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English
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Published:
2021-03-03
Updated:
2021-03-04
Words:
2,627
Chapters:
2/?
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43
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177
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Daedalus in the Maze

Chapter 2

Notes:

designed to hurt you....it's so easy it feels like cheating.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Sam sits on a patch of sweltering obsidian. It’s wet underneath him, like dew on grass. He can smell blood in the back of his mouth. He stares hatefully at his new cellmate. “What did you do to him?”

 

Dream laughs. “You already saw, didn’t you? Can’t you guess?”

 

“Tommy was beaten to death.” He feels diminished with horror. “You had him helpless, incapacitated, and you kept hurting him. Just to prove a point. You, you couldn’t stop yourself.”

 

“No. I could have easily stopped.”

 

“...I don’t understand.” He knew Dream. He’d known the man was never kind or gentle or soft, that he was proud and always scheming. But not this cruel, deranged, detached. “What happened to you, man? How did you get like this?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“You don’t even…” Sam can remember when there was no prison here, just miles of untouched coastline. As he'd laid foundation, he’d accepted the role of lead architect. He’d treated it as sacred duty, devoted every crevice of his brain to the single question of making a dungeon that would be inescapable. The man who’d employed him, he’d trusted. Now Dream thinks of himself as a God. When, when did that change? “Oh. It’s the book.”

 

Power over life and death. Utter assurance that he’d be above consequences. To make irrelevant the intrinsic value we place on the life of another human being. “No wonder this is all just a game to you.”

 

“You get it now, don’t you?” Dream places a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter what we did to Tommy. We can bring him back if we want to.”

 

He flinches away. “You beat him to death with your bare hands.”

 

Dream laughs dismissively. “We had a fight. He lost.”

 

“I don’t believe you.” His goggles pinch as his brow furrows. “It wasn’t a fight, it was a murder. You aren’t injured at all.”

 

“I don’t know,” says Dream, and he holds up his twisted fingers. The skin is torn, and the bones won’t heal right. “These are hurting pretty badly.”

 

Oh God, he can’t take this. Sam’s not strong enough to spend his eternity trapped in a blood-soaked box with an unrepentant madman. He’s not that kind of brave. He’s, as Tommy would say, a pussy. “Just bring him back. Whatever you’re going to do to me, I need to know he’s out there somewhere, thriving. I want to think of him smiling, to know that he’s okay.”

 

“Oh, no, Sam, not yet.”

 

He whimpers, “no?”

 

“I don’t trust you yet, Sam.” He pets the man’s cheek. “I’m not sure you’re ready to be my friend, that you’ll stay here with me. I need to know that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain.”

 

Sam trembles with rage. “I swear on my life.”

 

Dream mimes turning a page. “What’s that worth these days?”

 

***

 

Captain Puffy used to think she was good with kids. Now of the four she knows, one is dead, another is spiraling, and a third is afraid of her. She’s the only person who seems to care. The fourth boy is trying to assassinate her. She’s not a licensed therapist, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to die.

 

Still, she’s alive, and that means she can learn, and improve her techniques. Today she’s going to practice on a robotic raccoon. She hops a chain link fence and climbs into the construction site, steeling herself for the task ahead of her. She’s in tears from Sam Nook’s first burble.

 

“Hello Captain Puffy. I am waiting for Tommyinnit.”

 

“I--I’m sure you are.”

 

“Have you seen him anywhere? It has been several days since he left to gather oak logs.”

 

She clutches the android’s broad burnished chest for support. “I have to tell you something, Sam Nook.”

 

“Please tell Tommyinnit that we need his services here at the hotel.”

 

“Nook, he’s… oh God. Oh fuck.” She can’t say it. It was never supposed to be true. “Just follow me. I’ll show you.”

 

“I am instructed not to leave the construction site without permission.”

 

“Please, Sam Nook.” She wipes her eyes. “I won’t tell anyone. Just a minute. For him.” She leads the robot to a gaudy clay statue. Tommy, happier than ever and larger than life.

 

“I am confused...That is not the real Tommyinnit.”

 

“No it’s not. That’s because he’s fucking dead, Sam Nook.” Puffy doesn’t mean to yell, but she’s enraged. “He’s gone. We all failed him.”

 

“What is dead?” warbles the robot. “Did I fail?”

 

“It means he’s gone, and he’s not coming back. That he, he won’t work on his hotel again. He can’t fetch oak logs for you, or gather flowers. He can’t pay for upgrades or wear his safety vest.” She lays it out in simple terms that the AI can understand, and finds that it's helping to ground her. “Death is something that happens to everyone, eventually, but it’s not supposed to happen to kids.”

 

“Will I die?” the chirp is higher pitched, almost as if Sam Nook is scared.

 

“No, Nook… You’re not like us. You’re not alive the same way I am and Tommy was. At most you could get broken, and even then, Sam can come and fix you up again.”

 

“What about when Sam is gone?”

 

“Then somebody else. The point is that you don’t die like people do. When we get hurt badly enough, we have to leave forever.”

 

The robot pauses for a long time, and Puffy can almost hear its circuitry whirr. “Where is Tommyinnit, now that he left?”

 

“I wish I knew. I wish I knew for sure.” She hopes it’s somewhere nice and safe and full of bright colors. “But we know he has his big brother there to look after him.”

 

Sam Nook warbles again. “Can I go to where Tommy and his brother are?”

 

“No,” she says quietly, “If it’s a real place, I, I don’t think it’s a place where robots can go, no matter how hard they try.”

 

“But it is my job to protect Tommyinnit.”

 

Puffy sighs. “It was mine as well.” And she failed. She has no idea what to do next.

 

Sam Nook gazes down at her with the gleaming red cameras he has in place of eyes. “Thank you, Captain Puffy. I will go back to waiting at the hotel now.”

 

***

 

“Tommy talked about you a lot last week.” Dream chews on a raw potato, the skin catching in his teeth like paper. Sam isn’t hungry.

 

“...what did he say?”

 

“Well, he told me he hated you for trapping him with me, and that when he got out he would kill you. He also said you would come save him any minute. He said he would move into your basement at least on the weekends and eat your homemade pumpkin pie for breakfast.”

 

Pie. Pie for Tommy, as much as he wants, when he comes back. He can have Sam’s house. He can have the whole world.

 

“I’ve noticed how much you talk about him.”

 

“I just think he’s interesting. Do you?”

 

“I think he deserved a lot better than what he got.”

 

Dream digs into the starchy vegetable with his dirty, untrimmed nails. “I like the way he talks when he’s nervous. He stutters. It’s like he’s trying to fill up space.”

 

Sam hates the reminder of his young friend’s timidness. Tommy’s panic, his fear, his bravado. He won’t be the same. Doesn’t Dream understand this? They can resurrect him, alive and unharmed, and yet he’ll still be the same boy who was left to die in this claustrophobic closet, who felt his skull shatter against the stone.  

 

Tommy doesn’t have to forgive him. That doesn’t matter. But it’s important he knows how much Sam cared about him. How much he still cares. Enough to do this. Enough to play along. 

 

There’s a clock on the wall, the very last clock. It isn’t burnt, but Dream has held it to the lava until it melted. It drips down the wall like a surrealist painting, the hands eternally frozen at just before midnight positions. Why did he do that to himself, to his only link to the outside world? He gestures to the frame. “It’s almost like art.”

 

Dream smiles. “Do you like it?”

 

“It’s something to look at.”

 

“Here, Sam,” says Dream, pressing up against his arm, “Let’s watch the clock together.”

Notes:

Have you noticed that Dream's switch from Morally Gray to Manipulative Supervillain happens right after he acquires the resurrection book?

 

not me doing character analysis on that green fucker

 

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