quavered at Sapnap’s unexpected question, searching for words that would not come. He finally found an excuse, a full ten seconds later. It was long enough for Sapnap’s irises, usually a dark coal black, to turn a blazing vermilion. "He's…been helping me. As a security guard in training."

George and Sapnap hadn’t planned to confront either Quackity or Sam about whatever might be going on with the whole prison situation, but Sapnap was already pissed. He didn’t even think about the words as he spat them out, he just wanted to get Sam to admit to something, for Sam to know that Sapnap knew too.

The fireborn’s expression darkened. "Awesamdude," he started, taking a menacing step towards the tall creeper hybrid. Despite himself, Sam inched a pace back. Even though he had a couple of feet over Sapnap, they both knew that the fireborn was the better fighter. Sapnap was too violent and… feral, when he fought, and it just wasn’t something Sam could compete with.

"I know what's going on in there," the shorter man hissed quietly. Sam felt a small jolt of alarm spike through his spine, but he forced it down. There was no way that Sapnap could know. Unless…

"Yeah?" Sam blustered, hoping to distract Sapnap. "So what if I'm only feeding Dream potatoes? That's how he planned it." Sam shrugged, trying to come off as nonchalant. He didn't think he was successful. He hadn't actually fed Dream in months. He hadn't needed to.

The fireborn's gaze narrowed as more smoke began to waft from the corners of his mouth. 

"Sam," Sapnap growled warningly. His hand fizzled for a moment as he reached into his inventory, and then there was an antler in his hand. A very distinct, familiar antler. The weight of it dragged the branched end down to the ground with a hollow sounding 'clunk'. Sam blanched, face paling to a sickeningly yellow shade of green, and he took a step back.

Sapnap stalked a pace forward, the tines of the antler scraping gratingly against the stone path as he matched Sam pace-for-pace. He backed the creeper all the way into the gatehouse, where only the glow of the violet nether portal and Sapnap’s own vermilion eyes provided light.

“What the fuck are you doing to Dream?” Sapnap finally snarled, dark smoke billowing from his mouth. His fingers were twitching, and he had to drop the antler back into his inventory, lest he incinerate his only evidence. 

Behind his gas mask, Sam was losing a mental battle. His heart was thrumming frantically, and he couldn’t breathe. He wanted, so, so badly, to bring Sapnap into the prison, to show him Dream, to make Quackity stop. But, he was scared. Sam knew what would happen to him if word got out about what they were doing. The majority of the server was composed of hybrids, like himself, Dream, and Quackity. They all knew the horrors of trafficking, of harvesting. If word got out, Sam would be done for. They’d lynch him, along with Quackity.

Sam was terrified, so he turned and ran.

Sam disappeared into the light of the portal, and, before Sapnap could chase after him, the magic shattered into tiny particles of ultraviolet shards. The fireborn slammed into the backing wall of the portal half a second too late, a snarl adorning his face, teeth bared and claws scraping sickeningly down the obsidian. 

“AWESAMDUDE!” He roared, eyes ablaze with fury. “YOU GET YOUR BASTARD ASS BACK OUT HERE!”

Sapnap’s voice echoed in the small room of the gatehouse, multiplying and distorting, then finally fading out into nothing. He was alone. Sam was gone.

“Mother fucker!” The fireborn spat, smashing his fist into the blackstone wall in a bout of unrestrained rage. He felt something in his hand crack, and he jerked his fist back with a hiss and another vicious curse. He glared at the deactivated portal whilst cradling his broken hand close to his chest, scowl deepening.

Goddammit. Sapnap had just fucked up, hadn’t he? His temper had gotten the better of him, and he’d revealed that he knew something about what Sam was doing. Now Sam would be on guard, and everything would be so much harder on them. They'd have to work fast, now, to see what was going on inside Pandora’s Vault.

George was going to be so disappointed in Sapnap. 

God-fucking-dammit.

°°°°°

Sapnap was right. George was upset with him when he told the brunette how his prison visit had gone. Which. Whoops, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it now, not when it had already happened. George had just sighed, long and tired, and had waved him over to look at the list of trustworthy people he’d been compiling.

"Is there anyone you can think of that we could ask for help?" George asked, tapping a list in his hands. "I've been going through the people we know, but…" The brunette huffed out of his nose, brows furrowing. 

"But we don't know if we can trust any of them," Sapnap finished for his friend as he slid into the chair across their small writing table. George nodded in confirmation, dropping the paper on the table and absently plucking up the quill. He gave Sapnap a small side-eye before casually scratching another name onto the list.

“We could see if Karl would be willing to help us,” George gently put forth, but Sapnap was already shaking his head. 

“His memory’s gotten worse since you were last awake, George. He barely remembers who I am anymore, and I’m with him nearly every day. I can’t…” The fireborn’s voice cracked, and he had to bite at his lip with one sharp canine to hold back the sudden swell of emotion. “I can’t do that to him.”

His friend looked at him, brows creasing in concern. “He’s…he’s gotten worse?” George slumped back in his chair, vacuously fidgeting with the feathery end of the quill. “Oh… How bad has he gotten?”

Sapnap slouched in his seat, surreptitiously scrubbing at one of his eyes and sighing. The tips of his pointed ears flicked downwards, and a small wisp of smoke escaped from his lips. “I…I don’t think he’d know who you are. It’s been so long since he’s seen you.” The fireborn sighed wearily. “He doesn’t even know who Quackity is. I let him know about the possible prison situation, just to let him know where I would be, and he just…accepted it. Like it didn’t concern him.”

When Sapnap had told Karl about Quackity…about what he and George assumed that the avian was a part of, the man accepted the news with no question. He didn’t really remember the avian, Sapnap had to assume. The fact broke the fireborn’s heart. Not only the part that Karl didn’t remember who Quackity was, but the fact that Karl was forgetting in the first place. He didn’t know what to do about Karl’s amnesia, and it was steadily getting worse and worse and worse.  

Sapnap sucked in a deep breath and gradually exhaled it. He had to focus on one problem at a time. At least he knew what Karl’s situation was. At least he could keep an eye on the brunette. Now, Dream, Dream was who he needed to focus on right now. The man was their current unknown, and had the most precarious position.

“Is–is there anyone else you can think of?” Sapnap abruptly changed the subject, straightening in his seat and planting his elbows on the table. George shot him a disapproving look, but he ignored it. 

"What about Fundy?"

Sapnap immediately scoffed at the other man, lips twisting down into a scowl. "Fundy won't speak to any of us, especially not Dream. Not after what you pulled at their wedding."

George fell silent at the reminder, then changed the subject. Sapnap frowned at the brunette, but now wasn’t the time to admonish him for his past choices.

"Punz?" 

"I…I don't know…" Sapnap groaned, running a hand over his eyes. George squinted at the fireborn and waved his hand, telling him to elaborate.

"He did betray Dream in the bunker, but," he paused, and pensively drummed his fingers over the table. "But, I swear he and Dream had a plan. He was acting kinda strange when he came and told us the location of the bunker, and you know how close he and Dream always were." George frowned and leaned back in his chair, grasping his chin in one hand and humming thoughtfully. 

It was food for thought. It was so unlike Punz to go and stab somebody in the back like that, especially somebody he was close to. They all knew that Punz had a streak of avarice a mile wide, but so did every mercenary that lived on the server. Punz valued relationships, and they both doubted he would throw someone under the metaphorical ravager just for money.

They went through the list of the server members, scratching out names that would not help them at all. In the end, they had Punz marked down as a possibility on their list, along with Technoblade, Philza, Foolish, and Eret. Then they had another list, one full of neutral people who might help them break Dream out, which consisted of Callahan, Ponk, Boomer, Eryn, maybe Hannah, and Purpled. 

They crossed Purpled off of the list. They didn’t know if they’d have enough to buy his silence on the matter.

Sapnap thought Connor could help, but George quickly shot him down. Dream had made them promise, damn near begged them not to reveal any connection between the hybrid and his son, and since they (and Connor) were the only ones on the Smp who knew of Dream and Connor's relation, it was their job to uphold that promise. Prime only knew how the people of the Smp would use that info.

In the end, their list was depressingly small. In the end, they decided to break into the prison with just themselves, with just the two of them. George believed that they could do it. Sapnap thought that they needed more armor, better potions, before they tried.

Mentally, though, they were prepared. They were ready. They would break into Pandora’s Vault, the most secure prison on the entire server, and see what needed to be done about Dream.

…

…They were both terrified about what they might find inside The Vault.

Chapter Text

They had to stake out the entrance of the prison until Sam came out. Unfortunately, he rarely did, so it took nearly a month for the opportunity to arise to follow after him through the gatehouse portal. They both had a slew of invisibility potions, strength, weakness, fire resistance, and Sapnap even had a God Apple in his inventory.

Truth be told, it was… stupidly easy to follow Sam, step for step, into the main lobby of the prison while invisible. The creeper barely even looked at his surroundings, his focus solely on the screen attached to his armband.

Once they made it into the lobby, it was all over for Sam. 

Not a lot of people bothered to remember, but George could be dangerous when he actually wanted to be. He was a member of the Dream team for a goddamn reason, and not just because he and Dream were close friends. Sapnap would describe George as akin to a bear, or perhaps a jungle cat. Unbothered and lazy, unless something pissed him off.

George darted towards Sam, who turned at the sudden sound of footsteps. He reacted too late, though, as George reached him and hooked his leg around the back of Sam’s own, knocking out the back of creeper’s knee, and then in the same motion leapt and snagged a hand over the taller man's throat, dragging him down to the ground. Sam choked in surprise when his body was slammed into the blackstone tiles by an invisible assailant, hands flying up to defend himself, but Sapnap was already there, tearing off Sam’s gasmask and pouring a weakness potion down the taller man’s throat.

Sam gagged, eyes wide as he tried to spit the potion back out. He slashed wildly at the air, scoring a series of bloody lines through George’s left bicep with his clawed fingers. The brunette hissed, flinching back, and that was enough for Sam to throw the invisible man off and stagger to his feet.

The creeper retched, managing to cough out an insubstantial amount of the weakness potion even as he pulled his trident from his inventory. Sapnap drew his own sword and lunged, taking advantage of Sam’s distraction to stab at his belly. The edge of the blade skittered off of Sam’s armor as the creeper twisted, bringing his trident around to crack it across Sapnap’s back. A bone-jarring clang rang out as the shaft of the trident clashed against George’s hastily brought-out blade, allowing Sapnap to escape injury and scramble around behind Sam.

The creeper hissed, eyes tracking the two floating swords as they danced through the air around him. His arms were shaking, but he tried not to let it show. The weakness potion was taking effect…

“Who the hell are you?!” He snarled, jabbing the pronged end of his trident towards the sword in front of him. It parried, metal scraping against metal as his weapon was shoved to the side. A hot, jagged pain slashed across the back of his right leg, and he fell to one knee with a strangled grunt. He had to plant the end of his trident into the blackstone flooring to keep himself upright, limbs sluggish and leg screaming. He squinted, forcing his hazy gaze on the figure that was fading back into view. Was it…George?!

A concussive white pain abruptly smashed into the back of Sam’s head, and he slumped over, dead to the world.

Sapnap huffed in disgust, sheathing his barely-used sword and reaching down to roll Sam over. While he searched the warden for the prison access cards, George was wrapping a bandage around the sluggishly bleeding cuts on his arm. Sapnap gave him an inquisitive look, and the brunette shrugged. “Don’t want to waste any of the healing potions.”

The fireborn nodded. “Right.”

It took some trial and error, but eventually they found the guard passageways through the prison. From there, they just had to navigate the maze of hallways until they stumbled into the hall just before the main cell. A steep set of stairs led down into the control room to the lava wall, which they would have to go through to reach Dream’s cell.

They shared a look. They were almost there. They’d nearly done it. The question was, were they ready for what would happen next? 

George didn’t think he was. He had resigned himself to never see Dream, the real Dream, again. 

Sapnap was afraid of what they might find. What had become of their old friend? Was this all just a big misunderstanding? Sapnap dearly hoped so, but the more logical side of his brain told him that there was too much evidence pointing to the contrary.

George spared a glance at the wall of levers and buttons as they passed it before turning away. They were on a bit of a time crunch, after all, and there wasn’t any time to trial-and-error their way into Dream’s cell. 

The wall of lava loomed before them, slowly-shifting shades of orange and red and yellow casting an odd light over the floor and walls. Sapnap swallowed and glanced at George. The brunette had a determined look on his face, which reassured the fireborn just the littlest bit.

Sapnap pulled a splash potion of fire resistance out of his inventory and threw it on the blackstone floor between their feet, dousing the both of them in the heat-resistant effect. He took George’s hand in his own, and with a deep, almost final breath, dove into the wall of lava.

George’s sight was hazed and blurred by the sheer, oppressive heat coming from the molten rock around them, but Sapnap’s hand around his own guided him in the right direction as the fireborn waded through to the other side. It felt too long, the time it took to find the opening to the main cell. George’s mental timer of the splash potion was ticking steadily down, and a seed of worry started to form in his gut. What if they didn’t find it in time?

Sapnap suddenly yanked on George’s hand, pulling him from the wall of lava and into open air. George gasped out the breath he had been holding and almost immediately retched.

It was the smell that hit them first. The overpowering scent of rot, of old blood and necrotic flesh mingling with the rank stink of sweat and pain and even fear.

“Oh my god,” Sapnap choked out when he finally managed to blink past his watering eyes and make out the details of the tiny cubicle. It looked like a slaughterhouse in the cell.

Old, rotting blood was splattered damn near everywhere in the tiny, oppressive cell. Gooey, gel-like puddles of coagulated ichor were spattered over the floor, and long, hard streaks were caked onto the walls. Some spots looked like they had been scrubbed, like someone had tried to clean away all of the evidence, but…it wasn’t enough to hide the sheer amount of gore that coated the room.

Chunks of what looked to be flesh and skin and even bone were haphazardly shoved near the corners of the room where wall met floor, black and festering under the heat of the lava, and bloody clumps of hair were laced and tangled through the majority of the rot and grue. Some of the fresher puddles of blood were even bubbling and boiling from the burning temperature saturating the room, adding a wretched odor to the whole mix.

Sapnap clapped a hand over his mouth, holding back a wave of nausea. Beside him, George, who wasn’t as fortunate, was audibly hurling his guts onto the hot obsidian floor. The fireborn had to turn away from the scene in an attempt to compose himself, body quivering. He’d caught just the smallest glance of a body pinned up in the center of the room, and logic could only dictate that it was Dream, but oh God—

George turned to him, tears in his eyes and bile on his chin, and in a weak, uncharacteristically frail voice, asked, “S–Sap, what…you– He–” The brunette gagged again, doubling over, but nothing else came out. Sapnap took short, stilted puffs of air through his nose as he tried to convince himself to turn back around.

Behind himself, he could hear the slightest clinking of chains as the prison's sole occupant shifted. A low, haunting whine filled the cramped space, and George had to bite his knuckles to keep an anguished sob from escaping.

Sapnap finally managed to drag enough of his composure back together to turn his eyes to the sight that awaited him, to the strung up body of the man he once knew as his own brother. The sheer sight nearly brought him down to his knees, and he couldn’t help the small whimper that escaped from his throat.

Hunched in the center of the cell was the dark, hulking shape of Dream, true body out and exposed to plain view. His mask was nowhere in sight, leaving all of his hybrid features in the open. 

There was the glint of chains pulling his body into an uncomfortable stretch between the obsidian walls. A thick shackle was collared around his neck and bolted to the floor, while chains clamped around his wrists were anchored into the walls on either side of him.

A dilapidated, threadbare dark-stained rag that might have once been a shirt was draped over broad, bruised shoulders that trembled with each short puff of breath that the prisoner took. Bloody, shredded pants hung from bone-thin hips and a marred, hollow stomach.

He’d only ever let George and Sapnap see his exposed chest and heart twice, but they remembered enough to know that it wasn’t supposed to look like this. Many of his ribs were missing, empty gaps that made the rest of his uncovered bones stand out starkly against the dark interior of his chest. Sapnap could see deep, jagged craters slashing across pale, slightly blue skin where it looked like they had been ripped out of Dream's chest, while others looked like they had been sawed and broken off.

The glow coming from his heart was all but nonexistent, weak and fluctuating with each stuttering breath he took. The exposed organs that they could see looked grey and sickly, even under the low lights of the lava and Dream’s weak heart. The sight of a mournful soul drifting around Dream’s guts made Sapnap flinch back. Last he knew, Dream didn’t have any souls. He pushed that thought away. He didn’t have time to contemplate the revelations on how Dream had changed.

A lone protrusion stuck out of the side of Dream's skull, the unbalanced weight of it dragging the man's head down at an awkward angle. Clumps of hair were just gone, and the rest of his hair was a tangled, disgusting mess of matting, dried blood, and a yellowish pus-like ooze that hung in a natty curtain in front of his face.

Dream was horrifically skinny, bones visible through his stretched-thin scarred, maimed skin. Fuck, had he been starved on top of everything else? Sapnap’s stomach roiled, and he had to swallow down a wave of bile before he threw up.

Dream was missing a whole six feet of his tail, the empty space where it ended nothing but a grotesque, infected-looking stump. There were gaping, raw patches and gouges on his forearms and exposed flesh where keratin plating and mossy sculk should have been, leaving him looking more bare, more vulnerable, than Sapnap had ever seen. Even under his human illusion, Dream had always had this… aura, of, ‘I’m dangerous, I’m strong, don’t fuck with me,’ but…now? It was gone. The hybrid looked…pathetic. Broken. Sapnap didn’t feel like he could breathe. Dream wasn’t supposed to look like this. Dream was supposed to be strong, was supposed to be unbreakable.  

They could hear highly muffled whimpers and grunts, slurred and indistinct, coming from Dream’s figure. A heavy, choked-out moan was forced from the man’s ragged throat as he tried to curl further into himself, his chains jingling softly against each other at the restricted movement. The hybrid’s torn ears were trembling, and fuck, there was a tag in Dream’s ear, like, an actual tag meant for fucking cattle. It had the numbers 001 stamped onto it in neat, precise black lines.

Sapnap’s gut wrenched up into his throat, and his gorge rose back up. He turned as quickly as he could and lurched towards the corner near the lava wall to hurl his guts. George barely gave him a second glance, too preoccupied with holding back his own visceral reactions to the wretched sight of the man they once called a friend.

“Dream..?” He heard George whisper behind himself as he tried not to gag again, hands braced against his knees. He could smell the blood on the wall from the close proximity, and it was not helping in quelling his nausea.

The hybrid’s head snapped up towards George, face shadowed by the long, greasy tangle of hair as his ears flicked up towards the man. Dream's shoulders tensed, and an indecipherable noise wavered out from his chest. A long, warbling whine was choked out seconds later, and he leaned backwards, as far as his chains allowed him to go.

"We–we're not here to hurt you," George managed to choke out, sending a desperate glance towards Sapnap. An unspoken understanding passed between the two in the three seconds of eye contact, and they knew what they were going to do.

"We're…Dream, we're here to–to get you out," Sapnap managed, throat closing up around his own words. That was their only option. What the fuck else could they do? If they went and told anybody else about the conditions of the prison, of what Sam and Quackity were doing to Dream, they'd kill him for being a warden.  

A part of Sapnap thought that it might be a mercy, to put Dream out of his misery. He pushed that part down, unwilling to contemplate on that for too long.

He couldn't believe that his old friend, that his own goddamn fiancé had done this. What the fuck was wrong with Sam and Quackity? Sapnap had to bury the budding feelings of fury and anguish deep, before they overwhelmed him. He had a job to do, to get Dream out. 

“I’m gonna. I think I can melt the chains…” Sapnap murmured, forcing himself to move.

Dream leaned away from him as he grew closer, the sound of his breaths getting heavier and more fleeting as Sapnap approached the chain on his left side. Sapnap tried to reassure him, but…it really, really didn’t seem like Dream was comprehending that they were there, what they were saying.

“It’s…Dream, it’s just me. Sapnap. I’m. I’m gonna get the chains off, alright…?” Dream didn’t answer, flattening his ears against the sides of his skull and turning his head away.

There were no nails on the end of Dream’s fingers, where there would typically be claws, and. There was a finger missing from his hand. The ring finger. Sapnap tried not to look at the old-looking stump as he pressed a burning hand against the thick chain link. After several minutes, it started to get softer and more malleable. Sapnap grabbed either side of the chain and pulled, straining to snap the chain link. Flakes of molten hot metal crumbled off of the chains as it stretched, and with one final heave, Sapnap broke the super-heated metal in half. 

Dream collapsed suddenly, body jerking to the side as he lost the support of the chain on his left side. George yelped and scrambled to brace the hybrid as he let loose an ear-piercing whine that had them both hurrying to cover their ears. 

George clenched his jaw, hands over his ears and shoulders braced up against Dream’s chest to keep him from falling as the hybrid feebly attempted to shove him away. There was practically no strength behind his movements, and as George tentatively lifted his hands from his ears, he was able push Dream’s arm away and usher Sapnap towards the remaining chains.

It took about ten minutes for Sapnap to break the links of the other four chains, during which Dream had settled, somewhat. His breathing was still erratic, and he was leaning heavily against George, fingers of his free hand twitching irregularly. The thick metal of the manacles and the collar glinted in the lava light, but they were ignored, for now. They'd have to cut them off later, but for now, they didn't have the time.

The moment the last link snapped, Dream curled inwards, knocking George aside and nosediving towards the floor. He hit the obsidian with a painful crack, and the pair winced in sympathy. Dream struggled to rise, shoving at the ground with shaking limbs and heart-wrenchingly desperate-sounding whimpers. 

George hooked an arm under the hybrid’s shoulder to help him upright, and before either George or Sapnap could react, George was being slammed against the obsidian floor, nearly a quarter ton of angry warden hybrid snarling in his face. A black, unidentifiable liquid dripped from Dream's lips, splattering against the brunette’s face and making him gag.

Dream’s hands, thin and knobbly, were tangled into George’s shirt and pressed heavily against his chest. The hybrid’s arms were trembling under his own weight, and without warning, he collapsed, wheezing as he slumped down on top of George. 

The breath was forced from the brunette's lungs at the sudden weight, and Dream's remaining antler cracked against George’s forehead, sparking stars through his vision. George coughed, blinking away the pain and leaning his head away from where Dream’s rested on the obsidian floor just above his shoulder. The odor emanating from Dream’s hair was sickening.

“Sapnap!” He yelped, wriggling and trying to shove the bigger man off of him. The jagged edges of Dream’s broken ribs were digging against George’s stomach, and he was having trouble breathing.

“Shit,” the fireborn cursed, and he rushed forward to assist the brunette. Together, they managed to roll the evidently unconscious hybrid off of George, the man’s head and limbs lolling disconcertingly with the motion. God, he looked awful.

“We have to go,” George hissed, scrubbing the blackish grime from his face and accepting Sapnap's offered hand. Sapnap swallowed nervously, nodding. Sneaking an almost nine-foot warden hybrid out of the most secure prison on the server wasn't going to be easy, but it had to be done.

“Ye-yeah,” his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat to try again. “Yeah. We shouldn’t waste any more time. How much fire res you got left?”

George pulled a pair of splash fire resistance potions from his inventory without a word and smashed them, one after the other, on the floor between the three of them. Spurred on by the sudden action, they got to work, seamlessly working in tandem to get Dream moving.

Sapnap looped his elbows under Dream’s armpits, and George hooked his arms underneath Dream’s knees. They counted down from three, and heaved the limp body upwards. The hybrid wasn’t nearly as heavy as they thought he should have been, and they nearly overbalanced and tumbled to the floor. George sent Sapnap a sharp look of concern, and the fireborn could only shake his head. They couldn’t be concerned about that right now. They needed to get Dream out.

With a deep breath and a nod, Sapnap plunged backwards into the wall of lava, guiding his two companions, one terribly injured and dead to the world, one just as anxious and hyped up on adrenaline as he was, through the thick, sludgy murk of the molten rock. He had to swim backwards with only his legs, dragging Dream’s body along as George pushed them on from behind. It took longer than he had anticipated, to get to the other side of the lava, and he was grateful George had thought to use two potions, doubling the duration time.

His shoulders met cooler air, and he stumbled backwards, dragging Dream, and subsequently George through and into the open air of the room. George gasped when he emerged, while Dream’s breathing only stuttered the littlest bit. Sapnap swallowed down a swell of worry and met George's gaze. They were almost there. They just had to keep going, just a little further, and then they’d be home free.

Hopefully Sam hadn’t regained consciousness in the time it had taken them to get Dream out of his cell. 

It was difficult to carry him up the steep staircase into the hall, but they managed, lurching up each step until they could stagger onto the flat, paved flooring. George, thankfully, had remembered the path they had taken through the labyrinth that was the guard passages, and it didn’t take them long to emerge into the hall just before the main lobby. They picked up the pace, eager to escape the prison and make it back home, eager to leave behind the horror of the tiny cell in the center of a boiling moat of lava.

A strangled, muffled whine unexpectedly rumbled out from the unconscious man suspended from their arms, and he tensed in their grasp. George sucked back a gasp, and Sapnap shot a look over his shoulder, skin prickling.

They froze. Sam was there, blocking their only way out. The light of the lobby, and the portal beyond, backlit the Warden and cast a long, dark shadow over the floor of the hall. Sam watched them for a long, long moment, unnervingly silent as smoke puffed out from the vents of his reclaimed gasmask. Then, unexpectedly, he stepped to the side, shoulders slumping from sheer exhaustion.  

" Get out of here," the creeper hybrid hissed, gesturing to the warped magic of the nether portal. George and Sapnap didn’t question the man’s actions, jolting back into action and hurriedly moving towards the portal.

Sam bowed his head as they passed, whispering one last thing as they stepped towards the violet light of their escape. 

"I'm so, so fucking sorry."

Chapter Text

The plan was to take him to Kinoko, as it was the safest place they could think of. There was the whole matter of Quackity's invitation to move there, of course, but he hadn't even tried to show up. Karl lived there as well, but Sapnap figured that between the man’s memory problems and Dream’s severe injuries, he could probably convince his remaining fiancé to at least ignore Dream.

Sapnap and George emerged into broad daylight, freshly invisible with the unconscious body of Dream strung between them. Their first goal was to get somewhere secluded so that they could assess Dream’s injuries, and decide where to go from there. 

Though Dream’s body was just skin and bones, Sapnap’s arms were burning from exertion by the time they got deep enough into the nearest forest to settle down and evaluate Dream, and he was sure George wasn’t doing any better.

“Here’s good enough,” George’s breathless voice gasped, making Sapnap startle. The fireborn felt the weight on the other end of the body they were hauling drop down, and he followed suit, gently laying Dream’s head and shoulders into the mossy grass of the forest floor. 

As he listened to George catch his breath, Sapnap pulled out a bucket of milk to dispel their invisibility. He reached down, searching for Dream’s face and mouth through feeling alone. The sooner Dream regained visibility, the sooner Sapnap and George could assess his condition and treat him for his injuries. There had been such low lighting in the Vault that Sapnap couldn't be sure that Dream didn’t have any life-threatening wounds.

His fingers finally met chapped, grime-sticky lips, but before he could open Dream’s mouth, the hybrid was moving, jerking away with a strangled, muffled noise. Something smacked into Sapnap’s arm, and the fireborn jerked away with an alarmed curse. A heavy sound spiked into the air, an echoing, pounding thrum that reverberated in the backs of their heads. 

“Sapnap?” George questioned, but abruptly made a sound akin to a deflating bag and hit the ground with a thump. “Ough–ah!” Something slammed into the ground near where George’s voice had come from, tearing long gashes through the ground and sending a spray of dirt up into the air. A sharp, wavering growl ripped into the air, bordering on the edge of just too loud and making the duo flinch.

With another curse, the fireborn hastily brought up the bucket of milk and gulped half of it down in one go. “George, drink the milk!” Dropping his milk bucket into his inventory, Sapnap spread out his reappearing hands and tried to calm the half-warden down.

“Dream, Dream, chill! It’s just us! It’s me and George, okay? You're okay, man, we got you out. Alright?” The hybrid’s growl choked off at the fireborn’s words, and in the ensuing silence, George pressed to try and placate Dream.

“Dream, hey, look at me,” The now-visible brunette urged firmly, slowly pushing himself up from the forest floor. He sat up on his knees and gently reached forward, hands searching for Dream’s invisible form. There was a sharp intake of breath from Dream as George’s fingers met something solid, and the brunette gave the hybrid a soft, reassuring smile. “You’re going to be alright, Dream. We got you out, and we aren’t going to hurt you. You’re safe.”

There was a long, tense silence that followed before a sharp sniffle escaped from the hybrid, and a low, hitched whine broke out. Something snared around George’s wrist, and he was abruptly yanked chest-first against something sharp and bony. The man yelped, instinctively attempting to struggle free as thin arms and spindly hands dug into his back and sides, effectively trapping him. Something pressed itself against the crown of his head, and he heard a deep, shuddery inhale that ruffled his hair. 

Was…was Dream smelling him? George winced, wriggling his shoulders, but the grip around his body only tightened. Behind him, Sapnap hovered, hands up at the ready but unsure of what to do. Distantly, he noted that the intense sound of the heavy heartbeat had calmed, just the slightest bit.

“G…George? You good? What’s he…what’s going on?” The fireborn paced around George’s side, peering at the brunette's face through the invisible body of their friend. George grimaced, giving Sapnap an unsure, helpless look. “I think he’s…Sapnap, he’s hugging me. I can’t move.” As if to demonstrate, the brunette once again tried to struggle, but it only elicited a mawkish whine from the warden hybrid. 

Sapnap’s brow furrowed, and despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn’t help the grin that stretched across his face. “Aw, he missed you, Goggy,” The fireborn ragged, much to George’s consternation. The brunette’s face morphed to snap something back, but in that moment, the pale outline of Dream’s shoulders blocked out his expression. Sapnap was yanked back into the moment as the hybrid’s figure began to re-materialize, showcasing just how mutilated he looked. The fireborn swallowed back his teasing words, guilt and concern strangling out the last of his good humor.

George came face-to-face with a pair of scarred collarbones as they reappeared in front of his eyes. He glanced up, attempting to meet Dream’s gaze, but the hybrid was too preoccupied with burying his nose in George’s hair and inhaling as much of his scent as physically possible. 

“Dream, hey,” Sapnap reached forward and gently rested his hand on the hybrid’s shoulder in an attempt to gain his attention. The blond flinched, but Sapnap pushed regardless. “C’mon, man, let George go. You can cuddle him when we get somewhere safer, but right now we have to take care of your wounds.”

Dream’s displeased growl drowned out George’s affronted exclamation, but the hybrid reluctantly released his bone-crushing embrace. George stumbled backwards, sucking in a heavy breath while Dream shifted, painfully drawing his knees to his chest and hunching in his shoulders. His shortened tail moved to wrap around his ankles, splitting open several scabs and oozing out fresh blood. 

The jagged edges of Dream’s broken ribs had torn holes in the front of George’s shirt, but the brunette couldn’t dredge up enough indignation to care. He could repair it later. He turned his gaze over to Dream’s hunched figure, a swell of pity blooming in the pit of his stomach as he finally took in the man’s state, now that they were in proper light.

Numerous lacerations were striped across Dream’s exposed flesh, spotted by deep bruises and swollen skin. Half of the wounds looked infected, and the other half were old, gooey scabs that barely looked healed at all. Below all of the open cuts were older scars, all at various stages of healing. 

There was a bloody crater where Dream’s left antler had been, as if it had been ripped out of his skull. His hair was tangled and matted with blood and prime knew what else, stained dark from what had to be at least months of sweat and filth. The soft skin of his long, pointed ears was tattered, and the damn tag was still pierced into his right ear. The manacles and collar were still fastened tightly around his wrists and throat, and the skin underneath was raw and scabbed over. All of his sharp, clawed nails looked to have been pulled out, and the ring finger on his left hand was nothing but a stump, as was the end of his tail.

Dream's back alone was in awful shape. From what Sapnap could see underneath his shredded, threadbare shirt, there were burns and bruises and scars galore. Thick, ropey-looking scar tissues criss-crossed Dream’s shoulder blades and lower back, and Sapnap had the sinking realization that he had probably been whipped at one point.

Where there used to be short, sharp spikes lining Dream's spine was now only a jagged line of gouged, torn flesh, bits of bone that might have been the hybrid's spinal vertebrae peeking out from the raw, bloody holes. And fuck, there was a Q branded into his left shoulder blade. It was hardly the worst of the hybrid's injuries, in fact, it was probably only a blip on Dream's radar of pain, but it was the implications that nearly laid Sapnap out flat.

He felt like crying. Or throwing up. He remembered making that exact brand design with Quackity.

"It's for my cattle," the avian had whined, leaning faux despairingly on Sapnap's shoulder. The fireborn had rolled his eyes and scoffed. 

"You have cows? Seriously?" Quackity had hummed in affirmation. "Yeah, but they keep getting out and I have trouble finding mine among all of the wild cows. I'm tired of nearly getting gored by feral bulls that look like mine."

Sapnap had laughed at the avian's misfortune, but had agreed to help him make the brand.

He knew that Quackity had to have at least had some part in whatever was happening to Dream, because he was selling Dream's harvested body parts, but to have actual proof that he partook in it?

Sapnap’s stomach clenched, and he had to breathe past his budding nausea before he hurled. How the hell were they going to deal with this? Any of it? All of this was just so fucked, and Sapnap didn’t know what to do for any of it.

“Is there anything that you want us to take care of first, Dream? Any broken bones, anything that really hurts?” George asked, breaking Sapnap out of the despairing spiral he was falling into. He was suddenly incredibly grateful for George’s presence, unsure of what he would do if he didn’t have the brunette’s help.

Dream gave a slow, uncertain shrug, ducking his head with a distressed rumble. He raised his hands in a lost, half-hearted gesture before shrugging again. A long, garbled whine eased out from the hybrid's throat, and his ears flicked back, pinning themselves against the sides of his head. Another hitched breath escaped from his nose, and he couldn’t seem to stop the choked sob that jerked his body. 

George cocked his head, brows furrowing as he realized that Dream had yet to say a single word since even before they got him out. He bit his lip, scooting closer to the hybrid as concern washed through his body. Dream’s ears flicked up as the sound, twitching fervently as they followed the brunette’s movements. Sapnap stepped around the blond and crouched down beside George, worry spiking when George shot him a terrified, alarmed look.

"Can—can you not talk?" The brunette ventured, voice gentle. Dream whined and frantically shook his head, reaching up to bury his face in his hands. He whimpered, ducking his head behind his knees before jerking it back up. He whined again, distressed, and then finally turned his face upwards, towards both George and Sapnap. They recoiled almost in unison, shock coloring their features when they saw his face. 

Dream’s closed eyelids were swollen and sunken with dark, heavy bruises and burns. Blood and grime had encrusted them shut, and was tracked down from his eyes like a morbid rendition of tears, smeared over his cheeks and smudged over the bridge of his scarred nose. The dark red trail mixed with the thick, brackish sludge that dripped from his chin and seemed to leak from his grimacing lips, and George had the sickening realization that the black grime oozing from Dream's mouth was probably what had splattered all over his face earlier. 

The hybrid took a long, stuttering inhale, and then haltingly drew his lips back, as if he were snarling at the duo before him.

Sapnap choked, and George made a sound akin to a dying cat as they beheld the gruesome sight before them.

Dream's mouth was wired shut.  

Thick wires were punctured through his top and bottom gums, stitching his jaw shut in a horrible mess of criss crossing metal. From what they could see, the wires stitched all the way across his front incisors and only stopped just past his sharp canines. His gums looked bad, infected, even. Blackish-yellow and red-brown pus was sluggishly oozing from around each of the punctured holes the wires pierced through, and overall, his mouth looked rotted.

The smell was bad, even from this distance, a cloying, putrid scent that pervaded their nostrils and made their eyes water. George clapped a hand over his mouth, face wan with nausea. 

Sapnap swallowed, nervously tearing his gaze from Dream’s mouth to his swollen, sealed eyelids. Dread bloomed in the pit of his stomach as he examined them, noting how the bloody trails seemed to stem from underneath the lids themselves, and the skin surrounding them was burnt and inflamed. He had a horrible feeling about what he was about to discover, but…he had to check. Whether or not he wanted to know what was behind Dream’s eyelids was moot point. They looked damaged, and he needed to know just how badly.

He shared a quick look with George before reaching forward and gently placing his shaking hands on either side of Dream’s jaw. The man jerked backwards with a sharp inhale, muscles coiled tensely, as if he were prepared to spring away at a moment's notice. 

“Dream,” the fireborn murmured softly, easing the hybrid’s face just a little closer. He noticed, with a guilt-ridden frown, that the hybrid’s tattered ears were trembling, and the breaths coming out of his nose were short and quick. “Can you try to open your eyes for me, man? I need to…we need to take a look at the damage, alright?”

Dream whimpered, a small, pitiful sound, and fiercely shook his head between Sapnap’s palms. His ears pinned themselves against his head, and his nose scrunched up in an attempt to quell the oncoming sobs that were hitching through his chest. His breath began to come out in short, quick puffs, and the heavy thrum of his heart began to pound more deeply, the haunting sound bouncing off of the trees surrounding them.

“Hell…” Sapnap mumbled, sucking in a steadying breath. “Alright, Dream, that’s fine. We’ll…we can do it for you, alright?” He turned to George, a question on his lips, but the brunette was already a step ahead of him. In George’s hands was a bucket of water and a pad of gauze, items from the stash of medical supplies they had brought with them.

“I’m going to wipe off the gunk keeping your eyes shut,” George explained as he dunked the makeshift rag into the bucket. He squeezed it, wringing the majority of the dripping water away before leaning closer and carefully brushing the rag against the corner of the blond’s left eyelid. “Hold still.”

Dream flinched, violently, a sharp, keening sound slicing through the air, not unlike the screech of metal-on-metal. He ripped his jaw out of Sapnap’s gentle grip and threw himself backwards, trying to scramble away on his elbows before his arms collapsed under his own weight. The trees around them shuddered from the force of his scream. Sapnap let loose a curse, fingers curling into anxious fists while George dropped down next to Dream, soft, placating words already decorating his lips.

While George rushed to try and calm the panicking hybrid down, Sapnap jerked his eyes upwards, wildly scanning the area in search of anyone who might have heard Dream’s cry and decided to come investigate. They had to hurry. Just because Sam had let them go free in the vault didn’t mean he hadn’t sent someone after them anyway. They were wasting time, Sapnap knew, but the plan had been to at least get some of Dream’s wounds clean before they began the trek through the nether to Kinoko Kingdom. Sapnap didn’t know if they had the time to do that now, but at the very least, they had to get Dream’s eyes open so that they weren’t dragging him blind through one of the most dangerous realms in the known world.

He looked back over at Dream and George, nervously chewing at his lower lip as he stepped after the two. George was at Dream’s side and had his hands around one of the hybrid’s larger ones. He was mumbling quiet assurances into Dream’s ears while stroking the back of the blond’s hand with soothing, gentle fingers.

“Guys, we have to hurry,” Sapnap hissed, crouching down on Dream’s other side and gesturing south, where the main Smp was. “I don’t know if anyone heard that, but I sure as hell don’t want to find out.”

George shot him a reprimanding look, eyes quickly indicating towards Dream, who’s breath had stuttered at the fireborn’s words. Sapnap sighed, tense shoulders slumping. “Sorry,” he apologized. He looked at the shaking hybrid, the shock of his state washing over him once more, and the ravenette hard to swallow down his slowly-sparking anger before it made him explode.

“Dream,” he forced out instead of a furious scream. “We have to get your eyes open before we can go, okay? You gotta hold still, man. We don’t have time to waste.”

“Do you think you could lay down?” George asked, retrieving the water bucket and rag from his inventory. “It…might make this a little easier.”

Dream let out a garbled, sardonic noise that sounded about two steps away from a breakdown, shaking his head at them even as he settled back against the mossy ground. His hands drifted up to wring over his exposed, thumping heart, and his shortened, maimed tail was flicking anxiously from side to side.

“I’m about to start,” the older man warned, fingers ghosting over Dream’s chin as he steadied the hybrid’s head. The man moaned, body tensing, but this time managed to not jerk away as George began to work at the grime sealing his eyes shut.

With the help of the water, they had the crust cleared away in no time. When they asked Dream to look at them, a low, mournful warble bounded from his chest, but all the same, his face scrunched up, and for the first time in who knew how long, he finally opened his eyes, blinking up at the duo and revealing the dark, empty space behind the lids.

It took the duo several long seconds to process the fact that Dream had no eyeballs.

Underneath his closed eyelids were gaping, empty cavities, filled with congealed blood and blackened, shriveled tissue. Pus oozed from split open burns inside the gummy red flesh of the sockets, and freshly split open cracks were beginning to bleed, red mixed with a disgusting, yellowish liquid.

“Oh, fuck,” Sapnap managed to choke, soiled rag slipping from his slackened fingers as he stared on in horror. 

“God, fuck, Dream…” George whispered, hand rising to cover his mouth. He felt sick. What kind of monster could gouge out someone’s eyes? Was it some form of sick irony, based on the lore that most of warden-kind was said to be blind? Was it because Dream’s eyes might have been valuable?! What the fuck kind of—

George had to look away, eyes watering as his stomach roiled. He clenched his jaw, sucking in deep, heavy breaths through his nose and trying to swallow down the mix of fury and queasiness that swelled up to combat his guts. In his peripherals, he saw Dream struggling to sit up, and he forced himself to turn and assist the hybrid. He had to push everything to the side for now. He could break down about it later, but right now, he had much, much more pressing matters to deal with. Like the fact that Dream was blind. 

“Fuck,” Sapnap hissed, turning on his heel and stomping a few paces away. He twisted back around, caught another glimpse of Dream’s face, and had to move along further. “FUCK!” He screamed, abruptly whirling to slam a burning fist into the trunk of a hapless tree. The bark was immolated on impact, burning splinters and bits of wood exploding away from the fireborn’s knuckles. He hissed, jerking his hand away from the sudden pain of collision and turning back to Dream and George whilst cradling his fist to his chest. 

“We need to fucking go, now.” He snapped, red-hot eyes slowly dimming back down to their usual coal-black as he forced himself to cool down. George met his gaze and nodded, turning to hook his arms underneath one of Dream’s. 

“Ye–yeah. Yeah.” He muttered, attempting to haul the hybrid to his feet. Dream made an alarmed sound at the sudden motion, and flinched when Sapnap looped the blond’s other arm over his shoulders. Together, they heaved the taller man to his shaking, weak legs, mostly having to drag him forward with each and every step. It was awkward and unbalanced, as Dream towered over them by a good three feet, but they managed it through sheer, determined willpower. “The sooner we get home, the sooner we can get you taken care of, alright?” 

Dream groaned, an indistinct sound that reverberated through Sapnap and George’s bodies. They took the noise as an agreement, and began trekking towards the distant, secluded portal they had built deep in a cave not too far away. It was hidden enough, for their purposes, and it linked to one of the less-used portals on the nether highway. Their only problem would be getting from the highway to the portal to Kinoko, as it was a not insubstantial distance from everything else in the nether. 

It would be a struggle, but they could do it. They would. For the sake of their friend, for the sake of Dream.

With a grimace, George pulled a splash invisibility potion from his inventory and smashed it at their feet, obscuring the trio from sight.

Chapter Text

His knees ached. His hips hurt, his back was stiff, and his core was burning. He could sense the super-heated air caress his every wound, could feel the ash floating down to settle over his shoulders and the hot netherrack stones digging into the lacerated soles of his feet.

His breath came in short, harsh heaves, lungs pumping heavily as they tried to compensate for the bottlenecked oxygen through his nostrils, heart booming frantically as it tried to keep pace with the most exertion it’d had in an eternity while he tried to keep up with the two small bodies guiding him through the hellish landscape.

The manacles locked around his wrists and ankles weighed down his every step, and the shackle collared around his neck bore down on his shoulders, choking out his every strained inhalation with each dragging stride.

His head pounded with every breath, almost in tandem with his heartbeat. It felt like his jaw and mouth were attempting to rip themselves from his cracking skull, and the agonizing pressure behind his eyes—inside his eye sockets— nearly sent him to the ground with every trudging lift of his feet.

He kept misstepping, listing to the right and tripping over small stones and small ledges. His only antler, the right antler, weighed down on the right side of his head, and he often overcompensated for the unbalanced weight with his halved tail. 

More often than not, the hands of his guides were pulling him upright, urging him on, or supporting his shoulders and sides as they drug him further and further into the blackness of nowhere.

He couldn't help the deep, clicking snarl that emanated from his throat when their touch edged too close to the center of his chest. 

Their hands withdrew quickly after that.

When they finally paused, the hands on his elbows tugging his body to a stop, he all but collapsed, limbs trembling from the duration of the trek.

They had panicked, the musty-grassy scent of George flitting anxiously by his side as smokey-pine Sapnap tried to hold him up, but eventually they let him settle down on a hot ledge of netherrack.

They were saying something to him, but their voices were a warbled echo, his ears ringing too much from the heavy exertion his abused, atrophied body had just been put through.

Then their hands had brushed some of the open wounds covering his skin, cool cloths and numbing liquids being pressed to guttered, gummy lacerations and swollen, sore bruises. He had stiffened at first, before relaxing at the healing, if slightly painful, touches. 

They were his best chance for survival, weren't they? If he fought them now, he would be left alone to die, and, despite everything, he didn't want that. He wanted to live. He wanted to smell the sea breeze on the wind again, he wanted to taste ripe sweetberries in the late summer afternoons…

He wanted to see the sky. He wanted to see wispy white clouds racing against the deep aquamarine sky. He wanted to see the glittering stars, to breathe in the cool night air as he watched the moon pass overhead…

He wanted to go back to before…

Fire roared beside him, abrupt and sudden, the sound of an explosion thundering overwhelmingly in his ears, and he was thrown from his seat on the netherrack ground. He flailed, scrambling to grab on to something, anything— his left hand caught on a ledge, but the weight of his body wrenching down paired with his weak grip tore his hold away, and then he was tumbling down through the open air.

He might have heard Sapnap scream his name, but he couldn't be sure over the rushing in his ears, over the hot air whipping against his body as he plummeted.

Something plush and leathery slammed into his chest, and he felt a few of the remaining brittle ribs protecting his guts crack. A strangled screech ripped out of his throat, and whatever he had landed on cried angrily, an almost childish shriek as the surface of the creature pitched and rolled, and then he was sliding.

He panicked, attempting to dig his claws into the leathery flesh as a heavy sensation of vertigo twisted through his guts, but his claws were gone, ripped out one-by-one, and he slid off of the mob with a terrified, piercing whine.

The open air welcomed him greedily, gravity ripping him back down to the ground. He slammed down onto his left shoulder with a nasty, bone-breaking crunch, and a muffled, metal-on-metal screech tore itself from his ragged vocal chords.

He wasn't used to broken bones. Sir always wanted them intact, because they'd sell better. 

The sickening sensation of the shattered halves of his collarbone grinding together grated through his entire body while he lay against the searing ground, breath ragged as he tried to reel back the agony of his broken clavicle.

He forced it down with a practiced difficulty, burying it beneath the layers and layers of resolve he'd been forced to learn, and struggled to roll to his knees. He managed to stand, painstakingly forcing jelly-weak legs to bear his cumbersome weight.

Where were George and Sapnap? He strained his ears, but everything on his left side was muffled and distant. Without his left antler to catch and resonate the bigger sounds, he couldn't hear as well as he normally could. His right ear was still ringing from the explosion and the subsequent landing, fluctuating with the pounding beat of his heart. The dissonance between both sides of his hearing was disorienting, throwing off his balance almost as much as his amputated tail did.

He strained, flexing his tattered ears in an attempt to catch a noise, any noise at at all, that indicated that his rescuers were near, but he couldn’t hear anything. A whine rumbled out of his throat, and his ears pinned back against his skull. Something snagged in his matted hair, tugging painfully at his right ear, and clumsily, he reached up to pick it free.

It was a papery, flat rectangle, attached to his ear by a wire and bracket punched through the soft cartilage. He could feel a series of indents across the flat surface, but he couldn't make out what it was. 

His fingers tightened around the cattle tag, and with a furious snarl, he tore it from his ear, intending to toss it into the nearby lava he could hear bubbling, but the wave of sudden, jagged pain sent him reeling to the side.

His right foot sank into a thick, blazing hot sludge, and a warbling cry choked out from his gagged throat. He attempted to pull away, twisting frantically, but his underbalanced tail flicked too far to the left, sending him tumbling into what must have been the lava.

A heavy, gonging wail escaped from his chest, and he flailed, aching fingers scrabbling for the land that had disappeared out from underneath him.

He wasn't a full warden. He wasn't impervious to heat, like his fabled cousins were. He could still die from the heat of the lava, only it would be prolonged and painful.

He was sinking . Somehow, he had lost the feel of the lake floor below his feet, and despite how desperately he tried to tread the molten rock, it stubbornly sucked him down, gradually claiming his body as its new prize.

He squeezed out a whimper, nose flaring heavily as he sucked in the super-heated air. He could feel the lava inside his chest, a feverish, painful heat that slicked into every crevice and grasped heavily around his heart and straining lungs.

A low, warbling croak neared his side. He whined, a panicked, metallic sound as he flailed wildly to keep his head above the surface. Where was the land?!

His entire body burned. The metal clamped to his neck, wrists, and ankles was scorching hot, sizzling against the already-scarred flesh they encircled. The scent of burning meat and hair mixed with the ash coating his nostrils, and he had to force down a stuttering cough.

Something bumped into his side, and he couldn't hold back the frightened groan at the sudden, unprecedented touch. It pushed against his side once more, warbling gently as it slid him backwards through the lava. He shoved against it in a panic, hands sliding against warm, pebbly skin as he tried to get away, but the creature suddenly ducked down, sliding its back underneath his arms and rising up from the lava.

A strider, he suddenly realized, shrilling sharply when his hands slid from its back and he splunked back down into the molten rock. A desperate whimper pierced from his throat, and suddenly the strider was there again, nuzzling against his chest with a reassuring trill. He latched onto it, heaving his bulk over its side with trembling arms. He managed to sprawl halfway over its back, clamping his elbows over the strider’s side to stay aboard. His waist, legs, and tail still hung in the lava, but he could at least breathe now.

The strider warbled again, shuffling with slow, sludgy steps as it strode through the molten rock. His lower half dragged through the lava as they moved, and it was a struggle for his atrophied arms to keep a stable hold against the smooth, pebbly skin.

His feet suddenly scraped the rough ground at the bottom of the magma, and then the strider tilted to the side, dumping him back down onto the heat of the hellish ground.

He sprawled, half-washed ashore of the lava lake. His legs and maimed tail were still submerged in the thick, sludgy magma, but his arms and torso were splayed out over gravel and what smelled like soul-sand.

He could feel the sand gripping, greedily reaching for his spirits, contained by the thrumming magic of his own soul. With a quick, frantic effort, he heaved his body over, rolling into his back. The grasping tug of the soul sand lessened against his souls, but it was still present. He had to move, and soon.

But he was so tired…

A distant warble jarred his ears, bouncing around in his skull, and he scrunched his eyelids shut, whimpering when the motion split the skin surrounding his eye sockets.

He could hear the sound of bubbling lava, could feel it cooking his flesh, oh-so-slowly. His ear throbbed, as if it had just been tagged, and he could swear he felt surgically sharp shears snipping though his skin.

“You thought you could try escaping again, you mutant freak? You belong here. You’ll be here for the rest of your pointless, pathetic life.”

Sir’s voice echoed in his ears, bouncing off of the walls enclosing him in. His breath hitched.

But..George and Sapnap had broken him out, hadn't they? He…he knew that he smelled them at one point, nearby. He could swear that he’d felt the soft brush of grass against his bruised back, that he’d even felt the cool fizz of a healing potion soothe against his feverish skin.

A bubble of lava popped, and he flinched. The hot ground underneath his back, and it must have been obsidian, it felt so sharp, ground into the open sores lining his spine. He didn’t know when his chains had been moved to pin his body to the floor, he must have lost that time, but he could still feel the manacles pulling against his block-heavy limbs and barring him from any sort of movement. 

Sir must have wanted better access to his torso. At least he was lying down, now. Maybe his shoulders would finally stop aching. Maybe he’d be able to feel his knees and lower legs again.

On second thought, having sensation back in his limbs might be a downside.

A voice. Sapnap? It couldn't be. He was in his cell, and there was no one else to visit him. Maybe Sapnap and George had been by once, and that’s why he smelled them. Had they visited just to see him…? Or…the more likely option was to see the fabled monster of the server. He couldn’t remember if they had hurt him like Sir did. Had he been in pain when they visited…?

"The dude can barely walk, how the hell did he get so far?!”

A loud trill pierced the air, almost right next to him, and he tensed. What was that? What made that? He was sure the guardians couldn’t make sounds like that…

He was sure he’d been alone.

“Holy—shit, Sapnap! I found him! Over here!”

The sound of crunching footsteps grew nearer and nearer, and a low warble rumbled out beside him. Hands were suddenly touching his shoulder, and he couldn’t help the stiffness suddenly jarring through his body.

“I've got him!” The voice was high and loud, piercing through his sensitive ears, and slowly, he felt a long-forgotten instinct bubble up through his chest and curl sharply in his throat. A low growl rippled out through the air, and his fingers tensed, clawing through the soft, crumbly ground. He had to eliminate the threat, now, before it hurt him further.

With a snarl adorning his scarred lips, he reared upwards, ramming the crown of his skull into the soft gut of whoever was grabbing him. The lack of resistance from the chains pinning him down startled him, and he toppled, crashing face-first into blazing hot lava. He screeched, throwing himself backwards onto his backside with a painful thud.

A breathless yell buzzed at his ears, quickly followed by a thick glop and the heavy sound of molasses. A flurry of footsteps blew past him, and he forced out a garbled, creaking hiss, hauling his feet underneath himself in preparation to lunge.

"Sapnap!” One of the voices shrilled, gonging through his brain. He winced, flattening his ears against his skull to protect against the high noise. His nose flared as he pinpointed the source, an earthy dirt-grass pillar almost directly beside him.

"I'm fine, I'm fine! Fireborn, remember?” He braced a hand against the hot ground, swaying from the headrush of abrupt movement. His chest was heaving, sucking in as much oxygen as his lungs could handle, and his shortened tail was flicking behind him in a desperate attempt to stay balanced. 

With one last heavy, guttered breath, he leapt, lunging towards the earth-scented cloud with a vicious, chittering snarl. His target shrieked, but was altogether too slow to dodge his attack. Fist met flesh, a crunch, then the heady scent of blood parted the air. A nasally cry rang out, and he heard the person stumble backwards, heels crunching over the ground.

The overwhelming coppery scent flooded his nostrils and cleared his head, and with a fearful half-whine, he realized what he had done, recoiling almost immediately. Terror dug its way through his guts and grasped heavily at his lungs, staggering each heavy breath he took.

I'm sorry, it was an accident, I'm sorry, he tried to say, cringing back, but his ability to speak had been taken from him, and Sir wouldn't understand that he didn't mean to attack him. He never did! It was always his fault, he should know better, he would do better, please, just give him one more chance—

“George!” Lava glopped as something large splashed through it. He felt nauseous, heat twisting and sliding inside of his chest as his heartbeat picked up, throbbing thunderously through the sooty, maismic air. 

“My nose,” The voice gasped, and right, there were two of them. Did Sir get a helper? Would his punishment be worse, with a new, inexperienced mind thinking up ways to hurt him? He sank to the ground on trembling limbs, curling over his knees and drawing his arms over his exposed chest. He pressed his forehead against the hot ground, shoulders trembling as he gasped, quick and shallow.

No, sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t, he gasped, muzzled jaw strangling the words into a high, indistinguishable whine. His ears were ringing again, so loud that it even drowned out what Sir was saying. He pulled his amputated tail against his side, breath hitching as he felt the steps of both bodies draw closer, rattling the ground underneath his knees and jarring through his head.

Please, he whined, curling his body up as tight as it would go. They surrounded him, one uncomfortably close to his head, the other looming unnervingly over his back. Which one was Sir…? He couldn’t tell! The scents of blood and soot and dirt and magma were all pooling together in a hot slurry, and he couldn’t sort through them between each desperate breath he took.

His throat felt like it sealed shut, gagging on his next breath, and suddenly he was suffocating. His hands flew towards the collar shackled around his throat, mangled fingers curling around the rough-forged edge, and he struggled to pull it away from his neck. 

He just needed to breathe…!

One of the voices was warbling at him, warping sideways through his brain, hands pressing hotly at his back and shoulders. He whimpered, fingers tightening around the collar .

leave me alone, he tried gasping, chest compressing with the exhalation. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed, torso crushed by an unimaginably huge stone, and he couldn’t—

He couldn’t…

couldn’t…

…

..

.

.

Chapter Text

George cursed when Dream slumped, jerking helplessly towards the bigger man’s body as it went limp. Sapnap reacted faster, lunging forward to lift Dream’s head before his face could scrape against the dark soul sand. He grappled with the hybrid’s limp body, hooking his hands underneath the pale shoulders and lifting them. George hurried to help, heaving Dream’s dead weight over and laying him on his back.

His breath was harsh and ragged, even while unconscious, but at least he was breathing. He hadn’t been earlier. 

One of the few remaining ribs framing his chest had disappeared, looking as if it had broken off in the fall. The cattle tag was missing from his right ear, a ragged, bloody tear marking where it had once been. His left shoulder was swollen, and there was a bruised, misshapen lump on the line of his left collarbone. George gently ran his fingers over the protrusion, confirming what he suspected. Dream’s clavicle was broken.

The skin underneath the manacles around his neck, wrists, and ankles was blistered and bubbly, almost charred black from the contact with the red-hot metal. The rest of his skin was flushed a deep red and was hot to the touch, so much so that it nearly burned George’s hands.

The new wounds, at least, would be a quick fix. With Sapnap’s help, George pushed the edges of the clavicle back together and poured one of their regeneration potions over it. He held the bone in place as it healed, forcing back a shiver as he felt the edges click back together underneath his palms. 

Dream’s ear was doused with a healing potion, sealing the edges of the wound but not repairing the tear. He’d have a permanent, massive notch in his right ear for the rest of his life.

They didn’t know what to do for the freshly broken rib, other than dab gauze soaked with healing over the exposed, bleeding marrow and wrap it with gauze and tape.

“Help me get him up on my back,” Sapnap ordered once they were finished with the patch first-aid job, crouching down and gently pulling the unconscious hybrid upright. He slung one of Dream’s arms over his shoulder, and George was quick to help heft the heavier man up onto a piggyback. Sapnap grimaced at the weight, struggling to stand upright with his new, cumbersome burden. He hissed, knees straining, but he finally managed to rise, half-hunched over from the comatose warden hybrid slung over his back.

“Do you want help?” George rushed to steady the fireborn as he swayed, bracing against Sapnap’s shoulders and chest. The fireborn grunted, adjusting his grip on Dream’s thighs and shifting his stance.

“No,” he hissed, grimacing. His coal-black eyes wandered up to meet George’s own blue-and-brown, half-squinted with effort. “You can…clear the way. In case of…mobs. I got him.” His words were clipped, but there was a determined gleam in his eyes that told George that they wouldn’t be arguing about his decision.

“Okay,” George agreed, drawing his sword and turning to scan the long, twisted path they had taken to get down to Dream.

It was almost a comical sight, Dream piggybacking Sapnap. The hybrid was nearly double the fireborn’s height, and his long, gangly limbs stuck out over Sapnap’s hips and shoulders at odd angles. Dream’s head and shoulders were precariously thrown over Sapnnap’s own, and his feet were almost dragging against the hot ground. His halved tail did drag behind Sapnap, bumping against the hot stones and scraping over the netherrack ground. George wrapped the end of the stump with a strip of gauze in a quick attempt to protect the wounded limb.

They had to climb upwards almost thirty blocks, following the path they had carved out not even ten minutes earlier, with George clearing out the few skeletons that had wandered near and Sapnap trekking dutifully behind him.

They had to sacrifice a roll of bandages to tie Dream to Sapnap’s torso after the third time the hybrid nearly toppled off of the fireborn’s back. If Dream fell, or if Sapnap went down, George personally didn’t think Sapnap would be able to pick the large man back up again. Sapnap’s breath was ragged, sweat dripping from his brow and soaking his chest from the exertion, and every step he took was heavy and measured.

They finally reached the main path to Kinoko, almost an hour after the ghast had blown them off course. Sapnap had turned down George’s offer to swap, or even to take a break, so they pushed onwards.

“Hey. George.” Sapnap puffed, shrugging at the long, scrawny arms thrown over his shoulders to adjust their position. His face and ears were a deep red, and his black hair was plastered to his forehead. Some of the fluid leaking from Dream’s mouth had dripped onto the top of his head, staining his bandana a dark brown in several places, and the bits of his white shirt peeking out from underneath his armor were stained with fresh blood from the hybrid’s wounds. 

Either Sapnap didn’t care about the bodily fluids beginning to stain his clothes, or he couldn’t spare the mental power to worry about it. George thought it was a combination of both.

“Remember tha…that one manhunt? When we h…” Sapnap huffed heavily, mustering up the strength to clamber up the next step on the path before pushing on. “When we had to—to carry Dream. Uh, out of the…nether.”

Oh yes, George remembered. He remembered that particular incident all too well.

The cave-in had been no-one’s fault, just a strike of bad luck. He, Sapnap, Sam, Dream, and Bad had been doing a casual hunt in an attempt to blow off some of the steam building up from the L’Manberg situation. Bad and Sam had trapped the nether portal while George and Sapnap surged ahead, chasing after Dream into the nether. 

Dream had set up a TNT trap for the two hunters, half-hidden under a netherrack ledge, and then dug deep into the wall to get away. Unfortunately, a ghast had shot the TNT, setting it off too early, and the resulting explosion had the soft nether walls crumbling down on top of Dream. 

George and Sapnap had heard the explosion, but hadn’t known anything was wrong until they had gotten to the slanted mountain of rubble. Their compasses indicated that Dream was underneath their feet, and that’s when the panic had set in. The only answer they got from their comms was static when they called, and the dig through the hot debris took ages. When they had finally found Dream, he was awkwardly pinned underneath a massive slab of netherrack, unconscious and barely breathing. Three of his limbs had been broken, and almost all of his ribs had been crushed.

They’d immediately plied their friend with what little healing items they had and carefully lifted him out of the hole. He’d had his mask on then, so he weighed as much as a normal human did and was easier for the two of them to move. Dream had stayed unconscious the entire trek back to the portal, and after they had reached the overworld they built a tiny shack to look him over and take care of him.

Dream had been okay in the end, but the situation was uncomfortably similar to what was currently happening.

“The one where he nearly died from a cave-in?” George huffed, deflecting an arrow with the blade of his sword. He chased after the skeleton that shot it, smashing his blade through its skull in one clean swipe.

“Yeah. This is…reminding me a lot… of that.”

“Yeah. Me too.” 

….

They made it to the nether portal leading to Kinoko. George went through first, to make sure the way was clear, before he signalled to Sapnap to follow through after him.

The fireborn made it all the way to the sitting room of their shared house before his legs collapsed underneath him and he fell against the back of their ugly mushroom-patterned couch. George was quick to untie Dream from his back, and while Sapnap caught his breath against the sofa, George guided Dream to slump against the back of the couch.

“We gotta get him to the bathroom,” George told the fireborn, whose face did a strange, twisting grimace and took on a faint green tinge.

“Y…yeah. Give me a minute,” he managed to wheeze, leaning heavily over the back of the couch. He wasn’t worried about smearing the cushions with the grue covering his body. For one, the stains would blend in with the mushroom pattern. For second, it wouldn’t be the first time he had gotten blood on it. He was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

Eventually, Sapnap worked up the will to lurch away from the couch and unclasp his heavy armor. George followed suit, scooping up both sets and dropping them into the chest near the door.

“You ready?” George asked, striding over to crouch beside Dream. “No,” Sapnap huffed, staggering over to join him. “Let’s do this.”

George took Dream’s shoulders, hooking his arms under the hybrid’s armpits and hefting Dream’s back against his chest. Sapnap took Dream’s legs, and once more, they lifted the unresponsive body into the air. George led the way this time, taking short, quick steps backwards as he made his way over to the stairs adjacent to the sitting room.

“Why the….why the fuck did we build the bathroom upstairs,” Sapnap groaned, weary legs nearly tripping with each stair he took. George remained silent, watching the steps behind him and focusing on not tripping as he climbed them backwards.

They reached the second floor with little issue and started making their way to the bathroom. George also found himself cursing their floor plan, mentally lamenting that they had not only put the bathroom on the second floor, but that it was on the far side of the house from the stairs.

It was when they were in the corridor connecting their rooms and the bathroom that the body pressed to George’s chest suddenly tensed, and then he was sent tumbling towards the wall, balance lost as Dream flailed, a juddering, panicked rumble chiming from the hybrid’s throat. Sapnap fell after them, losing his grip on Dream’s legs and slamming into the floor with a grunt. The sudden loss of support of his legs from Sapnap sent Dream crashing into George, smashing the brunet against the wall and down to the ground as they both fell.

“Dream!” George shrieked, but Dream was already rolling off of the older man, wire strung fangs bared in a wild snarl as he struggled to his feet. He lunged away from the pair and smacked into another wall, blood and grime smearing in a gruesome trail across the dark wood.

“It’s us,” Sapnap exclaimed, shoving himself up to his feet and staggering towards the massive hybrid. Dream gurgled, a low, sallow imitation of a growl, and slid to the floor, leaving a discolored streak down the wall. Sapnap took a step closer, hands up placatingly. “Remember? Sapnap and George. We got you out, man.”

Dream whined, hands reaching up to tug at the shackle around his neck. The chains still attached to the manacles around his wrists clinked, and he flinched.

“You’re in our house,” George assured in a hushed voice, not even bothering to climb to his feet as he sidled nearer to the blond. “We’re in Kinoko Kingdom. No one’s gonna find us here.”

Dream’s ears flickered, and his face, screwed up in either a grimace or a snarl, softened, scarred lips sliding closed over the wires sealing his mouth shut.

“Can you get up? We’re gonna get you to the bathroom. We gotta clean all of the…we gotta get you clean, and take care of your injuries,” Sapnap explained gently, reaching towards Dream to brush his fingers against an uninjured section of his shoulder. The hybrid flinched, but nonetheless, jerked his head in a curt nod, hesitating before he reached towards Sapnap’s hand. With George as a crutch and Sapnap guiding him, they brought him to their medium-sized bathroom. 

The tines of Dream’s singular antler scraped a long gouge in the plaster on the ceiling, showering the three of them with debris. The hybrid jerked down, violently, and rumbled out an apologetic whine. 

“Don’t worry about it, Dream. Duck here,” George instructed, guiding Dream’s head down and to the side until he could squeeze through the low doorway. They left the door open to let in air and make it seem a little more open. The bathroom already seemed a bit crowded, with Dream towering over both of their heads and taking up a good third of the room.

Now that Dream was actually here, in their bathroom, George…George didn't know how to start. It was all so awful. Every time he looked at Dream, a new wound would make itself apparent, and all George could think of was how overwhelming it all was. They might not even have enough medical supplies to take care of all of this! Kinoko was a peaceful kingdom! They hadn’t stocked up on war-and-wound supplies because they didn’t think they’d be fighting anybody!

“We’ll—we’ll help you get clean first,” Sapnap told Dream, taking the decision from George’s hands. The brunet nearly slumped in relief, nerves lessened now that the decision on where to start had been taken from his jurisdiction.

Dream was almost too big for the sunken bath set in the floor, so instead of making the hybrid fold himself into the low tub, they had him sit on the edge with his legs in the basin. The water George set to run was lukewarm, and they left the drain unstoppered in preparation for the sheer amount of filth that would be coming off of the half-warden’s body.

The checkered tile on the floor would need to be cleaned intensely at a later date, but neither of them were too worried about it at the moment. The floor could be replaced, if they deemed it necessary.

George helped Dream remove the few bandages and disgusting rags that might have once been clothes from his body, throwing them into the waste bin in the corner as Sapnap retrieved a handful of hand cloths and towels from one of the upper cabinets. 

After soaking the towels, George and Sapnap began the arduous task of cleaning all of the built-up blood and grime from Dream’s body. The layers of filth were so bad that it took several rounds of meticulous, gentle scrubbing to even get small patches of Dream’s skin clean. Dream had grabbed a hand towel as well, flicking the remaining length of his tail into his lap and gently scrubbing at it, shoulders stiff and back hunched as George and Sapnap worked at the rest of his body.

The fresh water stirred up the scents locked into the dried layers of grime, and the smell was horrendous. Not just the scent of rotten blood and infected wounds, but also the odor of sweat and unwashed body of what was more than a year. George had opened one of the high windows along the walls to let in fresh air, all the while trying to not gag from the rancid stench clogging the entire room, and even seeping out into the hallway.

Sapnap was making a mental tally of Dream’s wounds as he scrubbed, swallowing thickly as he counted just how many there were.

The spines along Dream’s back had been ripped out, leaving gaping craters where keratin spikes had once been. The same went for his shoulders and forearms, and then there was the crater in his skull where his left antler had been. His face. His eyes. The wires mutilating his gums and stitching his mouth shut. The amputated limbs, like his tail and missing finger, and even the empty nail beds decorating the ends of each of his remaining fingers. The burns, all over his body from the lava, including the one from Quackity’s brand. The lacerations around his exposed chest, and Prime, the cracked, broken, and even missing ribs.

All of that, and that was without even mentioning the random scars, cuts, and precise gashes coating Dream’s entire body. Some of them were small, shallow scrapes and tiny scratches, but more of them were deep, and in one or two, Sapnap swore he could see the stark white glint of bone.

He forced himself not to dwell on it. If he thought too hard about how Dream had gotten his wounds, he’d have a breakdown, and they couldn’t afford that right now. Not when so much was at stake.

"Hey, um, Sa–ah–” the unexpected voice strangled to a halt, and both George and Sapnap’s gazes snapped up to the doorway, where Karl stood, hands clapped over his mouth as he stared at the trio with wide, horrified eyes. 

Dream jerked at the unfamiliar voice, a warning rumble building up into a stuttering growl that faintly shook the room erupting from his throat. He whirled around to face the door and slipped, palms slapping harshly against the filthy tile as he began to slide into the tub. His growl tapered up into an ear-piercing wail as he slid, wet palms sliding against the slick tile despite his desperately scrabbling hands.

Sapnap jerked, Karl dropping to the back of his mind as he snagged his hands around Dream’s bicep and hauled the hybrid back upright. He heard George curse behind them, footsteps pounding as he darted away, and then a distant, bodily thump and a startled yell from Karl down the hall. 

Dream latched onto Sapnap, clawless fingers digging into the fireborn’s ruined shirt, and through their combined effort, the hybrid was dragged out of the slippery basin. He splashed down onto the muddy, grime-slick tile, and with a grimace, Sapnap realized they would have to go at another round of cleaning.

Sapnap could hear a hushed argument a ways outside of the bathroom, and he debated the merits of leaving Dream to break George and Karl up before deciding that Dream needed him more. George could handle himself, and Karl should be fine, if George explained what was going on.

Sapnap focused on helping Dream sit upright. The hybrid’s heart was pounding, so hard that it reverberated loudly through the enclosed space of the bathroom, and he was breathing shakily, ears and hands and even amputated tail trembling faster with every beat of his heart. 

The teal glow of Dream’s fluctuating heart was bright now, so much so that it contrasted harshly with the yellow froglights hanging from the ceiling, and Sapnap knew that he needed to calm Dream down, before something bad happened.

“Dream? Sapnap? We’re coming back. It’s George and Karl,” George announced, and then two pairs of footsteps were approaching the bathroom. Dream let loose a stressed whine, fingers tight around the fireborn’s once-white shirt.

“C’mon, let’s get you set back down, okay?” Sapnap murmured, tugging gently at Dream’s hands. “It’s just Karl, and you know I won’t let anyone hurt you here.” Despite his words, a jagged snarl dripped from Dream’s torn lips, and his ears flattened back against his skull.

Sapnap swallowed, shooting a warning glance over to the door as George and Karl edged into view, and helped Dream back into the tub, this time so that the hybrid was facing the door. He might not be able to see, but he seemed much more at ease with his back facing the wall.

“You—what—Sapnap, you never told me you were breaking Dream out! You never told me he was a warden!” Karl’s voice shrilled higher and higher, hands flexing anxiously as he glared at the fireborn. A clattering hiss slid from Dream, and George, still standing beside Karl, elbowed him roughly.

“Volume,” George hissed, planting a hand on the back of Karl’s shoulder and pushing him into the bathroom. He put a hand on the doorknob and gave Karl a significant look. “You better not run, Karl.”

The taller brunet winced, eyes darting over to Dream as he rubbed at his right elbow and hesitantly nodded. George squinted at him, long and hard, before stepping away from the doorframe and scooping up one of the cleaner towels from the counter.

“Oh–kay,” Karl breathed shakily, hands clenching into fists as his eyes darted between the three of them. “Okay. Sapnap,” he locked his gaze on Sapnap, who seemed incredibly downcast. “Sapnap. Why didn’t you tell me about Dream? Some–some warning would have been nice.”

“I—I did, Karl,” Sapnap murmured, face growing wearier by the second. He turned away from Karl, putting his back to the dismayed expression growing on the tall brunet’s face as he plucked up two more towels. He handed one to Dream, who took it but made no move to wipe away the grime coating his skin. Instead, he wrung it between his hands, ears perked forward and shoulders hunched, laser focused on Karl and completely unaware of how the man was twitching under his attention.

“I did tell you, I swear. I’m so sorry,” he murmured, carefully stepping down into the running water in the bottom of the bathtub to part the matted curtain of hair over Dream’s face. The hybrid was face-to-face with Sapnap like this, with Sapnap standing at his full height in the tub and Dream sat on the edge of the basin. The fireborn reached up towards the hybrid’s face, fingers carefully brushing against his jaw as he pushed the natty mass of hair aside.

The hybrid recoiled at the sudden touch, body growing rigid before he forced himself to relax, huffing shortly through his nose as Sapnap began to clean the gore and filth caked all over his face. George rejoined him not a moment later, gently running his towel against Dream’s mutilated back. 

“Right before we left to scout the prison, I told you, I promise.” Sapnap couldn't help the crack in his voice, and he had to bite at his lip to keep his voice from wavering more.

“I…did…I forgot again, then.” Karl’s voice was small, and Sapnap sent a quick glance backwards to see that the brunet was stricken, one hand clenched around the doorframe while the other was balled into a trembling fist.

“Tell me what happened.” Karl’s tone hardened, and his face grew stony. “Actually, hold on.” He turned towards the door, froze, and turned back to George. “I’m not running, I promise. I’m gonna go get my journal.”

“Are you sure you won’t forget on the way there?” George snarked, then winced at the blazing glare Sapnap shot him. “Sorry, that was mean. I didn’t mean that.”

Karl seemed to wilt at George's words, shoulders drawing in and expression growing penitent. He quickly turned away from them, long strides carrying him away from the bathroom door.

Don't do that again, Sapnap mouthed at George, face pinched with anger. George sighed, and nodded, mouthing Sorry back at the fireborn.

Karl returned within a minute, journal in one hand and quill in the other. He sucked in a deep breath, and then met Sapnap’s eyes. “Okay. Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything important out.”

And so, they did. They started by telling Karl about Quackity’s gift of Dream’s antler. Dream had made an unidentifiable sound at that news, shifting uncomfortably on the edge of the tub. Sapnap wouldn’t know how to feel about that, either.

When Karl had guilelessly asked who Quackity was, Sapnap had faltered, face sagging with grief.

“He’s our— was our— fiancé. We were gonna get married, Karl.”

“O–oh…” Karl didn’t seem to know what to do with that information, quill freezing in place on the page. “Is he… nice?” He asked, and Sapnap’s composure almost crumbled, choking back a small sob and planting the heel of one of his hands against one of his stinging eyes regardless of the grime that coated it. Dream rumbled sympathetically, loosening his grip on his towel to reach out and fumble around for Sapnap’s wrist. The blond squeezed Sapnap’s arm with a small, soothing whine, leaning his face into the hand still pressed against his jaw.

“Thanks, Dream,” Sapnap murmured, squeezing his eyes shut to force away the growing wetness.

George took over the storytelling from there while Sapnap put himself back together, telling the taller brunet about staking out the prison, spying on Sam and Quackity, all the way through breaking Dream out of Pandora and traveling through the nether, right up to the present moment. Through the story, Karl’s face grew more and more pallid, and eventually, he sank down onto the closed toilet lid, fingers tight around the leather binding of his journal. His quill was bent in several places from how tightly he'd been squeezing it.

“All we need to do now is…is take care of all of Dream’s wounds, but…” George trailed off, sharing a look with Sapnap. The lost look in those coal-black eyes told George all he needed to know. Sapnap was as clueless as he was on how to start.

“We don’t know what to do,” George murmured, hands clenching around his towel as he avoided a particularly nasty slash on Dream’s side. They were running out of clean towels. 

Dream groaned meaningfully, leaning his head forward into Sapnap’s hands. 

"What about Ponk? He's a doctor, right? I’m not remembering that wrong?" Karl put forth, voice hesitant. His fingers were tapping on the cover of his journal in a staccato beat, and his right leg was jittering anxiously. His gaze never left Dream for long.

“Yeah, you’re good. Yeah, he is a doctor.” Sapnap reassured, eyebrows drawing together as his expression grew contemplative. A sound akin to a creaky hinge being opened rumbled from Dream’s throat, and George glanced down to see Dream hunching down, shoulders over his ears and shortened tail curled around the side of his thigh.

“It’s alright, Dream,” George reassured, pausing in his final wipe down of the hybrid’s side. “He's a doctor. He's got an oath to help people, not hurt them.” The brunet frowned, face screwing up pensively. “I'm sure we can convince him to keep his mouth shut.”

“You’ll have to message him, George. He hates you less than he hates me, I think.” Sapnap offered. It was…probably true. He’d had more spats with Ponk than George did, at least that he knew of.

“I could do it?” Karl offered, leaning towards the trio. “If—if I haven't done anything to him, I mean. Are we—am I on good terms with Ponk?”

“I don't know,” Sapnap leaned over to swish his towel in the running water in the bottom of the tub. It clouded brown for several beats before he managed to wring most of the grime out. “I didn't hear about any big fights between you and Ponk, and you've never told me about any.”

“I don't want to risk it. I'll do it,” George grunted, reaching back into his inventory to pull out his communicator. It fizzled into his free hand, which was still wet and somewhat covered in filth. He grimaced as he scrolled through the list of names on the server, leaving a gross smear on the screen from his thumb. He'd have to clean it later.

George finally found Ponk’s contact, clicked on it, then paused for several moments before typing out his message.

You whispered to dropsbyponk: we need ur help

dropsbyponk whispered to you: why would I help u

You whispered to dropsbyponk: Ponk please 

You whispered to dropsbyponk: we need a doctor

dropsbyponk whispered to you: for what?

You whispered to dropsbyponk:...

You whispered to dropsbyponk:...

dropsbyponk whispered to you:....

dropsbyponk whispered to you: fine. where r u

You whispered to dropsbyponk: Kinoko. At my house

You whispered to dropsbyponk: bring like, all of your medical stuff. were gonna need it

Message delivered, George sighed and dropped his communicator back into his inventory. 

“He’s coming,” he informed the group. Movement in his peripherals caught his attention, and he turned to see that Dream was trembling, intensely. His hands were clenched tight around the towel he'd been holding on to, wringing out the majority of the water, and his head was ducked down between his hunched shoulders.

Before George could reassure Dream, Sapnap was there, plopping down on the edge of the bathtub next to the huge hybrid and laying a gentle hand on an uninjured patch of Dream’s side. “Ponk's only gonna be here to help, man. We won't let him hurt you.”

Despite his words, Sapnap’s eyes were worried. He scanned Dream’s submissive posture with a troubled expression, gaze lingering on the hybrid's hands, arms, and the sharp tines of his singular antler.

Sapnap wasn't so much worried about Ponk hurting Dream as he was of Dream hurting Ponk. Ponk was a doctor, and as prickly as he may be to the people he didn't like, he would still help them. Dream, on the other hand, could and would turn violent at the drop of a pin. He'd already done it twice that day, attacking George and Sapnap out of the blue. Sapnap was worried that Ponk would set Dream off somehow. 

He was worried that Dream might kill one of them, if they weren't careful. He and George each had three Lives, but Karl only had one.  

He didn’t know how many Ponk had. He really, really didn’t want to be responsible for any of the man’s Deaths.

Sapnap turned his focus back to Dream. He’d deal with any trouble when it came. There was no point worrying about it now.

Chapter Text

(art by me on tumblr)

Thirty minutes after George messaged Ponk, there was a sharp rapping against the front door. Dream jerked at the abrupt noise, and George left it to Sapnap to calm the hybrid down as he stepped out of the bathroom.

George made his way downstairs to the front door, sparing a brief, disgusted glance at his appearance. His clothes were ruined, stained with dark, half-dried globs and splattered with streaks of blood, and his arms were coated up to his elbows in stubborn grit. He didn't have time to clean up, though, not unless he wanted to keep Ponk waiting, and he was sure he would just end up filthy again before the day was over.

Holding back a low sigh, George opened the front door and was greeted to the sight of the server's resident doctor.

Ponk had a huge gladstone bag slung over his shoulder, undoubtedly filled with medical implements of all kinds. George hoped that the man had brought enough. He was dressed in a white lab coat thrown over his black hoodie and red-striped white pants. The coat, paired with his black, yellow, and red patterned balaclava gave him a rather strange appearance, but George wasn't in any place to judge. He'd never seen Ponk’s face, but then again, the majority of the server had never seen Dream's, either. 

Ponk's eyes darted over George's disheveled, dirty clothes, white brows furrowing behind the ovular eyehole of his mask as he took in just how out of order the brunet was.

“Ponk,” George greeted, unable to help the exhausted waver coloring his voice. “Thanks for coming.” His words were met with a slow silence as Ponk squinted at him, red pupils as unreadable as they always were.

"You are gonna owe me for this, I hope you know that,” he finally settled on in lieu of a greeting, shifting his weight and adjusting his grip on the medical bag. “Can I come in? I rushed over here. You made it sound like an emergency.”

George winced, reaching up to run a hand through his hair before he stopped himself, remembering that his hands were filthy at the moment. “Yeah. Yeah, come on.” He stepped to the side, fingers clenched around the wooden door. "We–we wouldn't trust you with this unless we were desperate, and we're really, really desperate."

He took a long, preparatory breath, eyes locked onto Ponk’s form as he stepped past the brunet, watching intently to see what his reaction to George’s next words would be.

"It's Dream,” he said, and Ponk’s entire demeanor abruptly changed.

"Did you two break him out of Pandora's Vault?" Ponk’s voice was shrill, and he stepped back half a pace, gaze suddenly darting all around the room as if he were afraid someone would jump out and attack him. He unslung the gladstone bag from his shoulder and let it dangle by his leg while the fingers of his other hand fizzled, brushing into his inventory.

“Sam’s gonna come after you!” Ponk yelped, red eyes suddenly turning to bore into George. “You don't want Sam coming after you. He’s changed, George. He’s not the same anymore.”

“I know, Ponk.” George's face crumpled, and he took Ponk by the bicep, dragging him back outside and closing the door behind them. He didn't know how good Dream’s hearing was, but this was a discussion he didn't want the hybrid to overhear.

“Do you want to know why we broke Dream out of Pandora?” George stared deeply into Ponk’s eyes, trying to impress on him the severity of the situation. From the wild look in the doctor’s maroon irises, he already understood some of it.

“He's a hybrid, Ponk. We–” George’s voice cracked, and he had to blink back the unbidden tears that rose up into his eyes. He hadn’t cried, fully cried since they had discovered Dream’s antler, so why was this what set him off?

George let loose a frustrated growl and shook his head with a sharp sniff. He met Ponk’s burgundy gaze again, swallowing, and forced himself to speak. “He was being harvested. For parts. Body parts, Ponk. They were torturing him!”

What little of Ponk’s skin that George could see paled, and he fell back against the wall of the house to support his suddenly fawning legs. “Sam was…what…?” His shoulders rose up as he hunched in on himself, left arm rising up to clutch at his chest.

The doctor chuckled weakly. “It really shouldn't surprise me at this point, ha ha…” He sucked in what sounded suspiciously like a sob and straightened, demeanor abruptly changing as he shoved off from the wall. “Take me to Dream,” Ponk ordered, gaze fierce as he focused on George. “I’ll see what I can do.”

George inspected the man for a long moment before jerking a nod, leading him back inside and making his way up the stairs to the second floor. He could hear the soft murmur of voices coming from the bathroom, and the constant flow of water just underneath the low sounds.

“Guys?” He called, slowing before he stepped through the threshold. He held out one hand to Ponk, forestalling the man’s advance as he gingerly poked his head around the doorframe. “Ponk’s here. Don’t panic.”

Dream’s head turned towards his voice, and Sapnap, still seated beside the hybrid, shot George a thumbs up. Karl eyed the shorter brunet from his seat on the toilet, quill pausing from its scrawl across his journal. “Just tell me where you want me,” he muttered, dropping his gaze back to the yellowed pages.

George held back his wince and beckoned for Ponk to follow him, stepping into the bathroom proper and sidling up to the wall. The bathroom was going to be crowded with all five of them crammed inside. For a moment, he debated sending Karl outside, but decided that he would rather keep an eye on the taller brunet.

Just in case.

Ponk finally strode into view, and George could clock the moment his eyes locked onto Dream. His shoulders grew rigid, and a strangled-sounding noise slipped from his throat. 

"Is that—that's Dream?" 

George nodded. "Yeah, that's him."

"Y-you didn't tell me he was a warden hybrid," Ponk protested weakly, left foot sliding back against the wood flooring of the hall as he leaned backwards.

“No. No I didn't.” George agreed, crossing his arms. “I didn't want you to run.”

A near-hysterical chuckle bubbled out of Ponk’s throat, and his left hand rose to drag over the top of his balaclava. “Mother Citrus…” He murmured, hand dropping to run down over his face. “I wasn’t expecting anything like this today.” His gaze darted up to the ceiling, caught on the gouge torn through the plaster, and dropped back down to lock onto Dream. His maroon eyes scanned over the hybrid’s body, taking in first the hybrid’s sheer size, almost taking up a third of the bathroom even when seated halfway in the bathtub, the sharp, teal tinted antler and the empty space where the other one should have been. The broad, shivering shoulders with skin that bled into blue the further down his arms it got, his stump of a tail, his chest. Stark white ribs stood out against teal skin, rimming a massive, gaping hole in the half-warden’s chest like a ring of broken teeth. Past the mis-matched ribs were blue tinted organs, gently illuminated by the pale, beating blue heart right between Dream’s lungs.

Ponk had never seen a warden before. He wasn’t stupid enough to risk losing a Life on the thrill-seeker’s whim of exploring the dark deep. See, you didn’t just respawn from a warden kill. More often than not, you would lose a Life. You’d die for real. Ponk wasn’t willing to risk that. He was quite happy not knowing the mysteries of the ancient underground cities, without ever seeing a warden, and would have much preferred it to stay that way. But now…here one was, one of the most feared creatures in the world, the near-undefeatable warden.

Granted, Dream was only half warden, but Ponk didn’t think that much mattered. Or, perhaps it did, he contemplated, squinting at the shackles locked around Dream’s neck and limbs. If Sam had been able to keep Dream contained, had been able to cut off his body parts, then surely being half human dampened some of Dream’s warden abilities. 

“Okay.” Ponk finally breathed, visibly steeling his nerves. “Okay.” He inched over to the long counter beside the toilet and set his bag down, unlatching it with stiff fingers and pulling out several small kits and silvery sharp, horrific-looking implements. George was suddenly glad that Dream couldn’t see them. Most of what Ponk pulled out of the bag looked like torture tools in and of themselves.

“Tell me the worst injuries, and I’ll start from there,” Ponk ordered, and Sapnap did. As Ponk began to empty his inventory, setting down a myriad of bottles, canisters, packets, tools, and rolls of tape and gauze, Sapnap walked him through the biggest injuries marring Dream’s body. He started with the brutal wounds on Dream’s face, talking Ponk through everything he had noticed as they bathed the man. Throughout the explanation, Dream’s hands dug into the towel still desperately clutched between his hands, and his amputated tail twitched fervently, swishing fresh blood over the tile from the few cuts that had split open and sloshing the water that had dripped from the soaked towels across the floor.

One bottle in particular, large and full of a bright yellow liquid, was set to the side. When Karl asked what it was, Ponk curtly explained it was homemade limoncello, a lemon-based alcohol he usually used as a disinfectant.

George and Sapnap had finally managed to wash all of the gore caked onto Dream’s body, at least, so Ponk wouldn’t have to worry so much about any more filth getting into the hybrid’s injuries.

What little they could see of Ponk’s face was wan by the time Sapnap was done with his walkthrough, usually caramel-colored skin a pallid grey. His hands mechanically sorted through the supplies he had brought, arranging and organizing them across their bathroom counter, before he finally turned towards Dream.

“Do you mind if I examine you, Dream? I won’t–I’m not going to start just yet. I just need to see what the damage is.” His hands were splayed out at his sides, even though he knew Dream couldn’t see them. He didn't dare to approach until Dream gave a terse nod.

Ponk had Dream lean over the tub so that he could reach the hybrid’s face, clinically parting the greasy hair to see the damage. At the sight of Dream's empty, burnt eye sockets, Ponk faltered, horror and disgust flashing through his eyes before he visibly compartmentalized his emotions and forced his expression to smooth over. Sapnap had told him about the injuries, but to see them for himself—!

He moved down to Dream’s mouth, carefully parting the hybrid’s lips with his thumbs and wincing at the sight that greeted him. What looked like silver fencing wire criss-crossed over his teeth and pierced into his gums, stitching his mouth shut. The stitching began just before his right canine and punched into his gums, stitching all the way across the sharp fangs until the wire twisted off behind the second incisor. The sharp ends of the wire had gouged a pair of deep holes into the soft flesh of Dream’s cheek, and there were sores lining the soft underside of his lips.

His teeth didn’t look like they were fitted together just right, the zig-zag of the hybrid’s fangs off center a significant amount. Ponk frowned, pulling his fingers away from Dream’s mouth and running his fingers over the quivering jawline. There was a sharp, ill-fitting lump near the back of the jaw, on the left side. 

"His jaw was broken," Ponk murmured, humming disconcertingly and turning worried maroon eyes to Sapnap. "It healed back together wrong. I'm going to have to re-break it so it can set properly."

At the short man's words, Dream's ears flicked back and he pulled away with a deep, unsettling rumble. Ponk jerked his hands away from the hybrid’s face, sliding a step back over the tiled floor, heart stuttering.

"We'll leave his jaw for last.” He amended, warily eyeing the slight snarl wisping over Dream’s lips.

Ponk moved on, meticulously inspecting each wound embellished all over Dream’s body. He hissed when he saw the chunks taken out of the flesh above Dream’s spine, and turned a questioning gaze over to George when he found the Q branded into Dreams left shoulder. 

“Quackity,” George spat, and left it at that.

The crater in Dream’s skull where his left antler used to be was met with a downturned hum, and the amputated stump of Dream’s tail was inspected between gentle hands.

When Ponk finally reached Dream’s chest, he hesitated, eyeing the luminant organs inside and Dream’s drawn expression before ultimately deciding to observe from a distance, leaning down to peer at the the few intact ribs, the broken stubs where many of them had snapped off, and even the long, jagged tears lining his sides where the ribs had been ripped out. Past those, Ponk could see dark scars slashing through the soft flesh of several of Dream’s organs.

He shivered, straightening and turning away from the mutilated hybrid.

“I’ll start with his eyes, but first…” Ponk stepped over to the counter and lifted something from the polished surface. It was a syringe, made of clear glass and shining silver metal . The man plucked up one of the numerous bottles lining the counter, squinting at the scrawled label stuck to the glass before jabbing the needle through the cork stopper. “How much does Dream weigh? Give me your best guess.”

George looked to Sapnap, whose face screwed up in thought. “Maybe…I’d say three hundred to…three-fifty?” He glanced over at George, who could only give the fireborn a helpless shrug. “I don’t know, Sap, you’re the one who carried him back.”

Both Ponk and Karl’s eyes widened at that statement, and Ponk turned to peer at Sapnap with a new, appraising look in his eyes while he soaked a gauze pad with the bottle of limoncello. A sharp, citrusy scent pervaded the room, chasing out the lingering odor of rot. “Three-fifty…?” Ponk murmured, before shaking his head. “Alright. We’ll lowball it and go with three hundred.” He withdrew a quarter tic’s worth of liquid into the syringe and set the bottle down, then flicked at the side of the glass vial several times.

“Dream,” Ponk ventured, twisting to peer at the hybrid. At the mention of his name, Dream stiffened, ears flicking upwards towards Ponk. He rumbled lowly in answer, tail flicking anxiously as he waited for Ponk to continue. The doctor obliged.

“I have a sedative here. It’ll put you out for about eight hours, and you’ll probably sleep for a while longer after you metabolize it. Your body most likely needs the rest.” Carefully pronouncing each of his footsteps, Ponk moved closer to the massive hybrid and crouched down in front of him. 

Ponk didn’t consider himself a short person. Sure, even Sapnap was taller than he was, but so were a lot of other people. Most everyone on the server topped over six foot, so Ponk considered his lofty five-six a reasonable, normal height. Even still, he felt dwarfed by Dream, kneeling on the floor in front of the huge, looming warden hybrid.

Ponk pushed his thoughts away with a small shake of his head and blinked up at Dream, hoping that the hybrid felt just a little bit more at ease with the vulnerable position Ponk had just put himself in.

“I’ll have to inject it.” He informed the blond, leaning back on his heels. “Can I have your arm? It’ll be quick.”

Dream whined, head drifting over to Sapnap, who was still pressed up against the hybrid's side in a show of support and reassurance. Sapnap gently patted Dream’s bicep, stretching upwards to murmur something into one of his soft, tattered ears. The tension stringing Dream’s shoulders lessened just a little more, and he turned towards Ponk with a jerky nod, thrusting his arm out in front of him and nearly nailing Ponk across the face with his shaking fist.

The doctor stifled his yelp, falling back on his free hand against the wet tile, grip tightening around the syringe and gauze pad as he regained his balance. He huffed, checking the needle and the liquid inside, before carefully taking Dream’s arm near the joint and swiping the yellow-tinted gauze pad over the crook of the elbow several times.

“Just a quick pinch,” he murmured, quickly sticking the needle through the blue-tinged flesh and depressing the plunger. “And there. Done.” He leaned over to push the used syringe up onto the counter and casually tossed the used gauze pad into the trash bin in the corner.

“While that takes effect…” Ponk lifted one of the sodden, soiled towels from the floor and reached down to wring it out in the bottom of the bathtub. “I hope you have more clean towels,” he murmured, shaking the worst of the muck from the cloth and gingerly reaching for Dream’s arm. 

“Sapnap. You—you can control fire, right? Can you melt the shackles?” Dream’s reaction to Ponk’s touch was delayed, a slow flinch that told Ponk that the sedative was beginning to take effect. At Sapnap’s nod, Ponk began to stuff the towel between the metal of the cuff and Dream’s skin. Once he was done, he held Dream’s arm out towards Sapnap. “Good. Get that off.”

Without a word, Sapnap pulled Dream’s wrist into his lap, placed his hands around the manacle, and began to pour heat into it. Ponk directed George to stuff wet towels underneath the other cuffs, and then corralled Karl into washing the soiled towels strewn across the floor in the as of yet unused sink.

Ponk had wanted to cut Dream's hair out of the way, both for sanitation and because it was so matted that he didn't think they'd be able to brush it out, but Dream had adamantly refused, a delayed snarl warbling from his chapped lips the moment it was suggested. Ponk ended up tying it back as much as he could without pulling on any of Dream's head wounds.

"We'll probably have to soak his hair to get all of this out, if he doesn't want us to cut it," Ponk informed them curtly, and moved on.

By then, Dream was out cold, slumped limply against Sapnap’s side, and Sapnap had managed to melt the first cuff enough to pull it apart. He held the red-hot slag for several moments before shrugging and dropping it in the basin of the bathtub, next to the drain. The tub was porcelain. It’d be fine.

They laid out one of their last clean, big towels over the floor and pulled Dream over to lay him on top of it, where Sapnap could finish melting off the manacles. He saved the shackle around Dream’s neck for last, and had Ponk, Karl, and George hold the hybrid’s head up and hair out of the way as he burned through the thick metal.

The last shackle was dropped into the bathtub with the others, and Ponk, with the shakiest breath in his life, began to operate on Dream.

The eyes first , he thought clinically as he pulled elbow-length rubber gloves over his coat sleeves. Ponk pulled a large tray out of the bottom of his bag and began loading it with supplies, painfully aware of the three pairs of eyes laser-focused on his back as he did so.

Scalpel. Forceps, surgical scissors, as many pads of gauze as he could grab. Needle and sutures, just in case. Waste bucket and bag. The large bottle of limoncello. More gauze, this time in a roll. Tape. Bandages.

Items gathered, Ponk lifted the tray and set it down on the checkered floor next to Dream’s head. The tile was hard beneath his knees as he settled down next to the unconscious man, but it was a numb pressure he could ignore for as long as he needed to.

Ponk picked up the roll of tape and pushed aside the few loose strands of hair clinging to the hybrid’s forehead, then carefully pulled open the eyelids, shiny and puffy with not-quite healed burn scars. Ponk taped them open, and then with deft fingers, plucked up the scalpel and forceps, beginning the painstaking process of debriding the dead tissue around and inside of Dream’s left eye socket.

He started with scraping away the charred bits of flesh surrounding the cavity, holding the ruined flakes away with the forceps while he sliced through them with the scalpel. The separated chunks were dropped into the bin he brought for biological waste. He picked away at the black flecks smattering across the spill-patterned burns over the cheekbone and dug out strands of partially melted hair that had fused with the boiled skin. The inside of the socket was small, and there wasn’t much room to maneuver his tools inside of the cavity. The low, yellow light of the froglights didn’t lend well to good visibility, and he often found himself leaning at odd angles just to see and make sure he had gotten all of the dead bits in just one section.

Ponk had to stop halfway through debriding the first socket to swab out the oozing blood and pus of the reopened cracks and burns lining the inside with a limoncello-soaked pad. He went through three of them before he was satisfied, tossing the used pads into the wastebin and picking the scalpel back up.

He was glad for the overpowering scent of lemons, and for his mask. He knew the sight of infection, almost by heart, and could tell just from looking at the sockets that they were almost septic.

He was thankful he didn’t have to smell the infection.

When he was finally finished debriding the left socket, he swapped his scalpel for his smallest sewing kit and began the meticulous job of stitching closed all of the bleeding little cuts littering the delicate flesh. He made sure to use his dissolvable thread, the kind he usually used for internal wounds. He didn’t want to have to dig around in Dream’s skull any more than he had to.

Halfway through the procedure, Karl had excused himself, cheeks tinged a queasy pale. George cut his eyes over to Sapnap and jerked his head meaningfully towards the door once Karl was gone. The fireborn had hesitated for just a moment, muttering a small, “Are you sure?” before George ushered him out of the bathroom. 

Ponk barely spared them a glance, tying off the last stitch for the left socket and leaning back. The cavity was an ugly mess of swollen flesh and shiny black stitches, but they would hold, and they would heal, albeit slowly.

One more pass with the lemon alcohol, and then Ponk was stuffing the empty socket with gauze, packing solidly and then taping a thick square over the entire eye. He gave George strict instructions to change the dressing, packing and all, out at least every eight hours. The risk of infection was high, and a major infection so close to Dream’s brain could be deadly.

The entire process was repeated on Dream’s right eye, Ponk punctiliously replicating each step he had taken with the left eye socket. Throughout the entire process, George watched him, gaze sharp as they tracked the doctor’s each and every move. The brunet’s arms were crossed and pressed tightly to his chest, and he was slightly hunched over in his lean against the wall. Every once in a while, his fingers would jitter across his biceps, but would abruptly still, as if he thought any simple movement would distract Ponk from his work. Ponk couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful for the brunet’s consideration, but the intense focus centered on his every move made his hands just a little bit more unsteady than they normally would have been.

Once both eyes were padded and covered, Ponk took a long bandage and secured both square pads in place against the eye sockets, wrapping it tightly around Dream’s head before tying it off.

There were… so many stitches, for so many wounds, big and small. Ponk conscripted George into helping him, finally breaking the man out of his sentinel-esque watch after confirming that the man did know how to do a proper suture. 

They worked down from Dream’s head, slathering burns with one of the creams Ponk had brought, clearing debris out of each wound, new and old, and finally stitching them closed. Sapnap came back into the bathroom partway through the process, citing Karl making himself busy by attempting to make something edible for Dream to maybe eat later, and was roped into the monumental job of doctoring the hybrid’s mutilated body.

The ribs around Dream’s chest cavity gave Ponk pause. He…wasn’t sure what to do for the broken ones, jagged bone and exposed, bleeding marrow marking them out clearly for all to see. For the ribs missing completely, he simply sewed the jagged lacerations shut. Some of the gouges where the ribs had rested under the skin almost reached Dream’s back, and Ponk could clearly see the broken ends of the bone inside the deep slits, clearly where they had been pulled out until they snapped. 

He had no idea what to do for the jagged ends of the bones. Cap them somehow, maybe…he’d have to use gold, as it was ultimately non-toxic, but he’d also have to come back for another surgery to do it for the jagged ends of the internal breaks. Otherwise, the sharp edges of the bone would scrape and dig against the surrounding flesh, and could lead to swelling or even sepsis. The same procedure, however, would be much easier to perform on the exposed ribs. He told as much to George and Sapnap, and got their hesitant agreement to let him come back with caps for Dream’s ribs at a later date. 

Eight in total, out of twenty-four ribs, and three of those would require another surgery to cap the ribs broken underneath the warden’s flesh.

Dream didn't have enough uninjured skin for a graph anywhere on his body, so all Ponk could do for the gouges lining the warden’s spine was sew the smallest of them closed and bandage the rest.

Sapnap mutedly told him that there used to be keratin spikes where each crater was.

Ponk belatedly realized that he would be having nightmares about everything he had seen and worked on today. He managed to stay cold and clinical up until just that moment, three hours into the surgery. His composure began to crack, as he stared at the stump that ended Dream’s tail halfway. His vision twisted, and suddenly he wasn’t looking at blue-tinged flesh, but green. He was patching over the raw stump of a green tail, a mere seven inches left from what had once been forty-eight. Ponk’s patient had his face buried into the pillow at the head of the bed. He was sobbing.

Ponk blinked, and he was looking at blood-slicked gloves, suture in one hand, forceps in the other, and huge, limp body laying before him. The skin color was blue and tan, not mottled green, and suddenly Ponk realized that he had stopped breathing. It was only the hand on his shoulder that brought him back to the present— Sapnap’s hand— and he sent the taller man a grateful look, sucking in air that he had forgotten he needed.

Ponk resisted the urge to drag his hands over his face, aware of the gore coating his gloves, and forced himself to continue. They were almost done. He swallowed back the bitter taste that had bloomed on his tongue, and got back to work.

For Dream’s tail, there was nothing Ponk could do but dig out the tiny bit of vertebrae poking from the gummy flesh and sew the skin over the remaining muscle and tissue. 

It was going to be an ugly, ugly scar.

Ponk asked Sapnap to bring him the heavy-duty forceps from the counter, the ones that looked like pliers, as well as the surgical wire cutters he primarily used for braces, unsure that he would be able to get up himself. The entirety of his legs were numb from having sat so long, and he knew that he would be crippled from pins-and-needles when he finally had to move.

Ponk first taped Dream’s lips open, and then clipped through the twisted end of the wires. He then snipped through each wire at the cross-section, bending them upwards until they stuck out straight from the swollen gums. With the pliers, he gripped each wire at the base and, one-by-one, forced them down, stomach churning at the popping sensation that reverberated through the pliers as each wire tore free from the flesh that had sealed around it. Once the wire was too far down for the pliers to reach, Ponk grabbed his thinnest pair of forceps and pushed the wire out through the rest of the way to the other side. When the last connecting wire was pushed through, he was able to pry the hybrid’s jaw open. 

The muscles resisted at first, locked in from the long duration of inaction, but finally creaked open, enough so that Ponk could use the forceps to pluck out the short lengths of cut wire and toss them into the waste bin.

There was something underneath the wires, holding them up and blocking the view down into Dream’s mouth. Ponk nudged at it with the forceps, brow furrowing, and then he realized that it was a rag.

There was a rag stuffed into Dream’s mouth, stained a dark, brackish puce and soaked with Mother Citrus knew what. It smelled rancid, even through his mask, a mix of blood and bile and something rotten that clung to everything it touched with an oily determination.

Ponk was hesitant to touch it, even with his gloves and forceps, but he forced himself to pinch the rag between two fingers and pull it out of the hybrid’s mouth. The rag unraveled clumpily, and he heard a sucking noise as it slithered out of the open jaw and partially out of Dream's throat.

His eyes watered from the odor dripping from the thing, and he quickly dropped it into the waste bin. He was going to incinerate that bin as soon as he had the chance. There was no saving it, after this.

Ponk took a syringe and flushed each puncture hole in Dream’s gums with a shot of limoncello. The alcohol would hopefully fight back the infection cultivating in the wounds. If it didn't…Ponk might have to take out the posterior halves of Dream’s upper and lower jaw.

With George and Sapnap’s help, they rolled Dream over to the side of the bathtub so that they could flush the disgusting sludge and gunk out of his mouth. Even before they were done, George had an unused toothbrush in his hand, offering it over to Ponk with a wordless grimace. Ponk nodded in thanks, soaked the brush in his mostly-empty bottle of limoncello, and set to work, scrubbing every nook and cranny of Dream’s mouth and teeth to make sure nothing nasty got left behind.

Ponk finished the inside of Dream's mouth by sewing shut the puncture wounds with dissolvable stitches, as well as the deepest cuts and sores from the wires. Everything else, he slathered an antibiotic gel over and hoped that it would be enough.

They were almost done. The next thing they needed to do would be to realign Dream’s jaw. The misaligned portion would have to be rebroken and matched up properly, and then they would be able to use a healing potion on the wound.

Ponk hadn’t used any potions on Dream’s injuries, mainly because most of them were so old that the potions would have little to no effect. Dream's jaw, though…well, it needed to be rebroken and realigned, and since the wound would be fresh, a healing potion would work perfectly on it.

“Ready?” He asked George, who had a healing potion in hand. Sapnap was leaning over Dream’s body, hands pressed against the hybrid’s shoulders, just in case the pain woke Dream up and he needed to be held down. At George’s nod, Ponk lifted the small, silver five-pound mallet, lined it up, and swung down in a quick, precise strike. A nasty crack reverberated through the room, and they all froze, watching for Dream’s reaction. 

Nothing. The warden was out cold.

With swift hands, Ponk felt along the edge of both fractures and slotted them together, double-checking with the alignment of Dream’s teeth before giving George the go-ahead. A quick pour of the potion was all it took, and it was like the break was never there aside from the faintest ridge underneath the skin.

The final thing to take care of was Dream’s disgusting mass of hair and the crater where his left antler had been. Ponk, George, and Sapnap each took a corner of the towel laid out on the floor and lifted it, sliding the massive hybrid’s body around until they could dangle the back of his head over the edge of the tub. They grabbed an unused tray from Ponk’s bag to support Dream’s singular antler, sticking the tray halfway over the side of the tub and underneath the end of the antler. Sapnap cleared out the still-warm shackles from the bottom of the tub, using their heavy weight to counterbalance the tray while Ponk plugged the bathtub drain and turned the lever for warmer water. George, meanwhile, was raiding the upper cabinets for soaps and conditioners. He even found an old comb in the back of the cabinet that they could sacrifice to Dream’s disgusting swamp of hair.

Sapnap faltered when George thumped down the bottles of soap. They were Quackity’s. Unopened, of course, because Quackity had never even used them, never even lived with them, but they were the ones Sapnap had made specifically for the avian, because he knew that the scent of cacao beans were his favorite.

…it was going to a good cause. He could at least console himself with that.

Ponk unraveled the tie holding Dream’s hair up and let the natty mass fall into the rising water. Sapnap and George joined him, Sapnap stepping over to the other side of the tub while George kneeled down on Dream’s other side. Deeming it high enough, Ponk shut off the tap, sloshing his gore-smeared gloves in the warm water to clean them before he began poking through the almost-solid mass of dark-stained hair with brows furrowed in thought. His own hair was dense and coily, so he hardly ever had to comb it out. This was going to be… so much more complicated than simply washing out his own thick curls.

Sapnap, himself, didn’t usually bother with hair. The ends of his own inky black locks often caught fire, so they were always a bit charred and tangled. It’s why he wore his bandana. It kept his hair out of his face, and he didn’t really have to bother with it.

George noticed the hesitance from the other two and scoffed, snatching up one of the conditioner bottles. 

“Do I need to worry about the head wound,” he asked Ponk, popping the cork to the bottle and pouring a glob of soap into his palm. The rich, almost bitter smell of cacao filled the air, mixing in with the coppery-citrus- rot already suffusing the room. 

Ponk blinked and shook his head, watching as George reached down and worked free a hank of greasy hair, squishing the glob of dark-brown soap into it. “Not really. Just don’t rip open the scab. It should be fine if soap gets into it.” He paused, then added, “Don’t get the bandages over his eyes wet.”

George nodded, then reached back to pick up another bottle and toss it at Sapnap. The fireborn fumbled to catch it, nearly slipping and tumbling into the full bath. He sent George a glare when he regained his balance, fingers tight around the glass bottle.

Under George’s instruction, they began meticulously washing the matted, grime-inundated mop, parting sections at a time and picking through the unidentifiable chunks and debris. The comb was passed between the three of them like it was a hot potato, and they often found themselves using their fingers to pick through the mass when someone else got the comb tangled in a stubborn knot or clunky mass.

They had to change out the bathwater six times, and the drain had to be cleared of clumped hair and gooey matter thrice. Eventually, the color of Dream’s hair finally began to come through, long after their backs began to ache from hunching over and their fingers were sore from snagging on tangles, a light blond with thick streaks of white smattered throughout.

Eventually, they were able to drain the tub one last time and wring out the exponentially thinner locks of hair, finally clean and tangle-free. Since they were out of clean, dry towels, Sapnap had taken it upon himself to dry the wet hair, heating his hands up just enough to steam all of the water out by running his fingers through the pale strands, one last time.

Ponk took over then, picking up a gauze pad and using the last of his limoncello to wash out the crater where Dream’s left antler had been. There really wasn’t much Ponk could do for it, other than wash it with the alcohol and pad it with gauze. He secured it with a long bandage, looping the white fabric underneath Dream’s remaining antler and tying it off.

Dream gradually came to just as they were checking over the last of his bandages, moaning sluggishly. His tail twitched upwards and thudded back down on the floor towel, and his head rolled, lone antler scraping against the tray they had left it propped against. Sapnap cursed and rushed to drag Dream’s body away from the edge of the tub until his head was on solid ground, straining until George joined him.

The hybrid's jaw lolled open at the motion, and a long, low groan rasped out of his throat, two steps away from being a simple hiss of air.

Ponk jolted, eyes widening with surprise. He cursed, startling both George and Sapnap, who looked over to the doctor with concern decorating their faces. Ponk was focused on Dream, who was sluggishly struggling to reach up towards his face with drooping fingers. 

“He’s not supposed to be awake! The shot I gave him should have…” Ponk’s eyes darted to the window, taking in the dwindling light filtering in from the evening sun. “He should be out for at least three more hours, even with the low dose I gave him…”

“Hhhhhh,” Dream wheezed, ears flopping limply upwards. His lips pulled back in a grimace, and a delayed flinch rolled through his body. Ponk rushed to crouch beside the man, hands hesitating as he scanned for an uninjured place to measure his pulse before settling for the crook of his left elbow. A low, hissing growl slipped from the warden’s throat at the touch, but Ponk ignored it, squinting as he counted under his breath.

“Nnnn…nnnhh…” George hurried to catch Dream’s right hand before he could displace the bandages over his eyes, clasping the huge hand between his own thinner palms. The hybrid’s fingers slowly stiffened, and he tried to tug his hand away from the brunet’s grasp.

“Hey, Dream, don’t talk,” Ponk hushed quickly, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You need to let the swelling in your mouth go down a bit more before you try, okay?”

They man flinched back, ears flattening, and his lips sealed themselves shut. His tail dragged a few inches over the floor and bumped against Ponk’s leg, freezing at the unexpected contact. His free hand sluggishly scratched at the towel underneath his body, and his nose flared, sucking in great big heaves of oxygen.

“We’re almost done, Dream,” George reassured, gently stroking his fingers over the back of the hybrid’s hand. “Just lay down for now, alright? Go back to sleep if you want. You’re safe. It’s okay.”  

The warden had stiffened, half-drugged body tensing with a half-hearted effort before he was overcome with a wave of drowsiness. His muscles sagged, and while he remained awake, it was only just.

George gently set Dream’s hand down, and cast a weary look over the bathroom. The floor was still sopping wet, dark streaks of blood and bits of biological flotsam meandering in little streams and eddies over the tiles. Cutoffs from thread and gauze littered the floor, among the many towels strewn all around. They had even somehow managed to splatter filth over the walls, little flecks of dirt and blood and other unidentifiable grime. George stared at the stains, distaste clear in his expression.

The cleanup was relatively quick. Ponk began meticulously rinsing all of his tools in the sink and packing them away, while Sapnap gathered up all of the used towels to put in the half-full laundry basket under the counter and George scrubbed the walls and mopped up the floor.

Ponk had wordlessly stripped his stained lab coat and gloves, then tossed them into the laundry basket. George had raised an eyebrow at the action, but Ponk had only shrugged.

They couldn’t leave Dream in the bathroom. With shaking, overexerted muscles, they lifted the half-conscious man up from the slightly damp floor towel, helping him balance between the three of them. 

“Let’s bring him to my room,” George grunted, bracing against the hybrid’s left side. “He can have my bed.” Dream moaned, drooping away from George and onto Sapnap. The fireborn grimaced at the sudden burden, but dutifully supported the blond’s weight.

They ferried the half-aware man to George’s room, which was right next to the bathroom. Across the corridor was the door to Sapnap's room, and next to that was Quackity’s unused bedroom. At the very end of the hall, on Sapnap and Quackity’s side, was the door to Karl’s bedroom. Dream was bundled into George’s king-sized bed with some difficulty, and they deliberated for a brief moment before throwing a soft blanket over his shoulders.

Dream warbled something indistinguishable and went limp, burying his face into the pillow and digging his fingers into the covers. He curled in on himself, blankets bunching up against his body, and he let out a low, warbling chitter.

“Will he be okay?” Sapnap asked, concern evident in his tone. He was wringing his hands together and chewing at his lip, so distracted that he nearly drew blood. Ponk could only shrug.

“He…should be. If he doesn’t wake up fully and panic, at least. We just need to keep an eye on him for the moment. Just in case.”

George and Sapnap accepted the doctor’s words with weary nods and quietly slipped out of the room. They left the door cracked open, and left the dim blue froglights on. Not for Dream’s benefit, but for theirs, in case they needed to rush into the room if there was an emergency.

The three of them trooped downstairs at Sapnap’s direction, shoulders slumped down with the weight of… everything, and eyes drooping with exhaustion. Sapnap had some mushroom stew he had made the day previous that they could share for dinner before they crashed into the sweet, sweet oblivion of sleep.

Karl was busy deep-cleaning the kitchen, the woody scent of various cleaners permeating the room. Every surface sparkled, even the upper cabinets and the corners of the ceiling where dust liked to collect. Karl paused when they stepped through the door, brows furrowing as he inspected the three of them.

“Hello!” The brunet finally chirped, voice light and unburdened. He cocked his head, hazel eyes roving over Ponk and George as if seeing them for the very first time. Sapnap’s expression immediately wilted, pointed ears flicking back, but he forced his lips to twist upwards when Karl looked at him. “Sapnap! You didn’t tell me we’d be having guests over.” 

“Y…yeah, sorry, Karl,” Sapnap muttered lamely, voice hollow. “Lost track of time, didn’t have a chance to say anything.” The fireborn made his way towards the furnace and lit it with a flick of his fingers, then added more coal to it from one of the nearby chests. “The guy in the blue shirt is George, and the other one is Ponk.”

Ponk had frozen in place, mouth visibly agape through his balaclava. It took George placing a hand on his shoulder to snap him out of it, and when he did, he shot a concerned look over at him. With sagging eyes, George shook his head and mouthed ‘later,’ brushing past the shorter man and bee-lining for their icebox. 

Ponk blinked several times, squinting at Karl as the tall man bustled about the kitchen, putting away several freshly-dried pieces of cutlery. Karl didn’t…it seemed to Ponk as if the man didn’t think anything was wrong. Like it was just another normal day. Like it was normal to completely forget who George and Ponk were.

He shook the concern away. He could grill either George or Sapnap about what was going on with Karl later, but right now, he was just…too drained.  

He let loose the tense breath he’d been holding ever since he first saw Dream, and slid down into one of the table chairs. He couldn’t help but see the gruesome wounds decorating the malnourished body, the images playing out in the forefront of his mind like the world’s most demented slideshow. 

“I can’t believe Sam would do something like this…” He muttered, planting his elbows on the table and leaning his head into his hands. “I thought he would try to get better…” 

"Aren’t…aren’t you and Sam together?" The question was innocent enough, but it made Ponk’s temper flare. The revelations of the last few hours, paired with the five-hour long surgery, had worn down on his fuse, and suddenly he was furious.

“No,” Ponk spat vehemently, eyes scrunching with anger. “Not anymore. Never again, not after what he’s done to me. Not after what he’s done to Dream .”

Sapnap froze at the pure acid in his tone, lips pursing with surprise. George paused in the middle of placing a pot on the burning furnace, and Karl jumped, twisting around to look at the doctor with concern.

“What…what did Sam do to you?” George’s expression was drawn, and he looked as if he regretted letting the question pass his lips. Ponk seemed to swell, shoulders drawing in and red eyes sparking with a vicious sort of anger that almost felt tangible.

“I stole one of his freaking key cards, as a prank, because I wanted him to get out of that damned prison to get some sun.” Ponk laughed, the sound harsh and crackling in the stale kitchen air. 

“Do you want to see what he did to me because of it? Because I was putting the ‘prison security’ in ‘jeopardy?’” Ponk abruptly yanked his left sleeve up, all the way to his shoulder, and peeled a long, skin tight black glove from his left hand, revealing a startling flash of metal compositing almost the entirety of his left arm.

Ugly scars were wrapped around the remaining stub of the arm, which ended a little below his shoulder. Attached to the stump was a metal port that connected the mechanical arm to Ponk’s body. The join between flesh and gleaming metal wasn’t seamless. No, there were red wires that wove between the flesh and scar tissue, and there were tiny screws drilled into Ponk’s skin, leaving puckered indentations that looked painful.

The metal was painted with the same colors as Ponk’s balaclava, but it didn’t hide the bright, sickening shine of the prosthetic limb. George felt sick.

“He cut my arm off ,” Ponk hissed, flexing the fingers of his mechanical hand one-by-one. His gaze was furious, but Sapnap could see the pure, emotional agony that the man was holding back. 

“Are…are you okay?” Karl asked, obvious concern in his warm eyes. Sapnap cut in before Ponk could answer, leaning in front of the shorter man with a forced, tired smile. “Yeah, he's…we're good. It's just been a long day.”

Ponk couldn’t even pretend to be offended when Sapnap spoke for him, sagging as he realized what he had just shown the three other men. He slid the skin tight glove back over his hand and tugged his hoodie sleeve back down, ducking his head as if he were ashamed. Karl carried on, more hesitant this time as his eyes finally caught on to the drained slump bearing down on the others’ forms.

“What'd…you guys do today?” He asked, brows furrowing as he took in just how tired everyone else looked. 

“We went caving,” George said, catching on to the sallow look behind Sapnap and Ponk’s eyes. “We didn't get any good loot, though.”

Karl made a sound of disappointment, cocking his head, then shrugged. “That’s too bad. Hey, you want bowls?” 

George nodded brusquely, and took the carved wooden bowls from Karl’s hands and distributed them across the table. The rest of dinner passed in relative silence. When they were done, they dropped their bowls into the freshly-cleaned sink. 

“Hey, just…remember to read your journal in the morning, okay?” Sapnap told Karl as he left the kitchen, then winced at his wording. Karl nodded obliviously and reached over to genially pat said book. It was cracked wide open, facedown on the counter. Several of the pages were crunched and crumpled underneath, and one corner of the cover looked bent. It looked as if it had been thrown against the wall, and there was even a dent in the smooth wood planks above the journal to support that theory.

Ponk followed after Sapnap as the fireborn vacated the kitchen, keeping his voice low as he trailed after the taller man to the base of the stairs. “What was…what happened to Karl?”

“He's got memory issues,” Sapnap muttered, pausing with a hand on the banister. His coal gaze wandered up to meet with Ponk’s, pointed ears turned downwards and mouth curled into a frown. “It started around when we founded Kinoko, and it’s been getting worse and worse ever since.”

Ponk hummed pensively, sidling to the side to let George join him at the base of the stairs. The brunet inspected the doctor for a long, long moment before leaning heavily against the wall next to the stairwell. 

“Is there anything else we need to know about Dream? Any limitations, anything we need to keep an eye out for?” George’s heterochromatic eyes were sharp, despite the fatigue swimming in the colorful pools and the heavy lines that decorated his face.

Ponk sighed and looked back at George, a slight waver to his voice. “He’s not going to be able to use his mouth for a long while. He’s gonna have to be on light foods, and they’re gonna need to be ones he can easily swallow. I don’t want him chewing on anything right now.” Ponk paused thoughtfully. “In fact, I might need to make him a soft mouthpiece to keep him from grinding his teeth together.”

“I don't know if his teeth will stay in. Everything might be too damaged, and they might just…fall out. If his gums get any more infected, it might get into the bone, and then…” Ponk reached up to rub the space below one of his eyes, blinking tiredly. “If that happens, I’ll probably have to remove parts of his jaw.” 

His words received dual looks of horror, but he either didn't notice or didn't feel the need to acknowledge them.

"And as for his eyes….err." Ponk stopped with a wince. "...as for the sockets, you’ll need to keep them wrapped for at least three weeks. Check the bandages in the morning and once at night, and if anything is in the socket, flush it out with alcohol, or a regeneration potion, if you don't have alcohol."

“I’ll write down a list for you to do, of what to keep an eye on, but…tomorrow.” Ponk murmured, exhaustion coating his tone. He visibly yawned, shoulders drooping.

They were all tired. Sapnap didn’t think he’d ever had a day longer than this one, not in his entire life. Even the wars and battles he’d been in hadn’t felt this bad. Maybe the aftermath had been similar, when he had all been exhausted and emotionally drained, after the high of the fight had left his system, but somehow, today had been worse.

“Do you mind if I crash here tonight?” Ponk asked, and Sapnap couldn’t turn him down.

“No. C'mon, I'll show you where you can sleep.”

.

.

.

.

Sapnap and George had piled spare blankets and pillows onto the middle of the brunet’s bedroom floor for the night, both wanting to keep an eye on Dream.

Sapnap glanced over at the oversized bed they had pushed into the corner, where the origin of his conflict lay curled into the smallest ball he could make himself into. He was making small snuffling sounds, and would occasionally twitch or fidget, breath huffing out shortly with each jerked movement. 

Sapnap slumped against his pillow, exhausted, but too upset to sleep. He pulled his necklace off and fingered the two gold rings looped onto the chain, staring pensively at the one that had a fancy 'Q' engraved on the inside. They’d made them together, the three of them. He, Karl, and Quackity had all gone mining together to find enough gold for each of them to get an engagement ring. The trip had been a small highlight after the whole mess that had been Manburg, a way for them to forget what Schlatt had put everyone through. 

He couldn’t help but ruminate over the trip, a hollow smile ghosting his lips as he remembered the outing. They’d found an abandoned mine, and in the midst of exploring it, Karl had accidentally knocked Quackity into a pit of cobwebs. The avian had spent the whole rest of the trip complaining about the sticky strands tangling up in the feathers of his wings, and Sapnap had jokingly promised to help preen the soft yellow feathers after they found the gold. Karl had later been roped into the preening job, and they had all fallen asleep on their couch.

They had made the rings the next morning, two for each of them, all engraved with the others’ first initial. Quackity had worn his on his fingers, for a while, before the whole execution with Technoblade happened. He’d moved them to a chain around his neck, much like Sapnap had from the start. Karl still wore his on the ring and middle fingers of his left hand, but most days, Sapnap wasn’t even sure the brunet knew what the rings were for.

He heard the distinct creak of the hallway flooring as Karl passed by, and the hollow thud of his bedroom door closing. That was everyone in bed, then.

Ponk had accepted their offer to stay for the night, but had opted out of staying in George’s room to watch Dream with Sapnap and George. Instead, he was sleeping in Qua—what was supposed to be Quackity's room, but would now be renovated into the guest room. Or Dream's room. Sapnap didn't know.

He barely knew anything anymore.

Without much fanfare, he slid the ring off of the chain and dropped it into the very back of his inventory. He'd put it in his nightstand later, when he was in his own room.

He buried his face in his pillow and tried not to cry.