TW: SWEARING, YELLING, SWEARING, TRAUMA, BEATINGS, PHYSICAL AND VERBAL ABUSE, DEALING WITH ABUSERS, INCREDIBLE VIOLENCE, MENTIONS OF DRUGS, BLOOD, ANXIETY ATTACK TRAITS, SEVERE SHOCK, ILLNESS TRIGGERED BY MENTAL STRESS, TRAGIC BACKSTORY, UNBELIEVABLE TWIST THAT YOU NEVER SAW COMING
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Messy loose bits of wispy hair cloud my vision, I shove them away with sweaty palms and keep my eyes locked on the bubbling potion. I feel my heart pounding and hear the breaths coming out of my mouth.
"Please work, please work," I mutter unconsciously under my breath.
I don't remember which trial this is, it's written somewhere in my journal. The pages were nearly totally black with ink as I had struggled to squeeze in every amount of data I could. I just need to get the balance of ingredients right, that is all. I know I've thought this about the last dozens of trials, but I'm so sure that this is the one. This is where I get it perfect.
I feel my stomach pang as the liquid starts bubbling more furiously, the colour of the liquid changing from green to orange. Exactly like I wanted, but something's wrong. Frantically, I close the blaze powder valve on the brewing stand to stop the heat. My no-longer-white lab coat flaps at my knees as I move around the bench quickly. It was already heavily stained from the orange and green foam from the last few trials, as are my clothes. I even had to clean my emerald earring last night after a failed test. Only the gods know how the foam got in there.
I was just glad that the foam had yet to find a way down my shirt and to my necklace with my parents' rings looped on it. I had decided to wear it today after having kept it in a wooden box in my room. I put it away after my first proper fight on the battlefield, I nearly lost them and I couldn't bear it.
I grip the necklace through my clothes as the potion bottle starts to stutter and shake at boiling point. I slowly start stepping back knowing all too well the result of this disaster.
"Shit, shit, shit!" I grab the shield I had leaning on the table in the middle of the lab knocking over a vial of something in the process. I crouch down and brace for the explosive results of my mistake.
George is going to kill us.
"Is that really what you guys are thinking about right now?" I snap at the voices.
I squeal a little as I hear the familiar shattering of glass and squelching of the foam. The shield makes small shudders as bits of foam shoot at it. Then the room goes quiet again.
Cautiously, I peek around the side of the shield and sigh when I see the mess. Bigger than last time. I groan and dump the shield and grab a steel bucket instead. I pull on the orange and green stained sticky gloves and start shovelling handfuls of foam into the bucket. Again.
It had spread all over the floor, as usual, staining the Blackstone bricks. I decide to get the mop and bleach later. I move off the floor and start shovelling away the foam on the bench. At least I had learnt not to keep anything on the beach beside the brewing stand I was using.
I pick the glass out and throw it into the bucket too. I go to unscrew the top of what used to be a bottle from the brewing stand, but I bump into something. Something solid that wasn't the brewing stand or a sharp glassy edge. I furrow my brows and fumble around in the foam for the object. My fingers close around the smooth surface. It kind of felt like one of the bottles if they hadn't blown up in the experiment...
Wait... that is a bottle!
I launch into a frenzy, dropping the bucket on the floor and scooping away the foam with my arms making gross lime and orange stains.
There it is. One of the three bottles is full of clear liquid, warm to touch from the blaze powder, and in one piece. I pick it up and hold it to the Redstone light in the ceiling as carefully as if it was a baby. It shines orange and green, like rainbows through the living room window in the morning, and is devoid of any solids.
I bring it back to my chest in wonder, tapping the glass trying to work out how it has withstood the pressure. Running my fingers over the smooth side of the bottle I find the tiniest lump, like a mountain range running down the side.
Glue. This bottle must have broken before and has been glued back together. I whack a hand to my forehead as I realise I could have just bought enforced glass bottles to withstand the pressure of my experiment. Fucking hell.
I had done it, I have finally done it. A smile creeps across my face uncontrollably as my joy overtakes my stupidity. I let out a strange, excited squeeze and dash upstairs not bothering to take off my destroyed lab coat.
The door at the top of the basement stairs busts open with a bang as it hits the wall. I catch the doorframe with one arm to pull myself around the corner to the kitchen.
Drista looks frazzled and I notice her bowl of cereal and the spoon she must have dropped on the floor when I scared her.
"Holy shit," she mumbles bending down to reach her spoon.
"Sorry," I say not feeling sorry at all.
"What the fuck is going on with you?" she asks still looking slightly tense. I nearly jump up and down with excitement. She raises an eyebrow at my unusual excitement. It takes a lot to turn me into an overexcited child.
"I think I've just crafted a truth potion," I titter and Drista's eyes widen revealing their pretty green colour, she brushes the gold curls off her face as she sits up properly.
"Wait what?"
"Yeah!" Drista's baffled expression only serves to make my smile grow.
"But how?" she asks. I glide over to the chair opposite her at the table and hold the bottle tightly between my palms as I explain.
"Well it won't force you to tell the truth, that's impossible," I start.
"But it sort of makes you drunk I guess, kind of high too. So you're more liable to say stuff. The fermented spider eye is what gives you the truth stuff. It's poisonous to all animals, so I've manipulated it to react to changes in pulse and heart rate which makes your body hotter. When you lie, your heart rate increases, so when the poison detects the increase in temperature and then the poison kicks in causing pain," I grin wickedly as Drista slumps back in her seat processing all my words.
"Can it kill people?" she asks I hum in thought.
"Like all potions, you can overdose, but I've designed it so that it shouldn't kill the person it inhabits. Effects should fade after a few hours," I frown trying to remember all the details. I'd have to get my book to keep track of everything.
"Then again, we don't know how much of this Schlatt will be able to take, he's an alcoholic and he smokes," I huff irritatedly but Drista laughs furthering my confusion.
"It's going to be fun watching him suffer," she giggles. I shake my head at her young way of looking at the issue. So much like Tommy and Tubbo were, I think to myself.
"I don't really want to use it," I admit, now it was Drista's turn to frown.
"Why not?"
"Potions that are designed to hurt people shouldn't exist, they put everyone at risk once they're created."
"Well did you write anything down?" My journal flashes in my memory. Nobody except Tommy and Dream knows its contents, both of their discoveries were accidental. Tommy kept it when I was in the city, Dream saw it when I had left it in his room. Snooping is a habit I am trying to help him end.
"I plan to burn it once we have everything out of Schlatt, besides, nobody would ever find it."
After all, who would look in a child's dairy?
"Then no one will work it out! You're fine," she waves her hands dismissively and the issue flies past. Heavy footsteps on the stairs cause us to turn and see who was coming down them. Something in me lightens and darkens when I see Dream. I know what his arrival means, and what he's about to ask me.
"You ready to go Y/N?" he asks casually, but I can feel the tension, out the corner of my eye I can tell Drista notices it too as she goes back to awkwardly eating her cereal. I glance down at my unruly appearance.
"I'll be just a minute," I mumble and slip past him up the stairs to my room carrying the truth serum.
I take my crown off and set it aside so I can take off my lab coat. I tut as I look at how much I had stained the sleeves in my mad rush to find the potion bottle. I eye the glass object that I had set aside with my crown.
I check the mirror and notice that despite my efforts with my lab coat, my shirt had still been stained in some spots. I liked this one too. I dig through my closet finding another shirt, belts and other accessories.
A/N: This is your outfit! (the sword is an axe tho :) ) Image from PERSEY on Pinterest
I take a deep breath to steady myself and set my crown on my head and loop the potion onto my belt. A knock at the door draws me away from the mirror.
"Come in," I call. Dream steps in timidly, I catch a glimpse of the mask on his belt. I give him a half-hearted smile not feeling so joyous anymore. Dream smiles sympathetically back and opens his arms. I'm fast to fall into them, breathing in his scent through his typical green hoodie.
"You know that if you need to step out of the interrogation you just need to say so," he mumbles into my ear comfortingly. I take another deep breath to calm my nerves. I wasn't even in the prison yet and I was reacting like this.
"I know."
"How are you feeling?" he asks not letting go of me but pulling back to look at my face.
"I don't know, a bit nervous I guess," I shrug not knowing how to describe it. I knew dread was sitting solidly in my stomach like a stone, but that was all I could place.
"You're not going to be alone, Techno will be there, Tubbo will be there, Quackity will be there," he smirks and leans in until our noses are touching.
"I'll be there," he grins cockily and I can't help but smile. He leans in and presses a sweet peck to my lips chasing some of my worries away.
"Are you ready to go now?" he asks again.
"As ready as I'll ever be."
****
My hand flits quickly, scratching the paper with the pencil I had pulled out of a drawer in the next room. I couldn't see them, but it was comforting to know that Sam and Bad were guarding the door on the other side.
I had decided to stick to the corner closest to the door. Like Sam had described, Schlatt was adamant about not answering any of Quackity, Tubbo or Dream's questions. Techno stood stoically in the other corner absorbing the situation.
The room was made completely of obsidian. I remember it used to be Blackstone but Sam had changed it soon after Drista brought Schlatt in. The Redstone light casts pale shadows on the eerie stone making the room all the more ominous.
Schlatt sat like a ragdoll against the wall. Feet chained to the floor in front of him, wrists chained to the wall just above his head. His fingers had gone pale from having his arms above his head for so many hours, I wonder if he noticed anymore. There was dried blood on his wrists too from hours of wrestling with the netherite chains.
When we first walked in I had been shocked by his appearance. I was so used to red ties and perfectly pressed blazers and shirts; the scruffed orange jumpsuit made Schlatt alien to me. But most of all, I haven't been able to look away from the jagged shortness of his left horn. It had been broken off at the end. They were no longer well oiled or polished. They were dull and black with dust that had gathered on them as time passed. He reeked too, for once not of alcohol or tobacco, it made me wonder if he was allowed to bathe.
"Well, Dream," his voice sent awful shivers down my spine and made me jumpy despite the fact that we had been here for at least an hour already.
"I would love to answer your questions, I really would, but I'm afraid it's not in my best interest. My sincerest apologies," he positively dripped with sarcasm. It leeched off him onto every person in the room like how his horrible stink had found its way into everybody's nostrils.
Dream sighs with his hands on his hips. For the first time since we entered, he turns to look at me. He nods to the potion on my hip and I gulp knowing I'd have to step closer to pour it on Schlatt properly. I set my things down on the floor feeling Schlatt's horrible eyes watching my every move. I unlatch the potion and try to keep my steps steady as I approach him. I find myself kneeling in front of his face far sooner than I would have liked.
"My my my, little Y/N, how you've grown," he smirks like he's won the war. I force my hands not to shake and my expression to remain steady.
I grab his face forcefully and shove it so he's looking at the ceiling. I want to vomit, repulsed by the sensation of his skin on my skin. The room fills with his coughs and splutters as I pour the potion directly onto his face. It didn't matter how it got into his body, only that at least a few millilitres of it did.
As soon as the bottle is empty I'm on my feet. I startle as Dream catches my shoulder before I crash backwards into him. I wish now more than ever that I had the luxury of being able to see his face. I stare down at Schlatt and screw the cork back onto the bottle. He tries to rub his face on his upper arm, but his efforts are futile. The potion is well and truly in his system.
"Bolder than I remember," he mutters crossly.
Too paralyzed to react, I simply return to my corner and pick up the paper and pencil. It takes me a moment to get a proper grip on the pencil again. I touch it to the page immediately creating erratic scribbles from my shaking.
Schlatt falls into another coughing fit and I know the potion is starting to adjust to his body. Techno gives me a confused look, I send one back telling him with my eyes to wait, though Techno was never the best at reading people.
"He'll start talking soon," I say sounding much stronger than I anticipated.
As Schlatt falls out of his coughing fit I notice a slight sway in his body. The kind of sway a drunkard has in their step. Tubbo looks back at me, his horns catching the light, and I nod. The potion is definitely working now.
"What's the strength of numbers across your territory Schlatt?" Tubbo growls. A question with an answer we know a lot about. I smirk feeling grateful for Tubbo's investment in science. I doubt anybody else would have attempted to test the potion before launching into questions.
"Ha more than you bitch!" he spits on the floor. It takes barely a second for his face to contort with pain. Schlatt's wrist jolt in their shackles ripping the scabs off as he tries to clutch his chest to soothe his aching heart. The poison was working perfectly.
"Tell the fucking truth!" Tubbo shouts, his voice echoing in the small box making my ears sting. I resist the urge to clasp my hands over them.
"LESS! IT'S LESS THAN IT WAS!" Schlatt screams and starts breathing heavily as the poison releases its grip on his heart as his body temperature lowers. It was clear now that the poison is very sensitive to the body. I bite my lip wondering how effective the potion will be, it's designed to detect changes in pressure and temperature. Both are changes that occur when one is in pain as well as when one is lying. Gods, please help me now.
As Schlatt pulls himself together he falls apart again. Only now he isn't writhing in pain, his wriggling with laughter. His laughter turns from giggles to crazed broken howls. I couldn't tell if it was a side effect or if Schlatt was clinically insane... perhaps that's dumb of me to question.
"Where do you get your soldiers from?" Technoblade stomps out of his corner stopping just before he steps on Schlatt's legs. His scowl was larger than I'd ever seen it. Schlatt's laughter only increases.
"They're orphans dipshit! You must like that Mr Blade," he mocks before falling apart again.
I feel my stomach churn and my knees go weak. We had suspected as much, but a blatant confession? I feel the blood drain from my face and the room is suddenly much warmer than before. Mistakenly, I lean on the wall for support. Schlatt's lunatic gaze locks on me as his giggles dissipate into a deadpan expression.
"Orphans..." he grins like a mad hatter and I feel even more ill.
"Like Y/N and Tubbo."
Tubbo looks at me with confusion evident in his eyes. I blink profusely trying to hold myself together.
I'm not an orphan. I grew up with my parents I had a mother and father. I suppose I'm an orphan now that my parents are dead but I'm also an adult. I focus my vision back on the scene and see Tubbo staring at his boots, thousands of possible answers and questions running behind his eyes.
Schlatt's manic laughter cuts through it all. He stares at all of us with mordant disbelief.
"Do you idiots really think Y/N's measly human parents could create a being as powerful as she is?!" he shouts haphazardly. My brain churns its cogs trying to process his words, but he's fast to throw another spanner into the works.
"I had higher hopes for you," he sends a loathing look straight at Tubbo.
I jump as Techno punches Schlatt in the ribs making him groan like a dying animal.
"Shut your mouth," Techno glowers. Tubbo looks up from his feet, an expression on his face that I'd never seen before. Harsh and cold like a stone, stronger than an Ox, brows furrowed, lips taught. I have no idea what he's thinking.
"What do you mean?" he asks, his voice strong in its quietness.
"Tubbo don't-"
"What do you mean," Tubbo cuts Dream off, stressing every syllable of his words. Schlatt's chuckles roll through the room like thunder and his coughs cut through it like lightning strikes as his mouth drips with bloody rain.
"Who was your daddy Tubbo?" Schlatt's eyes have glazed over with madness, the blood on his chin making him look crazier by the second.
Tubbo stays silent. Stoic.
"Now that's interesting," Schlatt hums and sits up straighter.
"You better stop-" Quackity starts but is cut off by Schlatt.
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH! YOU BASTARD-"
Schlatt in turn is cut off by a blow to the jaw from Technoblade. If Schlatt went any further I was sure Techno would beat him until he was sure Schlatt would never wake up again.
I take a wobbly step back still holding onto the wall as Schlatt spits out a dripping red tooth.
"I HAD KIDS ONCE!" his words slur into drunken shouts as the poison works more and more by the second. We could barely understand him, but he had everyone's attention.
"BUT THAT FUCKING BITCH WIFE RAN OFF WITH THEM BECAUSE SHE LOST SIGHT OF WHAT'S RIGHT!"
Schlatt glares daggers at all of us. His chains rattle like snakes as he yanks against them so hard I think he'll pop his shoulder blade. His teeth grind together as more blood pours from his mouth and wrists onto the floor, his jumpsuit, his face. His broken horn making him look all the wilder.
We were dead silent. His deranged bloodshot eyes lock with mine.
"MY FUCKING BITCH STOLE YOU FROM ME!" his head swivels like a spinning ball to Tubbo.
"YOU'RE ALWAYS SUCH A FUCKING DISAPPOINTMENT!"
I try to make comprehensible sense of his incoherent noise when Dream grabs Schlatt by the scruff of his neck and slams him against the wall causing Techno to step back.
Schlatt only laughs.
And laughs.
And laughs.
I couldn't keep up.
The voices enter the fray. They wrestle in my mind incoherently fretting with one another in their mindless chatter. I can't make out a single thing they were saying. Just echos of sound crashing like white noise in my ears. I notice my pencil and notepad on the floor. When did I drop it?
Schlatt chatters like a mindless monkey as Dream shakes him without any sense of control. The room was an ocean of rage and fear.
"DO YOU WANT THE TRUTH?!" Schlatt shouts through his distorting laughter. I can't tell if my ears are working properly anymore. The room tilts like the belly of a ship in the world's most ferocious storm.
What the fuck was he talking about? My parents are my parents. I was raised in the village like all the other kids. Our village was too small to have an orphanage. We didn't have any outside contact with other towns.
I try to zone back in on the situation but it feels a million miles away. I notice Dream wrestling with Schatt, slamming his head against the wall. I see Schlatt's eyelids drooping. We need him awake.
I need to know. I have to know.
"Stop!" I yell, my voice trembling and weak like the mewling of a kitten but far too strangled to be cute. Techno and Quackity leap into action tearing Dream off of Schlatt's floppy body. Somehow, through it all, he never stops laughing. Quackity and Techno shake as Dream tries to rip out of their grasp.
Tubbo turns away from them and to me instead. I push myself off the wall trying to be strong and stand solidly. But I wobble and am forced to lean on it again. Tubbo's quick to come to my aid and hold me up by my arm.
I can't be weak here.
"Awe, you're so grown up it makes me sick," Schlatt snarls his voice raspy and head bloody. I see another crack forming in his already broken horn. I wonder how hard Dream slammed him into the wall. I wonder how he's still conscious.
I watch his stupid drowsy face. His arrogant smile and nonchalant posture and how his voice was so fucking under control despite everything we were doing to pressure him. Suddenly I don't need Tubbo's help to stand up tall.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I command the space and feel the tension bending like metal in my grip.
Schlatt sends me a lopsided smile.
"Y/N-"
"I need to know!" my scream breaks the air like an axe through the wood. Dream stares at me with a lost expression. I didn't mean to yell at him like that, but I cannot let this opportunity slip away.
Schlatt wanted me.
Schlatt kidnapped me.
He stole me and hid me away in a tower like a lost princess. His officers called me "lady" and bowed and kissed the top of my hand at the ball. He explicitly taught battle strategy and greek myth. He manipulated me, bent me to his will, injected me with serums, tortured Ranboo, destroyed the end and burnt my home to the ground.
I want to fucking know why.
"We had parents," Tubbo fumes next to me. I want to spit on Schlatt as he starts to laugh again. The same ringing sound, the same sickening voice. It made me want to hit something. Hard.
"Your 'parents' were total fakers," I scowl as he mocks my family's memory.
"No, they aren't-"
"You're believing a lie sweetheart," I feel my stomach churn again and shut my mouth despite how much I wanted to bulldoze this fucker with my words.
"Ordinary people like those fuckwits could never have understood your true power," he pauses to chuckle again and lick the blood from his lips. As soon as the blood is gone more floods the spot like a waterfall.
"I remember the day my wife ran away," he mutters, his words catching on the blood in his mouth. He spits it out of the floor.
"I never loved that bitch. She was supposed to give me an heir that was worthy and powerful," Schlatt's eyes drift over me.
"She was like you Y/N. A descendant of the gods, or at least she was supposed to be. She was a barren shit and only managed one fucking kid. The biggest, shittiest disappointment in my life," Schlatt's eyes snap from me to Tubbo.
He grins.
"Be grateful your mother loved scum like you because I wasn't about to fall for it."
Before I know it Tubbo was on the other side of the room kicking Schlatt in the rips. A squelching snap indicates all we need to know besides the groaning yowls. I feel dizziness kick in again and I stick a hand out to catch myself on the wall.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Tubbo bellows at Schlatt using his voice in a way I'd never heard before. I feel like I've seen a much different Tubbo in the past hour than in all the time I've known him. Despite the searing pain Schlatt must be feeling, he didn't falter.
"AND YOU'RE FUCKING LUCKY!" He points a bumpy chained finger at me with revenge deep in his eyes.
"THAT MY FUCKING BITCH TOOK PITY ON A PRINCESS OF A DESTROYED CITY. A city blessed with kings holding gifts given to them by their ancestors," Schlatt's smile grows and grows and grows with each passing word.
"APOLLO!"
No.
"ARTEMIS!"
No.
"ATHENA!"
No.
"AND ARES!"
NO.
"A PRINCESS I FUCKING STOLE BECAUSE YOU WERE ACTUALLY WORTH MY TIME UNLIKE THIS FUCKING PIECE OF WORTHLESS SHIT!"
Tubbo snaps and punches Schlatt directly in the face. I hear his nose break, like the snap of a chicken bone. I feel the coldness of the wall. I feel the cool bricks on the floor. I look around and everything is suddenly so much larger. When did I fall over? Did I fall over?
I can hear my heartbeat ringing in my ears. My breathing is the clearest sound.
The sound of my crown hitting the floor gets me far enough out of my daze. I grip the side of it in my fist and immediately feel the blood start to flow as the sharp edge cuts my hand.
"WHAT'S FUCKING FUNNY?!" Dream sounds far away as I watch him struggle against Techno and Quackity's grasp with hazy vision. I see him looking towards me and back to Schlatt. Quckity's arms give way after ages of holding the raging man back. Dream grabs Schlatt by the collar of his shirt.
"It's funny..." Schlatt trails off with a wheeze, blood spilling everywhere. Bubbling like a brook, running like a creek.
"It's funny because you've all been duped."
Schlatt lets out one final crazed laugh before we are plunged into darkness.
~~~~
See y'all in the next one ;)