Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was Tina who found the body, right as midnight rung.

Her sharp scream pierced through the upbeat swing music and the clocks’ chimes, like a sour note, and then the record paused itself, as if it too had realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Dream didn’t even get to do more than tense before Hannah was barreling through the guests and into the halls. If there was a threat to her fiancée, it wouldn't survive faerie fire.

Sam rushed to follow with Dream close behind. He'd probably regret thinking it, but he was incredibly glad to have an excuse to hand George his champagne flute. He had been pretending to drink from it all night, and it was getting harder and harder to find excuses to go to the bathroom and dump the stuff in the sink.

In front of the double doors to the lounge that doubled as Wilbur’s office, Tina was slowly backing away, face white as a sheet.

“Tina!” Hannah cried out. She launched herself forward, pulling her love into a protective embrace. “Are you okay? What happened - Oh.”

Oh was… a pretty accurate description, Dream felt. 

Sam shoved open the heavy doors until the scene was wide on display, from the tacky rug stained in blood to the body casually draping itself over the hardwood. The man’s hair had fallen over his eyes, almost enough to convince you he was sleeping, if you ignored the red soaking through his dress shirt. 

It was almost impressive how artistic it looked. Almost.

“Holy shit.” Sapnap gasped behind him, and Dream glanced back. More of the party guests were shuffling in, coming to find out what the drama was.

“He’s dead,” Tina whispered shakily. “Wilbur’s dead . What do we do?”

With a heavy sigh, Sam ran a hand over his face. He had mentioned to Dream that this was meant to be his night off. Was. 

“I’m calling the station.” Sam said finally. “Everyone go back to the ballroom and stay there until they arrive.”

“What about the others?” Dream asked. He scanned the faces of the crowd. “Niki and Techno are still in the kitchen I think.”

“I’ll find any stragglers, but until we can figure out what happened here, I don’t want anyone going off by themselves.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Quackity spoke up, incredulous. “This isn’t some accident, look at him! He was murdered.”

Sam glared at him. “And we won’t know how until everyone is safe and contained somewhere that isn’t the scene of the crime.”

“He’s right.” Dream said firmly. “Everyone out. We don’t need to get blood on our shoes.”

Tina laughed nervously, earning her a worried glance from her fiance. The people began to disperse. Quackity looked like he wanted to protest, but Punz came up behind him, nudging him along to join the rest. 

Dream paused, looking back. “Are you gonna be okay by yourself, Sam?”

The man paused his inspection of the room. For a moment, he seemed to struggle with his words, before shrugging a bit helplessly.

“I’ll be fine.” He said with an awkward shuffle. “I wasn’t the one who died.”

Which. Yeah. Not much Dream could say to that.

While this wasn’t the worst party Punz had ever been to, they were slowly ranking it up to the top five. Maybe top three. Wilbur being dead was nice and all, but they would have preferred it if he would have had the decency to die when Punz wasn’t dining at his house. He always had a habit of making things incredibly inconvenient.

The ballroom had decent acoustics, which meant that Punz was treated to the sound of every tapping foot, every mumble and murmur, and, most unfortunately, Tommy twisting and turning the handles of the main doors. Over and over. The clicking of the handle might have been satisfying the first few times, but after the ten minute mark half of the room had gone from hushed to on-edge, a pot ready to boil.

“I swear-” Dream gritted his teeth. Instantly, Punz put a hand on his arm and squeezed. To anyone else, it would have looked like nothing, but Punz focused a small bit of magic in the tips of their fingers, pushing comfort and reassurance into their touch.  Dream relaxed underneath him, bumping their shoulders together. 

"Knock it off , Tommy!" Fundy snapped suddenly, and the pot finally boiled over.

"Fuck you, foxboy! " Tommy hollered. "We wouldn't be sitting here right now if it wasn't for you!"

"What? What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're the one who came in here talking about 'inheritance this and that's', like you weren't looking to steal all his stuff. I bet you were the one who gutted him while we weren't looking!" 

"You seriously think you have the right-" Fundy stood up so fast his chair toppled back, his ears twitching back as he snarled. "He was my father . He owed everything to me. You can't walk into my family home and accuse me of being greedy when you're the one who showed up and started causing all this trouble."

"It's not my fault he liked me better than he liked you, bitch boy-"

Fundy lunged forward, but Hannah grabbed him by the back of the shirt and tugged. 

" Sit down and stop yelling." She ordered. "Neither of you are helping the situation, and we don't need another murder right now."

Fundy glared for a moment, but Hannah's eyes narrowed, and he wilted, picking his chair back up and slumping into it.

"And here I thought I was going to get dinner and a show." Quackity took a sip of his glass, and Hannah turned on him with a look of disgust. 

"You're acting real smug for someone who's going to be on the suspect list."

Quackity scoffed. "Like you're so innocent. I bet your little empire is sitting real cozy without Wilbur trying to buy you out."

"And yours isn't?" Tina muttered, and the duck hybrid's wings fluffed up, prideful.

"Wilbur couldn't match me even if he tried. And he really tried."

"Oh my god, stop talking about your sex life, please." Sapnap groaned into his hands. "We get it, you fucked him, no one’s impressed."

Quackity's cheeks went pink. His expression seemed to flicker between embarrassment and hesitancy. After a moment, he settled on anger. "Well, he was a better fuck than you ." 

Sapnap flipped him off. "Not a chance, honey. I got all the details from George. Wilbur is the worst lay of the century."

He reached over the dining table to pat George on the head. George, for his part, seemed to be sleeping, and if Punz craned their neck, they could spot the small ring of XD on his finger, glowing faintly with purple particles; visiting his God instead of dealing with this then. Not really surprising. They almost envied him for his ability to ignore this.

"You're calling George a reliable resource? He slept through half of their engagement."

"Why would you want to be awake enough to listen to Wilbur?"

"You think if I take some of the food home anyone will care?" Dream muttered into Punz's ear. "He's dead, so it's not like he's going to be eating it."

"Oi, what are you whispering about?" Tommy shouted, pointing at them. "Stop conspiring, murderers."

"I'm just talking about the food." Dream said with exasperation. 

"Yeah, a likely story. You wanted Wilbur dead more than anybody else; I'll bet you stabbed him while you were dumping your drink in the bathroom."

Quietly, ballroom doors opened, Niki and Techno slipping inside. Punz straightened as Dream tensed up and glared at Wilbur's heir.

"How did you- were you spying on me?! "

"I was following to make sure you weren't gonna steal anything from him while you were skulking around."

"What's this about stealing?" Techno asked as he lumbered up to the banquet. Niki slid to Punz’s other side and gave them a disgruntled look. They patted her shoulder. 

"He's accusing me of being a thief." Dream said tightly. "When I didn't even want to be here tonight."

Techno snorted. "Is stealing from Wilbur a crime now? He stole from everyone else, it's fair play, I think. He could use a little Robin Hood in his life, Sir Hiss."

Tommy made several loud, furious noises, but by then Punz was tuning him out. They focused once more on pushing a soothing magic into Dream's figure, gripping his bicep and rubbing their thumb into the fabric of his dress shirt. It wasn't nearly as effective as they wanted it to be, but still, Dream exhaled, just a little less stressed than before.

"Thanks." 

"Anytime." They murmured.

Another creak of the ballroom doors. Sam walked in and shut the door behind him, looking deeply uncomfortable. Any conversation went quiet, and all eyes turned to him.

He stood there for a moment, looking from person to person like he wasn’t sure what to make of them, before shaking his head and sighing. 

“Okay. The storm has caused some flooding on the roads. It's too dangerous for the carriage to make it over here until the rain stops. So I will be conducting this investigation, and you will all have to be detained here until the forensic division arrives.”

 Immediately, a chorus of protests erupted.

“Are you serious?” Fundy asked in disbelief.

“What’s the point of your dumb magic if you can’t just banish the water!” Tommy complained.

“We’ve already been at this party for hours .” Sapnap groaned.

“You were here too, why aren’t you a suspect?” Hannah argued. 

Sam endured the shouting for about a minute. Good call. It let people have time to vent before they settled down to listen, at least from Punz’s experience.

“I understand this may be frustrating for some of you.” He continued on, clearly attempting to be a calm, collected authority, even if Punz could see the stress lining his face. “I myself am not happy with the situation; this is not my department. However, we have no choice right now, and the longer this goes on, the more chances for the evidence to become contaminated and allow the killer to get away without justice. I will submit myself for questioning to forensics once they take over.”

“So it's a murder, then?” Punz asked with narrowed eyes. “You’re sure of it?”

Sam hissed out a long breath. The room seemed a bit dimmer with apprehension.

“Yes. I’ve done a cursory search of the body, and inspected the… numerous stab wounds in his chest. And throat. Twenty-three, in fact. In my inexpert opinion, I am comfortable with calling this a murder.”

“You fucking think? ” Quackity muttered, though he looked a bit disturbed. So did the others. Techno was the only one in the room who looked utterly unphased, though there was a solemness to him he didn’t normally carry. 

None of the people in the room could claim to be saints, and Punz was fine with that. They all had their vices, and morals sometimes had to be guidelines rather than hard rules to follow. It wasn’t the end of the world if you had to kill a few people.

Still. There was killing, and then there was violent killing. Something with a lot of pent up anger. Something personal. The type of thing where you didn’t want to be in the same room when it was unleashed, lest you get caught in the middle.

“Well, let's get this over with.” Techno nodded at Sam. He grabbed a half eaten plate of cookies and sat in one of the more cushy armchairs. He held a snickerdoodle daintily between his hooves. “What are you investigating first, copper?”

The crime scene didn’t have much else besides the body itself. No murder weapon, no trace of the killer, not even hints of the struggle that had to have taken place. And of course, enough blood to fill a body, on the rug and sprayed and splattered around the room in wide arcs.

Sam, after doing a third round of the room and coming back empty handed, the few meager detection spells he knew ringing negative, turned his attention outside.

If the culprit had run, there would be traces somewhere out there, in the mud.

But the storm seemed to be intent on raging, and Sam didn’t want to go outside like that. It was sure to be a miserable time.

Hopefully, by the time he was done questioning everyone it would have calmed down.

Leaving the lounge-office behind, and locking it for good measure, he headed back to the ballroom. Everyone was still there, mingling and whispering amongst themselves. Yet there was a heavy, almost tangible air of suspicion coloring every interaction.

“Alright,” Sam spoke up, his voice ringing overly loud in the hush that had heralded his coming into the room, “I’m going to ask everyone a few questions. No one leaves this room, or if they must they need to go in pairs. No one goes anywhere alone.”

He gave everyone an equal, weighty look, and was satisfied to find the guests all nodding along. Some even started drifting towards each other, forming pairs immediately.

Tina and Hannah had not let go of each other, Niki and Techno were still sticking close to each other, Punz gravitated towards Dream, and Sapnap was hovering over a groggy - but thankfully awake - George. The others were quick to form bigger but more mismatched groups of three or four, so as to at least adhere to the order not to stay alone.

Sam, after doing one last headcount, nodded shortly, and gestured to the nearest person.

“Come with me,” he said.

“Well this is cozy,” Quackity muttered, looking around at the small sitting room that Sam had requisitioned as a would-be interrogation room.

It looked as tacky and expensively decorated as everything else.

Quackity shifted in the plush seat offered to him, looking briefly uncomfortable before he put on an affable grin.

“You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you, Sam?” Quackity asked.

“Right now I think anyone could have something to do with it,” Sam said flatly. “So let’s make it easy on all of us, and try to make this investigation a short one. At what time did you get to the party?”

“Oh, about seven, seven fifteen maybe,” Quackity said, with a shrug. “Fashionably late.”

“I was there before the party,” Fundy sniffed, as though offended that Sam would consider otherwise. “This is my house, after all.”

Sam gave him a bland look.

“This is your father’s house,” he corrected him, and sighed when Fundy’s fur bristled. “You and I both know you have a place downtown. You haven’t lived here in years.”

“Well, okay, no, sure,” Fundy said, and drew himself up righteously, “But I’m the one that will inherit the property! And my father-”

He cut himself short, looking suddenly shifty.

Sam narrowed his eyes.

“Yes?” He asked mildly.

“Nevermind,” Fundy muttered.

Tommy threw himself into the seat with little care for it, and didn’t look around at the room at all. He was more familiar with it than anyone, after all.

“I think Dream did it,” he said without preamble. “Shifty green bitch, has been lurking around all evening.” A pause, and he added, glaring, “Him or Fundy. That bitch has been after Wilbur’s money for years!”

Sam massaged his forehead. He resisted the urge to sigh.

“Alright,” he said. “And at what time did you get here?”

“I live here,” Tommy said. Rolled his eyes, “Duh.”

George blinked blearily at him.

“I don’t remember,” he said, slowly.

“Of course you don’t,” Sam muttered. He still jotted down the time that Sapnap had provided. “Look, when you were awake, did you notice anything strange? Was Wilbur acting off maybe?”

“The guy acts off constantly,” George said with a small scoff. “He was just the same as usual.”

“George,” Sam gave up and sighed. “Please. Anything.”

George narrowed his eyes.

Hummed.

“Well, he seemed smugger than usual, I guess,” he offered.

Tina clasped her hands tight, still looking nervous even though the interview had started a few minutes ago already.

“No, we stayed with everyone pretty much the whole evening,” she said. “I only left because I needed the bathroom.”

“Right,” Sam said, and jotted it down. It rejoined what Hannah had said. “Why did you go to the office, then?”

“I-” Tina hesitated, then frowned. She shook her head with lowered ears, looking miserable. She said quietly, “I don’t know.”

“Did you have something to discuss with Wilbur?” Sam pressed. “Did you hear or see something?”

“I, no,” Tina shook her head again. She hugged herself. “I don’t know why I went there. I just had this gut feeling, like, like instinct, that something was wrong. So I just went to check, pop my head in and say hi, you know?”

She paused, eyes glassy.

“And there he was, dead.”

“I don’t talk with cops, you know,” Techno said, waving a biscuit around. “Goes against my beliefs.”

Sam closed his eyes briefly.

“Please,” he said, tiredly. “Indulge me.”

“Alright, alright, don’t look like I’m bullying you, I’ll feel bad,” Techno said. “What do you want to know?”

“Where were you between nine pm and midnight?” Sam asked.

“Oh, here and there,” Techno said. Then, after a quick grin at the look Sam gave him, he admitted, “Mostly the kitchen, with Niki. She’ll confirm it.”

Sam nodded and made a note. Niki had, in fact, already done so.

“Did you see anything weird?” He asked next. “Anyone behaving oddly?”

“George was surprisingly awake for a while, actually. Doesn’t mean he killed the guy, though.” Techno made a face. “Didn’t they use to date? What happened to that?”

“George? No. Sapnap stayed with him the whole time,” Dream reported, with a shrug. “Quackity was wandering a lot, though. Him and Fundy were speaking for a long time, and left the ballroom for a while, too.”

“Did they?” Sam asked, frowning.

“Yes,” Dream said.

“Do you know what they spoke about?” Sam asked.

“No, sorry.” Dream tilted his head. “Did you ask the butler? What was his name again…?”

“I, uh, I forgot,” Ranboo muttered. “I have a really bad memory. I’m not sure what I’m doing here, actually.”

“You’re the only person Wilbur keeps on as staff,” Sam pointed out.

“Oh,” Ranboo said blankly. He made a face. “I get paid?”

Sam narrowed his eyes.

“You should, yes,” he said.

“Huh,” Ranboo said.

“I mean, beyond the server - or is it a butler? - looking mightily confused all evening, not much stood out,” Punz said, and shrugged. “No idea where Wilbur found the kid. Is he even of legal age to work?”

Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t know. He just gestured for Punz to keep talking. After a moment, Punz did.

“Well, Wilbur himself wasn’t very present,” Punz said. “He just vanished partway through the party, and never really came back.”

“I see,” Sam said, nodding. This rejoined several accounts. “What about the guests?”

“I talked a lot to Niki until she went to the kitchen, with Technoblade,” Punz said. “She seemed fine.” They hummed. “Tina looked a bit sick before she left and found the body, I guess.”

“Anything weird?” Sapnap echoed, frowning. “Uuuh, I guess Fundy was behaving weirdly all evening. But he had a lot to drink.”

“What about Wilbur?” Sam asked. “Did he do anything weird?”

“He’s always weird,” Sapnap said, and rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, he showed up in the ballroom, by the buffet at some point, grabbed an empty plate and left immediately after. Looked real suspicious doing it too.”

“Do you have an idea of the time for that?”

“No clue, man, sorry.”

“About 9:20pm,” Hannah snorted. “He slunk into the ballroom, all thoughtful looking, went around the food. I think he grabbed a drink? I wasn’t paying much attention to that, honestly. And then he left. Didn’t speak to anyone. Not that it’s weird, given the argument just twenty minutes before.”

Sam paused.

“The argument?” He asked, suspiciously.

“Oh yeah, he and Dream went into his office, to talk or something, and had a huge row,” Hannah said, and made a face. “They got very loud.”

“You heard them fight?” Sam asked, leaning forward.

“ Everyone in the smoking room heard them,” Quackity snorted, coin spinning between his fingers. “I genuinely thought they’d come to blows in there. Heard something shatter and everything.”

He paused, thinking back on it. After a second, he shrugged.

“But I guess they just threw stuff around,” he said. “We saw Dream leave, he was fuming let me tell you. Angriest I’ve seen him in a long time. But he wasn’t hurt. And Wilbur left about ten minutes later, and he was fine too. Shame. Dream should have punched him.”

“How do you know he didn’t?” Sam asked.

“I asked him,” Quackity shrugged. “We went for a smoke at, uhhh,” He frowned, recalling, “I’d say nine forty?”

Niki seemed deep in thought for a long moment. After a moment, she nodded.

“I did see Wilbur go towards the back of the house, with his coat on,” she said. Her eyes tightened at the corner. “He was looking around a lot. I thought he just wanted to get a smoke at the back for a little.”

Sam hummed, tapping his pen against his notepad.

“Did he seem like he was alone?” He asked.

“Yes. Ah, but Quackity followed after him, a while afterwards,” Niki said.

“I see…” Sam frowned. “But they came back.”

“Well, I didn’t see, I wasn’t there anymore.” Niki said, with an apologetic twist of her lips.

“Right,” Sam said. “And where were you, then?”

“I didn't kill him!” Fundy exclaimed. He was gesticulating frantically by now, “I know what everyone will say! We all heard the rumors! But I didn’t! He was my dad!”

“I didn’t say you killed him,” Sam said, probably missing the right tone to be soothing. “I merely pointed out you have a strained relationship with him.”

Fundy crossed his arms across his chest.

“So what? He was hardly a perfect father,” he said, bitterly. “Though you wouldn’t know it, looking at Tommy.” He paused, and then narrowed his eyes. “You know, he’s been disappearing a lot tonight.”

“Tommy?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Fundy nodded. “Little shit knows all the shortcuts, I bet that’s how he did it.”

“I was asleep,” George said, drolly. “I wouldn’t have been able to kill him.”

Sam gave a frustrated nod. George had very little information to give. Still, he had to ask.

“You have motive, though,” he pointed out. “You used to be engaged.”

“Everyone in this ballroom has motive,” George said, obviously not finding that a compelling argument. “Hannah Rose was running out of options to keep Wilbur from buying her entire business. Punz probably didn’t get paid enough on a job Wilbur hired them for. Niki and Wilbur had the most intense falling out I’ve ever seen. Technoblade hates anyone in a position of authority. Quackity-”

“I get it, I get it,” Sam said quickly before George could list everyone on the guest list and their probable motives. As impressive and useful as it would be otherwise, Sam was well aware that everyone invited to that party had, in fact, a good reason to hate and murder the man. “Who do you think did do it, then?”

“Eh,” George shrugged. “He probably did it to himself somehow.”

Sam sighed.

Sam slammed the door behind him, feeling a headache build behind his temples. So many witnesses, so many accounts, and not a single answer. All he knew for sure was that everyone in this house had some motive to murder Wilbur - even Ranboo, who apparently wasn’t getting paid fairly for his work, which was very much illegal - and that everyone disagreed on who was most likely to have done it.

He could keep asking them all questions, but until he had anything , any kind of hard evidence beyond the time of the murder, he would have no idea what to look for.

He gave the nearest window a despairing look.

He’d tried to wait as long as he could, but it seemed the rain wouldn’t stop anytime soon. And he did need to check the grounds for tracks or anything else.

Before it got erased by the downpour.

Well, no time like the present.

“Alright,” he told the assembled guests. “Please keep to pairs, and try to stay in this room. I’ll go check out the other possible places for clues. It shouldn’t take long.”

The storm, unfortunately, wasn’t letting up at all. The wind was howling louder and louder, making the rain fall at a sharp angle.

Between the weather conditions and the almost total darkness of the late hour, the conditions were truly less than optimal to look for any sort of clues outside. And yet, here they were, because no one else could do it, and if there was anything, footprints or discarded murder weapons, anything , the storm would erase it soon. Sam had to hurry.

He’d already waited too long.

“I don’t see what we’re doing out here,” Quackity grumbled, making a point to be loud enough to be heard over the storm. His wings were awkwardly folded to allow him to stand under the small awning at the back of the house. He took out a cigarette, and stuck it between his teeth absently, watching their surroundings with wary eyes. “This place gives me the creeps. Honestly, no wonder he got murdered.”

He was, Sam noted, watching the woodlands at the edge of the property. There had been long-standing rumors that they were haunted, even before Wilbur Soot had married into the Salmon family. His late wife’s death, sudden and unnatural - though many had had suspicions, of course, but there was never any proof of Wilbur’s involvement - had certainly not helped matters any.

Haunted or inhabited by dark creatures or not, though, Sam doubted their culprit had come from there. Or had fled there, either.

There was a ward humming all around the property, after all, set up by the town security council, and Sam’s colleagues would have notified him if the alert for a security breach had rung at any point during the evening.

“You don’t have to be here,” Sam told him, instead of pointing that out.

“What?” Quackity called over the howling winds.

“I said, you don’t have to be here!” Sam called back louder, annoyed.

“You’re the one that insisted on a buddy system,” Quackity said, just as loud, and started rifling through his pockets absently. “I’m not joining you under the rain though.”

Sam let out a small, annoyed hiss, that thankfully went unnoticed in the deafening downpour. There were very few lights that remained lit - even the strongest of torch spells would fade under such heavy rain, and reignite once the wood was dry, and most other light sources were susceptible to violent winds.

The dim lighting was making things difficult. Sam, thanks to his Creeper ancestry, had a form of night vision, of course, but it barely helped. The rain was making everything blurry.

A burst of magic had him turn around, sharply.

Quackity, his finger lit with a small flame, didn’t seem to notice, busy with lighting up his cigarette. He took a drag, then finally looked up, noticing Sam’s look. He arched a brow, obviously unrepentant for his blatant use of magic, then looked around once more, one arm hugging his middle.

“Yeah, creepy place,” he said again, almost too quiet to hear over the storm. Louder, he asked, “Who would be crazy enough to come out in this weather to murder a guy? Even one as annoying as Wilbur?”

That, Sam admitted to himself silently, was a good point. No one would.

Besides, he’d have noticed muddy or wet footprints inside. There was no way for anyone to come out in this weather and not drip everywhere. Hell, Sam would have noticed if anyone’s outfit was wet.

Quackity may be right, and this was a waste of time.

Still, Sam had to do this by the books and-

“Wait, what,” he muttered to himself, pausing.

There were footprints. Large and heavy, having left a lasting imprint in the soil. Surprising, since that meant the person hadn’t been in any hurry - which, given the weather, meant that either they didn’t care about the rain, or had magic powerful enough to protect them from it.

Sam tracked their origin to a window, where the flowerbeds had been trampled. That was certainly suspicious. As was the fact that the window was latched securely. Inspecting the footprints closer, Sam could see that there were, in fact, two sets - the same person, going in and going out.

Interesting.

If they’d come from outside and left again through the window, that meant they had an accomplice on the inside. One that had closed the window after them, and… probably cleaned the corridors of suspicious, muddy traces.

If not, that meant whoever had gone through had left then come back. Closing the window behind them and then… possibly changing shoes. But why? Why come back at all? This made no sense.

Sam started following them, absently casting a small measuring spell. This was maybe nothing, but it could be evidence. It’d be useful to be able to compare shoe size, at least.

From the shape, though, Sam could already rule out a few people.

Hannah, for one, was wearing heels that would have left small, tiny indents. Then again, in such shoes she wouldn’t have come out at all. And she could fly - though maybe not with the wind so strong… Sam frowned. Well, he still doubted she sized so large.

Of course, he couldn’t rule out an accomplice.

He sighed. This was such a mess.

Soon, the trail of footprints led him to the dumpster at the back end of the property. Sam frowned at it.

“Sam!” Quackity called, from where he was still standing, under the relative dry safety of the awning. “Sam, where the fuck are you going?”

“One second,” Sam called back.

He opened the dumpster, not expecting much. Only an idiot would discard any true evidence in the trash, leaving large footprints all the way there and back.

Except there was something in the dumpster.

There, almost glowing white in the midst of rotting food and dark trash bags, was a round, porcelain mask. One with a very, very recognizable smiling face.

It was stained with blood.

“Oh Dream,” Sam murmured, dread filling him. “What did you do?”

“Oho,” Quackity, suddenly right beside him, holding a black umbrella above himself, said, grinning. “Now that is what I’d call damning proof.”

Sam glared at him. Quackity, though, only cheerfully started whistling and walking back towards the back of the house.

Leaving Sam holding the mask, alone in the rain.

The room that he was supposed to stay in was, like everything in this place, extravagant and old. Dream gave the billiard a cursory look, then turned around, to try and appeal once again to Sam. He didn’t have time. Sam’s face was grim, as if made of stone, as the door closed behind him. Dream heard the lock turn.

“Wh- Sam!” He called. “Did you just lock me in?”

“It’s only a safety precaution, Dream,” Sam’s voice came muffled through the door, though it did little to hide the dispassionate tone.

“Safety for who, exactly?” Dream asked sharply.

Sam didn’t reply. Dream glared at the wood panel separating them.

“You know I didn’t do this!” He called. “Come on, Sam, you know me better than that!”

“It’s just a safety precaution,” Sam repeated. “Just until the storm is gone and I have collected more evidence.”

Dream stared, dumbfounded, at the door, something that felt like a stone lodged in his throat. Hearing no reply, Sam left. Dream could hear his footsteps as he retreated, echoing in the corridor beyond.

The moment he was gone, Dream tried the door - but of course, he hadn’t heard wrong. He’d been locked in. This room, more richly decorated than any that Dream had ever lived in, was nothing more than a holding cell.

And Dream was supposed to be the criminal waiting for trial, in this sham of a murder investigation.

Dragging a frustrated hand through his hair, Dream moved away from the door and to the window. Of course, it was locked as well - probably due to whatever security ward Sam had engaged the moment the body had been found. Not that it mattered. In this weather, Dream wouldn’t be able to go far, even if he somehow managed to climb down safely from the second floor.

He couldn’t believe he was being framed for this.

Because, of course, someone was framing him.

Dream certainly hadn’t killed Wilbur. Though, if he’d known he’d get framed for the asshole’s murder, then he’d probably have done it to have the satisfaction of doing it himself. Sam should know-

Well, maybe Sam shouldn’t know, no. They’d lost touch, these past years, enough to justify the doubt. Sam knew Dream was vicious when cornered, and he knew that Wilbur had been one of the few to dare corner him. It was, probably, enough motive in his eyes.

Still, Dream felt Sam should know better.

If he’d truly killed Wilbur, he wouldn’t have dumped his bloodstained mask in the dumpster behind the house of all places. In fact, he wouldn’t have dumped it at all. It was magical porcelain. It could be cleaned, good as new, with only a spark of magic.

He also wouldn’t have been still in the house with the body.

In fact, Dream wouldn’t have left a body!

What was this, amateur hour?

It was offensive that anyone would believe Dream would be such a terrible murderer. Or a murderer at all, in fact, but still.

And with Sam and the others having decided he was the most likely suspect, they would ignore other avenues. And the true killer, the one that had framed him, was still out there, free to roam and to maybe even kill again.

Dream froze.

That was right.

The actual killer was out there. Where Dream’s friends were.

“Oh no-” He whispered, and whipped around and back to the door. He started banging on the wood. “Sam! Sam! Sam come back! I didn’t do it! You’re in danger! The real killer is still out there!”

But no one replied, and there was no movement outside of the door.

Frustrated, Dream turned back around and went to throw himself on the couch, heart hammering. This was- not ideal. But it was fine. Surely it was fine. The others were all in pairs, and they would stay safe.

Hopefully.

Dream just needed to figure out how to convince Sam it was all just a horrendous mistake.

Sam came back what felt like an eternity later, something tense about his face, around the eyes. This whole thing was obviously weighing on him.

Dream didn’t jump from the couch, but he sat up properly, hopeful.

“Did you find something new?” He asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” Sam replied, and Dream’s hope turned to stone in his heart. That meant that, no matter what had been found, Dream was still the prime suspect.

He sat back on the couch, and Sam sat across the table, back straight. Outside, thunder boomed.

“I would like to ask you a few questions,” Sam told Dream.

“I- yeah, of course,” Dream said, and tried to relax his grip on the couch.

It was all fine. He hadn’t killed Wilbur, after all, so he just needed to prove it. He’d been with other people almost the entire evening.

“Thank you,” Sam said. “Where were you, between 6 pm and 12 am?”

Dream frowned. That was a rather long time to cover. Tense, he started tapping his fingers against the couch’s cushions.

“At the party,” he said, and got a flat look from Sam for his trouble. He pressed his lips tight, then added, “You don’t have a more specific timing?”

“That’s not information I can share with you, Dream,” Sam said.

Dream drummed his fingers harder.

Why was Sam being so difficult? He had to know Dream was being framed. If Dream knew, exactly, at what time Wilbur had been killed, he could possibly give an airtight alibi.

“I stayed mostly in the ballroom with the others,” Dream said, and looked towards the window when the wind rattled the blinds outside. What terrible weather. “I went to the bathroom a few times, I guess.”

“Hm, why?” Sam asked.

Dream stared at him.

“Why…” he echoed, slowly, “Why I went to the bathroom?”

Sam nodded. Dream gave him an incredulous look.

“I had too much to drink,” Dream told him, “I had to piss- what do you think?”

“That’s not what Tommy says,” Sam said.

Right, Dream remembered suddenly. Tommy had been spying on him. In the bathroom.

“What a little creep,” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” Dream lied, and sighed, “Look, I was dumping my drinks in the toilet, alright? I don’t-”

He hadn’t felt safe drinking anything that came from Wilbur in any way, shape or form. He’d been afraid of losing his composure. Or worse.

But how could he admit that to Sam? To anyone ?

“I just didn’t feel like drinking,” Dream said.

Sam hummed blandly.

“Why take drinks at all, then?” He asked.

For the appearance of it. No one went to parties like this one without having a drink. There were always toasts being called. And besides, it was useful - Dream had needed something in his hands, or he’d have been fidgeting too much.

Speaking of - he stuck his hands under his legs. 

“People kept handing me them,” he said instead of the truth.

“Right,” Sam said, mildly.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant anyway,” Dream said.

“Whether you were drunk or not is relevant,” Sam pointed out.

Dream made a face, and looked away at the window. Right, sure.

“Sure,” he said, and shifted on the couch. He had to consciously keep his hands stuck though. The urge to pick at something was almost overwhelming. Dream looked back at Sam, and decided to remind him of the actual point. “Since Tommy said as much, then you know I was accounted for the entire time.”

Sam once again hummed blandly. He was staring at Dream, eyes flickering to every twitch he made. It made Dream feel, if possible, twitchier.

He’d done nothing wrong. But Sam’s stare still made him feel like he had.

“Why would I even kill him?” Dream burst out. “Out of everyone here, I’m not the one with the best motive!”

“That’s true,” Sam allowed. “But you do have motive. The fact that you are here at all is suspicious, you must see that.”

“It’s not like I wanted to be here,” Dream muttered. Sam narrowed his eyes, and Dream said, louder, “Look I had no choice. You know how these things work.”

“I also know that you didn’t have to accept the invitation,” Sam said. “You don’t like Wilbur Soot.” Paused. “ Didn’t like him.”

Dream snorted. Understatement of the century. 

“Who liked him?” He asked, rhetorical. Tommy, maybe. “Just because I didn’t like him doesn’t mean I wanted him dead.”

Of course, that was a lie. He had , and if he hadn’t been the prime suspect for his murder Dream would be privately celebrating.

He wasn’t about to tell Sam that, though. It wouldn’t help.

“Yet you still came,” Sam insisted.

Yet Dream did. He shouldn’t have, hadn’t wanted to, but he did. That much was true.

Still, Sam was missing important context. Wilbur had gotten his hands on rare artifacts that he shouldn’t have known existed at all, just a month prior. It wasn’t exactly Dream’s duty to make sure he didn’t misuse them, but who else would?

No one in this forsaken town ever dared to move against the man.

For better or for worse, this had been the perfect opportunity for Dream to act. Of course, Wilbur had known. There was a reason he’d invited Dream, beyond the chance to taunt him.

Which-

“ He shouldn’t have sent me an invitation in the first place,” Dream said tersely. “It goes against- He shouldn’t have contacted me at all.”

“That’s not the point,” Sam said.

"It is. You don't understand," Dream said, frustrated. He bounced his leg up and down, eyes flickering to the window every so often. The storm was still going strong, rain drumming a violent beat against the glass. "I have- I have a restraining order. Against Wilbur Soot. He- You should know this, Sam, you were there for that."

Sam nodded, but his face, Dream found, didn't clear with understanding nor sympathy. The stone in his heart dropped to his stomach. He knew Sam's expression, and knew the coldness in his gaze. There was something stubborn in the clench of his jaw, and Dream knew, suddenly, that Sam had already made his own assumptions.

Still, he had to try.

"I shouldn't have been here tonight, you’re right," Dream appealed to him, earnest. He took his hands out from under his legs to gesture. "I wouldn't have been here if not for the circumstances- why would I even kill him? I spent the entire evening avoiding him."

Sam hummed. It wasn’t a comforting sound.

"I have reports of an altercation," he told Dream, and Dream felt the stone get heavier in his stomach. "People heard you two argue, about two hours before the murder."

Two hours. Mind whirling, Dream did a quick mental calculation. That meant the murder had happened around 11 pm.

But how had people even heard them? Wilbur’s office was supposed to be warded. Soundproof.

Well, that was hardly the issue.

"I- We did," Dream admitted, and waved a frantic hand, "Because he kept trying to- to- Sam, he wasn't supposed to get close to me!"

"Yes, and yet you came to this party," Sam said. There was censure in his tone. It was obvious that he believed that Dream didn't uphold his end of the restraining order by staying as far as humanly possible from Wilbur Soot.

Dream wished he could explain everything to him. But Sam wasn't here as a friend, as a person that he could trust with the truth. Sam was here as a cop, here to arrest Dream for a crime that he believed Dream committed. Dream was aware, suddenly, that he made a terrible mistake in allowing this talk - an interrogation, he now realized - to go on for so long.

"Right," Dream said, and leaned back. He looked back at the window. Squinted and frowned. He thought he could see a figure, but then lightning struck and the illusion was gone, the glass clear. For a moment, he’d thought it was Wilbur. "I want a lawyer."

Sam’s expression faltered for a second.

“Dream,” he started.

“I. Want. A. Lawyer,” Dream said again. “And I will no longer speak to you in the absence of one, Officer.”

Sam recoiled, looking, for all of a second, hurt. Dream watched him dispassionately. Sam was the one accusing him of a crime, of a violent murder, without truly believing in Dream’s innocence. Without giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He had no right feeling hurt.

After a moment, Sam gathered himself, closing his mouth around an aborted word. He nodded shortly, and stood up.

“If that’s what you want,” he said.

It was, Dream thought wordlessly. He only stared back. Sam, lips pressed tight, turned away and quickly went to the door. There, he paused for a second.

He seemed to be struggling with something, some comment, maybe. Dream decided to cut him short.

“Oh and Sam?” He said, and looked away from the startled look Sam sent him. “You should be careful. If you’re wrong, and you are , that means the actual killer is still out there, and you are losing time.”

Sam opened his mouth. Closed it.

Then, with a shake of his head, he left the room, once again locking it behind him.

Dream waited for a second, before letting out a shaky sigh, slumping into the couch.

Well. That could have gone better.

Obviously he couldn’t depend on Sam anymore. In fact, as far as he knew, he could only depend on himself.

He just needed a plan of some sort.

The window leading outside, where the footprints had come from, was in fact the back window of a small storage room. There were a few muddy footprints on the floor, but following them led only to a dead end - the culprit had, in fact, left the shoes in a corner of the room, half hidden behind a dusty curtain.

It was frustrating.

Punz, who’d been inspecting the window, came to join him. Sam had traded Quackity for them, finding the other man too cheerful and unhelpful in the circumstances. His grin, when they’d presented the mask to the assembled crowd, had been unsettling.

Punz at least had the merit of being relatively quiet, and always objective.

Punz, Sam could trust to have his back.

Trading them had also allowed for a reshuffling of the pairs, which was just as well. Fundy and Tommy, who’d been stuck together for some forsaken reason, had been about to come to blows.

Now, they both were in separate rooms, waiting for things to clear up. Sam had questions to ask both of them, details about their whereabouts and what, exactly, Tommy thought he saw Dream doing, but it could wait a little.

“Locked,” Punz told him, about the window. “From the inside, as you thought. But the security ward that you activated when Tina found the body is also active.”

“That’s- True,” Sam said, distracted from the boots by Punz’s observation. “That means-”

“That means that whoever threw the mask out did it before the body was found,” Punz said, and then, tilting their head, “But after it started raining.”

That was a large window of time, unfortunately. It started raining in the early afternoon. It’d started storming well after the party had started, but that wasn’t really the point here. Still, it was good to have a time frame.

It made little sense, though, for Dream to throw his mask out in the dumpster and then come back to the party as though nothing had happened. What had he been thinking? Wh-

Wait.

Sam looked at Punz.

“ Whoever threw the mask out?” He repeated.

Punz blinked, and looked back, looking genuinely confused by Sam’s bafflement.

“Yes?” They said, “Look, Dream’s not stupid. He wouldn’t have thrown his mask out in the dumpster . If he wanted to get rid of it, he’d have destroyed it.” They shrugged, looking around the room slowly. “Besides, someone stole it during the party.”

Sam frowned. That was news to him.

“Someone stole it?”

“Well, yeah, he left it on the buffet table and came back and it was gone,” Punz said, and shrugged. “Thought it was Tommy honestly. The kid’s always trying to start shit, and that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.”

“Tommy’s a good kid,” Sam argued.

“Tommy’s a little shit,” Punz said wryly. They shrugged, “That’s not the point, though. Anyone could have taken it and thrown it in the trash. Dream, or someone else. Who did it is what we’re trying to figure out, right?”

“Right,” Sam said, slowly. He was trying, frantically, to put it on his mental timeline of events. “Do you remember if the theft happened before, or after the argument Wilbur and Dream had?”

Punz pressed their lips tight, but they obviously started thinking about it. Eventually, they shook their head.

“I don’t recall,” they said.

“Alright,” Sam said, disappointed. “Well, if you do-”

“I’ll tell you,” Punz said, nodding. They changed the subject, “Anyway, anything on the shoes?”

Sam let himself get distracted, looking back at the shoes. Punz crowded closer to him, to get a better view.

They were, in fact, incredibly close. Flustered, Sam tried not to notice how warm he felt. It was difficult. He still felt a bit chilled by his earlier outing in the rain, even though he’d dried himself since. Punz’s side, pressed against his own, felt like a furnace.

Sam cleared his throat.

“Nothing so far,” he said, “Dre- Whoever used them just discarded them, and given the size and state of them, they probably belonged to Wilbur himself.”

“Hm, convenient,” Punz said.

Very much so, yes, for the killer. Not so much for Sam himself.

Punz hand brushed against his side, then settled on his back. Startled, Sam looked at them. They were already looking back, expression indecipherable. When their eyes met Sam’s, though, a small smile stretched their lips.

“Sorry,” they said, and removed their hand. Sam tried not to feel the lack of it. “You just looked tense.”

“Right,” Sam said slowly. He nodded. “Thank you.” He looked back at the boots, and sighed. “This is just- a lot. It’s not my division at all.”

“And it’s supposed to be your day off,” Punz said, nodding.

“Yes,” Sam agreed. Frowned, “Did I tell you that?”

“You did,” Punz said.

Sam hummed, feeling a little embarrassed. He’d spoken to so many people during the party, and he’d drunk a little too. Things had been fuzzy, before Tina’s scream had shattered the mood and Sam had forcefully sobered. Maybe he had spoken to Punz, as part of a larger group, before that.

“We should cordon off this room,” Sam said, after a bit. “Prevent people from accessing it and contaminating the scene.”

“Sure, makes sense,” Punz said. They paused, “Ah, I touched the window.”

Sam pressed his lips tight. Well, that was not ideal.

“It’s fine,” he lied. “I’m sure it won’t have erased everything. Magical tracing spells are very advanced nowadays. My colleagues will figure it out.”

“That’s a relief,” Punz said.

Sam nodded, and turned to exit the room. He bumped into Punz, who was still standing far too close. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Punz merely put a hand over his back again, pushing him along towards the door. Words dying on his tongue, Sam let himself get led away.

There was nothing else in the room, after all.

They made it all the way to the upper floor corridor, where Dream was being held and the others that Sam wanted to interrogate were waiting. Punz stopped at the entrance of the sitting room, and frowned at the various pairs that were nervously waiting around, whispering amongst themselves. Ranboo had kept Tommy far from Fundy, and Wilbur’s biological son was, in turn, kept distracted by Quackity who seemed to be listening intently to some story or another.

“Sam,” Punz called to the officer softly.

Sam, gratifyingly, turned to them immediately. Punz smiled at him reflexively, keeping a deliberately casual hand in their pocket. The silk of their suit’s pocket-tissue felt soft under their fingers. So far, so good.

“Could you walk with me for a second?” They asked.

“I-” Sam seemed to hesitate, looking back to the sitting room. Almost no one had noticed them yet, and so the officer nodded and followed Punz towards the corridor. “Sure, yes. Did you need to tell me something?”

No, Punz didn’t really. What they needed was an excuse to venture closer to Dream’s door.

“I just wanted to talk to you a little,” they said, slowly walking towards their goal. Sam seemed to be reluctant to move away too much from the sitting room, so Punz put a hand on his back to guide him along. It worked, Sam’s face gaining a faint blue tint. Punz didn’t smile smugly, but they wanted to. Instead, they lowered their voice, “We didn’t really have time, but I wanted to check on you. You said this wasn’t your job-”

“Not my division,” Sam corrected softly. “Forensics and investigation is a whole different department.”

“Right,” Punz said, nodding. “I was just concerned. This must be a lot, to have to deal with this alone.”

“It’s my job,” Sam said, drawing himself a bit straighter. “And it’s a serious situation. It needs to be taken seriously.”

“Of course,” Punz said. “And you’re doing admirably so far. Really!” They said, smiling when Sam shot them a doubtful look, “You’re doing really good.”

Blue flushed Sam’s cheeks again. He looked away.

“I’m just doing my job,” he said again.

“Yeah, and you’re doing it well,” Punz said. They rubbed Sam’s back, slowly, and pretended not to notice the way Sam reacted to it. This was kind of fun. “I think everyone feels much safer, with you here, taking charge of the investigation.”

“You think so?” Sam asked.

“Of course,” Punz said. They gauged the distance. A few more steps and they’d be right where they wanted to be. “But it must still be a lot. I just wanted to make sure that you know you can depend on me. You know, if you need help. Backup.”

Sam froze, staring at them wide-eyed, and Punz cursed in their heart. Oh they’d been a bit too heavy handed. They were so close. The door was right there.

“You,” Sam started, and then shook his head, “That means a lot, Punz, but-”

He started to turn around, and Punz didn’t think. He grabbed Sam by the shoulders, and pushed him against the wall.

Right next to Dream’s door.

Finally .

Victorious, Punz gave Sam a flushed look.

“I’m serious, Sam,” they said, and leaned closer to him.

Flustered, Sam stared, wide-eyed, at them. His eyes kept flickering to Punz’s lips, Punz noticed. Well, that was nice to know. And, in any other circumstances, Punz would have loved to explore that. As it was, they had something to do first.

They took their hand out of their pocket, accidentally dropping their suit’s pocket tissue on the ground.

Without looking at the blue silk, Punz crowded closer to Sam.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Punz said, keeping their eyes locked into Sam’s own. “There’s a killer on the loose, Sam. What if something happened to you?”

“I can defend myself,” Sam said, defensive - but there was an edge to his tone. He was clinging to his composure with both hands. One of his hands, in fact, reached to grab onto Punz’s arm, but he didn’t force them to let go, “I’m trained for this, but you’re a civilian.”

Punz snorted, genuinely amused. They grinned at Sam, and took advantage of the diversion to kick the tissue under the door.

“Please, Sam, we both know I’m not your average civilian,” they pointed out.

They leaned in further, until their lips were mere inches from Sam’s. Sam’s eyes glanced down at Punz’s mouth. Punz glanced down at the tissue, and discreetly nudged it all the way under the door.

Wonderful.

Their task accomplished, they returned their attention to the flushed Sam. Hm. Maybe now was the time to explore something .

“Do you need a reminder of what I can do, Sam?” They asked, lowly.

Sam, for a second, looked like he would actually accept, his pupils blown wide. But then his grip tightened on Punz’s arm.

“This is not the right time or setting for this, Punz,” he said, flustered.

Well, well, well .

Punz grinned.

“Does that mean there will be a right time and setting for this?” They asked, and delighted in the way Sam flushed further. Absolutely adorable. “Alright then. I’ll hold you to it, Sam.”

And then, without waiting for a reaction, they straightened up and, winking at the surprised officer, they started walking back towards the sitting room.

Sam quickly put himself back together, yanking his shirt back into a semblance of straightness, before hurrying after him.

“You’re a menace,” he hissed at Punz, face still flushed even as he glared.

“Hm, it’s part of my charm, I’m told,” Punz said.

Sam, tellingly, only wordlessly hissed some more. But when Punz put their arm around his shoulders, he didn’t move away.

Dream waited until the footsteps and the sounds of conversation had faded to walk closer, quiet as a mouse. He’d recognized Punz’s voice, and Sam’s. Neither of them had come to see him, though, stopping close by before going back from where they came.

But something had slid under the door.

Dream crouched down, and took the tissue in his hands.

Silk, ice blue. The same shade as Punz’s eyes - the same color as their suit’s accents, as well.

Turning the soft piece of cloth around, Dream felt a small, familiar spark of magic. A smile, helplessly fond, found its way to his face.

Ah, clever.

There was a small key, embroidered in dark blue, almost black, on the silk. A spark of Dream’s own magic, and the embroidery unraveled - dropping a cold, obsidian key into Dream’s waiting palm.

Sam’s masterkey.

“Ah, Punz,” Dream murmured, smiling to himself. “Wonderfully done.”

Well then, he thought, straightening up.

Time to leave this place.

He had a killer to catch.

Dream didn’t really have a plan, was the thing. Catching the killer, the real killer - and probably the person that had framed him - was good in theory, but Dream had no idea where to even start. Whoever had done it wouldn’t have left many clues, and if they had, well.

They probably all pointed to Dream.

Besides, investigative magic was hardly Dream’s domain. Neither was old fashioned detective work. What was he supposed to do, find a magnifying glass and start inspecting the carpet? Might as well just go back into the room that served as his glorified holding cell and wait for the actual forensic team.

But Dream wasn’t the kind to give up so easily. Punz had helped him get out. Dream wouldn’t let it be for nothing.

Hearing voices, he ducked into the nearest room, heart hammering.

Whoever they belonged to passed by the door without stopping, and Dream breathed easier once their footsteps had faded into the distance. He let out a shuddering breath, leaning his forehead against the door.

Maybe wandering around without knowing where to look was a stupid idea.

He needed a clear idea, a plan of attack, something .

Why would anyone kill Wilbur?

Stupid question, there were too many reasons to count them all.

Who would kill Wilbur?

Once again, too many suspects. The man had very few friends, and even those probably wanted him dead,  at least a little.

Frustrated, Dream turned his thoughts to the evening. The last time he’d seen Wilbur was in his office, where he’d left him. Alive. Two hours before his death, Sam had said. That didn’t really help. Two hours was a lot of time.

Though Dream was still surprised people had heard them argue. He would have thought Wilbur’s office would be warded with some sound-proofing spells of sorts.

That… Was a thought, actually.

How had no one heard the murder happening? Twenty three stab wounds made for a messy, drawn out death. A loud one, for sure. They should have heard the fighting, the screaming, some sort of tumbling around, at least.

And yet, no one had known Wilbur had died until midnight had rung and Tina had found his body.

Thoughts whirling, Dream absently cast his magical sense outwards, reaching for Wilbur’s office. If he was right, then someone had cast a spell on it, and it would have left some residue, and if so, then perhaps a trace or signature, a hint of identity-

Something cold, dead , brushed against his senses.

Dream’s eyes snapped open in shock.

There was some necromantic spell active in Wilbur’s office.

That wasn’t what he was looking for. And yet, it might just be the very clue he needed.

“Maybe playing with those artifacts was good for something, in the end,” Dream wryly muttered.

Cautiously, he opened the door, and slowly made his way out. He needed to be careful, on the way to the office. Someone was probably watching it.

Miraculously, he managed to avoid the path of anyone else, even while taking down the main stairs. Sam was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Punz. Dream took his blessings where he found them, and kept going. He was almost there-

“Dream?”

Dream froze. Closed his eyes. Then straightened and put on the most casual expression he could manage, turning around.

“Hey, Sapnap,” he said, and blinked. Sapnap wasn’t alone. Of course not. Buddy system. “George. You’re awake.”

“And you’re out of your room,” George pointed out flatly. “Are you supposed to be here?”

“Of course not,” Sapnap scoffed. He crossed his arms, “He probably escaped. Picked the lock somehow.”

“I- What, no,” Dream said, waving a hand. He lied, “I didn’t escape.”

“Sure,” George said, obviously not believing him.

“Yeah right,” Sapnap said, and rolled his eyes, “Like you didn’t kill Wilbur.”

Dream tensed.

“I didn’t!” He exclaimed, and then snapped his mouth closed, resisting the urge to look around like a guilty person. Shit. If someone heard his voice… “You guys know I wouldn’t do it!”

“I mean, no, you would,” George said mildly, and then shrugged, “I mean, I would , and I’m pretty sure Sapnap would have too, if given half the chance.”

“Oh yeah, abso-fucking-lutely,” Sapnap said, nodding firmly. He frowned at Dream, looking oddly upset, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us though. You know we would have helped.”

George nodded along, as if what Sapnap had just said wasn’t the wildest thing he’d ever said.

…It probably wasn’t even in the top ten of the wildest things he’d ever said, all things considered, but still.

Dream stared at his two best friends, bewildered and outraged.

“I didn’t murder him, though!” He whisper-shouted at them.

“Dude, just stop lying,” Sapnap said, and looked even more upset. “We don’t care that you killed him.”

It would have been a nice sentiment, if Dream had actually murdered Wilbur. As it was, though-

“But I didn’t!” He insisted.

“You should have told us,” Sapnap went on, as though Dream hadn’t spoken. “We could have planned it better!”

“Please, he panicked and dumped his mask in the trash,” George reminded Sapnap, “There was no planning involved.” He turned to Dream, and gave the most unimpressed look Dream had seen from him in a while. “You should have come get us when you did, though. We would have helped you hide the body, at least.”

“I could have burned it!” Sapnap said, nodding firmly.

“Wh- No, that would have been way more suspicious,” Dream said, wrinkling his nose. “Burnt bodies smell, Sap- That’s not the point! Look, I swear, I would have told you if I’d planned to murder Wilbur, or if I’d actually murdered him-”

“No you wouldn’t have,” George cut him off.

Sapnap, next to him, nodded in agreement.

“You’d have told Punz ,” George continued, almost acidly.

There was nothing Dream could say to that. It was true. He would have gone to Punz first. Punz knew about the artifacts, after all, and everything that had happened with Wilbur, even the details that Dream had never told George and Sapnap because they would have felt so much more guilty.

They already had felt terrible, when the incident had happened. Dream didn’t want to add to that. Ever.

Punz also probably knew how to hide a body and clean up a crime scene, somehow.

George and Sapnap wouldn’t have been the best, or the most discreet option.

“That’s not the point,” Dream said again, tersely, and pressed his lips tight when George and Sapnap’s expressions flickered with knowing disappointment. They knew a deflection when they heard one. Dream pressed on, “I swear, I didn’t do this. I’m being framed. Look, I really wouldn’t have been so messy, and I would have run away. And, yes, I would have told you. You know that, right?”

“Right,” Sapnap said, but it lacked any genuine belief. He wasn’t looking at Dream. “Yeah.”

George didn’t bother. He just shook his head, and started to turn away.

“Just go,” George said. “We won’t tell Sam you escaped.”

Dream opened his mouth to protest, to continue to argue for his innocence… But his best friends obviously weren’t in the right mindset for that. Swallowing roughly, Dream met Sapnap’s gaze. Sapnap looked back, then with a twist of his lips and a short nod, he too turned away.

“Be careful,” his friend said.

Dream’s heart hurt.

“I will,” he said, quietly.

And then, he too turned away, towards the office.

The sooner he found his answers, the better.

The office’s doors were locked, but the master key continued to prove useful. Dream hummed in satisfaction as the double doors unlocked with a small click! The door creaked as it opened, uncomfortably loud. He quickly slipped inside before closing it behind him, hoping that the sound didn’t carry.

The room looked largely undisturbed. The body hadn’t been messed with and the blood on the walls had dried, although Wilbur’s shirt still seemed sticky. Dream grimaced, stepping around to inspect the furniture. Despite the squishy lounge chairs that still decorated the first half of the room, the place had been somewhat converted into Wilbur’s office. There was a gorgeous cherrywood desk filling the space, along with an upturned chair that likely cost more than it was worth. Dream edged over it, careful not to touch anything and risk yet more false evidence.

The papers on the desk were useless. A few blank invitations. A letter to the Eggpire - half-written - requesting an order of floral decorations. Detailed notes about Tommy’s training, something about how he was no longer allowed to use bows in the house. Some sketches of a book -

Dream couldn’t stop himself from bristling, recognizing it immediately. Wilbur wasn’t supposed to know that the revival book existed , much less know what it looked like! Even when Wilbur had been attempting to… persuade him, Dream had held fast and refused to reveal the secrets of his necromancy techniques. There were few people in this world who were responsible enough to have such power. Wilbur wouldn’t even rank in the top thirty. 

Dread began to pool in his stomach as he thought about it longer and longer. There was only one time where Wilbur had held him in a position of weakness such that Dream would have given out that information, and even then, he hadn’t , but-

He’d been drugged. He’d been drugged, and George hadn’t known until too late, until he’d come back from the bathroom to find his fiance and Dream gone-

Dream gripped his arms tight. He didn’t have Punz’s calming touch, but he pretended it settled him all the same.

Inventories were supposed to be hidden, but he had no way of knowing what artifacts the idiot had been pinching over the years. Wilbur could have done anything to him, used some sort of artifact that let him see Dream’s items, while he held him. After all, Dream had been in that dark, closed-off wine cellar for hours before Sapnap and George had come to rescue him, and most of those hours he’d spent unconscious.

It was incredibly violating to think about, but it was the most plausible explanation he had. The revival book had no written record that Dream hadn’t carefully destroyed. What other way could Wilbur have to get ahold of that information?

Well. Too late, now, to worry about it. Wilbur was dead, anyway.

Letting out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, Dream glanced to the side, trying to find any sort of distraction. He found his eyes stopping at the lone photo on the desk. It wasn’t of Wilbur’s late wife, nor of his son, but of a young Wilbur and his father, Philza Minecraft. The warmth in Philza’s gaze was unmistakable as he looked down at his son. The little boy grinned brightly at the camera with huge doe eyes. They both seemed so innocent. So unaware of what the future would hold.

There was a single drop of blood, on a corner.

Grabbing the frame, Dream wiped it clean then tilted it down until it was hidden from the world, Philza’s face turned away from the body in the room. The man didn’t need to see what remained of his son.

He maneuvered around the desk back to the body, steeling himself for what was to come. With a flick of the wrist, the revival book appeared in his hand. 

“Give it a body, again.” Dream murmured, and the book’s latch unsealed. “Wilbur, player of games.”

The book fluttered open, and the pages burst with magic, giving the office a bright, green glow.

“Good.” The magic felt easy to grasp beneath his fingertips, easier than any magic had ever been for him. Necromancy, and all its shades.

“Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return.” Dream spoke solemnly, letting his eyes fall shut. “Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long-”

The office doors swung open.

“Hey Dream-”

“Holy-fuck-” Dream yelped, and instantly the glow vanished, book shutting and locking itself as he threw it directly at Punz’s head.

“Wait, fuck- Dream what the hell? ” 

“I was doing something, you idiot!” Dream yelled, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

“So your response was to throw the book at me?!”

“I was- it was an impulse! You could have been an ambush!”

“An ambush that says hello?”

“Just-” Dream stopped. He sighed. “Nevermind. You’re an idiot.”

“Sure.” Punz quirked his lips, because he was a smug bastard like that. They reached down to pick the book off the ground. “You wanna tell me what you were doing in here?”

“What does it look like?” Dream gestured in frustration to the still-lifeless corpse.

“It looks like you forgot to check to make sure there were no cracks before starting your lightshow.” Punz nudged the very bottom of the double doors, where the light of the halls peeked through. “You could see the glow from outside.”

Dream pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course he did. Caution apparently wasn’t his strong suit tonight. 

“Ok. So I’ll fix that before starting again. Thanks for coming in to let me know.”

“Of course.” Punz said, before hesitating. They held the book against their chest, but Dream felt no tension or fear; Punz would never be tempted to steal away the revival book, not from Dream. There were a few people worth trusting in this world, but Punz always ranked highest of them all. “Do you think if Wilbur is found alive again it will be enough to prevent your arrest?”

“They can’t charge me for a murder that doesn’t exist. Especially if he tells them who actually killed him.”

“Who… actually.” Punz’s face went blank.

Dream groaned.

“Oh come on , not you too!”

“You can tell me anything, Dream. I won’t leave your side.” Punz said gently. They moved closer and held out the revival book. “I would have done the job myself if you asked.”

“I haven’t done anything! Why does everyone think I would be this sloppy? Did you really think I’d throw the mask away in the trash-”

“Okay, the mask thing was throwing me a little, but-”

“Look at this mess, look at it ,” Dream paused for a moment, then registered what Punz had said. “Wait, you didn’t kill him? Not even for like, his artifacts?”

“Now I feel like it's my turn to be offended that you’d think I’d leave a corpse behind trying to steal his shit.”

“You see how it feels when people think you’re that bad at killing someone?”

“You were really upset when he had the audacity to try talking to you! I assumed you were under a lot of stress.”

Dream huffed and grabbed the book. 

“Not enough to be incompetent! This is a framing job. A really bad framing job that they’re going to get away with because every cop in this town is a cheap bastard.”

“Don’t let Sam hear you say that.” Punz chuckled. Dream felt relief melt in him unbidden as they tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. Trust and faith bled from their magic, and with one touch he knew they believed him. “He’s still convinced they're some sort of force of justice, righting wrongs, triumphing over evil, the whole thing.”

“He’ll figure it out, someday.” Dream muttered.  “He has to. He can’t possibly be that blind.”

Punz smiled and patted his back. “Until then, we just go with the more unorthodox methods instead.”

“Right.” Dream grabbed Punz’s sleeve and walked them to the door. Punz followed obediently, and didn’t protest when Dream pushed them out. “You need to go back and find your- new buddy or whatever-” 

“Its Sam, now.”

“Right. Go back to Sam and keep people from coming over here while I get this sorted. The last thing we need is for people to see me here.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried.” Punz put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I think Techno is currently trying to stab Tommy with a sword.”

“He’s-” Dream inhaled. “Nevermind. I don’t want to know. Just go somewhere else so you don’t look guilty.”

“On it.”

He waited until they disappeared down the hall to shut the doors. He leaned against them, clutching the book tightly.

“Alright. This is fine. I can work with this.”

“What are you working with?”

Because he was apparently incapable of learning from his mistakes, Dream jumped, launching the revival book behind him.

It went through the man’s head, hitting the back wall.

“What the fuck.”

The man, who should not be floating in front of him, was Wilbur. Sort of. 

He was Wilbur if the man had significantly less gaudy apparel. He lacked his usual fancy jackets, or the gold rings on his fingers. Instead, the man looked soft , with a yellow sweater and a kind smile far away from Wilbur's more insidious grin.

His eyes were wide and white, but Dream had no doubt that if he pulled that photo off the desk they would be a perfect match to his childhood self.

Wilbur, or this phantom of him, grimaced.

“That was rude. I apologize for startling you.”

“Okay, now I know you’re not Wilbur.” Dream fought the urge to bury his face into his hands. Even if the ghost was polite, he didn’t want to take his eyes off it.

“Oh, well, no, I’m his ghost! Ghostbur!” The apparition said. “How did you know?”

“He would not be apologizing for that.”

The ghost of Wilbur- Ghostbur- looked very, very sad for a moment. Then he brightened. 

“Oh! I know what will fix this.”

Dream watched, mystified, as Ghostbur drifted off over to where the revival book had fallen. When he tried to pick it up however, his hands went right through it. Which, he was a ghost, of course they did. It left, however, a deep blue handprint right on the cover.

“Oh, bother. I was hoping I would have figured that out by now.” Ghostbur tsked at the book, as if it was somehow responsible for the mess, before floating back through the desk to Dream once again. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not quite what I should be at the moment.”

“I noticed.” Dream said drily.

“I’m glad to have made your acquaintance despite the circumstances however. Might I have your name?”

Oh he wasn’t serious. 

“You don’t remember me. Dream. The guy you’ve been harassing non-stop for over a year now. The guy you locked in a basement. Dream. ”

Ghostbur looked shocked, as if the very concept of such things were beyond him. Dream decided he didn’t like this version of Wilbur either.

“I don’t know you at all, and I certainly don’t remember doing any of that .” The phantom paused. “Although, I can’t seem to remember much of anything at the moment.”

Because of course he didn’t. That would be too easy , too simple , and god knows Wilbur was never capable of doing anything simple once in his life. Why would his death be any different?

“How are you even here?” Dream asked. “I didn’t revive you!”

Ghostbur seemed apologetic.

“I’m not quite sure, to be honest. The only thing I remember was waking up in my father-in-law’s wine cellar. The place seemed to have been stripped and redecorated with some baubles, but otherwise a decent enough place to nap. Sally’s family always did have good taste.”

“Oh my god.” He was going to revive Wilbur and kill him again for this. And then again, because he told that stupid, stupid man not to mess with those artifacts. He told him not to play around with things he didn’t understand, and now he managed to fuck up his own revival. 

Dream was not going to let him get away with this.

“Do you at least know who killed you? Anything about the murder?”

“There was a murder?”

Dream gestured wildly at the corpse he was floating over. The ghost tilted his head, looking down at his body in fascination.

“Oh! I’m not normally like that am I?”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Not the foggiest clue, sorry!”

“ Think! ” Dream insisted. “What’s the last thing you remember from your life?”

Ghostbut hummed and hawed, but seemed to be giving it an attempt. His face suddenly lit up.

“Oh, I was in this room!” He exclaimed, and turned a beaming smile to Dream.

Dream didn’t dare hope, but he still leaned forward.

“That’s great, Ghostbur!” He said. “Who was in the room with you?”

But Ghostbur merely looked confused.

“No one?” He said. He shook his head, “I can’t remember anyone. Sorry.”

Ghostbur gave a sympathetic look as Dream groaned. The ghost sort of vaguely patted the air where Dreams shoulder was, before beginning to float towards the door.

"Wait, where are you going?!" Dream scrambled up to follow him.

"I'd thought I'd take a little stroll." Ghostbur said cheerily.

"But you're dead. People are gonna notice if you're just- floating around without a body!" He said, and then, almost frantic, “They’ll think I did it!”

"Oh, don't worry about that." Ghostbur reassured him. "I'll make sure they know you tried to revive me, and are lacking in any nefarious intentions. I can be quite the convincing gentleman."

Dream had a lot of things he wanted to say about that, but the phantom slipped through the closed door, and when Dream pulled it open, the hallway was empty.

"... shit." Dream sighed.

Sam grabbed the tea most likely to have caffeine and the plainest teapot in the cupboards, filling the thing up with water and then setting it on the kitchen’s stove. Most of the personnel at the precinct were avid coffee drinkers, but back when he had still been close with… Dream, the man had often gotten nauseous just from the smell. It had been easier- better - to drink something else than risk leaving someone feeling sick just from spending time together. He’d never stopped the habit, even after he had joined the force and Dream had begun to drift out of sight. 

Tea tasted better anyway.

In the ballroom, Techno could be heard loudly arguing with Tommy. They’d been doing that for almost an hour, but this time at least they were having a conversation that didn’t involve swords. Mostly because the weapons had been confiscated. 

Some of the party-goers had wandered into the kitchen like him, trying to escape the noise. Tina was chewing on a cookie as she whispered something to Ranboo, while Hannah was sitting on the island counter, reading a book from the library. She looked remarkably awake, but he could tell by the droop in her wings that she was flagging, much like the rest of them were. Even Sapnap was starting to look tired, for all his claims that nothing could wear him down. 

It’s just until the forensics team arrived, he reminded himself as the kettle began to whistle. He pulled it off its hotplate, pouring it into his cup. They show up, get what they need, and then we can all go home.

Dream might not, but he tried very hard to not think about it.

Quackity, his own hot cup of coffee held tight in his hands, wandered closer to him when he noticed him.

“Why are you looking so glum, Sam? You caught the guy.” Quackity patted him on the back. It only made Sam feel more uncomfortable.

“We can’t be sure that Dream is the culprit.” Sam said teresely. 

“Oh please,” The duck hybrid scoffed. “His mask was covered in blood, right after he got into a big blowout with the guy. He was an idiot and he got caught. I don’t see why you have to go through all this fanfare when you could just take him and leave.”

Sam’s throat closed.

“What are you talking about?” He managed to ask.

“You’re tired, Sam.” Quackity smiled sympathetically. It looked as sweet as poisoned honey. “You’re doing a great job protecting us, but you can only keep it up for so long, especially when you’re just one man.”

“The forensics unit will be here soon.” Sam protested weakly, but an uncomfortable awareness was creeping up on him.

He was getting tired, exhausted. He had been working all week, and the one day he had off was spent attending a party, socializing with people instead of resting at home like he wanted. And the party ended like that.

He just wanted it to be over.

“And do what? Take all the credit for your hard work?” Quackity asked, and scoffed. “You wouldn’t even see a pay raise for what you're doing right now, I don’t know how you can stand it.”

Most days, Sam wasn’t sure either. 

This wasn’t what he wanted when he joined the force. He’d wanted to serve justice, to protect people.

Quackity sipped his coffee, watching him over the rim of the cup. For a long moment, neither of them said anything, and Sam felt worse and worse, left to stew in his own exhaustion and anxiety.

“You know,” Quackity said after a moment, and his words were casual, but not unkind, “No one would blame you for bringing Dream in yourself and skipping a couple steps in the process.” 

Sam frowned. He held his teacup close to his chest.

“That's not how the procedure works,” he said.

“Well, maybe they shouldn’t have forced you to do their job.” Quackity says with a gentleness that hurt. “Just take him in. Get a quick conviction and then go home and get some rest.”

“I-I can’t-” Sam wavered.

“Let me help.” Quackity interrupted, still so gentle. “I know some people, on and off the force. I can help, Sam.”

Sam lowered his tea and looked down; it was still filled to the brim. It was going to get cold soon, if he didn’t drink it. Maybe- Would it be so bad, to accept help? It truly wasn’t his job, and if Quackity could convince some more competent people to come and-

“Are you serious?” A voice spoke, low and flat, right behind him.

Sam flinched, whirling around, teas sloshing everywhere. Quackity’s wings fluttered in surprise.

Punz was leaning against the doorway, arms folded. Any traces of the warmth from earlier were gone, replaced by an icy gaze that froze Sam in place.

“Hey, Punz.” Quackity grinned, though there was something uneasy about it. “I see you’ve been skulking around. Find any fancy pearls?”

Punz didn’t go for the dig. He kept his gaze on Sam, and Sam only. Usually, the intensity of that attention made Sam feel warm. Now, though, he felt cold, frozen under the sharp gaze.

“I thought you weren’t a corrupt cop, Sam,” Punz said.

The accusation slammed into him, and Sam almost dropped his cup.

“I’m not!” Sam replied frantically.

“Then what are you doing accepting bribes from a crime lord?”

“I’m-” Sam jerked away from Quackity- from his co-conspirator he realized with horror- and waved his hand wildly. More tea splashed down. Sam didn’t care, focused on the way Punz was watching him. “I wasn’t. I wouldn’t. I swear.”

“Oh, is the mercenary going to tell us to be moral now?” Quackity sneered, sounding annoyed. “Like you’re so righteous. Everyone knows you sell your sword to the highest bidder.”

But once more, Punz ignored him, as if Quackity was barely worth any of his attention. He kept his gaze on Sam, angry. Cutting.

“I thought you were better than that, Sam.” Punz said, glaring at him with clear accusation, clawing their way into his soul as easily as they had held his heart. “I had faith in you. Dream had faith in you. He trusted you to be a good man, and you were going to betray him .”

Sam couldn’t help it. He recoiled.

Punz was right. Punz was so very, terribly right. What had he been thinking? That he was tired? That he could handwave the rules, the laws that were put in place for a reason? That he could deny Dream a trial ? He felt sick.

Through his own selfish weakness, he could have lost Dream’s trust. And he might have already lost Punz.

“Oh boo-hoo, a necromancer getting what’s coming to him,” Quackity said, rolling his eyes. “At least if he’s doing his community service we can actually get something useful out of him-”

“Quackity, get out.” Sam said bluntly, only the faintest shake in his voice.

Quackity whirled to glare at him, looking almost offended.

“Are you serious? You’re really listening to this guy?”

“ Go .” Sam hissed.

The man’s wings flared out briefly, as if he intended to attack. Sam tensed up. But just as quickly they folded again, and Quackity stormed back out into the ballroom, leaving his steaming coffee cup on the counter.

Sam could feel the other's eyes on him, but the one person he was focused on was Punz.

The only person whose opinion he cared for was Punz.

“I’m not going to betray anyone,” Sam said, and he didn’t beg but it was close.

“Right,” Punz scoffed. “So all that didn’t just happen?”

“It did.” Sam admitted. It was painful to say out loud. Shameful. Still, he pushed on, drawing himself up straighter. “But I shouldn’t have been tempted. It was a weakness that I won’t allow. I’ll make sure Dream faces proper justice, and I won’t let anything else get in the way of that.”

Punz narrowed their eyes. Sam tried not to squirm under their gaze, uncertain of what they were looking for and nervous he didn’t measure up to it.

Finally, they snorted, looking away.

“Proper justice.” They muttered, as if it was a joke. Sam didn’t have the heart to blame them after the indecency they’d just witnessed from him. They shrugged and turned back towards the ballroom. “Try not to get carried away, Sam.”

Then, with a few, quick, efficient steps they were gone. The room felt lesser for it. Emptier.

Their words lingered in Sam’s mind. Punz was right. Of course they were. Sam would do this the right way, or else there was no point in doing it at all. 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Dream froze, in the process of locking the door of the room behind him. Slowly, he turned around.

Niki was standing there, eyes sharp, face lit-up solely by the candlestick she was holding. It gave her a menacing look.

“Niki,” Dream greeted her warily. He looked around quickly, but thankfully, there was no one else around. “Please, don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

“Why should I do that?” Niki asked.

“Because I’m innocent!” Dream said, and quickly added in the face of her bland skepticism, “I would have run away the moment I killed him, if I had done it. No one even knows where I live!”

Slowly, Niki nodded, as though seeing the sense in the argument. Dream hoped, really hoped, that she did. She crossed her arms. She had, Dream noticed, a small bottle with a familiar design on it in her second hand.

Before he could think on it some more, Niki frowned, “I thought I saw Wilbur. Did you- Did you do something?”

“No, I didn’t,” Dream said, dragging a hand through his hair. “That was his ghost. Did you see which way he went?”

Niki inspected him.

“You conjured his ghost?” She asked, not answering his question.

“No,” Dream said, “He did this to himself. He was playing with necromantic artifacts - I told him not to, but of course, does anyone ever listen to me-” He cut himself off. Sighed. “Sorry. Sorry. I know you and Wilbur used to be close…”

“Used to,” Niki snorted, bitterly. “Yeah, I thought so.” She looked at him intently. “You really didn’t murder him?”

“No,” Dream swore.

She sighed, deflating. Apparently believing him.

Just as he was about to relax, Dream suddenly recalled what Punz told him, and tensed back anew. People were supposed to be paired up. For safety.

“Niki,” he said slowly. “Where’s your partner?”

“Techno’s busy,” she said.

“He left you alone?” Dream asked. That didn’t sound like the Techno he knew. The man was fiercely protective of his friends. With a murderer on the loose, he wouldn’t have left Niki on her own.

“He got distracted,” Niki said, a non-answer.

So either she’d slipped his notice, or Techno was in on whatever it was she was doing. Because she probably wasn’t doing anything good.

Dream recognized the bottle in her hand.

It was a magical fire-starting potion. Just one splash of it, and a whole room could go up in flames with a spark. And Niki was holding a full bottle of it, and a candlestick.

Warily, Dream stared at her. He flexed his hands.

“Niki,” he said, slowly, “did you kill Wilbur?”

“What?” She glared. “No.”

“Then why do you have enough fire potion to burn the whole house down?” Dream asked.

For a long moment, Niki stared at him with eerily unblinking eyes. Her grip on the candlestick had shifted. She was holding it, Dream noticed, a lot like one would a weapon. But then she let out a small tsk and shook her head.

“Because I did want to burn the house down,” she admitted, and Dream blinked at her in shock. She gave a bitter smile, “This whole place is cursed. Full of things that Wilbur should never have had. In fact, he shouldn’t have had the house at all. Sally didn’t leave it to him, in her will, did you know?”

Dream shook his head, negatively. He didn’t know.

“He didn’t deserve it , and I wanted to burn it in front of him, and then he dies?” Niki hissed, viciously. But then she smiled. It was a sharp thing. “But since his ghost is here, I guess this is just as good.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dream frantically waved his hands. “Everyone is still inside the house! And Sam locked the security ward, it’s dangerous-”

“I would obviously evacuate them,” Niki scoffed at him. “Techno-” She glared at him again. “Nevermind.”

So Techno was in on it. Good to know. Dream relaxed a little more. Techno was trustworthy.

Still.

“But I didn’t kill Wilbur,” he reminded Niki. “And we don’t know who did. If you burn the house down, the real killer escapes, free to kill again. You’ll destroy the evidence.”

“...And you’ll get convicted because all the evidence points to you,” Niki said flatly.

Well, that too. Dream couldn’t lie, that was also something important.

“Look, Wilbur’s ghost is not really him,” he appealed to her. “It’s just a shade, a copy. It doesn’t have all his memories. It doesn’t even know who killed him!”

“Huh,” Niki said. “That’s odd.”

“Right?” Dream agreed. He looked at her squarely. “Look, let’s make a deal. Tell me where he went. I’ll find him. Revive him. Get the truth. And then, he’ll be alive to see you burn his house down, and his murderer will be behind bars.”

For a second, he thought Niki would refuse. But then, after a long moment of thought, she gave a disappointed sigh and nodded.

“Alright,” she said. And then, steely, “You have an hour.”

“Thank you,” Dream said fervently.

“He went this way,” Niki added, pointing down the corridor.

Dream quickly thanked her again, and started running.

He now had a deadline. And if he failed to meet it, his chances to get out of this would go up in smoke.

Literally.

Sam didn’t even realize who had come barreling down the corridor. He reacted mostly by instinct, arm shooting out to catch the runner, mostly preoccupied by the fact that no one should be running- and certainly not alone- than by who it could be.

His grip tightened when he registered the face staring back at him, green eyes wide with dread.

“Dream,” Sam said, shocked.

His free hand patted at his pockets - and registered them empty.

Someone had stolen his masterkey. Someone had stolen from him, and used it to free Dream.

Scowling, Sam grabbed Dream’s other arm. Dream tugged, harshly, but he would find no give. Sam wasn’t about to let him escape him a second time.

“Sam, let me go,” Dream said, tone tense. “This is more important-”

His eyes darted to the end of the corridor, where he’d been headed in such a hurry. Sam glanced there, and saw a figure, pale and wearing pastels, drifting around the corner. He frowned, but didn’t let Dream go.

“Who was that?” He asked.

“No one, nothing,” Dream said, and it was such an obvious lie that Sam let out a small hiss.

“Don’t lie to me,” Sam said, frustrated. “Was it your accomplice? The one who let you out?”

“Wh- No,” Dream said. He lied, again, “No one let me out, Sam, now let me go-”

Sam hissed again, furious, and backed Dream harshly into the wall. Dream let out a small oof , and stared at him, wide eyed. Looming over him, Sam shifted so that he had his suspect caged in, then patted him down efficiently.

He couldn’t feel the key anywhere. It didn’t mean anything, however.

“Where did you put it?” He asked, sharply.

“What are you talking about?” Dream asked, glaring.

“My masterkey,” Sam said, pointedly. He felt Dream’s aborted twitch only because he was so close, and narrowed his eyes at him, “I know you have it.”

“I do not,” Dream replied stubbornly.

“ Stop lying to me ,” Sam hissed at him.

Dream glared back, unrepentant, unapologetic. He was taut as a bowstring against the wall, and Sam had no doubt that the moment he gave him an inch, Dream would take it and run. That was probably what he’d meant to do, after all.

Run away, and escape from justice.

But masterkey or not, the wards wouldn’t have let him through. Dream had to know that.

Or maybe he hadn’t, and that’s why he had been running. Trying to find a weak point somewhere, to slither through.

Didn’t he know how it looked? How it would look, to the court, at his trial? He wasn’t helping himself.

Frustrated, Sam met his defiant green eyes squarely.

“You should have stayed in your room,” Sam said, meaning it entirely. “Trying to escape, trying to run from me, hiding your accomplice… Don’t you realize it’ll just make things worse?”

“I do not have an accomplice ,” Dream said, and all but spat out, “Because that would mean I’ve committed a crime. And I have not!”

“Only guilty people run,” Sam said flatly.

“Have you heard about jogging? Get a hobby , Sam,” Dream snarked.

“You know this isn’t what I meant,” Sam said, annoyed. “You weren’t taking a jog down the corridor. You were chasing someone.”

Dream snorted, but didn’t reply. He didn’t have to, though. His eyes darted to the side again, and this time Sam was quick enough to catch a good look at whoever was at the end of the corridor. It was that same pale figure from before, leaning around the corner, as though waiting for someone to catch up.

When they saw Sam watching, they gave a cheery wave and vanished around the corner once more. Dream made a soundless noise of frustration.

“Come back here!” He called.

“What,” Sam said, shocked out of his earlier anger. For a moment, it’d looked a lot like- “Was that Wilbur? ”

“No- Yes,” Dream said. He let out a small hiss when Sam’s grip spasmed around his arm, “Ow, Sam-”

“Did you bring him back to life?” Sam asked, wide-eyed.

“No!” Dream exclaimed. “He was like that when I found him-”

Oh, no. Everything suddenly made sense. Dream had been chasing Wilbur to kill him again. Stop him from testifying, possibly. Sam felt sick with horror. Maybe he’d suspected, and all the evidence pointed to it for sure, but Punz’s words had made him doubt. Had allowed him some hope that maybe Dream was innocent as he claimed, and that it was all a misunderstanding that could get resolved peacefully in court.

This changed things, this made it all worse.

“Don’t look at me like that, I was trying to get answers as to who the actual killer is,” Dream told him, struggling in his grip again. “Because I’m innocent!”

Relief flooded Sam, leaving him almost dizzy. But said relief turned just as fast back into anger, tinged with worry.

“You know that sort of magic is illegal, Dream,” Sam hissed at him frantically. “Bringing people back to life is forbidden-”

“I didn’t! ” Dream hissed right back. “That’s a ghost , Sam! Did the Wilbur you know look transparent? You idiot!”

Oh- Sam experienced dizzying relief once more. His heart was hammering, not appreciating the rollercoaster of emotions he was putting it through.

It made his grip on Dream slacken just the smallest bit.

Dream snarled and wrenched himself free, grabbing onto Sam before he could react. Whirling, he slammed Sam into the wall, right where he was before, in a sudden reversal of their positions. Sam found himself staring into deep, angry green, head swimming with disorientation.

“I,” Dream said, tone deliberate and low, expression intent, “won’t go back to that room. I am going to catch that bloody spirit. And I will get my answers. Because despite what you believe, what you all believe, I didn’t murder Wilbur!” He leaned forward, viciously. “And I will prove it!”

He pushed away before Sam could reply, and pointed at him.

“Now stay out of my way, Sam!” He warned.

And, not letting Sam catch his bearings, he sprinted away, after the wayward ghost.

Sam stared after him, dazed. Then remembered himself.

“Shit,” he said, “Dream! Come back!”

But of course, Dream was already far gone.

Finding Ghostbur turned out to be easier than not, once Dream started following the trail he’d left. There was blue trailing along the walls and the floor, a strange substance that had a faint, fading magical signature.

Dream had no idea where it came from, or what it was, but unfortunately there was no time for him to get proper samples and do research.

It seemed like Ghostbur got easily distracted. He’d forgotten that he was supposed to be running - floating - away, and Dream found him in a drawing room with a large piano inside of it. The specter's hands were going through the keys, fingers moving with a silent melody.

Dream quietly closed the door behind him then, taking out Sam’s masterkey from Punz’s handkerchief once more, he locked it. It was easy, once that was done, to conjure up a spirit ward. This was, after all, Dream’s bread and butter.

Once that was done, he turned to the wayward phantom.

“So you remember how to play the piano,” he said, mildly. Ghostbur didn’t even have the grace to startle in shock, instead turning eerie white eyes towards him slowly. Dream took a step towards him, “And you remember whatever song that was.”

“Mellohi,” Ghostbur answered softly. He smiled, looking back down at the piano, but it quickly shifted to a terrible sort of sadness, “Why can’t I play?”

“Because you’re dead,” Dream answered bluntly. “Spirits, no matter how fully-formed, rarely have the energy to affect the world around them.”

“I can make things blue,” Ghosbur said.

“True,” Dream said, taking another step forward. “But that’s all you can do.”

Indeed, walking yet closer he could see the piano’s keys were all smudged with blue, in the shape of the ghost’s fingers. But no matter how much blue Ghostbur oozed, he couldn’t press the keys at all.

“So I’ll never play again?” Ghostbur asked. He sounded absolutely stricken by that piece of news.

“Not as long as you’re dead, no,” Dream said. He gave the specter a thin smile, “Lucky for you, that won’t be long at all.”

Ghostbur stared at him, and then suddenly comprehension seemed to dawn. The sadness shed off him like so much blue dust - literally, almost - and he brightened, floating towards Dream and making to take Dream’s hands in his own. His fingers phased through, cold, but Ghostbur didn’t seem to notice.

“You can make me alive again?” He asked, so eager that Dream almost felt bad for him.

“Yes,” he said, and it was the truth in a sense.

He could revive Wilbur. Ghostbur, who remembered very little from his life, and obviously had been left with intense but select emotions, was not Wilbur. He was, as Dream had told Niki, a shade of the man.

He was Wilbur, the way a golden retriever was a wolf. There were some vague, remaining similarities, but in the end, substantially, they were not the same animal.

And when Wilbur would be revived, Ghostbur would cease to be, plain and simple. Whether Wilbur would even remember those few hours as a ghost was questionable.

It was honestly very unlikely.

“Wonderful!” Ghostbur said. “Oh, that’s marvelous news! Do it, do it!”

“I was intending to, yes,” Dream said wryly, and took a step back. “If you could give me some space, and a few minutes? Revival is a process.”

“Oh, yes, of course, of course,” Ghostbur said, and bobbed back towards the piano. He mimicked sitting at the stool there, cross legged an inch above it, and started humming happily, “I will be able to play the piano again, wonderful.”

Dream gave a non-committal hum, having already turned away. The door was locked, but just in case, he grabbed a quilt that had been thrown over a nearby chair. It was lovely, depicting a school of salmons swimming up river. Dream gave it a bland look and threw it on the ground, pushing it with his foot against the door, to block out any light that would come through.

He then took care to go to the windows, and shut all the curtains. It didn’t change much in terms of light, besides the lack of occasional lighting flashes. It would prevent anyone seeing the light from outside, though, if anyone was stupid enough to go out in this weather.

Or, more likely, and riskier, if the forensic team decided to come at that very moment.

Sam had had a point, amidst the nonsense from earlier.

Necromancy of the level Dream was about to do was very much illegal.

And Dream was trying to exonerate himself from a crime, not get accused of a new one.

That done, Dream turned back towards Ghostbur, and took a deep breath. He took the revival book out, and started chanting.

Wilbur. Player of games.

Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. 

Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. 

There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. 

As though we were separate things.

When the light faded, Dream was left blinking at the spot where Ghostbur had been. It was empty now, which made sense. After all, revival would have banished the ghost.

However-

“Where the fuck is Wilbur?” Dream asked the empty spot, staring, bewildered, at it.

Thankfully, the buzz from the spell was still humming in his mind, in his soul, and it was the matter of a second to follow that connection like a thread unspooled. It was connected to Wilbur, in the living world. The revival had worked perfectly.

But it’d brought back Wilbur where his corpse was. In the office.

“Fuck,” Dream swore, and ran out of the room.

Dream wasn’t sure what deity he had to thank for his luck, but he managed to cross the entire house in the opposite direction without meeting anyone. He’d thought he’d seen Punz, but no one had come after him, so maybe not. The office door, when he reached it, was also still locked.

Bless Sam’s masterkey.

Unlocking the door, Dream quickly went inside the room, closing the wooden panel behind him.

And there, standing by his desk with a dazed look on his face, alive , was Wilbur.

The nice thing about the revival book’s special magic was its tendency to return the corpse back to semi-normalcy. Wilbur was no longer coated in his own blood, his shirt clean and white, his hair clean. There were a few white strands amidst the brown curls, though, and his skin had kept some unearthly pallor to it.

Dream had never been glad to see Wilbur before, and this time was no different. The sight of the man only incited disgust and unease in his gut. However, he was glad that the revival had worked.

“Wilbur,” he called.

Wilbur briefly looked up, meeting Dream’s eyes. He didn’t seem surprised.

“Dream,” he greeted, and slowly, a grin stretched over his face. “So you revived me. You know, I imagined how it would feel, many times, in fact, but my imagination can’t compare to the reality. I feel-”

“Alive, yes, that’s the point ,” Dream said, briskly.

“ Fascinating, ” Wilbur breathed, looking back down at his own hands. His nails had kept some blue tint to them. “So much better than-”

“Wilbur, focus,” Dream said, cutting him off once again. “We don’t have much time-”

“On the contrary, now that I’m alive, I find I have all the time in the world,” Wilbur said, and looked back up. He started to walk towards Dream, languidly, “I knew you’d revive me. I knew it. You may play hard to get, but in the end, you know I’m more useful alive than dead.”

“Stop right there, you sick, deranged -” Dream cut himself off, raising his chin instead. “Come any closer and I’ll make you drop back dead.”

Wilbur stopped dead - hah - a slight twist of his features betraying his uncertainty.

“You can do that?” He asked, brows furrowed.

“Of course I can,” Dream bluffed confidently. “I brought you back to life, easy as breathing. And just as easy, I can revert it. Didn’t you know ?”

Wilbur stared at him, red eyes almost glowing as he tried to somehow divine the truth of the statement. Still, he wouldn’t admit to not knowing something when he was so obsessed with necromancy. He gave a small sigh, like Dream was a particularly difficult child, and retreated a few steps, hands raised in the air mockingly.

“I know, I know,” He said - and Dream knew it to be a lie, since that information was in the revival book, that Wilbur certainly hadn’t read. It was in his possession. “Fine, ruin my fun.”

“Your fun? ” Dream echoed, disgusted. “Death isn’t supposed to be fun.”

“Well, not when it’s permanent, no,” Wilbur agreed, with way too much nonchalance given the brutal way he’d been murdered. It had to have been so very painful. And yet, he was treating all of this like a walk in the park. Lightning struck nearby, illuminating the window eerily, and making Wilbur’s eyes glow, as he grinned, echoed by the thunder, “But now, I don’t have to worry about that, do I?”

“Wh- What the hell are you on about?” Dream asked, warily.

“Well, I have you , now, don’t I?” Wilbur said. His grin would have been charming, if not the slight widening of his eyes. “My personal necromancer.”

“What the hell,” Dream said, once more, and only refrained from taking a step back by sheer force of will. He wouldn’t give Wilbur the pleasure of seeing him afraid. Flatly, he asked, “Did I fuck up the revival process? You seem to have lost it. I would never do anything for you.”

Wilbur, though, didn’t seem to be bothered by that affirmation. He only leaned back against his desk, looking disconcertingly smug.

“Oh, but you will,” he said, almost cheerfully. “After all, what choice do you have? It’s either that, or prison isn’t it?”

Dream scoffed at him.

“For my use of necromancy?” He asked. “Please, we both know that if I go to jail for that you also- ”

“Not that,” Wilbur said, with a wave of his hand, looking indulgent. “Don’t play dumb, Dream. I mean for my murder, obviously.”

The words felt like Wilbur had suddenly teleported them both outside, to stand in the freezing rainstorm. Dream, frozen to the core, stared at the man.

How could he know about that?

Ghostbur- No, that would make no sense. There was no connection between Wilbur and the specter. Ghostbur had had few memories, and very little substance. Besides, Wilbur would have mentioned something about it if he knew about the ghost. There was just too much there that he could use against Dream, even if just to needle him.

Forcing himself to breathe, Dream reminded himself of the type of man Wilbur was. The manipulative, absolutely dickish , gaslighting type. He probably wanted to threaten Dream by saying he’d accuse him.

He didn’t know.

“I didn’t kill you,” Dream said, flatly. “And you know it.”

“Well, of course I do,” Wilbur said, and waved a hand dismissively. His eyes were sharp with amused intelligence, “But no one else does. The evidence is pretty damning, isn’t it?”

Dream froze again. Several things suddenly clicked into place. Things that had made no sense, until now.

“It was you,” he said, reeling with the realization. “You’re the one that framed me.”

“Well done , Dream,” Wilbur said, patronizingly. Infuriatingly, he even gave two, slow claps. “Yes, that was me. I mean, I had to give you some incentive to revive me, didn’t I?”

“That- You’re completely insane ,” Dream said.

“Misunderstood genius is always given a few derogatory names,” Wilbur dismissed that. His entire face lit up, “You have to admit, though, it was genius, wasn’t it? We even had a huge, loud row in my office, that everyone could hear-”

He’d deactivated the damn wards on purpose , Dream realized with silent, furious shock. That bastard had known exactly what he was doing.

“-after which, well. It was very easy to steal your mask, given you so helpfully left it on the banquet table, drop some of my blood on it, and toss it in the trash,” Wilbur said. “No one even noticed. I mean, I thought Quackity did, but no. Or if he did, he certainly didn’t mention anything.”

Well of course Quackity wouldn’t. If there was someone in this place that was as rotten as Wilbur was, really, it was him. And if someone would take advantage of the framing job Wilbur had set up so conveniently, it was also him.

“Did he kill you?” Dream asked flatly. “Quackity?”

“Q? Hah!” Wilbur let out a bright, startled giggle that bordered on hysterical. “Oh I wish! It certainly would have been fun!”

Dream bit off a frustrated answer to that. Fun was very much not the word he’d use for the whole damn situation. He glanced at the clock. And with all of that, time was ticking.

Niki’s warning echoed in his head.

He needed to get to the bottom of this, fast.

“Alright,” he said, tersely, “So if not Quackity, then who?”

“You still haven’t guessed?” Wilbur asked, and he seemed wildly entertained. “Come on, Dream, isn’t it obvious?”

“Wilbur, anyone you invited to this damn party had motive to murder you,” Dream pointed out sharply. “You somehow made the list exclusively out of people that want you dead!”

“So mean,” Wilbur said, but he was still smiling. He didn’t refute it.

“But that was the goal, wasn’t it,” Dream went on, flatly. “You wanted someone to kill you, so you could frame me. Better yet, so they could help you frame me, without knowing.”

It made the same twisted kind of sense that anything Wilbur planned did. Honestly, the fact it had worked at all was almost miraculous. Then again, Wilbur always seemed to have things working out in his favor.

The one issue was that… Out of everyone, no one had really seemed desperate to push the crime on Dream.

Oh, people, plenty of them, had found him a very likely culprit, that much was true. Tommy had been waiting for him to slip up all evening!  But none of them had jumped on the evidence in the same, desperate way that a guilty conscience trying to get out of the crime they committed would.

Dream genuinely had no idea who had killed Wilbur. At this point, the most likely person to have done it, the person that truly had nothing to lose and everything to gain by murdering Wilbur would have been…

“Yourself,” Dream said, slowly. Then, frowning, “Wait, what?”

“Bravo,” Wilbur clapped once more. He was smiling widely. “That’s right!”

“You killed yourself,” Dream repeated.

“Yep,” Wilbur said.

“You- You stabbed yourself, twenty-three times , with some blade?”

“Well, obviously it was a spell,” Wilbur said, waving a hand grandly around the room. “I needed to make an impression, you see? Make it look personal . Intimate.”

Dream grimaced, and looked around. Now, the arches of splattered blood all over the walls made sense. The way the corpse had been laid out. The way it had been found exactly at midnight , Tina’s scream echoing with the rings of the clock- How theatrical. How exactly like something Wilbur would do.

That deranged bastard.

“Honestly, I almost hoped someone else would do it,” Wilbur said, and he was pouting . “But I waited, and waited, and no one came to murder me. All evening! Can you believe this?”

Dream glared at him. He certainly wanted to murder him right now.

“So, in the end, I had to do it myself,” Wilbur sighed. “I thought, you know, maybe Fundy would at least. As always, though, my dear son proved useless.”

Dream pressed his lips tight. If he didn’t kill Wilbur this evening, and Niki didn’t come through, he promised himself he’d lock Fundy and Wilbur together in a room. He’d give Fundy a gun. A knife. Something.

He wasn’t really close to the fox, but damn if he didn’t deserve to murder the fuck-up that was his father.

Glancing towards the clock once more, Dream decided to cut on the monologuing he could just feel Wilbur building up to.

“Why shouldn’t I just kill you again, permanently?” Dream asked him flatly.

“Oh, Dream, because you know you won’t get away with my murder if you do,” Wilbur said, sweetly.

“Murder you committed,” Dream pointed out.

“Semantics,” Wilbur waved a hand. “If you kill me now, you will have killed me at least once, and that’s more than enough for the justice system.”

Not if Niki burned the house down, but Dream would still get convicted due to Wilbur’s machinations. He glared at the man, who simply smiled smugly at him. Wilbur knew he had him.

Or rather, he thought he did.

“So what do you want?” Dream sighed, and made sure to look to the side in frustration. Wilbur’s smile became victorious, and Dream glared at him. “Stop looking so fucking smug.”

“You know exactly what I want from you Dream,” Wilbur said, and he took a step forward. Dream was loathe to let him get close, but he tensed up and didn’t react, even when Wilbur ended up far too close for comfort, a feverish glint in his red eyes. “ Immortality .”

Right. The very reason Wilbur had become obsessed with death, revival, necromancy. With Dream’s abilities.

That insane wish for immortality.

Dream had lost count of the number of times he’d told Wilbur it wasn’t possible to achieve. That it was far too dangerous. Illegal, too, but at this point they were well past that. There was no point in reminding the man of every argument they’d had over that very topic.

“Me reviving you every time you die isn’t immortality, Wilbur,” he still said, because it was true and because Wilbur certainly didn’t expect him to give in without a fight.

“No, but it’s close,” Wilbur said, and he leaned back, putting a hand to his own chest, the other waving grandly, “And between your talent and my resources, nothing can stop us from figuring it out! The real solution! The way to make me immortal!” He grinned at Dream, eyes wide. “True power. Godhood, at my fingertips.”

Making a mental note to make fun of George for having a type later, Dream clung to his composure. He would not punch Wilbur in the face. He would not kill him.

“Sure,” he said, not hiding his scorn, “And what’s in it for me?”

Wilbur blinked, obviously having not expected such a lackluster answer.

“Immortality?” He repeated, though it sounded like a question.

“In the short term, Wilbur,” Dream said, rolling his eyes. Ha. If he wanted immortality, he’d do it himself; he could figure it out easily. He had no need for Wilbur for that. “If you want me to cooperate, I want you to give me some sort of insurance that you won’t stab me in the back after I help you.”

“Alright,” Wilbur said, smiling slyly. Back on familiar terrain. “You want me to frame someone else.”

… This man was so very, very insane. Dream gave him a droll look.

“No,” he said, “I want you to write a damn suicide letter.”

“A suicide letter?” Wilbur echoed, blinking.

“Yes,” Dream said. “I want you to write a statement admitting to the truth. That you killed yourself, and tried to frame me.”

“That’s not very beneficial for me, though,” Wilbur said, frowning.

“Oh, please,” Dream scoffed. “You can just bribe the damn forensic team and the rest of the station into overlooking it all. As long as they overlook my involvement in it as well, I don’t care.”

“Ah,” Wilbur said, looking enlightened. He grinned, “Yes, reviving me is still a crime.”

“No shit,” Dream said, glaring. “So, you write the letter with the truth, and while you’re in custody explaining everything to your friends down there you can convince them not to charge me with anything.”

“Hm, that would be convenient for you,” Wilbur said, and looked at him, smile sharp, “What’s preventing you from stabbing me in the back the moment you have proof you didn’t murder me?”

Well, Dream thought, that had been the plan. But he wasn’t about to tell Wilbur that. He had other means to get what he wanted.

“We can make it a contract,” he said, easily. “A magical, binding one. I’m sure you have the supplies to make those.”

“I do,” Wilbur admitted, as if such contracts didn’t count as binding curses, and thus were as illegal as everything else in this damn office. He smiled, and went around his desk. He took out a paper, and a quill. Said quill was almost glowing. “So-”

“I’ll write the contract,” Dream said, and snatched the quill from Wilbur. “You, write that suicide letter. Better make it convincing .”

He didn’t trust the man to not fuck him over. Wilbur relinquished the quill and paper easily enough, though, grabbing another piece for himself, along with a gaudy fountain pen. He started scribbling, and Dream focused on the contract.

It had to be simple. Simple, no loopholes, nothing that could be misconstrued.

After a few minutes, he was done, and so was Wilbur.

Dream extended his hand, and Wilbur collected the contract.

“Hm, alright, let’s see,” he said, squinting at the words, “You have atrocious handwriting. Anyway, you swear not to harm me intentionally, as long as you have the letter in your possession, and you help me on a task that will be agreed upon tomorrow…. Tomorrow?”

“We can make a new contract for the details then,” Dream said flatly. “Right now, we have more pressing things to do.”

“I suppose,” Wilbur said, pursing his lips.

After another moment of thought, he nodded, and signed the contract. He then pocketed it. With a flourish, he handed Dream the letter right after. Dream accepted it gingerly, reading it over. It was, all in all, very standard, if written with a flair for dramatics that made it obvious who was the author, even if Wilbur’s signature wasn’t also at the bottom of it. It admitted the suicide, the way he’d planted evidence to frame Dream, all in an attempt to get him to revive him.

Miraculously, it did not mention when it’d been written, nor that Dream had already revived him. In fact, it could very easily pass as having been written before Wilbur’s death.

Exactly what Dream wanted.

He smiled at Wilbur shortly.

“Good enough,” he said. He glanced at the clock. Almost time. “Thank you Wilbur. Pleasure doing business with you.”

Wilbur frowned.

“Wait, Dream,” he started.

Dream, already at the door, holding it open, tensed. He had barely turned however before the letter was abruptly tugged out of his hands.

“I’ll be taking that.” Punz said smoothly, stepping out from where they were lurking in the halls. They smiled at Dream. “I think it's better in my possession than yours.”

“Punz.” Dream laughed, the sudden tension melting instantly. Of course they had followed him. He could always trust they’d know what he needed. 

“Ah, I see we have an interloper in our midst.” Wilbur stood up, but Dream was already backing out with Punz.

He slammed the door closed, locking it with Sam’s masterkey right after. A second later, he could hear Wilbur slam into the wood. 

“Dream!” He heard the man call, muffled. “Dream, open the door! What are you doing!?”

“Don’t worry,” Dream called back, smirking at Punz. “I signed a contract, remember? I will not harm you.”

“You- you better not!” Wilbur said frantically, and then reminded him with a bit more composure, “Sending me to jail will count as harming me, Dream.”

“Alright, I won’t do that.” Dream agreed with as even a voice as he could manage, though judging by Punz’s snicker, he was failing a little. 

“Then let me out.”

“You can wait for a little bit,” Dream told him. He checked the time, and smiled grimly, “Say, oh, not even ten minutes.”

“Dream!”

“Goodbye, Wilbur!” 

Without a backward glance for the door on which Wilbur was pounding, he grabbed Punz’s wrist and bolted, jumping over a potted plant so green it had to be fake. No way Wilbur had gotten the thing enough water. 

“What’s in ten minutes?” Punz asked as they dodged the hallway furniture.

“Niki is burning down the house.”

“... Ah. Is this a bad time to mention I stole some stuff from Wilbur’s bedroom?”

Dream laughed again, breathless and free.

“Sam, you’re gonna wanna see this.”

Sam could tell who it was by the notable lack of footfalls. Only two men he knew had the ability to walk silently, and one of them was currently avoiding him at all costs. Sam hadn’t given up on finding him, yet, but had gotten waylaid by yet another altercation between Tommy and Fundy.

Sam sighed. “If it's another head wound-”

“What? No.”  Punz sounded genuinely baffled, but when Sam shuffled out of the way, they snorted.

Tommy looked like he had fought a bear and lost, Sam was aware, but there wasn’t much he could do when he had very little knowledge in the way of healing magic. Tommy would simply have to sulk, tied to the chair, until forensics arrived.

At the other end of the table, also tied to a chair, was Fundy, equally injured but significantly more smug. Sapnap and George seemed to be keeping an eye on him from their places beside him. Except George was fiddling with his ring and Sapnap was chatting with Tina.

“Good to know you have things handled here, Sam,” Punz said. They waved a piece of parchment. “But I have some more evidence that might clear things up for everyone here.”

Tommy perked up.

“Is it gonna finally get all these wrong’uns out of my fucking house?” He asked eagerly.

“My house!” Fundy hollered, but was ignored.

“You shouldn’t have been investigating things without me, Punz, you know Dream is-” Sam frowned, but accepted the paper. He squinted at the writing, then froze. “Where did you get this?”

“Wilbur’s bedroom.”

“I already checked there, this couldn’t possibly have been-”

Punz held up a long string of pearls, at the end of them a small key.

“There was a safe beneath the floorboards,” they said smugly, “C’mon Sam, it's practically amateur hour.”

“You stole from Wilbur’s floor vault thing?!” Tommy shouted, and Sam winced. “Sam, arrest him, he stole from Wilbur!”

“Nothing left the house and it was all in search of evidence to a crime. Wilbur’s crime, in fact.” 

“Oh? What did he do this time?” Techno asked, wandering over. He had two plates of food in his hand, and Sam desperately tried to ignore the banquet tablecloth thrown over his shoulder. “Fraud? Arson?” 

“Framing Dream,” Sam’s throat clicked as he swallowed. The excessive cursive seemed to taunt him as he read it, over and over. “For murder.”

Everyone paused.

“What.” Techno said flatly.

“That’s a lie! Wilbur wouldn’t do that.” Tommy protested.

Fundy laughed, although there was a tinge of hysteria to it. 

“Are you fucking serious?” He said. “Of course he would.”

“He really would.” Hannah put her head in her hands. “What an asshole.”

“You can’t be sure it was Wilbur who wrote it.” Quackity said, but as soon as Sam turned the letter, Quackity grimaced at the font. “Ok, you can. He’s so fucking pretentious, god.”

“Wait,” George piped up, “So if it wasn’t Dream who murdered Wilbur, who did?”

“Wilbur committed suicide.”

“Ha, called it,” George said. Sapnap pushed him out of his chair.

“So we can let Dream out now, right?” Tina looked at Sam hopefully. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s probably stressed out from being locked in for so long. He didn’t say anything to me when I asked how he was doing.”

“You went to talk to the guy?” Tommy asked, scandalized.

Hannah glared icily at him, wings fluttering open.

“Tina can do anything she wants,” she bit out.

Even possibly conspire with a murderer, everyone heard, unsaid.

“It doesn’t matter, regardless.” Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dream escaped at least an hour-”

A shout was heard from outside the ballroom. The doors heaved as they were pushed open, and Dream darted through, a cloud of smoke following him in. 

“Sam!” Dream grabbed his arm, tugging on it. Sam grabbed Dream’s arm in turn, to hold him there, but Dream only moved closer. “Sam, we have to get out of here!”

 His grip tightened.

“What?” He said, looking at the smoke drifting in, then back at his- his innocent friend. “Dream what’s happening?” 

“Oh, that looks like fire.” Techno said helpfully.

Sam pricked his ears, sniffing the air. He was met with burning wood, and a loud crackle that was on the edge of becoming a roar. All the blood drained from his face.

“The house is burning,” he realized, quietly.

Not quietly enough, as everyone around him was pressed close to hear about the suicide letter, and thus heard him clearly.

“Fuck yeah!” Sapnap cheered, his hair lighting up in a magical blaze of burning solidarity.

“Fuck no,” Quackity yelled back, wings flaring in obvious fear. “We have to get out!”

“Everyone evacuate, pair yourself up and head to the exit.” Sam ordered. He quickly did a headcount as they went, scanning the room. Fuck, they were missing someone. Eyes wide, he counted the pairs and- “Techno, where’s Niki?” 

“In the kitchen,” Techno said quickly, “I’ll go-”

Just as he started moving, Niki burst through the kitchen doors, a wild look in her eyes.

“This place is on fire. Everyone get out!” She shouted.

“Does it look like we don’t know that?” Fundy said with exasperation. He tried to gesture to the smoke with his hands, but they remained firmly tied to the chair. “Uh. Can someone untie me please? So I don’t die?”

It was a surprisingly efficient exit, once Tommy and Fundy were released. For all of their exhaustion, they still moved quickly, soon bursting out of the front doors. Hannah, who had been holding onto Tina as they ran out, slowly lowered the arm that she’d raised preemptively to stave off the storm.

“Oh,” she said, looking up. “It’s not raining anymore.”

That was true, Sam noted, even as he guided the last of the stragglers out. The storm had finally calmed down, though the wind was still strong. All the guests seemed relieved though, and soon found themselves piling onto the front lawn. It was no less extravagant than the house itself, but the storm had done a number on it, leaving quite a few patches of flowers bent by the wind and the rain, the grass drowned in puddles.

They all turned to look at the house, the flames already licking at the walls and windows, casting an orange glow over them all.

“All the evidence that could have proved me innocent… destroyed.” Dream said hollowly, not looking at anyone. Sam’s heart ached, but he didn’t get to say anything before Tina came forward to hug him tight.

“Don’t worry, Dream, we already have all the evidence you need.” She promised. “Punz found a suicide note from Wilbur, framing you for everything. You’re not going to be punished for this.” She leaned back to give him a surprisingly fierce look. “You did nothing wrong.”

Dream stilled. Then, he hugged her back, just as tight. 

“Oh thank everything.” Dream exhaled.

There was an odd note to his voice, but Sam knew it was because he had been searching for so long, probably anxious and stressed, while his friends thought him a murderer.

Sam hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt.

The ache spread further as Dream rested his cheek on top of Tina’s head, looking at peace for the first time all evening. Sam should have been the one to hug him, should have been the one to tell him about the suicide note and reassured him that he was blameless for everything. Then maybe Dream would believe him when Sam would reveal how sorry he was. Maybe he would even hug Sam back, and Sam could breathe in and know that their friendship, no matter how distant it had become, wasn’t completely destroyed.

He watched forlornly as Dream and Tina separated, Punz coming up to pat Dream on the back. Punz, who’d known that Dream was innocent, and had done everything to prove it. They deserved to be at Dream’s side, unlike Sam.

While he watched, the others slowly spread out over the lawn.

Some began to pull patio furniture over to sit in, while others were content to lie in the grass, not seeming to care how wet it was. Techno made use of the banquet tablecloth he’d been holding to spread out like a picnic blanket. Soon he, Niki, and Ranboo were chatting around stolen plates of appetizers. Quackity had started smoking, again, and Fundy was lying down on the grass, staring up at the stars. 

“What happened to all that fuss about your house , bitch?” Tommy muttered down at him from where he stood. 

“I think I like it better like this.” Fundy said wetly, and Sam realized he was crying. “As long as mom gets the house back, one way or the other.”

Which was mildly concerning, and Sam really should be wondering how exactly the fire was caused, if it was on purpose, but as he turned to look up at the flames- 

This wasn’t his division. None of this was. This was supposed to be his night off, and therefore not his problem.

It was fine.

“Sam,” a voice said, and his eyes widened as he felt Dream’s hand against his back. He couldn’t help but shiver as the man smiled faintly at him. 

“Dream,” he breathed, before sputtering a little. “I- I have the evidence in my inventory to prove your innocence, and your mask. It still has blood on it, but I’ll make sure it's properly cleaned and returned to you in perfect condition. You won’t have to worry about anything happening to it.”

The man cocked his head, still smiling.

“That’s nice, thank you-”

 “-And I’m sorry.” Sam blurted. It felt mortifying to interrupt him, but he pressed on. “You needed me to believe you, to do right by you, but I didn’t. You had to go searching for evidence that I wouldn’t find- Punz had to find the suicide note.” Sam hung his head. “And I thought you were guilty. Even when, in the eyes of a just world, you were innocent until proven otherwise.”

His insides curdled with shame. Now Dream knew how awful he was. Punz would probably tell him in detail how Sam had almost given in to Quackity, too. He didn’t deserve the kind hand on his back.

And when it moved away, as he had known it would, his eyes squeezed shut. But then that same hand grabbed his own, and Sam’s eyes snapped open as Dream gently set his masterkey into his open palm.

“Here. You’ll need this back.” Dream told him. His soft expression felt like absolution. “Don’t be an idiot next time, Sammy.”

“Next time?” Sam asked, bewildered and finding his heart skipping a beat at the familiar, almost forgotten nickname.

The corner of Dream’s eyes crinkled with humor, and then he was reaching out to tenderly cup Sam’s cheek like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

All of the air left Sam’s lungs. 

“Next time.” Dream said lowly.

A strong figure pressed itself against Sam’s back. 

“Sam, the forensic guys are here.” Punz said quietly into his ear. “Why don’t we go over there and tell them what's up, and then me and Dream can take you home.”

His cheeks were now a deep blue. “You don’t have to-”

“-We want to.” Punz interrupted. They put a hand around his hip, and he could feel it like a brand. “And I’ll make sure we tell them you’re not coming in tomorrow, for your real day off.”

Sam hissed in embarrassment, but he allowed himself to be led towards the street where forensics was beginning to gather.

Of course, caught up in all this, he failed to notice Dream’s discreet glance back at Niki, and the way he nodded at her. Or the way she toasted him back with a bottle of stolen champagne, equally as discreet.

He never did end up finding out how the house fire started.

But who cared. It was his night off.