ASSASSIN 2~ 𝓗𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓭

₍⁠₍⁠◞Restless Nights◟⁠₎⁠₎

Quackity POV:

The night before they left was a restless one. He'd marched straight back to the castle to announce his leading of the mission and launched into preparations. His mother, when he told her, pursed her lips but said nothing to try and sway his decision.

The king tossed and turned in his bed that night, unable to switch his mind off. He wondered with paranoid intensity what this expedition would discover, what possible weapon Dream could have sent out for that could be so devastating. Something about this mission seemed final. As if this was it. The final battle, the end of the war, one way or another.

One thing Quackity knew for certain was that it could never be over until Dream was dead. Or he was.

Turning over with a groan, Quackity tried to clear his head. But if he wasn't worrying about the journey tomorrow, he would have to think about this evening, at the well. And he refused to do that.

Leaving at the crack of dawn -by his own insistence- would be difficult enough without him getting any rest. But as he lay there with his eyes wide open and staring tiredly into the dark, he resigned to the fact that he might stay in that state until morning.

Somewhere in the early hours, however, Quackity must have fallen asleep, because before he even knew that he was nodding off, he found himself blinking dizzily at upright legs and feet that he owned, halfway hidden in a swamp of thick fog.

He turned his head around at the misty void, aware of the way he mirrored the same exact movements as nightmares past. It was a loop he was stuck in, no matter how lucid his mind.

Like clockwork, there was the blue glow, like a sun shining weakly through a haze of clouds. He walked towards it, his feet dragging him even when his stomach felt as heavy as lead. He didn't want to go again, he didn't want to see.

The air warped around him, almost seeming to push and pull him as if it could sense his apprehension. It knew he deserved this. It wanted him to see it.

Quackity squeezed his eyes shut, forcing them to close and shut out the haunting, blue pulse his feet were marching him towards. He arrived there regardless, the cold reaching his skin and letting him know he was there.

Although he wasn't sure if it was by his own volition, his eyes opened.

Wilbur sat there, like a doll that had been abandoned in its dollhouse, left to sit politely at a tea party for ever and ever. Quackity looked at him with a sigh.

Every little feature had evidently been seared into his memory. Quackity wondered whether it always would be. The dreams hadn't shown any sign of going away yet.

The silence was what disturbed him the most. There was nothing from all around them, the mist was deathly silent, and even his footfalls made no sound on the ground. The little bluebird was the only thing that broke the quiet. It made no calls or chirps, but there was the small noise of its wings beating furiously against the stale, dark air, flitting around Wilbur's head like a cuckoo.

Perhaps with its furious flapping it was trying to stay warm, Quackity thought, suddenly becoming aware of just how freezing it had become. His fingertips were icy, all blood supposedly running through his veins slowly receding back to leave them pale and frigid.

He'd never stood here this long, he realised, with another chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. He'd always work up by now.

It had never occurred to him, the idea of what if he couldn't...

Quackity tried to take a step back and found surprisingly that he could. The cold air followed him, filling every bone in his body and burning his throat, making his breath catch as it tried to reach his lips.

As dread grew in the king, he knew something was terribly wrong. Panic refused to surface, however, frozen in fear and hiding inside him.

Wilbur turned and looked at him.

Quackity's eyes widened as he met empty ones that now seemed a lot less vacant.

He could see him. Wilbur could see him.