Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Quackity isn’t quite sure if he’s still alive. There’s a splitting pain above his prosthetic eye, and he can feel warm, sticky blood down his face. Being jostled around on a horse’s back is giving him a faint sensation of floating, and all he can see is red. The smoke from the burning ruins of Las Nevadas lies thick in his lungs. This might be death. Or at least dying.

But Quackity isn’t that lucky, and through this haze he reasons he’s just under the influence of the drugs and head trauma Dream used to subdue him.

Fuck.

Dream does not speak as he drags his captive back to whatever hole he crawled out of, and Quackity lets out a low, uncomfortable whine at the pressing silence. He can’t even string out the worst curses he knows at this asshole, his tongue sits thick and slack in his mouth and there's a lump in his throat.

Maybe Foolish will find him before they’re gone forever. The thought offers a little comfort. What advantage does the most renowned killer on the server have over a man who can’t die? Maybe the rain soaking into Quackity’s bloody shirt is softening the ground. Maybe the horse’s hooves will leave impressions that Foolish can follow right to the deep dark dungeon ready to swallow Quackity whole.

Or maybe he’s been incapacitated in Purpled’s coup.

Purpled and Slimes ’ coup.

The thought aches far more than the drugs and head wounds. Why would Slime, Quackity’s muse and friend , side with a man that cast him into a pit of cruel, molten metal to die?

Whatever’s going on, Quackity is fucking terrified to become a victim of it.

His intoxicated thoughts spiral from that into garbled terror and restless nightmares through drunken sleep. Dream continues leading them through the miserable rain to a fate Quackity can’t imagine.

Until a rough hand drags his bound body to the ground, and his wandering eye falls upon a dark shape he’d visited every single day for months. Even in his state, Quackity recognises Pandora’s Vault and feels his stomach twist in hatred and fear.

Dream finally speaks. “You recognise this place, Quackity? Do you remember what you did here, huh? You came here constantly to torture me. Does that ring any fucking bells?”

“Foo… foosh…” Quackity mumbles past his tongue, a desperate attempt at a cry for help as the reality of his situation dawns on him.

A harsh barking laugh from Dream, something he’d never wanted to hear again. “Foolish isn’t coming to help you, Quackity. Forget that pacifist . He doesn’t work for you anymore.”

His pathetic wriggles against heavy cuffs do nothing to slow Dream’s pace towards the moat around the island.

Another potion is stabbed into Quackity’s shoulder and he’s thrown into the saltwater. It clamours to sting his wounds and he stifles a shriek, but there is no shortage of air in his lungs.

A second later and Dream plunges into the moat beside him, grabs his shirt collar and pulls him into a small tunnel worming its way through the thick outer walls of the prison. Quackity is tugged out into air that smells of neglect and decay, and through a trapdoor into the crumbling ruins of the prison foyer.

“Welcome to your new home!” Dream says, revelling in a gleeful tone.

“Ffffuck y… you,” Quackity spits back.

He gets a hand in his hair dragging him all the way through the halls for that, but he’s too tired to fight it. Not even recognising the sounds of lava dropping away to reveal the high security cell gives Quackity enough adrenaline to struggle.

The bridge rises up to grant them access, and captor and captive reach the heart of Pandora’s Vault.

Only now does Dream unbind Quackity, leaving him to nurse his wounds on the scorching obsidian floor.

“I’ve done some redecorating in light of your big arrival,” Dream says smugly, gesturing around the cell.

He’s right, Quackity realises with another stab to the gut. Any damage from the escape has been repaired, holes and desperate cobblestone walls replaced with smooth and shining obsidian. But there’s more. The lectern, sink, chest, lamp and clock are all gone, ripped from the wall. The toilet is just a hole connected to a pipe. Two bright spotlights near the entrance shine hot white light concentrated in one spot on the back wall. The room would be bare, if not for the methods of restraint illuminated in the lights.

In one corner a short chain extends from the wall, ending in a thick, uncomfortable looking cuff. In the middle, a series of cuffs are attached directly to the wall, positioned to put the captive in an almost crucified state. Yet another short chain connected to a straitjacket. And from the ceiling, two wickedly sharp hooks, like the stuff butchered animals get strung up on

Quackity vomits.

A “tch” sound. “Already?” Dream sighs. “Fine, have it your way.”

He grabs Quackity by the ankles and hoists him up. Quackity shrieks, convinced he’s about to be stabbed through both feet, but lashing out does nothing against Dream’s netherite.

Dream groans. “Relax.” He pulls out two metal bits from a pocket, and secures them around the hooks, and Quackity’s ankles.

And with that, he’s left suspended upside down, trapped in the middle of Pandora’s Vault by Dream.

Chapter Text

Quackity is awoken rudely when the hooks holding him suspended in place let him go and he hits his head against the hard obsidian, falling on top of himself. Through a sore throat he lets out a self-indulgent groan to let whoever has woken him up that he’s not pleased.

“Five fucking star accommodation,” he mutters with poisonous sarcasm. He hears a “hmph” in response and whoever is here drags his ankle across the floor and locks it into something.

A tough glove smacks against Quackity’s face. “Wakey wakey,” they command.

Finally, Quackity opens his eyes, and immediately remembers where he is and who he’s with. Blearily, he stumbles to his feet and closes himself into a defensive position, hands spread on either side of his face to protect himself and lash out if needed. He doesn’t fucking care, he’ll fight Dream unarmed and chained up in Pandora’s Vault because that’s his only option.

From under the blank smiling mask, Dream snorts. He’s wearing a ridiculous amount of glowing netherite, the Axe of Peace swinging lazily by his side. No doubt he has more methods of torture hidden beneath that fucking green cloak of his. Quackity doesn’t stand a chance.

“Good morning,” says Dream. “How are you feeling, Quackity?”

He snarls. “Like I wanna kick your ass.” A cough. He’s still sore and weak from the drugs.

Quackity can practically smell the smirk Dream wears. “Nice to see you again too. Drink this,” he holds out a glass bottle to Quackity.

“What is it?”

“Vodka,” Dream shrugs, then laughs again. “It’s water, idiot.”

A moment of hesitation, then Quackity snatches the bottle away. He takes a small, cautious sip, tasting the liquid, then gulps it all down.

“You’re welcome,” says Dream.

Quackity doesn’t respond. He’s calculating his next move.

Fuck it.

He hacks up a large phlegm glob, and spits. It arcs beautifully through the air, and lands square in the middle of Dream’s stupid smiling mask, right between his eyes. It’s translucent and almost a little chunky and yellow in some parts. The perfect insult.

“And there’s more where that came from,” Quackity says with something almost like triumph.

Dream grows very still, and very quiet. Slowly, he pulls the hem of his cloak up and wipes away the glob. Slowly, he reaches his hands up behind his head and unbuckles his mask. Slowly, he removes it, revealing the face of a normal young man who has hurt too many people and been hurt too much in return.

Quackity has seen this face before. Dream had nothing to hide behind in his months as a prisoner, which gave Quackity free reign to mutilate his face through hours of torture.

But now their roles are reversed.

Dream smiles a wide and real smile, revealing gaps in his slightly yellow teeth. Quackity remembers these gaps well. He remembers making them, pinning Dream to this very floor while he brutishly yanked out tooth after tooth with a pair of rusting pliers, demanding information. When Dream got an actual tooth infection, Quackity was his emergency dentist, and took great pleasure in making sure the operation hurt as much as possible.

“Don’t do that, Quackity,” Dream says simply. Then without warning, he swings his axe around and the blunt side collides with a sick thud against Quackity’s skull.

He crumples to the ground, not yet unconscious but fully incapacitated as Dream unchains him. He is dragged across the bridge out of the main cell, and into a part of the prison Quackity has only occasionally been in with Sam.

They move through a maze of dark halls, until they come to a room completely empty except for a chair with restraints, and a drain on the slanted tile floor.

This is a room designed to efficiently clean the blood spilled here. Quackity feels sick.

He’s recovered enough to fight Dream as he’s strapped into the chair, but after a long struggle, there are thick leather bonds around his arms, legs, chest and forehead keeping him firmly in place, unable to move an inch.

“You’re not as strong as you used to be, pendejo,” spits Quackity, who’s convinced he could kick Dream’s ass in a fair fight by now. “Slower too. Too busy hiding from all your fucking mistakes to exercise?”

Dream looks up from checking the strap on Quackity’s left ankle. Those angry grey eyes are still so fucking unsettling, no matter how many times Quackity’s seen them. A heavy pause.

Then he smiles again, a smile filled with the absence of teeth.

“Do you see this?” he says, jabbing a finger into the spot where a canine tooth should be, but isn’t. “Do you see what you’ve done to me, Quackity? I’m missing pieces of myself because you couldn’t get enough out of your fucked up power trip. I’m simply returning the favour.”

“I did what I had to,” Quackity retorts. “I needed that information on the revival book. I considered what I was doing very fucking carefully . You hurt a lot of fucking people, Dream. Everything I did to you was justified.

A dismissive shrug. “Maybe,” says Dream. “You know, we’re quite alike, Quackity.”

“I am nothing like you, bastard.”

“No, no, think about it! We both have things that we need, right? Everyone does. But not most people are willing to go to the lengths that I do to get what they need. Except you. You were willing to torture me for months , because I had information you needed. And we’re both careful planners and manipulators. There was one point where I had Tommy–

“Don’t you fucking talk about–”

“ Shut up . I had Tommy playing right into my palm because I knew when to hit with an axe, or cut off a friend, or compliment him. And you? You convinced so many people to devote themselves to you and your nation with just your words. And a little TNT.”

“So what’s your fucking point?” Quackity snaps. He doesn’t like it, that Dream hasn’t told a single lie about his actions. How easily he compares them to his own. “We do some things in similar ways. Doesn’t change the fact that I had a good reason , and you didn’t.”

“You had a good reason? You just wanted that revive book so you could bring Schlatt back and have him work for you, rub everything he did to you in his fucking face. You couldn’t let him rot, you just had to have another minion to feel more powerful. That’s not a need, thats a selfish fucking want . It’s no better than me needing power on this server, wanting it so I can control what is rightfully mine. Face it, Quackity. No matter how evil you think I am, you are just as bad .”

Quackity doesn’t know what to say to this. If he tries to defend himself, Dream will just throw more of the bad stuff that he’s done back in his face, and he’s desperately trying not to think about those things. So he shuts the fuck up.

“Now, are you done?” Dream asks. “Can we move on to business?”

“...”

“Quackity?”

“Fine. Why the fuck are we here?”

“Well…” Dream smiles, and Quackity sees those awful gaps again. “You talk about your justifications, why you do what you do. I’d like to give you mine. You see, Quackity, you spent fucking months of our lives beating the shit out of me every day, removing any parts of me you thought were expendable. There are scars on every inch of my skin because of you. What I want to do today is justice.”

Quackity’s stomach turns to ice.

“I’m going to torture you just like you tortured me, every single day for as long as I want. I am going to make you feel what I felt.”

“No you’re fucking not,” Quackity breaths, short, sharp and shallow.

“Yes I fucking am!” Dream laughs, pulling a pair of protective gloves out of a pocket.

“No! No, get the fuck away from me, asshole!” Quackity tries wriggling, pulling at his bongs, rocking the chair, anything to fucking escape.

Another cackling laugh, and Dream pulls a trolley from the side of the room up to the chair, and lays out his dental tools, a cruel reflection of what Quackity used on him.

“NO! STOP THIS! FUCK OFF!”

Dream puts his stupid smiling mask back on and picks up a dental probe, a thin rod with a wicked-looking hook at the end.

“I’LL BITE YOUR FUCKING FINGERS OFF, DREAM. DREAM!”

The malicious dentist holds the probe over his lighter, letting the searing flame sterilise the hook. Then he reaches over and with a swift pop , dislocates Quackity’s jaw.

Quackity lets out a screech of agony. When Dream shoves his awful probe into his mouth, he discovers he can’t close his teeth around the man’s fingers, can’t defend himself from having his fucking teeth torn out. His jaw hangs limp, useless and in a lot of fucking pain .

It only gets worse as Dream reaches the still hot probe into the upper left side of his mouth, and into a tooth’s gum pocket. Quackity recognises it as the golden one he’d had done after Technoblade knocked out the real one with his damned pickaxe.

“No!” he tries to cry through tears and the fingers tearing his limp mouth apart.

He’s acutely aware of the hook sliding its way around his tooth, deeper and deeper, until Dream finds the root. Viciously, he wriggles his probe back and forth, ripping Quackity’s gum apart and loosening the fake tooth. His nerve feels like fire, his blood tastes sour and hot.

After this excruciating agony, they both feel the tooth give way slightly, pulling itself away from Quackity and into the hand of his vicious tormentor. Dream rips the probe back out in a spray of red, and his patient shrieks again. The tears come fast and hot, as does the blood.

The probe goes back on the trolley, and an elevator goes under the sterilising flame. Without waiting for the thing to cool, Dream shoves it into Quackity’s mouth, between the golden tooth and the real one next to it, digging deep as he can into the gum. 

Another agonising scream, Quackity can feel the flesh of his gums on fire, being mauled and torn like a baby deer caught by a wolf pack.

Violently, Dream turns the elevator’s handle, sending the tooth thrashing back and forth, loosening it with a sick, perverse joy. Then the tool is taken slowly and painfully out, hitting the metal trolley with a clatter and a splatter of mouth meat.

And then Dream picks up the pliers. They are thick, definitely not made for dentistry, and through Quackity’s dizzy, pained eyes streaming with tears, look like the jaws of a predator. He moans, too exhausted and grievously hurt to let out another blood curdling scream. The wicked things go under the flame, and then straight into his mouth.

Letting the vile pliers scrape and tear, Dream positions it to dig into the root. His other hand comes into the gaping mouth and grips Quackity’s gum. Now he can taste the disgusting tang of latex on top of meat, metal and blood.

Dream could get this over with as fast as possible. He could push down on the gum and pull up on the tooth in one quick, calculated move with exactly the right strength behind it.

But that’s not what they’re here for.

So slowly, agonisingly, Dream wriggles the pliers, pulling up, dragging out Quackity’s suffering with his tooth. Quackity can feel his nerves and ligaments and bones and flesh scream out with the torment they are under. Everything is on fire, it all hurts so much it almost doesn’t register. He’s sure he’s going to pass out from the pain, but Dream would never let him escape so easily.

Back and forth the pliers go, deliberately and torturously. Finally, fucking finally , there’s a vile snapping sound as the ligament lets go of the tooth, snapping away from the golden thing.

A final, awful heave and Dream removes the tooth. Quackity, despite his state, screams the loudest scream he’s ever made. A disgusting, sucking, wet sound, and air oozes into the new, profusely bleeding cavity.

He lets out a weak, horrible groan and takes deep, shuddering breath, praying to whatever the fuck could be listening, begging to just pass out.

Dream holds the bloody golden tooth close to his mask, checking to make sure it’s fully intact.

“Hm,” he says after a moment. “Not sure if I’d get much from a piglin for this. Quackity?”

His patient doesn’t respond, just flicks an almost unseeing eye up to where his tooth is being held.

“Don’t get comfortable, Quackity,” Dream says. “You’ve got one more gold tooth I’d like you to give me.”

“Mmmmughhh,” Quackity responds, trying and failing to shake his head beneath his bonds.

Dream takes a moment to clean all the blood off his tools, then he sterilises his probe and starts again.

Another round of tearing through the other gum, finding the nerve, twisting and wriggling his barbarous sharp things to loosen his prize, then ripping out one tool to replace it with another, digging into the gum and sending the tooth every which way to get it out. And then the pliers, slowly, so atrociously slowly, pull the gold away. The ligament snaps, the air comes rushing in, the blood flows free.

And Dream drops the tooth-shaped nugget down onto the tray, and steps away, removing his gloves.

“There,” he says, letting out a sigh of contentment. “Maybe I can get a couple of ender pearls for that, if I’m lucky. Thanks, Big Q.”

Hearing the nickname Quackity holds dear used by his worst enemy sends an extra stab of pain directly into his chest. “Hhhhuck you,” he says, unable to close his mouth to form a sour insult.

“Oh, right, let me fix that for you.” Dream moves swiftly forward and without a moment’s warning, grips Quackity’s jaw and shifts it back into place.

Quackity shrieks once more, and his eyes almost roll back in his skull.

“Come on, stay with m-” Dream is interrupted by the sound of a wet footstep coming from the doorway.

“Dream from Pandora’s Vault, what are you doing?” a high, curious voice says.

The last thing Quackity sees before the pain takes him into a deep sleep is the dripping, melting, inhuman face of his closest and most trusted friend.

And Slime stares right back at him.

Chapter Text

The chain around his ankle doesn’t let Quackity go very far, but he still tries his best to pace around the cell he’s trapped in. Every two steps, the manacle cuts deep into his skin and blood drips down from just above his Achilles tendon. His sole is covered in brown blood from the past couple hours, there is a well trodden path of sticky, wet footprints following him back and forth.

Quackity doesn’t have shoes anymore. He was wearing the high top boots of his usual desert dress during Dream’s coup and subsequent kidnapping, but now they’re gone. Dream took them, he supposes. No need for shoes in the well kept box he can barely move a metre in. The obsidian is hot though, surrounded by layers and layers of molten red liquid. Quackity’s feet burn.

But bleeding ankles and missing shoes are the least of Quackity’s concerns. Even lamentations of his freshly missing golden teeth and the bone deep pains in his jaw are set aside, because Quackity saw Slime .

His memory is a little hazy from all the blood and screaming nerves and a brain sending him to sleep as a last ditch defence mechanism, but Quackity knows it was his friend. He runs over that moment in his mind over and over, the question from the doorway, the figure stood there. Did he seem hurt? Was he restrained in any way? Did he recognise Quackity?

Slime had changed a lot since Quackity first met him. At first he was more of an it , arms not quite in the right place, a few too many fingers and toes, a shifting face on something that was almost skin. It spoke strange, it didn’t act like any person Quackity had seen before.

But slowly that almost skin became real skin, smooth and only a little oily, the extra fingers retracted into forming muscles and the limbs rearranged. Its face changed again, but this time to a more solid, permanent structure with eyes and nose and mouth in the right place.

And it became he , and he began to learn and love and lie. He became human.

But that wasn’t what Quackity had seen standing in the doorway. That figure was dubiously humanoid, a mix of gelatinous not-muscle and not-skin, shifting and quivering like the back of a stressed prey animal. There was no sign of human colours, no pale peach skin or light brown hair or pink lips. Only the greens of lichens in sewers and toxins in venomous frogs.

But it was definitely Slime, Quackity remembered from when a similar looking half-melted body dragged itself into one of its many burrows around Las Nevadas and stayed sedentary, only speaking in a tongue that took weeks to crack.

That was this Slime, but more confidently inhuman. Quackity was sure of it, sure that he had seen the remnants of his best friend’s face.

So. Probably not too happy, and maybe hurting from whatever torment Dream and Purpled had put him through, but alive and here.

The here part didn’t exactly reassure Quackity. Was Slime another one of Dream’s prisoners? Thinking hard, Quackity hadn’t seen any restraints or aversives strapped to the oozing body of his heir and confidant, but Dream was a master of emotional and verbal abuse just as much as he was physical abuse. Maybe he was holding Slime here not with a cage or chains, but with threats or blackmail? A promise? Fucking hell, brainwashing?

God, what happened to his friend? Quackity tugged against his chain, feeling the sharp and clear agony and letting his thoughts spiral, imagining what Slime had been through.

Maybe Dream had strapped him into that awful chair in the torture chamber and peeled off any remaining skin and hair, stripping his victim of the identity Quackity had worked so hard to help him build. Maybe he’d thrown him into a pool of hungry lava, letting flesh melt back into goo and ooze before dragging it back out and letting the thing reform wrong. Maybe he’d sat Slime down and had an honest and open conversation with him, and they’d talked through all the ways that Quackity had hurt them both.

Quackity collapses to his knees and vomits. There’s nothing in his digestive system, he’s not eaten or drunk in maybe two days, so nasty green bile rises through his throat and hurls itself onto the floor between his ruined trousers. He heaves and heaves the sour liquid out of his body, and it mixes in with his ageing blood. It’s a long time before Quackity is dry-heaving, with nothing left inside him to come out except tears.

Fuck it. There’s no one here to watch, and Quackity couldn’t give less of a shit about his hydration levels right now. He lets out a sob, and the tears begin flowing free. They drip down his nose and into his mouth, and Quackity lets the bitter taste of saltwater sit on his tongue as the air moves past, angry crying breaking the heavy silence of Pandora’s Vault.

Eventually, the movement of the tears triggers something in Quackity’s brain, and he feels the chemicals released into his body. The opioids and oxytocin are a welcome relief and they help him go a little numb, but he knows he’s still stuck and his best friend is in danger.

What do you do when you feel like shit but your body is fighting to make things better?

Quackity exists in this struggling limbo for minutes or hours, lying on his side in the filth and staring into space, before the sounds of redstone stir him from a doze.

He watches the lava lazily fall away to reveal Dream stood, operating the controls. The bridge rises up, and Dream picks up a tray from the ground and walks over the chasm of lava and into the main cell.

Quackity sits up and shuffles away from the mess on the floor. Even now, he’s a gentleman and a negotiator, and he won’t let Dream tear him from the place of power and respect he’s built for himself. He’s not going to lie in his own filth feeling sorry for himself because he’s a prisoner.

Dream raises a gloved hand in greeting as he crosses the threshold into the cell. “Dinner is served,” he says, holding the tray out to his captive and placing it in front of his crossed legs.

On the tray sits two well-cooked dinners – a pair of seasoned, medium rare steaks lying next to a platter of roasted vegetables. Two empty glasses wait eagerly to be filled with red wine from a bottle that began ageing a hundred years ago. Two thick slices of a rich warm chocolate cake wait for their turn besides the steaks. The cutlery, silver forks, wicked steak knives and shining dessert spoons, all wrapped up in crisp white napkins. It’s exactly the kind of food that gets served in Las Nevadas.

“Five star accommodation, right?” snickers Dream, delighted that he’s been able to hold a piece of home up to his prisoner, like teasing a starving dog with a meaty bone.

“Sure, why the fuck not?” Quackity responds, venom dripping from his voice. He shuffles a little closer to his plate and picks up the steak knife provided for him. It’s cool in his palm, solid and deadly. Maybe he could slit Dream’s throat with it.

“Quackity…” Dream’s voice has a warning tone threaded through it, as if he can read his prisoner’s thoughts.

The steak knife clatters back to the tray, and Quackity spreads his hands wide in mock surrender. “You’re a sick, cocky bastard, you know that?” he says. The display of power is too obvious, too arrogant. Give the prisoner a potentially lethal weapon, a cornered tiger unsheathing its claws, because you know that even desperate and armed they’re still no match for you. Show them they don’t scare you. Give them the opportunity to fight back, because that’ll drive the message in sooner.

Quackity picks his knife back up, fork in his other hand, and he stabs them into his dead cow, ripping the meat apart with ease.

“You’ve got no idea how many people have said those exact words to me,” Dream sighs, unbuckling his mask to tuck into his own dinner. “It’s getting so boring. You need to come up with more creative insults, Quackity. What happened to your wit?”

“Is that what you’re here for, then? A battle of wits?” Quackity laughs past a roast potato. “At least break out the fucking wine, Dream, let’s have some fun with this.”

“I’m sure we know who’d win that battle,” Dream bobs his head in mock deference. An amused smile twists on his pale face. Imagine the likes of Quackity winning a battle against Dream! “But I’m always happy to drink with you.”

He pulls a bottle opener from a concealed pocket and cracks open the tall thing, pouring a generous amount of deep red liquid into each glass. He takes his own and holds it up, waiting for Quackity to reciprocate the toast.

He doesn’t.

Dream shrugs, muttering “Cheers,” and raising the glass to his lips.

Slowly, Quackity follows suit, bringing his glass beneath his nose and inhaling. It doesn’t smell like any wine he’s had before, but the scent is familiar. Metallic. He takes a cautious sip, and swallows just before he realises what he’s drinking.

The glass shatters across the floor, and blood masquerading as wine spreads across the shining obsidian. Quackity chokes, trying to spit out the stuff he’s already swallowed, and stares at Dream in abject horror as the smiling man downs his glass of thick, warm blood.

“What the fuck ,” Quackity hisses, kicking his plate away from him and into the shards of glass cutting at his bare feet. “What the actual fuck are you playing at, motherfucker?” He scrambles for his knife and holds it between him and the sick man dabbing his stained red lips with a napkin.

Dream takes in the fear and disgust written over Quackity’s face with vested interest. “You’re a strange man, Quackity. And a hypocrite.”

“Why the fuck did you trick me into drinking blood , huh? What fucking game are you trying to get me into now?” The cornered man lets the knife flail around, preventing Dream from getting any closer.

He laughs and laughs, standing well out of the way of Quackity’s stabbing motions. “Look at yourself!” he exclaims. “You’re panicking and yelling because of a little blood ? What’s the matter, Quackity? I thought you loved consuming the people that wronged you! Remember Schlatt, Quackity? Remember what you fucking did to him?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Quackity throws his knife, and with a sick thud, it lands in a gap in Dream’s impenetrable armour, burying itself cosily just above his heart.

“Oh, what?” Dream cackles, and cherry red begins to spill from his lips. “Lost your appetite? But Quackity, we’ve just arrived at the main course!”

“FUCK OFF! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

“No, look!”  Blood sprays everywhere as Dream throws his arms dramatically towards the dining table that has appeared between them. A cloche plate sits there, waiting eagerly to be opened and devoured.

“I’M NOT FUCKING HUNGRY!” Quackity yells, trying to get as far away from the table as he can, but he’s chained to the stoic thing.

“But Quackity!” Dream shrieks in agony and joy. A red patch seeps out from his chest, staining his skin and clothes and armour. The metal of the cloche melts away, leaving a beating and struggling lump of raw meat. “It’s your favourite! It’s MY FUCKING HEART , Quackity! EAT MY FUCKING HEART !”

Dream’s chest opens in a mess of sinew and flesh that desperately crawls towards Quackity, reaching for any orifice it can find, into his mouth, into his nose, into his ears.

He can taste the horrible raw yet juicy and metallic things forcing its way down his throat, squirming within him. There is the stuff that yields easily between his clenched teeth as he tries to prevent more from joining the shit in his stomach, and there are the gristly bits that build up under his lips, pressing forward eagerly. The slimy pieces crawl up his nostrils, blocking any semblance of breathing, and the gore rushes into his ears, joining the sounds of his terrified heartbeat. He holds back a bloodcurdling scream.

“ OPEN WIDE, QUACKITY!”

Quackity shrieks as he sits upright, flailing to remove any meat trying to force its way into his digestive track. It takes him a full minute of swatting at his chest and face while trying to regain control of his breathing to realise the obvious.

There is no table, no steaks or hearts, no shattered wine or living meat. And no Dream. The chain around Quackity’s ankle is secured to the wall, the blood he sits on is his own from injuries and worrying.

He lies back down on the burning floor, relaxing as much as he can under the circumstances, confirming to himself that it was just a nightmare.

Maybe this is all just a nightmare. Maybe he’s just had a bad day running Las Nevadas’s affairs and smoked something he shouldn’t have to calm down. Maybe he’ll wake up soon as a crumpled, fully-clothed mess on his bed, nursing a headache and battling nausea, gasping for a glass of cool water. Maybe he’ll stumble through his lonely apartment and kneel over the toilet bowl, expelling the poison from his system with no one to hold his greasy hair away from his face.

Quackity isn’t religious, not anymore, but the old habit of muttering a prayer to a god he doesn’t believe in brings some comfort. He asks for this all to be over, for him to wake up, not because he thinks some messiah will bring him salvation, but because these are the same words he spoke to ask for peace when a childhood pet died, and those words still mean a lot.

“ Padre Hijo y Espíritu Santo ,” he whispers, hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles turn white.

The prayer hangs heavy like a blanket in the air, as Quackity lies in the silence, trying to keep it together. It disappears when he hears a distant click of redstone and the gradual cooling as the lava falls away from his cell to reveal the bridge to the rest of the prison.

Quackity can see green and shining netherite, and he grits his teeth, tasting blood. Great. Now Dream is actually here, not some nightmare version he can’t escape with sleep. The real deal is probably worse anyways.

But– no. That’s not the green of a cloak. This green shifts and oozes, discoloured and inconsistent.

It’s Slime. Slime is walking towards Quackity.

Chapter Text

The first thing Quackity notices is that Slime walks with a limp. A third leg has formed itself on his body, just behind his left. It’s slightly longer than his two front legs, making him lean forward and to the side as he walks unsteadily.

A dark cloak drapes itself around his torso and waist, hiding the translucence of his body behind a wall of dignified green and shining netherite.

His arms still appear roughly human, save for the lack of anything resembling skin. Bulging viscous muscles pull tight around slender, long bones reaching down to his hands. Those hands are strong and firm, but the fingers are too many and in the wrong spots, and sharp carpals break the surface, protruding out into his fist like an old-fashioned knuckleduster.

The face is something Quackity almost recognizes. Slime’s facial bones haven’t shifted much, but the muscles almost visible beneath the sludge pull his mouth and brows in different ways, and the eyes are sunken and out of place. He wears no obvious facial expression.

Despite this regression to something subhuman, Quackity is relieved to see him. He strains against his manacle, reaching for the friend he thought lost only days ago.

Slime walks into the cell, right up to Quackity, and drops a tray of plain mashed potatoes between them.

“Oh my god,” Quackity chokes back tears, and reaches his hands up to either side of Slime’s face. The not-flesh is yielding, and his fingers sink slightly into malformed cheeks. They can both feel nerves tingling. “I thought you were gone forever.”

Slime doesn’t respond, doesn’t move an inch. A muscle twitches below Quackity’s index finger, but he can’t be sure what it means.

“Are you alright? What did that motherfucker do to you, huh? Are you hurt?”

Still nothing. Quackity is familiar with that, Slime hasn’t spoken in high-stress situations before. Maybe he’s lost his language. Maybe his vocal cords were destroyed. Quackity just needs to know how his friend is.

“I was so worried about you, you know that? We all thought you were dead; we had a fucking grave for you. I visited that thing every day , but I knew you were alive, I knew it.”

…

“But I saw you at the coup! You remember?”

A strained, bouncing voice raised in greeting, almost-hands joyfully clasping his own. Two evil men, interrupting their happy reunion. A struggle. Quackity had almost overpowered Purpled, when he felt something cool and damp on the back of his neck. There was a moment of splitting pain, and then the next thing he knew, Dream had him.

“Was that… God, did Dream make you attack me? Oh, fuck, Slime, it’s not your fault, you know what he’s like. Manipulative, evil pendejo . I’m not… I’m not mad at you. You did what you had to, ok?

“But now we can get out. You and me. We can overpower that motherfucker! We could kill him !”

There is still no sign of comprehension from Slime, apart from the occasional spasming muscle. Quackity doesn’t give a shit. This is progress.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” he says, and pulls Slime into a tight hug.

Slime permits it for maybe thirty seconds, but he loosens Quackity’s grip and steps away eventually. Quackity wipes a stray tear away, the saltwater taking a smear of dried blood with it.

And then Slime strikes him square across the face.

The goo isn’t soft and relenting like that on Slime’s face, but solid, landing with a heavy impact that sends Quackity sprawling across the floor. The bones that stick out of Slime’s knuckles cut across his cheek, leaving a clean, deep slice that sprays fresh blood outwards in a violent arc.

The shock is worse than the pain, he thinks. It takes him a while to process what’s happened, why he is lying incapacitated on the floor with Slime standing above him. He can feel something warm and wet trickling down the side of his face, but the hot pain of a cut or the staggering ache of a punch hasn’t sunk in yet.

“Wh… what…” Quackity stutters, reaching a gentle hand up to cradle his face. He can’t understand why his closest, most trusted friend would do such a thing to him. There is still nothing written on Slime’s face, just the slight quivering of his gooey coating. “I thought…”

“Slime?” comes another voice from across the bridge. Dream stands there, coming to investigate the commotion. “You’ve fed him. Come on, now.” He gives no indication of recognising Quackity’s assault, ignoring him completely to focus on his new favourite pet project. Two clear snaps of his fingers echo loud, and he points to the ground on his side of the bridge, calling a dog.

Slime turns back to Quackity, still curled up and bleeding. He gestures at the undisturbed tray of mash sitting patiently on the floor, and steps back onto the bridge, following Dream to wherever.

The pain has begun to set in now. Quackity’s cheek stings with the violent impact, and deep ache spreads through his jaw from where his teeth were violently ripped out not long ago. His head swims, and he wonders if he has a concussion.

The mashed potato mocks him, sitting on the metal tray, unseasoned, unbuttered, and bleakly cold. Quackity knows for a fact it’s the same dish Sam fed Dream for harrowing months, watching him grow thin and malnourished. He doesn’t know if he can even begin eating it.

The gnawing hollowness in his stomach is nothing compared to that which is now growing agonisingly in his chest.

Charlie sits patient in his chair, hands folded neatly together across his lap like he’s been taught. He keeps his eyes from wandering to different sides of his head, keeping them focused and forward on Dream from Pandora’s Vault.

A pair of still, neatly placed eyes hold his gaze, a thin-lipped mouth pulled taught in thoughtful consideration. Charlie tries not to burp.

“Do I need to worry about this? That man?” Dream asks. His voice is politely interested in the affair, and, as almost always, concerned for Charlie’s welfare.

Friend.

One of his eyes drifts slightly, momentarily distracted.

“I didn’t want you to hit him, Slime. That’s my job.”

His hands melt together a little. It’s always slightly too warm in Pandora’s Vault.

“He is our guest , you understand? He kept guests in Las Nevadas. You were his guest . And now he is ours. We have to treat him like a guest .”

There is a slight shiver along Charlie’s dorsi muscles. He understands what these words mean, and what happens in their presence. He wants to avoid the games Dream from Pandora’s Vault plays with him when those words hang over their heads.

He must treat Quackity like a guest .

Not friend. Guest.

“I was thinking about what he did to you. Do you remember the lessons ?”

Humans are assholes. Politics are the way to power. Create no emotional attachments. Everything gets destroyed. Trust nobody. Hold your ground against authority. Seek successful revenge. Legacy is all you leave behind.

There are memories and emotions and nerve impulses and threats pressing their way to the front of Charlie’s eyelids, and he doesn’t want them there. His eyes roll back into the fragments of his skull a little.

“That’s right,” Dream says, sensing he has struck a nerve. The eyes roll back down, forcing their unsettling sights on his uncovered face. “Those lessons hurt , didn’t they, Slime? We have to make sure we use them well, agreed?”

He leans forwards and places a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. It sinks in, and his hard, sure fingers find muscle. It tremors a little beneath his grasp.

“I don’t have to remind you, do I?” There is a warning note to Dream’s voice, one that makes Charlie remember what a reminder means. The things Dream did to jog his memory were almost as bad as the torments he’d been told about,  the horror stories of his time in Las Nevadas.

“No, Dream from Pandora’s Vault,” he forces the words out past vocal cords not meant for that kind of sound. There is a stark difference between the sound of a flute being played, and the wind whistling through a reed. They may sound similar, but only one is made with human lungs and throats and lips. Charlie’s sounds are of the latter, inhuman sort. He is painfully aware of this as he feels his imitation of a torso ripple with the wrongness of speaking human words.

Dream notices his waver, and his grip tightens around Charlie. Broken nerves create an image of pain in his mind, and he feels his goo shudder beneath the unfriendly touch.

Friends don’t hurt each other.

“No, I think I need to help you remember,” Dream responds, hoisting Charlie to his feet.

Bad. Danger.

Charlie can feel his muscles trying to shift and break apart, wriggling away like the slimy scales of a salmon escaping up a river. His skin bends and stretches, shying away from the cruel touch, and his arm rearranges itself in a desperate attempt at escape.

But Dream has a firm hold on the broad, almost solid structure keeping Charlie together. His nails dig into the fibres, finding the veins his nerves run along and sending a simple message back to his mind to be processed. It says, Stop struggling, or I will hurt you more.

It is all Charlie can do to keep his limbs and innards in check, following Dream down the dark, stifling hallways into the room he hates. The restraint chair sits boldly in the middle of the stark white tiles, a quiet but ever-present threat.

“Strip,” Dream commands, releasing Charlie and striding towards the adjacent chamber, scrounging around in the cupboard.

There is a part of Charlie that finds following these orders second nature, and his hands move almost without permission to release himself from the cloak in identical colours to his mentor’s. But there is another part, a feral beast, rebelling against the nature of a well-groomed dog that has been installed within him. Even as Charlie’s fingers move unbidden to find buttons hidden beneath layers of slime, his movements are jerky and shaking, like a terrified rabbit.

It is a monstrous task to undress himself and stand in his natural state as a primordial thing of the grime, and it makes him feel like dirt beneath a shoe. But he does it anyway.

Dream turns back, satisfied, and grips Charlie’s naked ankle, shoving it into his old dress pants from Las Nevadas. His flesh recoils from the stiff black fabric, and this is where he finally gives into the wild part of himself and fights back.

The man dressing him in these awful old clothes is far stronger than him, though, and Charlie ends up flat on his back, having biting pants being shoved up his waist and digging oppressively into his thighs.

Next comes the shirt, stained with old sludge. They run through the struggle again, Charlie a child throwing a temper tantrum, and Dream a parent who knows what is best, and will have his way. The collar is done up to the top button, and a formal tie goes around his neck like a noose, pulled almost to the point of choking.

The suspenders and dress shoes snap on like shackles, and Charlie is dressed for a day as an employee of Las Nevadas, shuddering on the tiled floor and pulling weakly at his clothes.

“Stop your whining,” Dream grumbles, and hoists him to his feet by the shirt collar.

They walk down another dingy corridor, and into a corner of the prison shrouded in more misery and darkness than even the high security cell. It is bare, and unsheltered from prying eyes that want to peer through the cold iron bars.

The only thing within is a small, framed picture of Las Nevadas that hangs on the wall, the lights of the casino and the Needle glittering menacingly in the background. A laughing Quackity stands on the road with his arms thrown wide. His smile is taunting.

There is dried viscera and slime from past stays in this place. Charlie joins the muck on the floor, thrown carelessly by Dream, who wipes his hand disdainfully on his cloak.

“No, please,” he croaks out, clutching at his tormentor’s hem, but the cloth slips through his grip and a sharp boot darts out to clash with his knuckles. “Please, Dream from Pandora’s Vault. Don’t leave me here! DON’T!”

His only response is a harsh, “I’m doing this for your own good. Remember the lessons, Slime,” followed by a cruel slamming of the iron door that rattles the bars.

Charlie is left, screaming an animal’s scream as he shoves his disfigured and grotesque arms through the bars, reaching for help that will not come. He wants to twist and melt into something bestial, to undo everyone’s precious work on him, but the cloth of his old uniform constrains him.

His shape and mind are almost human, but not enough so to be respected.

Quackity laughs at him from the picture on the wall.

Chapter Text

There is no room for hunger in Quackity’s swirling stomach. He clutches one hand to his face and one to his abdomen, trying to keep whatever remains of his fluids inside his body.

Reading the feelings that crawl in his gut is impossible. That knot could be fear, or anger. The sick growling could be nausea, or confusion. The stone weighing everything down could be sadness, or exhaustion. Or guilt.

Quackity doesn’t know what to think of Slime’s reaction to their messy reunion. It has to be Dream. It has to . He’s well acquainted with the masterful way Dream bends the truth and channels people’s emotions to where he needs them to go. He’s seen it in Tubbo’s face, during the boy’s short and stressful stint as president of New L’Manberg, as Dream severed him from his best friend. He’s seen it in the way Dream, the most hated figure on the server, managed to rally Purpled as an ally to take Quackity down. He’s seen it in his own interactions with Dream, when he thought he had the prisoner at his mercy, trying to extract information on the revival book.

Dream has played this game with Slime, tying up his crude and confusing feelings until he doesn’t know what’s real, or who is lying to him. He was always gullible, poor thing. His malleable brain has somehow been tricked into thinking Quackity was his enemy.

This is the easier explanation than confronting what Quackity himself has indeed done. He had his reasons. And he’s cared for Slime viciously, the first person he’d dared to love after everyone else forgot about him. Dream has done some weird mind shit and turned that pure love and nurturing into something putrid and corrupt.

That’s the truth of it.

Quackity will not doubt himself. He’s seen what this place can do to people, how it can break them and turn them into something savage and miserable.

Not him. He’ll hold true to his vows and teachings, he will understand why he did what he had to do, he will not let the dark and rotten pit swallow him and dictate his feelings about himself.

You are a good person that deserves good things. This place will not take that from you.

He’d been hurt and lied to enough in his time.

But… hadn’t Slime?

A desperate growl snaps Quackity out of his funk. He notices the shake of his hands, the cramp in his muscles, the fatigue holding him in place as much as his chained ankle.

Desperate, bony claws of hunger grip at him, begging for something to feed on.

His mouth hurts like hell. Maybe a day ago, he had a violent surgery performed on him, and now he’s just been struck hard and sharp in the jaw. Eating would be a painful thing.

But it’s just mashed spuds on the tray left by Slime after his outburst. It’s soft, already broken down for him. His saliva will deal with the starch, make it smooth and runny, and then he can swallow it. Eating is vital.

Cautiously, Quackity scrapes a small amount of the plain vegetable onto the wooden spoon he’s been provided and raises it to his lips. The thought of poison crosses his mind, but he can’t smell anything in his meal. He gives it a small lick. It tastes like potato.

He shovels it all carefully into his mouth, careful not to brush against his sensitive side, and lets the off-white mash sit on his tongue, going soft. His body takes what it can, and then he painfully swallows.

Repeat.

This process is slow, and the shaking of his hand makes it slower. Every mistake sends agony through his face, his exposed nerves throbbing in swollen gums. It doesn’t even taste good.

Hazily, Quackity wonders how in this prison of fire and hatred, his dinner can be so cold. The water’s warm, though. Is it too much to ask for a cool swig of water?

He thinks back to his interruptions of Dream’s own mealtime. The prisoner would be sitting miserably, fiddling with his spuds. His face was pale and gaunt, his limbs shaking violently, the long sleeves of a prison jumpsuit hiding the fact that he’d been through severe muscle atrophy and was now no more than a skeleton with a tapestry of skin draped loosely over it. His eyes were lost in melancholy and dull hatred for the wretched vegetable, and drool slid from his vacantly open mouth.

Quackity shivers at the thought of that becoming him. How long until he is a white skeleton, a husk of a man living off the bare minimum? When will he go through the cycle of growing to hate potatoes, kicking them away each time they’re brought to him, then ravenously tearing them apart, driven mad by hunger, until he finally accepts them as the only thing he will ever taste?

That will not be me , he tells himself forcefully, but there are already cracks forming in the defensive walls of his mind. That cannot be me. Never.

He finishes his potatoes and water with a grim swallow, then kicks the tray away with a clatter.

Newly filled with food, Quackity lies down, back amongst the dried blood, and lets the heavy feeling that has been plaguing him take over. He cannot keep his eyes open, and he doesn’t want to. Better to let sleep distract him for a few precious hours that continue to bear his oppressive reality. Hopefully this time he won’t have any cannibalistic nightmares.

Quackity is asleep within minutes.

He wakes up with a start at the sound of clanging metal. A new tray has been dropped in front of his face, the same meal he had minutes or maybe hours ago. Mashed potatoes and a bottle of water.

“Not nice, is it?” says the voice Quackity hates more than anything else. He glares up at Dream, staring with disgust at the mash through his mask. “I know I didn’t enjoy it.”

Quackity stands up to face his tormenter, stretching out his spine so they’re almost at eye level. He’s still a little shorter than Dream, though.

They scan each other up and down, a silence full of hatred and calculating moves.

“Hm,” Dream breaks the thick air with a thoughtful hum, then pulls something out of one of his many pockets, holding it out to Quackity. It’s a folded jumpsuit, bright orange and smelling like fresh laundry. The collar faces up, and beneath it, just above the heart, is a number printed onto a white rectangle of fabric.

005

It’s Quackity’s prison uniform.

He forces out a hollow laugh. “Fuck right off.”

Dream reciprocates with an amused chuckle. “You’d prefer to stay in those ?”

He nods at Quackity’s current clothes, a red shirt made brown with blood, and a pair of thick dark trousers, perfect for keeping out the venomous animals and biting cold of Lad Nevadas’ plastic desert. They smell awful, and they’re soiled with waste, sweat and gore. Wearing the same clothes from two or three ( or four? More?) days ago strips Quackity of his dignity, but the prison jumpsuit would do nothing to restore it.

It is a set of clean clothes, though.

Quackity snatches the jumpsuit with a scowl, tucking it under his defiantly crossed arms. “Alright, then. Piss off, let me change in privacy.”

Dream doesn’t move, and he can still feel his eyes tracking up and down his frame.

“What? You wanna see me strip, huh?” Quackity dares to tease him, swivelling his hips for half a second.

His captor disregards this. “A medical exam. We should do one. After all, this is supposed to be you experiencing everything you put me through.”

A shudder escapes along Quackity’s shoulders before he can suppress it. Sam and him regularly did what could loosely be called medical check-ups on Dream during his stint as a prisoner. To their credit, it was partially so they could keep him alive, checking for any insidious wounds or infections or cancers seeking to take away their only chance at resurrecting the dead.

But mostly, it was another form of torment. The idea was to rob Dream of his privacy to the fullest extent, to poke and prod and invade his space, ask every question, check every part of him, to make sure there was absolutely nothing he could hide within his body.

Quackity didn’t like to do it, but he remembered the grim satisfaction of seeing how Dream hated it even more.

He certainly didn’t want to be subject to it himself.

“I’m a lot healthier than you were,” he protests, crossing his arms tighter around himself. “You don’t need to worry about me dying.”

The eyebrow Dream raised was almost audible. “No,” he agrees, “I don’t.”

Realising what he’s saying, Quackity’s insides turn to ice. He’s died before, a pickaxe to the skull from Technoblade, but that was not like what he imagined a permanent death to be. Losing a single life was more like falling asleep violently, then waking up in his bed a second later, bleeding profusely but very much alive.

But to lose all three lives, that must be something else. Would he see a Heaven or a Hell? Would it be Purgatory, or maybe a dreamless, everlasting sleep? Death was a terrifying thought for everyone, a brief and fleeting life snuffed out forever, no second chances, just an eternity of non-existence stretching until the cold death of the universe. The finality. The inevitability. The permanency . It claimed everyone, eventually.

But not Quackity. If Dream could raise the dead, he had mastery over Quackity’s life. It didn’t matter if his prisoner died because he could simply bring him back . A cancer could spread through Quackity, slowly killing every part of him until he was gone for what was supposed to be forever, but then he could be yanked back, reanimated at Dream’s beck and call.

Would he come back wrong? Bitter and old as Wilbur was, or scared and fragile like Tommy? Or would it change him in some other way?

I don’t want to find out. I don’t want to die.

“Y-yeah,” he nods. “You don’t need to worry about me dying, because I’m not going to .”

A second eyebrow raises behind Dream’s mask. Quackity can sense it, and with a stab of fear, understands that Dream means to kill him.

“Whatever the case, whether you’re sick or not, I should still do a check-up on you,” Dream says, waving away the thoughts of death and resurrection and ownership of souls. “I said, this is your penance. You are going to go through what I went through.”

Quackity scowls. He doesn’t know what to say to convince Dream to let him grasp at the shreds of his privacy and dignity.

The man seems to read his thoughts, and mercifully, shrugs in dismissal of his plans for a medical exam. “Whatever. I’ll leave you to get changed. Eat your breakfast. Then we’ll figure out what to do today.”

He turns on his heel and stalks back across the bridge, giving a dainty wave as the lava spills down to seal the cell once more.

Quackity spits at the ground Dream stood on a moment ago and mutters a curse. Reluctantly, he unbuttons his trousers to change into his prison uniform.

You are a prisoner now , the stiff and itchy fabric says. The 005 burns above his heart like a branding iron. This is your place. God show you mercy.

An hour later, as Quackity digests the last of his mashed potato, the lava recedes again and the bridge rises. From under heavy, shameful eyelids, he watches Dream walk across the platform, a shadow in tow.

It’s Slime. Quackity sits up, trying to take stock of what his friend (former friend? Jailer ?) looks like today, if he’s ok.

If he could read Charlie’s rearranged muscles, his expressions and twitches and tics, he’d understand the exhaustion seeping deep into his bones from a night of punishment he can’t quite remember. It’s like a blurry dream he can’t describe or comprehend the details of. He’s unsure if it actually happened, but he knows the pain was real, and he knows it stems from his time with Quackity .

If Quackity could read Charlie’s face like he used to, he’d know there was hatred, confusion, pain, and a grim sense of duty written plainly into his slime and sinew.

But Quackity is his enemy, and he doesn’t understand Charlie. This is why he follows Dream into the cell, removes the shackle from around Quackity’s ankle, and hoists him up, restraining himself from any bad behaviours or slip ups. This is why he follows orders.

Dream and Slime flank Quackity, gripping one of his arms each, making sure he can’t go anywhere they don’t want him to. They march him out of the cell and into the bleak corridors of the Vault. Dream makes cheery conversation about the pleasantly mild weather the server had been enjoying. No one responds.

It only takes a few minutes to reach their destination, but the anticipation could have dragged years out of Quackity. The realisation of where they are slams cold into his gut, as his captors, in perfect synchrony, wrestle him into the tiled room and sit him down in the chair, strapping him tight into the restraints.

“What now?” he snaps, directing all his aggression at Dream. “You gonna take out the rest of my teeth?”

“Only if we need to,” Dream shrugs. “Slime’s going to perform your medical exam. He’ll tell me if you need something as… drastic as another surgery. Isn’t that right?”

He claps a hand on Slime’s shoulder. His muscles tremble ever so slightly, and he nods enthusiastically, gazing staunchly at the ground.

“Slime’s well acquainted with human anatomy. He’s the perfect doctor, I’d say.” It’s a poor joke, a jab at Charlie’s unique nature and build, but it’s best not to say anything. After all, why cater to the feelings of a monster? They’re only fake things replicated from real people.

Quackity can’t help but feel a little relieved that it won’t be Dream peering down his gullet and searching through his hair for lice. Whatever has happened to his relationship with Slime, he still trusts him a hell of a lot more than the new warden to respect his body.

“Right,” Dream sighs, gives Slime another pat and a meaningful look, then retreats towards the doorway. “I’ll leave you boys to it.” He pulls the heavy metal door closed, and retreats down the corridor.

Quackity is left alone with his former friend. “Slime?” he asks gently, straining against the tough leather restraints. The man made of mismatched muscle and nuclear green sludge appears not to hear him. “Are you alright? What’s going on?”

A silence, not unlike what transpired yesterday in the cell before Slime struck him across the face. Quackity’s not afraid.

“Please talk to me, Slime. Please.”

Instead of a response, Charlie moves past his charge, and pulls a trolley up to the chair. There are no wicked dental instruments, thank God, just the regular tools needed for a check-up. He snaps on an uncomfortable pair of latex gloves, ignoring the sticky yet dry feeling against the makeup of his hands. They tear a little against his obtrusive bones, but there’s not much he can do about that.

Gently, he pulls the mouth wide open, and bends down to examine it, looking for any unusual marks or swellings along the gums, teeth, tongue, and throat. Finding nothing but the injuries he knows are meant to be there, Charlie picks a thermometer up off the trolley, and sticks it under the tongue, leaving it to do its work.

That was the mouth done. He pulls his eyes back out from the sides of his head, pulling the mental list out of his foggy thoughts, trying to remember the process. Check the mouth. Check the temperature. Check… check the ears .

The human tries to talk to him, desperately begging for answers as soon as his mouth has been cleared for disease or injury, but he is steadfastly ignored, his words melting into a painful jumble.

While he waits for the temperature to settle into a reliable read, Charlie shines a torch into each ear, trying to be aware of his own, to know if there was anything wrong or abnormal with the human pair. Nothing.

The thermometer beeps, and Charlie sorts the number on the display into something he can almost read. 37.5 degrees Celsius. That was normal for a human. Maybe a little close to a fever, but not quite. It was always a little too hot in Pandora’s Vault anyway.

Check the temperature. Check the ears… check the eyes.

This one only had one real eye, Charlie notes. Something about a pickaxe to the face from a failed capital punishment. He takes a moment to still the shaking of his limbs and lungs, shoving the memory into the shield of dissociation.

Then he resumes work, shining his torch into the real eye, feeling it reflect in his own. He doesn’t take too long with this, and quickly, forcefully moves on to removing the prosthetic eye. Charlie examines the empty socket. It has long since healed, and presents no significant risk, same as the pale pink and slightly raised scar that interrupts the skin on the left side of his face.

The subject reluctantly but willingly follows along with the visual tests Charlie presents, showing his lack of depth perception, but that is expected, and not a real problem.

Then he briefly runs his hands through the greasy mop of long black hair, searching the scalp for any signs of lice. Thankfully, there are none, but it’s still a terribly dirty head of hair.

Dream from Pandora’s Vault gave him instructions to clean and cut it back. He may be punishing Quackity, but diseases clustered around the scalp and stiff, oily hair isn’t pleasant for anyone.

So, Charlie moves to the antechamber, filling a tub with cold, soapy water and picking up a pair of blunt scissors. He’s still not allowed sharp things around their guest.

When Quackity sees what Slime intends to do, he protests loudly, wriggling against the straps keeping him in place, but there is no stopping this. At least it won’t hurt. He leans forward as far as he can to create space for Slime to work with.

The first thing Charlie does is take up clumps of dark hair and struggle with the blunt scissors to sever the tangles from their roots. This takes a while, and Quackity sadly watches his once beautiful locks drift past his lashes, falling slowly to the floor and sitting, black against the stark and shining tiles. It piles up in a limp circle around the chair.

Finally, Slime puts the scissors down and runs a gloved hand over his handiwork, combing away loose strands. Quackity can feel there is still hair clinging to his scalp, he’s hardly bald, but it’s close-cropped and sits drooping against his forehead and neck.

Then comes the freezing water, poured conservatively over Quackity’s head, being massaged into his scalp until what remains of his hair is wet and soapy. He holds still and quiet, feeling Slime scrub the soap against the dry skin on his head, and combating the oil keeping the hair in ugly clumps. Only a little water gets on the jumpsuit collar.

Hair taken care of, Slime conducts a quick blood pressure test, which he seems satisfied with. Then he takes a stethoscope off the trolley and inserts the pieces into what could loosely be called his ears. He presses the bell firmly to Quackity’s chest, just above his heart and listens intensely.

Quackity holds his breath, feeling the cold metal reading the beating of his heart, and Slime’s fingers on top of it, quivering ever so slightly.

Then the moment is over, and they break the contact. Slime goes about reorganising his tools and tucking the trolley away, pulling out some other instrument. He seems to have forgotten all about Quackity, still stuck in the chair.

But he comes back, placing down a weighing scale, and fussing over the chair’s restraints until they no longer hold Quackity in place. He sits up, unsure of what to do next.

A firm hand finds his shoulder and guides him to standing on the scales. After a moment of thinking, the machine spits out a number indicating his health. He stays in place as a tape measure rolls out to record his height.

Then comes the moment Quackity has anticipated and dreaded the most. Slime indicates to remove his shirt, not bothering to turn around. Reluctantly, Quackity follows his instruction, unzipping the upper part of his jumpsuit and letting it fall to his waist.

Slime moves forward and scans him up and down for any moles or blemishes that could indicate a deeper problem, then takes to examining the scars on his hands.

Quackity wonders if his examiner remembers those scars. After all, they’d burnt themselves into his palms as he reached into the lava to save his friend, their flesh melting together until one was dead and the other couldn’t use his hands for weeks. That was probably the worst day of both of their lives, and he can almost feel the searing, boiling pain spreading itself across his forearms.

There is a brief flash of recognition in Charlie’s eyes, and they roll with alarm back into his skull. His own hands begin to shake violently. He remembers these scars. He remembers falling into a pool of roaring heat, feeling his flesh and insides bubble and melt, his humanity disfiguring itself in seconds. And he remembers Quackity’s hands, reaching out menacingly towards him through the screaming agony.

Charlie gasps, stepping away from his guest as if electrocuted, and stumbles towards the door. He doesn’t bother slamming it shut to keep Quackity contained, he simply sprints away. wheezing gasps and sobs force themselves out and in of his burning lungs and bounce around the passages like mocking laughter.

Quackity is frozen in place for a moment, shocked at the convulsions he’s just watched his friend go through, seeing the obvious tremble of terror pulling at his facial muscles. Was it the scars? Did he recognise them? Did Slime remember what happened?

He doesn’t waste another second zipping the jumpsuit back up and escaping into the hall, chasing the sounds of Slime’s distress. If he remembered Purpled’s betrayal, maybe Quackity could get through to him and help him understand and communicate. Maybe they could escape.

His bare feet fly across the slippery, too-warm obsidian floors, listening out for the echoes of a sob, weaving through the labyrinthine passages, trying his best to remember the prison layout Sam had grudgingly taught him when they made their deal.

And then – there. A flash of green around the corner, the sounds of pistons shifting in response to a babbling yell.

There is a moment where Quackity has Slime cornered in a dead end, when their eyes meet in a moment of horror and pleading and remembrance. But in a split second, a door opens out of the wall and the frightened thing slips behind it, flashing a final look of animalistic terror at its pursuer. The pistons slam shut in Quackity’s face, and he hammers on the thick stone, calling for his friend, begging him to remember.

But the hostile mechanical rumbling of Pandora’s Vault is the only thing that responds to his pleading.

Until.

“What the fuck happened while I was gone?” exclaims a shocked Dream. He grabs Quackity’s collar and slams him into the wall. He isn’t wearing his mask, and there is a smear of a sandwich in the corner of his mouth.

Caught off guard , Quackity realises.

 “Can I not leave you two alone for five fucking minutes ?”

Meeting his angry gaze, Quackity only gives a smirk in response. He gets a backhanded slap that sends his jaw aching all over again for that.

“Where is he?” Dream demands, raising his hand again to threaten another strike.

Quackity jabs his thumb at the empty spot of wall a door had opened in a minute ago. “Slime’s gone.”

With a sigh, Dream releases the jumpsuit collar and massages his temples. “And how did you get this far? This part of the prison is off-limits to inmates.”

There is an uneasy curl in Quackity’s stomach at being called an inmate , but he shrugs it off. “Just followed Slime. You’re a lot fucking laxer on security than Sam was, you know. You sure you’re up for this big scawy job, Dweam?” The baby voice he puts on earns him another slap, and this one sends him stumbling. He doesn’t care though, it’s worth it to see the outrage on Dream’s face.

“You need to learn to shut the fuck up and keep your nose out of places it isn’t wanted, Quackity,” he hisses, grabbing his prisoner before he can struggle away from the iron grip. “How about I teach you a lesson , huh?”

Quackity sweeps any fear he feels from the threat off his face and out of his gut, holding his chin up and meeting Dream’s eye with a defiant spark. The inexperienced prison warden, in over his head, growls something about his need for control and unsheathes his axe. This is a little more cause for concern for Quackity, but the man’s furious clenched fist won’t budge, holding him in place as the flat of the axe knocks him clean out.

It's probably only a few minutes Quackity spends unconscious, but when he wakes, his throat is dry, his head aches and he feels supremely disoriented.

The gleaming hooks above his head bring him quickly back to his senses.

“Good, you’re back,” Dream says with his usual malicious delight, shaking off a bored yawn.

The heavy shackles now clinging to his wrists throw Quackity off with their unexpected presence as he tries to sit up. This window of confused incapacitation seems exactly what Dream was waiting for, and, taking advantage of his prisoner’s struggle, he hoists him up by the ankle as if he weighs nothing, just like their first night in the cell. There’s a heavy reek of blaze powder, and blood pink particles curl around his form.

Strength potion. The fucking cheater.

Quackity tries to take a swipe at Dream, but upside-down and nursing his new head trauma, he’s no match.

Dream gives him a smile that’s almost mock pity, and then in a swift, unstoppable movement, he stabs the hook on the ceiling through the middle of his left foot.

The feeling is like nothing Quackity can describe. The utter wrongness of something being shoved through his flesh and out the other side, then leaving him hanging, is unbearable in itself. Never mind the agony of the stab, then all of his weight being supported by the injured cut of meat his foot has become.

There’s no point holding it in. Quackity screams the most bloodcurdling scream he can muster, putting all his pain and fear and anger behind it until all the air has left his lungs and he is drowning in the blood rushing to his head. It nearly shreds his vocal cords, and Quackity doesn’t think he’ll ever speak or breathe again.

And then the other hook pierces his right foot, pushing past all the nerves and bones and meat, coming out the other end rusty with bright blood.

The howl Quackity lets out is downright animal. He can feel himself transforming into a terrified, raging beast, with teeth and claws that run red with his enemy’s throats. He is a wild, wild thing, and he lunges.

Useless, chained human hands barely bat at Dream’s face, his teeth go without the taste of evil flesh crushed between his maws.

Quackity swings a little from his hooks. He is utterly exhausted, and utterly defeated. Rivers of violent scarlet run down his ankles, staining his new prison uniform. There is nothing he can do about his new position, absolutely nothing. Dream smirks and gives him a little push. The lump of meat rocks, back and forth, just slightly, then returns to hanging still and dejected.

And then three quick and brutal punches land themselves on Quackity’s face, bursting blood from his mouth and nose and almost knocking out more teeth. He moans, unable to fight or cry out any more than he already has. Eyes pressed shut, he wills himself to pass out again, or choke on his own blood and let this whole affair be done with.

A cold thumb drags his eyelid back open and Quackity is forced to stare at his torturer. “That should teach you to stay quiet and stay put, right?” Dream smiles. It’s a genuine question. At least that’s what it sounds like, but Quackity can’t give an answer from all the thick red liquid swimming in his mouth and brain. A slight frown tugs at Dream’s lips, warping his face a little. “How about I come back tomorrow morning and see how you feel then?”

Still nothing, just a look of exhausted hatred.

“Alright,” Dream shrugs. “Good night, Quackity.”

Chapter Text

There is a long line of dry blood running down the prison jumpsuit and pooling in the space beneath Quackity’s jaw. There is a small pool of red spittle beneath him on the floor. This cell just gets dirtier and bloodier every day.

Half-dead and delirious, Quackity wonders if this is what it feels like to be a slaughtered pig in the abattoir, waiting to be butchered. He can almost smell the clean metal surfaces and the pang of raw meat. The slight swinging of the hooks digging through his flesh and sending sharp, rusty stabs through his nerves is the only thing that reminds him he is not about to be the centrepiece of a grand Sunday roast.

That pain is the only thing Quackity has to hold on to as he struggles to breathe, the pain and the anger. He never did anything like this to Dream. He stabbed and ripped and threatened, sure, but never hung him like a carcass. This is not a reparation. This is just blind, violent torture.

Quackity knows he can’t be far from being dead. How long can someone survive being hung upside down and bleeding? When would the wounds in his feet fester into an infection and take him under? These were all interesting questions he’d love to learn the answer to, if it didn’t mean being the test subject.

It doesn’t matter, though, because Slime kills him first.

It happens like this; the redstone clicks its tune, the unrelenting heat of the lava falls away, the bridge rises, and a shaking, limping figure crawls its way towards Quackity.

He twitches towards it, wondering if it can help him. The crusted blood around his dry lips crack and he tries a weak smile, spreading his hands to show the pathetically minimal threat he poses.

“ H… help ,” he manages to croak out, extending his open palm to the visitor.

It reaches its own trembling arm out, and for a brief but warm moment, fleshy human fingers interlock with slimy, sinewy fingers. One round, tired, brown eye gazes into two wide, trembling, green eyes, shaking and slipping out of contact. Quackity can see that Slime is scared and upset, but he thinks his friend is coming back to him at that moment.

“Slime, I–”

The sound of that voice triggers an animal instinct in Charlie, and he clutches tightly onto the hanging man and tugs firmly down.

Somehow, Quackity finds the energy to shriek as hooks tear into his feet, pressing against bone and sparking a fresh wave of blood. He hanks his hand away from the attacker, and loose metacarpals rip up his palm.

Slime stands with a threatening ripple of his muscles. One eye rolls wildly, but in the other is an unmistakable twitch and a glint of fury.

“STOP IT, WHAT ARE YOU–” Quackity’s cry is cut off as a blow lands against his diaphragm. He chokes out the little air in his lungs, and swings back against the hooks. “SLIME, WAIT–”

Another hit, this one angled down to strike right under his eye. Blood sprays. Then another, directly in the chest, then three more, knocking him in the sides. He sways dramatically, unable to fight back. His hands clutch weakly at the armour Slime wears, useless in stopping the barrages.

One after another after another, and fresh blood blooms from Quackity’s lips, his cheeks, his nose, and the cuts ripping their way across his chest and arms.

“GUARD!” he manages to yell out, a habit he must have picked up from Dream, before a stray knuckle bone shifts itself from Slime’s hand and tears across his throat.

It doesn’t hit his airway, or a major artery, but the slice still runs thick and fast. Quackity nearly chokes on the blood pouring out through his mouth, following the course of gravity over his face and dripping onto the ground. It leaves him unresponsive enough for Slime to land a few more hits unopposed before he’s knocked to the ground and dragged away by Dream. The summons worked after all.

Quackity doesn’t notice, his brain has shut down its own consciousness to protect itself from the pain of being assaulted while hanging like a corpse. The bleeding is a problem, blocking the nose and mouth and barely letting any oxygen into and through his broken body.

What hangs from the meat hooks may as well be a pig ready for the butcher’s knife.

Charlie fights Dream from Pandora’s Vault every step through the halls, yelling nonsense and batting at the warden with suddenly useless fists.

Dream ignores the worthless tantrum, pulling off bits of his charge’s armour and leaving them discarded in their wake. He knows exactly what the appropriate punishment is, and he can sense that Slime does too. The pathetic thing struggles harder and harder, gripping at anything that isn’t a smooth wall. He refuses to use his legs, trying to lie down to avoid his fate a little longer. Dream scoffs and picks him up with ease, throwing him over his shoulder, and marches into the wing of the prison he’s set aside for the management and care of Slime.

It’s a long struggle to get Slime into the straitjacket, but it’s one that the warden wins. 

Slime moans, a useless plea restricted by the too-small jacket, holding his limbs firm and solid, unable to shift even the bones deep beneath his surface. It renders him unable to fight, barely even move, as Dream throws him into an airtight and soundproofed empty room. Heavy shackles lock around his legs, and the chain they’re bolted to is barely long enough to let him raise his ankles from the floor.

Under the harsh white light, Slime stares in longing at the space behind Dream’s frame in the doorway, at the corridor that could take him anywhere, if only he wasn’t bound and stone-still on the floor. He whimpers, throat unable to form a please or an I don’t want to be here or a fuck you .

Dream frowns down at him for half a second, then slips his smiling mask down over his face, steps back from the room, and locks the heavy door behind him.

There’s nothing but a carcass ready for processing when he returns to the main cell. A real smile curls at the corner of his lips.

Finally. Something interesting to do to Quackity.

Chapter Text

The air in the hotel is cool and civilised, smelling faintly of rotting flower bouquets and expensive perfume. It is the kind of hotel Quackity would never have been allowed in when he was younger, and the kind of hotel he built and managed when he grew up. It sets his skin crawling.

He enters through the revolving door, the cold glass pushing him inwards. The metal frames squeal a little, as if the upkeep had been neglected for quite some time. When Quackity looks back, the door has disappeared. Off-white wallpaper with a cream floral pattern stares back at him, plain and polite.

With the hair on the back of his neck standing upright and the tips of his fingers and toes prickling uneasily, Quackity turns away from the blocked exit and crosses the chequered tile floor of the foyer, towards the concierge desk. The thin figure that sits behind it scratches a frantic message in the ledger, muttering darkly to himself.

“Ahem,” Quackity clears his throat, frowning down at the concierge when he doesn’t look up to provide the five-star service the stately air of the hotel suggests. Still, the man behind the cold marble counter ignores him. Quackity reaches out to the small silver bell and presses down hard and fast. One expectant, eloquent ding finally commands the concierge’s attention, and he looks sharply upwards.

A wave of nausea hits Quackity, sending him falling sideways as his knees grow weak. The smell of dead roses is sickening, but it’s not what twists his stomach into a disgusted knot.

The face behind the desk is Ranboo’s – except this isn’t the young upstart Quackity passed notes to in the cabinet or held tense diplomatic exchanges with on behalf of their respective countries. That Ranboo was rail thin with a neurotic but well-meaning smile.

This was a completely different Ranboo. His swollen, puffy eyes were rotting as they sat deep inside his skull, unseeing and exuding a melancholy only the dead possess. The flesh on his face was damaged beyond repair – deep caverns where the saltwater tears cut deep into his cheek, and rivulets of dried blood crusted along his lips and in grooves. The raised parts were a gangrene yellow-black, where infected flesh sloughed off his face. Where once there was a neat split between black and white skin, two bright eyes and small, discreet scars, there was now sick mottled flesh discoloured beyond recognition, and wounds in an eternal cycle of opening, bleeding, scabbing, and rotting. Long and matted white hair fell over this display of dead meat, veiling it only partially. Ranboo was a corpse, long forgotten, and a soul, dying constantly.

“Quackity?” His cracked lips can only just make the sound and the widening of his eyes push against clots of dry gore. He reaches a torn hand out, nails ragged with abuse, corrupted by more gangrene, as if to touch Quackity, to confirm he was real. “Is that really you? Have you come to –”

But Quackity doesn’t let him finish his question. He’s off, sprinting down the empty halls of the hotel without bothering to check in or take his room key. His dress shoes squeak and fly against the marble as he turns corner after corner, deeper into the sick heart of this place. He isn’t sure what’s going on, why Ranboo’s corpse is working as a concierge or where he left his luggage, but every crawling organ and prickling skin cell is telling him that there is something terribly wrong with this hotel.

His breath heaves as Quackity finds his way into a concrete shaft labelled FIRE ESCAPE. The rough grey stairs lead him up and up, and every muscle in his wretched body strains as if he were being pulled apart on a rack from a dark time of medieval torture. The sounds of polished leather against concrete follow him up every flight of staircase and he snaps his head around every few steps, terrified that the corpse at reception might be following him, but it’s just the echo of his own shoes bouncing against dull brick.

There is too much panic, pain and confusion for Quackity to think properly, to take a moment to consider what the fuck is happening. But some animal instinct, the unevolved neuron firings of a prey thing has taken hold, and Quackity falls into the age-old action of RUN.

So run he does, up rough flights of stairs in some creepy fucking hotel, up and up for far too long. Three hundred flights. Four hundred flights. A thousand flights. Five thousand flights. A hundred thousand flights.

The air fragments in Quackity’s lungs, the atoms splitting apart and stabbing into his ribs. He gasps, but there is no circulation of oxygen into blood. It is exhausting. It is dizzying. It is exhilarating.

His legs are just about ready to give out when his foot lands on a smooth, round glass bottle and rolls. The bottle shatters against the wall, flung out by his momentum, and Quackity lands, not on the hard, angled stairs, but on a warm, snoring body.

Trance broken, he lies against a stomach, a stained dress shirt split by a well-fed beer belly, panting, cramping, aching. And then the owner of this stomach snorts awake, sitting up and shoving Quackity away. As he slides a little further down the stairs, he meets the eyes of the sleeper, and everything clicks into place with a cold, sinister certainty.

The stairwell inhabitant takes a long, thirsty swig of an almost empty beer bottle and smiles widely at Quackity with sour teeth. He closes his eyes, forcing the stuff that tastes like piss down his throat, and sighs with content and contempt.

“Hello, Quackity,” says a very dead Schlatt.

It is at this well-timed moment that Dream decides to bring his prisoner back. The act of creation and restoration comes natural to him now, and it is with barely a thought on his behalf that breath re-enters dead lungs. He only needs to briefly flash through the book with a performative act of studying the contents, a small nod to the universe to show that he is still bound to the book it gave him, that he is still its servant, and not the other way around (although this is only a lie to ease the universe’s jealousy).

The effort Quackity puts in to clawing his way back to life is a completely different story. At first, he doesn’t realise he’s been resurrected; he thinks this is a new part of Hell.

At first there is no feeling, anywhere. There isn’t the awareness of an absence of feeling, as is normal for numbness. There is simply nothing. Then comes the slight, unnatural prickle in the fingertips, a body slowly reversing the brutally natural process of death. The real numbing sensation begins, spreading up his limbs and into his chest and lips.

But too soon, the agony of rapidly mending muscles and wounds soon rouses his nerves and Quackity is violently, painfully aware that he is in an incredibly damaged but alive body. Everything is going too fast, and it’s almost impossible to keep up.

The first breath he draws almost causes him to pass out again, it eats up so much of his energy. Quackity’s lungs knew they would never move again, they’d shut down to rest for good, and now to breathe is an astronomical, blasphemous fuck you to the laws of nature. But the air keeps coming, precious, painful, and life-giving to a drowning man.

Cold, raw meat turns back into living, pulsing flesh. Only minutes ago, Quackity was ready for the freezing trays of the morgue, or the unyielding butcher’s cleaver. He was fresh, ready to be cooked into medium rare steaks or minced and squeezed through the sausage making machine. Now, he is warm like a screaming newborn, or a dead calf gathering flies in the sunlight.

Muscles stretch and rip apart then sew themselves back together, fighting an uphill battle against the damage inflicted by being hung by the feet for hours, unstiffening themselves from rigor mortis and trying to connect back to each other after the dreamy dissociation of the afterlife.

There is a deeply unpleasant feeling in his feet, and Quackity is made aware of the stab wounds through his feet. The blood stopped flowing long ago, but now his body is fast-forwarding a process of filling the holes back in with fresh meat, scabbing over the entrance and exit, and forcing circulation down into his toes. Eventually, those violent openings are simply ugly markings, and his feet almost feel like feet again, aside from the awful pain.

And finally, finally, Quackity is alive. Everything hurts like a bitch, and the work of constructing a physical form that lives and breathes has left him utterly exhausted, but at least he is alive.

It takes another few minutes to get used to the feeling of pulling his muscles in organised patterns, accounting for all his fingers and joints, so that he may push himself to a sitting position.

Feeling and movement of bodies must work drastically differently in a metaphysical sense of the soul than the real human body, bound by biology and physics. In the afterlife, if he wanted his limbs somewhere, they were already there, manifested by the loosely drifting constructs of atoms and desires. In the real world, the idea of movement must be translated into electric messages, sent through a gigantic, complicated web of neural networks, received by the relevant muscles, then the effort must be made to actually pull and push them. And even after all of that, there is still a deep feeling of both acute ache and dissociation, and the limbs don’t always end up where they should.

Dream drinks in this new display of Quackity’s suffering, scanning him up and down, analysing how he reacts to each restarting body function and revival side effect, finding himself after the strange disconnectedness of body and identity.

It is almost with pity or even empathy that the warden sighs at his prisoner, as he himself has gone through these motions, these very experiences. But is that not the very point of this entire ordeal? Dream hates the writhing, living body at his feet, he feels that deep, angry feeling in every scar mapped across his skin, every wound that Quackity himself gave him.

But there is something much deeper than simple hatred that transpires between captor and captive. Hatred is a mortal emotion, something for the wretches that live for a mere eighty years then snuff themselves out for eternity. Between Quackity and Dream is a new understanding, a dawning of a logic only accessible to those beyond death.

Quackity can’t quite describe it, can’t put it into words – he is only newly revived, after all. But he feels it, and he hates the weight of his debt that keeps him on the floor. Everything about him – his body, his mind and soul, his existence, the remaining years of his life – is only possible because Dream brought him back from damnation. He owes it all to the man with the magic book, and it’s the worst thing he’s ever known.

The only thing Dream says is a simple “Welcome back!” He pauses, waiting for some sort of response, but Quackity only glares up at him, disoriented and seething. “Come on, really?” Dream cocks his head to the side. “I bring you back to life and I don’t even get a thank you? A hello?”

There is nothing Quackity wants more than to spit right in his fucking face again, but he learned that lesson the hard way. Instead, he concentrates on getting steadily to his feet, scrambling for a groove to lean on in the smooth black wall. Finding nothing, with shaking arms he drags his sack of a body towards the back wall, and uses the shackles bolted into it to bring himself to a standing position.

One trembling hand lets go, then another, and Quackity takes a tentative step forward. Immediately, he collapses face first, back to the floor. His nose mashes into the hot stone and a fresh stream of blood begins, the first of his new life. The gasp that comes with the new pain finally gives him his voice back.

“I- I thought I still had another life left. Before… before permadeath.”

“I thought you did too,” Dream admits, casually rolling a wicked looking knife between his calloused hands. “Guess you got too badly injured back at Las Nevadas, and you died on my horse. Or like, one of the million other times you could have been fatally wounded.”

Quackity grits his teeth, still trying to wrap his head around this new situation. “So what? Did your book give me back all three or…”

“As far as I can tell, it’s just one,” shrugs an unconcerned Dream, before a new idea overtakes him. “Why? Do you want to experiment with it?”

A horrible vision overtakes Quackity of being strapped down to a vivisection table, revived and killed over and over, notes being etched into his skin, a torture far worse than what he experiences now in the name of science.

The words he speaks next reflect the clearest thoughts he’s had since revival. “No. I don’t.”

Another shrug. “Alright, then,” Dream dismisses the idea easily. “It’s not like I don’t have plenty of other test subjects.”

Despite the relentless heat of the vault, Quackity feels deeply cold. “Other test subjects? Who?” Not him. Please, god, not him. “Is- is it Slime?”

A snort. “God, no. He’s got his own set of programs we’re tending to. I was thinking more along the lines of… Tommy.” It’s only a passing, casual comment meant to agitate, it’s hardly true, but it does it job.

The cold feeling turns to a frozen sting, and an icy anger erupts from Quackity. “You hurt that kid and I’ll fucking kill you.” Once more, he rises unsteadily to his feet and advances on Dream, aiming a punch that misses by about a metre and lands him on the floor again.

A deeply amused snort. “I’m just messing with you, I have far more interesting plans than doing science experiments on Tommy. I’m a little occupied with you right now.” Dream gives him a deeply patronising pat on the cheek, red from smacking into the ground so many times.

Quackity can’t tell whether to take his word and hold onto the solace that Tommy is safe or disregard his assurances. Dream is both a lying snake and brutally honest, and he switches between the two on a whim. But the idea that Dream isn’t focused on Tommy right now provides a little comfort, and Quackity does his best to believe it.

“But anyways. You’re not one of my experiments. What we’ve got going on here is justice , not science. When you die, it’s not because I want to find some secret of the universe out, but because I really hate you.”

“Good to know,” Quackity grimaces, settling for a sitting position. He’s not getting up any time soon.

“So?” Dream asks

“So what?” Quackity snaps back, hating the way those eyes bore through the mask and into his skin with morbid curiosity.

“What was it like? Death?”

Endless agony. The feeling of complete disconnect from himself and anything that was real. The pervasive presence of rot, whether it was wilting flowers or a long dead boy’s corpse. An indescribable, unshakable feeling of wrongness. An eternity of torture.

“It was shit,” Quackity says, holding his cards close to his chest. It’s not like Dream’s his fucking therapist.

“That’s it?” he replies, disappointed. “Just shit ? Not dark and cold, not painful , not a deep presence of existential dread and the realisation that you are nothing compared to the gods of our world?” Dream says this with such fervour, he shivers with excitement. Seeing him like this twists Quackity’s stomach with gross uneasiness. Dream’s completely off his head.

Is that what I’ll be like in a year’s time? After so much torture and captivity?

He brushes that worry off. There are bigger fish to fry right now. “Nope. Just shit.”

“What was it? Tommy’s was a dark void, Wilbur’s a train station… how did the afterlife present itself to you, Quackity?”

“It was a hotel.” The words are spat out like a bad taste, Quackity can’t help it. There’s something a little hypnotising about Dream’s hunger for understanding. The empty halls of that accursed place expand within him, pushing out room for anything else, and letting it out into the wider world gives him a little space to come back to reality.

“A hotel?” Dream scrambles closer and sits across from Quackity, like a schoolchild eager to listen to his teacher’s story.

“Yeah. Weird, fancy old hotel. Smelt like dust and dead flowers. Creepy as shit. Being there felt… wrong. And then there were the residents.”

“The residents?” Every word clings on, desperate for more.

“Ranboo. And Schlatt.”

“ You saw them? ”

“I saw them.”

“How were they?”

“Ranboo was… bad. Really fucked up looking. Badly scarred, and he looked like a rotting corpse. Well…I guess he fucking is, isn’t he? And I don’t really think he was all there, but he was kind of the same alive. Still. Not good.”

“And Schlatt?” Dream sounds desperately excited. “How was he? What was seeing Schlatt again like, Quackity?”

The thought of Schlatt, that angry mess constantly surrounded by the stench of beer and liquor, shards of shattered glass cutting into Quackity’s palms and the throbbing of new bruises ties his tongue. The alienation between the parts of his mind were already bad with the aftereffects of death and revival, but now he really loses himself in old, numb memories. Dream does him the courtesy of slapping his cheek until he comes back.

“Well?” Dream really is acting like a nosy child.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, come on , I wanna know!”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it !” Quackity snaps, summoning the little bit of strength he possesses to deliver a weak kick to Dream’s shin.

There is a dangerous silence where Quackity is sure he’s about to feel the full force of Dream’s vengeful wrath. But to his surprise, the man just shrugs, gets to his feet, and begins to saunter back across the bridge.

“Alright,” he says. “Whatever. I’ll get Slime to drop in with some dinner later. I’ll see you around, Quackity. Oh – and maybe we can have another go at saying hi to Schlatt sometime soon, yeah?”

And with that barely veiled threat, the lava oozes down to leave Quackity alone with his thoughts.

It takes a little while to realise that Dream hasn’t bothered to put him in the shackles again. Quackity vaguely wonders if he just forgot, but quickly dismisses the thought. He’s too smart for an oversight like that. Which means it’s not an oversight, it’s intentional. Quackity has been left unrestrained for whatever reason.

And by his inability to stand, the fogginess in his head and the shaking of his hands keeping relegated to a tired, vulnerable position on the floor, Quackity thinks he has a pretty clear image of the reason.

A life debt to Dream for his resurrection. Being left to freely wander the cell. The message is simple: I am far more powerful than you are. I have you fully within my grasp and you’re not getting out any time soon, shackles or not.

Dream smirks a little as he saunters past a very incapacitated Slime in a stupor from his latest discipline. Everything is playing right as he needs it to. Checkmate, Quackity.

Chapter Text

It isn’t Slime that comes to feed Quackity several hours later, but Dream. He’s unable to hide his frustration as he hurls a single, raw potato into Quackity’s stomach, winding him slightly.

“What’s the matter?” Quackity smirks, brushing off hours of self-reflection that quickly became spiralling, horrible thoughts. To sense the anger that Dream can barely control is a new feeling in his imprisonment, and the idea that the warden doesn’t have mastery of absolutely everything is a welcome one. So Quackity lets a dangerous, almost satisfied smile twist across his face, even when it earns him a boot to the nose.

“None of your business, is it?” snaps Dream, stomping the red residue from his shining netherite.

Grimacing at the freely flowing blood and the pain of broken cartilage, Quackity forces himself to think a little more seriously. “Where’s Slime? Thought you said he was bringing me dinner. He’s okay, right?”

Dream scowls and scuffs his boot. The truth was, he was having a lot of trouble keeping that abominable mess in check. Beneath his mask was a grazed eyebrow where Slime’s bony knuckle dusters had scored a hit, and his ego was a little bruised. The little shit had been out of line ever since Quackity had been dragged kicking and screaming into Pandora’s Vault. They needed to do some serious reprogramming and relearning.

But first, Dream really needed to let off some steam.

“Never mind Slime right now,” he says, rolling his shoulders back and cracking his knuckles.

Quackity recognises the very moves he used to make before commencing a torture session, and immediately scrambling up into a defensive position on instinct. The unstoppable, seething force tackles him easily, but despite the lesson he worked so hard on – that resistance is futile – Quackity still claws and hits back until he is physically restrained.

Each of his wrists is locked into a shackle bolted directly into the wall, then his ankles, and Quackity is stuck with no room to move any of his limbs. It’s not lost on him that the pose he takes is almost that of a victim of crucifixion.

With vigour, Dream peels off his mask so he can look Quackity square in the eyes. After all, it’s more fun that way. Quackity glares at him, defiantly holding his gaze, daring him to do his worst.

And Dream is more than happy to oblige, producing a thick pair of pliers with an evil smile.

Paling a little, Quackity asks, “And what are you planning to do with those, huh? More dental surgery?”

“Oh, please,” the man wielding the weapon scoffs. “You should know better, Quackity. I’m far more creative.”

Without a second thought, he seizes Quackity’s right hand, clamps the pliers around the tip of his thumb and tears the nail from its bed.

Charlie can’t hear the screams, buried away in the coolest, darkest part of the prison. He’s eternally grateful for the enclosures made for the maintenance of the elder guardians that keep everyone in the prison too weak and tired to fight back.

Curled up in one of the husbandry rooms next to a bucket of fish and a leaking tap, Charlie stares at the giant, sickly white body swimming around and around its too-small tank. It moans deeply, the scars on its side scraping against the glass as it pleads for freedom. Waves of fatigue roll from it, resonating deep in the twisted wet spaces inside of Charlie and making his muscles too heavy to move. It soothes him.

His flesh glows strangely in the light of the sparse sea lanterns. He stares absent-mindedly at the translucent patches that make way for amalgamated muscles and bones, marvelling at how his diseased slime turns an almost ethereal sea-glass colour in the cool light.

It’s maybe the most beautiful thing Charlie’s seen in a long, long time, the intricate ways his tissues commingle, warping and changing the gentle aquamarine light. It refracts through his arms, sending dancing patterns along the floor, mixing with those cast from the guardian’s tank.

Charlie wishes he could see more beautiful things like this again. When was the last time? Before Las Nevadas, certainly. There was nothing in Las Nevadas except plastic cacti, washed-out skies, and neglected entertainment lounges. It was an ugly thing full of ugly people. So, Charlie tries to condemn it, push it deep into the wrinkled folds of his tissue and leave those memories to rot, just as Dream taught him.

But it’s hard. What came before that? The was a before, Charlie knows that. But it’s confusing. A lot of conflicting senses. Clean linen and laughter, blooming flowers, and summer rains evaporating in the sunshine. The overwhelming drone of blue bottle flies crowded around putrid, dead eyeballs, the smell of burning hair. A comforting push and squelch of other liquid bodies, an unspoken understanding of two, ten, a hundred things from the same species. A castle in the sky where he played sick games with bored gods. The cool, dark earth. Pain.

The images come, incomprehensible and loud, until Charlie scratches at the grout between the tiles to bring himself back. No, there was no beauty in the time before. Only strange things he can’t understand. He needs Dream to help him sort those away forever. He needs Dream to teach him about the beautiful things.

Charlie knows he can rely on Dream for these things. It has been written into his core, the parts still holding him together as something that might have once been almost human. The understanding that Dream is here to help, Dream is constructing him into a person. But it isn’t lost on Charlie that the only beautiful thing he’s seen is in his only secret hiding place.

The loud wails and shrieks of the elder guardian hammering at the aquarium walls bring Charlie away from the treacherous thoughts. Letting out a wheezing breath of something that’s almost carbon dioxide, he puts his hands to work.

Elder guardians are big, and big things need a lot to eat. Gutting the fish with the knife he’s smuggled is a simple joy Charlie can indulge in. The repetitive motion of swishing the blade, preparing the meal, letting fish bones and blood mix into his own systems, it’s all relaxing. And the guardian lets out a happy lamentation when he chucks the shoal of guts into its tank, snapping the things up greedily.

Seeing the poor trapped thing singing its happy tune, cramped in the tiny space yet scoffing up its treats, it gives Charlie a little ease of mind.

Feeding time done, he lies against the cold floor, half submerged in a spilt puddle of saltwater. The brine stings wickedly, the chemicals in his body and the water mix strangely, but it’s a welcome sensation – this kind of feeling is something Charlie will allow himself to feel willingly, and he has full control over when it stops. It’s an invigorating thing, and between that and the small metal blade half sunken into his hand, Charlie has some semblance of peace and control. He lets his eyes roll back into his skull and his muscles spasm freely, drifting into a state of sleep, lulled by the elder guardian’s song and fatiguing effect.

Charlie rests.

The pain is nothing like Quackity has experienced ever before, and he’s been through a lot. It is excruciating, blinding, the worst thing he’s ever felt in his entire life. Almost immediately, he wishes that he could pass out, just so he wouldn’t have to feel it. But although he can feel a fast flow of blood, it’s not nearly enough to shut his brain down.

So Quackity is awake for all of it. And by God, it lasts a long time.

Dream doesn’t give him the mercy of trying to make it quick. He does not rip it off in one smooth, strong motion – even though he’d be perfectly capable of the tricky feat. Instead, he forces the pliers slowly under the nail, pushing against the bed and levering the white thing up. With agonising cruelty, Dream slowly tears it away from the cuticle, and drops the nail triumphantly on the floor in a small glob of blood.

There’s a slight sound of tearing and sucking that Quackity thinks he can hear, and it makes him nauseous. Fortunately, the details are spared by his blood curdling scream. It’s the kind of thing that would shatter glass, deafen eardrums, rip throats raw. There’s no way he’ll be speaking for a while after this. That doesn’t really matter, though, Quackity just needs an outlet for the torturous feeling in his hand.

Eventually, the white-hot feeling in his thumb is replaced by a steady, awful throbbing and a swelling, turning his hand into a useless, puffy appendage he wished he could not feel.

And then it happens again – the pliers dig into his forefinger, and the process repeats, nails separating slowly and cruelly from the bed, ripping away from the soft and innocent skin beneath to create fountains of blood. It’s even worse the second time around. Then the third. Then the fourth. And then finally, the fifth. Quackity’s right hand is left screaming and useless, hanging from the shackle like the limp hand of a slaughtered lamb.

“No more,” he tries to beg, “I’m finished,” but his screams have left his vocal cords damaged and silent. He can’t even get a simple “stop” out. Ironic, then, that his cries are even louder when Dream moves on to his left hand. He manages to beg then, but it’s as useless as when his pleas are inaudible.

It is a blessing when all of Quackity’s nails have been ripped from his fingers and toes, and twenty pieces of gore lie on the ground, haloed in the splattered blood. Dream calmly wipes the blood from his hands and his pliers, gives Quackity a kick in the shin for good measure, and storms out of the cell to leave his victim to die.

It isn’t the horrendous amounts of blood that kills Quackity, not by a long shot. He’s not that lucky.

At some point, his legs give out and he collapses as far as he can, and the manacles around his wrists are the only thing holding him up. The metal digs in, deep and painful, drawing blood, but he’s barely conscious enough to care.

The circulation of his blood slows down, and it sits thick and heavy in his veins like lead. The aching of his hanging arms, with screaming muscles attached to his chest, pulls his lungs further than they should go. Quackity strains to breathe, but there’s never enough hot air oozing down his throat and into his body.

It is a slow, hopeless way to go, and he does not fight it. Although Quackity has not quite given up yet – he has fought through years of abuse, and he will not lose to Dream, not after all he has done to change his narrative – his body fails him, and he doesn’t have the physical capacity to halt his progressive march to death.

Sometimes Quackity sleeps and gets a brief respite from the real pain with fitful nightmares, images of the people he loved dying or turning on him, their flesh melting into awful amalgamations and consuming him into their twisted bodies. Sometimes he is wide awake, and he is painfully aware of every aching muscle, each collapsing lung, every nail bed bleeding. The blood from his torture, and the manacles in his skin, runs warm and viscous down his arms, following their call of gravity and soiling his once-fresh orange jumpsuit with dry, brown stains. And other times, he is completely out of his body, floating away, leaving the pain behind with a slumped, barely breathing sack of flesh. He doesn’t quite remember who or where he is, and his attempts to reach out and touch, to feel, are fruitless. This state scares him the most.

Finally, finally , Quackity dies. He isn’t sure if it’s the asphyxiation or the heart failure that takes him, but he’s glad for both, glad it’s all over.

He is left to wander the out of kilter halls of that in between place, avoiding the inhuman wails for help coming from the hotel doors marked with impossible numbers. The smell of sweet dead things makes Quackity retch around nearly every corner, and each time he reaches to steady himself on a wall, his molecules miss the hard, solid surfaces and he is left nauseous and dissociated, scrambling for something real to cling to. He is quickly reminded how much he hates the afterlife. And yet, there is nothing he can do until the Father fulfils his role and resurrects him from the cross.

It's hilarious. Quackity has stepped into the archetype of the Messiah, and yet he has descended to animalistic status, out of control of his own life, crawling around in chains, begging for his next meal. Some Christ he embodies. He hopes Dream enjoys the bitter taste of his flesh and blood.

Dream and Charlie walk together across the divide and into the room with the corpse. It slumps, pitched forward, wrists nearly cut off from the manacles keeping them in place as the rest of the body yearns for the floor. The legs lie, half collapsed under the torn abdomen, the feet twisted and destroyed.

Charlie silently takes in this scene, observing how the face froze in a slack, pained expression that captured so much hopeless anger. He notices the way the muscles stick out and the patterns the dripping blood dried in. For a minute, Quackity’s corpse seems even less human than he does.

The muttered incantation brings him back to himself, and Charlie does his best not to squirm against the laws of nature breaking and reversing themselves. Dream waits for the insidious magic to finish itself, satisfied when Quackity draws in a shallow, rattling breath. From the loop of keys swinging cockily on his belt, he takes the one that springs the manacles open. Foot by foot, then hand by hand, the body is released from the wall, and Dream gives him a small kick. The man on the floor stirs a little, gasping a little deeper and flinching away from the cruel boot. With a satisfied grunt, Dream turns away and gives Charlie a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“You know what to do,” he says, then saunters back across the bridge and into the places beyond the belly of the vault, leaving Charlie with a half-alive mess to take care of.

He crouches down and gently takes one of Quackity’s hands in his palm. The fingers are covered in dry blood, stuck together. Ugly sores have begun bubbling up to the surface, ready to scab, a feeble measure against infection. They are swollen beyond recognition, bloated and hurting, ready to burst with pus. Charlie is a thing of imperfect, disgusting flesh, but he has scarcely seen something as corrupted and vile as this.

From a drooping, half-seeing eyelid, Quackity watches him, moving his strange, lumpy yet delicate limbs along the wounds. Slime’s fingers spasm slightly, the muscles not arranged exactly as they should be, but even with the bones bending the wrong way and the shapes all off, it is still a soft, trustworthy touch. Quackity wonders if this is Slime finally coming back to him.

From a pocket hidden in the dark cloak, Charlie draws out his medical supplies. He douses a cotton swab in alcohol, and, with the utmost caution drilled into him by his teachers, presses the soggy white material against the rusty red sores.

Quackity whines, and his wrist twitches away. The alcohol burns, even when he knows it’s there to heal. But with a strong grip on his wrist, Charlie methodically cleans the raw, exposed nail beds, scraping away the blood and pus to leave sensitive and wounded, yet clean, skin. He continues with the other hand, and both the feet. A cloth soaked in water gently wipes away the rest of the gore from the limbs, leaving only faint red stains. It comes away raggy and crusted, but Quackity no longer looks like he’s just stuck his hands and feet in a meat grinder. And it’s nice, to have another take care of him, to wash his dirty feet with such care, in a manner that is almost loving.

They both stare at the raw, pale hands as Charlie begins to wrap gauze around each individual finger and toe tip, then bandages them all together. Quackity no longer has useful hands, just injured paws bound in bleeding white. But he’s still grateful.

After a few swallows of lukewarm water, he feels well enough to sit up, and talk to Slime. But the wretched shy thing avoids his eyes and stands, stepping rapidly backwards.

“Please, Slime,” Quackity croaks. “Talk to me. Please.”

The creature merely shrinks, a pathetic, scared thing, and edges towards the bridge.

Too fast to leave room for escape, Quackity wraps his bandaged hands around one of Slime’s confusing limbs, sinking into the soft, squishy mess. It’s warm, not like the baking obsidian or the searing lava, but like the pulsing flesh of a living, loving person. Slime tenses around the touch, frozen, staring down at the desperate man kneeling at his feet, clutching his wrist.

“Slime, I’m worried about you. About us . Please, you have to talk to me. We have to get out of here. Please! Please, just talk to me. I miss you.”

This pouring out of his heart made little sense, nothing more than desperate ramblings of a heartbroken prisoner dreaming of sweet sunlight and strong, loving arms wrapped around them. But despite his mad words, the emotion in Quackity’s cracking voice was clear, and Slime began to tremble.

Quackity smiles hopefully – this was it; this was when they finally talked – but Slime simply detaches himself from the clutching hand, and limps back over the bridge. Watching in despair, Quackity wonders what in God’s name he’d done wrong, as the lava encases his cell once more.

Chapter Text

Everyone seems to be waiting for when Quackity finally breaks.

He’s held out well, so far. He keeps his businessman façade up when he isn’t screaming his throat raw, he’s even dared a few jokes at Dream’s expense. It’s worth the mouthfuls of blood he ends up with for talking back to see that he can still get under Dream’s skin. He can still stand, and think, and feed himself, and understand that what is happening to him is not his fault, and although he may not be able to move more than a few metres in any direction without his captors’ say-so, the little autonomy he holds on to will have to be enough for now.

Hell, he’s in a much better state than Dream was by the time Quackity gave up on torturing him. That prisoner was barely cognizant, with a hollow stomach and sickly, corpse-like skin stretched over hard, bony edges. That prisoner spent most of his time curled in a corner, no longer able to tremble with hunger, so badly had his muscles atrophied. That prisoner spoke only to beg for his life, for mercy, to call Quackity sir, thank him for his generosity, or to babble hysterical nightmares. The only thing that prisoner still had in way of power or autonomy was that he knew how to bring people back from the dead, and Quackity didn’t.

So, all things considered, Quackity is doing alright. Dream hasn’t yet fully realised his power fantasy, hasn’t fully carried out his revenge plot. Somehow, this doesn’t reassure Quackity at all.

He’s a lot better than Dream was.

Which means he has a long way to go.

And Dream will enjoy every second of it.

It’s typically Slime that fulfills the mundane task of feeding and watering Quackity, so he is surprised and disappointed (and maybe a little scared) to see Dream sauntering across the bridge with a tray of mash and a bottle of water.

“Good afternoon,” the warden says, raising a hand in greeting.

“Afternoon, is it?” Quackity replies, leaning against the wall closest to the lava. “Would it kill you to give me a clock or something? You had one, didn’t you? Before one of your bitch fits.”

“Security risk,” shrugs Dream. “You know, this is actually what I wanted the cell to look like. Originally, I mean. Before I ended up here. Sam was actually the one to give the prisoner all those privileges. Guess it worked out well for me.”

“Guess it did,” Quackity goes along, then takes a gamble. “You don’t think you could bring any of that back? A sink would go a long way in here. It’s really starting to smell. Or at least, like, one of those motivational kitten posters. Brighten the place up a little. You know? How about something saying hang in there?” He smirks, glancing venomously at the meat hooks.

Dream claps him on the shoulder, and he tries not to flinch. “Funny, Quackity. You feeling funny today?”

“Yeah, think I am.”

“Yeah? Yeah, not happening. Interior design’s not really my thing.”

“Oh, I know that, I’ve spent the past what… month, now?” (How long has it been? Time distorts when you spend your days dead, sleeping or tortured) “I’ve spent the past month in your establishment. The décor is awful. But you know, I can help,” the prisoner probes.

“Oh, really? How’s that?” Dream tolerates him talking back, he enjoys this battle of wits.

“I used to be a hotelier,” confides Quackity, sighing as he reminisces the old days.

“Do tell.”

“Yeah, a little place called Las Nevadas. Real nice, too. Full of chintz, velvet couches, sprawling courtyards, luxury bars open twenty-four hours a day, live entertainment every night. A proper five-star establishment, not like this shithole you run. Presidential suites and all. I used to have world leaders sleeping there. It was the best hotel that side of the old courthouse.”

“Was?”

“Yeah,” Quackity sighs, picking at a scab. “Not anymore. Got caught in some legal ownership bullshit. These assholes kicked me out. Real shame.”

“Huh,” Dream says, sounding almost pitying until he strikes Quackity across the face, netherite gauntlet sending a shuddering pain through his jaw. He collapses to the ground with a torrent of profanities, clutching his split lip. Fresh, cherry blood seeps between his fingers.

“The fuck was that for?” Quackity yells up at Dream.

“You know, I really appreciate that chat,” the warden says, a genuine grin on his face. He steps down on Quackity’s hands, pressed against the floor as he tries to push himself back to standing.

His prisoner yelps. “Yeah? W-why’s that?” he hisses painfully.

Dream leers down at him. “Because, Quackity, it was a great example of the behaviour we really need to … fix.” He yanks on his prisoner’s hair, pulling their faces together so Quackity is torn between the pressure in his skull and the pressure on his badly bruised fingers, still under that oppressive boot.

“A-and what behaviour would that be, Dream?” he retorts, refusing to shy away from that hateful face inches from his own. “I’m sure I recall you acting just like this during my visits.

Dream’s eyes narrow at the mention of their reversed roles. He is still for a moment, reminded of his own torment and the nightmares he still gets sometimes. Then he slams Quackity’s face right into the metal of his boot, holding him there with all the hatred he’d let fester from those awful months. “That’s right, Quackity, I did. And then you made sure that stopped, didn’t you, sir?” He spits that word right into his captive’s ear, so close he could rip the thing off with his teeth.

Quackity stops struggling for a moment, understanding dawning as he remembers the rush of adrenaline and satisfaction he would get from Dream clutching the hems of his trousers and whimpering, “No sir, please sir, stop it sir, I’ll do anything for you, sir. Sir. SIR.”

“I’ll never call you that,” he hisses, a promise to himself and an insult to Dream, even as his lips press against his boot, a symbol of servile respect.

Dream’s gauntlet wraps around his chin and pulls him back up to look him in the eyes, pupils full of cold determination. He needs this justice, needs it like he needs water. “That’s what I said, in your exact position, right here, only months ago,” he smiles, and it is full of righteous, venomous glee. “And that didn’t last very long now, did it? So we’re going to reverse those roles. I’m actually really excited to see what happens today. It’ll be… what’s the word? Cathartic. I’m going to enjoy this, Quackity. I’m going to enjoy watching you learn respect.”

Then Quackity is thrown back to the floor and kept there with Dream’s knee against his chest as the man starts to yank the orange shirt off of his captive.

This is when Quackity starts to panic, as he takes a guess at what Dream might be about to do. “Hey- hey, stop. Dream, stop. Stop it!”

But the moment passes, and his fears are dismissed. That doesn’t mean he’s getting off easy, though. Dream gets off him, struggling as his breathing speeds up, and drags him by the wrists to the manacles hanging from those hated hooks. Quackity is strung up, his toes scraping for purchase on the floor too far below, his bare back exposed. As his vision clears, he sees what Dream is holding.

“Oh, fuck no.” Quackity swings himself away from the whip curled in the torturer’s hands, looking for all the world like the black snakes that crawled through the Las Nevadas sands. Or, not like a snake. More like a hydra. This monstrosity had nine cruel limbs, each ending in a ball of lead. Quackity had never used an instrument like this, never even seen one. “What are you gonna do with that, huh? What’s that for?”

“Thought it would be obvious,” Dream smiles placidly, his grip on the thing unwinding so the tails brushed menacingly against the floor. “No? That’s fine. Here’s how it’s going to go, Quackity.” He walks around behind the hanging body, so Quackity has to strain his neck to keep him in his sights. “I’m going to whip you. I think you remember doing the same to me, don’t you?”

“You deserved it,” he spits. Dream frowns a little and Quackity goes to continue, another spiel about justice and useless shit, but he is interrupted when the flail is brought down without warning on his exposed back. It’s a heavy, sudden sensation, and for a second, he feels no pain, not even the lead beads digging into his stretched, vulnerable skin. Then Dream rips it out and he screams, the burning sensation penetrating into his nervous system and spreading like electricity through his torso and into his straining limbs. It really sucks.

Dream walks back around face to face with his prisoner, already wiping clots of blood from his torture instrument. He leans in close to hiss in the face of his prisoner, “I’ve had enough of this fucking attitude, Quackity. Enough of the insults, enough calling me an asshole, not doing as I say, all of it. You hear me? All of it, all of you, needs to learn. You need to change. I think you can do so much fucking better than the miserable asshole you are right now. So, I’m going to whip you,” Dream announces with vitriol, with hatred, and with an electric joy. “And I’m going to keep whipping you until you learn some fucking respect. And when, and only when you start calling me ‘sir’, will I stop. Do I make myself clear, Quackity?”

“F-fucking perfectly,” he responds, rolling his strained shoulders painfully as his torturer walks back around to resume.

The tails come down on his back again, and he experiences that awful sensation of flesh being ripped open.

“Your response,” snaps Dream, in the exact same voice Quackity had used for him when he’d strung him up and beat him senseless, “should be ‘yes, sir’. That’s it.”

“Fuck right off.” The tails bite into the small of his back, and hot blood immediately begins flowing down his trousers.

“Yeah, no, I don’t think I will.” Leaning close, Dream spits into his ear. “I don’t think I ever remember you stopping when I asked. When I screamed that I was on the edge of dying. When you dug your way down to my fucking ribcage.”

“Because you de- AGH! YOU FUCKING DESERVED IT!” screams Quackity, forcing the words out past the impact shuddering through his chest.

The whip comes out, then immediately down again. “And so do you.”

“We’ve… we’ve been over this, Dream. We’ve has this conversation so… so many fucking times.” Sweat is starting to pool on the back of Quackity’s neck, dripping hot, salty water down his shoulders and into the raw, ragged wounds. It burns. “You did things that… fuck… everyone agreed meant that you belonged in here. Everyone was safer with you in here. Everyone wanted that book, and everyone wanted you suffering. I was just- SHIT! I-I… I was just enacting the justice we all wanted. You’re just doing this for your fucking saAAUGH! S-sadism. You’re a sick sadist. That’s all you’ll ever BE! FUCK!”

Dream pulls the whip out with particular malice. “And you aren’t? You’re a terrorist, Quackity. You overthrew a democratically elected government. You burnt you’re your country. You abused your employees and pulled some sick fucking experiments to create mindless drones for your state. You tortured me for months. You even admitted to me that you enjoyed doing it! If anyone’s a sadist, it’s you. Don’t you dare have the gall to tell your victim anything different. Don’t use that line on me, don’t speak to me like that. Say something interesting or shut the fuck up and take it. Got it?”

“Fuck you.”

Another beating. They go for ten rounds, then twenty. Each flogging hurts like hell, the rough ropes and cold, hard beads desecrating his shoulders and back, but what really gets him is how it starts to build up. The strain on his shoulders, arms and chests from being suspended makes his back ache, and the wounds just keep adding up. There is no relief, not for a second. It just gets worse and worse.

After maybe twenty-five lashes, Dream lowers his whip to his side, and leans into his sobbing prisoner. Softly he says, “You sound like you’re in pain, Quackity. Are you hurting? Do you want it to stop? I can make it all go away. I can make the pain stop. Just do one thing for me, okay? You know what to say.”

It takes a good minute for Quackity to regain his composure, form words past the pervasive pain, the fat, rolling tears, and the lumps in his throat, swollen from screaming. He gasps for air in between sobs like he is drowning. Maybe some of that’s just stalling, making use of a brief moment of respite. All the same, he eventually finds it within himself to grit his teeth, swallow his tears and respond. “I’m… not… I’m not calling you… that.”

A pause, then Dream claps him on the back, a direct impact to the brutal lashes, eliciting another shriek. “That’s fine. We can keep going. I’m still researching mortality, maybe you can finally help me with my experiments? I’ve been wondering… how many lashes do you think a person can survive at most? Maybe… seventy?” He brings the whip down. Globules of gore go flying. “That’s about how many you’d give me before you started worrying about me dying on you.” Another lash. Another scream.

“Don’t even… f-fuck! Don’t even try.”

Dream ignores him, as he twists and writhes with pain and the animal urge to get out. “Or… or maybe a hundred?” Lash. Scream. “Or more!” Lash. Scream. “If I gave you a health potion, maybe we could go even further! Two hundred?” Lash. “Five hundred?” Lash. “A fucking thousand?” Lash.

“SHIT! No… no, no, you can’t.”

“Then,” Dream winds up for a particularly hard flogging, “learn some fucking respect.”

“CHOKE ON YOUR OWN SPIT!” Quackity screams as fresh blood sprays out. He hurls more abuse as the whip goes in and out, in and out of his rutted flesh. “I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE! I’LL RIP THAT FUCKING MASK OF YOURS OF YOUR FACE AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT! I’LL USE IT TO TEAR YOUR STOMACH APART AND PULL ALL YOUR GUTS OUT THROUGH YOUR MOUTH! I’LL DISEMBOWL YOU WITH YOUR OWN FACE! AND I’LL ENJOY IT! I’LL ENJOY EVERY FUCKING SECOND OF IT JUST – FUCK – STOP IT!”

He doesn’t. With each insult Quackity hurls at him, Dream just hits him twice as much and twice as hard. To his credit, Quackity is resilient. Starving, bleeding out and feeling his flesh being ripped apart, he’s still able to launch tirades of abuse, describe the many graphic ways in which he will end Dream’s life. Eventually, though, the prisoner wears down as number of lashes go from twenty to fifty to seventy. He stops screaming, stops struggling, barely flinches at the impacts, just hangs limp like dead meat.

So, Dream takes a moment to rest. He drinks some water, then scrubs some more on his blood-soiled chest plate and gauntlets, cleaning himself off a little. He leaves the cell for a minute, just to give Quackity some time to recuperate, just so he doesn’t die. Besides, he’s had a new idea.

Quackity regains consciousness to someone lightly smacking his cheek. He cracks open his eye, lashes almost stuck together from the salt of his tears. When he sees that stupid smiling face, and registers that he hasn’t been let down from the hooks, he closes it again and hangs his head against his chest. He just wants this to be over already. No such luck.

“Drink this.” Dream tilts his head up and pushes a flask between his lips, pouring water down his throat, just a little something to keep him alive. Then a different flask, a health potion. The burning pain of unnaturally fast healing shudders through Quackity, restoring his shoulder muscles a little and doing its best to scab over his desecrated flesh. He’s a little further from bleeding out now, which means more whipping. He’s given this exact same potion to Dream for the exact same reason.

“Enough, I’ve had enough,” he groans, coherent enough to understand what comes next and that he doesn’t want it.

“Then you know what to say,” Dream glances at him, analysing Quackity’s pained and hopeless face as he puts his empty bottles away, swapping them out for that dammed whip.

But physical pain, the beatings and lashings, are nothing in comparison to submitting like Dream wants, licking those boots like a devout and reverent hound.

“Never.”

Dream shrugs. “That’s your choice.” And they begin again. The meagre scabbing the potion had managed is immediately destroyed again, as the whip rips the wounds back open. Blood flows freely and faster than before. Quackity’s trousers are more of a rusty brown than orange now. His back looks like it’s been clawed open and feasted on by rabid, starving vultures, and still Dream is not done.

Quackity’s protests once more go from enraged screams to yelps and muttered swear words, to quiet, haunting groans.

At almost a hundred lashes, on death’s welcoming doorstep, Dream forces another health potion down his raw throat and asks once more, “Do you want it to stop?” Once more, Quackity refuses to call him ‘sir’, even when he knows Dream is far not going to give up. He can play this game. He has to win this game. He can’t give up either. He shakes his head, staring defiantly into the two black pits that represent Dream’s eyes.

“That’s ok,” the warden shrugs. “I think I can convince you soon enough.” Then he pulls out a flask of putrid smelling, dull green liquid, and pours it into a thick cloth, careful not to spill any on his own hands.

“Wh…what’s…” Quackity tries to ask about the contents, but he’s so tired and so out of it, he’s just waiting to bleed out and experience a moment of uncanny respite.

“Oh, nothing special,” shrugs Dream, walking around so his prisoner can no longer see him, his full back exposed to his mercy. “Just a little something I thought might persuade you.”

He presses the soaked cloth deep into the ragged wounds, and Quackity howls. It is nothing like the pain he has been subject to over the past hour, this scalds like nothing else he’s ever felt in torture, it sizzles into his raw flesh and eats away at his wounds, sends spasms across his muscles that make him shake so violently he’s sure to tear something. He thrashes and thrashes as he feels the shit working its way through his bloodstream, seizing up his veins with searing liquid that feels almost alive in its intent to harm him. The corruption in his blood, in his muscles, penetrating into his bones, hurts with a wrongness that clings to him like a dead lover. This is not supposed to be in his system, but no matter how hard he writhes and struggles, it will stay until the damage it has done is irreversible. That has to be it, this is surely the climax of his torture, the pain cannot get any worse –

Dream brings the whip into his back again, and Quackity breaks.

“STOP IT! PLEASE, PLEASE, I’M BEGGING YOU! SIR, STOP IT!”

The whip lowers, and Dream spins him around to look him in his tear-streaked, haggard face. “What did you say?” he whispers, revelling in the turn of events.

“Please, sir,” Quackity sobs, and the word hurts almost more than the poison or the beating. “Please stop, sir.”

A twisted smile creeps into the corner of Dream’s mouth, although the other can’ a predator’s grin when it has caught a small, feeble animal to feed on. “Alright, Quackity. I’ll stop.” He reaches up and frees Quackity’s red, bleeding wrists from their chains. He gasps with both relief and pain as he falls to the floor, and curls into a foetal position.

Dream types something into his communicator, then waits. His gaze doesn’t shift from the mewling mess on his floor, shuddering with the poison and rapidly losing cognizance. The once mighty Quackity, leader of a rich nation, the man with the ear of the prison warden, the man that had gotten away with torturing him for months, playing on that sick power fantasy, has been reduced to a pathetic, mewling thing caught firmly in his grasp, begging him for mercy, calling him sir. He had the power of life and death at his beck and call, but God, it had been a while since he’d felt powerful like this. It felt good.

Dream doesn’t move as Slime shuffles across the bridge with a bucket of saltwater, potions, and bandages. He stays staring as a cloth is soaked into the water and pressed against Quackity’s back. The prisoner moans as salt comes into contact with his wound, and fights his hardest, not recognising his old friend, but he’s on the brink of passing out, maybe dying, and he can’t defend himself as he is restrained with a strong hand around both his bony wrists. Slime continues to disinfect the rutted flesh, cleaning away the excess blood and any bacteria that had built up in the cell’s fetid conditions.

Dream watches in fascination as a health potion is poured over the wounds, and the red flesh scabs, just a little. Another potion, then another, just to make sure the bleeding is over for good. Tenderly, Slime wraps a bandage around his charge, winding the soft white cloth from his shredded shoulders to the ruined hips. Then he lets Quackity curl up again, and leaves. But Dream doesn’t go.

He stays, staring at the damage he has done. There is no motion from his prisoner, no acknowledgement that Dream is there, no attempt to nurse himself. He might be passed out. That’s fine. Dream can wait.

Eventually, Quackity must remember that Dream had brought in food as well as his whip. He manages to sit up a little, and crawls over to the mashed potato. With a shaking hand, he shovels the bland, hated stuff into his mouth, then blanches. The poison is still inside him, and it doesn’t mix well with anything else.

“I’ve got some milk, if you want the poison out,” Dream offers, once more casually friendly as he leans against the wall, all his weapons tucked away.

Still, Quackity flinches hard as he realises the presence still with him. “If you… if you wouldn’t mind.” He holds out trembling fingers, looking at his captor with almost a grain of hope, behind the hatred and shame. Dream raises an eyebrow, clearly expecting something. “Oh. If you wouldn’t mind… sir.”

“Here,” smiles Dream, handing him a flask of cool, fresh milk.

Quackity downs it all at once, eager not just for any cure, but for something that doesn’t taste like potato, vomit or blood. He sighs with relief and relaxes against the wall, letting the milk work its magic.

“What do you say, Quackity?”

Nothing. The prisoner just keeps his eyes clothes, hoping for a modicum of rest.

Dream crouches down in front of him, and roughly seizes his jaw in his hands. “What do you say?” he hisses. “Unless you’d like to do all of that again?”

For a moment, Quackity debates with himself, then swallows his pride. “Thank you, sir.”

All at once, the aggression drops from Dream’s face and is replaced with that smiling predator. He cups Quackity’s cheek, patronising, and says, “Today was good, Quackity. You did real good today. See you tomorrow.”

Quackity watches him saunter back across the bridge and lower the lava from under heavy, shameful eyelids.

He’s going to expect you to keep calling him that, now.

“Shit,” he whispers to himself, and miserably shovels some mash into his mouth.

Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe if you keep him pleased, he won’t hurt you as bad. This is just all about making himself feel more powerful. It could work.

Another miserable mouthful.

Or maybe his brainwashing’s finally getting to you. Since when did fucking Quackity beg for Dream’s mercy? Call him fucking ‘Sir’? Maybe he’s turning you into another Slime. He’s not going to stop torturing you just because he likes the things you say to him. You can’t let him take your pride from you. You can’t let him make you think he’s better than you are. You can’t become his dog.

But… it might be easier. If you don’t pull on your leash, you’ve got more slack, right?

“Fuck!” Quackity yells, and throws his tray across the cell. Whatever he does, he’s trapped in Dream’s claws, and there’s no way to change that.

Chapter Text

Charlie always remembers how to sit when Dream from Pandora’s Vault is in this mood. Feet flat on the floor, hands folded in his lap so he can’t fidget, head on straight and eyes following the speaker. He’d been taught from the moment Dream and Purpled from the UFO first let him out of that hole and started helping him recover. That’s what they called it, anyway.

It's been drilled into him since that first day, and the consequences for forgetting his position help him keep his bones and hands and flesh still, and his eyes concentrated on their target.

It hurts when he doesn’t sit properly, and it hurts when he doesn’t show Dream from Pandora’s Vault the respect he deserves.

That’s what he’s ranting about now. Charlie must pay attention.

“… so, I’m thinking after we’ve made sure that our guest is being respectful, properly respectful, that’s when things can get interesting. So far, the worst that’s happened to him is the physical pain, the actual torture. And that’s not – well, it is fun, but it’s not like what he was feeling when he was torturing me. Or you, Slime, he enjoyed torturing you too. So, we’ve got to really get him to that state, so he knows he’s powerless, so he finally fucking gets that –”

“Do you love me, Dream from Pandora’s Vault?” The words are out of Charlie’s mouth before he can catch them, slippery like a fish. Stupid. Can’t control it. Get punished for that.

“…What?”

“Do you…love me? Quackity from Las Nevadas said he loved me. Quackity said I was his closest friend. Are we friends?”

It’s a confusing memory. All of Charlie’s memories are unclear and they hurt to focus on too much – Dream calls that dissociation – but beneath the memories of pain, fire and being sculpted into a monstrous human being, all the shit of Las Nevadas that he can’t quite process, there are a couple of moments he is sure were happy. Words of assurance. Gentle touches. He thinks he kissed Quackity’s cheek once. Ideas of friend and love itch at the edges of his memory, making him all the more confused.

Dream from Pandora’s Vault seems shocked to silence. He doesn’t move. Charlie hunches down in his chair, waiting for the consequence of his callous words. They always get him in trouble.

“I…yes. I’m your friend, Slime, your closest friend,” Dream says quietly, and crouches down in front of Charlie. He unwinds Charlie’s hands from each other and holds them in his. “Of course I am. I saved you from Quackity, remember? I helped you get better.”

The wretched creature’s eyes glance up, interlocking with the sympathetic human ones, something so much more alive and put together than him, but Charlie thinks he sees that Dream from Pandora’s Vault wants to help him. “But… do you love me?”

“Quackity told you he loved you?” Dream asks for confirmation. Charlie nods, eager. “Mm.” Silence. Charlie stares at those human eyes with hope and longing, begging for the answer he needs like a dog. They merely pierce back through him, thinking.

Eventually, “I don’t think Quackity loved you, Slime.”

“… What? But – he said, I’m sure I remember, even after everything –”

“Sometimes,” Dream cuts the whimpering off, “people lie. They tell you what you want to hear, so you’ll do what they want. There are bad people out there, Slime, people that will treat you like shit then say they love you, so you don’t leave them. So they can keep you trapped. Quackity is one of those people. He hurt you, put those awful lessons in your head, then pretended to love you so you’d always be his servant, so you’d never leave Las Nevadas. Does that make sense?”

No. No, it didn’t. Why would someone say that they loved you, then do things that no good lover would ever do? Why was it all so complicated, and all so shit? Human connections made Charlie want to crawl back into the hole he came from, where he belonged. He’d look like nothing more than the ooze and muck underfoot, like he deserved. And it would be so much better than how these asshole humans treated him.

Bursting into tears, Charlie concedes. “Yes. Yes, Dream from Pandora’s Vault, it makes sense.”

“Hey, hey now,” Dream says, cupping that sobbing, slimy face in his hands in some semblance of comfort and care. “It’s okay, Slime, it’s over. Quackity can’t hurt you anymore. I promise I won’t let him.”

Charlie surges forward and wraps his arms around his closest friend. After a terrifying, empty pause, he feels strong arms hug him back, holding him close and safe. “Thank you,” he weeps, burying his dripping face in Dream’s chest plate. “Thank you, Dream from Pandora’s Vault.” He wants to say more, but his words are all muddled, and he thinks his throat is wriggling itself into a knot as he heaves his lungs out with grief and gratitude.

“Of course, Slime,” Dream says back, then gently takes his chin and tilts it up until they’re eye to eye. He holds his charge firm, even as he squirms a little, ready to curl up in a ball and let all his feelings claw at his insides until he’s too tired to move. “Hey, listen. I’ll never love you like Quackity said he loved you. And I promise, that’s a good thing. I don’t – I will never – treat you like he did. You’re safe here. You’re among friends. You’re never going to hurt again; do you understand me?”

Charlie swallows all the words he can’t say and all the tears he won’t spill, and nods. He understands perfectly. Dream smiles and lets go. They get off the floor.

“I’ll let you rest now. I want you to come and find me later, and I’ll discuss the rest of the plan with you. We’re going to fix everything, okay? We’re going to get justice.”

With one more nod and a desperate smile that comes out more like a contorted grimace, Charlie runs off down through the prison’s guts to his hiding place and collapses against the Elder Guardian’s tank to sob and hit himself and try to understand that all the times Quackity was good to him, all the happy memories, were just another form of torture. His wails entwine with the trapped sea creature, and as he lies there, he can almost feel the thing’s scars against his side and the chains around his limbs, keeping him trapped in this rotten place.

Quackity wakes from an uneasy sleep into his living nightmare with the shifting sounds of redstone cutting off the lava flow surrounding his fucking hotbox. He sits up and strains to see who’s coming over the bridge, and with a groan, stands when he sees a green cloak. It’s a habit. He’s not going to stay down on his knees while Dream does whatever he wants with him. That stunt yesterday (was it yesterday? Time doesn’t work quite right in Pandora’s Vault) didn’t mean anything; he’s decided. He's not gonna call Dream sir. Bullshit. He’ll keep fighting.

The nerves ease up a little when he sees Slime under the hood. “Oh, hi,” he croaks, sinking back to his knees. His back is still killing him, the deep scars from where the leather had cut him over and over burn angrily. It’s almost like it’s still sizzling with poison, no matter that was all flushed out with the milk in a violent wave of vomiting after Dream had left him. The bandages, no longer soft and white, itch against his scabs. “You wouldn’t have any food, would you? My stomach is killing me.”

Charlie reaches into his pocket, and Quackity extends a hand, eagerly ready for anything to eat. What Charlie redraws from his cloak is not a potato. In a flash of movement made wild by a loose elbow joint flying far beyond its breaking point, he brings down a whip upon Quackity, landing with a vicious sting against his hopeful palm.

“AH- WHAT THE FUCK?” Quackity rears back, clutching his injured hand to his chest. “What the actual fuck was that for, Slime?”

The sharp scent of warm, metallic liquid, the sight of bright red pouring into the empty eye socket, triggers something in Charlie, and he can almost hear the mantra of the lessons playing like a broken record by his ear. He points the whip like an accusation at the shocked prisoner curled before him and speaks to him for the first time since he fell into fire.

“Did you love me?”

Despite the advances Quackity has tried during his imprisonment, the handholding, the begging for memories of a softer time, it still catches him off guard to hear his old heir ask him this, to speak to him about their old feelings, before everything went up in smoke. It surprises him to hear Slime speak at all. Quackity thought he’d been given up on.

“… What?”

“You said you loved me. In Las Nevadas. Did you mean it? Did you love me?”

“I… Slime, it’s complicated, you know what happened with me and–”

Quackity is interrupted by the whip coming down on him again, with such heartbroken force that it sends sprawling from the impact with his ragged back, even through the bandages and his uniform.

“Yes or no!” Charlie snaps, brandishing the whip again. “Did you love me?”

Through clenched teeth, Quackity takes a deep inhale. This hurts, in more ways than one. “I don’t know.”

This earns him another lash, and this time it rips open the ugly orange cloth and the stiff rusty red bandages. Quackity yelps as he feels his scabs tear with the impact of those vile lead beads. Charlie can’t contain his rage.

“You didn’t! You can’t have! You didn’t even respect me!”

“Please, Slime, I did! Fucking stop!” Quackity raises a hand, imploring the violence to end. He is rewarded with another gash in his palm from the cruel leather. “A-and I still do! I respect you!”

“Liar! You’re a liar!” Another lash, this one slicing across Quackity’s nose and tearing up old scar tissue, and then another. Charlie can feel his throat closing up, the air in his shrivelled, deformed lungs leaving him forcing out despicable words for this pitiful excuse of a human being again.

Quackity barely chokes the words out, as his back bursts into bloody rivers once more. “I’m not, I swear I’m not!”

“You are! You don’t respect me, you don’t even think I’m a person!”

“No! No, nonono– it’s not fucking true! FUCK!” Quackity writhes as his protests are met with the beads digging into his deep wounds.

“You don’t think I’m anything! Well, I am! I’m better than you!” Charlie can feel salt burning his eyes as the grime on his face dilutes with tears.

“Stop, please, stop!”

“I’m better! And you need to treat me like it! I’m in charge, I make the lessons! You call me sir!” Charlie won’t stop whipping. He’ll continue until Quackity’s back is a red sea.

“Slime, think about what you’re– SHIT!”

“Call me sir!” Charlie tears another hole in Quackity’s face, and blood bursts like fireworks across the bridge of his nose.

“PLEASE, SLIME!”

“SIR!” Charlie screams and brings the whip down again. “SIRSIRSIRSIRSIRSIRSIR!” Again, and again. Crimson sprays everywhere. He sees red, he tastes it, he wants more. He wants Quackity to hurt like he was.

Eventually he must realise that he isn’t hearing any pleas, no exaltation, no screams or yes sirs. Charlie lowers the whip, and claws air back into his aching lungs, his vocal cords protesting and turning into lead as they always do. As he calms, he sees the blood coming from Quackity’s neck, not sprayed there from his face or back, but pulsing steadily out of a gash straight through his artery.

The whip slips through Charlie’s fingers. He can feel the hot blood burning into his face. In the silence, he can hear his husky, wheezing breath trying to force its way down his shuddering throat. He drops to his knees and screams.

Quackity stares back at himself. The stained mirror with the frame of peeling gold paint presents him, and he won’t do. His single brown eye is weary and haunted, the bag of skin beneath it exaggerated and almost grey. There is a cut splitting his face, a new scar running perpendicular to his encounter with that pickaxe. His jumpsuit is soaked in old rusty brown stains. It’s shameful.

Beside his shaking hand gripping the edge of the sink sits a vial of foundation and a compact full of bright red rouge. He knows what he wants to do.

Quackity doesn’t know how long it takes to do his makeup, he is barely present in the dingy bathroom and with his trembling, injured hands, picking up the vial is nearly impossible. His face is never quite in the right place, his fingers never aligned quite right.

The foundation makes him look pale and corpse-like and it scares him. The vial slips through his hands and shatters against the grimy tile, spilling its contents everywhere.

No…

This is all you have. He’s going to be so mad.

Dropping to his knees, Quackity begins to scrape the foundation from the grout, ignoring as the shards of glass embed themselves inbetween his fingers. He drags the stuff over his face, lathering it heavily over what he doesn’t want to see. The raised scar tissue disappears beneath his powder, clinging to his face like a sleazy one-night stand. Eventually he can’t feel it as his face is caked.

When a particularly sharp piece of glass digs its way into the soft membrane of his hands, Quackity curls into himself and starts to sob.

“No, no… please no,” he whispers as he feels the tears begin to wash away all his hard work, the ugly scars once more exposed as the saltwater and foundation pools on the floor. He slams his fist against the floor and struggles to inhale. There's no air to enter his lungs. Quackity squeezes his eyes tight shut and concentrates for maybe an hour (maybe a year) to regain his composure. He scrapes up what little foundation is left from the tiles and scrubs and scrubs against his cheeks, doing what he can to cover up the tracks left by saltwater.

Quackity stands again, staring hopefully at the face in the mirror. It’s a little watery and the eyes are rimmed red, but it’s no longer cut into quarters by old wounds. Better. Not good enough.

He digs a greedy finger into the compact and lathers the rouge across his cheeks, covering more and more until it looks like his cheeks are soaked with crimson. It’s not enough. He smears it across his eyelids, shaking as he tries to get the corners precise and beautiful. He needs to be perfect.

The lips are a final touch, so bright he could be drooling and spitting out his own blood, but finally he looks how he wants. And he won’t cry again.

There’s a red dress hanging from the door handle, and Quackity’s grateful to change from his ragged clothes encrusted with old violence. It fits his form, and he finally feels satisfactory.

It takes a few tries to grasp the handle and leave the closet of a bathroom, but Quackity feels no less cramped stepping into the hotel suite. There’s a man sat on the side of the double bed, hunched over an ash tray and frowning at the impossible patterns on the mouldy carpet. A cigarette burns up in his hand, his crumpled suit jacket lays beside him.

“Hello, Schlatt.” The man sat on the bed turns his neck, stiff with advanced decay, to face Quackity, and his yellow teeth and decomposing lips split into a wide smile.

“There’s my man,” Schlatt throws his arms wide in greeting. “Welcome back! How you been?”

Quackity collapses onto the bed beside him and buries his face in his hands. “It’s been tough, man, not gonna lie to you.

“Yeah, you’ve been in and out, haven’t you? What’s going on?” A firm hand claps him on the back, between his bare shoulder blades where the sequined dress does not reach. The suggestion of another man’s phantom hands running over the ragged scars on his back makes Quackity shudder. Schlatt must sense this, because he curls his arm around his waist; still, the cruel metaphysics of Limbo prevent them from truly touching. Maybe it’s protection.

He considers not telling Schlatt anything, keeping his cards close to his chest, his heart shielded from the man that hurt him the most.

When he doesn’t speak, Schlatt prompts him again. “How’s Las Nevadas?”

This breaks Quackity, and he chokes back a sob. “It’s all gone, Schlatt. It burnt down. Purpled took it from me.”

“Who?”

The ignorant question nearly startles a laugh out of Quackity. “He’s – you know what, never mind. No one. Just some treacherous motherfucker that ruined everything.”

“Oh, so kind of like you, huh?”

Quackity twists out of Schlatt’s grip, disgusted by the comparison. “What the fuck? No!”

Schlatt laughs his booming laugh, hacking up droplets of blood from his decades-long substance abuse. The globs land on the carpet, but they have no physical form with which to stain, and the bright red spots disappear within seconds. If seconds are even still something they can count anymore.

“No? You’re not a traitor?”

“Of course not, Schlatt! I was your most loyal fucking supporter!”

“Until you decided you didn’t like following my authority and decided to put a bullet through my heart and join those terrorists in their dank cave! Until you left me to be Wilbur’s bitch! How is that little bastard doing anyways? Heard he found a way outta this place. You been whoring around with him again?”

The nausea that hits Quackity with each word Schlatt spits at him worms its way to the core of his soul, and his vision, the manifestation of the afterlife around him, warps until it the floor tilts and the walls curve, delivering him unto the man in the stained dress shirt like an oesophagus.

“Well? What you been doing with him, huh?”

Quackity stumbles backwards, struggling to force his feet to find solid ground as he slides towards Schlatt, who cackles wholeheartedly at this cruel display. He lashes out, driving away from the twisted jaws that threaten to swallow him whole. Something must shift in the mechanism of this labyrinth as he swings his ghostly, unconnected fists, and everything bends impossibly. Quackity can feel himself be split in half, and then into quarters, then further and further until his atoms can barely find each other, sliced and grated into fine dust. And then, despite his lack of anything that could conceivably be called a body, Quackity feels a great force punch him in his gut, and he comes to hunched over the bar, nursing an empty glass.

He gasps, pantomiming the act of drawing breath into lungs that aren’t there, and trembles as he tries to regain his composure. Eventually, Quackity’s construct seems stable enough that he can command the pretence of muscles to take in his surroundings, gain some meagre understanding of this unfathomable place. The bar is dingy, and only one of the many hanging chandeliers flickers occasionally with feeble electrical signals. The light can barely penetrate the choking dust motes in the air. The labels on the liquor bottles behind the bar are unintelligible. The gramophone in the corner mumbles spiralling static. The tables are all set out with cutlery for ghosts that will never arrive. The entire space feels much too large, and yet unbearably claustrophobic.

Quackity thinks he must be alone at last, until he hears something distinguishable from the skipping, wailing static. There are two bodies in the corner, beneath the heavy velvet curtains that block whatever could be outside the ornate windows with peeling gold-painted frames. One of them, dressed in faded street clothes, lies prone, his face pressed to the faded carpet, drool staining across the fractal patterns. He appears to be in a stupor so deep his torso rises and falls with breath only once every few minutes. The other, crouched over him in a crumpled, moth-eaten suit, is watching for any sign of their friend stirring. They’re muttering, counting.

"Nineteen million, seven hundred thousand and forty-six.

"Nineteen million, seven hundred thousand and forty-seven.

"Nineteen million, seven hundred thousand and fifty. No, wait – nineteen million seven hundred thousand and… forty... eight. Yeah.

"Nineteen million…"

Turning away, Quackity lays his head on the dusty countertop and closes his eye. No one here can mock him, they’re all too stuck in their own personal hells. It’s dark enough to create some semblance of nighttime, and an ache synonymous with exhaustion tugs gently yet persistently at his eyelid. Quackity lets his head connect with the bar and rests. He drifts in and out of consciousness, the silence creeping in from the corners of his mind interrupted whenever the wisp in the corner reaches another increment in their counting. Quackity finds himself following along with the numbers.

Nineteen million seven hundred and one thousand and ten.

Nineteen million seven hundred and one thousand and eleven.

Nineteen million seven hundred and one thousand and twelve.

He’s awoken by the sound of his glass, still clutched in his hand, refilling. Quackity cracks open his eye, and the blurry shapes slowly come into focus. There’s the counting one..... Ranboo, their name was Ranboo. They're still hunched in a ball on the floor, but the man with them – was it Mexican Dream? – was gone. Instead, they're surrounded by half-empty wine bottles.

Quackity turns his head back to his own drink, staring down at the dark liquid. Distorted in its infinite reflections within the crystal glass is the face of the bartender, his matted mutton chops framing that twisted smile.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Schlatt grins, then bursts out laughing at his own stupid, sick joke. In the corner, Ranboo chokes a little.

Quackity doesn’t think he can deal with this bastard sober. He raises his glass and downs it in one go – but he’s been here long enough that his nerves and limbs are growing more and more disconnected and most of the bitter drink sloughs down his dress. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like the liquid is actually there. It’s not like the dress is real enough to stain.

“Did you sleep well? Get your beauty rest, mi amor?”

“Shut up.” Quackity hasn’t even drunk anything, how the fuck does he already feel hungover? Schlatt’s harsh words slam and echo around his skull.

“Come on, I’ve been waiting days for this conversation! You ran out on me, man!”

“Days? Thought those didn’t mean anything here. How many years you been stuck in this place?”

Schlatt sniffs and picks up his own glass. He’s definitely not supposed to be drinking on the job, but since when has that ever stopped him? Certainly not during his tenure as president. “Days,” he begins to explain, blatantly patronising, “is a very long time here when something interesting finally starts happening! Fuck all those years, I got you back! Talk to me, Quackity!”

A wethered, phantom-pale hand claps down on his shoulder. Quackity stares begrudgingly at it, holding him like an old friend. Holding him the way Schlatt had done when things were better. When they spoke with each other, properly, on the gleaming White House balcony with clean-cut sugar lined out on the table. When they fell in love.

“Fine,” Quackity growls. “Pour me another drink.”

The corner of Schlatt’s mouth curls up even further. “There’s my vice president.”

For a moment, as more liquor swirls into Quackity’s glass, and Schlatt raises his own, everything feels almost familiar. Almost gentle, as the tumblers meet with a muffled clink, an echo of a night’s celebration after spending hours pouring over policies.

“So?” Schlatt probes after a swallow. “How is he?”

“Who?”

“Wilbur. What’s it like having another dead guy out and about?”

Ranboo glances up, swaying dangerously on their haunches as that sudden move shifts their perspective. Quackity passively wonders if the kid’s taken up drinking. Suppose it’s not surprising after all this time with the other two.

“Well?”

Quackity starts massaging his temples. The headache is getting more concentrated. “Do we have to talk about –”

“Come on, tell me about it! I wanna know, man! You sorted out your affair with him yet? Got it over with and got down –”

“Christ, man, do you have to say all this bullshit?” Quackity snaps easily, almost kicking his barstool from out beneath his legs. Ranboo flinches and tucks his head back into his knees. “It’s fucking complicated, alright? He came back and he was a rogue element who was just trying to one up me! Just more of the same old rivalry shit! Constant stupid tantrums when I offered something he thought was below him and shitty power trips that got people killed! He’s just some self-absorbed skank that sleeps in a caravan. I don’t give a fuck about him, and I don’t know why you do either!”

“Jesus, alright, man! I was just wondering. Have another fucking drink,” Schlatt raises his hands in mock surrender, then attempts to placate his old vice with more spirits.

“Besides, there were already others in the picture.” Quackity, mumbles, accepting the peace offering. He doesn’t really want to tell his oldest flame about Sapnap and Karl, but alcohol has loosened his lips.

“Oh?” Schlatt turns to him, eyes shining with a hunger and envy Quackity remembers well. This is new information to him.

“And it’s none of your business.” Quackity snatches his glass and, once again, downs the whole thing in one go. It burns, but not as much as the blood pooling in his cheeks.

“Aw, I just wanna have a conversation with you! Fuck, has it been so long you don’t wanna tell me anything?”

“Yes, it has,” he sniffs, indignant. “I’ve moved on from you, Schlatt. The world’s moved on. I had – have a new country, I am the one in charge of myself. And I’m gonna get everything back, with my own two fucking hands, like all the other shit in my life I’ve had to singlehandedly work for. And I’ll never have to think about you or any of those other bastards ever again.”

Schlatt laughs his booming, all-consuming laughs and slams his glass into the bar. It shatters everywhere, crystals splaying out as far as they can reach. After all this time, all this time to recover and move on, Quackity still throws his hands up when glass around his old lover and president begins to fracture. He can feel the slices digging themselves into his palms. And then, something much softer, much more horrible.

Schlatt’s fingers interlock with his and pull him out of that protective shell. They lock eyes, and there is nothing but malicious lust in Schlatt’s small pupils. He leans forward, and his beard brushes Quackity’s quivering, flushed cheek. The old president whispers, “You’re not getting out of this cycle, sugar pumpkin. This is you forever. It’s not something you can fight your way out of. It’s you. You’re my vice president, you got that?”

Quackity wants to fight this. He wants to prove that he's more, that he's healed and grown beyond what this disgraced president did to him, but the splintering glass still echoes in his ears, echoes repeated thousands of times over, replaying from meetings and intimate conversations in the cabinet gone sour. Those awful hands grip his, almost gently, in the cruel, most mocking way that only Schlatt can manage. They still his trembling, and keep him anchored to the agonising familiar. It's so much easier to fall back into what he knew, to give up control, than to crawl forward and fight for better.

So when Quackity parts his lips to give his choked response, he chooses the easy answer.

“…yes.”

“Yes what?” Schlatt snarls, but there is a contorted, toothy smile behind that threat.

“…yes, Mr President… sir.”

“That’s better.”

Cracked, dry lips plant a kiss on his rouged cheek, and Quackity has never hated anyone more than he does in that moment.

Chapter Text

Quackity doesn’t realise he’s alive at first. This is his… third? His third time being dragged back from still lungs and frozen heart, and the feeling of his mind returning to a body desperately rejecting being woken up from eternal rest isn’t one he’s gotten used to yet.

Once again, he has to readjust to the physical plane, the sensation of muscles and skin wrapped around bone, nerves firing and directing movements almost exactly (except for the tremors he’s developed recently, but that’s probably a separate issue). Being in a real space, a room that does not bend and shift and stretch from the size of a closet to an ocean, also takes some getting used to.

As feeling and awareness slowly return to his exhausted form, Quackity is made aware of two things – the throbbing lacerations scabbing along his face, hands, neck and back, mortal wounds healing in impossible time, and the harsh slapping of a gloved hand against his cheek.

Quackity cracks open his eye and forces it to drift up to that vile grin, and as the wailing of a phantom gramophone fades from his ears, he realises that this necromancer is speaking.

“Wh… what?” he forces open his jaw, painfully unstiffening from rigor mortis.

“Oh, I was just asking for your input, Quackity,” Dream sounds awfully cheerful, but he’s clutching the whip Slime must have killed him with, and holding onto the cowering mass of muscle and slop so tight he almost reaches bone (is that a tibia in Slime’s shoulder?). Quackity knows this man is very angry. “I’d just like to know why I can’t leave you two alone for five fucking minutes?” His tone stays light, but there is venom behind every word.

Quackity reaches a hand up to massage his temples (why does he feel like he’s hungover? The booze in Limbo didn’t even exist), but pulls away sharply when the barely healed cuts across his palm collides with the new scar splitting his face.

“Um…” he is way too disoriented to be dealing with this shit. Everything hurts, and his head is spinning worse than the wildest nights of Las Nevadas. “I… don’t… know,” he swallows, hardly managing to avoid choking on his swollen, dehydrated tongue. His answer is stupid and slow, not the kind of sharp-witted comeback he would have liked to throw at Dream, his only remaining defence. Quackity can barely resent himself through the agony of scabbing wounds.

Dream huffs. “Alright. Slime? Do you have anything to share with the class?”

Charlie really doesn’t want to speak in front of Quackity again. All of his anger has been spent, and now there’s just an aching spot in his elbow socket that he strained too much from reciprocal violence.

“Slime?” There is a warning between those teeth. Charlie really doesn’t want to get into more trouble than he’s already in.

“N… no. Dream,” he forces out, barely audible and barely understandable. The grip on his arm tightens enough to hurt.

“Really?” Dream sounds really pissed off now. Quackity, finally regaining control over his body and sense of balance, slowly pulls himself up to his feet, ripping open the scabs from his first round of lashes. He doesn’t want to be on the ground when Dream decides to act.

“I come back to find Quackity’s ugly corpse on the ground and you screaming like a little girl, and neither of you have anything to say about it? What the hell am I going to do with you?” he says, as if wrangling misbehaving toddlers and not… whatever Slime and Quackity are.

“Man, just…” Quackity speaks up, eyeing the tightening grip on Slime’s malformed wrist with worry. “Just, whatever you’ve done to Slime, let him go. He’s… he’s not fucking well, Dream, I don’t…”

I don’t think he wants to be near me. I think he hates me.

“I don’t… neither of us want this.”

Dream releases Slime with a shove, and instead wraps his cruel, gloved hand through Quackity’s matted hair, pulling him too close to that mask.

“Two things, Quackity. One, I don’t give a fuck what you want, and two, what the hell did I tell you to call me? Huh?”

Quackity’s hands fly to his hair, desperately trying to pry Dream’s vice grip open as he winces centimetres from the Warden’s hidden face. There’s no way in hell he’s indulging in this fucking power trip, unless…

Slime cowers against the wall, clutching his wrist and watching the proceedings with apprehension. Quackity can’t read his face and body language like he used to, before the fall, but he knows this look. It’s the look Tubbo had right before his face got blown in two, the look Tommy wore whenever someone moved too suddenly on their visits to his exile, and it’s undoubtedly the look Quackity contorted his face into when Technoblade brought the pickaxe down on him. It is the primal expression of a prey animal cornered by the harbinger of their death. It is painted so clearly on Slime’s warped features.

Slime is different to Quackity’s other old flames. They’ve all betrayed him, in one way or another, but Slime is the only one that, in this moment, Quackity is willing to forgive. The lashes across his face and palms mean nothing in this moment. He just wants Slime to stop hurting him, and to stop being hurt in return. He wants him to leave. And if Dream needs to hear him beg like a dog to make it happen…

Quackity lowers his hands and stops fighting. He swallows and forces himself to meet the beady eyes of Dream’s mask. “Please, sir.” The word is poison in his tongue. If he had a sink, he would scrub his mouth out obsessively once he was left alone. “Sir, just… let him go. He can’t be here. It’s not good for him. Please.”

“Hm.” Dream releases Quackity’s hair, and he only just manages to stay upright. He turns his piercing, dangerous gaze from his prisoner to his pet project, hunched, staring not at him, but at Quackity.

Charlie is having a bad time. The anger is boiling again. He can literally feel gas bubbles rising through his intestines, filling him with rage. Here goes Quackity, talking about him like he isn’t here, like he can’t fucking speak for himself. Like he needs someone else to save him. He squeezes his wrist so tight the joint nearly breaks the surface of his filmy skin.

There is silence, as Charlie stares with loathing at his old, horrible boss, Quackity stares at Dream, desperately gauging for any kind of reaction, and Dream stares at him, analysing him like an interesting science project.

“Alright, Slime,” the Warden says finally, snapping the tension. “Let’s go have a discussion, shall we? Figure this whole situation out.” He saunters towards the bridge, but stops when Charlie stays frozen in place. Dream reaches his glove beneath his mask like he’s massaging the bridge of his nose. Letting out a long-suffering sigh, he snaps his fingers and gestures to the spot next to him. Like calling a dog. “You’re already in fucking trouble, Slime. Just make this one thing easy, will you?” That gets Charlie moving.

Stupidly, impulsively, Quackity staggers forward, reaching out a hand to catch his old partner. “Slime – wait,” he pleads, he needs to look him in the eyes and figure out what the fuck is going on. Instead of touching Slime’s cloak or hand, though, Quackity is intercepted by Dream, holding him easily and bending his arm behind his back. Quackity gasps from the new pain.

“You are on thin fucking ice, Quackity,” Dream sneers, right by his ear. “It’s a miracle I’m even considering discussing your idea, even though you keep pulling these disrespectful stunts, alright? So shut the fuck up.”

“You’re considering–” Quackity cuts himself off with a pained grunt, as his arm is twisted further.

“Why are you speaking? You speak when I fucking tell you to speak. You got that?”

Teeth clenched, Quackity steels himself from the torrent of abuse he wants to scream. “Yes, sir,” he hisses, and grunts when Dream releases his arm, throwing him to the floor.

“Come on, Slime,” commands the man Quackity hates most, stomping back over the bridge. This time, Slime doesn’t hesitate to follow. Quackity’s forehead is pressed to the obsidian with shame, so he doesn’t see Slime look back at him with an unreadable expression.

Charlie stands, vulnerable and small, in the middle of his room, watching Dream from Pandora’s Vault pace back and forth. He doesn’t dare say anything. He just waits for the punishment to begin. Finally, Dream stops in front of him and looks him up and down for a long moment.

“Tell me why you killed Quackity.”

It feels like if he speaks, Charlie will light Dream’s incredibly short fuse. But he knows the punishment for not speaking, so he takes a moment to nudge his lungs and vocal cords into the right spot, and inhales.

“He didn’t love me.”

Silence. It drags. Charlie develops a sudden interest in the patterns of the blackstone floor.

“… Is that it?” Dream gauds.

“… I needed to ask him. I-If he… loved me. I don’t think… he… no. He didn’t. So, I needed him to… I needed to hurt him.”

“Right.” Dream takes a moment to think. “You couldn’t take my word for it? That he didn’t love you? Don’t you trust me?”

Panic rises in Charlie’s shoulders. One side of his collarbone pierces his skin, even as he takes shaking, irregular breaths to soothe his tightening muscles. “No, I… do trust you. I… needed to hear him say it.”

“And did it help?” Dream is still mad, but the sudden threat has passed.

“…No.”

Dream nods. “That’s what I thought.”

More agonising silence. Charlie squirms under the unbroken gaze, feeling like he’s being dissected. He’s sure he can feel his intestines unwinding a little, an impulse he’s sure he’s gotten under control. He resists the urge to burp out the nervous gas swimming through his stomach.

“Do you think he’s right?”

“Excuse me, Dream from Pandora’s Vault?” Charlie doesn’t know what’s going on. He belches a little. Dream ignores it.

“Quackity. Is he right?”

This is a test.

“Quackity is never right,” Charlie says, parroting from an old script Purpled drilled into him those months ago.

“O- okay, obviously,” Dream agrees, and there’s a little grin in his voice. “Alright, forget Quackity. Do you think you should leave?”

Baffled, Charlie opens his mouth to reply, but it just hangs open, nothing coming out. He’s never dared to think about leaving. He isn’t even sure its possible. What would he be without Dream? What would he do? Surely, just wander until he collapses, right? He’s not anything without guidance. He couldn’t survive by himself.

“Well?” Dream from Pandora’s Vault is expecting an answer. Charlie doesn’t have one for him.

“I- I don’t… where would I go? I don’t… have anywhere else.” It feels dangerous, voicing this aloud. Charlie braces for something terrible to happen.

It doesn’t.

“I mean…” Dream trails off, deep in thought. “If I can’t trust you to be here with Quackity, there is one other place you could go.”

Quackity’s new pastime is scraping the dried clumps of gore and filth off of the walls and floor and flicking the flakes towards the lava. The great thing about it is that there never stops being body fluids for him to scratch at, not in this never-ending torture loop. There’s always something to do. He wishes someone would come in with a bucket and a mop, he’s increasingly concerned about infection. Then again, infection doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of this game.

Even so, Quackity would rather avoid it. Not that he has much hope. He can spend all his rest time peeling filth from the wall, but there’s always more after Dream visits. It grows faster than he can clean.

This prison used to have standards. It was part of Sam’s routine, to make sure Dream’s cell was kept well enough that the man didn’t contract some sort of awful sickness, and Quackity knew he spent hours making sure the room was sterile for their… interrogations. He misses Sam. The only friendly face he ever saw in these walls. He’s not sure if he can still count Slime as a friendly face right now, no matter whether he forgives that walking amalgam of mysteries or not.

Whatever. Quackity’s too tired to think about it. He’ll just try to scratch out a surface large enough for him to rest his head without lying in old blood, and not think about anything else. He could use the strait jacket in the corner next to the toilet as a pillow, but he really doesn’t want to touch it. Just keep scratching.

He goes for hours, slow as hell because his new nails are still growing in, and it hurts like a bitch. Eventually, Quackity has the bright idea to unwind one of his many bandages and use one of the few unsoiled spots to polish the hot obsidian.

It’s ridiculous, and humiliating. It reminds him of when he was much younger, before the politics and the business, before founding his own city and striking it big. He doesn’t like to think about that time. Quackity has gotten used to being in charge, of giving orders, of having other people to clean his floors for him. His life has turned on its head and, in an instant, he’s back to being the scrappy, frightened kid living in a hovel. He’s pleasing whoever holds the most power, calling them sir and doing their bidding, to gain the most (or hurt the least). What has he become?

Giving up, Quackity leans against the wall and resigns himself to the foul conditions. Maybe if he dies of infection, Dream will be bothered to mop up after himself. It’s a long shot, but it’s the best Quackity’s got. Until he gets bored. Then he’ll just give in and resume the Sysiphean task, desperate for anything to do except wait. He’s got to be careful it doesn’t become a compulsion.

That how Dream ended up, towards the end of his stay. Twitching, tapping his fingers, counting the seconds until Quackity’s next visit. That’s how Ranboo seems, too. Flinching at Schlatt’s cruel laughter, and again, that awful counting. Counting until what? Someone comes to save them? What a lovely fucking pipe dream.

Quackity has sworn to himself that he won’t end up like Dream. He resolved not to break, not to call Dream sir, to keep his mind intact. It was of the utmost importance that he didn’t bend over backwards to do whatever this madman wants, just to minimise pain. He was a proud man. He would stay proud.

Unless, of course, Dream found the one thing that could break him immediately. Slime might be able to freely wander the corridors of this groaning construct, but he’s still a prisoner. Dream can hold him above Quackity, use him as the ace up his sleeve to get Quackity to comply immediately.

He’s reminded of when he joined the server stepping through the nether portal, into the giant cavern where Dream kept everyone’s most precious things. He supposes… Slime is his most precious thing. He shaped Slime, nurtured him, taught him everything he’d learned, putting as much care into his new friend as he had into his country.

… Friend is the wrong word. Slime was more. Not a rebound from Karl and Sapnap, but a new, loving partner that marked a new chapter in Quackity’s life, one where he was valued and cared for. He wonders if Slime ever dreams about the softer nights, eating together in the quiet, empty restaurants and gazing at the kaleidoscope skyline. The intimate hours. The few moments where Quackity truly let his guard down for the first time in months.

Quackity isn’t sure there’s a word to describe what Slime is to him. An heir, a friend, a confidant, a mentee, perhaps even a lover. And those are all roles that Slime filled, but… he’s something more.

And Dream saw that. He used it. And now, Quackity has to do whatever he says, otherwise God knows what will happen to Slime.

Quackity sits, hunched over and staring into space, long enough that his hand wanders to a patch of gore and begins to scratch at it again. All his efforts are concentrated on trying to keep the horrible images of Slime being tortured from surfacing in his mind. He sees enough in his nightmares.

In some sick way, Quackity is almost relieved when he hears redstone shift and lava begin to drain, interrupting him from his spiral.

He gets to his feet as he sees that plastic grin reveal itself. Maybe he’ll have to play nice, but he won’t let Dream kick him while he’s down.

Dream enters, and wordlessly drops a potato and a skin of water on the floor for Quackity. He spends a moment just staring at his prisoner, tapping his fingers against his sword as if in deep thought (the compulsions have not fully left him, Quackity realises), then turns to leave.

“W-” Quackity begins to say, but he withers slightly as Dream pauses, hand still resting on his sword’s hilt. You speak when I fucking tell you to speak. He swallows. “Wait. Dream.”

Dream doesn’t turn around.

“…Sir,” Quackity spits, and this time, Dream responds.

“Yes, Quackity?” No mask can hide the dripping satisfaction in his voice, the little triumph at only responding to that sign of respect and deference.

“What… what did you say to Slime? Where is he?”

Dream tilts his head slightly, and stays silent, as if debating on whether the truth, a lie, or a refusal to answer would hurt Quackity more. Quackity almost doesn’t want to know. He’s afraid of what he’ll hear.

“Slime’s fine. He’s left, actually.”

Quackity’s eyes widen. Holy shit. Dream actually let him go? In what fucking universe?

“Left? Left where?” he asks desperately. Why did Dream listen to him? Release a prisoner from his web? What is this maniac playing at?

Quackity can’t see Dream’s face, but he can sense the real, wide smile beneath the fake, painted-on grin.

“He’s gone back to Las Nevadas.”

Chapter Text

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing about this makes sense. It’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny. Slime? Let go? Back to Las Nevadas? Dream has to be lying.

“…What?” is all Quackity can think to say, dumbfounded by this bombshell dropped so casually.

“Yeah. Figured he could use a break from your sorry ass, so Purpled’s looking after him for me until he calms down.”

Quackity’s tongue sits slack in his open mouth, still trying to make sense of what Dream is telling him. The warden takes it as an opportunity to keep mouthing off.

“You know, he was behaving so well until you showed up. He was happy, helpful, chatty. We were helping him move past all the shit you did to him. I thought he was ready. Thought it would be… I dunno, cathartic for him to help me handle you.” He shrugs. “I guess he couldn’t handle it. You really did a fucking number on him, Quackity. You’re good at that, aren’t you? Hurting people. First me, then your old boyfriends, and now–”

“SHUT UP!” Quackity snaps, snatching the potato from the floor and hurling it at Dream’s mask. It makes contact but does absolutely nothing against the man dripping in netherite. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he screams. “YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT WE FUCKING–”

A heavy, backhanded slap cuts Quackity off and sends him stumbling to the wall, leaning against it and clutching his cheek as blood fills his mouth. He doesn’t have a moment to process what just happened; Dream grabs him and throws him to the floor, and a swift kick nails Quackity in the chest.

A broken gasp, interrupted by the blood he spits out onto that fucking boot. It’s plenty to get him to stop talking, forget about Dream’s jabs at his old relationships and focus on curling into a ball, protecting his vital organs. Dream doesn’t care, his boot lands indiscriminately on his shins, knuckles and forehead, kicking and kicking until all Quackity can see is red.

He groans through a split and swollen lip when Dream picks him up by the collar and throws him onto his back, leaving him unprotected from any more attacks. Quackity raises his hands to protect himself, but Dream catches his wrists easily and pins him to the ground with a knee against his chest.

“How many times are we gonna go through this, Quackity?” he hisses, digging his nails into the soft skin of his prisoner’s wrists. “When are you gonna learn to fucking respect me, huh?” He raises a fist, and Quackity can only writhe uselessly in defence. “You don’t talk back.” Thud. Quackity’s nose bursts with blood as Dream’s punch lands. “You don’t swear at me.” Thud. “You don’t fucking interrupt me.” Thud. “Do you understand?”

Quackity is really tempted to say yes, to do anything to make the torture stop, but he’s a stubborn fucking bitch and Dream hasn’t beaten all the pride out of him just yet. If the warden is to be trusted, Slime isn’t here anymore. He’s only been subservient and addressing Dream as sir to get what he wants for his old protégé. There isn’t anything left to lose. In his lucidity, he will not bend to this man’s will. Not anymore.

“F…f-fuck you,” he spits, barely able to get the words out past a broken nose and swollen tongue.

Dream grabs a fistful of his hair, pulls his head up and slams it back down into the obsidian. Quackity’s eyes roll back, and for a blissful moment, he is unconscious.

It doesn’t last long. Quackity gasps awake maybe ten seconds later. He is still pinned underneath Dream, but the man has discarded his mask, and Quackity is free to study the nasty scars sculpting his face. He remembers being the one to create most of these.

The other thing he can see is Dream’s eyes, full of cold, calculated fury.

“You know,” Dream snarls, grip tightening on Quackity’s wrists. “We’ve been in these exact positions before, only I was on the receiving end. Do you remember that, Quackity? Do you remember doing this to me?”

Contorting his bleeding face, Quackity gives Dream a crooked smile, forcing his next cruel words past his split lip. “Those are some… some of my fondest fucking memories.”

Almost cartoonishly, Dream’s nostrils flare with rage, but he still manages a grin. “And do you remember the final weeks of your visits? When I was so fucking emaciated that I couldn’t stand to greet you? And all I could do was lie there and wait for you to start… Do you get off to that, too?”

“The best weeks. You in your fucking place,” Quackity replies, matching Dream’s piercing gaze. For a second, he thinks he sees a genuine flash of anguish in the warden’s eyes, a tremble in his voice, but it’s so subtle he could write it off as imagining things.

Dream nods slowly, and he can see him digesting that information, confirming just how Quackity felt about the worst days of his life.

“Good to know,” he says, and Quackity is sure he can sense a slight tremor in the hands keeping him pinned down. There’s a moment where neither of them say anything, just staring at each other, remembering all the times they’ve been in this cell together, one vindicative, one furious. And then Dream breaks the silence.

“So you think I’d enjoy doing the same to you?”

Fuck. Quackity really doesn’t want his ability to walk taken away from him. He thinks he’d throw up from the shame of being able to do nothing but lie at Dream’s feet while he was tortured. Not like walking is doing you much good anyway. He’s trying to think of a witty retort, or something he can say that will convince Dream to back off, when the warden smirks and answers his own question.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Slime isn’t here anymore,” Quackity blurts. “If I can believe your lying ass, he’s gone. You don’t have him.”

“That’s right,” Dream says. “He’s with Purpled. Good listening, Quackity.” His condescending grin splits his face.

Quackity struggles under the weight of his captor. “Shut the fuck up,” he hisses. “I’m not done.” Dream starts to interrupt him, raising him up to slam him into the ground again, but he keeps talking. “You’re an idiot, Dream. If Slime’s not here anymore, you don’t have anything to keep me in line. You’ve taken everything from me. My country, my people, my freedom. What reason do I have to obey you now? You won’t break me like this. Not the way I broke you. Fuck you.”

As he speaks, Dream’s eyes widen, but so does his grin. He seizes Quackity’s jaw in his iron grip, squeezing tight so he can’t talk properly.

“You know I appreciate a good challenge, Quackity. You think this changes things? We’re right back where we were months ago. I had nothing but the book, and now you have nothing but your pride. You think you won but here we are. I am a god, you’re nothing. Those months didn’t break me. Because I’m better than you. I know what makes you tick. I’m already under your skin. All you have left, your pride and your fucking body, I own it all. I can take it away any time I want. And I’ll enjoy every second of it. So please, keep acting like this. Keep clinging on to what you have. It’ll make it so much better when I destroy it all.”

Shaken, Quackity opens his mouth to retort, but Dream clamps a hand tight over his lips. He bites down, but his decaying teeth don’t even make a dent in the netherite gauntlet.

“Let’s stop pussying around, shall we?” Dream continues, an evil glint in his eyes. “You’ve always loved talking, haven’t you, Quackity? It’s all you ever do. It’s what gets you out of trouble… but mostly it’s the reason you’re in trouble in the first place, isn’t it?”

He pauses as if waiting for a response, and his wide grin turns into a satisfied smirk when there’s nothing.

“So, I’m gonna make this easy for you, Quackity. I think you could do with going silent for a while. It’ll be good for you.”

His smile warps once more into a twisted, sadistic contortion, and from behind his back, Dream pulls out a wickedly sharp knife. Quackity starts to struggle, fruitlessly tossing and turning under Dream’s restraint, fighting harder and harder as the blade gets closer to his face. The warden pauses for a minute, knife above the prisoner’s wide eye. Then he snorts, and tosses it aside, drinking in the instant relief from below.

“I’m just toying with you,” he lilts. “I’m not gonna cut out your tongue, geez. Those things don’t grow back. I’ll start missing our lovely conversations.” He reaches into his back pocket again and pulls out something a little less extreme. The hand is removed from Quackity’s face, but before he can hurl a torrent of abuse at Dream, there is what could only be described as a muzzle in his mouth and all the horrible things he’s trying to say are completely muffled. Dream listens to the quiet sound of his protests, and sighs contentedly. “Now that is a lovely sound.” Calmly, he reaches around the back of Quackity’s head and buckles the gag up tightly, going so far as to attach a padlock, just to make sure. “There,” he says, stepping away at last.

Quackity reaches up to feel the heavy weight on his face, and the padlock keeping him silent. He gives an experimental tug, but the gag holds tight. His shaking hands drop away and clench by his sides, and he is painfully aware of the blood rushing to his cheeks.

With wide, satisfied eyes, Dream gives him a reassuring shoulder pat that he staggers back from, at the same time lashing out to try and hurt Dream for even daring to get anywhere near him. Quackity has spent an excruciating amount of time in this hell, but all of his nightmarish experiences half undressed, chained up and too injured to move didn’t feel half as vulnerable as this. Dream is right, his sharp tongue is his only line of defence, the only reason he ever got out of the messes he created, and now the only vehicle for his pride. He isn’t sure that he would feel more vulnerable if he was stood naked with all of his skin flayed. That was his last line of defence.

 Completely defenceless, Quackity presses himself against the back wall, wide eyes boring into Dream’s. Unmasked, the Warden’s pleasure at seeing him like this is on full display. He’s like a vampire, drinking it all in as his prey shrivels up into a hollow, mortified shell. Quackity just wishes that whatever he’s going to do next, he’ll get it over with.

It’s like this bastard can read minds.

Dream steps towards him, no longer relishing in a silent Quackity, but studying his body and deciding what to do next.

“I can’t choose,” he begins. “I could break every bone in your feet and legs now…” Pause, for dramatic effect. Quackity begins to shake his head desperately. “Or,” he drawls, “I could save it for later, when I need to blow off some steam.” A small smile. He can’t resist. “What do you think, Quackity?”

A moment of furious shame where he can’t reply, then Quackity realises he still has one method of communication. He raises his middle finger swiftly and violently, waving the defiant symbol in his captor’s face. Dream swipes at his wrist, probably to break it, but Quackity is prepared and he pulls back before the gauntlet can close around it. He can feel the gag shift as he manages a cheeky smile that definitely radiates from his eyes.

It doesn’t last. Easily, Dream shoves him to the ground and brings his netherite boot down on Quackity’s right shin. Even through the gag, his scream fills the suffocating cell as bone shatters. It isn’t so bad that his shin is on display through his skin, but curling into a protective foetal position, he can feel the shards jostling around in his leg.

He glares up at Dream, tears streaming from his eyes, demanding an answer. The asshole just shrugs. “You know this, Quackity. You disrespect me and you pay for it! Are you stupid? Have I hit you over the head enough times that nothing sticks anymore? Stop staring at me like it’s my fault, you know what to do to make it stop!”

All Quackity can think to do is, once again, raise a shaking middle finger. This time, he’s too slow to stop Dream from grabbing it and painfully twisting his wrist.

An animalistic hiss, “And if you keep doing that, I might just cut your finger off. How does that sound, Quackity?” That quiet, dangerous tone isn’t a bluff. Quackity lowers his finger, and Dream releases him.

“Good,” he says, and steps away. The tension drops from his shoulders as he waltzes towards the bridge. “I’m bored. I think I’ll head over to Las Nevadas and see how Slime’s getting on. Have fun like, listening to the guardians cry or whatever.”

With a jaunty wave and a final satisfied glance at all the emotions running over Quackity’s face, Dream saunters back over the bridge, and the lava falls.

Quackity doesn’t get up.

Chapter Text

Quackity’s fingernails, regrown at last, are already red and raw. One of them has cracked down the middle. And there isn’t a dent in the gag covering his face. Whoever made this did a damn good job.

He stopped trying to break the padlock pretty quickly, it was obvious he wasn’t going to get through the thick steel with emaciated fingers, but he could try the seams of leather the straps attached to. He spent a lot of time worrying at the threads, delicately trying to unwind them, but when he discovered the bolts and studs holding everything together, he just started ripping and tearing, trying to punch a hole in the fabric.

Nothing worked, and now his face hurts and itches, and his fingers are bloody and trembling. He half considers continuing his fruitless efforts, for the sole reason that it distracts from the loose bone shards in his leg.

Quackity hasn’t worked up the courage to roll up his jumpsuit trouser to inspect the damage. Every time he moves it accidently, he feels a wave of nausea, and images of what it might look like churn his stomach. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate anymore, and he definitely doesn’t want to throw up into the gag.

He just lies, stock still on his side, trying not to think about anything he’s feeling. But no matter how hard he tries to shut everything out, one question crawls its way through – Where is Slime?

There are two options – Dream is telling the truth (highly unlikely), and Slime has been shipped back to whatever remains of Las Nevadas, or he’s been put somewhere else. Somewhere much worse.

Thoughts of where he could be – somewhere deeper in Pandora’s Vault, somewhere darker and drier – fill Quackity’s mind’s eye. He sees a tomb – a room with no door, sealed off with obsidian, and Slime’s cadaver, abandoned and forgotten, rotting in the centre. Maybe Dream’s given up on him. It’s easier to work alone, after all.

Or, by an insane toss of the dice, Dream was being honest, and Slime is back home. What does Las Nevadas even look like anymore? He doesn’t remember much of the attack – bombs and fireworks, smoke in the air and corpses of the clones in scorched piles. A part of him likes to imagine it as the best parts frozen in time, a glimmering skyline, luxurious lounges and pristine hotel rooms waiting, untouched, for him to return. Another part can only see rubble – another failed country like L’Manberg or El Rapids, populated only by ghosts.

Dream said he was with Purpled in Las Nevadas. If Quackity is to believe him, that probably means his city state is still running in some capacity, under the watchful eye of that ungrateful asshole. So how does Slime fit into that? Vice president or prisoner? The fucking cleaner? Maybe, if he could talk, he’d forget his dignity and beg Dream to tell him more.

But he can’t, and neither of them are here. All Quackity can do is keep wondering as his leg begins to swell and grow hot with the beginnings of an infection.

You sit in a chair of crushed velvet, staring at an off-white piece of paper covered in characters you can’t read. On the other side of the marble desk is the man who found you hiding in a hole, holding out a fountain pen.

You stare at the pot of ink beside the paper, a deep, deep blue like the corners of the caves you used to wander, when you were something else. One of many.

The pen lands with a small clink in the dark pool and is held out to you again. You take it with a shaking limb and notice the difference between yours and the human hand, light olive against radioactive green. One is organised into neat bones and tendons, the other shifts through a hundred different forms with each passing moment.

You don’t have a name to write at the bottom of the page like you’re being prompted. You had a name, once. Maybe a few different times. You don’t think about it very often. The human on the other side of the table lets an exasperated sigh. You can feel the warm, slightly damp air on the side of your face. You just write down what you know about yourself, what you are.

You stare out the window at the sunset pierced by the glistening towers, bleeding out over glass and concrete.

You are going to stay here for a long time.

When the bridge rises and the lava drains, Quackity swallows the throbbing feeling in his shin and drags himself to the corner of the cell. Bracing his hands on either wall, he pushes himself up with his left leg, wobbling the whole way, until he’s standing as straight as he can. He’s white knuckling the wall, but he hates being on the ground in front of Dream. It’s the least he can do to reclaim whatever dignity he can.

When the warden steps into the cell, he’s holding a tray with a potato and bottle of water. Even through the gag, Quackity can taste the vegetable’s earthy smell. He’s getting sick of the shit, but his stomach still growls.

Dream sees him staring at the food and sets it down behind him. “I know what you’re thinking. If you’re going to eat, I’m going to take the gag out. You’re going to be able to talk again. Right?”

Quackity briefly meets Dream’s gaze, a half-hearted recognition of what he’s saying. He returns to staring hungrily at the potato, but the warden snaps his fingers in front of his face.

“Hey. Look at me, Quackity.”

Fine.

“That’s better. Now. If the gag’s out, you can just start saying whatever shit you want, right?”

He was thinking that.

“That’s not gonna happen, Quackity,” Dream chides in his awful sing-song tone. “It’s simple. If you show me the respect I deserve, the gag comes off and you get to eat. Got it?”

Quackity’s eye narrows. Fuck’s sake, he just wants to eat.

“Got it?” Dream prompts again.

Well… he does want to eat, but still not as much as he wants to defy Dream. He doesn’t respond.

“Alright,” Dream sighs. “Let’s give this a go. If you… I dunno, kneel down in front of me… fuck it, with your hands out, I’ll let you eat. Hell, I’ll even help you get down if your leg is giving you too much trouble.”

Staring at the potato, Quackity considers his options. Compromise again for the sake of a meal, or stay stubborn for the sake of his humanity?

“I’m waiting, Quackity.”

Do it. You need to fucking eat. Don’t do it. Don’t give him the satisfaction. You’ll be full. You’ll be mortified. Please. Please.

“One more chance.”

Quackity doesn’t move. Shakily, he raises his middle finger to Dream. Quicker than he can pull away, Dream grabs his wrist, and, without even a moment to gloat, bends the finger backwards until something snaps and it’s almost touching the back of his hand.

With a shriek that only just escapes the gag, Quackity yanks his hand back. He loses his balance and crashes to the floor, bringing his broken shin and finger in towards his chest, sobbing.

Through tears, he can see the meagre meal disappear into Dream’s inventory. “What did I say?” the warden hisses. “Does nothing actually stick in your stupid head? I told you, keep doing that and I’ll cut that fucking finger off.”

All Quackity can do through the pain is shake his head and pull his hand closer. He shudders when, once again, Dream’s boot lands against his broken shin, and fresh blood spurts from the wound.

“Consider that your last fucking warning,” Dream snarls, and leaves.

You stare into the jet-black hotel mirror, and the thing that you have become stares back. A clean, crisp suit cut off with a green tie hides the churning insides beneath. There is a pale peach film slowly growing into your face, solidifying over bones and muscles that you can see in the man from this city that never sleeps.

The clock on the wall says it’s almost time to go. You step into the elevator, colder and smaller than a cell, and feel your stomach drop as it takes you down a hundred floors to the plastic desert outside.

He is waiting for you by the fountain, spurting patterns with precise mathematical accuracy. It mesmerises you, but he has more important things for you to be doing.

You walk down the bitter asphalt, past the border and into the lands full of bombshell holes and abandoned towers from times gone past. In the distance you can see the structure looming in the sky, a grid cutting into the clouds, emptied of the bombs that now lie in the rotting hole of what was once a great nation.

You stand beside the border, and he tells you about everything that happened, about why he wasn’t allowed in, how he’s always been rejected because of where he’s from. You offer comforting words, but you know the damage has been done. Now you understand.

You stand on the chess board where rulers used to play, and he explains the treacherous world of politics and power. You try to want to believe in it, the friendship and camaraderie, but you know how it ends. He tells you to want it anyway. Now you understand.

You stand in the rubble of the old happy place that overlooks a crater. He tells you to sever everything, that nothing lasts. He recounts the stories of a revolutionary, a tyrant, a politician. They all end badly. Create no emotional attachments. Now you understand.

You stand before the quartz columns of a museum. He tells you to hold your ground, to stand strong for what you believe in in the face of adversity. You can tell it comes from somewhere personal. Now you understand.

You stand before your country and he tells you his regrets, his fears, and his hopes. He knows he will die someday, and he knows this is what he wants to leave behind. You want to be a part of it. You want to help build this legacy. Now you understand.

You wish you never understood.

Quackity has no idea if his estimate of the passage of time is accurate, but he thinks it might be another two days before Dream comes back.

A few hours after the last visit, he finally works up the courage to roll up his pant leg and look at the damage, gingerly using his uninjured hand to reveal something grotesque. The skin is swollen, hot to the touch, and a shiny red. It’s all slightly misshapen. Quackity gags, but there’s nothing left in his system to throw back up. He doesn’t think he has it in him to set the bone.

So, he spends the next days on his usual pastimes – picking at his scabs, worrying at the gore baked into the obsidian, counting the seconds, worrying about Slime. Occasionally, his hand wanders down to his leg and he probes it a little, trying to work up the nerve to do something about the injury.

He drifts in and out of consciousness and can slowly feel the infection creeping up his body and nestle as a fever in his head. For a few hours, he shivers uncontrollably, until his aching muscles give out and all he can do is lie, stone still on the floor, simultaneously feeling like he’s burning up and losing all body heat.

The redstone sounds of the prison’s beating heart echo around him and he keeps expecting to look up and see Dream standing over him. He isn’t sure if he’s screaming, or if the guardians are. He thinks there’s a black hole within his stomach, slowly getting bigger. Everything is collapsing inside of him.

When Dream comes back, Quackity doesn’t even notice he’s there until gloved fingers are snapping in front of his face, bringing his attention back. The warden speaks as if through a wall, or underwater.

“How bad is it?”

Quackity doesn’t respond, just glances down at his leg. Is he imagining it, or is the swelling even worse?

“Look at me.” He can’t ignore Dream when a stiff hand grabs his jaw, pulling his focus back towards the mask. Dream takes off his other glove and presses it against his forehead. After a moment of feeling how close to death his prisoner is, he steps back and assesses his options.

“Are you listening, Quackity?”

Quackity closes his eye. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, but he looks up at Dream with a sharp gasp when he feels a boot starting to press against his leg.

“I said, are you listening?”

Half-heartedly, he nods.

“Good. This is a really easy choice, Quackity. If you promise to be good, I’ll let you eat, and I’ll heal you. You don’t even have to say anything. Just behave. How does that sound?”

Quackity’s pride has been crushed under a layer of fever. He doesn’t hesitate to nod eagerly. Dream bends over and unlocks the gag, pulling it away from his face. He gasps, drawing in lungfuls of dry, warm air that were so limited seconds before.

“Wonderful,” says Dream, pulling out a couple of potions.

He tilts Quackity’s head back, and the prisoner eagerly swallows the health and regeneration elixirs. He sighs and closes his eye as he feels the swelling and fever go down slightly, the pain of his broken bones subsides a little. It’s not enough to cure him, but the relief it provides is immeasurable. He lies back, taking deep breaths as Dream works his way down to the broken leg. From his inventory he pulls bandages and a splint. Without warning, he gets to work setting the bone in place and securing it. Quackity screams, but Dream holds him down and finishes without a great deal of struggling.

“There,” he exhales and steps back. “How’s that?” His prisoner just closes his eye and sighs deeply. “Great. Want something to eat?”

Quackity extends a shaking hand and is rewarded with a potato. Grimacing, he bites into the raw vegetable, tasting nothing but cold starch. It’s not pleasant, but he’s starving. It’s gone in a few bites. Dream watches, and when Quackity is finished, he hands him a small water flask. This too, disappears down his throat immediately.

The food, water and medical attention has Quackity thinking a little clearer. He remembers where he is, who he’s accepting food and care from. He feels his fists clench and his face flush. He meets Dream’s steady gaze and waits for the man to say something.

Dream gives a curt nod, and, looking down at the gag, he stows it in his inventory. “You were good today, Quackity. Maybe you can keep your mouth shut by yourself after all. I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he turns to leave.

Quackity can’t help it. It’s in his nature.

“Motherfucker.”

It’s quiet, but Dream hears it. He freezes. “What was that?”

“I said,” Quackity hisses, “motherfucker. You’re an asshole. You think you fucking control everything about me? You think you can take my fucking voice and you’ve won? Go fuck yourself.”

Turning sharply, Dream turns sharply and storms back towards him. Quackity throws his hands up, blocking anything too important from the incoming kicks.

“Fuck’s sake, Quackity,” Dream says between the swings. “I really thought we were getting somewhere.”

The prisoner gasps as the boot gets through his meagre defences and grazes his temple, but his resolve holds. “I’m not a fucking dog,” he snarls. “You can’t break me, and you can’t train me.”

“We’ll see about that.” Dream picks him up by the hair and pins him against the wall.

“What are you going to do?” Quackity huffs, almost laughing. “Gag me again? Take my food away? I already fucking ate. Are we really going to keep doing this?”

An incredulous snort. “You think I’m a fucking idiot? You think I didn’t know your sorry ass was going to go back on the progress we’ve made?” Dream throws him back to the floor and holds him in place with a knee to the chest.

Quackity starts struggling when he sees the potion Dream pulls out. This time, it’s a sickly green.

“Open your mouth,” his captor commands, unscrewing the cap. Quackity locks his jaw shut and glares. Dream massages his temples in mock exasperation. “This isn’t getting you anywhere, Quackity.” He pinches the prisoner’s nose shut and simply waits.

Try as he might, Quackity can’t hold his breath forever, and eventually instinct overtakes willpower. He opens his mouth with a gasp, and before he can shut it again, the neck of the bottle is between his teeth, and the poison disappears down his throat. Dream gets off him and watches as he gags, coughs, and begins convulsing. With a horrible shudder and a churning in his stomach, Quackity feels his meal and drink come back up, violently expelled from his body.

He's barely recovered when Dream grabs him again and the gag is back on. Once more, he is silenced, and once more, he can no longer meet the tormentor’s gaze.

“I don’t know what you were expecting,” Dream smiles, vindicated. “Give up, Quackity. I’m always three steps ahead. It would be so much easier to stop resisting. Have fun starving to death.”

And with that, he’s gone.

You are cowering on the edge of a platform, watching your fellow employee confront your boss. There is molten rock at your back. You can feel it peeling your skin, boiling your blood. You know this is going to end badly.

The man from this rotten city draws his sword just as the kid from the UFO brings his axe down. They are fighting viciously, exchanging hits that would destroy weaker people. You can hear them arguing about a book, a book you know very little about, except that it’s not worth all the trouble it’s caused.

You can see blood and sparks fly, and the two have reached a stalemate. They are breathing heavily, screaming at each other. You look up towards the sky far above and tune the noise out. You just want this to be over.

You barely realise when the kid charges towards you and knocks you backwards. You don’t feel like you’re falling. The lava embraces you like an old friend. Your companion dives off the platform and collapses beside you, his glistening armour protecting him from the worst of what is quickly eating you alive.

He screams for you, tears evaporating on his face. He doesn’t want you to go. You’re not sure you’ll be able to, even after you’ve returned to dust.

You thank him as you boil and burn away, studying every line on his soft face, still so young – far younger than you.

You’re ready.

When does he die? Quackity doesn’t think he notices when he stops staring at a wall of lava and starts staring at a slimy abandoned pool, or when the hollow ache in his stomach grows into a complete absence of any internal organs.

He remembers feeling pain, then euphoria, then nothing. He swallows. There is no saliva in his mouth. He crawls across slippery tiles and breaks the film on the water, submerging his face and swallowing putrid liquid that tastes like algae. It slides down his throat and disappears. His mouth is no less dry.

Quackity exhales, but no bubbles disturb the water. He opens his eye, and lunges back as it focuses on the horrific sight hidden beneath the surface. Staggering away from the water’s edge, he watches as two bony, waterlogged hands grip the edge and pull up the wet mass of what was once Ranboo’s corpse. As if watching a car crash he can’t turn away from, Quackity stares in morbid fascination as its skin dissolves and it slumps on the tiles. Blood spirals outwards as the body collapses in on itself and fleshy chunks disintegrate into nothing. Throughout the ordeal, there is a gurgling, choking sound, muffled through the crumbling, waterlogged oesophagus. It’s finally gone.

All Quackity can think to do is clutch his own body, confirming that the same thing isn’t happening to him. He lies back and sighs, then sobs with tears that won’t come from ducts that aren’t there.

“It happens all the time,” a deep, mournful voice behind him whispers. “I don’t know why I always climb back in. I think I’m bored.”

With shaking hands, Quackity pushes himself back up and turns to look up at Ranboo, staring down at their own blood. They’re in their own prison jumpsuit, the one they died in. The orange has faded and stained beyond recognition. The hems are in tatters. Their hair, stark white, falls almost entirely over their face, but Quackity can still see the resigned exhaustion in their sunken eyes. He flinches a little as they sit beside him. They smell like salt and cyanide.

“Do you want something to drink?” They hold out an unopened wine bottle and a spiralling corkscrew.

Quackity takes both. “I didn’t think you were the kind of guy who drank.”

A hollow laugh from Ranboo’s rattling lungs. “I don’t even remember my name half the time. Who knows what I was like before I came here? Besides, it’s all there is to do.”

“Fair enough,” Quackity nods, ripping open the bottle with a pop that echoes infinitely through the glass room and over the water’s eerily still surface.

He takes a long, deep swig and sighs with relief, even if it’s just a placebo and the deep red drink isn’t really there. He hands the bottle back to Ranboo, who does the same.

“… Do you remember me?” he asks, glancing over to his companion. Their eyes are lost, watching the dull, glassy surface.

“I don’t like thinking about it. It’s easier to forget. I think I knew you, once. We were friends. You weren’t him, though. He was different.”

“Tubbo?” Quackity wasn’t privy to how the two young lovers grew close and then broke apart. He only saw it in subtle gestures during cabinet meetings, updates from his spies, and the way Tubbo looked back to their old outpost with shaking hands as he signed Quackity’s citizenship contract.

Ranboo takes another deep gulp of wine and passes the bottle back. “I don’t want to remember his name.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

There’s a long, awkward pause as they share the bottle and their eyelids begin to drop.

“Do you miss him?” Quackity works up the nerve to ask.

“I think so. Sometimes. I know we were close. I think that means I should miss him.”

“Are you angry with him?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“You lost one of your lives sacrificing yourself to him.”

“Oh. Is that what happened?” They sound resigned.

“I mean. It wasn’t the final blow, but yeah. And… he left you. For my country.”

A mournful sigh. “Does it matter anymore? I’ll never see him again. I’m tired. I don’t want to waste my energy on anger.”

“You might see him again,” Quackity dares to prompt. He can’t stand seeing his old friend so far gone. Why don’t they care? “Death isn’t permanent anymore.”

Ranboo’s laugh is hollow and cynical. “Even if it isn’t, I don’t think I’ll come back. I’ll stay here or find somewhere new. I’m done with that place and those people.”

“Oh.”

Ranboo swallows the last dregs of wine and sigh deeply. “I like this part,” they confess. “When everything stops hurting, and my legs feel like lead, and my thoughts stop. It’s peaceful.”

Quackity hums his agreement.

“I think I’ll go back to sleep.” The rail thin corpse lies back, staring straight up at the skylight to nothing before their face goes slack and their chest stops rising and falling. Quackity follows suit.

When he wakes back up, Ranboo isn’t beside him. As he slowly stumbles to his feet, something in the corner of his eye catches his gaze. A corpse wearing a faded jumpsuit, floating face down in the pool. He ignores it.

The door out of the recreation area leads straight into an impossibly long dining hall. The heavy oak table is weighed down with food and drink that has long since gone off. Quackity stares longingly at a whole roast chicken, wrinkled and writhing with maggots. He reaches out and breaks a leg off, bringing it to his lips.

It doesn’t taste of anything.

Quackity wanders back to his room and waits. Maybe someone will bring him something to eat later.

You didn’t think you would have to come back here. You gave up control when you let the kid take you away – you thought he wouldn’t want to come back either. He proved you wrong. Whether you like it or not, you’re both tied to this place.

You look out over the scorched skyscrapers that still stand after the attack. They reflect their sharp glimmering angles back into the room you lie dormant in.

You opened the door to the outside only once. Something watching from the end of the hall was wearing your face, and you didn’t investigate. You know it’s still out there. All of them are.

You can see them shuffling on the cracked asphalt below, stumbling through a sense of normalcy as fake as the desert you’re all trapped in.

The kid tries to talk to you, sometimes. He pretends to be the new boss, in his crisp purple suit, but it’s a size too big and his voice still cracks occasionally. That doesn’t stop him waving his weapons in your face, trying to intimidate you, or maybe earn your respect. You don’t care anymore.

You hate this place. The smell of stale cigarettes and the light reflecting off wet tiles has sunk into your flesh. You try tearing your room apart once, when you’re bored. The performative fit of rage leaves you with splinters and nails stuck in your hands. No one seems to care, and now you don’t have a bed to sleep on.

The sun rises and sets, over and over. You think the days are getting shorter, so you start locking yourself in the bathroom. There isn’t a window in there to tell you how long you have been rotting in here for. You feel yourself disintegrating either way.

When the man from Pandora’s Vault breaks the door down, he finds you fused with the bathtub, unresponsive. You feel your muscles quiver as he peels you off and drags you out, but you don’t see the point in struggling. He’s just trying to help.

A momentary lapse in concentration, and you find him dressing you in uniform and pressing a broom into your hands, before releasing you into a maze of false hopes and flashing lights. You stumble through the windowless labyrinth, past the slack-jawed creatures that wear your shifting face, each stuck to its own machine that whines high-pitched notes every time they press another coin into its slot.

You’re not leaving, so just keep your head down and work. The time passes either way.