Chapter Text
Sam tries to ignore Dream’s cutting remarks every time he spends a minute in the prison to check Dream’s there, still breathing, to hand over his meals. Sure, he could easily check the security feed and the dispensers are perfectly capable of giving Dream his potatoes without human interaction but, in all honesty, Sam is curious.
This is the creator of the server he lives and works on, this is the so-called God. Yet here, stuck behind obsidian walls in nothing but his green hoodie and smiley-face mask, he doesn’t look like much of a God. He looks weak, easily killable. It wouldn’t be hard to take his last life, really.
But Sam won’t. Not just because of his morbid curiosity - because this is like trapping a butterfly simply to watch it’s wings flap in panic and fear, trying to escape an impenetrable glass jar - but because if anyone should take Dream’s last life, it should be Tommy. Not Dream’s jailor. No matter how many times he begs Sam, in that sickly-sweet, honeyed tone of careful manipulation and lies.
“C’mon Sam,” he’d murmured to him on the second day, “you’d be the hero of the server.”
At the time, Sam had rolled his eyes, rolled the potatoes to him, ignoring the words.
Dream had sighed, hands outstretched to pick the potatoes up. “I know the lava and the water won’t work. I’ll keep respawning here. All you’d have to do-“
“Goodbye, Dream.”
Back then, it was easier to ignore, to watch from afar, to spy the butterfly from outside the glass jar. Only something about Dream is magnetic, a star drawing in the people like lone planets to his orbit. The temptation to see him, to understand him is almost overwhelming.
So Sam resists. For a week.
Dream keeps the begging and the sharp remarks up, all cutting to the bone then smooth as honey as if to heal the wound. Sam has always had particularly thick skin - as part creeper, getting angry is simply a no-go zone, he has to be even, calm or his anger can become a bomb - and even if he didn’t, Dream has only interacted with him in-depth during the prison’s construction. He doesn’t know Sam all that well and so his words like knifes do little but scratch instead of cutting deep.
Every time, Sam ignores him. They follow a pattern. Sam appears to hand over the potatoes, Dream goads him or begs, Sam tells him goodbye and then leaves before Dream can say anything else. Three times a day, every day for five days.
Until he can’t let his curiosity from spilling over.
“-I can see a sword on you,” Dream continues as Sam slides the potatoes to him. “It would be easy, Sam. I wouldn’t even put up a fight, I swear.”
He snatches the potatoes from the floor and pauses, waits for Sam to bid his farewell but Sam is rooted to the obsidian floor below. Curiosity bubbles up inside him, much like the heat of anger igniting gunpowder. He can practically hear the sizzle in his ears.
“Sam?” Dream asks after a moment, tilting his head. His stance widens, his arms dropping loose to his sides. He must think Sam is finally going to take him up on his offer.
“Why?” Sam finally speaks, keeping his voice even; monotone. Before Dream can respond, Sam hastens to correct his mistake. “Why beg now? Tommy had you cornered, you were begging to live then. Yet all it takes is three seconds in this cell and suddenly you want nothing more than a sword to your ribs.”
Silence spreads between the two of them. Dream, clearly evaluating the new situation, probably wondering how he can spin in to favour him. Sam regards the white mask and keeps his expression neutral.
“I didn’t realise how isolating it is.”
Sam refuses to laugh at the lie. “Don’t lie to me Dream. You put Tommy in exile for that entire reason-“
“-actually Tubbo-“
“-everyone on the server knows it was you.” Sam puts as much authority in his tone as he can and Dream falls quiet. “So I ask again: why?”
With another head tilt, Dream backs to his bed, sitting down and placing the potatoes on his pillow. Crossing his arms over his chest, he says, “did you know that it only took around a week to break Tommy?”
Sam blinks. “What?”
Even behind the mask, Sam has the distinct impression that Dream is grinning at him. “A week and he was begging for my attention, even after I stole and burnt his armour, even after the beatings. He couldn’t stand me leaving him because I was the only one to show up, to pay him attention. It was hilarious.”
Sam is going to be sick. The sizzling in his ears rises a pitch but he can’t move. He’s stuck in place, listening to Dream proudly recount what he did. It’s worse than Sam expected because he can’t hear any lie. This is all the truth. This is the cat bringing the dead bird to his owner’s feet.
“Pitiful,” Dream amends after a breath, “but still funny.”
Silence once again fills the room and Sam knows Dream is spotting the crack in his armour, in his careful facade. He doesn’t bother to hide it. If Dream thinks it’s a weakness, he’ll keep trying to exploit it, so he’ll keep speaking. Sam tells himself it’s a way to finally satiate his curiosity. It’s not an actual weakness.
“You okay, Sam?” Dream asks, amusement in his tone and Sam nods, robotically.
“Goodbye, Dream.” He spins on his heel and leaves to the laughter of Dream behind him.
When he gets back to his guard station, he vomits into a bin, finds his hands shaking violently. He wills the heat from his stomach, from his neck, from his palms, away. He will not let Dream get under his skin like this. Dream is in his prison, under his mercy. Not the other way around.
Three days later, after manually feeding Dream and checking the security feed, he finally ventures back down. He rations that he wants to give Dream a taste of his own punishment - for Tommy, his brain whispers - and not the fact that every time he considered it, his hands shook once again.
Before he ventures down, he spends an hour sitting in the crater of L’Manberg, noticing the Bloodvines growing in the rubble of a once powerful nation reduced to nothing but ash and dust. Sam was never really concerned with L’Manberg but he remembers brief glances and interactions with Wilbur, with Tommy and Tubbo.
Wilbur was so bright back then, a flame that could never be put out. His presence demanded attention, respect and his charisma, his delicate handling of words so effortlessly had him a following in no time. He had a silver-tongue and an angel’s face and even when descending into madness, that once bright flame corrupted into a full-blow forest fire of fear-inducing power, Sam could still see the odd appeal to follow him.
Tommy was like a flame too, only one that burnt you, instead of Wilbur’s warmth. He raced through the server with a childlike joy, screaming and laughing and swearing until half of the server lost their hearing. He was a ball of energy, uncontrollable and wild, until Wilbur started to change. Wilbur’s all-consuming flame coaxed Tommy down from fire to embers, breaking him down and down but never fully putting him out.
Sam has heard the rumours of their brotherhood, of the infamous Technoblade joining in the War because he was the oldest, of the Angel of Death, Philza Minecraft, being their father. Sam has heard these rumours, brushed them off as stories told between children.
He saw the way Tommy defended Wilbur until the very end, the way all three looked up to Philza, the teasing Technoblade endured around Tommy without immediately cutting him down in the name of the Blood God, of the shared horror of Wilbur’s death, the betrayal in Tommy’s voice as Technoblade released the withers, not once but twice, the shout from Philza of having to kill his son.
So maybe they weren’t all rumours, all stories. There was truth there, underlying it. Sam couldn’t unearth it, though. He had a prison to build.
He should’ve taken the time to listen.
Then there was Tubbo. The equal and opposite of Tommy. The easy smiles and more childlike joy and intrigue. Sam saw him chase Tommy around the server, the way laughter would always follow them because it was alway a them. If Tommy was there, then Tubbo would be following. Never one without the other, like interchangeable pieces.
Then the revolution happened, and the Wars, and the presidential elections. Wilbur was driven mad with power and greed and prideful envy: his country was stolen from him and no one, not even himself, could have it so he blew it up and begged his own father for a poet’s death. Dying with his country. Tubbo became president - so young, too young - and the boy became a man in a matter of minutes in his too large suits and forced smiles and bruised bags under his eyes. Tubbo got the country Wilbur tried so hard to destroy and was left with a wreckage to fix, an almost impossible task of starting afresh, building something more peaceful.
And Tommy - so young, too young - still reeling from his brother’s abuse and subsequent death at the hands of his father, lashed out. George’s house in flames. George, the one man who Dream would go to Heaven and Hell for, the one man who Dream would do anything to protect. Tommy and Tubbo, backed into a corner and under the stress of a childhood of war and bloodshed and death, a decision was made.
Sam hadn’t been there when Tommy was exiled but he was around when Tommy came back to fight for L’Manberg, however futilely. Sure, Sam had noticed the boy was different. He held himself in a hunched manner as if preparing for a blow. He looked skinner, more pale. Bandages had covered his arms, his hands, up his neck. Faint bruises and cuts and burns had littered the available skin but Sam hadn’t thought to look closer. He was a boy, a child; he, himself had gotten into so much when he was younger, he believed maybe the boy was injuring himself while adventuring. Tommy had been like that before, plasters and bandages from fighting mobs and sparring with random people on the server.
Now, as Sam sits in the ruins, he replays Dream’s words. Those wounds weren’t from adventuring. Those wounds were tended to by a brother who’s eyes had narrowed in betrayal as Tommy switched sides. Those wounds were inflicted by the prisoner behind Sam’s obsidian walls.
“Planning an extension, Big Man,” Tommy says behind him and Sam startles, springing to his feet.
Now, he can see the sudden jerk of a hand to the sword at his side, the fear in Tommy’s eyes before he blinks it away, laughing at Sam’s shock. “Easy there, Big Man. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Sam shakes it off, clears his throat. “Sorry. I was pretty deep in thought.”
Behind Tommy, Sam can see the vague outline of Tubbo chatting with Jack Manifold. “S’okay. We’re just here to get some building supplies for, well, I don’t know, something Tubbo’s planning.” He smiles and Sam aches to know how much of it is a front because he knows a week won’t have healed him. Not when he saw the state of the pair in that museum Dream had. The fire burning so harshly in Tommy’s eyes, it burnt Sam to look in his direction, as he stood in front of a cowering but accepting Tubbo. Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever escape that image of them all. Two children facing off against a God, knowing they’re going to lose but willing to try anyway.
“There are some chests over there,” Sam points to the left of him, Tommy follows the finger with his gaze. “I think they’re filled with stone and wood.”
Tommy grins down at him - he’s so tall and lanky and still so skinny - and claps him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Big Man. Might get your advice on how to build. I mean that prison,” he whistles between his teeth before turning to the pair bickering in the background. Sam doesn’t miss the harsh glare Jack sports in Tommy’s direction only to drop it once Tommy turns to him. “Yo! Over here!”
Sam watches them go after a quick hello and goodbye to the pair. Something burns in his chest, not gunpowder or rage. Something sweeter, all the more violent. Protectiveness. Philza and Technoblade are god-knows-where, Wilbur’s dead and a half of the server are either obsessed with an Egg or still vying for Tommy’s head on a spike.
He vows, as he ventures back into the prison, grabbing the potatoes and heading to the only filled cell, that no one is going to hurt Tommy. Or Tubbo. Not again. They deserve a goddamn childhood not filled with angst and atrocities.
If Dream is surprised, Sam can’t see it as the lava falls in place behind him.
“He has returned.” Dream breathes and Sam rolls the potatoes to him. “Did our last talk upset you?”
“I understand why,” Sam starts, his thoughts nicely lined up in his head and Dream once again tilts his head. He ignores the potatoes rolled by his feet. “I mean, they’re kids, right? Manipulating them is easy, they don’t know any better. Even Wilbur makes sense. At the end, he wasn’t in his right mindset.”
“Have it all figured out, do you?” Dream sneers but Sam no longer cares about the walls Dream builds around him with his words and lies, trying to protect himself. He’s behind Sam’s walls now and Sam has a few tricks up his sleeve. Dream can’t hide anymore. Not even that stupid smiley mask can save him.
“So why not kill Tommy when you had the chance? Wilbur served his purpose, so did Tubbo. But you said you’d broken Tommy, so why not kill him?”
“You can’t force me to answer you.”
At this, Sam does laugh and if it sizzles in his throat, well, it only adds to the point he’s trying to convey. “Of course not but if you don’t answer me, I’ll leave you all alone to your thoughts.”
“And why would that bother me?” He rests his head on his hands, elbows on his knees as he sits on his bed.
“Because I control who comes in and out, Dream.” He plays a card that’s bound to leave an impression. “So when Sapnap says he’s wants to visit, or George, I can simply decline. You’ll sit here, with these four walls as your only friends for years. Tommy lasted a week of isolation, right? How long do you think you’ll last?”
Dream is sitting up now, hands dropping to his bed, clenching his fists in the sheets. Sam can feel the glare behind the mask. He doesn’t waver. He doesn’t even blink. This isn’t a threat, Dream isn’t a threat, not when they’re in Sam’s domain.
“I don’t want to see them anyway.” He spits and Sam smiles, takes a step back, clicking his communicator - with added controls for the mechanisms in his prison - so that the lava can recede.
“I’ll be sure to let George know that his meeting with you will have to wait until the prisoner stops trying to escape.” He uses such an upbeat tone, so unlike his usual monotone, that Dream takes a second before it clicks. It’s not even a lie. Both George, Sapnap and Punz have asked Sam about a possible meeting. Sam simply told them to wait until he’s sure Dream has settled in. Dream, much like Sam, knows they won’t question it if Sam tells them to wait longer.
All of a sudden, he stands, rage turning his clenched fists white. “You wouldn’t.”
Sam laughs again, steps onto the path, walks backwards. “Who’s going to stop me?”
The lava is in place before Dream can make the steps from his bed to the path. Sam hears the scream of rage switch to pain as he burns to death, respawning back in his bed, back in his cell of obsidian walls, back to isolation.
In the security room, Sam watches as Dream paces his cell like a caged lion, seething. He sits back in his chair, resting his joined hands over his stomach. He’ll give the God three more days to cool off.
He has questions. Dream has answers.
And outside, Tommy and Tubbo are trying to start anew. Dream can’t hurt them from his cell. Sam will do everything in his power to stop Dream from hurting them again.