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sam's routine used to go as follows:
one, wake up. short process, just get out of bed, clean yourself up, put on clothes and armour, eat something small.
two, pick up the trident.
three, haunt the prison. maybe let a visitor in, although that's rare. generally do maintenance, remember to check on the food supply, ignore, ignore, ignore.
four, put the trident down.
five, go to bed. morning process in reverse, slower and absent.
and that was sam's routine for months. every day, go through the same motions, to the point he feels his head might be ticking, too, now, because he's just another part of the machine. there were...
blood under his nails, red against green, the smell of burning flesh keeping his stomach coiled tight enough to not accept food. a mistake. a stray variable isolated twice. zero equals zero.
...casualties. but it's fine!
sam smiles at quackity in the new step: four. let q in. five. haunt far away so as to not hear anything. six. let q out. seven. resume as assigned.
(assigned?)
written. planned. previous.
(better.)
six. sleep dreamlessly. funny, right? dreamlessly? ironic. nine. sleep with screams in your ears. whispers. nothing like the egg but somewhere deeper.
sam's hands have started shaking, recently, and it's made his toothpaste spill and his coffee stain his hands in black and coarse skin. q's hands have been shaking, too, and sam doesn't know what that means for dream.
the bandage rubs at the skin between his fingers. dream laughs, coughing up blood, and sam's back in the room, ponk's hand under his boot.
"this sucks, doesn't it?" dream rasps out, kicking weakly at sam, on reflex maybe, because sam isn't doing anything other than tying knots on the fabric covering his chest.
"well..." sam hisses in a threat, making dream tense on instinct, longer reflex. "...it could all be over if you just-"
dream kicks at him again. "that one was intentional. you're an asshole."
he watches dream's swirling green eyes, then grabs what remains of his sheared hair and pulls him up. "backtalk?"
"oh, shut it." dream looks away, as well as he can in his state. "i trusted you, you know."
"you shouldn't have."
quackity stands in front of the desk, recounting his day, and sam doesn't listen because his ears are buzzing too loud. q doesn't care.
"was it worth it?" dream asks, covered in scars, holding a steak that sam's practically drooling at, "do you regret it, now?"
"never," he says, but he doesn't mean it. it had to have been worth it. it hurts but it weakens the source, does it not?
dream laughs, now and then, after, before all this. "magic is volatile," he'd said, definitely before. "it can take you and melt you, if you're not careful."
"what do you mean?" they're fifteen or so, today.
"it rots you." dream takes one of his books and points at a text sam doesn't read. he really should've, because today, at twenty-something (it isn't important) dream laughs again, eyes dull and empty, swirling still like swampwater, "do you know my name?"
sam only drools over the steak. he doesn't pay dream mind. quackity stands at the portal, cursing. "im gonna fucking kill him! actually! you know, he doesn't listen, and-"
"-and you want the book. i know, quackity." he's tired. the subject of that sentence doesn't matter because it could be fucking anyone and the statement would be true.
"the book doesn't-" q huffs. his skin is paler than before. "it isn't real. there is no book."
to sam's disappointment he turns around and walks back to the desk, slamming his bloody hands down, leaving prints.
"how so?"
"he is the book, sam. to get the book, we have to- to- we have to get dream."
sam laughs in dream's face. "you have no power, anymore."
"i can kill you, right here, right now." dream's hands aren't shaking but he isn't really breathing, either. dream is hollow. porcelain beyond the broken mask he insists on wearing. "i won't. but i could!"
"you could what, dream?" sam watches q say on the camera, eating his lunch. step six, maybe five. "what were you saying?"
dream, screaming, kicks at quackity, just like he does at sam. he sobs when quackity breaks another finger with a sickening crack.
"what can you do?" quackity pours half a bottle of regen on the floor. he takes dream's head and slams it into the puddle, again, again, until sam's finished his lunch and probably thrown it up again, too.
"yeah, fucking cry," he says, and sam almost does. "nobody gives a shit. you know, they're all so happy im here."
dream looks at sam and sets down a cake.
"yeah, that's right. they all want me here. every single one." q keeps a shoe on dream's throat as he chokes on the glass he swallowed. "sam is happy i'm here."
sam scrubs at the obsidian hard enough to make himself bleed. the whispers won't stop. maybe this is what dream spoke about. "you don't mess with respawn," he'd muttered, "every time you do you die a little."
"that's harsh," sam had said.
"it's how it is," dream had said back, and shrugged. "it kills you, because it takes from your own energy stores."
"it most certainly doesn't," dream says, "im fine."
sam wipes at his eyes with a hand that shakes enough to disrupt his blood flow, probably. "how are you alive?"
"oh, who said i was?"
"you- you won't? please, please-" sam mutes the speakers. he can't listen to this.
two has always been to pick up the trident, but sam doesn't do that today. he lays in bed and hopes the food he's choking down doesn't come back up again. he isn't the warden. he's not the machine. he didn't do this to himself.
dream turns to him and says, "i hate you."
sam turns away. "i know."
