There was so much blood.
Watery cherry red, thick molasses burgundy, splattered on green grass and against peach skin and dribbling down a deformed chin. Accompanied with ear shattering shrieks, and sickening thuds of fist on bone, and the twisted crack when it snaps, and the awful radio silence of dead eyes and clenched fingers and murderous determination.
The Rose in front of her was not the girl she knew, blank face, empty eyes, absolutely no mercy. The pink scars twisted in the light as she raised her arm to slam it down on Fundy's face again. Eret held Niki back, long fingers digging into the meat on her arms as she screamed, and no one was listening, just Fundy's horrible gargled shouts of agony and her terrified ones, rising in the air, like the smell of copper and smoke.
Heat radiated onto the back of her neck, a reminder of the fire raging behind her, crackling pops as the flag that represented so much, charred to nothing, thin wisps of blackened fabric floating in the air, fanned by flames that licked the wooden flag pole, creeping over onto the thankfully damp grass.
When the shouts turned to half-human strangled sounds, forced out from the deepest pits of pain and desperation, Niki knew. She knew that there was no stopping what had already been set in motion.
Fundy was going to die. Rose was going to kill him.
The guards reached them, too late, no matter that there were two bodies on the ground now, one with a face deformed beyond our comprehension, warped and almost unrecognisable, and the other, slumped and bloodstained, unconscious next to him.
She watched them carry her away, faceless, nameless, to the unknown.
She cried, held in Eret's arms, on the floor of an empty bakery, once filled with people, and smiles, and warm yellow light. The night before the election, so long ago, worlds away from where they are now.
There was nobody left.
She missed Wilbur, goofy lopsided smiles and unkempt brown hair. She doesn't know where he is, if he's safe, if he's okay.
He's just gone.
And Tommy. Gone too. Jack was dead, a stone in a field, not the person that used to help her cook, brought her fresh fish from the pond, the person that always seemed to be Fungi's favourite, even if he pretended he didn't really like cats. Tubbo in Schlatt's clutches, twisted into being someone he isn't, believing something he wouldn't. And now Rose, dragged off to Schlatt.
It's not just that though. The person Niki saw today was a stranger. She'd lost who Rose had been too.
It's empty, and lonely and so utterly hopeless that she just wants to curl into a ball and never come out. Eret coaxes her back to the world though, soft heavy blankets and mugs of steaming tea and sometimes annoying optimism that feels fake, even for them.
But it works, enough, enough for her to want to fight again, fight for her home, and her family, and everything she has.
Enough to make her go and see Dream.
He's happy.
That's the first thing she picks up on, on his doorstep, retelling the whole horrific mess of yesterday's events. He knows, of course, because he always does, but there's this little bit of relish in his voice as he pokes her for the gorier details.
It strikes her how much Rose reminded her of him, and how much she'd rather he not be anywhere near her. But she sucks it up.
He tells her he'll get her out, with a tinge of anger in his tone, and she withholds a snarky remark about him wanting to be the only one holding her hostage, because he sure as hell didn't have an issue when it was him doing it.
Regardless he agreed, like she knew he would, and she goes back home, successfully clawing her way out of a pit she threatened to slip into. She keeps it going for a week, even though they won't let her visit Rose, even though she has no idea if they're going to execute or torture her or never let her out again. Niki has to go back to L'manburg for more sugar, and it hurts the whole way back, because Rose used to always do this.
To her surprise, Sapnap's there when she gets home. He's quiet, awkward, hands next to his thighs and eyes cast down. He wants to talk about Rose, and she doesn't, but she lets him anyway.
"Dream- Dream thinks that this is finally the time he gets her back." He says in a small voice, distracted by Fungi peering around the corner curiously. He hasn't left Rose's room, curled in the messy covers of her bed. But he knows Sapnap's voice, and he knows he's Rose's friend.
"By breaking her out of prison?" Niki asks, confused. She knew Dream wasn't in the right state of mind, but there's a step over the line into delusion, and she thought he wasn't quite there yet.
Sapnap shakes his head, face a little screwed up as he tries to word his explanation. "He thinks that her killing Fundy is a sign that she's finally 'let go', whatever the hell that means."
Fungi twists around Sapnap's legs, and he smiles tinily, barely there, more so softening the harshness of his downturned face rather than quirking his lips.
"He's going to get her out, we'll get her back." She reassures him.
"Who are we going to get back? Back- back when she was with us, Fundy attacked her and she literally cried begging me to stop Dream from hurting him. Now she killed him, without even flinching."
"We'll get her back." She repeats, strongly. They will, because there is no other option, because she can't lose Rose too.
"Dream will have something planned, he always does."
"Aren't you supposed to be allies, on his side?"
"Best friends."
She hums under her breath. "We won't let it get that far."
He ponders her words. "No, no we won't."
Then he leaves, and there's this big void of silence and space that she tries to ignore, but it settles, unwelcome in the pit of her stomach anyway. Heavy as lead, sinking through her belly, keeping her awake with the million of worries flittering in her head, restless anxiety coupling with terrible emptiness and two halves of her brain begging for the end and for her to just do something.
The morning comes with worse. It always seems too.
She's up, apron secured around her waist, hair pinned high, the smell of fresh loaves and sweet icing flooding the bakery. Flour dust spins the in the streams in sunlight beams, furnaces warming the stone cave.
Peace. Distracting, fake, and wholly pretend, but it's nice to pretend, even for a little. Niki pretends that Rose is just at the medical centre, just finishing her night shift, and will be home soon dark bags and mussed hair, just like she always his. She pretends that Wilbur's back asleep in the van, Tommy, Tubbo and Jack in their houses, mere hours from running in and trying to weasel free cakes out of her, hands in chests, sticky icing on their cheeks, the guilty look in Tubbo's eyes and the mischievous one in Tommy's.
Her heart soars in hope, when someone knocks on the wooden frame of a window, still lost in a make-believe world where everything is normal again, before the arrival of Schlatt crumbles it down to the floor, a billion fragmented hopes and wishes and false dreams created to cocoon her from he real world shattered at her feet.
"Niki!" He says, jovial tone so insulting after everything that's happened, all those people ripped from her life, the home he burned down around her. "We were looking for a place to eat, what've you got?"
"Nothing." She replies tersely, hands clutching the bench top. Schlatt stops abruptly at her tone, and Quackity steps forward.
"We're all out of food, aren't you a bakery?"
"I've just put my only batch in the oven, after you went through and took half my stock for taxes."
"C'mon Niki we're hungry here!" Schlatt says.
"I hope you starve." She spits, eyeing them with pure disdain. Quackity's face falls, and even Schlatt looks a little taken aback.
"Niki?" Both of them say in horror, Quackity even stepping back.
But she's not done.
"Get out. After everything you have done to us, just get out!"
There is no us. There is no one else. Just Niki and Fungi and memories of people too far from reach. Or dead.
Just gone. Always gone.
Quackity and Schlatt retreat, and she knows she'll pay for it, she knows he'll come back with a force ten times stronger, punish her for nasty words that normally come from Rose's mouth.
Someone's got to do it while she's away.
Because she's away, not gone forever, not dead, she'll be back, it was a moment of weakness, a snap, and she'll come back normal, as okay as she can be, and it'll all right itself again.
Right? At least that's what Eret chanted, like a mantra, even though neither of them believed it.
Lots of little lies, pretend made up worlds, moment masked in false hope and performed happiness and tiny seconds where everything feels okay, and then it crashes down like and ice cold wave, a weight in her stomach, a grip on her heart. It hurts, and she acts like it doesn't, a revolving cycle with no escape, no distraction that lasts long enough.
She doesn't know how Rose did it for this long.
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The hell that rains down on her a week later for her disobedience is worse than she could have imagined.
She's ripped out of her bed in the dead of night, armed guards dragging her out by the arms, still trying to blink away the fogginess of sleep. They throw her onto the ground, and her shoulder slams painfully into the wooden flooring. She turns her head, to the sight of men ransacking the bakery, tearing doors off cabinets, ripping bags open and dumping the contents onto the floor, smashing everything within reach.
A sledgehammer collides with the new furnace she got only a few weeks ago and she pushes herself up, trying to stop them, trying to save the one place she has left. A man, face covered in metal, kicks her, netherite boot colliding painfully with her stomach as she curls up on the floor, whimpering at the agony blooming over her middle.
They're yelling, angry words and nasty insults, hatred spewing from the mouths of people she doesn't even know, faces she can't even see. She closes her eyes to the noise, and the brightness of their torches, and the total destruction going on behind her, resting her temple on the hard floor, wishing it all away.
They leave her with the half empty shell of her old life, the upturned remains of ingredients and baking equipment and her home. Something fuzzy and soft, and a little bit damp nudges her cheek, and she opens her eyes again, the earliest hints of dawn giving her just enough light to see Fungi rubbing his nose against her.
He survived.
She scoops him up, cradling him to her chest. He mewls, and Niki knows what he wants, and she wants it too.
"She's gone away for a little bit." She explains softly. "Rose'll come back."
He perks up at her name, wide eyes looking into hers, as she strokes behind upright triangle ears, soft warm fur. "Yeah Rose, she'll be home soon."
"I'm getting her out this week." Dream's voice wafts in, quiet, smaller than she's ever heard him talk. "But she's staying at my place."
Niki turns and watches him warily, Fungi burying down into her chest like he can sense how evil the man before them is. "She should come home."
Dream shrugs, blank smile masking any emotion that may have flittered over his face, stepping over some of the wreckage. "There isn't one to come back to."
"We'll build another one, she would never agree to stay with you."
"Maybe you don't know her as well as you think Niki."
"And you do?"
Dream sighs, sticking his hands in the pockets of his pants casually, observing the mess in front of him. "I know what's best for her."
"For you, you mean. It's never been about her."
"I love her."
"You don't know what love means."
"I am protecting her. You L'manburgians are too preoccupied with family and connections and it's a weakness. Vulnerability. It'll only get her hurt. I'll make her stronger, I'll make her fucking untouchable. It's all for her."
"She's human Dream. She deserves to be human, to live, to feel love and happiness and to have a family. You are going to destroy her. That's not love."
He pauses, stiffening up a fraction, before the discipline and self control kicks in and he returns to feigned casualness, except now Niki can see straight through it.
"They're going to come back. You know that right?"
She glances around the still destruction, heart sinking. "I know."
"You've caused too many problems, and you know too many people. Schlatt wants to destroy you. He wants revenge."
Niki stays silent, cross legged on the floor, scratching Fungi's belly. Dream continues.
"If it were me, I'd leave before things got worse."
"No."
Dream leans against the quarter of the kitchen bench that's somehow still standing. "They'll kill your cat, they'll take everything you own, you screw up and they'll drag you out for a public execution." He mentions conversationally, like he's talking about the weather and not her life.
"Why do you care?"
"Rosie told me to look after you, and if you die, my life gets a lot more difficult." He says tonelessly.
Niki scoffs. "Of course. Wouldn't want me to get killed and ruin your chance at manipulating her back with you."
Dream chuckles, shaking his head at the ground. "Something like that."
"I'm not leaving."
"You should."
"I have nothing, and I have no where to go. I can't leave."
"I'll help you. You can find Wilbur and Tommy and stay with them, if they haven't died in the last couple of weeks."
Niki's head shoots up, hope like tiny embers glowing hot in her chest, tingling in her fingertips. "They're alive?"
Dream shrugs. "As of two and a bit weeks ago."
"Why didn't you tell us? Where are they?"
Dream laughs again, but it doesn't bring warmth like it should, rather chills and cold discomfort lodged in spines and creeping up the backs of necks. It sounds wrong. "You leave and I'll tell you. I don't give out information for free."
"No."
He observes her for a moment, cold, calculating eyes that she can just feel on her face, before standing up straight with a sigh. "Well, I suggest finding a new house Niki, and please try not to get killed before I get Rosie out."
"Wait!" It flies out of her mouth before she can close it, and he stops, back turned and almost out the door.
"I'll go, I'll go. Just tell me everything."
She'll be back soon, for Rose and for L'manburg, to reclaim everything that once was. For now, she's just got to stay alive.
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A/N We had to check in with our fav!
Dream really said 'So I did some manipulation off camera' except off camera is Rosie being in jail and manipulation is literally getting rid of the last connection she has in L'manburg. What can I say? Man works fast.
This was supposed to be a Rosie/Punz bonding chapter with some dumb humour and fluff w the dream team but my football team lost and I was sad so you get this instead. (Also I missed Niki).
Next chapters will cover Rosie's adventures in the house of horrors, and another Pogtopia POV!
I hope you enjoyed!
Oopsies x