a panacea for the absent soul - Ainlux (2024)

Chapter 1: against all odds, he's alive

Chapter Text

Dream opens his eyes again.

He opens his eyes again and he's breathing, he's solid, he's not a ghost he's alive; against all odds, despite everything, he's alive.

He blinks awake and for a long, protracted moment he stares blearily at the inexplicably wooden ceiling, a low burn of confusion simmering in his gut. His mind feels...slow and sluggish, placid even, as if he has all the time in the world to revel in the miraculous rise and fall of his chest, the expansion of his lungs, the heartbeat nestled within the cradle of his ribs. It distantly registers that he has no idea where he is—why is he alive? Better yet, how is he alive? He swears he's supposed to be dead, he swears he should be—when he clumsily misjudges the distance between his resting place and the wall during a lazy stretch his knuckles sting from an unintentional graze against solid wood.

...Is this not limbo, or a dream, then?

Belatedly, Dream hisses a quiet ow, slowly blinking as he makes the herculean effort to half-turn, half-rise. He spots a flash of white on the table next to the—his?—bed and realizes thatoh his face is bare, absently reaching up with non-aching fingers to touch his own sleep-warmed skin. Whatever room he's in is rather dimly lit from its singular window pane but there's more than enough light to discover that he's occupying a very basic room crafted primarily with oak planks and a smattering of cobblestone corners.

So very basic as to inspire a curl of nostalgia as he eyes it.

All told, it's a relatively small room by a player's standards, closer to the size of an average villager house and only large enough to hold a few survival staples. From where he occupies the single red-cover bed he can plainly see a single-wide chest and a dark furnace, beside which is a half-dozen oak logs and a spot just big enough for something about the size of a crafting table...without the crafting table. A lone unlit candle sits in the window frame and an equally unlit torch hangs over the room's closed door. A second, open doorway leads to the house's bathroom, judging by what he can glimpse of a sink in the space beyond, the small mirror above the tap reflecting a bit of light from the bedroom window even at this unfavorable angle.

This is all...jarring.

Dream is honestly not even sure he's still in the server (and why would he be? Why would he be alive again after losing all his canon lives? If he's alive surely he's somehow just been shunted to a different server without going through the main hub first?) and he dreads to check the answer.

Nothing about this feels real, Dream doesn't feel real, even as he gingerly slides his legs from beneath the bed covers and stands to explore the space. He grimaces at the familiar sleeves of the comfortingly green hoodie he hasn't seen since he was put into prison and traded green for orange, plucking a bit listlessly at it. There's a painful lump in his throat at the sight of it, at the normality of it, at the soothing softness he'd started to forget as the months without it went by.

As the toll of Pandora came calling, calling, calling and began to ruin him in earnest.

His feet are bare beneath the hems of his black pants but he can spot his boots—not a similar pair, no, buthis boots, as well-worn as he remembers, albeit the scuff marks are cleaned-up a little—neatly tucked by the door. Wood is...not new material, not really, but it is a welcome sensation all the same.Anything is better than yet more accursed obsidian, he'll admit, busy peeking cautiously through the window glass, hands easily—and, strangely, without shaking—bearing his weight against the table as he leans toward the dim spill of sunlight.

"Nothing but blue sky and trees," he murmurs, his voice briefly, startlingly, sleep-raspy.

So many trees, in fact, that at whatever hour this is the sun struggles to fully brighten the room. Dream's gaze falls from the outside world to the pristine white mask smiling up at him from the table, as glossy and uncracked as the day he first made it. He ghosts a hand over it, both bemused and befuddled at its surprising state of repair; his mask had long since cracked under the stress and strain of battle. And it had also long become a popular target when people found they couldn't simply strip it from him as they pleased (meticulously crafted and long-standing enchantments wouldn't allow it and he certainly would not bare his face to his enemies, willingly or otherwise).

How curious, then, to find it whole.

Dream leans back from the table, hesitant to put on his mask even as he yearns for the safety of it. It has been...he can't actually remember the last time he had it off for longer than a minute or two. Instead he steps away in the direction of the single-wide chest, popping it open to snoop through its contents. In it, neat-as-you-please, are a handful of food stacks—none of which are potatoes, thank prime—basic items such as coal, torches, an iron tool set, and then two sets of clothes including his missing gloves and socks.

Maybe it's not a windfall of diamond gear, a complement of combat potions, a full gapple stack, and several dozen emeralds, and it's nothing on the stashes he left back in the Greater SMP, but it's workable for his needs...whatever those end up being. He's done far more with far less.

Leaning over the chest he wavers for a moment, hand hovering over a stack of bread, both his empty stomach and a deep-seated longing to taste something, to eat and be full, warring in his head. Does he eat? Does he risk making himself sick on rich, non-potato food? He may notfeel weak right now but that doesn't mean he isn't. Logic, coupled with months of starving and poor food, begs him not to. Begs him to hold out, to wait, to abstain, just in case this is nothing but a cruel mirage and he finds himself beholden to yet more starving and potatoes (he shouldn't get his hopes up, he shouldn't believe he's free, he shouldn't let himself relax—what if this is just a trick?) in the near future.

A pitiful, semi-prideful desire to feel normal again wins out over that logic, kicking it straight off the highest metaphorical cliff as he plucks a single bread and steak from their stacks. His mess of a brain tells him to use the knife he keeps in his boot but there's a clean, food-safe knife he yoinks from the chest instead for the time it takes him to slice the bread in half, dizzyingly gleeful to slap together the most basic of sandwiches if for no other reason than he can. Mentally flipping Sam off, he holds his creation in his hands, distracted for a second by his own fingers looking not-quite-right (he could have sworn his fingers were permanently crooked), and then shakes off that thought to take a bite.

Oh.

Dream blinks to discover he's no longer standing. Rather, he's gone quite abruptly from upright to on his knees, awkwardly curled over the sandwich in his hands. This simple, basic, two-ingredient sandwich; this beautiful, holy offering. He swallows that first delicious bite and breathes slowly, deliberately, forehead resting against the chest lid. It's so good. He'd been dying a slow, poisoned death of an empty, gnawing stomach only rarely filled by bland, ashen taste. He'dforgotten that food should taste like something, should be enjoyable, and here, now, he pushes down the swiftly building urge to cry about it.

How pathetic, he halfheartedly sneers at himself, scarfing down the rest just slow enough to savor each bite for a handful of seconds.

Somehow, someway, he still doesn't feel sick even after speed-eating the whole sandwich, more food than he's had at once since...a lot longer than Pandora, which counts this impulsive venture as a win, he thinks. On the off chance he does have a delayed reaction he stays kneeling on the floor for a while yet, staring absently at the wood grain beneath him. Finally, though, stomach pleasantly full and bodily reaction seemingly as normal as it can get, he levers himself upright again and drifts into the small attached bathroom with the intention of cleaning his hands of crumbs and steak juice.

Dream clicks on the bathroom's glowstone switch, glances up, and freezes to stare at his own face in the mirror. He hadn't...noticed, in the moment, in the dim main room lighting, but it's so much clearer in the stark light of the bathroom that his torture-given scars are gone. In fact...Dream quickly shucks his hoodie to check. All of his scars appear to be gone, his skin a strangely healthy tan considering his recent months-long incarceration and his only marks are the freckles across his cheeks, arms, and shoulders. If that wasn't enough on its own, his hair—now fallingabovehis shoulders, not below—is such a light blond it's almost more accurate to call it white and he's fairly certain his eyes weren'tthis neon-bright green before.

He looks...new, fresh, different. It's still him, in the mirror, but....

Shaken, he washes his hands on autopilot and pulls his hoodie back on over his undershirt, resisting the urge to tug the hood on over his face to hide (from what, his own reflection?) by the skin of his teeth.

He lifts his hands to consider them more closely, realizing with no small amount of fascination that he hadn't imagined the lack of aching, the lack of shakiness, the way it no longer hurt to breathe from the abhorrent state of his ribs. Although he'd been force-fed potions (until the last—) there had been no true recovery awaiting him on the horizon. Potions could only do so much on their own. His body had been far too battered far too quickly and far too often to have any chance at well and truly recovering without the kinds of intensive healing regimens unavailable to the server's current resources and knowledge base.

Dream had...well, not come to terms, per se, but he'd accepted that if he ever were to be free of Pandora it would lead to a life carrying the marks of Quackity and Sam both until the day he died. Diminished, scarred, body sensitive to food and light and heat. More than a little ruined.

He meets his own neon-bright eyes in the mirror and musters a weak, fleeting smile.

"Until the day I died indeed," he whispers, watching the stranger-not-stranger do the same.

Desperate, burning curiosity has him duck back into the main room to stand in front of the door where he hesitates with a hand on the wood, glances back at his mask on the table, weighs the necessity for his boots. Should he kit himself out? Should he play harmless? He's wearing his own clothes but has only the basic iron set of weapons, no shield, no armor. Merely a pseudo-anonymity from baring his face. He is, to put it bluntly, vulnerable. And there are dozens of unfriendly faces he would rather not run into. He pauses more firmly after a quick false-start, teeth worrying his lip and calculations flitting through his mind, before he smooths out his expression and gently, carefully opens the door to head off attention both hostile and non.

His caution is somewhat overblown, given that outside proves to be a small, quiet, empty clearing surrounded by a thick layer of trees that isolates this little house from the world. As he steps onto sun-warmed grass the softness of it beneath his bare feet, so gentle, so vibrant, so full of life after months and months of nothing but obsidian and lava and pain, causes him to choke back a wretched sob, palm clapped over his mouth out of reflex to stifle the noise lest Quackity hear him and return—

—no, no, Quackitycan't be here...if he's alive there'sno way Quackity is here—Dream exhales shakily through his fingers, blinking away stubborn, unwanted tears and straightening, hand falling to grasp at his wrist as he casts his eyes around the clearing.

The view immediately outside the door already suggested as much but it truly is surrounded on all sides by dense forest, the tree canopy high enough to hide the entire roof, tiny as it is; he's half convinced if he climbed the nearest, tallest tree he wouldn't be able to spot a single hill or mountain on the horizon. He turns in a slow, methodical circle, eyes darting from trunk to treetop, still suspicious that he may find a glimpse of something familiar, but...there's nothing. Nothing except nature and an undergrowth—unnaturally, dubiously—both thick enough and thin enough to prevent unwanted mob spawns in daytime and hamper the ability of mobs to approach the clearing at nighttime.

Which is all well and good, he supposes, as far as ensuring the area is both secret and safe.

And the prospect of secrecy, of safety, is an admittedly rather heady one.

Dream is thus almost helpless against the relaxing of his shoulders, bared face tilted up toward the sun as his eyes slip closed. The lava in Pandora's Vault was a burning, choking heat-death that he couldn't escape. But this? This kind, life-giving warmth suffusing him with energy? He wants to do nothing but sprawl in the grass and bask in it until it becomes too much and he then seeks shelter in shade or the splash of cool water.

Wrestling that urge down takes a minute, considering he's busy breathing clean air and enjoying the sun and the wind (and after months and months and months of stifling darkness does he not deserve peace?) rather than maintaining some measure of vigilance.

He does manage to drag himself back mostly on track. Eventually. Enough, at least, to start thinking.

The real question then, iswhere he is...and how he got here...andwhy he's here. Okay, the realquestions are where, how, and why.

A soft vwoop-adjacent noise startles him out of his daze, snapping his attention forward as his heart skips a fearful beat. There, in a space where only a shadow had been now exists DreamXD, the god's regalia gently billowing in the breeze and casting a visible corona of light beneath the dense canopy leaves.

Chapter 2: a consequence, his fading humanity

Chapter Text

"XD…?" Dream murmurs, suddenly feeling vulnerable without his mask and moderately bewildered at seeing the god here, now...if XD is here than that's undoubtedly the how, and where would almost need to be somewhere in the SMP—but why would XD bother saving him? Him, the broken mess that he is? He knows XD, he’s familiar with the god, but the two of them have barely interacted throughout the lifetime of the server, so why…?

After a slight tilt of the head in greeting, XD glides closer to Dream’s spot rooted prey-still in the grass. “Dream,” the god returns, voice even, pausing a few feet away and then, quite deliberately, XD’s mask shimmers and vanishes to reveal the god’s bare face.

To reveal Dream’s face, which he’d known the god copied forever ago but now? Seeing XD’s version of his face—a version clear of scars but adorned with a familiar constellation of freckles, with inhumanly bright eyes and nearly-white hair? A face he had just stared incredulously at in the mirror mere moments ago? It’s almost enough to send him reeling.

Instead, what happens is his mouth opens and: “I should be dead,” spills out. Neutral, factual. Not an accusation but a definitive statement.

Quackity killed him. Quackity took his final life. Dream should be dead.

[Dream was slain by Quackity wielding Warden’s Willbreaker], after all.

What he knows is that he should be dead. Presumably, or rather, most assuredly the SMP at large is celebrating his third death—

(regardless of the hows, the whys, and so on of the events leading to his dying in prison, as he’s not fool enough to desperately hope the wider SMP cares—there will be no justice for him because he’s Dream: a monster and a villain and a tyrant and something less than human and that’s reason enough to ignore others’ failings in favor of being ever-so-pleased at his final fate—finally, they will think and they will cheer, and they will celebrate their bloodied freedom atop his cooling corpse; it does not matter that all three of his deaths were due to vengeance and cruelty, were in essence, at the very core of each, executions done by those who had and abused their power over him…

…they are good and he is evil, and what do the good do but slay evil?)

—even as he stands here in this moment alive and breathing. As he stands here experiencing the disjointed unreality of the should-have-been-deads. As he stands here, air expanding his lungs and heart beating in the cradle of his ribs despite everything, changed for it and because of it and unsure, very deep down, if he wants real answers or the comfort of lies.

“Should,” XD echoes, slowly beginning to circle Dream, “is an interesting word to use.” The god’s measured predator’s stalk around him—still at more than an arm’s length away—is a steady whisper against the grass. XD rarely alights with his full weight onto the ground as he prefers to hover, prefers the intimidation factor and the reminder that XD is not mortal and thus not beholden to paltry mortal rules like gravity. At the moment, however, the god is physically walking, boot steps rhythmic and purposeful as Dream warily tracks his movements.

“Would you rather be?” the god muses, expression benignly curious as he crosses in front of Dream.

It feels like a trap, somehow, although Dream’s fairly certain his answer won’t cause XD to kill him even if he did choose to say yes. Even if he chose to lie, if he chose to argue…which he wouldn’t, not when his most honest truth is that he does so desperately want to live.

“No,” he finally replies, “but I was killed.” Those words are important to his initial sticking point: he was killed on his last life in a manner befitting a canon death, without a totem of undying in his inventory, therefore he should be dead. A ghost, perhaps, if he were so lucky, but dead all the same. Living defies the three-life rule of the server as an anomaly he doesn’t understand.

XD hums, “You were, yes. But why should that mean your death?”

Dream is…admittedly confused about what’s happening here, and by what he means everything. In what scenario would being killed—on a last life—not lead to his final death, to an eternity in limbo or the unending blackness of a culled existence? “…I was on my third life?” he tries, a dawning, uncomfortable sense that he’s missing something vital beginning to creep over him.

(How long was he dead? For how long was he lost in the void in the span between one blink and the next? What is he missing?)

“Oh Dream,” the god croons with an airy sigh, circling closer to trail gloved fingers lightly along Dream’s defensively hunched shoulders, the touch electric—colored particles fizz up and out at each point of contact. “Have you forgotten what you are?”

His lips part to reply with a plea for clarification a second before XD’s godly aura unfurls its power throughout the entire clearing. The full breadth of its presence blankets the air in a weighty, syrupy-warm miasma that has Dream’s tongue suddenly heavy in his mouth and his thoughts gone fuzzy, his eyes fall to half-mast and his face flushes as he sways on his feet. His immediate internal and very alarmed panic is ruthlessly smothered beneath a deep, intrinsic familiarity that his traitorous hindbrain insists is safesafesafe. Dream knows this power, Dream trusts this power. He wants to, he wants to…prime if he doesn’t want to lay with his head in XD’s lap and sleep, soft and unguarded, assured the god will look after him while he rests—but he can't quite grasp why.

By some miracle he manages to unstick his tongue enough to rasp, “X…D…what…?”

Blessedly cool gloves cradle his face, a soothing touch he presses into with a quiet, gasping shudder (to his own, distant mortification) that inexplicably sates a yawning, hungry chasm in his chest he’s never noticed ached like an open wound until this very moment.

“Oh Dream,” XD croons again, thumbs sliding gently back and forth beneath Dream’s eyes, “my Dream.”

Through blurry vision he absently notes the god’s strangely tender expression, his own hands raising to weakly grasp at XD’s forearms in search of grounding. He hasn’t been touched kindly, gently in so long he is helpless to stop the inevitable burn of tears which build until they spill over to be brushed away by XD’s thumbs. How long has it been since he let himself cry, since he allowed himself to be so horribly, terribly vulnerable, since he cracked himself open for genuine emotional catharsis? Since he let himself be well and truly human?

“My chosen, my favored, my admin,” the god murmurs, holding him as if he is a precious and beloved thing. (As if Dream is not merely a failed collection of mistakes masquerading as a person who is worth nothing and has nothing and is nothing.)

Admin? The word slithers into his thoughts and curls around his beleaguered sense of self, alighting in his core, a gentle revelation and a gentle reminder. Oh, right. He is the admin, isn’t he? Then why has he…why is it—he should know this—

“I—,” Dream chokes out, wincing when pain spikes through his head and interrupts him mid-word, his fingers spasm where he’s still holding onto XD for support.

XD’s power coalesces, sharp and pressure-dense, into a cocoon around the two of them, the god quietly clicking his tongue in a manner reminiscent of Dream. “I see,” XD states, tone flat and the faintest frown marring his face. Dream can barely muster the energy to formulate the foundation of a thought before he’s distracted by the god’s crossed halos flickering end-purple-bright and wings snapping outward with a whip-crack of displaced air. The thus-far low, soothing hum of XD’s power crescendos into a bone-thrumming, teeth-rattling hunter’s roar that sends the nearby trees swaying dangerously backward and flattens the grass beneath their feet.

And then silence. A dull ringing in his ears left by the absence. The creak of wood resettling around him. And a slow, shivery sensation of tightly-clung metaphysical drapery sliding down and away. His next breath comes noticeably easier as he blinks placidly at the tip of XD’s nose, his brows furrowed, and struggles to understand why it feels like he’s finally shed too-tight, ill-fitting clothes after years of unwilling, unaware encasem*nt (entombment).

He makes an audible, questioning noise deep in his throat when XD pulls away slightly. One of the god’s hands now holds what looks to his still-blurry vision like a hovering, feebly pulsing ball of red and black tangled string. Underneath the remnants of XD’s aura is a whisper that cajoles and wheedles and appeals and shrieks when he tears his attention away. There’s no language to its words save the instinctive translation understood by an admin or a god, which does not parse well beyond the senses—the whisper lies as scraping metal wrapped in thin veneers of brightly-dyed cloth. Ignoring the code-string throwing a tantrum, Dream wracks his brain trying to remember what this type of entity is called (he swears it’s right on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach), it’s—

“A curse,” XD tells him. “An insidious virus in your code that stole you from me,” the god continues, a warning and a threat and a promise all dripping lava-slow from his voice. A swiftly-closed fist shatters the lopsided ball with a sound not unlike breaking glass, then a follow-up burst of end-purple-bright purifying flame dissolves the floating, fragmented remnants of code-string and leaves the air around them cleaner in its wake.

Dream blinks again to find his vision clearing—sharpening, even, as the iron tang in his mouth fades—and a subtle, gentle pulse in the center of his chest that echoes his heartbeat.

“There,” the god notes, viciously self-satisfied, bright green eyes focused on his closed fist. “I thought it destroyed when I retrieved you but it appears clever enough to attempt restoration. A shame its source code log is corrupted. Regrettable, perhaps, but as it dares to exist on this server, in my server space, in my domain, it shall be found. More importantly,” here XD reaches up to free one of Dream’s still-grasping hands and maneuver Dream’s palm to press against that newly-felt pulse. “Your connection, Dream, can you feel it again? Your second heart, the soul of your server, your world.”

The pulse flutters hummingbird-wing-fast in acknowledgment of his attention, a greeting and a call of I’m here, I'm here! “Patches,” Dream whispers, one side of his mouth ticking up in long-forgotten fondness. How could he have ever forgotten this? How could he forget the joys of nurturing the world to which he was admin? The server, his server purrs beneath his skin, although it’s much weaker than he remembers. But if he’s been cut off from the server for so long, and so thoroughly at that…as much as he hates the thought it does make an unfortunate amount of sense.

One more thing he’s failed at, one more responsibility he didn’t handle correctly.

Now that Dream’s caught on, XD pulls away and Dream’s hands automatically follow until they’re both cupping a glimmering blue-green sphere held up between them. His remaining fondness withers at seeing the lack of vibrancy in his server’s core; its colors are washed out and a half-step from grey, with small pockets of near-black and curious crimson red gossamer-thin spots.

Whatever that curse was, wherever it came from, it’s caused his server’s health to steadily decline by severing—muting—his server connection. He should have noticed, he should have fixed it, he should have been better—

(how could he have when he didn’t know? When he could not remember? With his attention stretched thin as one crisis after another cropped up to distract him? When he had no moment of peace during which to self-reflect and catch the internal discrepancy? Between his two back-to-back executions? During the Pandora’s Vault beginnings, starved and beaten and primed for weeks upon weeks upon weeks of Quackity’s heavy-handed torture, kept clinging to life by the grace of choked-down potions and naught else?

When his dark and spiraling thoughts caused him to consider salvation in the quiet, fleeting oblivion of death in lava’s embrace? In those terrible lonely moments where his clawed-together scraps of resoluteness, the drive—the rabbit-heart fear—fueling his desperate desire to survive, the last battered embers of hope, sputtered and began to fail him…to wink out like the growing darkness left by the final absence of long-dead stars?)

The SMP is lucky it did not deteriorate further. Another six months of being trapped by both virus and prison would, judging by the state of it now, have entered the server into a critical failure status from which very few options would remain to save it.

…Which is a morbid train of thought he does not want to explore right now, thanks.

“XD?” Dream prompts after a swift mental shake, reminded that he still has no definitive answer for his continued existence, never mind what’s happened to the server in his…forced vacation.

The god heaves a sound akin to a huff, head tilting a fraction to the right as neon-bright green eyes find Dream’s own. “You are an admin, Dream. At the core of yourself you are,” XD’s features flicker into an indulgent mien, “my admin, my favored, my chosen, death cannot keep you. She may visit you, yes, of that there is no question. To refuse you life again? No. Not you, who learned the teachings of admin scholars and in whose veins runs admin blood. Others may fall to limbo, may await revival or ejection at another's hand, but not you. Most certainly not here on this server in the seat of your power.”

Truth be told, at the moment Dream’s memory of his admin education is fuzzy, like he’s glimpsing snatches without context through a curtain of rain, “But you…?”

“I merely plucked your code-core from that obsidian coffin and brought you here,” XD gestures with a wing toward the house, “but given time you would have respawned regardless. Either in Pandora’s Vault or at the server’s origin coordinates; as long as the server lived so would you. That is simply the nature of admins. I knew we needed to speak and as loathsome the cause was, your death allowed me the opportunity I had thus far been denied to retrieve you.”

That’s…right, isn’t it? Certain parts of his admin knowledge are slowly slotting back into place in his head as XD speaks. The lives system affects the server population as a whole and even he is technically beholden to it, yes. But server-side safety precautions ensure the admin is not spawn-killed in full—nor excessively in non-lives servers—lest the entire server collapse from the complete breakdown of the symbiotic relationship between admin and server. Those precautions have been in place since the active admin hunting days, since it’s rarer now but things of that nature do still happen.

On servers where limbo is enabled, admins can’t be placed in the limbo state for too long since admins are granted the ability to revive players. The revival process doesn’t work in limbo itself due to its command and communication filtering system, a feature considered immersive for the overall experience. Admins in limbo cannot access their full server duties and cannot revive themselves out of the limbo state—so a nasty catch-22 can arise in cases where there is only one admin or there is no allowance for outside revival methods. An admin who cannot conduct maintenance or otherwise connect with their server leads to worsening the health of said server, risking critical failure.

It’s why certain protocols were written to give admins varying levels of immunity to death states, particularly permanent death states. While admins can usually still be killed on their servers, a maximum amount of time for the admin to be in a death state is preset on server creation, with that time being lower for servers with a single admin and a large world size. The only exceptions are given to specific types of servers with stricter rule sets. Custom limbos do exist with flexible parameters but the DreamSMP is already large and complex enough without delving into customizing its code or adding mod packs that would all then need their own upkeep on top of regular maintenance.

(There is no way he'd want extra work when he's embarrassingly behind on maintenance as it is.)

In Dream’s own case, had he been placed in limbo with an appropriate and accessible ghost avatar it would be possible for Punz to revive him since he did, in fact, have the forethought to grant Punz revival permissions. Granted, with the virus affecting him and the state of the server being as…tumultuous as it is, his revival may have taken far too long. While he certainly trusts Punz to revive him, the fact remains that without outside intervention he isn’t confident that Punz would, firstly, understand the urgency and, secondly, be able to get access to either his body or his ghost and a copy of the revive book.

Not in time, at least.

Not unless XD chose to be less…XD and prod Punz along. XD is not a god known for being compassionate, and XD’s attachment to this server begins and ends with Dream. The god may find amusem*nt and even kinship in others on occasion, but XD has the advantage of time as well as power. The server failing would matter little to XD save the loss of his current entertainment, which the god could quite easily replace. As an admin, as XD’s admin, Dream’s code-core is the only one that the god would actively bother to save—unless, of course, he felt so inclined—and Dream alone would be given new life on a fresh server.

Anyone else saved in the chaos would be incidental.

XD has the ability to take and give life, to sustain infinite worlds, to reweave the fabric of reality, to alter the very flow of time. Such divine intercession carries with it consequence and the more direct or the more powerful it is, the steeper that cost climbs.

Dream’s understanding of nearly all these concepts was lost between the introduction of a virus to his code, the crumbling of his relationships, his control slipping through his fingers, his two (almost three) stomach-turning executions and his ignoble third death—third execution—by Quackity’s hands using Sam's tools.

XD scowls—scowls!—and continues with no overt indication that he’s been patiently waiting out Dream’s grim wandering thoughts, “I could not reach you irrespective of medium. Not in the Greater SMP, nor in Pandora’s Vault, to my own regret. You were barred from me and I suspect if you had respawned with that virus still muddling your code I would have continued being unable to reach you unless you specifically called for me.”

Oh. “Which I…wouldn’t have,” Dream admits, the shape of it leaden and a bit nauseating to taste, “because I wouldn’t have known to. I wouldn’t have thought to.”

Even with the revival book close at hand, his ‘ace,’ with its surefire way to summon XD to his location including into the heart of Pandora…the only reason using it without a resurrection target would cross his mind is by an outside, and insistent, suggestion to do so. Where would he find that, as isolated as he was? He only revealed the book’s existence to the server when doing so became necessary to save his last life. Even if Quackity or Sam or anyone else (it’s why they kept him alive, it’s the only reason he was alive long enough to be tortured, it’s all he was worth—) had the idea to push for proof they’d have obviously wanted a real target, which wouldn’t have summoned XD.

And then even if they’d somehow gotten it from him, a non-target resurrection attempt by someone who wasn’t Dream would also have not summoned XD. And Punz, for all that he had a front seat to their experiments and knows more about the book than anyone else on the server, would have no cause to push for wanton use of its ritual methods. Not after seeing them in person. Punz respected its power too much for that, so Dream would have been stuck either way, holding the key but unable to use it.

The god makes a small so there you go gesture, “I greatly suspect what little of your power did remain available to you only did so to deter me from approaching. Isolating you would have been prudent lest I discover it, since it had taken such great pains to place its scales over your eyes.”

Again XD scowls off toward the trees, “I do not know what its aims were,” the god’s expression softens as his attention shifts back to Dream. “Nevertheless, it hurt you.” The staggering depth of regret in those words is apology enough to get Dream tearing up again—

(because it’s so very obvious in XD’s words and actions that XD cares and Dream can recall, now, with budding clarity that XD has been a steady, stalwart presence ever since he stepped foot on the server. That XD has been a constant source of strength in the background—a confidant, a mentor, a place of safety. He is both chosen and favored by a god who otherwise scorns compassion, by a god who chose to care in spite of Dream’s own failings and an unbridgeable distance between them…

…nobody but Punz has expressed their care for Dream in so long he’s unfamiliar with what it feels like to be cared about by someone, by anyone, and at the greediest, most selfishly human part of him all he wants is to be cared for again. To be valued, to be greeted with smiles and laughter, to experience kind touch and burrow into the welcoming space of someone else’s arms and be allowed to breathe, to exist without having to fight for his right to simply be.)

“And,” XD murmurs, reaching out to briefly tug a lock of Dream’s now near-white hair in reminder, “one more piece of my regret is this. I could never regret saving your code-core and thus you, but I do regret its cost to your humanity.”

Consequence, Dream thinks, eyes tiredly slipping closed.

XD chose to save his infected code-core despite the virus’s efforts to make it impossible, chose to power through the dangerous and the unknown in order to gather Dream’s death-fragments in his hands and lift Dream out of the void. And then, when it would have been far simpler to take the choice away from Dream and reset Dream’s code to its non-infected state—to remove Dream from the server for a new life elsewhere—XD’s choice was to revive him.

Recollection of a final-year lecture subject at the academy floats into Dream’s thoughts. Ascendancy, the concept of an admin who fulfills certain criteria becoming divine after years of successful adminship, when their power crescendos until the admin’s core evolves into that of a god. A rare phenomenon, even with a god’s favor. When it does happen it can take decades for a first proper evolution. Upon ascendance, the now-god then claims their own server territory or takes up their mentor god’s mantle and shelters upcoming admins who, with time and experience, may also ascend. Older gods fade or choose to reincarnate into a mortal life, thus maintaining a cycle that ensures a steady ebb and flow of world-magic which keeps the greater server hub connections healthy.

The academy’s lecturer had stressed that most admins would go out and live normal lives never meeting a single god; most admins would make or maintain less than a half-dozen servers in their lifetime and see a god only if they were lucky.

Statistically speaking, it’s far more likely to stumble upon a god-given blessing or be chosen as a god’s mortal vessel than to ascend, simply by virtue of the sheer amount of blessed and-or cursed enchants haphazardly discarded throughout the constantly-reforming server territories.

As a young admin both chosen and favored, Dream should haveyears before his first evolution, albeit somewhat hastened by his own inherent strength and accomplishments. It’s truthfully not something he’s ever really thought about for all his played-up god complex.

Just…he thought he had time.

He thought he had time and now because XD chose to intercede, to save him, he is no longer the person he was before. A little less human, a little more other, a step apart from those he misses in a way not tied to factions or beliefs or sepia-toned nostalgia. A lifetime’s worth of history has been erased from his skin—it is not just the absence of Pandora (for which he is grateful, there is no world in which he would choose to carry marks from Quackity, from Sam, forever), it is the removal of marks gained from valor and from guile and which prove that he fought, he survived, he won, he lost, he lived.

There were memories inlaid within his scars. An arrow wound from an archery competition where George sneezed and somehow misfired directly into his thigh. Splotchy burns on his hip from tackling Sapnap away from a ghast which nearly shot them both off a cliff because Sapnap was too busy arguing to notice. Old blade scars gotten when he was first learning how to fight. Nicks and cuts scattered across his hands and forearms from parkour while practicing various tricks. A long sword-mark up his right bicep leftover from his duel with Techno. The weird right angle on the edge of his collarbone from Bad’s overenthusiastic shield bash during a spar. Dubious potion splatters from experiments Antfrost led them in when none of them were awake enough to be using brewing stands.

Those scars are gone. The memories remain…but memories fade.

(Will he remember, years from now, the stories told by scars and souls that have long since disappeared?)

“…It was going to happen eventually,” Dream finally says with a halfhearted shrug, humorless and defeated. He opens his eyes again, gaze dipping to stare blankly at his greying server core. That his server is in such a sad, pathetic state should preclude him from a divine evolution as-is—every example shown of successful natural ascendancy accompanies a vibrant sphere radiant with healthy power. A server should be nurtured carefully until it achieves its purpose as a home, a battlefield, a creative vision given life and heart and soul.

His server appears mostly-dead and mottled by unknown ills…a failing grade, were he to be quailing under a teacher’s eye. The ache of it in his breastbone is a lethargic despair-flavored poison.

XD exhales slowly, sounding pained as wings rustle. Heart-bruised and aching, Dream finds himself pulled gently into the cradle of XD’s arms, face tucked into the god’s neck as feathers curl around him. He feels…shielded from the world, safe, and the bitter resurgent sting of tears is not as unwelcome as before. His body trembles as the weight of what has happened—his death, his revival, the foreign virus in his code, the unwanted touch of the divine now changing him—falls heavily unto his already bowed shoulders.

“I have you,” whispers XD, the god’s hands cradling Dream’s neck to hold him close. “I have you, Dream. You can let go.”

(there was a dream here once who lived and loved and died and died and died and lived and lost)

Dream clutches desperately at the back of XD’s robes and breaks apart, shatters.

Mourns.

Chapter 3: toward the future, an uncertainty

Chapter Text

Eventually, lashes wet and head aching, Dream’s untethered drifting in the safe cocoon created by XD eases gently into a sheltered harbor and he feels cried out enough to start clawing himself back together. Piece by piece he gathers his scattered dreams and desires and hopes to tuck carefully beneath his skin. He has no need to pretend, to throw away the core of who he is in pursuit of a derailed plan, to continue wearing a mantle someone else originally shackled him with, to obligingly play at being someone else’s villain until he became everyone else’s villain (the server’s scapegoat).

That Dream died in Pandora’s Vault and the Dream that breathes anew is a blank slate.

He’s…free. He’s well and truly free.

Sure he’s different now, achingly so, and alone except for XD and Patches, but he’s alive.

He is alive and has all the time in the world, now, to figure out what to do next—if he does anything at all beyond existing, beyond living.

“What do I do now?” Dream asks, voice tear-thick and fragile. The question spills out from his thoughts through his mouth as he rolls his head to not muffle his words into XD’s robes.

XD, who until he moves has been crooning a soothing, wordless End-borne song, quiets. “You live,” the god answers, lifting one hand from its place in Dream’s hair to coax the server core into Dream’s line of sight again. “You rest,” XD continues, “you heal. You learn to wield your power both old and new. You pour love and care into the server until it shines hale and hearty as it should. You exist in whatever way you find makes you happiest. Above all you live, Dream, for no one but yourself.”

Dream unhooks a hand from where it’s tangled up in XD’s robes and reaches out to his poor beleaguered server core, green light sparking at his fingertips. The grey blooms into color where he brushes featherlight against it. Just a little, just a fraction, just barely noticeable to all but the keenest eye. But it does. And the second heartbeat nestled in his rib cage thumps just a hair louder. He’s done something right for once—for the first time in a long while he’s helped, he’s made something better, and a smile nearly breaks through his lingering melancholy.

Like a recalcitrant cat he reluctantly pulls himself away and XD is content to let him after an indulgent, fond laugh. The god’s wings shuffle and mantle at XD’s back, gloved hands returning to hold his face ever so briefly. “Remember,” XD tells him, “that you are loved.”

And it hurts deep in his chest that a god is the one to tell him this, that a server loudly thrums with agreement. That he isn’t hearing this from George, from Sapnap, from Punz, from any of the people he used be able to claim as friends—from those he still, damnably and softhearted, cares for despite broken trust and poisoned bonds. But Dream can’t, won’t be ungrateful to XD, to Patches, to the only two beings willing to love him as he was, as he is, without buts or strings or caveats, as someone who is and always has been worthy of being loved.

(Truth be told this is already more than he thought he’d ever have again, plan or no plan. Even in his most optimistic, most hopeful moments he knew the likelihood of his relationships recovering beyond scabbed-over tolerance or distant neutrality—underscored by wariness and a dearth of painful history—was a fool’s errand. To hear, to feel such uncomplicated love and acceptance tempts him to cry again, tear ducts threatening to flood anew, all that stops him is the soul-deep exhaustion he already feels.)

It hurts, yet for all that he’s out of practice it is so very easy to say: “Thanks XD, love you too.”

And really well and truly mean it when he says it. When he echoes the sentiment toward his server in his thoughts a scant beat later. Affection has not leapt from his lips without a reflexive self-censor in a year, not without checking his surroundings first, without fearing being overheard, without the dread of openly loving someone being used against him. Without the love that overflows from his heart twisting into a weapon to run him through—without being punished by everyone around him, by himself, for daring to love anyone or anything at all (for having the audacity to be human).

He blinks, bemused, as XD lightly chucks his chin to interrupt his dipping mood and then steps away to give Dream space to stand on his own since he’s no longer seconds away from outright collapsing. Minutes, perhaps, as tired and cried out as he is the grass warmed by the sun is rather inviting. Eager to help, Patches is assisting him in steadying his balance—the earth shifts accordingly beneath his feet, which makes standing tall much less of a challenge than it would’ve been just a half-hour ago.

“Where’d you learn that?” he teases, scraping up some good humor with the barest flicker of a grin and finally scrubs a sleeve across his eyes to dry his wet lashes.

XD may be a god who’s lived a long time and met countless mortals from which to learn behaviors and mannerisms, but after XD connected to him it’s usually Dream’s tics the god copies. He doesn’t think he’s ever done that in his life.

A caught-out expression fleetingly crosses XD’s face and the god’s aura goes all shy; a subtle, embarrassed pink dusting colors the god’s freckles, halos, and even XD’s full divine aura. “Ah,” XD starts, stops, fidgets with his robe sleeves under Dream’s slowly, disbelievingly raising brows. Dream’s arm is still lifted close to his cheek as he squints at XD. “Ahem,” XD awkwardly coughs into one fist, quite clearly relaxed enough to mimic yet more human behavior far more naturally than usual. “It was, ah, Foolish.”

For a moment all Dream can think is the word? the adjective? until it clicks. Right, right, that tall totem of undying shark builder guy that XD commissioned a statue from. How could he forget the guy who exemplifies Hermitcraft’s casual ‘go big or go home’ building philosophy and chose to do it on Dream’s server of all possible servers? The guy who should by all merits not be on Dream’s server, with all its dramatic spats, but actually hanging out with hermits and building his little heart out somewhere far less stressful and far more appreciative of his efforts. That guy.

“Ah, right, the shark guy,” he notes aloud, still teasing.

XD rallies a little, an answering smirk blooming beneath the god’s now white-glowing freckles, “Yes,” XD says, dryly, “the shark guy.” The smirk subsides into a secretive smile, “His statue of me is rather flattering and…I am fond of him. His choice of kept company leaves much be desired but I suppose it is true that you cannot win it all—something needed to be sacrificed,” the god adds in a haughty tone Dream is familiar with from XD’s loud and somewhat catty distaste for Bad, which, no matter how many times he’s asked, has never been explained to him.

And at this point he’s unsure if XD isn’t just committed to a bit that lets him both be ominous and terrorize Bad. It wouldn’t surprise him.

Well…there are certainly worse people XD could bother. All he can recall about Foolish is the man’s preference to spend his time crafting intricate structures around his initial base as opposed to obsessive involvement in the latest brouhaha. Granted, it has been months since Dream’s last drama-thread update from Punz, so he is woefully out of touch regarding the current state of the server’s ever-mercurial relationships. He’s under no illusions that the server members, excepting Sam and Quackity, behaved themselves with him locked up in Pandora. He would never in a million years be so lucky. Not a single one of them are the type to behave, not even if he paid them, barring Punz, of course, wonderful man that he is. It is entirely possible that Foolish is no longer a primarily solo act these days, suckered into aligning with any number of factions.

Oh, but that…is not actually Dream’s problem.

The icy coil of dread wanes and dissipates. There’s no reason for him to tie himself in knots trying to stitch together a plan of action or try and anticipate the worst case scenario. While he’s probably still going to worry, he’s aware that XD can handle himself just fine. Most of the server won’t clock their true connection without judicious application of a clue-by-four—given XD’s casual, discussion-ending claim of simply having stolen Dream’s face which most would accept at, ah, face value—and none of them have the power to truly hurt XD. Mildly inconvenience, sure, he can admit his server contains a few clever people who may manage that much, but only that much. And even that is more likely to be on accident than on purpose.

Since Dream was recently executed (again), well, he imagines it’s more than fair that he wash his hands of the Greater SMP at least for a good, long while.

As morbid as it sounds, he has earned a vacation.

Let the server think what it will. Let it ask questions, let it ask none. Let it come to its own conclusions for good or for ill, let it celebrate the vanquishing of its odious and terrible tyrant (with what recognized authority, by what metric? They call him such but it wasn’t him attempting to execute his enemies during faux-festive events). Let it pat itself on the back, call itself a hero. Let it crow to the very heavens over its hollow victory. Let the server dance upon the empty bloodstained obsidian box serving as both coffin and grave.

Let the entire lot of them persist as they always have with no brush of self-reflection, as navel-gazing and power-hungry and moral-bereft as to be their own ruin. Let them be as horribly, selfishly human as they always have.

(As he never could be.)

No, stop. Dream breathes in, deliberately, and lets go on the exhale.

They were talking about Foolish, weren’t they? He brusquely shoves aside all these cluttering, unwanted thoughts which sprouted beneath his still slightly-grinning face, surprised at the rapid spiral having lasted only a few seconds and not what felt like an entire hour. The dichotomy allows him to smoothly cross his arms and pick up the conversation thread without looking completely stupid. “Well,” he says, tone light, “as long as you’re having fun.”

Judging by the weighted glance XD gives him, his short foray into teetering on the edge of another breakdown did not in fact go unnoticed. Mercifully, XD lets it lie. “I am,” the god admits, utterly unselfconscious, “Foolish is…interesting. His desires are straightforward, his work ethic is admirable, and his presence is a bastion of peace amidst the tiresome buzzing of the Greater SMP.”

Dream shivers with a commiserating cringe. As the server’s resident god, XD is much more sensitive to the constant flux of living and nonliving energy than Dream is as its admin, and even he remembers it being overwhelming in the early days of the SMP (when his adminhood so easily lingered at his fingertips). The academy lectures didn’t prepare him for how loud everything would be, amplified and made worse by the server’s large scale. He had worn himself thin creating a far vaster world than his professors ever advised and nearly lost himself in the sheer volume of life suddenly clamoring for his attention.

If XD had not chosen to reach out—a hand offered in the darkness—and safeguard him from the storm…he doesn’t want to imagine how long it would have taken him to recover from that weeks-long hazy migraine. While he’s glad to have his mind clear and his power back he is not looking forward to finding out if his own sensitivity has increased in line with his new status.

“It is rather cacophonous, I know,” XD huffs a laugh at his disgruntled expression, sobers. “I will not leave you to drown, Dream. You will have the time and the space to adjust, to adapt, to thrive—as much as you need for as long as you need.”

Dream turns his face away, touched but awkward, “Won’t you have better things to do?”

He has XD and Patches again, sure, but he’s grown accustomed to handling things solo, pushing through exhaustion and pain to do what he needs to. There’s no reason he can’t manage this, too; he doesn’t need to be coddled (even if it sounds…nice).

XD whacks him in the side with one wing until Dream gets the hint to turn back, and levels a serious look at him when he does. “My time is mine to do with as I wish. Your capability has never been in doubt. It does not mean you are unworthy of a supporting hand. We both know you are not as monolithic as you wish to pretend, and while you have been alone to spare yourself from new hurts, trust that I want to do this for you. So let me.”

“Besides,” XD sniffs, imperious, “it is no great hardship. I am not so weak I cannot continue to hold the tide at bay for your sake. During your…absence I have thus far already been maintaining the server in your stead—no, it is not your fault, Dream,” the god is quick to chide when Dream’s shoulders creep toward his ears as he curls into himself in shame. “You did not willfully abdicate responsibility, you were ill. Do not blame yourself for what lies out of your control.” A tall order considering Dream’s ingrained anxieties regarding the loss of control, but for XD he’ll try.

Sharp tone gentling, XD continues, “I know very well that you love this world. You exude that love in great measures such that I can feel echoes of it far beyond the edges of the server.”

That’s…news to Dream. His cheeks flush with embarrassment at the revelation he’s been, what, broadcasting his affection without noticing? He lifts a hand to cover one warm side of his face, distantly wishing to sink into the ground and never resurface. The earth rolls a little beneath his feet, Patches excitedly querying ready? and he hastily disabuses his server of the notion he’d actually wanted to, tossing panicked explanations on hyperbole and metaphor and dramatics through their connection.

Patches sulks but subsides, server core projection drooping in disappointment.

“You love this world,” XD repeats after an amused glance at Patches. “You have always loved this world. Even in your darkest time you loved it. How can I do anything less than respect that love?”

A shield comprised of the god’s end-purple-bright power winks into visibility around the server core in visible layers, beneath which Dream’s own green is sheltered. This close, Dream can, surprisingly, detect a light awareness of XD’s sincerity drifting from the flowing ribbons.

“Thank you,” Dream says past the lump that forms in his throat.

The words are for XD’s aid, for XD’s choice, for the open acknowledgment of Dream’s feelings, and the unsaid but understood admittance of the god’s reasons to save him from the the void—despite the cost, despite easier paths existing. Not only because Dream cares about the server but also because XD cares for him enough to respect that he does.

XD inclines his head in acceptance, “I have been monitoring the situation amongst the server since you were killed.” An undertone in the god’s voice has a chill drip syrup-slow down the length of Dream’s spine.

“…How long was I dead?” Dream asks in a faint whisper. Time is not linear in the void, not unlike limbo’s distortion. All he recalls is closing his eyes in death and opening them in life…for him it passed in an instant.

“Long enough to ensure your data integrity was stable,” XD answers, sidestepping a defined time frame like Dream had somewhat expected him to. “And for the Greater SMP to begin reacting in earnest to your death, if you would like to hear of it.”

Dream considers pressing for a less general response—he imagines it could be anywhere between ‘relatively short’ and ‘distressingly long’—then lets it lie. If he truly wants to, he can probably find out on his own later. Does he need exact numbers for the time it took XD to gather his shattered code-core and restore it and, by extension, him?

And then he considers XD’s question, turning his face away to stare into the undergrowth while he thinks. A tiny, not-quite-smothered optimism says maybemaybemaybe while an eclipsing so-very-weary cynicism says nonono—

(does he truly want to know? Does he dare assume to hear anything but celebration, at most a mild reprimand to Quackity for killing him, a soft questioning of Sam’s own culpability? Does he dare wonder and hope and pray that his old friends react in horror, in anger, in sadness? Does he dare believe in the pipe dream of justice when it is his death the server had been so ready to deliver once, twice, nearly thrice before he revealed he still had some value so they locked him away instead?

(into a rotted existence where it would have been far kinder just to kill him again)

Does he dare presume better of people he had already—naively, so, so naively—thought he’d seen the worst from? Does he dare suspend his doubts toward those who kept their silence as they watched him die, callous and cold? His incorrect variables for levels of hatred and desires for vengeance led to a miscalculation, to cascading failures regarding his knowledge of Sam and a complete misreading of Quackity that left him starved and tortured and killed again.

His hubris aside, he never saw himself as worth the time to ruin. An error in his thinking. A blind spot. A willful, pained refusal to admit he has always been the sole exception on the server. Always incapable of good, forever seen as evil—past, present, future—worth nothing beyond a dirt-packed grave. Since posthumous opinion on Wilbur changes by the hour, the only other person considered as terrible is Schlatt and in the eyes of the server Dream is as dead and gone as Schlatt, now.

(at least sapnap will be happy))

—distantly he realizes he’s digging his fingers into his skin where he’s still holding onto his cheek and has to force himself to relax. Dream drops that hand to bite his knuckle and cuts his gaze down to the right, weighing pros and cons.

If he says yes, he’ll know; if he says yes he can’t un-know (but he’ll know).

“No,” he murmurs, turning back toward XD and letting his arm return to its original crossed position. “I don’t think I do.”

I do but I don’t, Dream laments. He wants but he doesn’t, his chest tightening with muted despair. Neither is the right answer. Knowing could bring closure or it could bring fresh anguish, while not knowing may as well be a one-way ticket to obsessing over what he’s missing.

XD, who has patiently awaited his verdict, does him the favor of not calling him out despite tracking the tumultuous path his emotions have taken. “Very well,” the god says, gracefully accepting his response, “should you decide you do I shall relay it to you at that point.”

Dream gets the faint impression XD wants him to, which implies that it’s less than utterly devastating. Even still, he doesn’t think he can hear it right now. “And if I never do?”

The god’s wings mantle to refold neatly away, “Then you never do.”

“…Just like that?” Dream isn’t sure why he’s surprised. XD can be a bit of a bastard considering the god has no reason to adhere to mortal morals, but he’s never been cruel to Dream.

Of course XD takes no offense, “You have all the time you need should that change. If it does not, then it does not.” With a mild shrug, XD waves Dream’s concern away and then glances up at the sky, “I should return lest a server member think to pay attention to my movements. They require entirely too much supervision as it is.”

Whatever expression he makes causes XD’s features to turn tender again when the god meets his gaze (has he ever looked so tenderly at anyone? Maybe—)

“I will return to visit,” promises XD, his genuineness apparent in the wave of power that washes over the clearing and soothes Dream’s spiking anxiety. “To assist your adjustment and for the company. This space is quite far from the Greater SMP, Nether distance included, so you will be safe even from the most expeditionary travelers. Do promise me, Dream, that you will not entrap yourself by remaining here.”

Dream’s brows furrow and he tilts his head to prompt clarification.

Gesturing to their surroundings, the god quirks a familiar smile, “This is a place of rest and recuperation on your life’s journey. It is not the end of your path. Do not constrain yourself here—there is a nigh-infinite world for you to explore, so when you are ready go and explore it.”

…He can see XD’s point. “I promise.”

“Good,” XD nods, mask shimmering back over the god’s face in a swirl of particles. “Be well, Dream.”

“You too,” Dream echoes. A soft vwoop and then, blinking away the afterimages of XD’s teleportation, he’s alone save for Patches.

Face raising skyward he stands for several minutes admiring the cloud-dotted blue expanse before he tiredly turns and takes a few steps toward the house. Rather than reenter he spins on his heel to put his back to it and plops onto the ground, propping an elbow on bended knee. A twitch of his fingers brings Patches’s core closer, where he notes a hue alteration that tells him their connection is healing.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Combined with the sleepiness of being sun-warmed and comfortable it’s hard not to flop over and fall asleep. Dragging his eyes open from where they’d fallen shut, Dream blinks at Patches’s core. She’s shifted into her other form: a tiny green-eyed, mottled-furred kitten peering up at him, as guileless as a newborn baby.

“You were so big,” he whispers, throat tight when he remembers Patches’s adult-sized self when they’d both been in better health.

Patches mrrs at him and a claw-tipped paw tugs at his pants, slow-blinking as love-forgiveness-belief-rest trickles along their strengthening bond.

“Naptime?” Dream guesses. He wants to nap…and their connection can equalize a bit more while he’s asleep. His only other idea is sorting out his messy thoughts, which sounds really damn awful. Napping under the sun is far more appealing.

Patches mrrs again, the grass beneath him obligingly altering at his server’s command to a lush, soft bed of green.

Laughing a bit wetly, Dream stretches out and curls onto his right side, “Guess that’s a yes.” Emulating XD by sniffing rather imperiously for her size, Patches tucks into the crook of his arm with the ghost of a rumbling purr.

His eyes slip closed under the warmth of the sun and he drifts easily into a sleep without dreams.

Chapter 4: if but lost, a dream

Chapter Text

Dusk greets him when he next rouses, sleepy-hazy and slowly leeching his sun-granted warmth out into the evening air. He huffs, rolling onto his back to stare at the sky. Next to him, Patches lets out a disgruntled noise and then claws pinprick their way up onto his chest so she can peer balefully at him over his chin. Gracing her with an apologetic smile, he brushes fingers through her fur to gauge her health—he can’t tell for sure since he didn’t exactly measure her initial size but she does seem a little bigger. Even with XD’s demonstration of destroying his tag-along virus his worry didn’t disperse entirely but if Patches is growing then that’s proof of his recovering bond.

He lays there in the grass for a while watching stars fade in to the purpling canvas, thoughts murky. While he knows that he has all the time in the world, now, he has all the time in the world, now. And the million-emerald question becomes: what does he do with it?

Living, for Dream, has long been tied tightly with the desire, the need, to follow the plan. Everything he said and did could be traced back to the plan—his purpose—and little else. When he faltered or when he stumbled he had the plan to look toward, to reaffirm his own resoluteness so that he could walk forward with confidence despite doing so on a lonely road.

Once, what drove him was his kept company. Friends, mischief, adventure, just existing day-to-day. Conflict was as serious as halfhearted mediation between George and Sapnap squabbling in attempts to one-up each other, incapable of not dragging him into their nonsense. He was entwined with the lives of those he held most dearly, safe in the knowledge that at the end of the day they’d be clustered around a fire or sat around a table bickering fondly and no worse for wear.

And then he lost that. He tried so hard to cling to the server, to his friends, to his three rules…he tried too hard. He tried to do too much, to be too much and failed over and over and over. All he cared for began to slip through his fingers and he had no idea how to begin to get it back, not without exerting his adminship over the server. Not without living up to Wilbur’s claims of tyranny by wielding power none of them had any counter for.

The academy gave examples of admins who chose to control their servers using the full admin suite as their sword and shield. Although it was never said outright, such admins were treated more than a little cautiously in books and lectures. The prevailing takeaway was the sense that doing so made those admins unapproachable. Cold. Emotionless. Open to the most distasteful decisions in order to maintain their specific vision for their server, whatever that may be. Considered to be less human than many gods, even, as they prioritized their subjective ‘ideal’ above all and didn’t care how they achieved it. One of the few exceptions to brazen adminship would be tightly-regulated server types such as mini game or competition servers in which case admins being more hands-on was preferred. But those also usually included more admins—thus spreading the power out enough to prevent a total lack of checks and balances.

When admins can rewrite base player code at their leisure that’s a lot of power in their hands.

He’d never wanted to be that kind of admin. Even when sorely tempted he refused to. And without that kind of backing he had no real defense against Wilbur’s oratory charisma, which talked circles around him in ways he couldn’t have been prepared for. Dream’s experience with arguing was with close friends, not strangers, and his struggles to refute Wilbur’s words only made it easier for the man to talk over him or for him.

As someone who stumbles over his words and often fumbles articulating full, complete thoughts, Dream wasn’t the right match-up for Wilbur…at least for Dream’s benefit. He was exactly the right match-up for Wilbur’s. While Sapnap and George would rib him for it but end up understanding, suddenly he was no longer speaking with people who knew him but new people unwilling or unable to listen to what he was trying to say even when he did manage to get his point across.

(And he was so often being shouted down and shouted over by louder, more insistent voices until he simply fell silent because there was no point in speaking.)

Suddenly the only way to be listened to—and poorly, at that—was to leverage the building fear of him and his souring reputation but that also did him no favors. When he mediated, when he was kinder, no one would listen so he turned to menacing and threats just to be heard. In those cases his ability to articulate became tied to over-the-top speeches where he’d psyched himself into reading from a script so he’d hopefully fumble less. Which then just dovetailed into an increase in fear and ‘proof’ of his ‘evil’…thus shooting himself in the foot again.

Dream spent many a night the same way he is now: wondering how he could possibly recover his reputation and never finding a feasible path.

It’s true that his adminship gives him certain commands he could have used to mitigate Wilbur’s (and later Tommy’s, he can’t forget the loudest and most troublesome piece on the board) crusade to label him a villain to Wilbur’s hero in its early stages. The option exists that he may even have looked to the main hub for the services of an adjudicator or a council review to settle the disputes before they turned into wars.

But although doing so may have prevented what came after, it may just have easily played further into Wilbur’s narrative and bred resentment that boiled over later regardless of his efforts.

…Dream was very much damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Of course by the time he would have heavily considered doing it anyway he’d lost his access to those commands and those choices, rendering the quandary moot.

He lost the purpose he found in the company he kept, frustrated and panicking when the lives system clicked on (and he’s suspicious of why it did considering he’s very sure he’d toggled that option off—if he hadn’t and it was on from the start then he really would have perma’d Tommy and likely Tubbo, too) while he felt helpless to stop the deterioration of his relationships. Even if his code hadn’t been corrupted, thereby making him forget about /revive, and even with the revival book in hand, he wanted nothing less than to see any canon death messages for George and Sapnap (and Bad and Ant and Punz and—).

He’d feared losing them so strongly he didn’t care what he had to do or say to keep them safe. What did his choices matter as long as they were alive? What did he matter as long as they were alive? Maybe he could have clung harder to them and tried swimming upriver against the current of his negative reputation, tried harder to be heard and understood, tried to explain his anxious dread but…it was just….

Easy is what he can’t say because that’s the biggest and boldest lie he’d ever tell if he did. Spitting in the faces of Sapnap and George was agonizing. Every word, every lie out of his mouth torn out from the bleeding core of him like serrated, poisoned knives—it would have been kinder to rip out his own heart with nothing but his own blunt fingers.

What he wanted was his home back, was peace, was to grab his friends and take them all far away from people determined to make him something he wasn’t (a monster, a villain, a tyrant).

But he wasn’t blind and he wasn’t deaf. If he tried to keep them they would always be targets, and as much as he knew they could look after themselves well enough he also saw they took it far less seriously than they should have. Wilbur could and would (and did, the spirit of him) rally superior numbers brimming with self-righteous dissent to continue fighting an endless, worthless revolution. And Dream saw quite clearly the lengths those like Eret would take to grab power even if it meant assassinating George to take back a throne and a crown that meant less than nothing without Dream to back it.

The expression on George’s face when he’d taken back the crown had been a second sword through the heart—he’d almost broken down with just how close George came to death. Dethroning George as a person and a ruler was secondary in terms of motivation. People knew George was his most obvious weak spot and with him and Sapnap already on the outs it was an easy way to hurt Dream by killing George.

How better to rattle Dream’s confidence and ring true his vulnerability? How better to open him up to follow-up maneuvers that may’ve well seen him dead alongside George?

Dream was so horribly afraid, so shaken.

When he could not make them listen to him—to take everything as seriously as their enemies who’d love to see them all dead—he could conclude nothing else but the sheer necessity of pushing them away as decisively as possible. He embraced the villain’s mantle so his words and actions were those of a villain’s role, not genuinely expressed from the heart. Yes, he wanted George and Sapnap safe and his choices contributed to that goal, but in the process of forcing himself to let go—painfully uncurling his fingers to allow them to drop from his greedy, desperate hands—he, behind the safety of his mask, watched them close off. Sapnap especially began to eye him the same way most of the server did: as an out of control threat that needed to be stopped if not outright eliminated.

It led to his own ruining, there, but he quite honestly did not know what else to do. He told himself that so long as they were safe it did not matter what happened to him or if they hated him and tried to live with (that lie, that lie, that prime-forsaken lie).

So many sleepless nights spent wondering, only the plan and occasionally Punz for company, when and where and how he might have succeeded in subverting his own downfall if he had only done…something different.

What that something could have been he never settled on, too aware (but not yet aware enough) of the server’s general disposition to allow himself the kind optimism of believing if he had then it would have saved him. For every moment he thought perhaps I should have he found counterpoints—always, always aware in the back of his mind that the second Wilbur’s propaganda reached its first ear that he would forever be the server’s ‘big bad’ even if he’d chosen to be nothing but peaceful and cooperative exactly as Wilbur and his ilk wanted.

What ifs are so very persuasive.

Could he have made better choices? Yes. Could those better choices have saved him from his deaths? He can’t be convinced of the answer being yes.

Not when so much of the server obsesses over power. Not when there are so many willing, listening ears ready to take up arms at the first suggestion of a threat. Not when a retired Technoblade, whose motivations are certainly not obtuse, was blackmailed and threatened into an almost-execution on the chance that he may be a problem in the future. Techno is powerful, after all, but that power is banked behind an anarchist’s morals and a code of honor ill-suited for the server’s constant power plays.

How would it have been any different for Dream? How could it have been any different for Dream, knowing to what level people would stoop in order to eliminate Techno on pretext because Techno couldn’t be controlled? Why would it have been different for Dream who, like Techno, is powerful and not liable to be controlled?

It wouldn’t matter how he disengaged, or when…whether it was pre-Disc Finale or Doomsday or Exile or L’manberg—the server wouldn’t let him disengage.

The truth is, Dream could move thousands upon thousands upon thousands of chunks away and still spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder waiting for them to hunt him down. Because they’d do that. They would. He would never be able to just leave since they would then spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders for him to come back. And so they’d make it his problem. No amount of assertions that he’d not return would stop them because they’d never, ever believe him.

As long as he was alive somewhere to be a loose end he’d never be allowed any measure of peace from the server members (prime knows if everyone else let bygones be bygones in the early days, even, at least someone—most likely Tommy—wouldn’t let it go).

He’d been…well and truly stuck. Nothing he could do and nothing he did was the right thing. His purpose had narrowed to a plan he believed in, that he still somewhat believed in, as he dug himself ever-deeper into a pit he ended up dying in.

With death he’s free of the server’s regard but he also lost that purpose so now he has no purpose at all.

What is he without a plan, without a purpose?

A lost Dream; a new Dream.

“All the time in the world,” he murmurs and exhales sharply through his nose, a wry, unhappy smile aimed at the dark, star-studded sky.

Patches mrrps as he cups a hand around her and leisurely climbs to his feet. Absently brushing grass off of him he casts a quick look around the clearing in a habitual check for hostiles and then turns to enter the house. Sure he’s safe from mob spawns surprising him due to the layout but he doesn’t exactly want to test his luck—although fighting something to work out some pent-up frustration does appeal to him he’s, quite honestly, not in the mood.

He reaches up to light the torch above the door before he closes it behind him and pads over to the window to also light the candle there. Patches launches herself onto the table from her perch in his hand, pacing around his mask twice before she decides to sit primly on the side closest to the bed.

Dream inhales, puffing up his cheeks and then exhales as he plops himself down on the bed and leans back on his arms. Tilting his head to meet Patches’s intent stare he watches her mimic his movement. A soft broadcast of concern-support-safe-opportunity pings their bond.

XD may have told him to rest and heal and do what makes him happy…but he hasn’t been happy in so long, he hasn’t been idle in so long (hasn’t allowed himself to be idle because it wasn’t safe) that the vast expanse of time with no pressing responsibilities not spread out in front of him, as wide and infinite as the void, is daunting. Terrifying, even.

The paralyzation of choice, he muses with a low whistle, shifting to prop his elbows on his knees. He lightly tugs a lock of his hair as he considers the overwhelming amount of options ripe for the choosing.

Where does he start?

He gestures sharply with his free hand and snaps to open the admin panel, which obediently materializes in its semi-opaque projected hologram. A spread of his fingers has the single panel expand into several hovering windows arranged in his preferred configuration that, once stable, washes his face in a tide of pulsing red alerts and warnings. Immediately he cringes, feeling the strong desire to smother himself with the pillow next to him, pretend he never saw it, and give it up as a bad job.

“Oof.” Dream stymies the urge with a quick hair tug as his eyes flick around each window, absorbing live statistics and points of concern.

Server integrity at 23%, up from an all-time low 16%. Data dependencies failing to validate in the first five attempts. Outdated resource libraries. Delayed and backed-up server updates. Benign and dangerous glitches that should’ve been hotfixed or patched by now. Piecemeal scraps of hotfix and patch code sloppily tossed wherever, barely doing anything but take up space and risk causing conflict errors. A misaligned socket node disrupting the main hub connection. Player and coordinate data showing signs of corruption.

It’s…a lot to take in. Server integrity is crucial and for it to be that low—critical failure state is entered at sub-10%—is alarming. Sub-20% is also not great, since at that point extraneous and nonessential functions are cut one-by-one to try and prevent tanking past 10%.

“If XD wasn’t keeping the server on life support…,” Dream winces as the words leave his mouth. The integrity value may be increasing now since he’s active again, but XD was—and still is—adding +5/10% and enabling the server to continue functioning as usual with no noticeable hiccups.

When server integrity is in the sub-20% or sub-15% range and the server’s health is poor it enters ‘safe mode.’ And safe mode can be brutal. Functions are shut down without warning and chunks are deleted past a 100-chunk border around the spawn coordinates. People outside that border when the deletion protocol kicked in would be full-dead, lost in the void, or shunted into a random server if they were lucky. Portals stop working, enchantments revert, netherite turns into diamond. All but the most basic items, mobs, and crafting materials are also be deleted from inventories, recipe books, and the world in order to save resources by paring down everything except what the server needs to continue operating.

Usually reaching the End allows players a chance at resetting the server should there be issues the admin can’t fix with maintenance, but in this state the End isn’t reachable. Both it and the Nether straight-up don’t exist to, again, save resources, which has the side effect of trapping server members in safe mode. Safe mode’s purpose is to stabilize server integrity 1-2% above crit-fail and it must be manually exited via admin command—a command which can’t even be accessed without a healthier server.

Few servers fully recover from entering safe mode since it’s so close to a complete failure and the deletion protocol sours motivation to rebuild even if the attempt is made. Granted, it isn’t well known that the deleted chunks, inventory, and material swaps are actually stored as snapshots in the memory cache. Careful effort can stitch those snapshots seamlessly into the server’s code to restore it, but it’s a tricky process that carries its own risks. Errors in execution can tank server integrity into crit-fail range, corrupt mis-stitched chunks regardless of partial successes, or, the least dangerous except for morale, permanently lose the snapshots, thus making it impossible to try again.

“They’re so lucky XD likes me,” Dream mutters, crooking a slight grin when Patches agrees with staccato, trilling mrrs.

XD didn’t have to make the choice to help. For servers with patron gods a small amount of energy is siphoned for the server’s health, but without XD’s active support the server would’ve died and only maybe two or three people would have had any idea why it was deteriorating around them.

Prime forbid they realize how to fix the issue. The world’s ending but prime forbid they make allowances for the admin—it’s Dream after all. Mutually assured destruction is preferable to acknowledging Dream’s role or the server-admin relationship.

If he were a pettier person he could use commands similar to safe mode’s sanctions. Or even…ah, XD did maintain a decent series of snapshots. He could mess with the server by shuffling snapshots around to randomly restore old builds and then re-up the new ones. But as amusing as that sounds it’s not really worth it when such obvious mischief is risky. XD may be willing to take responsibility for shenanigans—since XD can also do those things—yet not everybody in the SMP is an idiot. Keener minds might pick at that explanation until the truth came out.

“What a shame,” he laments, “it’d at least be a little cathartic.”

Patches offers him a cat-laugh in response, to which he sticks his tongue out at her for a second.

Twisting a lock of hair around his fingers he briefly swipes up on the maintenance task suggestion log and squints, “Sideways—wait, the fish spawn code is still stuck generating sideways-swimming fish? That’s an old one I thought I fixed. Furnaces failing to light if a single fuel material is used? Oh, that one eats the non-fuel item too? Even whole stacks? Weird. A 74% chance—that’s absurdly high what the hell—for ender pearls to teleport improperly…oh, I see. The new coords don’t log correctly so player data then loads in a ‘suggested’ spherical radius that can include coords in the ground or in objects. What a…fun experience to start suddenly suffocating because you’ve teleported into a tree trunk. Yikes.”

A few tasks are important, such as one where Nether lava falls occasionally unload and reload under certain conditions. Or durability sometimes glitching to 1% based off of what the log can only describe as ??? which is…interesting. Others are less critical, such as a bug where every third piece of leather armor crafted is dyed a random color. Or one where two or more occupied flower pots within the same chunk can spawn a three-high cactus nearby even when there are no cacti in the nearest five chunks and the coordinates are not in a desert biome…for some reason.

“Are you sure XD’s not just poking fun?” Dream eyes Patches, who holds his gaze as she sprawls indolently across the table and offers him a slow blink, her whiskers barely twitching. Upon returning to his log skimming he spots a custom ‘bug’ that activates an equally custom ‘Bad Luck: Bad Company’ status in the vicinity of Bad and Foolish specifically and sighs, “Okay, that is definitely XD having a laugh.”

Not touching that he swaps the history and activity feeds for the windows dedicated to admin commands and inhabitant profiles. His breath hitches at the sight of Punz, George, Techno, Sapnap, everyone’s names—he could open any of these tabs and get details updated in real time: health and hunger and buffs/debuffs, inventories, current and set spawn coordinates, advancement progress, a full list of items linked to individual playerIDs including ender chests, snapshots of travel history, message logs, recorded deaths and kills, usage statistics for weapons and items and materials and food….

Almost hypnotized, his eyes slide over to the admin command window’s [Player Edit] tab where he could, he could—Dream shudders. That’s too much power. It’s a bit sickening to consider just what he could do if he wanted to truly assert control over the server like an actual tyrant. Even before XD triggered his first ascension and gave him a power boost he could have edited certain kernel-level player code to completely rewrite people’s behavior to almost whatever he wanted. And now, ascended, he can affect even more code.

To yank his mind away from that dangerous path he gives himself a full-body shake—he has never wanted to be that kind of admin—and forcefully ignores the sweet siren-song temptation. Instead, he focuses on his own profile tab, opening it and watching the screen transition unfurl, petal-like, to showcase his data. He brushes past details he doesn’t want to acknowledge in favor of sliding his player connection web module to the forefront so he can check one of his two pressing questions.

Dream reaches out a hand to access the web, curling his fingers around a projection of his code-core he then pulls free of the panel and expands with a slight gesture. The panel windows float toward the far wall and increase their transparency, allowing him to better see and manipulate the data he’s interested in.

As he cups his code-code sphere he straightens and crosses one ankle over his knee. Strands connecting him to other members of the SMP spool out in various directions, colored by enmity or relationship or other factors. As the admin every person is auto-connected to him by a neutral thread upon joining the server—they’re his and that means something—however…his web’s strands are in shredded, haphazard tatters.

Maybe it’s unsurprising due to what he’s done and what’s happened and he should know better by now. Maybe he has no right to the tightness building in his chest and the choked-up burn of tears.

…But it doesn’t hurt any less.

Swallowing down the urge to cry he lifts shaking fingers toward the nearest, brightest strong and unbroken thread (it’s blue, it’s blue, it’s blue) only to flinch away. XD’s vibrant purple-white-black is there alongside Patches’s deep forest green, as is a braided red-pink, a soft white-black twine, a shiny white-black-gold, a red-white-black, a tan-blue, and even a teal-gold that has him raising his brows. A dull, greying red-orange lands like a harsh physical blow (Pandas, please…) next to blackened, red-tinted creeper-green and blue-white-black.

Most other threads are almost full-grey and broken apart. If he weren’t the admin they’d be completely gone but since he is, an underlying connection remains between him and everyone else so he’ll always get to see his failures arrayed in dead threads. He can only tell Tommy and Wilbur’s strands from the rest by the thin line of green from his use of the revive book. There are some strands in a neutral gray, but he guesses those are people he’s had little to no contact with who aren’t interested in deciding their opinion on him one way or the other.

What he’s supposed to be looking for is…ah, there. Dream carefully refrains from touching a single thread to pluck at the knotted nub of a severed gold string. An info panel pops up that tells him his playerID has been disconnected from all tracking compasses on the server and goes on to relate that his playerID can’t be reconnected remotely.

“That’s a relief,” he says quietly, exhaling as tension drops from his shoulders. While he trusts XD to have put him somewhere he can’t be easily found, those compasses were a glaring weak spot if anyone were to think of using them—if anyone had reason to believe he still lived. His gaze then falls to the tempting prospect of plucking the healthier threads to peek at his (allies, friends, supporters?) just to know—

Should he check those—or he should still check how—

A heavy thunk startles him into snapping his eyes over to the chest, onto which Patches has jumped with her full weight to get his attention. He opens his mouth only to close it with a click of teeth when his stomach growls long and loud in the sudden, befuddled silence. Patches insistently thumps the chest lid with one paw, leveling him with an incredibly judgmental look for her small kitten features, fuel-eat-rest-sleep yowled chidingly through their bond.

Dream is so surprised by the chastisem*nt he automatically gestures to close the entire admin panel before he can process the motions. Once he realizes he’s done so he groans and kneads his fingers into his temples, “You’re such a bully.”

Patches only snorts at him, unimpressed. She does have a point as much as he’d rather not admit it.

Wilting a little under her smug countenance when she hops back onto the table, he stands up to retrieve food and tries not to think about his abysmal relationship with starvation and hunger. When he last ate it was probably around noon—maybe?—and he’d had a long conversation with XD and taken a fairly decent nap afterward. And then he’d been maudlin for a while, so it definitely passed dinnertime even before he got lost in fiddling with the admin panel.

Honestly he just…hadn’t noticed. It hadn’t even occurred to him to eat, that he could eat and that he should. He would have continued to not notice if Patches hadn’t interrupted his focus simply because, mentally, he’s accustomed to little-to-no-food from Pandora’s Vault.

He’d grown used to starving, to hunger, until it became background noise for him to do his best to ignore for the sake of his own sanity. Quite clearly no amount of begging would change Sam’s mind about feeding him—not when Sam felt perfectly justified in forgetting to feed him entirely. What would be the point in obsessing over the food he wasn’t getting? What would that do for him beyond drag him down spiraling?

It was easier to bear the maddening, gnawing emptiness if he tricked himself into not thinking about it.

(If he didn’t think about it, it didn’t hurt. He didn’t have to think about Sam purposefully choosing to starve him. He didn’t have to think about the thin line he straddled between starving but alive and starved to death day after day after day. He didn’t have to think about wondering if this day or the next or the next was to be the last time he got any food at all.

he couldn’t help but think about it and it hurt all the same—why, Sam? weren’t they friends, once? he trusted Sam and—)

This isn’t Pandora’s Vault and there is no Sam to withhold food and he has to remember that.

“I’m going to have to be better about this,” Dream sighs as he peers out into the night, hip leaned against the table while he methodically eats through another sandwich. Patches mrrs softly and climbs up his hoodie to perch on his shoulder so she can gently bump her head to his cheek.

He swaps his food into one hand so he’s free to use the other to reach up and scratch under her chin, “…Thanks, Patches.”

Her purring intensifies and he finds himself smiling.

Chapter 5: the question therein, of happiness

Chapter Text

Satisfied that he’s eaten and confident he’ll go to bed, Patches boops him on the cheek with her wet nose and then her physical form ripples, deconstructing into a swirl of code that disappears. Left in her wake as an apology and explanation both, a pop-up window briefly conveys a truncated energy consumption chart. While their bond did stabilize by several percent, the manifestation of a unique physical form—even a small one like Patches’s chosen cat—saps energy that the server can’t quite afford to lose when it’s already struggling. Despite XD’s assistance it is smarter for her to reenter her own rest mode to conserve energy for use later…and to aid in becoming less reliant on XD in the future.

Once over a certain threshold it won’t be such a toss-up between having her company and maintaining server integrity. But right now, she has the right idea.

With a jaw-cracking yawn into one hand, Dream ducks into the bathroom and take care of his evening ablutions. On his way out he pauses, fingers curled talon-tight around the frame, and then deliberately steps back. Reluctantly he turns to lean onto an elbow propped against the sink edge, half-lidded gaze dragged up from the drain to meet his reflection in the mirror. The near-white of his hair and the glow to his eyes and freckles and the lack of scarring across the bridge of his nose are all just as alien and strange as when he first saw himself again after waking up.

As much as he’d prefer to not acknowledge his new normal…unless he actively changes his appearance using the admin panel (or his final ascension alters him anew) this is him. Now and forever this is what he looks like, who he is.

The last time he saw his face before he died it was in stolen, furtive moments in the dead of night when he sought a minor reprieve in his cell’s single source of water. And the him there clawed his way over heedless of shaky limbs or aching wounds, shifted his mask aside, and tried so, so desperately to find familiar humanity in a distorted reflection warped by heat and exhaustion and pain and a failing memory.

Does he truly remember what he looked like? At least, without XD’s copycat face to provide the gist?

After a long moment of tracing his new—old?—features in a bid to better acclimate, he lets his palm slip from his chin, hanging his head and running a hand through his hair with a gusty sigh, “Ugh. Can I please not?”

What’s one more unpleasant thought tossed on the pile, he muses humorlessly as he pushes away from the sink.

(His mind has always been one of his worst enemies. As much as the Greater SMP may believe otherwise Dream is a very social creature; being alone for so long has done him zero favors mentally or emotionally. The little socialization he got via Punz and Ranboo and Techno could only go but so far when their company was inconsistent, yet it was all he had. He kept his distance to keep them safe, to prevent their tarring by the same brush…but all the purpose that served, really, was to make him even lonelier.)

Trading a swift, bitter smile with the Dream in the mirror he flicks the bathroom light off and strides out, raising an arm to snuff the torch above the door as he goes. In the candlelight he shucks his hoodie, halfheartedly folds it, then drops it atop his mask on the table. Left in his undershirt he stays standing to run through a few different stretches before he leans over to snuff the candle, too, and crawls into bed, pulling the covers up over his chest as he does so.

Dream lays on his back staring at the wood grain of the ceiling awhile waiting for his tiredness to switch into actual sleepiness. Quiet, dark nighttime is a dangerous temptation for his straying thoughts now that he doesn’t have the company of XD or Patches to distract him. As morbid as it sounds he also doesn’t have the distraction of an injury, or hunger, to direct his wandering mind. He attempts to focus on an absent study of the angled shaft of moonlight which cuts into the room through the glass because it’s a simple, beautiful thing.

Of course it also reminds him that, as with the sun’s warmth and the cool breeze it’s something he’s missed more keenly than he realized until he’s seeing it again.

Sacrificing his freedom to Pandora’s Vault, and believing it to be worth his own suffering, led him to dismiss the sheer loss of life’s beauty in addition to what he thought he could endure before reality laughed in his face. He wrongly assumed that after months of perpetual paranoia and hyperfocus where he’d had no time for any of it, nature and self-care both—on edge and pushing himself over and over and over—that he wouldn’t really notice the absence. Then, as it shook out, he miscalculated badly. Setbacks kept him imprisoned longer, he overestimated Sam’s ability to be just and fair while blindsided by Sam’s hatred of him, completely underestimated Quackity’s willingness to be cruel, told himself no small amount of lies to convince himself he’d be fine, and nothing but failure came of it.

He presses his eyes tightly closed, breaths a deliberate inhale one-two-three, exhale one-two-three, only to snap them back open when lava-bright orange flickers behind his eyelids. His ragged gasp is explosive in the silence, as is the hysteria-tinged laugh that escapes him when he notices he’s gotten halfway upright on reflex, some horrid, pathetic mix of sorry and sir stuck in his throat.

“f*ck,” he bites out, gaze nonetheless checking corners out of well-learned habit.

There is no lava to be seen—of course there’s no lava. Why would there be? He’s no longer locked in solitary—and no orange light at all with both torch and candle extinguished. The only light in the room is the cool white-blue cast by the moon, which leaves him relieved but trembling in the aftermath of a waning adrenaline spike.

“It has to get better,” he whispers, fiercely and unsure who exactly he’s trying to convince. Death may have saved him from the physical torment but now that he’s away from the prison, from his torturer, from his abusers, that is the perfect time for his Pandora-shaped demons to come home to roost. He drops back down and rolls over to face the wall, lifting one hand to clutch at his chest where his heart beats rabbit-fast, “It has to.”

It will, it will, it will, Dream repeats, his mantra a prayer to himself and to no one at all. Exhaustion coaxes his eyes shut as his racing pulse ever so slowly levels out and he slips into sleep between one breath and the next.

Whatever he dreams of he doesn’t recall beyond hazy, looming shapes and a soul-deep, lingering desolation that was not all his own. Not that it matters since he abruptly jerks out of sleep, heart pounding and gasping for air in the dimness of pre-dawn. He pushes himself up on his elbow and presses the heel of his hand against his sweaty forehead, caught in a churning whirlpool of panicked anxiety that has him itching to do something as he tugs futilely at the sheets he’s gotten twisted up in—

(he needs to be awake and ready for when Sam drops in; he needs to be awake and ready for when Quackity shows up. He has to be awake and ready so he can try to hold it together as long as he can for whatever fresh torment awaits him today in Pandora’s Vault. What is he doing sleeping like he’s not in danger? Like he can afford to think he’s safe? How could he be so complacent, so stupid as to forget he’s at the mercy of people who want to hurt him and make him bleed?)

—but. No…that’s wrong, isn’t it? It is.

That welcome reminder soothes the instinctive panic but Dream still shudders, cold nose tip brushing against his wrist, “Sam’s not here. Q-Quackity’s not here. I’m safe, I’m safe. I am.”

Upset at the unnecessary worry his brain decided to try and bury him with a second time, he scowls blearily at the air and lets himself thump heavily onto the bed, determined to go back to sleep even as unease continues to prickle at the back of his mind. Mercifully, at some point dozens of minutes later his persistence is rewarded and he manages to do so, the lingering ghost of Pandora’s Vault left, for now, in the early dawn.

The next time he wakes it is a much gentler, fuzzy-minded surfacing to the warm pink of morning sunlight kissing his eyelids. Dream contemplatively peers through his lashes over the top of his sheets at the brightening window and has the faint but insistent inclination to get up, if only to witness part of a sunrise over the treetops. Well, until he remembers yet again that he’s safe, that he has no responsibilities, that he can at any time in the future get up to watch a full sunrise for as many mornings as he wants.

So with those realizations in mind the urge fades and he mutters a low no then rolls over to face the wall and go right back to sleep.

His third wakeup is a similarly calm drift into consciousness from the depths of a restful sleep. A kinder rousing with no startling anxious thought to send his heart racing or overwhelm him with worry. No urgent reason to leap out of bed exists—no plan to follow, no SMP members to corral, no arguments to hear, no fights to be had—and so he doesn’t bother. Instead luxuriating in slow stretches and post-wake yawns until he finally, grudgingly, turns away from his cozy wall corner in order to toss the easily-untwisted sheets aside and lever himself upright.

Noontime, or thereabouts, sunlight spills into the room judging by the brightness he finds himself squinting at now that he’s no longer sheltered from it by the wall and his back. Dream sleepily rubs at his face then stands and staggers into the bathroom for a quick run-through of his morning routine.

Once that’s all handled he slips into the main room and unlatches the chest to pull out a few pieces of bread and coal he then sticks into the furnace to heat up for a light lunch. Patches may be in her rest mode but he doesn’t doubt she’d manifest herself to make her displeasure known if he doesn’t make an effort to eat. With food cooking he takes the time to tug on his socks and boots as well before he leans on the wall next to the furnace to wait, hands tucked into his pockets and one boot-tip tapping against the floor.

As he keeps one eye on the bread he considers the usefulness of acquiring a book or two in which to keep track of his thoughts and otherwise write things down. Not only would doing so be helpful to make and maintain organized plans for the future but, also, it’s a method for him to work through everything that’s happened on his own terms. XD may be willing to be a listening ear and Patches herself is supportive, but XD can’t always be around and Patches’s emotional comprehension lacks the, well, human component necessary for effective therapy.

And it’s not like he could or would contact Puffy.

When his options are a god, a server, someone he doesn’t want to see or speak to, and maybe a recommended therapist from the academy if he re-ups the main hub connection…. Yeah, no, a book would be best.

It would just be nice to reclaim writing for himself, too, rather than have his last memories of putting pen to paper be Sam and Quackity’s demands for him to write out the revive book. Or the hints to pen a note to lure Technoblade. Out here he won’t have to constantly be worried about someone else getting ahold of anything he does choose to write, either—in the Greater SMP it’d be a glaring weakness to be so vulnerable and honest but here it’s a chance to assess himself. To heal. To gain some measure of closure by writing out all the words he’ll never get to say, all the feelings he’ll never get to express, all the secrets he’ll never get to tell.

Prime if he doesn’t want to use this golden opportunity shaped like a fresh start to find enjoyment in things again now that there’s no role to play, no pretense to maintain—no urgency or shame or endless barrage of what he needed to be doing instead of taking a moment to exist.

When was the last time he traveled for nothing but the sheer joy of it, parkouring his way through and around and over all kinds of terrain? When he saw a point in the distance and worked out the optimal path to reach it simply because he could and it was fun? When was the last time he took up a blade or an axe or a shield or a bow to throw himself into low-stakes combat? When he could pick up a weapon and keep his skills sharp with a friendly spar? When he faced battles comprised of mobs or pillagers and not angry, fearful (hate-filled) faces in life-or-death situations couched as war?

When was the last time he packed his inventory, picked a direction, and went adventuring into the unknown? When was the last time he felt free enough to try something and not care if he stumbled or failed because there was nothing that couldn’t be laughed off and tried again? Much too long ago. Before everything started to fall apart and his anxieties grew about the server and his friends and—

“Definitely should start journaling,” Dream interrupts with a huff, snagging his toasted bread loaves to munch on and exiting the house.

The lack of stagnant blood (seeped into obsidian floors and caked onto walls and ceiling both) and rotted potatoes (always, always yet more potatoes crusted into blackened grooves and partially burnt by lava that did nothing for the smell) and lava-burn (a steady sizzle-pop mired by a steadier-still wall of exhaustive heat that dried his eyes and throat and seared its mark onto his uncovered skin) in the air is no less amazing and incredible as the day before when he pauses to breathe it in until the prison’s shadow fades once more from hanging over his shoulder as his own haunting, chain-rattling grim reaper.

Enjoying the fresh air he begins an unhurried meander around the perimeter of the clearing while he eats his satisfyingly crunchy bread. Near the tree line a faint trickle of XD’s power raises the hair on Dream’s arms as it twines between the trees in a passive layer of protection the god laid as a barrier. Peering into the undergrowth, the occasional luminescent green particle can be spotted dispersing from the braid—proving Dream’s initial suspicion correct. Sure he didn’t know it was XD at the time but still, given the presence of the god’s greener nature magic, now he does in fact know that XD put some effort into repurposing whatever may have already been here.

At most the main pre-generated structure was here. But the denser trees meticulously arranged as a mob-deterring shield? The additional small wheat farm and equally small infinite water source he finds tucked toward the back of the standard-design house? Those weren’t.

XD’s building skills are…perhaps as bad as Dream’s own. Maybe more so considering one of them is a god who’s been around for centuries and one’s an early-twenties admin. Whether that’s XD’s own quirk or bleed-over from Dream he hasn’t the slightest idea and XD will likely never reveal one way or another.

Really, the nicest thing he can say about the god’s building is that…well. XD can? Does he? Not very often, no.

In this specific case Dream would bet money on XD having lifted the absolutely most basic designs for the farm and water source. It’s not a large or complex space that would require that much work to make livable and even as embarrassingly not-great as Dream’s building skills are he could’ve put something similar together in an hour. XD, though? Nah.

Like he said, some effort not a lot of effort.

Having seen the god’s personal world—that, to be fair, is awe-inducing—he’s aware of XD’s tendency to default to copy-pasting structures with such regularity and dismissiveness that someone as build-happy as Foolish would probably faint. The god has had centuries to slowly piece together his own genuinely incredible builds that are then copy-pasted to, again, great effect…the issue being that, like many gods, XD is lazy. Anyone brought to that world would be too awed by the god himself to notice, intimidated by XD’s godly aura and the immense, sweeping vistas that appear so utterly alien due to the use of mind-bending geometry and extremely rare materials foreign to most players.

Dream honestly wouldn’t be surprised to visit XD’s world again and find copies of Foolish’s builds with the only differences from the SMP versions being color-coordination to suit the god’s aesthetic palette. As long as Foolish is alive XD…probably won’t take credit for them…maybe? Given XD’s apparent fondness for the man it’s more likely that as long as Foolish doesn’t displease XD then the god won’t. But XD’s fuse is both long and short (depending on the day, the time, the weather, the phases of the moon, the god’s mood, how bored he is…).

“Pour one out for Foolish, I guess,” Dream laughs.

XD is remarkably vain with an attention span prone to wandering, so while the god would never admit to his substandard building skills, it becomes obvious when actually looking at the god’s personal spaces. Not to mention XD is a god of chaos, not order, so his strengths lie in things like terraforming nature to his whims rather than methodically drafting a creative vision piece by piece and line by line. Whenever the god needs to do something with structures he cheats. Heavily. He steals ones he finds appealing, recolors them, and then plops them down to his own satisfaction preening as though he did all the work himself.

That isn’t to say XD hasn’t built things of his own or that he doesn’t have his own style, because he has and he does, but those builds take XD decades to pick away at until they’re deemed perfect. At which point he of course, full of pride and relief in equal measure, then reuses them ad nauseam. He’s too much of an impatient perfectionist to bother most of the time when it’s far easier to lift already-made designs he likes, thus giving him more time to spend as a drama-loving chaos stirrer whose favorite entertainment pastime is watching messy human lives.

For an eldritch entity that primarily gains sustenance through eating souls XD is honestly quite endearing.

…Although that might just be his warped perspective from his position as the god’s favored and chosen admin.

His meandering circle around the clearing comes to a stop beside the tallest tree in the vicinity, where he brushes the leftover crumbs from his toasted bread onto his pants. Sizing up the tree for handholds and footholds he makes an evaluating little hum, shrugs, and reaches up to grab the highest branch within arm’s length to start hoisting himself upward. The surprising ease of his movement leads to a sobering back-of-the-mind observation.

Had death not healed him this relatively simple climb would be very difficult with the way his limbs shook and his fingers spasmed, unable to fully curl around anything tightly enough to get a solid grip. Starvation, poor sleep, heat exhaustion, and the lack of exercise led to atrophied muscles and a pervasive weakness that left him slow in body and mind. If the opportunity arose for him to try a similar climb without this heal would he have tried? Undoubtedly and to his own detriment—he would not have wanted to admit such a vulnerability, so he would have pushed through the pain just to prove he wasn’t broken.

It took death to allow him the freedom to scale from branch to branch without a single falter in his step, bark scraping his palms and leaves tangling in his hair. He breaches the top layer of the canopy and can be nothing less than giddy from the pleasing burn of exertion and the stomach-swooping adrenaline granted by a bird’s eye view.

Steadying himself more firmly into a knotted bundle of top branches he raises a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and casts a look over the terrain. The immediate surroundings are, as he’d thought the day before, densely forested and on an even level that does well to disguise the clearing’s existence. Off on the horizon he can spot some hilly areas but no mountains—very distantly he thinks he sees desert sand, maybe, or snow, although the majority of what’s visible from here for dozens of chunks is, despite the unusual number of trees, plains biome through and through. A second and third scan reveals no pillager tower or sprawl of villager roofs, making it quite likely he’s the only non-mob entity present…with possibly an exception for a spawned-in wandering trader somewhere nearby whose pathing can’t circumvent XD’s barrier.

What he wanted to check the previous night besides his player connection web was the admin panel’s map module, before Patches interrupted him. XD may have his trust, and what he’s seen does imply such, but it’s hard to truly believe he’s safe without diving deep into the admin tools for his own peace of mind. Which, naturally, is why he then gesture-snaps the panel open again intent on activating the map.

He does hesitate for a second, gaze catching on his bark-scraped palms. As he stares, mouth parted around a quiet what, the tiniest green particles wisp into smoke as his scraped hands and arms heal.

That’s a bit…Dream glances at his current status to check his health and hunger levels. His health is full, his hunger is two units below full, and regen normally doesn’t bother with superficial injuries that heal with time or sleep. So, to proc regen is a bit…excessive. A bit unnecessary. Even a bit overkill, if he may be so bold.

“Okay,” he chokes out, “okay. Regen. Okay. Really active regen. That’s. Fine.”

By all accounts it shouldn’t bother him. Regen is a positive, right? The better and faster he heals the safer he is, right—

(but he finds himself thinking about his unscarred reflection, finds himself wondering if he’ll heal everything so quickly and painlessly that he might not even notice a wound before it’s gone; he has already lost nearly two decades of history writ on his skin, is he barred from the creation of new history by his skin remaining forever blank?)

—so it has to be fine, it has to.

Dream clenches his fists, exhales, and with herculean effort refocuses to navigate the still-open admin panel to the map module.

It loads much like the normal map items do at first—colors and details filled in by broad strokes—then smoothly expands its coverage in full until everything he can see from his position is displayed in one continuous high-quality image. Then it pulses, color-coordinated for resource-tracking and entity-tracking switching on, followed by the arrow toggle sets for changing view by height and depth and zoom level, the icon key in an adjacent assist panel, the item finder shortlist snapped onto one side, and an empty waypoint list that must have been cleared since he can kind of remember marking the community house, at least, all those months ago.

Ignoring the urge to input those old coordinates to replace that waypoint he toggles off the resource colors and entity-tracking in favor of hitting the zoom-out button. Twelve presses later, combined with the panel itself unfolding to show more data onscreen, and he thinks he spots the bottommost corner of the dense black rectangle that can only be Pandora’s Vault. At his current level of zoom, details are jumbled into mashed-up pixels but Pandora itself is still large enough to be distinct given its unbroken swathe of solid black compared to other structures with less rigid architecture or softer block colors.

He has to yank his eyes away from it when his breaths start quickening despite the prison being nothing but a splash of black on a holographic projection. Staving off yet another uncomfortable dip in mood by the skin of his teeth, he narrows his attention onto his player icon and the map’s axes. If he’s reading the math right he is incredibly far away—weeks if not months of straight travel with the minimum amount of downtime each day. Just for some extra assurance he opens the distance calculator and selects the Nether portal factor, watching a series of portals be drawn on the map between himself and the SMP that, again, tells him he really is quite safe here.

Dream is dead as far as the wider server is concerned. There is nothing to inspire a server-wide hunt for him; the dead are of little threat or interest to anyone.

What other reason would anyone have to travel the extreme distance needed to find him? Based on current patterns of the SMP’s growth it’d be years before someone stumbled into this specific clearing and by that point he’d have moved on, resetting the whole hypothetical run-in. But even if they did randomly decide to travel so far they’d also need to be going in his direction, which, without the compasses to pinpoint him that’s very unlikely…still, he quickly knocks on the tree trunk just in case.

And then turns entity-tracking back on to set an alert for when players enter the nearest twenty chunks for good measure.

No need to tempt fate.

With that burden lifted from his shoulders, Dream resets the zoom level so the map shows his immediate surroundings in detail. While he is safe here it’s also readily apparent that there’s…not much of interest in the nearby area. Caves, probably, if he dug underground, however the only semi-unique feature is the river a few chunks to the east. Everything else is forest, forest, and yes, more forest. Nothing but oak, at that. Boring.

Dream shifts his attention from the map to the house and the clearing and considers both. There’s food in the chest inside and XD’s addition of a small farm and infinite water source. There are tools to make use of and a bed to sleep in at night. There’s a furnace for warmth and hot meals and a tub with which to stay clean.

It’s small, it’s quiet, it’s idyllic.

A life here is possible. A simple, unhindered existence drifting day-to-day in an easy routine. A soft and gentle fulfillment could be found here as time slips him by.

But…XD made him promise, didn’t he? Not to trap himself here overlong, not to just exist but to thrive.

He thinks he could be content here with no more than he needs: a house big enough for one, a scaled-down farm, never running out of water, a tree chopped and a tree replanted, cooking and cleaning and crafting, a small animal pen attached to the house for wool and milk and meat. Nothing more, nothing less.

He could be content. He could.

Happy, though?

Dream tilts his face up toward the sky as he gives the question serious thought. Could he be happy with such a slow-paced life? A life in which he chose to set aside his sword, his parkour, his desire for adventure?

No, he doesn’t imagine so. For a while, perhaps. Forever? No.

He’ll stay here until the wanderlust kicks in, appreciating the effort XD put in for him, and then he’ll strike out to find someplace new he can truly make his own and call it home.

(techno called dream homeless and it was a painful weathered truth; his home was shaped like george and sapnap and bad and ant and skeppy and sam and punz and callahan and everyone else until it burned to ash and he was left with keys to doors that would no longer open for him)

Chapter 6: to bloom, beneath the sun

Chapter Text

What to do, Dream muses as he resettles more comfortably in his canopy seat and props his chin in his palm. Drumming his fingers against his cheek he considers his current options. The world is quite figuratively his oyster and he could go anywhere (minus the Greater SMP, of course, although he very much could—as if he’d want to invite disaster by showing his face there), and do anything he likes. At any other time such freedom would be downright euphoric but the excessive amount of choice he has now turns those options into an over-full chest he’s reluctant to open lest he be buried.

Laziness itself is appealing if he’s being honest. Laying without a care in the sun or crawling back into bed, rising only when he must but otherwise concerned with nothing beyond existing as purely as any living being does.

After months without end of lava-light and dark obsidian in a stifling box turned coffin, though, he isn’t particularly eager to shut himself inside the house for hours at a time. Not unless he’s genuinely sleeping or making use of the bathroom. Which, nap aside, why would he willingly forgo enjoying the sunlight, the wind whispering in the trees, the calm of nature surrounding him on all sides—what was for so long denied to him by circ*mstance and other people? Where is the value in denying himself those wondrous simple things in a self-made echo of being trapped in a softer Pandora? His own self-destructive tendencies aside, that’d be…well. Wasteful of him.

This life is a boon and he should make the most of it.

The admin map draws his gaze from where he’s been staring off toward the horizon in absent thought, his eyes catching on the river to the east. A tilt of his head and then a low hum, his index finger tapping at his bottom lip as an idea begins to percolate. What better to do today than wander over and take a look? That fish code won’t fix itself and it’d be useful to see firsthand if it’s the same glitch or a different one. Since he does need to start checking off maintenance tasks it’s a relatively straightforward issue to start with, as well as a helpful one to aid in remembering how this whole admin thing works.

And a walk would be nice just for the sake of having the space, the time, the ability to. Clear his head, stretch his legs, acclimate a little better to his broad freedom and have it really sink in that there’s so much he can do now. Besides, the river isn’t too far from here so there’s not much risk in meandering over if he pleases, either for getting lost or stumbling into outside danger.

“…Sure, let’s go check out the fish,” he decides with a nod, only to jump halfway through the word fish at a sudden light weight on his head and its accompanying mrrp.

Patches makes herself known with a rolling purr, paws briefly kneading Dream’s scalp before she hops neatly onto his raised knee. While she was small enough to curl up entirely within the width of his palm the night prior, to his critical once-over her size has grown and her fur has a healthy shine. She primly circles to face him, her tail wrapping around her front paws, and levels an expectant stare at his face. A small, semi-opaque white square window pop-up projects over her head, its bottom point hovering between her ears, upon which a colorful fish icon followed by a bold exclamation mark is displayed.

For a long moment his brain stalls as he attempts to process what he’s seeing. Oh, she’s learning—relearning? He can’t quite remember if she’d ever done so back then—how to chat without relying on emotions sent through the bond. Despite sort of following what she’s trying to say he still finds himself blurting what? at her out of sheer incredulous surprise.

In response and in order, her chat window then cycles: solid green block, fishing rod, fish icon, cat icon…and then does it twice more for emphasis.

…Yeah, that’s what he thought she said. “You want me to catch fish for you.”

She shows him a green checkmark next and three exclamation points this time, alongside a trilling chirp of encouragement that he’s correctly interpreted her desire.

“Patches,” Dream sighs her name long and loud, scrubbing at his face to try and erase the helpless fond quirk of his mouth. “Patches. What would you even do with fish? You don’t eat.”

As a server avatar she may look like a cat and present herself as such, with most of a cat’s features and personality, but she has no need to eat. She has no history of food-based nourishment or even the ability to consume food items, since despite her appearance her physical form is technically an illusion. Her understanding of hunger is limited to its role in systems present on the server that don’t affect her, and through Dream’s experience with it—her “food” is comprised of code and energy such that she is always in a state of consumption to remain operational.

What would she want fish for, other than to bat it around in true cat-like fashion?

Patches yowls in disagreement, her claws flexing none-too-nicely to prick at the skin beneath where she’s sitting on his clothed knee, the rude little hellion. In quick succession she shows him: a red x, a checkered square of green-white-purple-black, a cat icon, a fish icon, and then another green checkmark closely followed by, all all things, a very non-standard thumbs-up that is very much not in the basic image files for the server.

Upon interpreting all that, Dream gives in to the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, hoping against hope to stave off a headache. “Wait…you mean to tell me that XD altered your code so you could eat?” Patches repeats her checkmark-thumbs-up combo. “Why—when the hell did he do that? Before or after he updated your social lexicon with…emojis, apparently?”

XD…why.

“You still don’t need to eat,” he counters, secure in his presumption that the result of XD’s boredom—generosity?—wouldn’t have saddled her with a true reliance on eating. “You just want to,” he further accuses, pointing at her with a scowl.

To which she gives him a baleful, mournful mrrw, wilting pitifully and widening her big green eyes, whiskers drooping as a low, crying keen builds in her throat.

He opens his mouth to firmly deny her, unwilling to cede ground to her pouting as the poisonous, unkind thought (such a greedy thing she is, such a pointless greed she wishes to sate, has she no shame?) bubbles to the surface of his tongue. It burns, caught behind his teeth before he can speak it into the air, a phantom wisp of not-so-old, all-consuming hunger gnawing at his own stomach. How many times did he long for food trapped in Pandora even when he did his best to not think of it? How often did he wish he could eat something, anything that wasn’t the rare potato just for the fantasy of having a choice? How many of his hazy daydreams were filled with the greed of a closely-held desire to eat beyond staving off starvation, beyond the needs of practical utility?

(How many pathetic moments were spent obsessing over food—safety, rest, an end—while knowing to the core of him that nothing would change?)

Dream breathes slowly and takes a moment to reassess as he watches her continue to ham it up. Obviously, Patches is in no danger of starving and she has no need to eat; she is expressing her own wants and desires to find enjoyment in things she could not do before. Her overly dramatic wailing and sad eyes are her attempt to cajole him into providing her with that enjoyment—not done out of malice or greed or a cavalier attitude to the gluttony of excess but of a simpler childlike interest. There is no hidden meaning, no buried trap.

And there is no harm in indulging her, is there? What right does he have to take out his hangups (about food and waste and the alienness of the concept of joy) on her? None. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for his neuroses. Just because he’s f*cked up about, well, a lot of things, doesn’t give him the right or the freedom to force the world to deal with him at his worst. His problems aren’t everyone else’s (not anymore).

So instead he finds himself rebutting her less cruelly, “Patches,” he calls past the slight fading tremor (of fear and anger and a cyclical whirlwind of self-hatred fed like an ouroboros) in his voice. “I actually can’t. I don’t have fishing rod or a bucket. You know, the things needed to fish? I don’t even have a bow, or arrows, and I’m not about to catch any for you barehanded.”

From where she’s draped herself fainting-maiden style over his knee she replies by flicking her tail at the still-open admin panel. The screen swaps to the item catalog that allows for spawning anything and everything available in the server’s item repertoire. Unlike the creative mode catalog which itself can be limited by server-side rules, this one has everything, Overworld-compatible Ender Dragon eggs and command blocks and the impassable transparent barrier blocks included.

Well…she’s not wrong. He could just spawn in what he’d need. At the same time, “I’m not spawning in stuff for fishing.”

Item spawning has never been something he’s cared to use all that much, spending as little time in creative mode as possible and when he did it was mainly to assist in traversal. Even now, with no actual reason not to, he doesn’t want to fall into the trap of relying on those shortcuts. Almost everything he’s ever had he got with dedicated time and effort on his part, so while spawning in a fishing rod or bucket would take no time at all and let him move on, it cheapens the work he otherwise has put into his life.

Why bother putting in the effort to craft full netherite if he can simply select each piece in the catalog and drop it straight into his inventory?

Maybe he’s clinging too hard to things that no longer matter and that never mattered in the first place (why bother when it’s so thoughtless, so quick, so much easier?) just the same as he clung to rules and agreements and beliefs and understanding that failed him so utterly.

Maybe so, maybe Dream’s being petty and self-sabotaging over a very minor roadblock in his mind. Yet…what else does he have to do with his time? If he merely spawns in what he needs or what he wants, doing no resource gathering, no real crafting, no planning, how rewarding of a life is that? The concept of doing so feels…empty—he has nothing else to break up the immense span of time afforded to him: no commitments, no social obligations, no pressing schedule, no drama to keep up with, nothing.

It’s the unnecessary quickening of a life that has nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to be.

In other words: it’s so very meaningless.

Patches heaves a catty and disgruntled sigh, responding to his continued negation of both her desire and her potential solutions with a swift crafting table, fishing rod icon duo.

“Patches,” Dream throws up his hands, ignoring her hiss at the motion jostling her, “I can’t make a fishing rod without string and I don’t have any iron to make a bucket. I’m not going mining for who knows how long just for three iron!”

Quite honestly he half-expects her to counter that with a reminder of the admin map’s resource finding feature but, oddly, she only closes her chat bubble. Granted, she is likely aware based on his mental calculations that mining for iron—despite the help of what amounts to easily-followed directions—would take more time than she’s willing to wait.

She peers at him through one cracked eye and huffs an amused laugh, using enviable cat-body physics to right herself on her perch before she hops back over to his shoulder, where she tucks herself close. Down-river-go she sends along their bond with an imperiousness that demands to be obeyed.

“Yeah, yeah, your highness. That still doesn’t fix the issue, you know that right?” Dream grumbles even as he closes the admin panel and begins to gingerly climb his way back down the tree, a hand hovering near Patches in case she overbalances and falls. For his cheek she nips at his ear, her purr undercut by yet more laughter at his expense.

Once at ground level he straightens up from his landing, brushing bits of bark from his hands and taking a minute to pick leaves out of his hair.

And then jumps a literal foot in the air at the very loud, very close spider hiss, whirling around so fast he almost trips over his own boots, palm grasping at empty space by his hip rather than a weapon hilt since he’s oh-so-foolishly unarmed. The sneaky culprit who was not there a second ago—and he’ll testify in front of the admin council as such—sits shaded beneath the trees, its dark body mottled by pockets of sunlight and its face tilted up to meet his alarmed gaze with its neutral reds.

Clutching at his racing heart and ignoring Patches’s cackling into his neck he manages a tight, strangled, “Hey?”

The spider hisses again—in…greeting, he thinks?—lifting its front legs to offer him a bizarre little back-and-forth criss-cross wave.

Dazed and incredibly confused and with more than a bit of internal screaming he automatically does an absent wave back, What the f*ck. It’s cute, why is it cute?

It chatters at him, the barest scraps of its intentions pinging his subconscious. His rusty admin know-how fails him on the translation, brain not-quite firing on all cylinders. Using its legs to gesture between them it then reaches under its abdomen to pull out—string?—which the spider proudly presents with both legs held up and toward him, clearly intending for him to take its gift.

Regretting so many things in his life he nevertheless crouches to accept the stack—enough for six fishing rods, he notes—with a baffled but still polite, “Thank you?”

Gift successfully given, the spider hisses a few more times, waves a farewell, and scurries off into the undergrowth before Dream’s halfway raised his own hand again to return its farewell out of reflex.

“Well…,” he mutters, blinking at the spot where the spider had been and then staring down at the string he’s now holding. “That happened.”

Patches’s face is tucked out of sight behind his head so he can’t quite glare at her but her continuing quiet, wheezy laughter gives away her culpability. XD’s barrier should’ve prevented a mob appearing out of the blue like that, so she specifically spawned in one single spider, neatly circumventing his protests about having no string with which to craft a fishing rod. Can’t really argue against making that fishing rod if he has both materials, after all.

“Clever little cheater,” Dream tsks, deciding to allow her the victory. He rises and moves to enter the house, where he uses some of the oak logs propped in the corner by the furnace for planks and sticks. The crafting table he then creates is set down in the convenient open spot and in a dozen or so minutes, all of which he spends with Patches sprawled across his shoulders like a tiny scarf, he has three separate fishing rods added to his inventory.

He wavers in the doorway as he turns to head back outside, weighing the necessity of his next possible action. Relenting to the overall pragmatism of it, he steps over to the chest to snag the iron sword, too, swapping it for the excess materials from his crafting. Between XD’s barrier, Patches’s mob-nullifying presence, and his own reignited adminship he should be fine without armor or weapons unless he’s extremely careless. Still, his fingers wrapping around a sword hilt for just a moment soothes a deep, unshakable insecurity and makes him feel more at ease—the extra insurance never hurts.

With that all settled he exits the house again and after a quick check of the sun’s position in lieu of a clock—and the laziness of not wanting to reopen the admin panel—he starts making his way east. Judging by its slight westward arc there’s enough time for several hours’ worth of daylight fishing, so Patches should easily be happy.

The walk is a comfortable one as he pushes his way into and through the trees. Birdsong and distant bees and running water and the crisp crunch of grass and leaf litter and the thud of boots against tree roots complement the delightful scent of blooming flowers, the cool-dark of the shade, apples, and honey. Slipping onto the far side of XD’s nature-green barrier elicits a shivering tingle down his spin and a familiar End-cold tang on the back of his tongue, and he suspects his passage will be noted wherever the god is.

As he’d seen from the map, there were only a few chunks between the clearing and the river, since he steps out of the tree line barely half an hour later. Patches excitedly mrrps and speedily climbs her way down from his shoulders, leaving him to amble toward the riverbank after her. She perches on the edge of a grassy outcropping that hangs over the water, almost literally vibrating in place as she avidly tracks whatever’s caught her interest—be it squid, seagrass, flotsam, or fish alike.

Across the river the opposite bank is of course yet more oak trees after a short swathe of primarily turquoise-green grass, and peering in either direction turns up nothing unusual. Not even beehives or sugar cane, the latter of which is a letdown considering he does want to make a journal at some point so a source of paper would’ve been helpful. A patchwork of dirt, sand, gravel, and even some clay create the majority of the river’s edge minus a few more overhangs of pure grass. World generation must have allowed for small pockets of flat block placement alongside the typical downward slopes.

Dream comes to a stop to stand behind Patches, leaning over her to scan the river for fish. A squid swims north along at the very bottom, leaving a cloudy trail behind itself as it goes, and vegetation sways with the current. He nearly misses the salmon for how much they look like floating debris in the dirt stirred up by the squid, their glitched movement easy to mistake as natural motion within the water until they dart to one side. When they sharply turn against the current to horizontally swim upriver, well. That’s where it becomes very obvious the sideways-swimming glitch wasn’t fixed.

Or, he squints at a single salmon, he did fix it. Technically? They don’t seem to be swimming sideways in every direction, at least, which is an improvement over the original glitch. Again, technically. Just several directions. It’s not as if he spent much if any time fishing or paying close attention to fish, so the on-the-surface fix-that-wasn’t escaped his notice.

Running a hand down his face, Dream releases a heartfelt groan, “Coding.”

He drops to sit next to Patches with a huff, crossing his legs and pulling up the admin panel’s maintenance tools in one fell swoop. A tap of the suggested task in the log opens the relevant code and entity files, and a keyboard screen flickers to life hovering over his lap. Fortunately, admin tools have progressed leaps and bounds since their first iterations, so rather than having to skim every individual line of code to pick out errors—a nightmare when the error was a single additional space—helpful color-coded annotations point him to various problem areas in the file.

Also fortunately, this specific issue doesn’t interlock with anything else, making it simple to find where he’d messed up—a dropped semicolon, an added comma, an if-then statement incorrectly turned into a comment, code nested at the wrong level—and fix it. Prime knows if he tried to apply this fix only for another thing to break he’d probably scream…or cry. Or both. There was one glitch that ended up being a cascading series of errors all tied up in incompatible water generation in regards to gravity parameters and that took him like a solid week and a half to solve because he kept finding more and more symptoms of the problem before he actually found the source of those problems.

That was a time he spent basically in a fugue state, exhausted, snappish, and constantly on the verge of resetting the entire server once he’d hit the fourth straight day of work.

No more error messages pop up after a few thorough reads so he saves the fixed code, closes the file, and executes a localized update command to apply the changes in a soft roll-out. At first the chunks nearest him will update since he’s the admin and has a certain priority level, and then the rest of the server will have the update rolled out in an unobtrusive manner. While he could force-refresh the server to read the new code all at once, not only is that incredibly obvious—and XD may or may not take the fall for it—doing so has, in his experience, often caused a few issues of its own.

Thus, unless a glitch or bug is genuinely and immediately dangerous he tends to not force updates.

A soft green swirl pulses outward in a light gust of wind, the ground blocks and water and trees and entities and air, even, shining as the surrounding chunks refresh to reflect the new code. Shifting the admin windows aside he cranes forward to check on the fish with keen eyes, and does a little fist pump when he sees that they’re all now swimming as they should. It’s a small victory but a victory nonetheless, so whatever embarrassment he may’ve felt at celebrating gains itself no traction.

Patches forgoes her visual stalking of the river inhabitants to offer him a pat-pat-pat on the knee and a rumbling purr, which earns her chin scratching and a smile. Of course her niceness is short-lived since she then reopens her chat bubble to insistently bother him with spammed fish icons, so. The fickleness of a cat is, ah, one of life’s greatest…treasures?

“Such a cat,” he teases, tweaking the tip of her ear. Dream obligingly dismisses the entire admin panel and pulls out one of the fishing rods from his inventory, “I’m going, I’m going.”

She chatters at him and bonks her head, hard, into his thigh when instead of immediately beginning to fish he takes a moment to pull off his boots, socks, and roll his pant legs to mid-calf, scooting forward to dip his feet in the water. Then he takes hold of the rod, examining it somewhat critically—the last time he really used one it was for tricks rather than its intended purpose—and to Patches’s immense relief finally casts a line into the river.

Fishing has never held that much appeal for him, far too slow-paced to keep his attention from wandering about ten minutes in. He’s easily distracted on a good day, so an activity based around the kind of patience ill-suited for multitasking? Not for him. There was always something else to do that was more interesting, or useful, or fun compared to spending hours locked in place by the water waiting for fish to bite.

But…he can admit that it is relaxing now that he genuinely has nothing else to worry about. The quiet flowing water with its occasional burbling splash, the warmth of the sun, the breeze blowing his bangs away from his face—it’s calm in a way he has the time and space to appreciate, for once.

The first fish he hooks a dozen or so minutes later actually startles him, muscle memory from desperate, precise tricks reeling it in before he can even process what he’s doing. He blinks at the wriggling salmon he’s suddenly holding up by the fishing line, Patches’s demanding yowl what jars him into unhooking it and tossing it over to where she’s expectantly waiting. Her excitement is evident in her swishing tail, and her chat bubble displays several heart icons repeated in a rotation of rainbow colors before she pounces onto her long-awaited treat, tearing into the fish with gusto.

“Feel a little bad for the fish,” he grimaces, turning away from Patches’s enthusiastic mauling back to the river and recasting.

Time slips by molasses-slow as he falls into the zen of a routine of casting and waiting, idly kicking his feet in sunlit water and a hair’s breadth from being at true peace.

Chapter 7: to move forward, left behind

Chapter Text

A deliberate scuff of a boot against the sand catches on the faintest edge of his awareness, tugging him gently from his state of zen in order to glance up and over his shoulder. Full intimidating regalia absent, wings and all, XD is approaching from his left with a leisurely gait; there is no cause for pretense between them and so the god has forgone the unnecessary accoutrements. It occurs to him that he did hear the initial vwoop of XD’s teleportation, only his subconscious has categorized the god as safe so, unlike with his earlier eight-legged visitor, rather than be startled he simply clocked the sound and moved on. Only now that he lays eyes on the god does he recall both the noise and the appearance of XD’s aura pinging his senses and the nigh-instantaneous dismissal of each.

“This is not where I thought you would be,” XD muses aloud, the god’s mask vanishing to reveal a quirked brow. XD looks from Dream to Patches’s pile of fish carcasses to the surrounding river and then back, a second brow raising in silent question.

Dream snorts and reels in yet another fish caught on his line, throwing it Patches’s way, “And where’d you think I’d be?”

Out gallivanting through the countryside? Knee-deep in a cave system? Collecting wayward animals? Engaged in a pillager raid? It’s not as though he has many options without traveling rather far or mining into the earth. At least fishing is better than laying in bed in an unlit room for hours, doing nothing but feeling sorry for himself.

XD drifts closer to stand next to him on the overhang, a soothing curtain of godly power sweeping feather-soft over him, “Well, certainly not fishing.” There’s a scornful emphasis on the word like it’s something XD finds particularly abhorrent, which causes Dream to smother a laugh in his shoulder. “Exploring, perhaps. Re-familiarizing yourself with your weapon forms, maybe. If I had thought to presume you would have a fishing rod in hand I would still expect to find you performing one of your parkour tricks. Entity wrangling, even. Not using it for its intended purpose. To my understanding you never had the taste for such slow pursuits, believing it too boring—in that, we are fairly similar, as you are quite aware. So imagine my surprise to find you here doing just that.”

Rather than continue craning his neck and risk a muscle cramp from trying to keep his eyes on XD’s face, Dream lets himself go back to staring out over the river. “It is boring,” he admits, rueful even as he swaps his low durability rod for a fresh one and compulsively casts again. “You’re definitely not wrong there. But…the good kind of boring,” he continues in a whisper quickly stolen by the wind, “the peaceful kind of boring. And I think—I think I need that.”

From the corner of his eye he sees XD’s regalia shine and when he turns his head to watch, the god’s outfit alters itself to copy Dream’s own current clothes. Then before he can blink or begin to process XD in a black undershirt and dark pants, gloveless and bare-armed and barefoot and so very weirdly casual, the god is already sitting beside him on the grass. Less like an almighty eldritch god who regularly twists the fabric of reality around his fingers and more like Dream’s very human identical twin—could pass as Dream’s twin if it weren’t for the criss-crossed halos which still orbit around XD’s head.

What a pair they must make, a god and an admin who may as well be brothers dangling their legs into the river as if nothing more than human.

The god presses their shoulders together in a quiet gesture of comfort, “Ah, well. I suppose that may be true. Even the most boring parts of life have value in the right circ*mstance. Peace does not take the same shape for every living being. If it is helping, then feel no shame in taking solace where and when it comes.”

Although Dream knows he doesn’t need XD’s—what, permission?—to do what he likes, especially considering XD already encouraged him to do so, a familiar tightness in his chest grows warm and loosens at the approval in the god’s voice. At the lack of judgment or teasing despite XD’s own on-record distaste for it. “…Thanks,” he murmurs, reeling in another fish he slots into his inventory and then recasting.

A content, companionable silence settles over the riverbank as the minutes tick by in the background, he and XD leaned into one another and Patches’s feeding spree finally abated for a splayed-out snooze in the sun. Of course, while Dream is focused on the bobber the god next to him, true to his personality, does slip rather quickly into boredom. XD at least isn’t loud about it, wordlessly gesturing to summon a constellation of colored orbs in various sizes that then bob to-and-fro in a lazy dance, the area now awash in a soft whirling rainbow. Alongside the lights themselves hovering several feet over the river a few dozen fireflies also spawn, floating closer above the water as faint yellow dots in the earliest curl of a pre-dusk sky.

“Very pretty,” Dream praises with a low whistle and a nudge of the god’s knee with his own. It’s easy to forget XD is perfectly capable of such acts of beautiful whimsy when XD’s favorite pastime is essentially causing problems on purpose…and stirring up existing drama.

XD offers him an exaggerated half-bow, “Thank you. I do try.” The god then hums, reaching out to pull Dream’s left hand free and turn it palm up. “It is important,” a slightly chilly fingertip traces the lines on Dream’s palm, “to remember the joys of simpler magic. Of the value in the seemingly purposeless. To remember there is light and life to be found if only we choose to look.”

Thin ribbons of purple-white-black coalesce and twine around Dream’s hand as a braided line of warmth and pressure forms in his chest and snakes its way to his palm. Wispy green-white-black sparks rise from his skin to meet XD’s purple-white-black, the pleasant heat building until roughly a half-dozen tiny emerald orbs of his own pop into being above his open hand. The pressure eases gently, as refreshing and relieving as a sip of cool water on a sunny day and twice as sweet-tasting on the tip of Dream’s tongue.

It isn’t quite the same as executing an admin’s commands, those flexible but still mostly rigid templates with their quicksilver flashes of power. Something natural and wild and alive coils in the air, in his lungs, in the very core of him, faint sparks continuing to buzz off his skin and his lashes and flyaway strands of his hair.

When Dream finally manages to look up into XD’s face, the god is already looking back, tender indulgence writ deep in the god’s familiar green eyes and the affectionate upwards curve of his mouth.

“I may court chaos,” the god says, oh so very softly using Dream’s hand to gesture—to send the orbs created of Dream’s burgeoning, evolving power to twirl amongst XD’s dancing lights and fireflies. Swift, darting pinpricks of vibrant emerald never quite lost amidst the rainbow. “But you, my dearest Dream,” XD absently tucks a lock of Dream’s hair that’s fallen in front of his eyes behind his ear, “are a creature of light and love and order. Of life. A protector, a provider, a creator. Your chaos is well-honed but fleeting, and wanton destruction does not suit you—your very heart and soul rebel against it even when needs must.”

Dream can’t bear to meet XD’s gaze any longer, cheeks flushing a faint pink as he stares at the god’s freckles instead. What XD is saying…it’s true, really. Every moment he’d spent fighting friends and enemies—not during manhunts for fun but disagreements couched as outright wars spiraling further and further—every time he chose to, had to, destroy something or hurt someone he hated it. Whatever small vindication he felt from being in control, from fighting back, from standing up for himself, never lasted long before his stomach almost always twisted with guilt and regret and a plaintive mournful question of why. And by the time he’d worked through those sour feelings another conflict started and the cycle repeated itself, causing him to scramble to cling ever-harder to his mask, to his presumed confidence, to his grim determination, to whatever he could grab hold of.

Struggling not to slip under the quicksand threatening to swallow him whole. Not to break.

Not to drive his axe into the earth and plant his feet in the dirt, yank off his mask so they might have to acknowledge his own dwindling personhood, and start screaming just to be heard. Just to get everyone to stop. Just to get everyone to maybe think, for once in their lives.

Just to demand of them all: Is this worth it?

(Will we look back at these moments and say to ourselves the prices we paid were just and fair and well-spent? Or will we lament at the waste, the hubris, the reality of these prices being that they were unnecessary to pay at all? Will we ever admit that we ruined ourselves for causes that not once mattered, fighting demons of our own creation time and time again?)

Of the blood spilled and bonds broken and backs stabbed and for what? Arbitrary already-given independence? The soothing of bruised pride? The grasping at meaningless power? To maintain the lie of good versus evil, heroes versus villains, hunters versus monsters? To slay a tyrant whose great tyranny lay in asking to not grief, to not steal? An unwillingness to admit to the flimsy foundation upon which Wilbur initially hitched his magnum opus, his symphony? To justify the cruelest versions of themselves using propaganda crafted and weaponized to abdicate all responsibility to Dream and only Dream’s shoulders?

To pretend at a moral good built on the corpses of friendship and trust and fairness and kindness?

Nothing ever seemed to be enough. Hands grasping at the nebulous shape of power, destructive and chaotic and self-serving in a quest for an empty happiness. One which itself is then never enough on its own, ever-hungry eyes quick to search for what else may briefly fill a yawning abyss that will never, ever be sated. Not by titles or victories or treasure or acceptance.

He is as guilty as most everyone else of escalating things he shouldn’t have, constantly kept on the back foot and unwilling to simply roll over to show his belly to those who’d find it easy (who found it easy) to plunge a sword straight through (again and again and again). But he’d never taken the same cruel satisfaction that Sam did, that Quackity did, that Tommy did, that those who stood back and watched him die twice did, that Sapnap would have (if Dream had lived long enough for Sapnap’s promise to come true). Outside of a few actions he’ll never regret, he’d never once thought himself on the moral high ground in his worst moments. When it got away from him, when he leaned too hard into the villain’s role to prop himself up—exhausted and on autopilot and stuck in that ill-fitting but well-worn mantle.

Truly, truly stuck as he wielded the masks suffocating him as both sword and shield.

After, though…afterward he would shakily try to remind himself about the role, about the plan, about the buried aspects of himself that were kind and gentle and loving, about the endpoint where he would hopefully never need to be cruel or ruthless again.

And each time it grew harder to remember the core of who he was beneath the crushing weight bearing down on him, grinding him slowly into dust. Since he couldn’t exactly hang around Techno much without risking them both, thus losing out on the delightful character-breaking banter and Techno’s refreshing call outs for his bullsh*t, his only real reprieve came in the form of Punz. Who always without fail greeted him with a smile, who trusted him, who like Techno looked at Dream like he was a person. Punz was a breath of fresh air in the confines of his stiflingly lonely role, sweeping into their meeting spots unafraid to draw close and lean in and let out the world’s longest, weariest sigh as he’d kick his feet up onto the table, drawing Dream in with casual gestures and an affectionately ribbing hey boss.

Dream, Punz would start, tone grave and blue eyes dark, you will not believe this—, and go on to dramatically regale Dream with whatever the stupidest point of server drama was since they last spoke, exaggerated expressions and put-on voices included. No matter Dream’s mood he’d always inevitably rest his chin in his palm and listen raptly, reacting to Punz’s report-turned-gossip-session with all the appropriate gasps and no, really? and what! that it deserved, a bonfire of fondness warmly flickering in his chest all the while.

…Prime he misses Punz.

Techno, too.

(and—)

XD sighs, dragging Dream’s lowered gaze up to find a somber understanding awaiting him. “Even now it eats at you. What was done, to you and by you. I wondered once, and only once, had I chosen wrong. There are those who would say we are too different to be compatible. On the surface, those who know you and I would insist as much. Yet,” the god’s expression flickers into a brief smile, “you proved time and time again that I did not. You were human and flawed and different and good. You lived and you loved and you cared. You tried. And I, in all my apathy, found in the spaces between our differences our similarities, too. I found that I could become more than what I was so content to be. I knew then that you never needed to be me as I am to be my chosen, my favored. You were important and precious just as you were, and perhaps the best choice because of it. I will never, could never regret becoming DreamXD.”

Dream sniffs, the sound wet as dampness stubbornly clings to his lashes, “XD….”

(Good? Who other than Punz would dare to be kind enough to say such a thing about him except a centuries-old god?)

“Be kinder to yourself, Dream,” XD says, a soft command in the sublayer of his voice. In a tone Dream heard once, years ago now, tell him to watch seconds before the god effortlessly tore an empty, failing server asunder so the new could rise from its ashes. “You are no great evil but a victim of circ*mstance. You are not the sum of what they made of you—that is not all you are, nor is it all you have ever been. So be kinder to yourself,” the god then repeats less sternly. “You deserve that kindness, as difficult it may be to believe. In this space and with time to heal enough to be kind, even when it involves,” shuddering, XD grimaces and waves vaguely at the river, “fishing.”

When Dream can’t help but huff a small laugh XD looks ever so pleased with himself, flicking Dream on the forehead and releasing Dream’s still-held hand. “You may now return to your fish,” the god magnanimously offers, leaning back to recline against the grass in a graceful propped-up sprawl. Comfortable enough to not quite say he needs a break from the emotional stuff but still give the both of them the time to breathe and process—such an awkward, well-meaning chaos god.

And such fondness he has for this chaos god.

He does need that allowance of time, though, after that little impromptu rollercoaster XD took them both on. Dream is still incredibly unprepared for the brunt of the god’s affection and regard although he should be used to it by this point (old fresh scars run deep). So, rather than argue or press on he simply…scrubs a hand across his eyes and goes back to fishing. Immerses himself in the idle routine of it as the overt and subtler implications of XD’s words linger in his subconscious—tries to slot them into his warped self-perception and right the spilled-over damage done to the truth of him.

Tries to remember that to XD, to Punz, to Techno he is and always has been as much a person as anyone else (it isn’t easy when he can hear Wilbur and Tommy and Sam and Quackity and—

just a monster, right? Not human, never human. Just a roadblock to others’ happiness that needed to be slain for the sake of the server finding peace—).

Sometime between the second and third fish tucked into his inventory for a Patches-approved stockpile, Dream zones out again until a sodden saddle whacks him in the shin, abruptly lifting him back up into the present. He scowls through a loud, pained ow, kicking it away to let it float downriver and hopefully despawn or be someone else’s problem, and feels zero shame in glaring at XD when the god rudely snorts beside him. His shift in attention lets him finally notice what XD’s been up to while he was busy, his eyes catching on the array of new colorful orbs being prodded by the god’s fingers.

No, not orbs, player code-cores.

Ones that XD is absently poking at, humming occasionally as he parses bits of data for the players those code-cores are linked to.

Deep blue and red-pink and white-blue-gold held close.

White-black and red-white-black and tan-blue and teal-gold a slight distance back.

Even red-orange, too, wavering on the fringes.

Dream swallows around his suddenly dry throat, a leaden longing quick to sprout and burrow its roots down to the marrow. A desperate whine is strangled into silence between his ribs before it can pathetically take flight. Above each core playerID tags waver into visibility—a temptation to check, to verify, to know, to answer questions he’s not quite brave enough to admit he has. He can’t unstick his eyes from the first three code-cores, drinking in the sight of them as his palms burn with a visceral need to cradle them all near and dear to his heart.

Patches’s head plops onto his thigh with just enough force to make him blink, causing the playerID tags to disappear again and letting him tear his face away. On any other day, in any other situation, he’d accuse XD of baiting him on purpose…and on any other day, in any other situation, he’d probably even be right. But, as he glances down at Patches, who slowly blinks up at him in return, he figures it’s far more likely that this is just a case of the god doing so by complete accident.

He peeks over again, notes both the half-lidded eyes and the familiar posture of someone who is wishing they had a snack and honestly doubts XD even noticed his glare. Hell, the reaction to him being hit by that fished-up saddle was probably just a reflexive sound to counter Dream’s ow.

Still, it reminds him….

As loathe as he is to break the peaceful atmosphere and the syrupy-slow flow of time draped over the riverbank, he does wonder if XD showed up for an actual reason beyond curiosity for Dream’s breach of the god’s barrier. “Y’know, not that I’m not happy to see you,” he starts, because he is very much pleased by the company, tempting player cores dangled in front of him aside, “but is there a reason you’re here, XD?”

XD’s immediate first action upon being addressed by name is to dismiss the player cores back into the ether, which means his prior conclusion is probably right. The god’s second action is to sit up only to mock-recoil in feigned offense, “What, may I not visit o favorite mine? Am I not a delight? I did say I would visit, did I not?”

His flat expression that barely covers his regret for asking is met by a curl of mischief, “Your mortals have been making interesting choices as of late left to their own devices. Such circles, such denial, such webs to unweave as scales fall from long-covered eyes. A little bit of self-reflection aimed where it is most devastating. Houses built on unstable foundations crumbling to the earth around long-deaf ears. Naturally, I find myself fascinated that our favorites among them are, of course, the worthiest of watching. Such just champions are a pleasant surprise.”

The god’s hand briefly splays out, tiny dots of player core colors spark to life above XD’s fingertips until only the lone blue remains. XD cups the ember of it, something distant and nostalgic there-and-gone in the god’s eyes as he softly blows the ember from his hand, letting it dissipate in the breeze.

Dream wants to ask—he wants to ask so badly he genuinely feels sick with it but he can’t right now. As much as it scalds his tongue to stay quiet, to not engage XD’s leading trail-off, to refuse to read into that blue (that blue, that blue, that blue), he can’t. If he asks, if he knows, he can’t take that back. He can’t undo it. And he isn’t ready to know. Not when he can’t guarantee he won’t find something that will provide the damning hope that might spur him to return even when he absolutely shouldn’t. Even when he’s one bad Pandora-heavy flashback from shattering to pieces.

There are things and places and people (so many people) he misses but what painful new cost would he be forced to pay to see them again?

He may have power again as the admin, and he may have the server via Patches, and he may have XD in his corner, but as he has learned so well in his last few months alive, in these past few years spent losing, there are so very many ways by which to feel pain.

XD huffs at his swift head shake, though he does so with an understanding nod, “Their squabbles do become stale rather quickly, even with my appearances to spook them. I have my limits to what I find entertaining. Besides which,” the god continues after rolling his eyes at the loss of perceived quality in his chosen entertainment and a noisy exhale, “between realizing I forgot to leave you a rather important item in the chest and your broadcasting—“

“My what?” Dream mouths, head tilting in concert with Patches’s on his thigh.

“—I thought it would be best to give you this in person rather than simply drop it off while you were out or asleep.” Before Dream can prod for clarification the god raises a hand in which a book and quill set appear, which is then held out for Dream to take.

Setting his uncast fishing rod down on the other side of Patches, he accepts both book and quill. Curiously, just touching it leaves his fingers tingling and sends a brief shiver ghosting along his arm. No book has ever given him that sensation except for the revive book, which was strongly tied to XD and felt as such.

“You meant to give this to me before?” Dream asks, turning it over a few times in his hands—it looks just like any other vanilla book ever crafted on the server. There’s no excess ornamentation on its spines or cover, nor the hair-raising true otherness of the revive book.

Speaking of…, “Whatever happened with the death book, by the way?”

The revive book is now an irrelevant piece on an empty board—a loose thread in an unraveling tapestry. A remnant of a bygone flowering field littered with lava-ash and blood-blackened fragments of crying obsidian craters.

“To your second question,” XD frowns off toward the river while he speaks, “I dismissed it and the revive book back to the library. You rather smartly destroyed the latter’s physical form to safeguard the knowledge in your possession. And the death book never made its way into your hands. Which, shamefully, may have been more useful in allowing me to reach you before you died. It does have a much looser threshold for summoning me. I was content to leave it where it was while you were alive so long as I held hope for us to speak…and then you were no longer alive. Your death made both superfluous and I did not want to leave such a power in the hands of the server without you there to counter it.”

His memories are still fairly fuzzy from when his code was affected but from what he does remember, hearing that the death book is gone is honestly a relief. Thinking about such a readily abusable power being in the hands of the very same people who believe death is justice made him more than a tiny bit nervous. Using the death book carried its own heavy price but he had no difficulty imagining several server members who would not care what price they had to pay as long as it suited their purposes.

The god sighs and loosely shrugs, turning back toward Dream. “To your first question, I did. I may not possess the precise human perspective nor present myself as a caring god to most…and I may pretend to be above such regardless of the truth of my own existence, but that does not mean I am unaware of the realities of living. Of trauma.”

Dream’s breath hitches when XD reaches out to gently curl his fingers more firmly around the book in his hands.

“You are alive and safe now, yes,” XD continues, “yet for you the change in your situation occurred in an instant. You were hurting and unsafe and fearful and dying and then you weren’t. You woke up in comfort, without pain and safe and whole and alive. There was no in-between, no limbo in which to reflect, no drawn-out transition. It was the abruptness of it and your own incredulity which kept you from reacting overmuch when you first woke, but those harsh, painful feelings of the before are still there. Your experiences before your final death—long before that, even—did not give you the time, the space, or the opportunity to process much of anything as you were dragged from crisis to crisis. A blessing, is it not, to die in a screaming, wretched hell and awaken in a quiet, peaceful sanctuary? A blessing that does not seem real, is that not right?”

His eyes skitter away from the god’s knowing, understanding gaze and its reflection of how utterly lost he feels, breaths shallow as his mouth runs dry and his pulse drums loudly in his ears. He’s cast adrift by those last sharp, cutting words—words which pierce through him and reverberate, seeking a truth in their echoes that, distantly, he doesn’t believe is meant for Dream.

(Not for Dream but for an unhealed wound that haunts XD.)

More merciful to Dream than he deserves, XD allows him his cowardice, “It stands to reason you would need to process all that has happened and all that you have suffered once you were able to. Else, how would you heal and move on? How could you even begin to without working through all of those messy, complicated emotions? Without addressing the roots and branches of your trauma? Thus, while I knew I myself would be around for you to talk to, I also knew it would not be always. You needed something more constant, something less dependent on myself or Patches. So I planned to leave journals for you to make use of—to write out your thoughts and feelings however you found most cathartic. A lapse in memory or attention caused me to forget until now to provide said journals, but yes, I had originally meant to.”

Oh, Dream stares blankly at the book in his hands, a mix of gratitude and awe alongside a helpless, inarticulate mishmash of feelings tumbling through him. Knowing XD cares about him—which he does! He knows that!—is one thing. Seeing it in action, holding proof of it in his hands? That’s another. And having XD, a chaos god notable for his apathy and even his occasional absent cruelty, acknowledge Dream’s trauma in plain terms is…

…validating. It’s so utterly and completely validating.

“Thanks, XD,” he whispers, fingers clenching around the god’s thoughtful, practical gift.

“Now,” XD states after a belated mildly embarrassed clearing of the throat. “I am no therapist. And neither is Patches,” he pauses, brows furrowing, “although she may qualify in some regard as a therapy animal.”

In unison Dream and XD both look at her where she’s laid out against Dream’s thigh. She mimics the god’s earlier shrug with a lazy roll of her shoulders as she blinks guilelessly up at them, her sleepy vibrating purr a soothing rumble where she’s pressed against Dream. A chat window pops up above her head with a detailed shrugging emoji, which is followed by a cat icon and a heart and a green block.

Dream starts to open his mouth to wonder aloud at the criteria for a therapy animal and if it includes provisions for nonliving creatures. Shuts it. Points at the chat window, “Why did you teach her emojis?”

This time it’s XD who mimics Patches with a guileless blink of his own and a tilt of the head, “For the same reason I taught her to eat. To engage, to live, to learn, to experience more than her base server code allowed.” The innocent gleam in the god’s eyes fades into something faintly sly, “I simply expanded the freedoms she was already due to receive as your server avatar. If that then gives her the drive and ability to bully you—ah, to be a better companion for your needs, I should say—then, well. What a fortuitous turn of events.”

Once again Dream regards XD with his flattest expression, only rather than more mischief XD responds with a bright smile that’s weird to see broadcast on a mirror of his own face. “I can’t tell if you would be the worst therapist…or the best.”

And once again XD shrugs, “A matter of perspective. You and I have the power to bypass the necessity for mental and emotional healing, and I presume to some that may be the work of a good or bad therapist. Not that I would ever consider something of that nature for you, as to do so would commit an injustice to you and your experiences. In truth it would leave you worse off than before without the aid of your own history to prevent the harm made by similar mistakes. Rather than consider such an option, I expanded Patches’s code in anticipation for your renewed bond and planned for your journals…the latter of which I of course forgot to provide.”

It is true that both Dream and XD have the power to rewrite base code. To rewrite memories. To reset feelings. There is a certain freedom in truly losing that baggage, in no longer having it looming over him, in it no longer having any power over him. And yet who’s to say he won’t make the same mistakes again? Who’s to say he won’t make new mistakes because he’s lost everything he’s learned?

(the only way to learn is to experience the pains that come hand-in-hand with life)

Would he stop at simply excising the worst parts and keeping the framework, or would he tear it all out by the root until he remembers nothing at all?

(He imagines himself running into Quackity, into Sam, into Tommy, into Sapnap, and not remembering enough to know and shudders.)

After burying all that and clearing his own throat he ventures, “And my…broadcasting?”

The god hums and reaches over to lightly tap his forehead and his chest, “When I chose you we forged a bond. Much as with your server, your Patches, your thoughts and feelings echo along that bond to me. I told you yesterday that you feel love so strongly it can be felt far from the server,” oh, right, that embarrassment is familiar, “and at present, my awareness of you is greater than yours of me. In the early morning, when your ability to shield yourself is weakest, I sensed your distress. That, and your desire to find a method by which to process your troubled thoughts—a desire you then felt again later, sharp and clear. It reiterated your need and reminded me that I had meant to provide you exactly that.”

“And so,” XD presses onward, “with that in mind and the notification of your passage through my barrier, I decided to rectify my lapse. I may have no qualifications as a therapist, but it is my hope you will find it helpful as you process those troubling thoughts and heal. You have suffered, Dream,” the god’s tone gentles, “and I do understand the urge to pretend all is well, to push down one’s ugliest and most terribly destructive emotions. I want to remind you to let yourself both grieve and reminisce—more than that, however, I want to remind you to let yourself get angry. You were wronged, deeply so. You had not been given the luxury of expressing that anger I know you felt. Despair, loneliness, determination, fear, anger, all locked tightly away because you could not afford to acknowledge them. You were not allowed to, neither by yourself or the circ*mstances.”

When is the last time Dream let himself be well and truly angry? The last time he let himself feel anything actually close to anger beyond annoyance or frustration? His lies about Spirit?

...he does feel angry. He’s felt angry for a long time. A furious, helpless firestorm of grief kept banked in his chest beneath an ocean of thread-thin steel composure.

“Not, of course, that I believe you would find senseless destruction to be your most rewarding outlet,” the god notes, waving a hand dismissively and easing the building snarl of rage tangled around Dream’s ribs. “Short term catharsis it may provide, but you have never been the type to enjoy it,” XD peers at him, studying the play of emotions flickering across his face, “then again, a little bit of it every now and again may still be useful. I am however reminding you that you are allowed your anger regardless of its given form. Let yourself grieve, laugh, rest, rage. Let yourself heal. There is no time limit, no hanging sword. My hope, as I said, is that you will be kinder to yourself as you learn to move forward. Adventure, explore, fight, fish, sail—”

Abruptly, Dream sneezes into his elbow, the sound drowned out by a chorus of item pop-ins and loud splashes that leave his ears ringing and his knees soaked from a resulting wave. When he sniffs and finds the strength to look up he cringes. The fireflies have all scattered to the far trees, the surface and banks of the river cluttered with single boats and floating multi-stacks that now drift with the current. Between the boats of every type and color of wood, the bodies of unconscious and dead salmon can be seen—the unexpected wooden objects having careened like meteors into the river as they were spawned in by force.

From beside him, both Patches and XD stare silently at the absolute mess Dream’s made and slowly turn to eyeball him. “—I did not mean for you to go sailing right this second.”

“…You’re the one that mentioned it,” Dream rebuts, mulish as he covers his face with the book in his hands to hide the heat flooding his cheeks.

“I suppose I did,” the god relents with a bubbling edge of humor. Laughing a little under his breath, XD tugs away Dream’s meager cover, “I think it may also be prudent to spend time exploring your returned and new power, too. I would rather not find you buried beneath an avalanche of who knows what the next time you have an errant thought.”

One single gesture vanishes the whole lot and returns the riverbank to normal, the remaining whimsical lights from before dispersing alongside the despawned boats. With that done, XD then climbs leisurely to his feet and holds a hand out to Dream.

A bit confused, Dream goes to put the book and quill in his inventory and pauses. No wonder it felt strange to the touch. “These don’t stack,” he finds himself accusing, vaguely pointing at his empty hand where it had been.

XD raises his brows, an absent indicative wave made toward his face, “God.”

Well. Fair enough. He kind of walked right into that one.

Since he has nothing much he can say to that, Dream also tosses his abandoned fishing rod next to the book and quill—the enchanted sixty-four stack—and then accepts XD’s assistance to stand up. As he lifts his feet from the water and rises, a brief cocoon of the god’s aura curls around him and leaves him completely dry. Quite handy. It’s also at this point where, upon looking around, he realizes it’s gotten rather late, finally cluing in to the onset of dusk as he slips his boots back on and rolls down his pant legs. When he starts to straighten up fully he lifts Patches with him, letting her clamber onto his shoulders where she then mrrs into the space between his neck and collarbone.

“I have time,” says XD after glancing at the sky, already taking hold of Dream’s hand again.

Growing more confused, Dream frowns but doesn’t protest, “Wait, for what?”

An End-cold pressure starts to surround all three of them, creeping ever-closer as spatial power crests higher and higher—

He startles and presses his free hand over Patches’s body to steady her, “Wait are you really tele—”

—and breaks, an instant of blade-sharp darkness and bitter cold softening into foam.

“—porting. I guess that’s a yes.”

Dream shakes off the momentary disorientation of someone else’s teleportation to learn XD has dropped them on the stablest section of the clearing house’s roof. “Did you really need to…,” his incredulity trails away when he turns to find the most obvious reason staring directly at him. “Oh.”

Admittedly, the roof may not be the tallest structure around but it is tall enough. At least, for this. Over the trees lies an undeniable spectacular view of the sun setting, framed on all sides by a riotous cohort of clouds. He eases himself down to sit without looking away, his vision beginning to blur as he drinks in the rolling swathes of yellows and pinks and reds and oranges and purples and indigos. Patches mrrs again in comfort as she rubs her face against his neck.

He may have missed the sunrise this morning but XD has chosen to gift him the sunset.

Swiping the back of a hand over the tear tracks trailing down his cheeks, he chokes out, “You’re still so lazy.”

“God,” XD murmurs in reminder, graciously guiding Dream to better lean against him for support.

Together in the quiet peace that cradles them, he and Patches and XD watch the sun set until it passes out of sight and below the horizon and leaves the sky purple and indigo and star-dotted in its wake.

XD is the first to stir however long afterward, gentle as he stands them both up. A softer breath of power moves them from the roof to the grass as easily as taking a single step forward on even ground. It’s then that XD faces Dream, the god’s regalia replacing his borrowed clothes between one blink and the next as gloved hands kindly wipe away the remnants of Dream’s tears.

“Thanks, XD,” Dream whispers, grateful and humbled and so, so fond. “For everything.”

“For you, Dream,” the god says, wielding an honest smile. “Anything.”

Those words ring truetruetrue—so true Dream feels faintly dizzy.

And then XD steps back to give him space, “Do be well, Dream.”

He can’t quite promise that he will be in words but can try. Once he nods and echoes the sentiment a single vwoop later leaves him and Patches alone in the clearing. Dream exhales slowly, shakily, an anvil-heavy exhaustion settling onto his shoulders that bids him to slip inside. The torchlight is blinding after so long spent in the dark, forcing him to squint as he snatches up his hoodie from the table and burrows into it with a pleased sigh as the night’s chill is smothered by the thicker, warm fabric.

Under Patches’s gimlet eye from where she’d hopped onto the table to allow him to put on his hoodie, he raises his hands in surrender and makes his next move opening the chest. After witnessing her earlier feeding frenzy he really isn’t in the mood to cook any fish, so he spends a minute swapping everything he caught for a piece of bread and meat that he then turns into another sandwich. He munches his way slowly through it while sitting on the floor, his back resting against the bed—the last thing he wants is to try to sleep in crumb-covered sheets.

The entire time he’s eating his inventory window is open to one side, his gaze stuck on the full stack of XD-enchanted books and quills. He’d wanted writing tools for several reasons, but now that he has them, now that they’re sitting tauntingly right within reach, ready to use and exactly what he needs….

Now, it’s as if his mind has never been emptier.

“Okay, I can do this,” Dream brushes crumbs from his hands and pops one book and quill out from the stack. “Right? It’s just writing. Just a little journal. Just for me. Doesn’t have to be perfect—”

(—no demands made for him to write, no grinning grim reaper poised in wait, looming over him, no bloodied weapons raised in threat, no greedy, power-hungry desire to take his knowledge—his bargaining chip, his only worth, the only thing keeping him alive—)

“—does it? It’s venting, basically. The only way to fail is not to start.”

Even still, after he props open the book on his bent knees, readied quill hovering at the top of the first blank page, he hesitates. The empty space is a daunting invitation he doesn’t know how to begin to answer. Biting his lip he closes his eyes, tries to clutch onto a single thread he might tie to the parchment and spool out across the page.

When Dream blearily cracks his eyes back open he stares at the G in which his quill tip is nestled.

“Oh,” he croaks, his chest tight and bleeding from shrapnel in the shape of longing.

Each quill stroke thereafter is a bittersweet pain by a hand so very used to each swoop, to each letter’s exact curvature in writing.

George, he writes, I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry. I should have told you that more often. Do you know, anymore? How much I love you? Or have I ruined us so completely that you hate me? Like you thought I hated you? As if I could ever hate you. As if I could stop myself from loving you. I should have told you everything. I should have told you I didn’t mean anything I said back then. Should have let you know how much you mean to me. I should have never walked away from you. I thought I had to. I thought you and I wouldn’t be safe if I didn’t. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong. I guess we’ll never know, will we? I hope…I hope you can be happy without me….

Chapter 8: words left unspoken, given life

Chapter Text

I hope you know that I loved you even if you only believed I did for too short a time. I did, I do. I wanted to give you the world. I wanted to give you everything. You didn’t want it. I don’t know what you wanted…you never told me. Every guess I tried to make was wrong. You’d look so frustrated with me. Scoff, roll your eyes. But you’d never tell me why. I couldn’t read your mind and you were silent, so I kept trying. Kept failing. Kept thinking that ‘maybe this is the one,’ and it never was. There was always this expression on your face that said I should know, that it was obvious. But it wasn’t obvious to me. Maybe I’m just stupid. Or blind. Maybe you’d be better off with someone else who’d understand what you want. …As long as they could make you happy the way I failed to I think…I think I could live with that.

Maybe you were never meant to be mine and I was never meant to be yours.

We’re worlds apart now and maybe that’s for the best. For you and for me. Whatever you think of me if you think of me at all you don’t have to worry anymore. I ruined us. I died and you lived and we’re both free now.

I loved you, I loved you, I love you. I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing you, loving you. I don’t think I can. Too much of my heart exists in the shape of you. You’ll find happiness without me and I’ll try to find my own without you and…one day I’ll be able to say it’s fine without choking on a lie.

Dream hums a lilting tune and digs his ink-stained fingers into the soil, neon green flickering around his wrists. XD chose to start leaving post-it notes with suggestions for how to best acclimate to relearning—and freshly learning—his powers, the god’s excuse for not dropping in himself being that things are rather interesting here, Dream signed with a, frankly, worrying winky face. He’d found this suggestion’s note directly attached to his face upon waking up in the morning and another had appeared on the mirror between splashing his face with water and looking up. Whatever has inspired XD to take his trolling into the ‘horror’ category has found itself a place on Dream’s hit list after the way the bathroom light cut and re-lit in sync with his startled glance at his reflection. And that was on purpose, which he knows because not two seconds after he’d yelped and tripped on the bathroom rug it happened again and a new note was stuck beneath the previous one that just said lol.

He has never once in his life seen XD write lol so shenanigans must be afoot if the god’s so willing to use his ridiculously gatekept deity’s penmanship hacks on chat speak of all things. At least XD’s not using numbers yet but at this rate it’s only a matter of time before he’s faced with an incomprehensible jumble of letters and numbers without a damn clue what’s being said. If XD gets either excited or bored enough he dreads that he’ll start finding an unholy combination of cryptograms and pictograms deposited at his feet like a cat’s trophies, with said cat expectant for Dream to solve a puzzle where the only real answers exist in the god’s head and no place else.

Thankfully for his paper-thin sanity…and possibly his future of constant migraines, this post-it was straightforward and as normal as he could have hoped for from XD. Which has brought him where he is now, on his knees in the middle of the clearing with his hands buried in cool, partially damp dirt. Green threads twine around his fingers and forearms as his lets his focus drift, connecting to the earth not through a code interface or Patches but with his own heart and mind and power. Although he could quite easily bring his adminship to bear and have it answer him quickly—energetically, even, the server eager to oblige him—the exercise XD proposed relies on a careful coaxing to best test and stretch Dream’s awareness and control.

Like this it is a slow-stirring creature, its consciousness rising in increments to brush against the gentle blanket of Dream’s power. It’s hard to describe in spoken language, the sensation of thousands of blocks spread out around him, beneath him, the world roots of bedrock far, far below. Grass and dirt and gravel, stone and diorite and andesite and deepslate, pockets of copper and iron and lapis and redstone—sprinkles of starlight diamonds scattered here and there—caverns, creeping flora in vines and moss and fungi, vast underground lakes and rivers and waterfalls boiling and frigid and lukewarm, and mineshafts, vestiges of cobwebbed railways and long-abandoned chests. His attention skitters away at the slightest hints of bubbling lava-orange heat and forbidding obsidian-black, returning from its deepest perusals to carefully cradle only the layer of soil and grass spiraling out from him at its center.

Eyes closing as his held-close, dense power sits heavy on his tongue and mantles itself upon his shoulders, his fingers flex in invitation to tiny sparks of life scattered amongst the dirt as if dozens of seeds tossed by the wind. He imagines cupping his hands around each minuscule bulb, encouraging the fawn-like curiousness of roots tentatively spreading, exploring, anchoring—shells parting to reveal green buds that persevere and breach the surface into the waiting sunlight’s reward.

Grow, he urges not in demand but in suggestion, a faint blueprint of his desire echoing along the thought but one without true expectation. The ability to command change exactly as required is not beyond him, yet this isn’t about commanding that the server conform to his specifications, it’s about allowing the world to resonate with his power more naturally without a rigid end goal. To reconnect and redefine the type of future successor, the type of admin, the type of person he is and wants to be, feathering out the edges of what is most important in his heart and mind into a more honest shape.

If this world is not given the chance to know him down to his core then how can it ever hope to help him when he falters?

Dream breathes in, spider’s silk threads webbed across the clearing twined into the soil which thrum with a soft neon-green glow, and breathes out, a gentle vibrato strum enticing life to bloom. His lashes flutter as a ticklish tingle tugs at his fingers with all the shyness of an uncertain child—threads vibrate in acknowledgment, acceptance and he blinks his eyes open in a state of floaty, placid relaxation. Where the clearing was once only a sea of grass, now it is awash in colorful flowers that spawned and grew and bloomed under the ghosting touch of his guiding hand. Yellow dandelions, red poppies, yellow sunflowers, red and pink and gray-white and orange tulips, blue cornflowers, light gray azure bluets, oxeye daisies in their white-gray and yellow. At the edges of the clearing, too, lilacs and rose bushes and peonies have also spun to life.

Gently untangling his hands from the soil and letting his active power fade, he settles back onto his haunches and squints at the outliers, huffing a tired breath up at his sweaty bangs. According to the admin map this area is a plains biome, so for these flowers which don’t naturally grow in the basic plains—including the sunflowers—he suspects tinkering on XD’s part to develop a safer space has resulted in a hybrid plains biome sub-categorized as a forest. Considering he asked for the earth to provide its most natural bounty, not every permutation or spawn possible in the Overworld, he’s throwing these oddities at XD’s feet. Tsking at said absentee god, his gaze falls onto the most glaring proof directly in front of him, fingers raising to trace the shape of the bell-like lily of the valley without daring to touch its petals.

“…Bit optimistic, isn’t it?” Dream mutters, aborting the urge to run those fingers through his hair when he registers the caked-on dirt and cringes at the thought of smearing it into his practically-white hair.

A wave of dizzy exhaustion then prompts him to slump backward, awkwardly shifting his legs from underneath him so he’s not laying on his own heels. He’s sun-warmed and sleepy now, bare shoulders and black clothes having soaked up the heat as he stretched figurative magic muscles for the first real time in over a year. With a jaw-cracking yawn he tosses an arm over his eyes to block out the sun and contemplates taking a nap right here and now, utterly wiped out by the demanding complexities of creating life from essentially nothing. Using shortcuts or structured commands would have been faster and easier, but despite his tiredness it’s a satisfied fatigue of a job well done and time well spent. Dream created something new and kind and beautiful all on his own, just for the sake of it—under XD’s suggestion, of course, but he’d chosen to sink so deeply, to let the world around him take the reins and show him whatever it wanted with only the barest hints of guidance.

Soft footfalls in the grass pull him from his hazy drift enough to lift his arm a smidge to find Patches staring down at him, her face peeking over the top of his head. When he first started this task she’d watched from her spot by the door, but after a while she did, as is the cat way, get bored, preferring to flop over and snooze instead, splayed out and mouth open as quiet, rolling mrrs became oddly soothing background noise. He peers up at her with a drained smile and makes a half-hearted sweeping gesture with his free hand around the clearing to indicate its new appearance, “See? Took a while, but I did it.”

Whiskers twitching, Patches boops him on the forehead with her nose, a brief pop-up flashing a thumbs-up, heart, trophy, and medal as pride-affection-appreciation echoes along their bond. She then rests her chin where she’d booped him and purrs, kneading her paws tucked close enough to pull a little at Dream’s hair, too, where it’s spilled onto the grass. He reaches up to rub behind her ears, brows rising as something small and fuzzy dislodges from her fur when his fingers brush against it…oh, a bee? It flies off toward the nearest flower, buzzing as it goes. Dream turns his face a little to watch its whimsical path from beneath his still-raised arm, nails scratching Patches’s head and neck as she presses her cheeks one after the other into his hair.

The bee cants its way from poppy to tulip to daisy, it and half a dozen more summoned by the newly bloomed flowers from their hives, so simply pleased by what Dream has created that he’s left feeling humble.

I did that, he thinks in soft, sun-dappled awe as small black and yellow bodies swoop to and fro, his heart full with an indescribable joy that he’s done one more thing right, that something his bloodied hands have touched brought happiness instead of misery—

(he brought ruin for so long no matter what he did or said or how much he tried; a displaced disaster in a phantom human shape decried and despised; molded by strange hands and words and yanked in far too many directions by foreign and familiar faces alike always asking, taking, demanding; less of a person and more of a symbol to rally against as he tried to make something, anything of the shroud which had been wrapped too tightly around him; lost, lost, so lost, furious and grieving and trying all the wrong things as he spiraled further down the abyss challengingly tossed at his feet)

—Dream exhales and resettles more comfortably, forearm lowered back over his eyes as he reels in the drifting fringes of his sleepiness as a shield, a cocoon, a barrier, his tension dissolving like fog beneath the sun.

Pandas …no…I guess I lost the right to call you that a long time ago, didn’t I? I died, Sapnap. Three times I died, two as you watched. I guess I made you break your promise, huh? Seems like such a me thing to do, doesn’t it, to die to someone else after you’d promised to be the one to kill me. Even with what you last said to me…when you told me you’d kill me in the same breath you told me you hoped I got better in a place built only to ruin. Even still, I can’t help but wonder what you thought when you saw I’d died. Did the message make you happy? Did it piss you off? Were you shocked, maybe? Confused? Did you want to know why, how? Did you roll your eyes and move right on, assuming I’d deserved it?

Did you think about thanking Quackity or yelling at him for stealing your kill?

Did you make the same expression you did when you watched Tommy kill me twice?

How much did you want me dead. I thought about it a lot when I had nothing else to think about. While I waited for Sam, for Quackity, starving and tired and so lonely. f*ck, I was so lonely. I missed you but you wanted me dead. I missed you but you’d told me if I ever got out of prison (as if that would ever happen, did you really think I’d ever get out of the place you put me?) that you’d kill me. Maybe I would’ve let you. If it was you, I think….

I know you probably wouldn’t believe me but I cared, I did. Until the end even now I cared. You were my best friend, my brother, and I loved you. I didn’t say that enough, did I? I didn’t make it clear that I always felt better with you at my back, at my side. Maybe I should have talked to you the same as I should have talked to George. Sat you both down and told you how I felt, tried to let you know what was going on in my head. Maybe I was too much of a coward or too prideful or maybe I was afraid you’d turn away from me anyway. Maybe you would have listened and trusted me, been an anchor, had my back. Maybe I was afraid that you would. That you would end up dying because you listened to me. I don’t know. I’ll never know. All I can be thankful for is that you’re alive and safe and hopefully happy.

Do you remember when we were younger and happier? When we first came to this server after I’d made it for you, for George, for everyone? Before everything happened. Us against the world, yeah? We bickered and fought but it was never anything serious, y’know? We explored and went on adventures and built together even if you guys bullied me about my bad building skills. Do you remember when we went to find the ocean? I died in a cell built over an ocean I couldn’t hear and couldn’t see and maybe that’s what you’d say I deserved.

…I guess I don’t have the right to say this but…live for the both of us, Sapnap. I always thought you were meant for great things. Go be great. Take care of yourself. You don’t have to worry about me anymore, you’re free. I am too, but…I don’t think we’ll meet again. I think I’d just ruin you and George both if you saw me again. So, yeah. I guess it doesn’t mean much coming from me but I hope you live well without me. I hope you’re happy. I hope your future is a good one.

The weight of a basic wooden unenchanted handaxe is noticeably insignificant after carrying his double-bladed Nightmare for so long, but even still the movements are familiar as he works through his weapon forms in a cleared space between flower patches. Lunges, thrusts, slashes, stabs, the ever-important jumping crit. As with his tree climbing previously, his body obeys him easily, smoothly, at odds with the prevalent sense-memory of mangled hands, weak muscles, and shaking legs. More than once he has to stop a follow-through slash or his footwork so he can plant the blade in the dirt and lean on the handle, breathing through the creeping discomfort that continues to stubbornly cling to him. Discomfort which also plagues him with a wavering double vision that sends his stomach swooping and drips ice-cold water into his veins as phantom pains leave him stuttering mid-motion, his brain insistently highlighting the jarring difference between the him of just a few short days ago and him of now.

While he grits his teeth and forces himself to start over, he tries not to think of the last time he held a weapon in his hands, when he surrendered and disarmed himself only to be murdered twice over as once-friends stood by and watched, expressions cold and merciless. He tries not to think of the powerlessness and the despair he felt in those moments before the revive book bought him a reprieve that sent him into another kind of hell.

He tries (and fails) not to think of the threats made against him in Pandora, the abuses of the warden’s power, of the helplessness that grew and grew and grew as Quackity tormented him with words and weapons (as he realized that Sam let him in, that Sam wouldn’t bother to come when he called, that Sam didn’t care). Of the constant prey-fear kept at bay only by calculations he knew he couldn’t act on—if he moved against Quackity at all, took advantage of his own experience to lash out, where would that leave him?

Dead.

Even if he’d chosen to give up his single bargaining chip all that would give him was death at Sam or Quackity’s hands, far too much trouble to keep alive without the book as his ace. If Sam didn’t care (actively encouraged) that he was being tortured…as Sam already didn’t care that he was being starved, that the conditions were worse even than what Dream first envisioned himself able to tolerate, then what value did Dream have to Sam if he ‘acted out’ by killing Quackity to protect himself? Maybe it wouldn’t be Sam who killed him at that point but someone else brought in to be rid of him, but either way he’d have died for the last time.

Sam may have begrudgingly given him potions after Quackity left, been good cop to Quackity’s bad cop, done just enough to keep him alive for the next day, but as he did so he’d always look at Dream with heavy, disapproving scorn as if he’d rather Dream stop being difficult and hand over the book already. As if it was Dream’s fault for being tortured and not giving in despite the pain and humiliation, despite how all three of them knew that giving in would kill him. As if Dream was specifically choosing to be an inconvenience to Sam by continuing to breathe.

As if he couldn’t wait to no longer have to see Dream at all, to leave Dream buried six feet deep, to leave Dream to rot in that small bloodstained box—

(he trusted Sam, he put his life in Sam’s hands and was fool enough to trust that Sam would be fair, neutral, kind; it would have been kinder to stay silent and let Tommy kill him than to mistakenly think that he, that duty, that fairness would matter to Sam; a bitter lesson to learn when it’s much too late to change anything and all that remains is regret and a persistent horror)

—well. Dream supposes Sam will never have to see him again thanks to Quackity’s heavy-handedness, so…their chance to get the revive book may have died with him but Sam still got what else he ultimately wanted: Dream dead.

To look Sam in the eye and ask if it was worth it would only confirm what has already been beaten and carved into him until his blood overflowed and his body cooled in a box turned tomb. To press at the cracks of Sam’s thought process, his morality, to poke and poke and poke to find the real Sam who chooses to perpetuate abuse, to turn away from torture facilitated by his own tools and permission.

(Yes, Sam would say, straight-faced and cruel. Yes it was worth it.)

Scowling, he twists with a harsh downward slash and releases the handle midway through to hurl it with a wordless shout, bent over and arm aching from the force. Hearing the satisfying sound of the axe edge thunking heavily into a tree somewhere in front of him, he bares his teeth at the ground in a grim parody of a smile, tremulous tension drumming up and down his spine. After a moment he heaves a sigh and straightens up with a roll of his shoulders, running a gloved hand through his hair as he locates the poor tree he’s victimized by chucking an axe at it. Before he can process the results of his impulsive throw, his attention is snagged by a bee bumping repeatedly into his cheek, buzzing with annoyance at the unexpected sharp projectile that cut off its path.

“Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs, reaching up to gently pat it and then lift it away on one finger. Its wings flicker as it buzzes in reprimand for his carelessness, front legs gesturing for emphasis, then nuzzles at his knuckle and flies off toward a nearby daisy. Chastised by an insect, Dream huffs a somewhat embarrassed laugh, biting his lip and shaking his head as he picks his way through poppies and tulips and cautiously past a rose bush toward the tree holding his axe. He whistles when he sees just how deep it bored in for only being a wooden axe—nearly all the way to the handle—and places a hand on the bark close to the blade, absently measuring the breadth of the gash with his fingers. A little over a foot long and three inches at its widest, not quite at face height but a little higher, and when he tugs experimentally on the handle to free it, his brows raise at how strongly it’s anchored into the wood.

Dream plants his feet and wraps both hands around the grip to heave it out, rocking backwards on his heels and needing to take a quick, startled half-step back for balance before he topples over when it finally loosens, needing far more effort than he’d initially thought. “Huh,” he says, bemused, eying the cracked wooden blade as he runs a questing finger along the fault lines etched into a weapon that just moments ago was at almost full durability. Now it’s below a quarter and visibly showing its wear and tear…which is kind of strange given that all he’d done was rest it in the ground and then throw it once. Did he really throw it that hard?

…Is this another one of those things he’s going to have to get used to after XD revived him? Yet another alteration to who he is and what he’s able to do? Strength beyond a human’s capability without potions or enchantments? What’s next, perfect night vision? Breathing underwater? Flight without changing game modes or using an elytra?

Not particularly wanting to go down that line of thought he sighs, dropping the axe to his side and looking up at the tree again. Without the axe to hide it, it’s a gaping wound, a jagged vertical slash, ugly and violent. He co*cks his head, eyes falling to half mast as he considers it carefully, unable to stop himself imagining Sam’s face superimposed against the tree with the cut placed neatly over Sam’s left eye.

Wouldn’t that be fitting? Wouldn’t that be just.

To mark Sam the same as Techno marked Quackity. To ensure that Sam could never run from the truth of who he is at his core when he has power, forced to see the true Sam in every reflective surface, in every mirror. To find himself in the mirror of Quackity, too. Two halves of the same cruel whole. Scorned and marred the moment that power ran out by defiance wrapped up in fear disguised as hate immortalized as scars.

“If I lived, if I got out…,” he muses, smirking meanly as he holds up the axe to line up the blade with the mark, lets it linger as he runs the idea through, featherlight mental touch tracing the shape of it. His smirk falls the same as his raised arm, a noise of disgust leaving his throat, “Cathartic for me, sure. But I just know Sam’d completely miss the point…even if I explained it to him slowly with tiny words. Techno’d probably get it and laugh. Sam, though? Fat chance of that.”

Dream scoffs, flicking away the axe into his inventory, “Oh Dream,” he whines, placing the back of one hand against his forehead and dramatically collapsing against the tree he shifts to put at his back, “Dream. C’mon, Dream. Dre-am. Why would you do that to me? I’m a good person struggling to do my best here but you’re making it so hard. What have I done to deserve being treated like this? I’m not you, I’m a good person! See, see, you’re just proving me right to do those awful things to you! I had to do those things, see, ‘cause you’re just so violent. You hurt people for no reason, Dream! I had to keep you locked up, I had to starve you, I had to abuse you, I had to let Quackity in. And, and, y’know what? I’d do it again if I could! You deserve all I did and more, I sacrificed so much to control you in here. I’m the good person here, you’re just as bad as I’ve always thought you were. Blah, blah, blah.”

He’s making mocking gestures as he speaks, rolling his eyes hard enough to give himself a headache as he hates that every word out of his mouth sounds so utterly peak Sam. He hates that he could very well stand nearly bare and vulnerable in front of Sam, all of his Pandora-given scars and emaciated frame on display, look the man in the eye, and still have to listen to Sam spew such complete bullsh*t right to his face, pretending not to see the truth of Sam’s own choices reflected on Dream’s body no matter how glaring and ugly and obvious.

(Had he not died, had he lived, had he survived, had he miracle of miracles healed, he would bear lasting scars for the rest of his life, carrying cruelty’s torturous marks made by Sam, by Quackity, far, far into the future. What a wretched existence that would be: forever tied to his abusers, forever reminded by his reflection in mirrors and glass and water of a past he couldn’t run from no matter how fast he pushed himself or how far he ran, no matter how much he tried to never think about it.

Thanks to XD’s intervention he’s now wiped clean of their marks but he died for it—lost for it.

…Is that really much better?

(yes, he thinks and hopes and prays, it’s better, it has to be, it is, it is, it is))

And…even if the server cooperated long enough to stop imploding on itself he knows he’d never receive anything resembling an apology.

Exhaling harshly through his nose, he flexes a little to push off the tree he’s leaned against, starting to pace a tense, tight line back and forth in front of the wounded tree, hands making sharp, irritated movements. “Ha! An apology? Me? Prime forbid I get an apology from anyone! I’m the ‘bad guy,’ right?” his air quotes look more like air claws, “It’s only my server I invited you all to! I let you live here! And what did I get in return? Broken rules! Destruction! Theft! My best friend, killed over and over! Me, killed over and over! I tried to keep the peace, I asked, I bargained, I almost begged and still I was the bad guy for asking that people just…just…behave! How dare I, right?”

“I said, hey, maybe don’t grief? Maybe don’t steal? Anything else is fine, just please stop? And I got called a tyrant, somehow,” he scoffs derisively, tongue absently poking at one pointy canine tooth, “oh, yes, I was infringing on your freedom! Even though all I wanted was for those three tiny, tiny rules to be followed, I was the bad guy! Oh, I asked you not to build your little exclusive settlement oh no. How terrible of me. It was never about L’manberg! Why would I care about L’manberg? A community? Sure, whatever, sounds fine. No, what I cared about was deciding who could go where! I didn’t want people to be excluded on, on, on such stupid grounds. I'm the bad guy for saying an area I can't even go to unless I follow a bunch of stupid rules to stroke your egos is not cool? When I can't even trust that you won't stab me in the back while I'm there? Really? It's my server, you're going to tell me I should just, what, let you take it over? Allow you to do whatever you want, wherever you want, to whoever you want, with no consequences? In what world does that make any sense?"

He runs an agitated hand through his hair, “This was supposed to be a home, for me, for my friends, then I let other people in and it became a war zone! No one cares that I wanted peace, that I didn’t want to see my home destroyed! No one cares that I was afraid, that I didn’t want my life to become nothing but looking over my shoulder,” Dream snorts at those words, ash-blackened humor rising at how his life did become exactly that. “…Never knowing when what I’d built would be exploded or burned down or stolen. If my friends would end up dead at the hands of someone else. Running myself ragged trying to protect people who didn’t seem to understand they were in real, actual danger! So much uncertainty, so little control, everything just…always worsening not just because of everyone else but even my own friends! George and Sapnap both like causing problems…Sapnap instigated sh*t constantly and then, since I was considered ‘the leader,’” again, his air quotes are causticly claw-like as he forcibly ignores the kicked-up wind and darkening skies wrought by his irritation, “it reflected badly on me—I was expected to deal with it! And then he’d show back up completely confused why I might not be okay with that. Oh, he’s consequence free, sure, but me? I was never that lucky. I couldn’t even clean up his messes without that also reflecting badly on me, or being screwed up by someone else, or, or, so much going wrong!”

“Who cares how any of that made me feel, right? All that stress, never-ending anxiety and worry for me, for my friends, for my home? Psh, that doesn’t matter, apparently! Who cares that Wilbur’s grandstanding to stroke his ego ended up labeling me ‘the villain,’ to his ‘hero,’” Dream’s tone drips poison as he twists around on his heel, “reduced me to nothing but an obstacle for him, for Tommy, for stupid f*cking L’manberg to vanquish! Who cares that it’s my server, that I was here first. Prime forbid anyone remember how it all started, yeah? The drug van? Wilbur’s pride? I was, I was…I was cast as the bad guy in an overly dramatic theater production I didn’t agree to! But that’s fine, isn’t it? Let Wilbur control the narrative, let Wilbur tell everyone else who I am, that’s fine. Let Wilbur tell me who I am. Sure, fine. Prime forbid I point out how ridiculous that is! I’m just supposed to accept that, right? Accept complete strangers I’ve never even spoken to looking at me like I’m some kind of horrible person with a smile! Accept my own friends buying into the Dream that Wilbur created—that’s the real Dream, after all! Years of friendship, years of knowing me, and yet it’s. Just. So. Easy. To discard me based on nothing but Wilbur’s word…and I’m supposed to not fight back? Not that that ever helped…all it ever did was play more into what Wilbur’d already said. I don’t know what I should’ve done other than roll over…bow out, leave. Let Wilbur have his pointless victory, his empire of f*cking dirt. Let George and Sapnap and everyone stay and…try to stop worrying about them.”

Dream tries to dissipate some of his agitation by intermittently bouncing on the balls of his feet, boots scraping through dense leaf litter. “It’s only me who got turned into a pariah. I was the problem from the beginning, so with me gone surely everything would be fine. Surely Wilbur wouldn’t pick a new target to villainize! And hey!” His voice rises, startling away a half dozen avian stragglers from the canopy overhead, “I’m gone now, aren’t I? Everything’s gonna be so perfect without me! I’m stuck thousands of chunks away from my home that’s been taken from me! But, well. It’s not like I matter! I don’t have feelings, I don’t have a say, I don’t deserve the right to live peacefully in my own home, I’m just an inconvenience for the people who do, right? Right? Who cares what they did to me, how what they did affected me! Oh, all that? Tommy killing me twice in a row? Almost three times? The abuse, the starving, the torture? That doesn’t matter at all. No, why would it? Why would it matter what they do to me? Why would they ever acknowledge what they did, let alone apologize—they have value, not me! It doesn’t matter that I had nothing left! They don’t think I’m a person!”

His anger crests higher and higher, and then breaks in an earth-crashing tidal wave, his clenched fist impacting directly with the wounded tree’s gash as he whirls around on the spot, his shout erupting from deep between his ribs, each word a bloodied thorn tearing its way out through his throat.

A heavy, resounding crack echoes sympathetically in his chest as the wood beneath his knuckles abruptly snaps, not simply breaking but obliterating, the entire trunk rocketing away and toppling over, taking another handful of trees down with it in a cacophonous mess. Lungs heaving and eyes burning, Dream relaxes his tense fist and stares at the torn fabric of his gloves across his red-painted fingers, presses his other hand tightly over his mouth at the familiar neon green sparks that appear to fizzle and pop, bit by bit vanishing all evidence of his impulsive self-harm.

“…Just a monster,” he whispers, huffing a humorless laugh. He drops to a crouch, the hand over his mouth lifted to clutch onto the broken oak trunk for balance as he rests his forehead against it, his good-as-new fingers digging into the soil. As he takes even, shaky breaths the wind slowly calms its howling and sunlight begins to peek from behind a disappearing curtain of thick grey clouds overhead.

A warm, comforting weight drapes over his shoulders, a grounding weight that purrs and kneads gently at the quivering remnants of tension stubbornly clinging to him like a shroud. Patches tucks her wet nose close, whiskers ticklish on his skin, mrrs vibrating in a soothing rumble from which he gathers the strength to carefully stand up while keeping her safely where she lays. Once upright, he surveys the destruction created by his lashing out with tired eyes, all that fleeting, momentary catharsis having fled to leave nothing but an emptiness behind.

Shattered tree trunks, what intact logs remain having fallen hard enough to imprint into the earth, splintered wood thrown like scatter shot in a wide arc, whole branches launched like spears to embed like an arrow’s rain over a battlefield, leaves almost artistically smeared in windblown piles, a paltry handful of apples and saplings tossed around after dropping from the vanishing canopy. A nearly portal-tall, portal-wide chunk cut right out of the forest just from the force of Dream’s punch and Dream feels nothing except a vacant sadness once shaped like fury—perhaps what might be generously called a disappointment in himself for once again choosing violence.

He scrubs a hand over his face, through his hair to tug lightly at strands in the back, sighing through his nose, “Yeah, I’m not bitter at all. Clearly.”

Patches snakes her way around his neck until she can meet his gaze with artfully big, luminous greens, sharp claws pricking into his skin as she contorts herself like a noodley scarf. The emotions she broadcasts are jumbled up in a single primarily concerned package, but after parsing it as best he can, he’s fairly certain he knows what she’s trying to get at.

“He did say that, didn’t he?” Dream blinks and tilts his head, idly tapping one boot tip against the ground as he reexamines the carnage with a less self-critical eye. “Let myself get angry, huh.”

That elusive catharsis ekes its way inch by inch back, curls from his bottom rib up around his heart, up through his lungs, nests itself comfortably on his tongue. It simmers in his bones, a coiling heat that reminds him that he is not the Dream of yesterday, he is the Dream of now and he doesn’t need to pretend none of his feelings matter…to diminish, to devalue his own emotions for the sake of his pride, for the comfort of other people.

Who is he pretending for, alone and dead and already as valueless as it is possible to be?

The embarrassed urge to fix his mess, make it look like he’d never been here at all, dies beneath a stirring of his ire and another memory of XD’s words.

Why should he erase the evidence that he exists, that he was here, that he feels, that he matters?

Even if it’s raw and ugly and violent? Even if no one’s going to see it but him, and XD, and Patches?

Still…still, he doesn’t want this to be his legacy. Dream flicks his axe back into his hand and with Patches riding along on his shoulders, tackles the task of clearing up just a little, collecting apples and saplings as he picks his way around the debris field. Next to each broken, fallen trunk he then kneels on the dirt to methodically plant a new sapling, close by but still far enough to allow for full growth, replacing what he’s destroyed in the present with a healed over future. With the last one tucked safely into the earth, he rocks to his feet again, brushing dirt from his hands as he considers the picture it makes: destruction intermingled with fresh, resilient life, all wrought by the same hands.

“…I’m sure there’s some kind of metaphor here,” he muses, lips quirked wryly, eventually just shrugging with an absent gesture and turning away to finally walk back to the clearing. Whatever metaphor is there to be found is mirrored in the gentle warmth of the sun as he passes out from under the canopy, in the soft sway of brightly blooming flowers in the breeze. He takes care to only step on grass patches and watch for bees, returning to the space he’d been using earlier to practice and swapping the low durability axe out for a fresher sword. It’s oak wood just the same as the axe, with a sword’s balance and length that is no less stranger for the missing weight of his Nightmare weapons, and he fidgets with it: rolling the hilt through his fingers to hold it in a brief backwards grip before twirling it around again into a proper hold, raising it to point over the treetops at the far side of the clearing.

A heroic pose for a villain, perhaps.

Patches bumps her nose against his cheek, her mrrw encouraging and affectionate and so very effective at lifting his dipping mood. She keeps at it until he can’t help but laugh, smiling as he shoves her face away, at which point she then makes sure to float one of her nonstandard mischievous cat emojis in the air before she gingerly climbs her way down to the ground and sprawls out between a grouping of sunflowers.

Dream watches her fondly for a moment and then shifts his attention to his raised sword, “Well then. Let’s get back to work.”

I was a coward, I think. Afraid to let myself get too close. Afraid to look at you the same way you looked at me. Afraid to face a future where I lost you too, after everything. And I should have respected you more, let you in, talked to you more honestly. You didn’t have to help me but you did. You trusted me when no one else would. You saw me like a person when the server called me a monster. You couldn’t have my back publicly because it wasn’t safe for the plan, for you, but you had it when and where you could. You’d wanted to, you’d been willing to thumb your nose at the whole server for me, until I convinced you not to. And I should have thanked you more for that. The words would stick in my throat each time we were able to meet, the gratitude all but choking me. But I couldn’t voice them, not really. I could only make sure to compensate you, to reward you, too cowardly to let myself take those final steps to be vulnerable again.

I didn’t want you to be another George, another Sapnap, another friend I couldn’t keep. I kept my distance…and that wasn’t fair to you. You deserved better than that, than me. I can’t tell you now but…thank you. Thank you for choosing to trust me, to believe in me, even when I know I didn’t make it easy for you. I told you less than I should have, tried to do more on my own than I should have. And still, you chose to stay when you didn’t have to, when I wouldn’t have blamed you for leaving even if it would have gutted me to lose you too, and no amount of thanks could ever express just how much your support, how much you just on your own, meant to me. All those sleepless nights, all those secretive meetings, you were a balm and a blessing and I can never forget how your company kept me from fraying apart at the seams.

I was lonely…but when I had no one else I had you. I don’t know if you ever thought I was trying to replace George and Sapnap with you, I hope not. But maybe my silence made you think it, sometimes. It isn’t true, y’know? Even before everything got messed up I appreciated you for who you were, who you are. You’re not them and you never had to be, not for me. You were yourself and that you, that Punz, was more than I deserved, really.

Everything we did may be for nothing, now, but even still…thank you. Thank you for letting me know you, thank you for being there for me, thank you for reminding me that I was more than they said I was, thank you for giving me the strength to remember that peaceful future I wanted to build. I regret not telling you these things when I had the chance, but know that they’re true. If I could do just our partnership over again I would make sure you knew just how much you meant to me, I’d call you my friend—I’d leave you with no doubt that I care about you. I hate that I don’t know if you know that I did, I do.

You don’t owe me anything anymore, yet I know you enough to know you won’t break my trust despite that. That’s just what kind of person you are…and, I think, I think that I might miss you the most. I hope you’ll find something new, something better, something that gives you peace and happiness. I wish you all the best moving forward. Thank you for everything, Punz.

A scattered collection of journals lays across the floor, various spines bent to show off meandering paragraphs, random doodles, and scrawled lists on ink-dotted parchment. Pages rustle and flip occasionally in breezy air allowed in by the propped-open door, soothing background noise perfectly suited to a lazy day spent with Patches conked out in a nest of covers on the bed and Dream, toasted piece of bread held between his teeth, sleepily plucking away at a code panel.

One specific journal is pressed flat by his knee, bearing a collection of goals for the future, while a scaled-down admin map with temporary pins floats off to one side from an earlier attempt at productivity. Writing each goal was a tiresome exercise in frustration, since he spent more time poised with the quill nib on the page wasting ink, his brain stalling, than actually writing anything. And even what he did manage is embarrassingly basic: concepts like ‘build a house,’ ‘travel,’ ‘gather resources,’ ‘make armor,’ and so on, which is…a bit pathetic. But that’s the reality he lives in now, the overwhelming vastness of time stretching out before him with nothing necessary for him to focus on achieving beyond what he himself can think or want to do. And when his one and only motivation these days is himself, a factor that hasn’t carried any weight in his mind for months and months…well.

Safe to say it’s difficult to wrap his head around being able to—being encouraged to, by XD and Patches both—put himself first. It’s difficult to contemplate the nebulous shape of what might bring him happiness without the hanging shadow of the Greater SMP and those he’s left behind. There is no comforting clarity to be found in the roadmap of his plan, no guidance to ground him each time he felt lost at sea.

All he has is himself, and what good has that done him in the past?

How does he begin to quantify his own peace, aimless and alone but for a god and a cat as he is? When so much of what he’d sacrificed had been carved out of him for the sake of a future for those he held most dear? Who is he without his plan and without those precious lodestones?

Who is Dream?

To give his aching, empty brain a break—and stave off the unsettling existentialism—he gave up on trying to force ideas through a mental block in favor of sitting next to the furnace, projected keyboard hovering above his lap as he troubleshoots fixing the pile-up of furnace-related bugs that cropped up when he was blocked from his admin power. He started with what seemed easiest, the failure to light reliant on fuel amount, and quickly finds, to his own lack of shock as it is the way of code everywhere, tiny interlocked links to other glitches buried within the furnace item module.

It’s like the world’s worst themed scavenger hunt.

Oh, he fixes the fuel failure? Surprise, furnaces now have a chance to auto-delete themselves under completely unknown conditions. Why do they delete themselves? Who knows! When do they delete themselves? Who knows! The log had no ideas and even looking at the code gave Dream zero answers to those questions.

Oh, he patches that? Actually, the most necessary function of furnaces are their ability to shift within a single-chunk radius around their original placement, appearing all over the floor, atop or attached to other objects, along walls, on the ceiling—and if that’s not enough, each ‘move’ picks a new angle for the furnace to be facing. This furnace disappeared and reappeared attached to the wall outside right beneath the roofing, twisted upside down to very unhelpfully dump its coal out on the grass. The yelp he made when it abruptly vanished—utterly silent until it made the distinct placement thud against the wall outside—was more akin to a screech, one so loud Patches stirred just enough to toss the pillow from the bed straight at his face to muffle the noise. Heart racing from the scare, he then had to slink outside and find where it went, surprised to see it latched onto the side of the house with a dozen coal having fallen to the ground and bounced around.

One soul-deep sigh and some pickaxe use later, coal gathered back into his inventory, things were put to rights so he could continue.

Oh, that’s then done away with? Guess what, suddenly all fuel and materials placed inside for more than five minutes transform into random items whenever the furnace turns on. Which…may have a niche use…except the ‘random’ items are all incredibly common or generally worthless and whatever was initially inside is lost forever. Condolences to those who may’ve wanted to smelt rarer materials into ingots or even simply cooked food.

Oh, he stops that from happening? It’s now time for furnaces to have a one-in-ten chance of exchanging their properties for TNT and auto-igniting—doesn’t everyone enjoy an explosive surprise? How does someone know if their furnace’s properties have changed? Well…when it explodes. Visually it’s the same and the interface works exactly the same. But it’ll explode. Maybe not immediately, but it will.

Oh, he’s eliminated that possibility? How about the output starts ejecting everything from potions to solid blocks at high velocity regardless of the inputs, essentially turning the furnace into a launcher-style weaponized dispenser. The second he sees that glitch sequence he awkwardly laughs before shuffling further sideways to ensure he isn’t liable to be obliterated by a high-speed projectile if he happens to breathe wrong and proc the effect. And of course it’s this bug that is just finicky enough to require an item-by-item deletion of hundreds of potential ammo types rather than a simpler, less time-consuming fix.

Which is why he’s currently repeating the same keystrokes over and over in a mindless rhythm while slowly eating his way through the bread he toasted an hour ago that’s gone room temperature and weirdly extra crunchy. He’s so zoned out it takes who knows how many minutes before he notices the buzzing of an error prompt from attempts to delete strings that don’t exist and surfaces from his haze. When he finally blinks up at the screen and processes what he’s seeing, he straightens out of his slouch to reach over and scroll the panel’s embedded code window to find blessed, blessed nothing where hundreds upon hundreds of itemIDs were listed.

If he had any extra energy left he honestly might’ve cried from the sheer relief of seeing it all gone, swiftly applying the fix before something else breaks. While he doesn’t actually cry, he does finish off the remaining few bites of bread and open the furnace interface from the safety of one side. Biting the tip of his tongue, he then whistles to get Patches’s attention, pointing at the furnace with a grimace when she rouses to look at him.

“Let’s see if this works,” Dream says with a nervous chuckle, crossing his fingers as he carefully sets coal and wood inside the empty input slots. It lights and five, ten, fifteen seconds pass where the interface seems like it’s returned to standard functionality….

And then he flinches away from it as a resounding crack whips through the quiet sizzling when something dark and small rockets out from the bottom of the furnace at such dizzying speed he barely registers its path as it drills straight through the wall opposite the furnace opening. His teeth click together when he shuts his open mouth, trading an incredulous look with Patches, who covers her face with one paw and shakes her head, before he leans sideways to eyeball the new hole that’s somehow an actual, perfect circle in the oak planks.

Impressive, but very, very terrifying considering he’d been sitting in front of the furnace earlier.

“Well…that wasn’t it,” he concedes after a stunned moment of silence, definitely now sufficiently alert to skim through the code for what he missed. There, a misaligned cursor twisted two different itemIDs into some bastardized object that the furnace tried to parse alongside turning the wood into charcoal. He huffs a tired breath up toward his bangs, rolling his eyes as he deletes the single surviving offender and tidies up the item module, sullenly jabbing the [Apply Update] prompt when he saves these hopefully final changes.

Just in case, he waits out the last dozen input items watching the progress bar suspiciously each time it fills and ticks back over. Luckily for his blood pressure nothing else gets launched and he feels safe to push himself to his feet and go in search of whatever poor thing got ejected through his wall. He steps around the journals spread out over the floor, waving absently at Patches where she’s decided the excitement is over and gone back to sleep. “Isn’t that a mood,” Dream sighs, shading his eyes from the sun as he exits the house and circles to the right, gaze scanning the grass. About twenty feet from the wall he finds the object almost buried beneath the greenery of a lilac bush, a dark spot nearly hidden by cast shadows.

Upon crouching down to pick it up, Dream startles at realizing exactly what it is: a netherite ingot. It shines under the sunlight despite its deeply dark hue, familiar and comforting as thoughts of his Nightmare armor and weapons come to mind. Straightening and beginning to walk back to the house, he turns it over in his hands, fingers tracing its edges. Quietly, he slips it into his inventory as he passes the threshold and nabs an intact oak plank to swap for the damaged one—the damaged one with its spiraling grooves and fading heat from the force at which the ingot passed through it.

If he considers just how many dangerous furnace-related glitches he’s seen today he’d bet money on either Patches or XD passively if not actively repressing the worst of it, otherwise the server certainly would’ve been thrown into even more chaos. Which of course isn’t even factoring in everything else that may be equally fatal that he hasn’t yet gotten to. Not that most of the server members would have any idea how precarious their safety is from server-side glitches alone, player-side conflict aside.

He tosses the damaged block into the chest and then retakes his seat on the floor, “Y’know…I think I should be getting paid to deal with this. Can I start taking taxes?”

To which he quickly learns Patches may be dozing but she is awake enough to rebut with a very catty giggle.

You’d say this was cringe, I’m pretty sure. I can already hear your voice making fun of me. Well, too bad for you! You’re not here to mock me about it ‘til I quit, so I’m gonna write what I want to say. Maybe it’s cringe but hey, who’s gonna stop me? Besides, you’ll obviously never read it.

I know I don’t need to say this but I will anyway. The favor you owed me? Now? You don’t owe me. We’re square. I wouldn’t want to cast such sappy aspersions on your character but I believe I know you well enough to know that I could’ve relied on you to get me out of Pandora had things gone differently. You’re maybe the only person I could say that of…the only person who’d look past it being me and call it out for what it was. I believe you would’ve done your best to help me. We may not have seen eye to eye on everything, sure, however I’ve always admired how consistent you are in what you believe. Yeah, you’re an incredible warrior and absolutely someone I’d feel better having at my back or by my side but that’s not all you are. That’s not the sum of who Technoblade is. That’s not all I appreciate about you. Those ideals of yours give you a unique outlook on life and everything that’s happened here, one I wish more people here had, if I’m being honest.

You don’t compromise the core of who you are but you definitely know how to listen better than I do, I think. You’re steadfast where it counts but you’re willing to step back where it’s better to, and I probably should’ve taken more cues from you. Maybe things would’ve been different, then. Or maybe it actually would’ve been me on the chopping block for the Butcher’s Army like they’d also wanted when they chose to go after you. Did I ever express that I was glad you survived that? Because I was. I was so thankful you lived. Though…if you had died that day I promise I would’ve revived you as soon as I could. I’d owe you that much.

Since, really, I didn’t send you an invite and whitelist you just for you to be dragged into a stupid war the minute you got here. I didn’t want you here to be used as everyone’s weapon for conflicts that had nothing to do with you. I wanted to hang out with you, maybe spar a few times, get to know you off the dueling circuit. Give you a place to rest, another home. But we saw how that turned out. I don’t know what I should’ve done to change things. Concede to Wilbur’s ego? Bow out from the Greater SMP? Would anything I chose have been enough? I really don’t know.

Maybe if I had you wouldn’t have been endangered the way you have been in a place that should’ve been safe. In a place that should have respected you more. And I include myself in that, although I tried my best to give you the respect you deserved as both a person and a warrior. You’ve never been a weapon or a cudgel with which to defeat my enemies. You’ve been an ally and a neutral party in our exchanging of favors, and I’d like to think that, experience aside, we stood on relatively equal footing. A friend, even, had I the courage to let myself connect with you without the shadow of my now-failed plan hanging over me. Who knows, maybe you’re laughing at me for saying that. Or maybe you understand what I’m failing to articulate even while there’s no verbal words for me to stutter and falter over.

I just…I respect you a lot, y’know? I hope you know that. If my fanboying wasn’t obvious enough, ha. I never said much about it but I respected the hell out of you for choosing a peaceful retirement that didn’t stay peaceful, sorry, for all the gentleness you pretend you don’t have. At that point I couldn’t have done the same I’d have faced attempted execution(s) just like you, I’m sure but…I thought about it from time to time. I thought about trying to choose peace, to carve out a life for myself without violence or ruthlessness. To see if it was possible for someone like me. I never could before the end, so I never did. Although since I’ve died I suppose that’s what I’ve been starting to do now, huh?

Look at me, on my Techno copycat arc. Cringe. :)

I’m gonna be cringe just a little more, sorry. I’ll miss you, okay? I will. You always looked at me like I was a person, unafraid to knock me down a peg or two when you thought I needed it. I didn’t scare you or intimidate you—to you I was just Smiles, a homeless green Teletubby, a nerd, Dream. I wish I had been braver so we could’ve talked more, because those moments where you reminded me I was just some guy were invaluable to me. I guess it seems weird to say I liked being bullied but it’s more that I liked that you didn’t take my sh*t—sorry, demonetized yet?—seriously and it kept me grounded the way I really needed to be. I think if we’d been able to be proper friends you’d have ensured I didn’t do anything too crazy when I got caught up in my head about things. You’ve always been good at keeping your feet on the ground and your head out of the clouds. Steadfast, like I said.

I regret that we weren’t really friends. I regret that we won’t get another chance to duel—I swear I could’ve won for real!—I regret many, many things in my life but I’ll never regret that we met. That I knew you, even if but for a short time. Thank you, Techno. My life was richer with you in it. Fly high, Techno. You’ve always been the best of us.

Courtesy of an XD-delivered early morning wakeup in the form of a post-it being slapped against his cheek, Dream’s morning is spent groggily eating breakfast on the roof while he watches the sunrise. Many moments during which are also spent imagining various comical demises for the god, given that there was no actual pressing need to wake him up while it was still dark out. Except, of course, for XD’s distant amusem*nt. Since the note kindly suggested a task—using images of what he assumes based on the shapes is supposedly wheat—once he’s sadly no longer in danger of falling asleep again much to his own disappointment, he clambers down and moseys over to the farm.

At least XD wasn’t just being, well, XD, proven by every plot of wheat being golden and ready for harvest. So Dream simply throws up his hands with a mutter of I guess and knuckles down to harvest and replant since he may as well. Despite his annoyance at having been rudely awoken for a chore he could’ve done anytime, it becomes easier as he goes to take satisfaction from the routine, the basic design of the farm requiring genuine hands-in-the-earth effort that’s otherwise typically shouldered by automated processes.

By the time he’s finished, it’s closer to noon than dawn. His muscles are pleasantly sore and with the weather being just as pleasantly nice, all he wants to do now is take a nap. Preferably someplace not inside the house or on his flower-covered lawn…again. The last nap he took in the grass he woke up covered in sleeping bees which, while sort of cute, was also rather unsettling while he was still too half-asleep to realize what they were. And an inside nap does have the comfort of his bed, but with the weather so nice he’d like to sleep outside for at least a little bit.

As he washes dirt and wheat chaff off his hands in the farm’s nearby infinite water source, he squints at the trees, considering their viability as a napping spot. A shady snooze nestled into a cluster of branches could also be enjoyable, although he’d have to wander around for a while checking trees to find suitable candidates before he could actually start sleeping.

Or…he might try something completely different. Grimacing in remembrance of his embarrassing boat-spawning sneeze several days prior, he acknowledges the novelty of visiting the river again. Compared to the changed but still familiar scenery of the clearing, the river itself is relatively unfamiliar, so it’d be a nice change of pace. Without Patches to badger him for more fish—his dozens of salmon more than enough even after feeding her one or more a day—he hasn’t gone back since the first visit. His focus has been on journaling and finding ways to keep himself busy with tasks around the house, so he honestly just hadn’t thought about returning to the river.

Which makes it perfect now, he concludes, stretching with a yawn as he meanders into the house to grab wood from the chest to craft a boat on purpose this time. Boat now in hand, and by hand he means inventory, he tosses his hoodie over his shoulder to use as a pillow and starts off toward the river, Patches gamely trotting along at his side.

The river glitters beneath the sunny blue sky, a ribbon of peaceful clear water twining through the landscape that beckons Dream closer. He makes his way to the overhang, where he takes off his boots and rolls up his pant legs while Patches watches the fish swimming under the surface, her lashing tail a blur. Dream then pops the boat from his inventory and slides an oar free, which he attaches to a bundle of string tied to the remaining oar; the loose oar is used as a makeshift anchor, driven solidly between stable blocks to keep it, and thus the boat, steady. Boats do have properties to allow or force a stationary state regardless of the material they’re resting on, but that stationary state is, well, stationary. And being on a boat atop water that’s very clearly moving while the boat itself isn’t is incredibly off-putting.

If he did that he may as well have just slept at the house for how meaningless his choice to come here would be.

Anchor set, he drops the boat into the river and climbs inside, balling up his hoodie to rest his head on as he reclines onto his back and drapes one arm over his eyes to block out the light. His other arm ends up with its elbow hooked over the side, hand fallen to dip his fingertips in cool, flowing water. At his height he’s a little tall to stretch out his legs and be truly comfortable, causing him to prop one heel on the boat’s corner edge and keep his other leg’s knee bent, if still resting against the side. There’s a soft mrrr from the overhang before Patches rocks the drifting boat by hopping inside, tucking herself in the space freed up by his chosen position as a purring cat-shaped loaf.

The sun is a warm balm as the rocking cradle and the soothing sounds of running water gently guides him into a doze.

A chill rouses him sometime later, his arm raising to give him a view of a blue sky overtaken by somber grey clouds, the treetops on either side of the riverbank rustling in a storm wind. He groans in disappointment and pushes himself up, shivering at a gust of wind that steals away the last of his sun-given heat. Patches pokes her face out from under his raised knee, flinching when a raindrop plops onto her nose. She makes a noise he can only describe as a hissy yelp and abuses her power to vanish on the spot before she can be assaulted by rain again.

Dream snorts at her dramatics, reaching over to the string anchor line to pull the boat to shore where he climbs up and out, crawling into his hoodie as he goes for whatever warmth he can find. The boat and its makeshift anchor are then returned to his inventory, after which he rolls his pant legs down and puts his boots back on so he can start making his way to the house. As is his luck, the sky opens up steps away from the protective curtain of the trees, a hard rain immediately soaking him straight through.

“Great!” He chirps brightly, tugging his hood over his head and resting a sleeve-covered hand over his stomach when it growls. “Love being hungry, cold, and wet.”

He may or may not stomp a grumpy path toward the house, only hesitating at a branch snapping somewhere nearby—loud enough over the downpour to be heard. Swiping his hair out of his face, his steps slow to a stop as he tries to see anything beyond a dim grey mist. A smear of movement, a distinctive green—

(sam, sam, it can’t be sam, it shouldn’t be sam, but the colors inspire an animal-prey fear tuned for something more threatening than a mob)

—heart pounding, Dream scrambles backward on instinct with a hand clapped over his mouth, falling heavily against a tree and nearly spilling onto the ground. Wide eyes track the green blob’s approach, widening further when a low-hanging creeper face droops sadly into sight. Its black eyes and permanent frown assess him from several blocks away, the rain having turned it into a pathetic-looking weirdly-shaped wet dog that only becomes more pathetic as it cringes into itself under his flattening stare. Its front legs fidget and then slide forward, turned at an angle to show off its incongruously cute paw beans, before dropping something to the dirt and retreating, slinking away again into the grey rain after letting out a sad pseudo-goodbye hiss.

Unnecessary scare over with and adrenaline tanking, Dream bangs the back of his head against the tree he’s leaning on and heaves a world-weary sigh. He pushes off the tree to see what random item it left, blinking at what isn’t the expected gunpowder but a music disc floating between two roots. The inner label being green makes him think it’s cat until he shoves away the clatter of bad memories to pick it up and realizes upon closer inspection it’s actually far, instead. He holds it by two fingers, bemused. Music discs aren’t that rare but creepers don’t just drop them willy-nilly, so to have this one do so is entirely down to either Patches mucking about or a proc of his admin aura.

“…I guess I’ll need to get a jukebox at some point, huh?” Into the inventory it goes, strange encounter briskly moved past so he can continue on toward the house.

An errant thought sparking when he reenters the clearing slows him to another stop amidst a cluster of tulips, face lifting to the sky. He’s gotten so cold from the downpour that he’s wrapped around to being warm, the initial rush to get inside and dry off tabled for a moment. His eyes close as he stands there and breathes, allowing himself the chance to enjoy the rain—it’s one more thing he hasn’t seen since before Pandora, and if it ever rained while he was trapped there he wasn’t in any position to know. This is one more thing he’s choosing to reclaim for himself, one more thing he’s taking back alongside his freedom, one more thing he can find beauty in again.

Eventually he tilts his face away in favor of slipping through the door and closing it behind him, toeing his boots off. An immediate full-body shiver hastens his journey into the bathroom where he’s quick to start running a bath. From the chest in the main room he grabs fresh clothes to change into once he’s clean and warm, peeling off his sopping hoodie to drape over the furnace he then lights in preparation for drying everything he was wearing. He keeps a weather eye on the tub once the temperature’s perfect and it starts filling, laying out the rest of his wet clothes to dry and ducking into the bathroom the second it’s ready.

The river was cool, the rain was cold, the bathwater is a blessed, flushing warmth he sinks into with relish. Quite honestly this is the first time he’s let himself do so since he’s been here, far too used to economical cleanliness constrained by his poor living conditions. Far too conditioned by circ*mstance and cruelty and choice to begin unlearning habits constructed within the confines of a cage. That, and even despite the pleasant heat, he can’t prevent his brain from unwanted reminders of the prison cell; he shakily attempts to gather control as he slips beneath the surface—

(there’s no hand holding him down, there isn’t; he’s fine, he’s safe, he’s in control here)

—as he holds his breath until his lungs burn, burn, burn, gasping for air when he finally resurfaces. Scowling, he leans over to grab the journal and quill he’d brought and laid atop his towel, resting it against the tub’s edge as he scrawls out all his messy, ugly thoughts with a heavy hand until his wrist aches and the words dissolve into angry scribbles. Dream tosses both journal and quill to the safety of the floor after tearing out the page, resettling in the tub to give it a once over.

Nothing but ugliness and self-hate and a helpless, scorching fury.

Death wishes masquerading as poetry.

His arm absently lowers the parchment into the water, distant gaze watching the ink bleed and the paper crumble. Watches his words smear and dissolve, vanishing. Erasing. Rain drums loudly in his ears as it falls in an endless tide against the roof. Droplets drip, drip, drip from his hair and his fingertips.

In a haze he sinks under again, staring past the floating strands of his whitened hair at the water-warped ceiling.

Dream closes his eyes.

And breathes in.

Clean and smelling of citrusy soaps and shampoo XD must have yoinked from a more modern server judging by its kitschy labels, he steps over his laid out drying clothes after checking the furnace’s progress. Patches still being absent means she can’t bother him for it, so he nabs some cooked fish from the chest to nibble on and sits on the edge of his bed. Towel draped around his neck, he watches the rain-drenched scenery outside the glass window while he works at sating his hunger. He’s no longer cold and he’s both clean and dry now, so all that’s left from his list is to eat.

The dim orange flickers from the furnace reflect enticingly on the mask on the table that he’s done his best to ignore. With the downpour a steady sound in the background, Dream finds himself setting aside his fish to reach out to finally pick it up. Its immaculate white porcelain is chilly from its proximity to the window, the thrum of his personally woven enchantments a familiar and comforting buzz in his hand. He traces the eyes, the smile, the edges, the ridges of the strap clasps that, with his enchants, fake a physical—and thus removable—band. As he turns it over he notices a dark spot on the table that had been hidden beneath his mask and looks down, breath catching in his throat and mask nearly slipping through his fingers.

…That’s…his communicator.

Why is it here?

This should still be locked up in Pandora’s Vault with everything else they took from him.

What use is a communicator to a dead man?

Chapter 9: a cleansing, this bleeding heart [i]

Chapter Text

Dream stares at the communicator lying dark-screened and silent on the table, frozen in place and breaths shallow as quivering fingers clutch tighter onto the edge of his mask. With no eyes of its own and the camera shutter closed, the communicator still manages to stare back—as ominous as it is innocuous. The sight of it and the cresting tidal wave of awareness of what it might mean inspires a heart-racing dread worse than any time he’s ever faced down the jaws of certain death with only the paltriest weapons and armor to his name.

It’s a dread he knows well: this dread that wears Quackity’s face and smiles Quackity’s smile and speaks in echoes of Quackity’s voice.

This dread with its sharp, cruel grin and scornful eyes and knife-edged taunts that laughs as it cuts him and stabs him and burns him and breaks him and spills his blood over and over and over.

It’s a dread he knows well: this dread that wears Sam’s face and sneers Sam’s sneer and speaks in echoes of Sam’s voice.

This dread that looms with heavy, rough hands and the glint of a golden crown in lava-light and his neck caught between two trident prongs in clear warning, cold eyes and lava-heat and hissed smoke stinging at the cuts leaking blood around his throat like the snuggest of collars.

Loud, roaring static mixes with the droning downpour outside to fill his head with vacant white noise, mouth gone dry and vision blurring as acidic fear-born nausea washes honey-drip slow over him.

Through the tingling numbness of his clenched fingers something oozes out from between the spaces and slides down along his knuckles, pooling at the joint of pinkie and palm where it hangs (hangs, hangs, hangs) and, finally, falls.

His lashes flutter, eyes flicking up to the rain-fogged window glass instead of the communicator before hazily drifting toward his hand bit by bit. Against his clean, blemish-free skin now runs a rivulet of red that jars his focus and draws his eyes along its path, toward the pooling crimson that gently drips to the floor again as he watches. Placidly blinking at the droplet as it falls out of sight beyond the bed’s edge, at the casual smear of his own blood, he snaps the slightest bit back into himself, hearing and vision refocusing as realization slithers into view.

Oh. Dream rolls his wrists and manages to unclench the death grip his has on his mask, flexing absently to soothe the ache as warm blood wells and flows anew. The culprit that sliced open his skin and painted his fingers and knuckles and palms is in the cradle of his right hand, where the clasp was just sharp enough under pressure to wound—an injury he’s caused himself by trying to hold on too hard. How typical. A bloodied half-formed handprint is branded into the edge of the previously pristine white, whorling feathered outline slowly seeping red tears toward the black smile.

Garish. Fitting. Bloodied hands and a bloodied mask. What is that but the core of who he is? Self-inflicted injury, endlessly spilling his own blood—bleeding lifeblood and love and purpose as his chances to save himself all slipped through his fingers, torn away either by his own hands or ripped away by the hands of other people—through his own terrible decisions and self-destructive lack of self-control.

A creature of ruin whose greatest achievement in its short, pathetic life was ruining itself. A blood-soaked legacy all that’s left in his wake. A creature doomed to be forgotten as history erases the humanity inherent to the tragedy shaped like a dream.

(A creature stupid enough to trust, to try, to seek peace, who dared to hope there was an ending; a light at the end of this dark, tragic tunnel that even he could bask in, a future that even he could touch. A creature dumb enough to believe he could have something good and safe and peaceful to enjoy far into the wide, open arms of a future without fighting, without conflict, without the constant embrace of his exacerbated paranoia and strangling fears as his only companions.

A creature idiotic enough to still carry hope that the faces he so dearly missed might finally look at him with kindness and trust and love again.

What a foolish creature is he. What a fool.

Monsters don’t get happy endings.)

A twitch of his fingers and his self-loathing thoughts nearly lets the mask fall to the floor, if not for his own quick reflexes catching it with his fingertips. Rather than drop it completely with all the elegance and dignity of a touched hot coal, he raises it to eye level with a ginger hold and stares down the blood-smeared face he’s worn for the server for years now. The unmoving smiling face they think they know him by and from and as. He finds himself wondering if things may have been different if he’d not hidden his face behind it—if all those who looked at him and saw not a person, not a human, but a symbol would have actually seen him.

Would having to look him in the eye and see familiar human features staring back have changed anything? Would seeing him frown and laugh and smile and exist entirely bared to the world have changed their perception of him in the slightest?

“…Probably not. I’m not lucky enough for that to be all it took. Probably wouldn’t have changed a damn thing,” he mutters with a faint sneer, cynical as much as he’s just uncomfortably aware of the server’s attitudes. How could he not be? Techno certainly didn’t need to wear a mask to be considered subhuman, after all, so why would Dream be any different to them?

They hated him and feared him and cared only about exploiting his weakest spots. Is that not why he forced himself to let go of Sapnap and George both? Is that not why he pretended he felt nothing for Spirit’s death except annoyance at the last piece he had of his beloved horse, that memorial cherished leather, being used against him? Is that not why he denied himself anyone and anything, cutting out his attachments near the roots as he bled silent, raging grief behind the smile of his mask?

Is that not why he lied, lied, lied? Even as it would have been kinder to rip his own heart out than continue down the path while all that he cared about was lost, stolen, or turned against him? Even as every day that passed he stood alone and watched his own home deny him a place within it?

It’s a nice farce, he supposes, to think that there is any answer except of course not. Nothing would change, not positively, not for him. His bare face would simply give them more ammunition to tear him down with, emotions and thoughts and all his vulnerabilities laid out plain as day and so easily abused. It would open him up to mockery and cruelty if for no other reason than to see his reactions—

(Quackity and Sam hated that they couldn’t remove his mask; that they could not see his face when he screamed and cried and begged; that while his voice broke and his body broke and his spirit wavered on the cusp of breaking, Dream’s face was protected as the one part of them they could not flay open; that he still had some of his pride, some of his dignity, some of his secrets.)

—to crack him down to his most vulnerable and genuine and yet still deny him respect and empathy. If the Butcher Army and the Green Festival and Pandora’s Vault taught him anything, it’s that the server would never consider him human, even as the cruelest ones involved blithely commit their own atrocities over and over with zero self-awareness of how monstrous they’ve become on their selfish quests for justice and glory and power. Their empty, empty quests.

They would never recognize his personhood, mask or no mask. He’s never been human to them, never just a man, never someone trying to protect themselves and their home. No, just a symbol, a villain, a ‘tyrant,’ a prisoner, glorified and condemned, presumed evil just by daring to exist…so what would it matter in their eyes what they do to him? He is bad and they are good, and what do the good do but use anything to justify their heinous cruelties against all that is considered bad?

“The worst monsters always look the most human,” he shudders, nails clicking idly against the porcelain as his grip shifts to hold it more firmly in one hand.

Is he not the proof of that? Has he not experienced that truth for himself until it killed him?

He reaches out to trace the curved line, that empty smile, with one bloodied fingertip, Quackity’s mocking laugher echoing in his ears and Sam’s cold judgmental gaze pressing down onto his shoulders with all the heaviness of a sky-boundary-tall stack of anvils. The mask creaks and starts to whine under his hand as it curls ever tighter into a dragon’s crushing claw. Its enchantments spark violet and white and green, void-cold as they try to maintain integrity beneath Dream’s ascension-modded strength.

(Maybe it’s better that he’s dead. That no one will ever see this smile ever again. Maybe he should destroy it completely. Leave the parts of him that find comfort in it, in the work he put in to craft it by hand—leave those young and naive and prideful parts of him to wither and die too.)

He contemplates smashing it beneath his boots, imagines breaking it with an axe, a sword, a TNT explosion, about hurling it at full speed into a solid obsidian wall, into bedrock, to see it shatter apart into unrecoverable pieces. About erasing it and all it stands for by dropping it into the vastest Nether lava lake, by tossing it into the fathomless expanse of the End.

This mask, his iconic mask, was created to endure the harshest conditions a server could possibly throw at him. Optimistically, it would even be able to survive the void between servers for at least a short while. It iterated on the older, simpler designs of a younger Dream to protect him in more aspects than privacy alone. So many sleepless nights spent hunched over enchantments books, coaxing threads of his own admin power into a self-powering weave that evolved his mask into a genuine artifact. A feat which gave his final academy project high distinctions, making those two straight weeks he was then chronically exhausted and stuck speaking ancient Ender and fragmented code worth it.

(His languages professor found it hysterical when his adviser—who could somewhat parse the code but only spoke modern Ender—stopped her in the hallway for assistance. She’d given her attention to Dream, who was fidgeting with his sweatshirt hood pulled almost over his eyes, his shoulders hunched and flushed with embarrassment. A foot and a half shorter than him, she’d peered up at him to study him with all the grave focus that earned her over a dozen degrees and a legendary reputation. A moment passed before she nodded decisively and asked Dream to speak, completely straight-faced as she listened, and then two seconds after he trailed off she wheezed, bending over with her hands on her knees without an ounce of shame.

Dream remembers wanting to die watching her headfins flutter fast enough to blow the loose strands of her hair away as she laughed so hard she fell silent. His adviser merely heaved an unsurprised, long-suffering sigh and patted him on the back. She eventually levered herself upright, actual tears in her eyes that she wiped away before she pulled him down by the collar and reached up to pat him on the head, teasingly asking if he was trying to be a little too authentic for his final presentation.

He’d wilted with a weak refutation that caused her to huff in amusem*nt and turn to his adviser, declaring that she was going to help him give his final presentation as a translator so it wouldn’t need to be delayed however long it’d take for him to recover. Besides, she wheezed out after his blurted surprise set her off again, this is a fantastic example I am absolutely going to use for every class I teach from now on. You have made my entire year!

…Well, at least she’d been impressed by both his language skills and his enchantment work.)

So the mask has history, good and bad. Memories he doesn’t want to forget and memories he’d rather not have. The product of rigorous study and his own two hands meant for protection and safety that morphed into a wall he’s hid himself behind ever since his world expanded to include close-quarters strangers. He’s been prodded before by Sapnap, by George, on placing it aside—why do you act like you need it to feel safe, they’d ask. Which is a question he struggled, and always failed, to answer in a way they could understand. It’s never really been about the privacy. Or the enchantments. He’s not less without it, but it is a comfort. A bit of insurance, a just-in-case. A reminder of old dreams and long-lost endless idealistic potential.

The Dream who envisioned it, the Dream who crafted it, the Dream who stood in a hallway and listened to laughter that turned into a declaration of aid, the Dream whose exhausting work and impassioned presentation returned high honors and distinction, (the Dream who felt seen and heard and valued and who flourished), the Dream who looked forward to the future with such hope…that Dream is so far away now. The Dream who graduated the academy may as well be a stranger with the same name; after everything that’s happened, that version of himself feels like a lifetime ago.

He isn’t that Dream anymore…and he isn’t sure if he ever could be again. Maybe that Dream could be happier. Maybe that Dream wouldn’t have made so many mistakes. All he has left of those faded dreams are his mask and academic credentials that have collected years’ worth of dust. His credentials were thoroughly devalued and ignored—in part due to fears of alienating his server if he threw his status around (funny, isn’t it, how that’s turned out for him)—and these days the only person he’s hiding from out here is himself.

So, sentimentality aside, does he really need to cling to the mask? When even his good memories can’t help but remind him of what it became in the end?

His hands made it and his hands can unmake it. But….

…Perhaps, rather than destruction, it may be more fitting to ask XD to take it back into the dark heart of Pandora and leave it where his body breathed its last. Entomb his symbol, the last piece of him that he’d held onto as the days passed and Sam and Quackity did their best to take it from him too. Entomb all his bad and all his good in that wretched obsidian box…kill the hopes and dreams and the past and future in the same coffin in which Dream died bloody and broken and alone. Perhaps that would be poetic, even. It would at least be his own choice, then, right? An ending he chose and one final snub as its secrets remained forever lost to his abusers, his torturers, his murderers, his allies, his enemies, the entirety of the server.

(Or is that just more running away? Is it running, or is it a twisted form of closure?)

Admittedly, while there is a small part of him that would find such a thing gratifying and even poignant for all two people who’d understand…. When he genuinely tries to imagine his mask thrown away, broken, or abandoned where he died, his breath hitches in distress. His damnable, selfish fingers cling onto it and pull it toward his chest as he trembles, a soft keen building at the base of his throat. It’s so stupid. This desperate desire to keep. Hasn’t he learned by now that greed makes monsters of men? That greed poisons? That greed corrupts? That greed destroys? That greed kills?

Why can’t he just…let go? Why can he never just let go?

Why does the idea of letting go hurt so much?

(For all that he postured about how much he didn’t care about anything or anyone, he never did rip out the roots of the things he loved most. The towering trees and blooming flowers fostered with gentle care in his heart were methodically, meticulously, painstakingly sawed and shorn down until his wrists kissed the dirt—until he could hide their remnants with loose earth and wild grass. To view the aftermath was to see an empty, barren plain in greys and browns and pockmarked absences fitting for the server’s most hated villain who had nothing and no one. A wasteland embedded at the core of him. But the roots remained, sheltered in a weary hopeful heart. And those roots run deep.)

Dream stills the anxious jittering of his leg, unfolding from his hunched over posture to rock back and then forward in a motion that carries him from sitting to standing. He glances at the window as he rises, eyes tracking the indistinct slash of white in its reflection—a ghostly phantasm eerie against the foggy glass. Its blurred edges fade into the murky gray rain outside, a perfect metaphor for the specter he became…that he still is, now just a persistent out-of-place remnant in his own world. In his own life. A detached, lonely errant line of code set apart from what should be a cohesive unbroken whole. Even his face is an indistinct featureless smear, neon-bright green shine absent…only a soft smudge of one cheek and the barest outline of his snowy hair backlit by a gentle orange glow from the furnace behind him. His gaze falls, skirting around the communicator on the table to the dots of blood on the floor between his feet.

He should…probably clean that up. Unlike the inside of his cell it’s not a giant mess, and a check reveals nothing on the bedspread or his clothes. Although the thought of cleaning up his own blood threatens to make him sick from unwanted memories, he should still be mindful of his own space. There’s no reason for him to live in filth now that he has control over his environment that doesn’t come with disgusted orders from a warden coaxing him to obey if he wanted his single potato for the day. A potato that could be rotten, moldy, lava-burnt, pathetically small, or if Sam felt generous might be at least as big as the palm of his hand and normal. And even when he cooperated as quickly and quietly as he could, that potato wasn’t guaranteed, so he’d have forced his hungry, hurting body to clean up his own blood for nothing.

Nothing except the illustrious warden’s satisfaction.

“f*ck Sam,” he scoffs, lifting his injured hand to keep from trailing blood as he picks his way around the still-drying clothes toward the bathroom. He feels as though hours should’ve passed while he was doing a passable stared-at Enderman impression, and yet the corners of the mirror are still fogged from steam when he flicks on the light with the back of his wrist. His own exhausted face stares back at him, telling shadowed bruises beneath dulled green-spark eyes and still-damp strands of white hair plastered to his forehead, already emotionally wrung out without even having touched his damn communicator. All he’s done so far is stare at it, filled with all the dread he’s ever felt for the most helpless he’s ever been, which is a fantastic start.

The fact that he’d much rather take his chances with no armor or weapons or inventory while debuffed to hell and back in the Deep Dark than pick his comm unit up off the table bodes well for his future.

And he does mean future because he knows his own stupid brain won’t be able to resist the siren’s song lure to pick it up, to look. To see just what’s been said about his death…about him in general, even, despite knowing that it won’t be pretty. Won’t be remotely pleasant. A clear and obvious setback to his own fumbling attempts at healing through his journaling’s surprisingly effective catharsis. He knows. And yet. He is also aware of his own nosiness, the curiosity that’s done more harm than good (and yet failed to prevent so much harm for all his planning), the settling in his bones at being in control of, at the very least, the information he has at hand.

His communicator is a boon and a trap both. A boon for its ability to connect to the main hub and its very, very helpful services once he fixes the misaligned sockets. A trap for its inevitable self-inflicted ruining of his mood. Preventing that ruining would only occur if he got rid of it entirely to remove the temptation it presents.

…But Dream’s not one for doing what’s actually healthy for himself, is he?

Heaving a weary sigh, he twists the handle to start running warm water, a little helpless not to glance toward the open doorway as his teeth dig into his bottom lip. “I wonder what XD’s thinking to just…leave that here. Seems like a pretty big gamble even if he really wants me to know what’s been happening.”

XD wants him to ask, to know, to understand what’s gone down since his death. It’s obvious by the unsubtle hints and the radiant glee the god exudes whenever Dream catches him poking at code-cores or staring off into the distance with a co*cked head. Dream’s hesitation has thus far been respected, which he appreciates, so to have come face to face with his comm unit when he expected it to still be in a Pandora’s Vault locker? The only person who could’ve retrieved it is XD—[keepinventory] is not [true] as his own [gamerule], otherwise he’d have certainly been able to sneak a stockpile of food and healing items from the limited stash he took with him for the ‘finale’ into the prison, forced loss of his armor and weapons aside—since it’s not a built-in part of his player skin and has no permanent inventory slot, meaning the communicator is as losable and breakable as any other crafted item.

Since it’s not part of his player skin and he didn’t enable the dedicated inventory slot that auto-returns it on a timer, it should’ve remained in Pandora, alongside the clothes he desynced from his default outfit in trade for prison orange. Both his clothes and the comm unit should therefore still be under the warden’s lock and key, not folded into his chest and laid out on his bedside table. He’d assume post-murder that Sam or Quackity would rush to incinerate whatever of his was left in the prison as cleanup, barring whatever was scooped up by opportunistic trophy hunters after his double execution and the rush to toss him in a cell—

(in the solitary cell that Dream swears he told Sam was only ever supposed to be temporary (not that that would matter since it was Dream who was to stay there forever) and carefully regulated (not that that would matter since it was Dream who was to suffer under Sam’s ‘new and improved’ rules); he swears he told Sam…but did he? Was it something he thought but never actually said? Trapped with only Quackity’s visits to tell a twisted variant of time by, his memory started to slip, a haze arising around his recollection of working with Sam on the prison as he struggled to reconcile the man he thought Sam was with who Sam was turning out to be.

Even with his fuzzy memory he recalls how baffled he felt when Sam only ever put up the most token protest to the dumbest proposals he half-jokingly threw out. A morbid fascination with finding Sam’s line eventually folded to the twinge of worry at how easily dissuaded Sam’s objections were, at which point he stopped poking the bear in hopes Sam would re-find his spine and bite back.

Little did he know that Sam’s spinelessness may as well have been a facade and that Sam was more than ready to bite back. Just…in the worst way he hadn’t expected.

He thought he knew Sam. He thought he could trust Sam. He thought Sam was better. More the fool was he for holding onto any shred of optimism. He’d been blindsided by the breadth of Quackity’s thirst for power, somehow, despite his awareness of Quackity’s propensity for cruelty given the existence of the Butcher Army. But Quackity’s constant day-after-day-after-day presence—as much as it burned, as it terrified—could have only been made possible by Sam’s permission.

And so Dream, fighting every step of the way to prevent the last dregs of hope from dying, had to finally admit to himself that he’d misjudged Sam. Utterly. That he only had himself to blame for thinking better of someone he thought he knew, of someone he thought could be fair and just and neutral when he needed them to be. And he still finds himself struggling to accept the real Sam, the basest Sam, despite months of exposure to that, that abuse he doesn’t want to see for the trauma it’s given him.

…Maybe he told Sam. Maybe Sam heard him. Maybe Sam understood what he meant. Maybe Sam would have abided by his point…until the finale. Maybe Sam chose to rub more salt in the wound by making solitary Dream’s final resting place on purpose.

(How else does he end up in the most inhumane barebones cage in the entire prison straightaway? The cruelest and most terrible blackened tomb? A hair’s breadth from being an exhibit in a display case made of obsidian with a lava-glass wall, where all his needs relied on a minder, a keeper, a warden who hated him down to the core? A warden who hated every breath he dared to take, who hated that he dared to be alive and not already dead. A warden who saw Dream the same as the rest: a monster and a villain who needed to be shown his place through agony and punishment. He either assumes Sam’s own agency in choosing cruelty over neutral care or he assumes Sam to be so weak-willed and spineless that external pressure bent Sam into the shape of cruelty. Whichever is true, whichever breaks his heart the harshest, the Sam he knew, the Sam he thought he knew, is the man most accountable for, for…abusing him. For killing him through starvation and stir-crazy spiraling and allowing in his torturer until the point of no return.)

Within the mighty fortress walls of Pandora’s Vault Sam held all the power. Sam was in control down to the last minutiae. Everything that happened within those walls can be traced back to Sam and the man’s choices…in how Sam chose to wield that power and exert that control. If confronted in painstaking detail about those choices, Sam would undoubtedly foist both off onto Dream somehow manipulating him; there’s very little doubt in Dream’s mind that that is what would happen: Sam making himself look so damn pathetic to garner sympathy, except if Dream alone pushed. In which case Sam may waffle and whine and make himself small but he’d feel less hesitant about showing Dream the ugliest truth wreathed in the warden’s smug satisfaction.

To anyone else who asks, Sam’s decisions were a byproduct of stress and Dream’s own fault, as his very existence was a torment to the poor, beleaguered, helpless prison warden. To Dream’s questioning, Sam’s decisions were a calculated, cold-hearted expression of Sam’s dearest desire to see Dream broken and bleeding and begging at Sam’s feet again and again and again.

How does anyone accept someone they once brought with them to a new world, a new home, someone they once called friend, hating them like that?

Dream doesn’t have an answer.)

—and, if his assumption held true, that XD simply spawned in new items to replace what had been lost. But neither carries the telling code-string tang of a fresh spawn, or a rollback repair, or a save state dupe. While he hasn’t checked the communicator, he’s already aware that his clothes have their original unique itemIDs including their individual instanced links to his playerID, making them, well, the originals. Which says that XD specifically swooped in not only to nab him but also anything of his still in Pandora, with some extra clothes he suspects the god picked up from one of his squirreled-away bases if not the Community House itself. And he suspects the latter due to certain singed hems and mismatched threads and clumsily-applied patches he distinctly remembers Alyssa guiding him through while they sat alone around a campfire late one night.

The clothes are a kindness, a bittersweet reminder of better days, something to hold onto that’s his. Despite the conflicting feelings it inspires in him, the mask is an integral part of his identity, a prized possession crafted by his own hands, enchanted over months of exhausting work, it’s his to its core. The communicator is a hanging guillotine he could really do without. Old message logs he’d ache to lose. New message logs he’d ache to have. Its one good point is its connectivity parameters for the main hub—and the usefulness of its mobility, he supposes—but he can use the admin panel if he wants for both of those things…he doesn’t need the comm unit at all.

Why would he? He’s a dead man without a ghost. Who’s he supposed to talk to? Who’s going to talk to him unless it’s bitching in the message logs of the silenced dead? And why would he expose himself to that?

Admin commands let him directly talk to XD and Patches if need be, and if he really wanted—if it was really necessary—he could also tweak admin comm params and use system messages to talk to anyone else. Not that he’s planning on doing so, but if he ever did….with the anonymity, the lack of tracking, the system-level, kernel-deep safety? That’s the way he’d go. The communicator, with its ID-link and ability to be tracked by anyone tech savvy and motivated enough, is just a sword hanging overhead held up by the thinnest fraying thread in comparison.

So why bother with retrieving Dream’s communicator at all? If XD simply wanted him to have the highlights the god could’ve rattled them off or compiled a video reel already. And yet.

He finally just huffs and gives himself a swift bodily shake, sliding his unfocused gaze down from the light’s reflection on the curve of the faucet. Then he blinks, vision sharpening. The sink basin is splattered with pink stains from the methodical rinsing he’s been mindlessly repeating on loop while his thoughts meander. “XD’s not stupid,” he states, dragging each word out and tilting his head in consideration. “Easily distracted, sure. A bit of an asshole, yeah. A schemer? Absolutely. Chaotic? Chaos is XD’s bread and butter. But stupid? No.”

“We’re far too similar,” Dream slows to a stop in his aimless routine and turns his injured palm up. Fuzzy green and white divine-lite sparks gently seal the washed-out cut, his skin once more pristine and his palm lines whole and unbroken. He reaches over to yoink some soap so he can actually wash his hands and mask, insisting, softly but firmly, “He can’t not know.”

They’re far too alike in their curiosity—self-destructive, for good or for ill, an incessant twinge in the back of their minds—for XD to not know the comm unit is a primed TNT trap. It’s not only a face and a name that they share, so it’s impossible for the god to not suspect. To not understand. XD may play at being clueless and disconnected from genuine emotions and self-reflection, often irreverent and catlike in both curiosity and cruelty, but underneath the surface, he’s canny and clever and, above all, self-aware.

And that, more than anything else, means the presence of Dream’s communicator is something XD’s calculating mind sees as a worthwhile risk. A gamble, still, with all its fallible human factors and yet somehow, someway, worth it. Which implies a plan with an endpoint that, should the stars align, will be to Dream’s benefit when all’s said and done. His own hesitation aside, he has no reason to distrust XD—he’s never had reason to distrust XD, not when it matters—certainly not after the god’s already gone to such lengths to give him the space and time to heal on his own terms.

Not after XD earnestly and awkwardly played informal therapist and gifted him a max-stack of useful journals and kept him company and let Dream cry on his shoulder while holding him close. Not when XD still calls him chosen and favored and looks at him as if he’s something truly precious.

Even such a notorious chaos god would not be so cruel. Not to him. All the same, whatever good XD presumes Dream will get out of having access to his communicator…can that good truly outweigh the nigh-guaranteed bad alongside it?

How high a cost will he end up paying to find that ‘good’?

(Didn’t he already pay the highest price? Isn’t that why he’s here now? What more can he lose?)

Does XD believe in him that much? In his resilience? In his ability to follow the god’s train of thought to the desired conclusion? What does XD see that Dream can’t? What truth does XD know that Dream refuses to consider? What sunrise over the horizon is XD basking in while Dream continues to stumble through the dark?

When the god’s optimistic cart-before-the-horse plan upends—and it very likely will—it’ll be XD he’ll expect to pick up the pieces. It’s the least the god can do for not thinking to at minimum give him a warning. Surely, if XD’s committed to the comm unit’s potential value it would’ve been smarter to hold onto it for the future? Ease Dream into the idea of it? Not, well, leave it lying around for him to trip over before he’s anywhere near ready to see it, let alone use it.

“Thoughtless well-meaning god,” he mutters, clicking his tongue as he imagines taking XD by the shoulders and shaking him a little. Maybe more than a little. He lifts his now washed-and-rinsed mask from the sink and examines its glossy wet surface under the light for any remnants of blood he’s missed. The spotless white porcelain glows, the side clasps’ gilded edges shining, and smells pleasantly of citrus when he uses the towel still hanging around his neck to dry it and then his hands.

It clacks gently against the sink, set aside to let him aggressively work the towel over his hair and finally get that dried too. Once it’s dry enough to not drive him insane from being wet and cold, he runs his fingers through his bangs to push them back, then sighs and pushes through his waning energy to start cleaning the sink. If nothing else, it is satisfying to watch each pink splotch disappear as he scrubs; he rides that satisfaction briefly into the main room, gaze dodging the bedside table, laser-focused on the small dots of blood on the wooden floor.

Task complete and insistent urge to scour his blood satiated, Dream skitters back into the bathroom and runs the sink again long enough to rinse out the part of the towel he’d used. With all that now done he wrings it out several times, scurrying over to the still-running furnace to slot in another handful of coal and trade his toasty-warm hoodie draped atop it for the towel. He slings the hoodie over his shoulder for the moment, returning to the bathroom and plucking the mask off the sink’s edge.

Like before, its enchantments are a soothing hum that appeases an anxious tremor in his core when he takes it in hand. Dream studies the simple smile, melancholy entwined with a candle flame’s resolve banked in his chest. He flips it around and raises it toward his face as if to wear, lips quirking upward as the back smoothly transitions from a blank facsimile of an inner-side mask to a crystal-clear view of himself in the mirror.

It’s a bit of a trade secret just how perfectly he can see despite its appearance suggesting otherwise. Even when Dream performs well above expectations in competitions he’s heard countless confused, incredulous whispers assuming he shouldn’t be able to ‘what with the mask.’ He’s sure if there weren’t anti-cheat measures in place they’d gossip about that instead, so on some level he’s glad it’s just other annoying nonsense. Sometimes people shrug it off as his hearing being better or other senses obviously compensating for what must be reduced vision. Which he’s always felt was both a bit funny and rude; masks and other face coverings aren’t that rare and if they were truly obstructive—truly more harm than good—then fewer people would wear them by choice.

All anyone would need to do is take a stroll or two through the main hub and peek in on some of the most popular servers to realize masks are a little too prevalent to be genuine downgrades to a person’s sight. Not every mask carries enchantments to the same extent as Dream’s—perhaps only a small handful do—but even before he had this one his basic mask let him see well enough.

How else could he have kept himself safe as a child and, later, a teenager, than to be able to perceive his surroundings in as much detail as possible?

So, naturally, he expanded on that once he had access to the academy library and an ever-growing understanding of enchantments. The material got an upgrade, his craftsmanship improved, and then…well, and then he had a lot of work ahead of him to bring all his ambitious ideas to life. Quite honestly, the activation timing and visual clarity were a real pain to get right: requiring a ton of trial and error, countless headaches from bad attempts, and numerous consultations with the professors who had experience with longtime face coverings.

(Believing that masks or other face coverings mean worse visibility and, thus, vulnerability is a common take to find. A take which, as an impromptu history lesson once proved to him in detail, is both completely wrong and purposefully never challenged to encourage the continual underestimation of mask wearers.

And Dream, despite suspecting this from his own experience? Well, he only had those suspicions confirmed after weeks of dedicated work and asking around led him to the academy’s lead archivist, who very politely assessed Dream’s commitment to his mask over seven separate faintly threatening teatimes. Once he’d passed their test they showed him how their own mask worked, gave him some tips and a history lecture, and then patted him on the head, wished him luck, and shooed him off with secretive smile and a box of homemade baked goods pulled not from an inventory but a legitimate dimensional pocket.

(This centuries-old archivist had peered at his bare face with an intensity that made Dream feel seen, murmuring a name he wasn’t sure he heard right and still to this day doesn’t want to think about.)

He left the archive bemused and mildly intimidated but also thoughtful and mentally refreshed. The baked goods were, to his complete lack of surprise, fantastic. His academic high distinctions for his final project were secondary to the follow-up batch that appeared in his dorm after his presentation, the congratulatory note that tweaked his nose by being written in ancient Ender aside.)

Dream examines his reflection in the mirror. Familiar white-backed smile, unfamiliar mess of white hair, his black sleeveless undershirt, green hoodie piled on one freckled shoulder. He shifts his wrist, mask canting to one side to reveal his unscarred face again, previously neon-green still rather dull as his mood continues to hover at a low point. His elbow pivots to drop his raised arm across his chest and the mask’s proximity enchantments deactivate, transitioning back to standby.

…Try as he might, no matter the angle of his head or the squint of his eyes, he sees no monster reflected in the mirror. No terrible monster, no cackling villain, no power-hungry tyrant, no controlling puppeteer, no master manipulator, no unhinged dissident, no emotionless wall.

No, none of those are what he sees staring back at him. What he finds in the mirror? What he finds in his reflection? Just a human being.

Tired and lonely and without a purpose. Very, very flawed. But…a human being nonetheless. One who’s made mistakes and paid for those mistakes. One who’s caused harm and been harmed. One who deserves the chance to find happiness. To find peace. To live. To thrive.

He looks down at the mask in his hand and, in spite of his spiraling, self-hating thoughts earlier, feels a flicker of bitter, spiteful anger overtake the hesitation to keep it. Yes, he doesn’t need it and the bad memories are numerous and hard to ignore, but it’s his. And there is good there too, still. It’s one of the few things of his own he has left, everything else has been lost or stolen or destroyed.

Letting go has never been something he’s found easy, not to consider, not to do—he knows it’s one of the many flaws he has. It’s one that’s caused more harm than it’s ever done him any good. Bad habits formed and cemented during the years where that selfish greed of his allowed him to see the next sunrise. Bad habits sharpened for self-sufficiency at a time where there was very little he could afford to let go. Survival skills twisted into desperate possessiveness over what he was able to hold onto and call his. He can let go, but he usually has to trick himself by appealing to the logic of it, and if he can’t quite convince himself letting go is the smart choice, then his stubbornness rears its head and he digs his heels in.

A flaw, yes. Undoubtedly something he should work on and try to better temper for the long, long future ahead of him.

Yet…why should he force himself to let go? What would be the point? There is no plan to follow anymore. No reason for him to throw things away, to deny himself attachments. No role to fill as the lone lightning rod to weather the brunt of the server’s hatred; no need to use himself as a shield to try and protect what he cared about except himself.

What good would a performative, far-too-late forced loss—an ill-timed graceless concession—do him? Other than be a worthless, empty gesture? An unfitting attempt at symbolism for an audience of one? An unnecessary self-punishment after months already spent being punished in ways up to and including his own last death?

Dream closes his eyes and thinks about his professors and their support. The archivist and their history lessons and baked goods. The work he put into perfecting the enchantments and the high distinctions he received for creating an artifact of his own. How well it’s served him all these years and the broader scope of its imagery that reaches beyond the confines of his server. His lip then curls as he thinks about the self-righteous vindication the server—who would never understand the history of his mask and certainly never respect it—would feel upon seeing him shed the mask as if they’d won something (wouldn’t they have?) that was never theirs to win.

No, no, hesitation and bad memories be damned, he’s going to keep it. Rather than throw it away, rather than destroy it, rather than use it to make a symbolic point that will undoubtedly be misinterpreted, Dream is going to carry it with him into the future. Make new memories. Better memories. Memories that will honor the good history of his mask.

Why shouldn’t he?

Why should he carve out another piece of himself to destroy? Especially now? What would that prove, how would it help him? Who is that even for? Who is that supposed to appease? (Other than the very same people who think he should have nothing and be nothing. Other than his own self-hatred.)

He’s already lost everything else.

Unless he campaigns to again place himself at odds with the server to take it all back, he has almost nothing left to his name beyond what’s sitting in the chest here. And he’ll continue to have almost nothing except what he makes from this point onward. As much as he’d like to decisively reclaim everything he misses, to walk away having left nothing of his behind, well. Honestly, the thought of facing everyone again, the thought of trying to carve out peace of his own while the server’s reaction looms is almost enough to send his heart racing triple-speed.

He can already see it now: they would tamp down their fear of him and weaponize it into a righteous crusade. Form another hunting party. Repeat the finale confrontation. Repeat Quackity’s Butcher Army. Repeat the Green Festival. Retread the ground of every execution that’s ever been held. Chase him down, however long it took to find him. Corner him. Kill him. No revive book gambit to save him this time.

Just…death. Once again, just death.

(All this server knows is death. Violence, destruction, and death.)

Even with XD and Patches at his side for support, even with the effects of his ascension, even with the reconnection and growth of his admin power, even with the insurance of his infinite lives to their three, even still. He’d rather do literally anything else than be face-to-face with the same people who more than likely cheered Quackity and Sam on for what they did to him.

(It’s fine, after all. Those things were done to him. It’s what he deserves.)

Kicking them all out is always an option. He could meet their violence pound-for-pound with his own, play for keeps, kill to defend himself. He could plant himself in the Greater SMP and refuse to be cowed, mete out death until they might finally clue in that he’s no longer holding back. He could refuse to stay silent, refuse to do anything less than be loud and be cruel with all the truths the server has chosen to ignore and forgotten.

He could.

But why should he have to get his hands bloody over and over in hopes his existence as a person will ever be respected, let alone be allowed to live in peace? In hopes he’ll at least be left the hell alone long enough to make it to twenty-five?

If he wanted a surefire way to incite the server’s annoying martyrs and heroes into never leaving him alone, outside of the usual daring to exist in the same general space, that would do it. He’d be proving them right in their view of him by fighting back, so of course they’d rally themselves to their—always, context-be-damned—just cause of taking him down permanently.

Again.

Dream snorts derisively, lowering the mask to where his belt would be. A short specific rhythm tapped against its surface activates a hook enchantment to keep it attached when he lifts his hand away. “Cathartic idea, yeah. Really, really cathartic. But, sadly, not worth the headache. Headaches, I should say.”

Violence is an answer. However, as violence often does, it provides more problems than it does longterm solutions. Thus, rather than resort to killing who knows how many idiots—which has, despite some evidence to the contrary, never been something he likes doing—he could indeed kick them out. Ban them. Reset the entire server. Undo all the building, all the damage, all the history. Erase it all. Delete everything that happened from the moment he first stepped foot on the server (since the moment he invited George to see it with him, before he dragged Sapnap away from PVP watching to join them). Reclaim the entirety of the server from world spawn all the way out far beyond the horizon.

Start again from zero with the whole of his world open to him.

Be free of ghosts. Be, quite simply, free.

But…if Dream’s being honest…although it burns to leave the Greater SMP alone and stay ‘dead,’ he just. Doesn’t want to take it back, not even with a reset. Not right now. Not for a good while. Perhaps never. He doesn’t want to try and push past the staggering weight of bad memories to attempt reclaiming land that hasn’t felt like his in almost two years. None of it save a few tiny pockets feel like his, like safety, like home. Of course it’s still his, at least in the abstract and the technical senses, but all the same it isn’t and it hasn’t been for a long time.

It doesn’t feel like his land anymore. It feels like theirs. Like he’s an outsider, an interloper, even though each and every block has his adminID buried in its code, which links him to all of it. Undeniably so, in fact. Still, it’s more theirs than his. Without erasing his own memories to be rid of that baggage he won’t be able to forget that. Unless he chooses a memory reset, he’ll never be able to shake feeling like a stranger in his own server should he try and stay anyplace they’ve been. Not easily, not without years and years and years passing by to dull his memories—

(although he’s already dismissed the idea…forgetting remains a temptation. His memories alone or the servers’ memories too, gone. Nothing left from the moment they arrived. Blank slates, all of them. There’s room there for a fresh start, for things to go better than the first time…

…but as he concluded before, forgetting doesn’t fix anything. Not when he’d lose the lessons that he’s learned. He doesn’t want to find himself across from someone and not recognize who they are and what they’ve done to him, what they’ve said, what they’ve promised. Outside of a small number of people he could tentatively trust not to take advantage of him, that would be a lose-lose situation. And even if he erased theirs instead, does he trust they won’t defy the odds just to spite him and regain their memories, picking up right where they left off? Does he trust their personalities and their choices to be any different without all the history? Does he try to believe it won’t fall apart in new ways even if it doesn’t quite follow exactly in older footsteps?

could he actually pretend none of it happened? play at being a welcoming server admin who doesn’t carry bitterness in his heart shaped like their names and faces?

Does he cut out the middlemen called chance and free will and micromanage every single aspect possible? Reset the server and their memories but keep his own? Carefully ensure nothing spirals out of control by guiding them step-by-step, wiping any disadvantageous memory or idea that may put the server back where it started? Correct bad behavior as if disciplining unruly kids who just won’t listen? Force conformation to his own ideal of what the server should be like?

Does he live up to everything they’ve ever thought of him by truly playing god?

(could he ever feel safe near them if he didn’t?)

dream’s never wanted to be a god of anything. all he ever wanted was a family he could love that loved him back.)

—so, while it aches to concede ground, to let the very server members who gladly wished (and delivered) death on him keep the main part of the server for themselves, he thinks there’s something more valuable to find in staying here. The prospect of letting go threatens to raise his hackles (it’s so much to let go of) but it’s…safer, here. Less daunting. Here, there’s a hopeful flame to nurture and a wealth of untainted possibilities spread out in front of him.

A kindness, too. A new beginning. A new path.

When he does strike out to explore and find a good place for a house a home it will be through new land that has no bad history for him. He won’t find echoes of old faces or old terrain or old conflicts waiting around every corner to blindside him. He’ll be the only person who’s seen it and traveled it and made memories along the way and the land here may one day start to feel like home.

Put like that, letting go is easy. A relief, even.

“Besides,” he drawls, tugging his hoodie from his shoulder and shrugging it on, “I’m, ah…pretty sure XD might’ve already put down barriers to keep any expansion from going too far out. Then, oh no,” he says, flatly, rolling his eyes in tandem with his reflection, “they’ll have to make due with what they’ve got when they reach the edge. What a shame. No more near-infinite land to use, how upsetting. However will these poor, starving, destitute waifs survive. Since they frequently like to waltz off to build whatever big new ‘totally not a power grab’ thing strikes their fancy it won’t take long for them to hit the wall.”

Dream tucks his chilly nose into the still-warm collar, turning the bathroom light off and stepping back into the main room. “Granted, that’s just a guess on my part. It’s exactly the kind of thing he finds fun. And, well…it’s not particularly hard to imagine where he’d go from there.”

A series of barriers are still not a perfect solution to prevent anyone from somehow finding him—low as those odds may be, the server has some, shall he say, lucky inhabitants—so he’s not about to disable his player proximity alert, but he can picture the shape of the idea fairly clearly. (A cage called freedom; a kinder lie than Pandora’s cruel truths. An incensed god demanding retribution and yet tempering divine judgment to better respect the soft heart of his admin.)

In fact, he’d bet money that XD has and will be using it to make a point that will get less and less subtle as the bit goes on. Dream isn’t pleased to have left the Greater SMP to the wolves, but if he’s not pleased then XD is all-out affronted by the very concept. While Dream is frustrated about it in his head or rants out loud or writes down how he feels, XD has no qualms with making his displeasure known very loudly and very publicly.

Perks of being an eldritch god, he supposes, getting to air grievances without immediate violent pushback or getting blatantly ignored. All that prey-brain wariness has gotta count for something in forcing people to actually shut up and listen lest they be smited on the spot.

As long as he’s not dragged into it, he’s choosing to let sleeping dragons lie without asking any questions. Until he’s ready to know he doesn’t want to know.

“Besides,” he repeats, stepping over to the table to pick up the fish he still hasn’t eaten and crossing his arms over his chest, food held up toward his face. Proximity to the comm unit and the thought of food sends an unpleasant swoop through his stomach but, despite how little he wants to, he should still eat, just in case he ends up without any appetite later. Better he eat now and feel slightly off than not eat only to be too ill to even think about eating for hours on end afterward.

“Besides,” he echoes as he takes a small bite, squinting through the window toward the darkening scenery outside, “the only ‘big, necessary’ reason to go back is to use the world spawn portal if I wanted to leave.” Dream hums with the ghost of a smirk, “Well, that’s what I’d have to do as a normal player. I can also ask XD for a lift, or activate the admin’s failsafe. Or, I can just create a second world spawn with a new permissions log. For company, if I desperately want it…or to leave, if I want to. I don’t need anything from it that I can’t get here.”

Want is a different story.

As much as his heart aches for what he wants…some things may be beyond him now. Some things he may have a chance with years from today. Some things may only ever be wishful thinking regardless of the time that passes. Missed and mourned (and beloved, still.) To at least some degree he has to accept that and move on, much as it hurts.

Right now what’s best for him—rather than spinning endlessly in melancholy circles—is to take each day as it comes. To figure out what he wants to do moving forward and try to work toward building a future that he, that Dream, can thrive in. Where he wants to go, what he’s looking for, what he hopes to find. He needs to figure himself out, work through his baggage, try to learn what a new kind of happiness might look like. He needs to relearn the true scope of a self at peace and also how to exist as his truest self.

What he needs is to reclaim who he is. Reclaim the aspects of himself he set aside or re-purposed for his now-pointless plan. Relax and shed the last vestiges of the facade he grew too used to wearing. Re-find the bright-eyed spark that’s long been missing. Remember how to be happy, remember how to be kind to himself, remember that there is an entire long, long life for him to live.

But first, he’s going to do something very stupid.

…In a moment.

First he turns his back to the table and ducks into the bathroom to wash his hands, which he then wrings as he pauses in the doorway. He bites his lip and flutters around the room collecting his dry clothes and testing the progress of the towel draped over the furnace. Dithers a little before he leaves it to continue drying. Then he stalls more by kneeling next to the chest and very neatly and very slowly folding everything he places with great care inside, fidgeting with the existing arrangement for a minute or two after. Rising from his spot on the floor he absently tidies a few more unnecessary things, gravitating over to the table again as he slows to a stop.

Dream stares at the communicator’s dark screen, breaths shallow and heart racing double-time. It has no eyes of its own yet is ominous all the same, shadowed by the dark grey lighting of approaching rainy nighttime smeared across the oak wood. Shaky fingers reach down to his hip to unhook his mask, which quietly clacks against the surface a palm’s width from the comm unit. He reaches past it to light the candle and then, fingers freezing a hair’s breadth away in last-second indecision, scoops it up into his hand.

Immediately he shivers and almost drops it, not expecting it to be almost glacier-frigid due to being next to the window although he should’ve suspected as much given his mask was chilly. Inhaling deeply to try and find the strength to go through with this idiotic idea, he hops onto the bed and scoots over until his back’s against the wall. Once settled, he grabs the blanket to drape it over half a shoulder and his bent knees, where he rests the device and proceeds to contemplate his next step. There’s nothing making him do this—he could set it back on the table, place it in the chest, ignore its existence forever if he wanted to.

Nails click-click-click against the case as he thinks.

Self-destructive to a fault, he bites the bullet and turns it on.

His heart rate hitches as the logos roll by and his lock screen pops up with its bland default background and no personalization. A tap of his thumb slides the password prompt to the forefront, which is the moment where Dream does another stared-at Enderman impression by freezing, mind gone blank. He doesn’t…it’s been so long since his last use of the thing that he can’t remember. What did he put for his password (was it…)?

A sequence of careful numbers entered over several drawn out minutes, many of which he spent staring up at the ceiling in thought, and the lock screen slides away to let him in, the password dredged from his memories correct.

“Oh, right,” he says, pressing chilled fingers over his eyes for a second’s reprieve. “Birthdays, of course. I thought that’s what it’d be, but I…,” Dream trails off as he registers his words are weirdly muffled. He has zero recollection of when one of his hoodie strings ended up in his mouth between finishing off his actual meal and just now. Spitting it out before he ruins it, he thunks his head on the wall behind him and heaves a sigh, “That’s not food, idiot.”

Like the lock screen, the home screen is similarly bland, although neither were boring on purpose in the beginning. Muscle memory gets him through a series of gestures, taps, and swipes that, when done in sequence together, transition his ‘fake’ background and layout to his real one. Sure it’s a bit overkill in terms of security but he’d rather overestimate than underestimate when and where he can (and unlike people, where he seems to keep failing, technology’s much, much easier to wrangle). Access to his message logs could potentially have incriminated his allies and access to all his other paraphernalia would prove to be damaging on its own.

For anyone who knows him his password isn’t that hard to guess, so if someone were to try they’d have cracked the lock screen and gotten into everything had he not gone a step above in his communicator’s security. Given that his privacy program is currently showing an alert that logged over eighty attempted password entries since he last accessed the real home screen, his past paranoia is more than vindicated.

Still…it’s a bit sad, a bit soul-crushing, that, as he skims the list of tracked inputs, none of those attempts used a combination of his, Sapnap’s, and George’s birthdays. That’s what his password has been for years now, ever since they first clicked; he never changed it even after their falling out. His confusion earlier was related to a stray memory of thinking he might switch up the order sometime—

(when Sapnap promised to kill him if he ever got out of Pandora, Dream’s mind wandered that same night; he already felt unsettled in the face of Sapnap’s words, in the face of someone he loved dearly thinking it be better if he died at their hand than live, than sit down and talk, than have the opportunity to ever reconcile; someone he loved dearly chirped that prison would help him get better in the same breath they swore to kill him if he was ever free again; that night after Sam left, to stave off an ugly, unwanted breakdown by the skin of his teeth, he ran through various permutations of a new password if he removed Sapnap’s birthday, maybe traded it for Punz’s to keep it the same length…

…he couldn’t remove George’s; he never saw George; he didn’t want George to see him like that (he didn’t want Sapnap to, either) although he wanted, desperately, to see George; his best friend never showed up, never visited him, never spoke a word to him, and that’s a wound he’ll nurse for a long time but at least George never looked him in the eye, echoed Sapnap’s words, and then left him there; with George, the absence hurt but as long as he never heard those same words, as long as he never saw that same derision, even if every visitor to his cell used George’s name against him, he could pretend George still cared enough to not want him dead

(george never stood by and watched him die twice in silence))

—yet for obvious reasons hadn’t the opportunity to. To think no one tried their birthdays is…he’s glad Sam or Quackity or whoever were denied access to his data in any form but…really? None of the originals’ birthdays? None of their names? Not one single inkling he might choose something even vaguely sentimental as his password? For XD’s sake they didn’t try Dream’s own birthday which, of course he wouldn’t use by itself, but still, that’s a basic guess worth at least one shot if for no other reason than to be thorough.

“Right,” he mutters, an upset rasp to his voice, “I forgot I don’t have a heart. I don’t care about anyone or anything. Yeah, that’s me,” scrolling the input list again to pick out some notable tries, he scoffs, “heartless villain of the server. Let’s see, what would I use as my comm’s password? Well, as I don’t care about anyone I’d obviously use the itemID for netherite. Oh, or spell out ‘nightmare’—I know it’s a dumb, edgy play on my name but seriously, what am I, twelve?—okay, that one is just my name. Uh-huh, totally secure. I think this one is an attempt to figure out the revive book’s ID? Kinda hard to tell when it also looks like a keysmash but it does have parts of some slightly relevant itemIDs. Ah, those are for axes and armor pieces…wait, is this one literally a smile? Did someone actually try a colon-parentheses and expect it to work?”

He squints at the list and yes, that is in fact a :) someone tried. “Wow, way to think I’m a moron and obsessed with myself.”

The smile isn’t the worst, no, the worst is: “Who the hell put Tommy’s name? Is that his birthday?” A quick check of the admin panel confirms it is indeed Tommy’s birthday that someone thought would be a viable guess. A guttural exclamation of disgust bursts out of him, “No. Just. No. Gross. What kind of creep do they think I am?” he pauses, teeth briefly clicking together, and grimaces, “Wait, don’t answer that. I forget that they believe I’m legitimately obsessed with a teenager. Not a single brain cell for chunks.”

Dream shoves aside all of that mess and scrubs a hand over his face, flicking open the settings to deactivate the password entirely. For a moment he considers altering it instead by finally swapping Sapnap’s birthday out but…honestly, what’s the point in having one where he is? Who’s he keeping out, mobs? The persistent ghosts hanging over his shoulder? His conscience?

While he’s already in the settings menu he ensures any potential notifications are silenced, blocked, or both. Then exits settings and dismisses the security alert, eyes finally tracing over his longtime background. A closeup picture of the Dream Team crammed together in the frame, Dream in the middle bookended by Sapnap and George, all posing for Bad behind the camera. His mask is shoved to one side to show off three grinning faces with windswept hair and joy-pinked cheeks; his arms are around them as they hold up matching peace signs. Bad, he recalls, was about two more picture attempts away from murdering all three of them with his bare hands since their laughter kept ruining take after take with motion blur, eroding Bad’s immense well of patience.

If his memory doesn’t fail him, right after this picture Bad called it good enough and tapped out to go destress someplace they weren’t. The smart play, as he’s fairly certain George and Sapnap immediately started fighting. Again. Over something stupid. Again. And tried dragging him into whatever they were arguing about. Again.

With a fortifying breath, he tears his gaze away from what he can no longer have to pay attention to the purple-white-black XD icons nestled next to the chat app. One’s a .txt file where the god tells him there’s a pre-death and post-death snapshot for the chat, including any direct messages in general chat and private chat. Each snapshot has inventoried and stored either every message sent before his death or every message sent after he died, with overlap on the latter from the active chat, although the snapshot is pruned for relevant messages and does not include absolutely everything.

XD further explains that while the communicator will receive messages as normal if he wants to read them, the device is actually on its own channel. Unless Dream reaches out, anything sent to him will return the proper errors for an unavailable player as is done with the dead, but still be visible on his end unlike typical dead players’ experience where those messages would be lost to the void on both ends.

Additionally, the god included parameters and filters to show unsent messages, too, which is actually a step above what Dream can access as the admin. Text data that sits in the chat box long enough to trigger a timer-based log is grabbed and preserved; if the message is sent, that goes through as usual, if the message is deleted instead, then it gets placed in what the god calls a ‘ghost log.’ To account for multi-tasking and temporary drafts while preventing message repetition, the text data is held and checked against the full log. If the text data shows up within the main log, aka is sent, then that data is released from the checker and not treated as a ghost message. If the data does not, by remaining unsent through manual deletion, the temp draft expiring, or temp draft being saved but still unsent, then it is shifted from the checker to the ghost log.

From the log, those messages’ visibility relies on showing or hiding them using filters, which will serve as toggles for three chat modes: one that works as usual, one that shows sent and unsent, and one that’s unsent only.

Clearly XD is trying to tell him something. Since, as XD puts it in the file, it pays to know what people might be saying when they don’t know they’ll be heard…and that a person’s initial thoughts can be very enlightening…followed by a shrugging emoji and another dreaded winky-face.

Should he reach out for any reason, that chat session—or single chat message—will exist in its own temporary container that will flush its data on the receiving end every time he closes the app, so there’s never anything to trace back to him. If he reengages that same person or group the container will, depending on his preferences, re-up itself either as a fresh log or pull the desired re-shared data from the previous log until he closes the session, at which point that data will be flushed as usual. It’s some redundant, if welcome, security since the encryption and history scope is now set to admin-level again instead of the default params.

In essence, he has the opportunity to communicate if he wants to while being as safe as he possibly could be from everything except the words themselves. Most of it is tweaking he can do himself as the admin, but XD did go above and beyond in preemptively partitioning the chat and laying the foundation for an immense amount of control. Not to mention the god has ensured he has so many options; whether he types another word or never does, whether he reads what’s written or none of it…no matter what he chooses to do he’ll be safe.

XD caps off the explanation with a direct acknowledgment that he doesn’t expect Dream to use it until he’s ready—if he ever is. Pointed out gently but firmly is the fact that not everything everyone is lost unless he truly gives up on it them.

Time, XD writes, the onscreen text starting off strong before getting shaky toward the end, is yours in abundance now, but the same cannot be said for the majority of the server. Life is by its very nature a messy endeavor as the living seek their desired fulfillments in what short time they have, and it passes faster each and every year. I do not expect you to make yourself vulnerable to those who hurt you, not before you feel ready—if you ever do; if you never do, I understand—however I believe you deserve the option to salvage what you can should you want to. Take it from me, Dream, in that as time slips you by you will look back and feel the losses from the lack of closure that comes with being haunted by all the last words and all the last looks and all the last memories. You will live with the constant wondering of ‘what if’ long after you have the power to find out where that question may have led. I know I have given you a double-edged sword. My hope is that you use it to have fewer regrets than I.

Dream runs his thumb over the shaky lettering, a sympathetic ache in his chest at the palpable melancholy practically leaping from the screen. The god’s history is very much a mystery even to him, as he’s never pried past whatever crumbs XD sees fit to drop either when his guard is down or he’s trolling with the most insane thing Dream’s ever heard. XD may pretend to be a big bad chaos god unaffected by anything ‘like a mortal would be,’ except if it’s funnier to pretend he is, but several centuries’ worth of life equates to the potential for unfathomable amounts of trauma, too.

The centuries-old god dispensing wisdom may be worth listening to, probably.

“Maybe, XD…maybe,” he murmurs, closing the .txt file and glancing between the pre- and post-death snapshot icons. Exhaling a trembling breath he balances the comm unit on his knees and rubs at his face with both hands before he presses the heels over his eyes.

It’s not too late to back out of doing this, to make a different choice.

A kinder choice.

A less self-destructive choice.

He drops his hands to pick the communicator up again, blinking away dark spots as he inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales, finger hovering above the post-death snapshot. Throat and mouth uncomfortably dry, he swallows through his growing nerves and taps on the icon.

The screen swaps to a white-on-black XD, then transitions in a flair of End-purple particles that coalesce into separate chat groupings. Several chat groupings, in fact. The general chat is split into two versions, active and inactive, with subgroups for chronological and latest first. Private chats are grouped up below the main chat’s four available options and sorted by participant number, message density, and then their last update, something that places both Punz and Ranboo—and their joint chat—higher on the list. Mildly surprising is that Techno’s is under Ranboo’s, and then below Techno’s is….

Moving on. Not every chat bubble has an unread notification but most of them do, which is…intimidating. Some of the chats are even for people he doesn’t recognize who undoubtedly felt the need to chime in after he died despite never meeting him. Great. Unsolicited commentary from literal strangers that don’t know him, don’t know anything but what they’ve been told, and haven’t seen him let alone spoken to him. His favorite. As if everyone else won’t be enough on their own.

Dream sniffs and rasps out a humorless laugh laced in jagged, bitter edges. He jabs the filter to show the ghost messages, wavers, selecting the inactive-chrono version after a moment of indecisive waffling. Obligingly, his screen swirls out of the added dashboard into the main chat interface, a little animation of XD holding a clock that’s rewinding itself as everything loads. The chat window itself ends up being styled like a blank log, the majority of the screen empty with the ‘first’ message at the bottom.

That first message of course being the beginning of post-death: his death notification in stark, attention-grabbing system-side white due to the server reading it as a canon loss. Even if the majority of the server has had him muted for months if not years now—

(and it may very well be true after how many times he submerged himself in lava as what he can admit was the world’s worst coping mechanism; nobody cared, nobody came looking, nobody came asking, nobody wanted to see reminders of his name; the grey walls of back-to-back deaths were obviously all a manipulation on his part, an annoyance, an inconvenience; Dream dying over and over (killing himself over and over) was perfectly acceptable as long as muting him meant nobody had to hear about it; the only one who ever said anything was Sam, who sighed, disappointed in him as he always was, and told him to knock off his attention-seeking behavior already

(and then sam would let quackity in again)

(and then the cycle would repeat again))

—his status as the admin overwrites their settings so this message will have pinged on everyone’s communicators. It’s supposed to be very visible when it’s the admin; it’s supposed to be a warning and a wakeup call that something isn’t right. And so the message will be as blatant as it can be without being written out in the sky with blocks and simultaneously broadcast audibly at max volume throughout every occupied chunk. No one will have an excuse as to why they didn’t see it, not unless they literally lost their comm unit and haven’t spoken to or seen anyone in months. The truth is there in plain terms, each piece of the puzzle of Dream’s final death laid out in emotionless, clinical text.

Even bothering to point that out makes entirely too many assumptions that anyone curious about it will feel safe enough to ask, let alone ask the right questions. Let alone not be deterred by whatever story Sam and Quackity spin. After all, it’s so much easier to accept whatever series of words makes it so you don’t have to think. Words that already resonate with what you believe, so you accept what you hear because it sounds ‘right’ and if it’s ‘right’ then that means there’s no point in any further thought.

(let’s not unravel that neat little bow; let’s not find out what’s right is wrong)

If he dips his toes into the whirlpool called optimism, Punz is smart enough to phrase hard-hitting questions in a safe but effective manner. And although he regrets never showing just how much he appreciated Punz’s support when he had the chance, he does know that Punz cared. It’s Dream who’s too f*cked up to have let himself connect the way he now wishes he had. Ranboo, on the other hand, could swing some hesitant, well-aimed barbs at the soft underbellies called justice and fairness and for all his projected spinelessness ‘boo can and will go for the throat. Techno may decide to repay his outstanding favor by speaking up not only about the clear injustice but also not shy away from the fact that it happened to Dream…he’s always been honorable like that.

(still, dream won’t hold his breath lest he suffocate first; even if questions are asked it does nothing for him since in the server’s eyes he’s dead and there is no revive book to bring him back (who’s going to remember he’s the admin and realize he lives?))

No takeback. No retcon.

Only the truth.

Everyone will know. Everyone will know.

He stares at those eight words and despite knowing the truth of them in his bones they have yet to coalesce into something that makes sense, that feels like it actually happened to him rather than a distant stranger that bears his name. A contextual shortcut menu pops open from where his thumb rests primed to scroll up, frozen, on the screen. Dismissing it with a weary huff, he flexes his fingers to ease the stiff ache that’s grown as he’s held himself so still, his anxious jitters forcibly smothered.

Dream closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Counts to ten. Steels himself for the coming spiral. Exhales until it hurts. Cracks his eyes open. Rereads those damning eight words through his lashes—

[>> Dream was slain by Quackity wielding Warden’s Willbreaker]

—and throws himself down the rabbit hole.

…
// finally!
// can’t blame q i’d do the same
// wait what was quackity doing there?
// i can sleep better at night
// that took longer than i thought lol
// smh sam wasn’t that your job?
// wasn’t sam supposed to keep dream alive? what the hell happened?
// wonder what the last straw was
// kinda surprised it didn’t happen sooner tbh
// sam must have the patience of a saint ngl. i would’ve killed him that first day and been done with it
// he couldn’t even behave himself for a whole year? could he not just stop being awful?
// what else do you expect? it’s dream
// we knew he wasn’t going to get any better ‘cause he started bad and he only got worse
// hey q how’d it go? he scream? beg? man i hope he cried haha
// damn we shoulda taken bets on when he’d do us all a favor and croak
// why was he still alive in the first place?
// never understood why we didn’t kill him off for good months ago
// heck, why didn’t we kill him after he revived tommy? that never sat right with me and surely it should’ve been the tipping point
// speaking of tommy why was he ever allowed in there to begin with? i’ve never understood that. if sam’s in on this quackity thing surely he could’ve saved tommy’s life from dream?
// well sh*t tommy i think q stole your kill lol
// quackity really out here reliving the army huh? interesting
// really hope q’s okay! and that something didn’t happen to sam!
// oh? that’s such a relief! even with him locked up he still made me so nervous!
// something doesn’t sit right with me about this
// ha! it’s what he deserves
// be free sam!
// truthfully this is exactly the news i’ve been hoping for
// wait what about the book?
// what book are you even talking about?
// who cares about the book it’s not worth keeping that asshole around
// yeah lol why didn’t we just take it off his corpse
// tbh i hope the book’s gone so nobody thinks to revive him with it
// good point! last thing we need is dream running around again when the server’s future is finally looking up
// what was the point of locking him up just to kill him later?
// quackity’s the true mvp of the server for real
// i guess sam needs a new job now?
// what was sam even doing? i thought he was the warden. did he just let quackity in to kill dream?
// anyone else just suddenly feel at peace?
// idk about you but i feel like i can finally breathe
// now now let’s not start playing devil’s advocate right after the devil dies
// guys i think it’s party planning time!
// does that mean we can take down that eyesore finally? (sorry sam)
// excuse me. you want to run that by me again.
// good f*cking riddance. bye green bitch. see you never.
…

A surprise direct message in the general chat, the only one he’s seen in the entire torrential downpour, catches his eye—

>> Wilbur whispers to you: Well, I do believe this is what they call checkmate.

—and, suddenly, not only blinking away tears and feeling detached from his own body but also reliving in stark clarity how nauseous and dizzy and hurt he was in his last moments as Quackity stood over him and laughed—

(lava orange crests across his black-dotted vision; the scorched dry heat in his lungs; the knife-like agony of drawing shallower and shallower breath; the jagged shards of broken bone grinding in time with every helpless twitch; the survivalist prey-fear struggle to live (but why, but how), the outgoing tide of its panicked desperation waning as the seconds pass; the scalding honey-slow drip of blood as it oozes from his hairline over his eye, down his cheek, kissing the corner of his mouth (iron-filled and choking) to his chin, curling its way like yet another brand around the soft skin of his throat; the hazy cold stealing so terribly gently over him as it offers him death’s welcoming hand (as it offers him a kindness in freedom from life))

—Dream

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Outside, the rain continues to fall.

Chapter 10: a cleansing, this bleeding heart [ii]

Chapter Text

He slowly blinks into awareness and finds the world is monochrome, colorless. Deep shadows ooze from the corners of the room, the warm furnace glow long gone dark and cold. A lone candle flame flickers fruitlessly against the creeping, encroaching black. There’s a droning in his ears from the waterfall outside and an all-consuming staticky white noise like the roar of a storm-churned ocean that fades in and out like the tides. It goes silent on a held breath, a reprieve, until the room spins and the sound washes over him again. Rinse, repeat. Numb from head to toe, no longer sitting upright but huddled beneath the covers, foggy memory unable to pinpoint when he changed positions. Clawed hand held rigid around the communicator’s casing—hard enough to ache, faintly; hard enough to cause it to creak, pitifully. His thumb is aimlessly, helplessly scrolling and re-scrolling the deluge of post-death messages.

Reading and rereading with bleary, stinging eyes.

Devouring the evidence of just how much he was is hated. Devouring the evidence of just how little he will be is missed. Devouring the evidence of his death being more valuable than his life ever was.

Celebration. Praise. Relief. Blame. Damnation.

It’s exactly what he expected to find. Exactly what he thought he’d find. Why would he ever hope to find anything different? He’s known his reputation and the general sentiment for so long by this point—how could he not? The theft of his personhood, the unwanted reshaping of his self into a villain, the pieces of his heart chipped away over and over until he could do nothing but bare his fangs and embrace what was abandoned in the aftermath.

What else could he do but try to weaponize what remained? What else could he try but to make something out of the scattered fragments of his flesh and bone and soul? What else might keep him alive when even the people he saw as family, once still, saw it better, easier, to turn their backs and walk away? When they never once asked and wanted to hear his answers? Skeppy is the only one who tried, he thinks…but in the end, Skeppy left too.

He brought them all here to build a home, brimming with all the love he felt feels, always, always gazing toward the horizon. Toward that bright, bright future he only wanted to craft with his family by his side.

In the end, the only one who asked, the only one who listened, the only one who stayed, the only one who still saw him, was Punz. A closely-held secret. A keenly missed ally. A dearly cherished friend. Lost. Just the same, lost. An absence no one will understand except the two of them; as far as the server is concerned Punz’s betrayal defeated him, imprisoned him, killed him…and hopefully—by XD does he hope—that will be enough to keep Punz safe. Lost, still. But safe. That, he tells himself, is has to be worth the loneliness.

In the end, for him there is no family.

In the end, for him there is no home.

In the end, for him there is a tragedy.

And so, self-aware and weary, he knew better than to expect kindness for his final death. Is that not the very foundation upon which his plan was built: that he be viewed with such overwhelming, all-consuming scorn? Simply put, these messages are the words and thoughts and feelings he should be inured to by now after months upon months spent treated as a pariah on his own land.

…Somehow that just makes it hurt all the worse.

Gasping, he loosens his grip to let the communicator slip onto the bed and pulls his hand close, shivering as he tucks his ice-cold fingers between his chest and the warm cradle of his other hand’s palm. With chattering teeth he turns his face into his pillow, breathing slowly, deliberately, shoulders awkwardly shifting to allow him to huddle further under his single blanket and the safe cocoon of his hoodie. To preserve what heat he can, for a long stretch of time he lays unmoving except for the trembles in his limbs and the rise and fall of his chest, gaze still locked on the screen and its light-spooled talons.

Once his fingers no longer feel seconds away from turning arctic-exposure blue, he runs the tip of his tongue across dry lips, stalling, and then reaches out again. His heart thump-thump-thumps in a fearful rhythm that pulses a noxious co*cktail of dread coursing through his bloodstream, even to the tips of his nails. As he, ill-advised to the last, goes to lift his communicator up—to continue reading, to turn it off, to toss it aside, he’s not quite sure yet—a cold-borne spasm seizes his arm and slides his thumb sideways across the screen. Normally this simply soft-closes the app, except…the angle causes him to touch the sidebar with its minimized list of chat icons, and so the motion instead ends up swapping the main chat for whatever private one fell under his thumb.

When he notices what he’s inadvertently done, Dream freezes in an instant, staring wide-eyed at the name and icon splashed across the screen’s topmost banner. After their exponentially sour last meeting before he died…this is one of the few chats he really didn’t want to open anytime soon. Ever, actually, if he’s being honest.

It couldn’t have been Punz? Ranboo? Techno? …George?

Sapnap’s bright-eyed grinning face and goofy self-picked Sapnap! >:) stare back at him. A taunt. A temptation. A fistful of poisoned knives gilded with a label that proclaims better days shoved directly into his heart. Distantly, through another wave of thick-banked fog and the way his ears abruptly perceive only silence, he realizes he’s shaking again at the thought of reading hateful screeds untempered from main chat spewed by his ex-best friend his brother.

His familiar, loyal companion named nausea slithers up to rest comfortably at the back of his throat—he doesn’t…he can’t do this, he can’t. Shouldn’t. He doesn’t have nor need nor want to; it’s not too late to gather the shards of his bruised and battered fortitude and turn away. To make a different and kinder and less self-destructive choice.

To, just this once, leave temptation to rot unheeded.

…But, as history has proven time and time again—is that not the grim and bloody truth of Pandora’s Vault?—Dream isn’t one for choosing to do what’s actually healthy for himself, is he?

(Did he not clutch tightly to his own stubbornness with bitterness his primary fuel as he threw himself against unyielding, uncaring rocks again and again and again? Did he not allow the things and people he loved loves to slip and be torn away as he pretended to be some stalwart stone-hearted lone fortress? Did he not stop fighting against the titles, those of tyrant and villain, laid upon his brow, because despite the anguish in giving the core of himself over to strangers and enemies…it was still easier to reclaim a measure of control and agency by embracing both for himself, to weave his own blood-tipped crown? Did he not make all the wrong choices such that he was left with his back permanently pressed against a wall, fangs bared and claws extended, his actions and reactions both spurred on by the desperate desire to survive to one day live in a world teeming with daggers hungry to sheathe themselves in his spine?

(if there’s a poster boy for the f*cked-up it’s probably him))

Thus, true to form and ever-faithful to history, those shards of his fortitude remain abandoned as his eyes drop from the relative safety of the chat banner and its protection of his own ignorance to hurtle into the ravenous jaws of text lurking underneath.

…
// seriously.
// no seriously what is this sh*t in the chat
// are you kidding me dream
// you really pulled this dramatic sh*t
// kinda pathetic
// i’m sorry wait a minute what does that say
// i swear i saw that say quackity killed you
// oh it actually does say quackity okay
// what the hell did you do to let that happen
// you’d better not have hurt quackity dream
// he’d better not be so much as bruised
// if you did you’d better pray you don’t have a ghost
// sh*t whatever you did it must’ve been something pretty bad i bet
// sam wouldn’t have let you die if you hadn’t
// he’s kept you alive through some bullsh*t so yeah i bet you must’ve gone above and beyond
// such a sh*tty overachiever aren’t you dream
// i swear you exist just to cause problems don’t you
// ruining more things by having the audacity to die
// only you
// oh here comes dream to make everything about him again
// you never know when to f*cking stop until you’re made to
// i was the one who was supposed to make you stop but no you had to up and die before i could
// y’know maybe we should have let tommy kill you a third time if this is what happens when we didn’t
// well overdue death i guess
// honestly dream what the hell even was the point of you bargaining to stay alive if you get yourself killed a few months later
// did you even hear me when i saw you last or were you ignoring everything i said because i wasn’t important enough for you
// you were supposed to be in prison to get better but you couldn’t even manage that huh
// why could you not just f*cking behave for once in your life dream i swear
// what the hell did you think would happen when you crossed the line again
// honestly i should’ve ended you when i visited and saved us all this trouble
// i think even sam would’ve let it go if he knew you’d do all this
// f*ck
// f*ck
// f*ck
// you are such an asshole dream
// how did i never know you were such a coward
// too afraid to face me so you thought you’d stir sh*t up and get killed by someone else
// how f*cking dare you
// i’m so pissed off at you finding something else to ruin
// that was my job and you took it from me
// isn’t that who you are right down to your core though
// always running away
// too much of a coward to stand your ground and look me in the eye while i put you down
// you don’t even respect me enough to let me be the one to kill you
// is that it dream
// i mean nothing to you
// where is that stupid book you were on about so i can revive you and kill you again like i promised i would
// i swear if you hurt quackity i’ll figure out a way to rez you book or no book just so i can kill you again and make it hurt like hell
…

Oh.

…Is this what a heart breaking feels like?

A soul-deep ache in blue bruises upon purpled bruises upon blackened bruises as something sheltered so lovingly in his heart of hearts cracks, torn from its nourished roots to leave a gaping, wounded absence in the rough shape of name and face and memory.

As if pushing upstream through a steep waterfall’s endless torrent, Dream sluggishly raises a trembling hand to his face and wipes his dry sleeve across his wet cheeks. The comm unit tumbles from nerveless fingers to bounce off the mattress and clatter onto the floor; it must land facedown since the room then plunges into darkness. Complete and total black save the dimmest, dullest glow that barely casts far enough to resolve the cloth touching his cheek into a discernible shape. Extinguishing all light by closing his eyes, he presses his other sleeve against his tear-heavy lashes in a futile attempt to hold the ache in his head at bay and curls into a tight ball beneath the blanket, miserable and, as Sapnap so aptly put it, pathetic.

(a coward, always running; a misbehaving dog, a rabid dog; who should have behaved, who should be killed; a creature of ruin that can’t even die right; a threat to a nonexistent ghost; revived to die as he should have at his brother’s hands; what about quackity, poor, poor quackity; did he hurt quackity, didhehurtquack-i-ty)

The sob that gouges itself from his throat has him tasting blood when he breathes, his chest concaved from the violent force of a gnarled web of jagged, deeply-rooted glass exploding outward from his core—bladed shrapnel cleaving through skin and embedding into bone. An ugly, wretched sob that cascades into one, two, three, four, five; an unfettered, howling, hideous grief tangled hand-in-hand with each and every one of his regrets and an ingrained, insidious hatred of the self.

Is it not far too late, this mourning? Is it not far too gauche, this private wake? Is it not far too selfish, this funeral with its lonely audience of one? Mourning what once was which can not be again. An ailing tree burnt from leaf-tip to root-tip, its ashes not caught by the wind and spread across unbarren ground from which new life might one day sprout, no, instead tossed into the void and forever lost. Is this sorrow and remorse not far too little and far too late?

After everything he’s said and done…does he even have the right to mourn?

(always too late; never ever enough; even now, a derisive jeer in his brother’s voice asks: is this his true grief or one more performative lie stitched together from corroded memories of forgotten honesty?)

“Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry,” Dream gasps through his tears, voice tremulous as the litany of empty, useless apologies slurs into meaningless noise turned raspy whisper turned silence. In the quiet left by his faded voice, the constant churning roar of the cascading rain outside—as it surrounds him within the confines of its droning cocoon—again fills his head with static, thoughts blank and body disconnected as reality threatens to rattle apart.

Even still, the word’s shape, that sorry, continues to pass between his lips, each repetition the excruciating agony of wrapping his own hand around a knife hilt embedded deep into flesh, deep into bone, and wrenching. Gracelessly, helplessly, showering the room in sprays of blood over and over until every inch is painted in dripping crimson—

(so much crimson that despite no burning heat and orange light it starts to feel like home)

—until all he’s done is hurt himself and make a mess, pathetic tantrum-throwing child that he is. He hasn’t learned, has he? In spite of impatient lesson after lesson after lesson carved into him by hunger and pain and cruelty he hasn’t learned how to be better, has he? Hasn’t even tried. No, if anything he’s surely gotten worse, contrary and stubborn and selfish all the way to the end…all the way into his own grave. A poor student of the subject being taught, too obstinate and difficult to do anything other than misbehave under his dedicated teachers’ hands. Digging his heels in, bending but not breaking, his worst aspects highlighted in stark relief by pride and the desperate desire to survive.

Sapnap’s voice jabs into his ears, scoffs, Do you even remember how to apologize and mean it? Can you feel sorry anymore, Dream? Or have you forgotten how to care about other people? Why don’t you tell me what you’re apologizing for! Do you even know? Needles further, tone low and vicious, Who the hell are you apologizing to? The people you owe it to or yourself? Are you saying sorry because it’s what you think you should say or because you’re actually sorry? C’mon, break it down for me! Tell me what you’re sorry for! Tell me who you’re apologizing to! I don’t think you can since you’re not sorry at all, are you? You’re just lying again like you always do, trying to get sympathy without having the guts to be honest! A liar and a coward ‘til the end, huh? I’m not even surprised.

…Nononono he swears he is, he is—he’s not lying…! Please, please believe him…!

(someone, anyone, please believe him when he says he’s sorry)

(what is he sorry for; anything, everything, nothing)

(why is he the one sorry; he’s the one that died)

(he’s the one who was always going to die)

Is his penance to make one final appearance in the Greater SMP to fulfill that broken promise? To make up for dying when he shouldn’t have—in the wrong place, at the wrong hands. Unarmed, unarmored, prostrated at Sapnap’s feet or perhaps standing still and waiting for a sword in his ex-brother’s hand to run him through. Is his repayment for his wrongs to weather the hate and anger in Sapnap’s eyes as his life is stolen a fourth time? Would Sapnap drag it out to make it hurt, turn it into another spectacle for the server’s enjoyment? Or strike him down and be done with it the minute he shows his face, as quick as a casual dispatching of an unruly mob?

If he goes off to die for his sins, to make up in some small way for being a disappointment and a coward both, would Sapnap immediately honor his word and put him down? Or might he hesitate at the compliance his appearance, even just a little? Would he stall so long that Dream might need to reach out with trembling fingers and cover Sapnap’s hand with his own on the hilt, raising the blade to his heart hand-in-hand, then impale himself straight through?

(pull his brother close in a parody of one last embrace; barefaced and vulnerable as he gives one last honest smile for sapnap’s eyes alone; murmur one last thank you and i forgive you and i love you as blood covers the blade and their joined hands and his life comes to an end for a fourth time)

Or is that more selfishness on his own part, re-breaking the promise by stealing away Sapnap’s opportunity yet again? Not merely selfish for dying at someone else’s hands but also selfish for the lie of that death. Selfish again, if he steals the choice away a second time. And further selfish still if he doesn’t go at all.

Like always, Dream can’t do anything right, can he? Horribly selfish to the core.

Although the thought is a terrible one, maybe he should go…let himself be killed or kill himself to fulfill that promise. For the closure of it. Close his eyes and die beneath Sapnap’s sword and then respawn here, alone and soul-battered but alive again. Either way it would serve the same overall purpose, right? He’d be dead again just as Sapnap wanted. Just as Sapnap promised him in the seat of Dream’s suffering in the heart of Pandora’s Vault.

Would that satisfy or cool Sapnap’s burning hatred of him? Would it finally allow his ex-best friend a measure of closure and open the road to a peaceful, content future without Dream in it?

But, more than anything…would that make Sapnap happy?

(Could it? Could Dream’s death be the catalyst for Sapnap to at last be able to thrive, moving forward in a world that no longer places a duty on his shoulders to see Dream killed? In a world that no longer links the two of them together, hailing Dream as a villain and Sapnap as a hero, allowing Sapnap to live in peace without that unsightly regret in his history?

Dream continues to recall the expression on his ex-brother’s face as love and death twined together left Sapnap’s mouth and struggles to comprehend the depth of that hatred. As everything about the conditions of Pandora’s Vault was dismissed and he was told he deserved it in order to get better in the same breath Sapnap promised to slay him should he ever leave.

Love you man, Sapnap says before he turns away and leaves Dream there at Sam’s mercy—and later, Quackity’s (poor, poor Quackity)—and it’s worse than any poison ever known to man as it courses through his veins and sets him on fire from the inside out.

How does anyone accept someone they once gladly brought with them to a new world, a new home, someone they once claimed as best friend and brother and one third of their soul, hating them like that?

As with his similar question about Sam, Dream may never have an answer.)

The agonizing process of self-destabilizing his own code for a genuinely permanent death would be less painful than ever finding out if killing him would make Sapnap happy. He just…at the heart of him he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want be in the position to see Sapnap’s anger cool as it turns into warm contentment. Besides, what if he goes through the whole trial of it for nothing—if whatever he chose and however he died wasn’t enough for Sapnap? Just him being dead clearly isn’t enough on its own, so what about the method? Is he then going to be forever trapped, haunted by regrets over what he should’ve done to ensure Sapnap is happy with the way in which he died?

While he still, still, despite everything, wants his ex-brother to be happy, at the same time it’s not enough—he can’t do that to himself.

Shamefully, understandably, he doesn’t want to die.

(he’s so tired of killing himself for other people’s happiness)

He gasps, choked and wet, as something shaped like finality and which whispers relief dislodges from his ribcage; it drags itself into the aether, pulled taut as it yanks and yanks and yanks at a gossamer-thin wire threaded painfully and possessively around bone. Until at last it’s freefreefree; a sharp, bloody hook set loose from its anchor and reeled away into the distance before he can think to scramble and catch it, too stunned and dizzy to process anything beyond a faint, wretched satisfaction.

It feels like an ending. Formless and vague, but an ending.

And, for the first time since he was young and alone—

(still, he is still so young and so alone)

—he hides under the covers and cries himself to sleep.

Outside, the rain drums relentlessly against the roof and sheets against the window as thunder rumbles overhead.

He blinks sleep-bruised eyes up at the dark ceiling, idly squinting to tick off bloodstains as a morbid way to pass the time. One, two, three. Frankly, he’s surprised Sam hasn’t seemed to notice them or, perhaps more accurately, he’s surprised that Sam hasn’t ordered him to clean them up when his dear, beloathed warden seems to otherwise find doing so delightful. Four, five, six. Lava-heat dries out his throat, the constant temperature and light and bubbling unhelpful in curbing his exhaustion in the scant hours of ‘rest’ he manages to catch between unpleasant visits. Seven, eight, nine. And there’s nothing he can do about the mining fatigue either, the unholy combination leaving him so fuzzy-headed and tired that only sheer stubbornness keeps him from passing out more than he already does from pain and hunger and blood loss. Ten, eleven, twelve. His body still twinges with aches leftover from the day before, healing potions purposefully never quite potent enough for his injuries as Sam insists on doing the bare minimum to keep him alive each and every day. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

The sound of the bridge startles him into standing, back pressed against the wall as his heart kicks up and his head spins from the abrupt motion. Is it time already? From the still-falling lava emerges the constant presence in his nightmares: a grinning Quackity with potion motes swirling around his body, pickaxe slung over one shoulder, shears clacking in his hand, and oozing a palpable glee that bodes more ill than usual for him.

“I have such a beautiful day planned, Dream,” Quackity greets, the following laughter echoing around the box they’re both in and raising the hair on Dream’s neck. “Really dug deep and cooked up somethin’ special this time, so you’d better appreciate it! Jeez, the things I do for you.”

Dream does his best to swallow down his uneasiness, “Is that so?”

Moving through a few test swings of the pickaxe, Quackity whistles cheerily, “Of course! I thought to myself that, well, things are a little stale here with just the two of us. You’re bored, I’m bored. Not much of a party, is it? So I figured why not bring along a guest to spice things up. Really make today memorable for all of us, yeah? Little bonding between, ah, the three of us. Also, well, you’re not spoiled for choice when it comes to company, are you? Me and Sam aren’t too amazing on our own when you see us every day—I mean, I’m a delight at all times, thank you I know, but Sam? Bo-ring. So! Being the kind soul that I am, I imagined you might want to see someone you missed!”

Oh…no.

Quackity smirks at him, half-turning to shout back through the lava curtain, “C’mon in! Water’s just fine.”

Cold pit forming in his stomach, Dream’s eyes flicker over at the sound of potion-protected travel, jerking back into the wall behind him as dread consumes him. That’s—

(black and white and a well-kept blade in hand and the fluttering tied ends of a headband and a promise made to kill him)

—Sapnap…? Nonono Sapnap can’t be here! He should be literally anywhere else but here, not again! Why is he here? With Quackity? Doesn’t he know why Quackity’s here? Or…does he know and just not care?

“…Sapnap? What are you…?” he somehow manages to rasp after forcing away the reflexive, small-voiced ‘Pandas…?’ he wants to implore as he blinks away the confused tears blurring his sight.

“Dream,” is all he gets in return, flat and dismissive as Sapnap’s attention immediately gravitates to Quackity instead. “You said he was misbehaving?”

What?

The question gets stuck before it can spill out from behind his teeth, a dawning horror cresting over him at the possibility that Quackity’s gotten Sapnap on board by rephrasing the reality and the purpose of the torture into ‘correction’ of some made-up behavior he’s supposedly been engaging in. As if he has the time to do much of anything except desperately hold onto any semblance of control, wrestle with hunger pangs, get tortured, and spend hours upon hours unconscious from injuries! Injuries Quackity causes!

“Yep,” Quackity pops the ‘p’ obnoxiously, cutting a fleeting, sly look directly at Dream that’s replaced lightning-quick by soft-edged false concern. “Unfortunately he just won’t cooperate. Not with me or with Sam. We’ve been trying but you know Dream, he’s real f*cking stubborn. Too stubborn. He doesn’t quite get how to behave yet and that’s worrying ‘cause, I mean, how’s he supposed to get any better? We’d kinda hit the point where we’d run out of ideas, y’know how it is when you try everything at least once. Gave it some thought later though and I figured you’d have a better go at it, ex friend and all that. Then if that’s not quite it I guess we can both give it a shot?”

Sapnap nods as if this makes any kind of logical sense and hefts his sword up, its metal glinting ominously in the lava-light, “He is stubborn. Always has been,” casts a withering, disappointed once-over in Dream’s direction, “so that’s not surprising. Glad you tagged me in for this, Q. I’ll see what I can do to help you and Sam out and hopefully we’ll get some results.”

Quackity pats Sapnap’s shoulder and flashes a thankful smile, “Really appreciate you agreeing to help us out, Sap. If anybody can get through to Dream like we need to, it’s definitely you.”

And Dream almost gags at the affectionate gaze that then passes between them, the venom dripping from Quackity’s fangs a honey-sweet lure that Sapnap appears blind to. Or…he really hopes Sapnap’s blind to it. He doesn’t want to imagine Sapnap being completely and totally aware of the lie Quackity’s selling—while he hates everything about this as it is, he explicitly doesn’t want this to be some taunting performance to leave him guessing at the character of his ex-best friend even more than he already does.

He tenses when Sapnap turns decisively toward him, just missing the mocking little wave Quackity gives him over Sapnap’s shoulder. His gaze flicks between the sword and Sapnap’s face, dimly wishing he could wake up now to find this has all been a horrible nightmare inspired by potion overuse and delirium from pain.

If it’s a nightmare it’s a vivid one, Sapnap’s fist grabbing his collar and yanking him down, “I thought I told you the last time, Dream,” his ex-friend hisses, “that you were in here to get better. How are you supposed to get better if you won’t behave! Causing trouble for Sam and now Quackity too? How the hell is that behaving, Dream? And now you’ve caused enough trouble to force me to come deal with you!”

“Wait, Sapnap, wait—!” Dream blurts, composure rapidly failing and panic beginning to blacken the edges of his vision. His teeth click together as a sword point is leveled at his neck by a steady hand.

“Shut up,” Sapnap says, shaking him just enough that the blade stings as it cuts his skin. “For once in your life shut up. You think I want to listen to anything you have to say? What, you think I’d believe you? I know how you are and it’s too late to try and make excuses, Dream. You’ve caused problems again and I’m the one who’s going to fix them, again. If you didn’t want this to happen then you should’ve thought about that before you thought it’d be fun to act like a child.”

Despite the heat of the cell he feels like he’s been dunked in ice-cold water in the heart of the tundra.

Sapnap releases his ratty prison orange collar with a shove, contempt writ across his expression as Dream slams heavily against the wall. “I left you alone in hopes you’d actually behave. I hoped you wanted to get better. I see now that I shouldn’t have, since you clearly don’t want to. Well, I’m not making that mistake again.” He raises the sword, “We’re trying a new 1v1 today, Dream. This time you don’t have a shield to hide behind and you can’t run away and I? I’m not leaving until I know you’ve learned your lesson.”

Dream shrinks away from the blade and Sapnap’s vehemence both, breaths quick and shallow behind his mask as his ribs acheacheache.

The sound of clapping from Quackity’s direction sets him further on edge and makes him want to vomit, “Nicely said, Sap! With that kinda talk I think we’ll definitely get through to ‘im one way or another today. Show ‘im who’s boss!”

Desperate to stop this in any way he possibly can, to at the very least try, Dream shakily lifts one bandage-wrapped hand to grasp the sword and ignores how the metal bites into his fingers like gnawing teeth. “Please, Sapnap just wait—!”

His plea chokes off into a pained grunt before he can continue—and say what, exactly? What words could reach Sapnap when he’s made it clear he won’t listen? Dream doesn’t know and he’s a fool for even bothering—when Sapnap yanks the blade away, slicing through both bandages and palm to spray fresh blood across his mask, the white long since stained the faintest pink its enchantments can’t quite manage to keep clean. In some distant corner of his mind he registers that his cheeks are damp…that Sapnap’s features are blurred around the edges.

“I said shut up,” repeats Sapnap, sneering and rolling his eyes as he pivots into a stance Dream is familiar with from when his ex-friend got serious in a fight. “I don’t want to hear it! You had your time to talk! Now it’s time for you to listen!”

Quackity looming over him making demands for him to hand over the revive book is one thing. This? Facing new torment at Sapnap’s hands in the guise of ‘betterment’? It’s a different kind of hell.

Pathetically curling into himself, Dream winces as the blade flashes out with an expert’s precision and an executioner’s apathy, “No—!”

It slides through his chest, right between his ribs as Sapnap’s aim is true. Smoothly, as if piercing air. For a moment it doesn’t even hurt, like he can’t process what’s happened so the pain doesn’t exist. And then Sapnap twists the sword and all of Dream’s lagging pain receptors come alive at once; blinding white-hot agony tears through him so strongly he thinks he briefly blacks out—does he scream? He’s not entirely sure but his throat feels raw—coming to as he coughs blood from his mouth.

Uncaring fingers dig into his hair, wrenching his head up from where he’s gone limp against the wall gasping for air. Cold conviction dark in his gaze, Sapnap glares directly at where Dream’s eyes are behind the mask, “Oh Dream,” Sapnap drawls his name and then tsks, “we are just getting started.” The sword is ripped from his chest without warning, crimson droplets splattering across Sapnap’s unflinching face, “So don’t you dare wuss out on me this early. You wanna make yourself a problem for everyone? Stand up, then! What, you can dish it but you can’t take it? Typical.”

Sapnap’s hand claws down the side of his head to seize his neck, “I’m doing this for your own good, idiot, so shut up and learn something. You’ll thank me later.”

The sword comes down again as Quackity’s laughter rings out—

(i’m hurting you to help you; i’m killing you to help you; so just be silent and let me help you)

—and Dream

s

h

a

t

t

e

r

s

.

.

.

.

(his tears…they fall like rain)

A weight drops onto his back, abruptly jerking him up out of the nightmare’s abyss to blink blearily awake into the gloom, heart racing triple-time and drenched in sweat. He swallows, his fingers—ice-cold and lava-scorched all at once—flexing idly against the sheet fabric over and over as minutes drift by in a haze. The burbling of orange-bright heatheatheat and roughened, sharp obsidian black and the determined cruelty in Sapnap’s expression and the echoes of Quackity’s clapping and delighted laughter swirl endlessly in his overstuffed head as he lays there in the dark and tries to breathe through an unceasing tide of cottony, honey-sticky nausea.

(he tries to tell himself that sapnap would never agree to torture him like that; it was just a nightmare spurred on by his poor choice to read sapnap’s messages; he wishes he was a better liar so he might genuinely believe his own flimsy excuses)

Tense, he waits for something to hurt, for something from his nightmare to carry over into wakefulness, to drag him back down into his once-reality’s intimate relationship with pain.

But, eventually, he has to admit that whatever’s resting on his back is likely not a danger to him…rather, it’s vibrating; it’s small and warm and purring, a pleasant contrast to the awfulness of his dream. All his relief-muddled thoughts can muster is a vague disbelieving: cat?

“…Hope…?” he murmurs, mouth dry and mind caught on the spider’s web strung between safehome and dangercell; between the crushing pressure of heartsick loneliness and futile longing for the comfort of companionship as gentle as the featherlight touch of the sun’s rays on a cloudless day beneath that wide open blue sky.

A soft mrrw greets him, weight shifting to stand as four paws dig into his skin—four grounding pinpricks of force—through the blanket he’d half-shoved off and meander toward his left shoulder. He grunts a faint ouch at the unexpected pressure mostly out of habit, lacking the energy to bother moving anything except his mouth. Two ear tips pop into his line of sight, a familiar feline face peeking down at him with concern writ across drooped whiskers and a furrowed fuzzy brow.

Oh, right. Of course it’s not Hope. Hope’s dead. Killed because he loved her.

(Why did he ever, even for a single moment, think it was her? She died long before Quackity’s first visit, beaten to death by Tommy as a way to punish him for daring to get attached. And why would she choose to be here now, with him? He loved her and it got her killed. If by some miracle she was alive again, she would surely want to live someplace else. Be with anyone else who isn’t him, with someone whose love wouldn’t kill her a second time.

Although a piece of his heart is still and forever will be hers, he could never blame her for choosing life over him. Miss her dearly, yes. Blame her, no.)

It may not be Hope but despite the world still being colorless to his eyes, he’d recognize this cat anywhere. She’s a little smaller than she was, he thinks, face thinner and fur pattern a fraction too mottled. Diminished, he thinks. His fault, he thinks.

His hand twitches on the bed, a wave of fresh anguish smothered beneath drowsy melancholy, “Patches?”

…How long has it been since he last saw her? Since the rain started, he muses, recalling how she’d vanished with a displeased yelp and didn’t return. Whatever day that was. The same rain that hasn’t let up for…just how long has he lost track of time—hours, days, almost up to a week by now? Dream didn’t exactly make it a priority to keep track despite having permanent access to a clock again since…well, what’s the point? And without knowing, he can’t even begin to guess. Long enough to forget her presence, at least. Quite frankly, some deeply-rooted, bitter part of him is surprised to see her again, which he can admit may be unfair to her.

While he’s certainly been disconnected from his body and the world around him, who’s to say his murky perception of time is not in itself a trick of a spiraling mind? A mere rote continuation of that desert mirage born of unending heat and unending exhaustion and unending hunger and unending thirst—

(for freedom, for companionship, for kindness, for care; for something, anything to cling onto as time slipped through his fingers as swiftly and as carelessly as lifeblood spilled in rivers from his veins onto equally thirsty black stone)

—and that warped unreality of time that threatened to drown him while he did not live but existed in his future coffin, death’s waiting fingers curled snug around his throat. If not for Quackity’s visits and Sam’s cleanup afterward to act as morbid and yet appallingly appreciated anchors he’d have completely lost track then—of course, not that his timekeeping ability wasn’t noticeably on its way out once his clock was gone.

(but…how could he know if quackity came only once a day when time had no meaning and he had no clock or windows with which to track the passage of the sun and neither of his jailers would ever tell him the truth if he ever dared to show weakness and ask)

Losing track now is hardly shocking, is it? He has the tools at his disposal. He’s regained control and the freedom to exert it. But is his failure to utilize either a shock? No, not when so much of himself yet persists in the tight embrace of Pandora’s talons, vile in their familiarity. In their comfort.

(Death did not remove the blinders called choice and agency from his eyes; death did not remove the chains called cruelty and authority from his wrists. Death cracked the chains and shifted the blinders but he is haunted, still.

(he tells himself that he will be free; that he is free; he is always such a liar))

Time has gotten away from him again, here. Although it’s seemed endless to him, it’s possible only a few dozen hours at most have passed since he originally picked up his communicator. In which case the plaintive, twisted loop of his abandonment fears churning in head and heart and stomach is…excessive.

(always so dramatic, isn’t he?)

(but what if he isn’t; what if it really has been as long as it feels?)

(how can he know unless someone else sees fit to tell him exactly how long it’s been?)

Pointedly, four weight-bearing paws knead into his back, soothing the tension in his muscles and interrupting his whirling thoughts. One slow-blink later, a quiet mrr is pressed into his tangled hair, just behind his ear, and then Patches climbs off with dainty steps before wriggling her way under the covers to tuck herself next to him, softly chattering as she goes. Against his sweat-chilled body she’s a readily welcomed line of easy-to-cuddle heat; Dream shivers and carefully, sluggishly, turns from his position on his stomach onto his side instead, curling an arm around her. In response she wiggles even closer, stretching out to rest her head on the pillow right under his chin, where the touch of her wet nose pulls a wordless protest out of him. Her sandpaper tongue swipes over his skin a few times in apology before she settles, her purr resuming and kicking up in volume.

Fatigue mantles onto his shoulders again as he closes his eyes and sighs, Patches’s purring vibrations loud but still not enough to drown out the waterfall of rain outside. She’s here and she’s trying—is that not enough? Should he not be trying too?—and the vestiges of his ugly bitterness dissipate beneath a tidal wave of gratefulness so overwhelming that, in its aftermath, it leaves him feeling bereft.

Drained.

Empty.

Dream turns his cheek further into the pillow and draws his arm better around Patches’s body to hold her close. Tears build at the creases of his lashes as he imagines pouring all the regret and apology and love through Patches into the ghost of Hope, whom he wasn’t able to hold one last time before her death.

(he cried over her corpse; why didn’t her life matter; why did she mean less alive than dead; why did she deserve to die just to hurt him; she was killed because he loved her; a death sentence counting down from the moment he dared to let himself feel a flicker of affection, a flicker of hope)

Did she know that he loved her? That he imagined a day when he could be at peace in a little home where she could enjoy the sunshine and chase creepers and play with homespun yarn and eat all the fish he would gladly catch for her? That he would have done anything to save her? He tried but it wasn’t enough…in the end, he wasn’t enough. All he could do was avenge her and mourn her loss in silence, chest filled with glass and yet more blood staining his hands, a dull fury roaring in his ears at the unfairness of everything.

(it should have been him and not her)

If there is any kindness in the world, he prays she knew to her last breath that he loved her.

His tears spill over, warm trails that trace the lines of his face to pool beneath his cheek and dampen the fabric there.

“I love you,” he murmurs, more of an exhaled breath than well-shaped words but no less heartfelt.

I love you, he thinks. To Patches. To Hope. A confession. An apology. A goodbye.

Some ragged, gnarled thing within the confines of his ribs eases and gives way as he begins to slip into sleep. Just as he falls into darkness again, ever so faintly—ever so softly he thinks he imagines it—answering meows echo in stereo.

He blinks and there are dark inhuman limbs gently sliding a second, fuzzy blanket over him. Light, persnickety motions tuck it neatly around him with such painstaking diligence, until he’s cocooned within a pleasant pocket of heat that wards off the chill continuously creeping over him, puffs of breath misting in the air. A hushed chattering, conveying concern in every click, drifts to his ears while a little pat-pat is bestowed on his thrice-covered shoulder, and then the sound of movement draws away from the bed.

In his arms, Patches snores on with the rolling snuffles of the utterly carefree. Taking her lack of distress as a sign, rather than try to summon energy he simply doesn’t have, he only vaguely tracks its path as it settles close to the door, its rhythmic shuffling lulling him back to sleep not long after.

He blinks and there is a new, non-Patches-sized weight taking up space between him and the wall, resting within the circle of his outstretched arm. It’s solid. Comfortable. Even warmer than his missing server avatar and much larger besides, its soothing rumble the purr of the truly content. Idly shifting, a faint whiff of gunpowder tickles his nose and through the lethargy that threatens to paralyze him it sends his heart skipping, mind hitching on an impossible answer. From under his lashes he considers the blocky swathe of still-grey texture: the rise and fall of its back with sleep-slow breaths, the absence of sharp edges where it’s burrowed in, snug and supportive and at ease in his presence, and, most tellingly of all, the shameless vibrating purr of the fulfilled and the safe and the loving and the loved.

His frozen muscles relax, acrid fear dispelling into the aether. Just a normal, non-hybrid…well, perhaps not normal creeper, all things considered.

But.

Not Sam, it could never be Sam. When would Sam ever be content enough to purr in his presence?

Blurry, sepia-toned memories emerge out of the fog to form scraps of the Community House in the background, unclear faces gathered around a campfire as the stars shine down from overhead. Those unclear faces with their unclear words and their unclear laughter and the surprise interruption of a purr leaving Sam’s chest, his hands fluttering as he describes an idea, his happiness too much to contain in silence. The trailing off as he notices the change in their attention and the hacking cough that cuts off the sound, face mottled by mortification. Sam’s groan when they tease him, palm clapped over his eyes and a begrudging huff loosed at an arm slung over his shoulder, his affection met in kind by bodies not built to mimic but which were no less vocal.

…That was the last time he saw Sam be happy enough to purr, glowing with his own pleased contentment even when the man was so embarrassed he’d vanished into his workshop for a week afterward.

I helped shape the world in which Sam feels safe, he’d thought, honored but humble as the community—as the family—he was trying to build created something greater than itself.

It was sweet, that victory.

Sour, now. Perhaps the sourest victory has ever been and ever will be. But…once, sweet.

Maybe Sam has purred since, somewhere far from the Community House and from him. Maybe he hasn’t. Dream will never know, not when he lost Sam a long time ago. Not when the idea of seeing Sam again is a leaden, poisonous thing clumsily wrapped in hate and fear and a pervasive sense of small-voiced, devastated (whywhywhyhowhowhow) betrayal.

All he has now is a parody of Sam’s shape. One which has no withered history to keep it from expressing kindness to him. A creeper that chooses to offer comfort in the form of gentle companionship and the solace of a safe, happy purr as Dream presses his face into the familiar gunpowder scent and re-welcomes oblivion’s embrace.

He blinks and the room is dark.

He blinks and the room is gray.

He blinks and the absent ache in an empty stomach fades, pulse pounding in his head.

He blinks and he’s burning up.

He blinks and his blankets are pooled in a tangle around his feet, a warm body draped close to his ankles.

He blinks and he’s freezing.

He blinks and his sluggish, questing hand doesn’t quite cooperate in grasping either blanket.

He blinks and tries not to give in to the nausea nipping at his heels, valiantly ignoring the discomfiting vulnerability of baring his face toward the shadowed ceiling as the world spins in a vortex around him, doing his best not to move.

He blinks and finds himself scrunched into a tight, familiar huddle in the corner, face pressed against his knees and heat radiating from his forehead that feels downright scalding even through multiple layers of fabric; trembling fingers trace the soft surface of his sheets over and over, the dichotomy between his frazzled expectation for rough obsidian and the smooth cloth grounding despite the bubbling crackle of lava that caresses his ears.

He blinks and stares at the wall, bruises imprinted beneath his eyes as the dark slowly creeps in.

He blinks and focuses on breathing through the tightness in his chest, lids closed as light slowly blooms.

He blinks and there are cool hands touching his flushed cheek and threading through his sweaty hair, brushing back his bangs. Tenderly, kindly. A rumbling voice speaks what sounds like his name through ten layers of swaddling cotton and the ever-falling backdrop of rain. A familiar voice, a trusted voice. One he turns into with a relieved exhale, seeking the sanctuary it drapes delicately around him like a veil.

XD…? he ventures, muzzy with confusion but grateful, half-distracted as the line of heat splayed against his back snuffles a sleepy hiss and settles.

“Oh Dream, oh my favored and my chosen. Your very soul cries. Did I—? Ah, I see. I may have jumped the gun, as it were. I wanted you to know but not like this.” The hand on his cheek lifts, tap-tap-taps, pause, a muted clack, the hand returns. “Never like this. It was not my intention for you to be so thusly hurt but I suppose you are in possession of a much softer heart than I. My sincerest apologies, dearest admin of mine; I am clearly still young enough to make poor decisions and harmful mistakes. Well, I cannot say that Patches has not done her part in her own way but I still carry the majority of the fault for an ill-thought plan. So rest, Dream. I will be here to take care of you.”

A small, protesting whine leaves his throat when the hands disappear, voice moving away, its accompanying black and white and grey shapes blurry as they pass out of the range of his cracked lashes. Weariness drags his eyes closed again while he listens to the whisper of cloth and footsteps and feathers rustling in the room, tension receding like the tide.

He stirs at the press of a damp cloth against his forehead, which then begins to gingerly clean his face with even, steady swipes. Grief-stricken yearning constricts his ribs—he feels so pathetically young and so pathetically small; a lonely child desperate to have someone, anyone take the burden of caring off of his shoulders onto their own.

…When was the last time someone chose to take care of him? Chose to even offer? Chose to push past his awkward, fumbling deflections and do it anyway? When was the last time someone looked at him as something other than strong and terrifying and unbreakable and then chose to treat him like just another flawed and fragile human being? Chose to realize that for all his independence he is still so very young with all the mistakes to match?

(understood that he is not an all-knowing and all-powerful monolith seeking to destroy but to protect, desperation and loneliness and grief for his home driving him to make decisions he would have rather never felt the need to make at all)

(only punz and ranboo chose him, believed him, saw him)

(no one else asked; no one else wanted to listen; long before he staged the ‘finale’ dozens of readied swords and schemes looked to tear him down; in what world would he choose to allow himself to be vulnerable in front of people so pleased to have forced silence upon him, stealing his ability to be truly honest as they cared not what his truth was; people who gleefully accepted the easy answer…even those he thought knew him best ultimately chose to ignore the glaring inconsistencies in favor of the easier acceptance of what he did and said at face value)

(…of course he made use of their choices, what else did he have if he did not try to eke out some control by doing so; should he lay down arms and try to speak from the heart it would not matter; their weapons thirsted for his blood and his words would never reach their closed ears)

(it was become the villain or die)

(and dream did not want to die to please them)

(but yet he did; in the end he did; three times he did)

(this terrible bitterness in his poisoned veins is an old friend)

(a god and a server are all he has left; the last ones who want him…want him)

Prying one eye open with herculean effort, he peers through a sheen of tears that smear his vision at the kneeling god who is choosing him. “…‘D?” he slurs, X coming out as esh. Uncurling one arm from its spot under his chin, he slides his hand across the sheets to rest the tips of his fingers on the god’s sleeve. He wishes his mouth would cooperate or that he had the energy to well and truly express just how thankful he is for XD, but he doesn’t. All he can do is reach out and mangle XD’s name, heart aching with a boundless, overwhelming love impossible to articulate.

“Dream,” XD softly returns, tender thumbs and damp cloth wiping away his tears and hand moving to cover his own. “Rest. I will be here, I promise.”

And Dream trusts him when he says so.

“…‘k,” he breathes, letting his eye fall shut again.

There is rain outside, still.

But there are gentle hands and gentle company and the gentle sunlight’s touch of shelter and the gentle flutter of a bird’s wing called cherished.

Under the willingly extended aegis of such gentleness, how could he do anything else but allow himself to rest?

He blinks and feels refreshed, clothes and sheets and pillowcase and blankets faintly tinged with a pleasant citrus aroma and clean and clear of sweat.

He blinks and finds himself propped upright in a nest of blankets and pillows, hands helping his uncooperative, leaden limbs balance a bowl of mushroom soup in his palms. His stomach weakly rumbles, hunger a distant, murky concept that flares brighter and more defined as the warm, earthy scent hits his nose and no nausea rises to meet it.

A spark of useless pride simmers, balking at his own helplessness. Breathing in onetwothree and breathing out onetwothree, he fills his lungs with the smell of food far more important than meaningless pride and calmly lays down a mental towel to extinguish its embers.

Dream accepts the aid, slow and sleepy as he takes small sips of soup, leaning against the pillows and the creeper body so kindly supporting his right elbow. It’s simple but no less delicious, its warmth spreading from his fingertips to his toes to the shell of his ears, filling and easy on his empty stomach. He manages to get through a third of it before he has to shake his head, bowl taken from his hands and replaced by a cup of water he obediently drains.

XD’s low voice is a soothing backdrop he has no energy to try and parse, drifting in the sounds of words and the furnace’s quiet crackling and his creeper companion’s hissy snores.

Cup run dry, it too is taken, his hands falling with muted paps to his lap, idly plucking at the feathered edges of the gray-to-his-sight blanket he’d been gifted earlier.

The bed dips next to him, fingers combing through his hair and then methodically beginning to part and weave what he thinks is a braid as his eyes close, a content doze stealing piece-by-piece over him.

He blinks and belatedly realizes his hands are sore, flexing over and over while he cradles one big creeper paw in his palms, rhythmically kneading the toe beans. Stopping to let himself heal the ache is the smart move, probably, but there’s a delighted purr pressed against his chest that radiates approval, and a smaller purring ball tucked behind his head and it’s…grounding. Calming.

…What’s a little pain compared to that?

He blinks and the room is furnace-lit again, echoing low-volume synths filling the space between the crackle-snap of burning coal and XD’s storyteller’s cadence. Patches is laid under his arm, her legs stretched out akimbo and thin line of drool pooled below her furry cheek; she mrrps cutely when he runs a knuckle over her head and scritches lightly behind one ear. Gaze flicking past her, he watches the god’s fluttering gestures as some anecdote or another is relayed from where XD is carelessly sprawled on the floor, back to the bed, a kernel of fondness popping to life in his chest. There’s no way XD isn’t aware that Dream’s been too out of it to actually listen, but the god is still choosing to keep him company regardless, making good on his promise.

Ever so faintly, ever so easy to miss, color begins to bloom again as he hides a tired smile in the crown of Patches’s head and eases into sleep.

He blinks and the room is cool and dark, a restlessness itching at his bones that has him toss and turn, unable to find relief from the insistent urge to do something at odds with his own sleepy-heavy weariness. For a while he lays on his back and glares at the ceiling, wooden beams painted a subdued green from his glowing eyes as he counts through several dozen sheep in every wool color, recites as many crafting recipes as he can remember offhand, and deliberately drags up the memory of an extremely dry academy lecture on syntax minutiae…all to no avail.

“Ugh…I just wanna go back to sleep,” he sighs, flopping over to face the wall with an irritated huff, flinching when a braided strand of hair swings over and thwacks into his brow. Despite his best efforts it’s too heavy to blow aside, compelling him to unearth an arm to brush it back behind his ear so it won’t keep awkwardly pulling at his scalp.

Once his arm’s finally free—the twists of his sheets too close and under him turning it into a whole thing, ripping him further away from blessed unconsciousness—he pauses, squinting at what little he can make out in the nighttime gloom with only his eye-glow to see by.

Huh, interesting. At some point gloves were tugged onto his hands to trap heat in…which he slept straight through, apparently. They aren’t his own gloves, either, as they’re not the same soft, smooth leather he’s used to feeling on his palms. Curious and bemused, he pushes himself up just enough to free his other arm and drops down again, reaching out to trace the similarly-feathered, amateurish quality to his blanket. It’s hard to tell given his eyes give off green light but he thinks the material is, in fact, itself a light green with white trimming…glancing at the blanket bunched up below his elbow, he finds it much the same in color.

Another homemade gift, clumsily made but so, so earnest.

When’s the last time someone made something like this just for him—simple, practical, freely crafted and given, expecting nothing in return—just because they could and they wanted to?

(ranboo once brought him a pie with a haughty tsk and purposeful guile as he commented on dream’s scrawniness; dream had been so incredulous that he’d then been forced to gape as ranboo then pulled out a chest filled to the brim with baked goods; to keep you from withering away, ranboo had said, solemn as a funeral dirge, hands clasped over his chest and a mourner’s wetness to his eyes carefully calculated not to fall and burn his skin; punz’s stunned silence broke with a physical crack preceding his swift crouch, arms wrapped around his head as he wheezed into his knees and couldn’t form words other than vague oh sh*t and dream you and ‘boo f*ckin’ hell; it was funny, then…it’s not quite so funny now, but he remembers the blazing warmth of his own gratitude once his spluttering stopped, unable to deny the truth hidden in ranboo’s comment; dream was not, after all, taking care of himself as he should’ve been, much as he tried to pretend otherwise)

(…punz, he recalls, once spent a week poring over various enchanting tomes and a spool of thread with intent focus typically reserved for battling the dragon; asking got dream shushed like he was being a distraction, so he’d thrown his hands up and decided to leave punz to it; much later, punz ferreted him out where he was sleepily refreshing the enchantments on some backup gear for the three of them and dream had been too surprised at the dark circles under punz’s eyes to protest his arm being snagged and punz’s fingers tying something around his wrist; he’d then blinked at the green and white braided bracelet shimmering faintly with enchants that he didn’t recognize, flicking his gaze to punz’s similarly shimmering medallion and then tired, satisfied, sharp blue eyes; did you…fuse enchants, he managed to ask, impressed by punz’s clever mind; for a little peace of mind, punz replied with a pointed raise of a brow before wandering off; …the bracelet is safe far from the prison, at least)

(he misses them both)

Dream presses his glove-covered palm over his eyes and sniffs, breathing shakily through the urge to tear up and cry. He waits it out until he wrangles together enough composure to finally move to take hold of the braid, lifting it away from his face. This close, his white hair shines a deeper verdant hue, fingers tracing the plaited curves to reach the bottom of the braid where he finds what’s weighted it down so much it’s uncomfortably yanking his hair at that angle.

There’s a metallic charm woven into or attached to the hair tie, too small to figure out the full design by touch and a bit too close to parse without proper lighting. Even still, as he turns it in his hand, there is a pearl of some kind emitting a soft end-purple glow anchored to some part of the charm.

“…At least it’s not XD’s halos,” he mutters, twirling it between his fingers and then tucking the whole braid gently behind his ear like he’d been meaning to from the start.

That all done, he’s still far too awake for his liking, jittery with the need to be useful after spending so long doing nothing but laying in bed. In the middle of the night his options are rather limited as far as what he can do to be productive and tire himself out, and while he’s awake he’s not awake, so a cheeky little jaunt into the dark, rainy outdoors is hardly what he’s looking for either. Which isn’t getting into the chiding he would be in for by XD and Patches both if they catch him being reckless just because he can’t sleep.

Although…he tilts his head, considering. He could enact a force sleep command on himself for sweet, instant unconsciousness. But…that’s not very productive, is it? Well, not for anything besides the blissfully satisfying lure of not being awake right now.

With a tsk, he flicks out a gesture to pop open a mini admin panel that hovers close to his hand. If he can’t sleep without a command use, the least he can do is perform a bit of deep-level maintenance work on the server code like the admin he’s supposed to be. And, if nothing else, that’s usually enough to sap all his energy and make him want to crawl in the bed; since he’s already in bed, hopefully it’ll exhaust him enough to fall asleep again after a while.

Dream ignores the tempting variety of options, the suggestions log, and even the clock to activate the most literal administrator mode that allows him to burrow directly into the core of the server’s code, waiting as every essential and nonessential line of code unfurls in the window.

He frowns at several clouds of red that fly by, brows furrowing. It’s not the typical error-syntax red but one that jogs his memory, the crimson flickering with black particles that almost succeed in camouflaging the red in standard dark mode greys. Scrolling the window until he reaches the closest smear of red to the top, he studies the junk code that seems to serve no actual purpose. Just by itself it looks like a collection of syntax mistakes and commented-out nonsense, as if the writer couldn’t quite decide how they wanted to structure their idea but kept their initial code rather than delete it.

Normal, almost. Except for the hazy red aura around each letter, number, and symbol that pulses in and out. And the glitchy static. Even without those glaring issues the text makes no sense, looking more like a keysmash instead of any language he can recognize. All of that is suspicious enough, but….

Primarily, it’s the same color as the virus XD removed from his code after he died. The one that placed scales over his eyes, that diminished him, just as it cut him off from his admin abilities, his server, Patches, XD himself.

“And it’s left echoes,” he seethes, “sneaky little bastard. Trying to hide, huh? Doing who knows what in the background—something? Nothing? Who knows!” He pinches the bridge of his nose, scowling, “…XD got all of it out of me, but I doubt he went core-deep during his server-side sweep. With the safety net missing here, god or not, it’d be way too easy for him to accidentally cause a catastrophic failure if he did. Once I was cleared he probably stopped after purging the partitions, which means it’s left roots on this level. Lingering.”

Suddenly wide awake and furious—

(terrified of it affecting him again if he leaves it to fester; scared to be remade anew at his most helpless and his most lonely)

—his fingers spark with neon-green as he reaches out to shunt the infected code straight into a quarantined partition that snaps onto the main panel, its edges warbling with soft white divine-lite power.

Dream wants it all out.

Scroll.

Shunt.

Scroll.

Shunt.

Scroll.

Shunt.

He startles as hands cover his own mid-fervent motion, power sputtering and aching eyes blinking owlishly at the screens. A muted orange hue has stolen into the room, meaning it must be morning, which triggers the abrupt realization that oh, he’s exhausted. Kind of dizzy, actually. So exhausted, in fact, that he can’t even verbalize his protest when XD moves the panels away from him and the frown he tries instead barely causes his lips to twitch downward.

Fingers run through his hair and then a cool palm rests over his eyes, soothing the soreness where his lids close and stick, refusing to reopen. “Honestly,” the god huffs, “go to sleep, Dream.”

“Vi’s,” he counters mulishly, flopping a hand toward where the screens disappeared over his shoulder. “Gotta ge’ i’ ou’, ‘D.”

XD hums in question and tugs lightly at the charm tied to Dream’s braid, “Hm? Oh? I see. Yes, the roots.”

The god’s voice dips low, ominous, exuding a threat so dark that most sane people would immediately scurry for the nearest Nether portal network to get the hell away. If he had the energy, Dream would curl toward it to bask—a pleased cat sheltered in the cocoon of XD’s ire—because the importance of the task and his own fury is met in kind by his god.

Is understood.

“In hiding right under our noses, hm? Well, that certainly will not do. We cannot allow this parasite to continue hitching a ride in the server uncontested, can we?” XD tsks, nails clicking on the bedside table with a war drum’s rhythm.

Dream weakly snaps and fumbles a clumsy thumbs-up in agreement, startling again when his lifted hand is caught and set gently on the bedspread. His sheets and blankets are then pulled back over his chest to cover him, head briefly raised as his pillow is turned over to the cold side. Quite frankly, the sigh of relief that explodes out of his mouth at feeling the chill on his overheated cheek teeters on the verge of obscene—a mangled thankful blessing aimed at XD’s name ricochets from his thoughts out into the aether.

Of course, since said god is less than a foot away…it’s a good thing that Dream’s too tired to bother with genuine embarrassment when XD is rude enough to laugh at him, “Oh, and what is this? Such gratitude from my favored! How flattering. My chosen, you are quite welcome.”

“Fu’ o’f, ‘D,” he groans, halfheartedly trying to smother himself in his pillow. Is it too late to trade this god in for another one?

“Nah,” the god rebuts, ever loquacious and refined as befits his station. Mature, too, as he then flicks Dream’s nose, “You are very much stuck with me, my admin. Now, be so kind as to grant me permission to deal with this…pest while you sleep.”

Since when did chaos god XD need permission from him to do anything?

“D’n ne’ i’…?” Dream points out, displeased that the god keeps making him talk when he’s seconds away from elusive, blessed sleep.

XD heaves a dramatic sigh, “Fair point. Perhaps I do not actually. However, it is your domain—the very heart of your server and thus you. Although we may share the same outlook on eliminating this virus and permission may therefore be implicit, I believe it is still polite to ask permission beforehand. Besides which, forgetful admin of mine, I am respecting your decree that rescinded my permissions after the last time.”

Last time? For a second he has literally no idea what in all the realms XD is referring to and then it clicks, his ears instantly going scarlet in remembered mortification. Right, last time. That time, of course—how could he ever forget? They should maybe not have a repeat if at all possible.

Giving up on forming words to try and speak, he sends a very pointed thought in the god’s direction emphasizing one time, XD.

…Strange how, afterward, he gets the sense that he did unlatch a door that had been tightly closed between them.

Not a heartbeat later, the air in the room buzzes with a hunter’s keen delight as XD’s feathers rustle in amusem*nt, “As you say, Dream. One time.”

Considering the questionable sincerity of that acknowledgment, Dream immediately has every regret. But that’s for future Dream to worry about since present Dream conks out so fast he barely registers XD’s godly aura spiking as the virus hunt starts.

He blinks and sees the messy-haired Dream in the heat-fogged mirror placidly copy him, shoulders slumped and limbs heavy as he moves through the routine to clean his face and his teeth. This is the first time he can recall being in the bathroom with any clarity but he must have been in and out several times; the motions are as familiar as the weariness and the lurking god keeping an eye on him from the other room. Familiar in its own way, too, is the creeper holding some of his weight by resting against the back of his knees.

Absently, he reaches down to pat the lovely thing on the head in thanks for its help and quirks a smile at the follow-up purr as it bumps into his palm. Obliging its desire for more pets, he gives it attention until it emits a series of grateful hisses and resettles out of petting range.

Classic pet behavior, really. Pet them until they decide they’re done and that’s that.

Huffing a fond laugh, Dream curls his fingers around the edge of the sink and co*cks his head at his reflection. Watches the splay of his noticeably longer hair follow the motion, the wispy curls he’s used to mostly gone flat from added length and being smushed in his sleep. His little side braid, too—freshly plaited, he notes—swings, its charm glinting in the bathroom light. The charm’s details continue to elude him, fog and condensation on the mirror equally as obstructive as his own drowsiness blurring his vision.

How curious, then, that he swears he somehow feels noticeably lighter.

Both him and his reflection squint accusingly at each other and then shrug in unison, smothering a yawn into his fist as he turns to stumble back to bed, flicking the light off after an awkward slap at the switch. It’s only thanks to his guide creeper that he doesn’t slam shoulder-first into the doorjamb, clumsy and uncoordinated with his eyes already half-shut. He detours on his route to zero in on XD, who’s perched on the bedside table surrounded by floating code cores and admin panels, thunking his forehead against the god’s collarbone.

XD oofs quietly at Dream’s less-than-gentle impact, the momentary stun followed by raising an arm to wrap around his shoulders and cradle the back of his neck. Sleepily affectionate, Dream pats the god’s robe and then moves to step away toward the inviting siren’s lair called bed. His attempt to dive into his sheets is derailed by XD’s fist snagging his hoodie, freshly spawned-in cup of water held out for consumption with raised brows.

The yes, mother rests on the tip of his tongue yet goes unspoken, the tiny bit of sass not worth the wasted energy when he knows the god has a point…but hydration, ugh. XD’s beatific smile receives the brunt of the withering glare Dream sends over the rim of the cup as he drains it and, rather pointedly, despawns it himself before he finally crawls into bed and yanks the covers over his head.

“Goodnight, Dream,” XD calls, chuckling when Dream’s only response is an irritated grunt.

He slowly blinks into awareness and finds the world no longer halfway monochrome but notably vibrant and far less dark than it had been, hands stilling where he’s apparently been combing the feathers of XD’s wings in a calming rhythm. There’s a pleased croon vibrating out from XD’s chest that slowly fades as Dream’s movements come to a stop; his tingling fingers twitch in place as colors bloom across the god patiently standing in front of him to allow him better access, swirling away to infuse the space with life anew. A quick sweep of his gaze around the room reveals there is grey lingering in corners and on edges and the rain hasn’t miraculously stopped—there are shadows that remain and rainfall drumming on the roof, still.

All the same, improvement is undeniable when Dream feels awake. Alert. Present. Like an actual person, again.

“Good morning, Dream,” XD quietly greets, the last of his crooning petering out on the warble of Dream’s name. Wings flutter and mantle so the god can pivot on one heel and lean slightly down to observe him, “Are you awake, now?”

Dream nods, squinting past XD at the…yeah, no that is in fact a jukebox plopped in the corner of the ceiling. At least he wasn’t hallucinating that he heard far a while ago, a small mercy amidst the battering of an endless cycle of sleep-wake-sleep. Taking a moment to process this new, unexpected addition to the house’s decor, he finally says out loud, “I believe so.” A tinge of incredulity sticks to the words, which come out muffled due to him scrubbing his hands over his face as he speaks.

“Sorry,” he blurts, swift to drop his eyes from the slight frown that gets him in favor of beginning to pick at his nails. “That was…bad.”

XD exhales evenly, hands reaching out to lift Dream’s head up, “I told you before, did I not? That you are allowed your grief and your anger. Was this,” the god’s intent to absently gesture with his hands is stymied by Dream’s cheeks in his palms, the awkward pause turned into a vague wing motion instead, “sequence of events ideal? No, perhaps it was not. However, as you are aware and as I am aware, you have not had the space nor the time to well and truly grieve. And yes,” XD emphasizes at whatever expression Dream is wearing, “you have a right to your grief. You have every right to your grief. Those are your feelings and no one else’s. What you have been through is yours to process in whatever way suits you best. Perhaps this was not what you would have chosen, but…it has also served its purpose well, has it not?”

Has it? Did his who-knows-how-long loss of energy and time achieve something meaningful when he wasn’t looking?

“What d’you mean?” Dream prompts when XD appears to trail off into deep thought, confused and unsure what he might be missing.

“I say this with all due affection, Dream: you hold on too tight, particularly to the very things that do nothing but hurt you. As much as I may wish you did not, so you might have been spared the pain you have felt, I would still not change this about you. It made you Dream,” the god’s grip alters so he can run his thumb along the crease between Dream’s brows. “You care. So easily, so deeply. A blessing and a curse, as such things inevitably are. And it has scarred you, as such things inevitably do. Tell me truly, would you have chosen to grieve this openly on your own? Might you have decided to burn out the roots—to let go—in spite of the several dozen wounds you would need to cleanse in order to be free?”

His tetchy rebuttal dies on his tongue, wilting beneath the piercing stare XD levels at him as his shoulders slump. When it’s put that way…. “No,” he admits, honesty clawed out of him so harshly that he briefly tastes iron between his teeth.

He doesn’t lack the self-awareness to know all his talk about leaving things behind and living for himself is, at the moment, a facade. A strong one, an easily believed one. One built on a glacially show mirror to reality, words and thoughts proclaiming his desired independence vehement and yet hesitant, skittish. Reluctant. Cut the wire, he tells himself—he must cut the wire, surely it’s as simple as that? Except, he can’t bring himself to move, to commit, his very core rebelling even as he, again, knows better. If he doesn’t cut the wire it will continue to strangle him, the circlet of bruises permanent on his skin, his heart, his soul.

Perhaps someday in the future he might have sat down and worked through the tangled web of his feelings…let himself process everything in detail with clear eyes and a clearer head. Time would, as it so often does, prevail over his reticence given enough of it passed to temper the hurt caused by old wounds. Eventually, this might indeed become his truth as days turned into weeks into months into years into decades; bitter, poisoned memories gone hazy around those jagged edges, their sting softened thus that he may regard their contents head-on without flinching. In the here and now, however, existing as he has been in what feels like an endless, aimless dream? When both his imprisonment and his death are still so terribly fresh? So vivid as to inspire nightmares and the contemplation, however brief, of embarking on a fool’s errand for the sake of happiness he does not owe? He still marvels at waking up without pain, without hunger, with sunlight and comfort and a tangible freedom…is it any wonder he hasn’t yet taken that final step of his own volition?

No, his most probable course of action with no pressure from external factors is simply to say he will and then not.

(is that not the easiest path he is already so accustomed to walking; pretending he’s fine in the same breath that he’s consumed by the spiraling, incessant cognizance that he is not)

Which, as he is very much aware, is antithetical to his ability to actually move on. Whatever pretty words he uses to craft a nice-sounding lie fall laughably short of genuine action taken on his part to follow through.

Just saying something does not make it true.

(i don’t give a f*ck about spirit, he hears echo in his own voice; adamant and dismissive and mournful and angry; of course xd has needed to press at the cracks of his conviction—dream has long been a liar)

Too much of a coward to slam the book closed, he thinks, more than a little humorless. Oh, the irony in his loud, mocking rejection of attachments when he’s the most attached of them all. I hold too tight to the things that hurt me, huh. Well. I suppose that’s hardly a surprise…I never do know when to let go.

The staccato drum of XD’s fingers against his cheek yanks his attention back to the present, where it is impossible to look away from those bright green eyes that are a mirror of his own. “At your core, Dream, you hope,” the god quirks a smile feathered at the corners with sadness, “you are selfish, same as I when it comes to who and what you care most for, but you are motivated most keenly by a hopefulness. An idealism. You do not wish to toss aside what may one day return to you, no…you want to ever hold it close. To offer it safe harbor if and when it chooses to settle at your shore once more. To you, a burnt bridge is not an ending. There is water to cross or a chasm to scale which may seem insurmountable to most, and yet you see how to close those temporary gaps in the landscape. How to rebuild what has been burnt.”

…It’s true. Dream hates the idea of giving up, of admitting something is not fixable no matter how much time or effort is invested in fixing it. Absolutes are terrifying—what if he’s wrong, oh, but what if he’s right? By virtue of being alive people make mistakes and what kind of person is he if he ignores the reality of growth and change to deny forgiveness or reconciliation or betterment?

If he closes himself off in self-defense and will never change his mind?

…A person less hurt and happier in the long run, no doubt.

XD lifts a hand from his face to poke his forehead, “You know, logically, that you should allow some bridges to remain burnt,” and Dream well and truly does, since this is a fact he cannot deny when the barest whisper of Sam and Quackity and Sapnap, now is enough to send him trembling, ill and pathetically nervous. “That some bridges should be not just burnt but utterly destroyed. Perhaps many bridges, even, considering how…poorly you have been treated by those content to steal your home from you,” the god appends, a wrinkle of distant irritation flitting across his expression.

“However,” the hand poking Dream’s forehead moves to instead tap at Dream’s chest, “while you also know that you should allow this emotionally, those same emotions reject the very concept of prioritizing yourself first. Your heart is far too kind and far too selfless to do anything but quietly allow yourself to weather an avalanche of hate and pain if that should mean those you care for may be safe and happy. Admirable in some ways, yes, but quite detestable in others. Once, you stood your ground without theatrics to position yourself as an easily-abused lightning rod. You were no less kind, of course, but more steadfast. You knew your own value and did not let yourself be dissuaded otherwise in the face of opposition, unapologetically and comfortably yourself. Where is that Dream? Asleep? Dead? Buried beneath the weight of people who do not deserve you?”

There is a ringing in his ears as XD concludes, whisper-soft, “You matter far more than you have allowed yourself to in a very long time. Martyrdom does not become you, Dream.”

“XD,” he chokes out, a weak reprimand and weaker demand crammed in those paltry two syllables.

“Sacrifice did not suit me,” murmurs the god, somberly, a quicksilver dark cast over his features there-and-gone. “It does not suit you. As nobly intended as it often is, all it brings is pain and regret and ruin. Destroying yourself for people that do not care for you…and even for those that do…it is not worth it and it never will be, no matter what lies we are told or what lies we tell ourselves.”

Dream is struck silent as he watches XD visibly get lost in memories the god then, after a long moment stretches out uninterrupted between them, physically shakes off. Such philosophical trauma-adjacent musing is definitely not the norm, and hearing it causes something held tight in his chest to ease; he’s not the only one to understand—he’s aware he can’t be the only one, it’d be statistically improbable if he was—the ugliness inherent in sacrifice.

Before he died he’d gritted his teeth and maintained the course, praying that the suffering he thought he could handle would be worth it in the end. What else, after all, did he have? It was far too late for him to turn around…in truth, it’d been far too late for far too long. Faltering, changing, stopping? That was just asking to get himself hunted down and killed if he even dared to ‘turn a new leaf,’ as it were. If he dared to no longer play the role of scapegoat and lightning rod so the server could pretend all their problems were his doing and his alone he would be crucified for upsetting the status quo. And so…with certain death looming at his back he kept going, but for all his worn optimism and projected confidence he was only human so he had his doubts, fear’s skeletal fingers hooked into his shoulders down to the bone.

This self-destruction will not be worth it, fear crooned against the shell of his ear. They will not be worth it. You know this, Dream. Don’t you? You will suffer for nothing and where will that leave you? Right back where you started. Alone. Hated. Useless.

And did fear not present to him truth’s bouquet with its blackened roses and blood-red ribbon?

Throughout everything he did he clung fiercely onto his hopes, but hope is a fragile, delicate thing to be nurtured and when it’s battered, broken, and locked in darkness it withers, shatters, dies.

XD abruptly sighs, wings drooping in self-recrimination and hands falling away as the god turns half-toward the window, “Your care and your hope are not failings, much as I suppose I have thusly implied. They are strengths which I…envy,” XD’s gaze drops to stare at his palms, “I cared, once. Hoped. I do still. But faintly, like echoes of what I once felt so strongly—a distance, there, in the space between how I feel and the depth of it. I am…relearning,” vibrant green eyes flicker over to him, then up through the glass toward the overcast sky, “and it is…difficult. Gratifying, but difficult. I told you once that I never wanted to connect with any admin, content in my domain and ambivalent besides.”

“I remember,” Dream says, thinking back to that weird week of suddenly being chosen by the chaos god. “You immediately lived up to your title when you showed up with zero warning, picked me a split second after you arrived, used your most ominous tone to tell me that, and then bounced.”

Considering there are hundreds of tomes, essays, think pieces, message boards, you name it, discussing the extremely low likelihood of XD ever deigning to do more than utilize mortals as entertainment, Dream’s surprise upon meeting XD and realizing the god was choosing him was nearly its own supernova. Granted, the baffled awe mostly faded after the dozen or so times afterward the god showed up to spirit him away someplace regardless of time, his schedule, or even his state of dress.

Smirking faintly with a haughty sniff, XD preens, “If I know one thing, it is drama.” He coughs into a fist, sobering, “My point, which has gotten away from me, is that you care. Enough that even I wish to try and do the same if I can. I need you to understand, well and truly to the heart of you, that I do not regret you and that I do not want to change you. I do not want a you crafted to appeal to my tastes—a blank, accommodating slate for my enjoyment. I want you as you are, as you wish to be, as you will be. Would I rather you have more of my traits to protect you from preventable hurts? Yes, because I would rather you not hurt at all. Would I force you or demand you to emulate me to spare you said hurt? No, of course not. I do not want something shaped like you that acts like me, I want you. I want Dream.”

Dream presses his hands over his burning cheeks, teeth biting the inside of his lip. His chest aches as he blinks back tears under the heavy weight of XD’s untempered, sunlight-golden regard.

“That blessing, that curse…is one which has done you no favors, worsening in tandem with your admin status as it drove you to prioritize the bonds of your server members over yourself. Bonds then poised to do yet more harm as they are linked to the core of you and your instincts bade you to ensure their health and happiness,” the god gestures and Dream’s communicator pops into one open palm, frown leveled at the device. “I misstepped when I left this for you, to my own shame.”

Pointedly ignoring it to focus on XD’s face, Dream musters up the words to ask the questions he’s had since he saw it laying on the table. “Why did you think it was a good idea to give it to me? Why not just leave it at the prison? Or, if you thought I needed it, why didn’t you keep it until you thought I was ready? Surely you know what we’re both like!”

Like an undercooked noodle the god wilts, reaching blindly for the his regalia’s hood to pull over his head and mournfully whine. “I meant to leave it in the chest,” he claims, kicking said chest open and tossing the comm unit back in with all the huffiness of an angsty teen, “where you would see it but not be surprised by it. Its presence perhaps still unwanted but…softened by the more desirable supplies, rather than it being tucked beneath your mask as if a trap primed to spring. It would be in plain sight from the start and entirely your own choice whether or not you engaged with it.” XD crosses his arms over his chest, blowing out a breath into his bangs the same way Dream always does, “And as to why I did not keep it myself…be honest: would you have ever thought to ask even if I told you I had it? I suppose I was counting on your curiosity to entice you to pick it up at all.”

No…he very likely wouldn’t have wanted to touch it or ask for it if not for his swooping mood and lack of distraction at the time.

“Did you know?” Dream wonders, voice small, watching XD keenly over the tips of his fingers where they dig into his cheeks.

XD’s attention moves from the window to where Dream sits, affect smoothing to a serious mien, “I did not know, no. Suspect, yes. I…somehow, I miscalculated. I wanted to nurture your hopes. Remind you. Give you a choice. All by providing you with a line of communication that could some day be open. I wanted you to see not all was lost and to that end I should have been more vigilant. The precise breadth of their hatred eluded me, even if I knew you might find the negatives to outshine the positive I was trying to show you. I could have sanitized what had been said, perhaps, but I also did not want to lie, however pretty and pleasant. My carelessness hurt you,” the god bows his head, “in my quest to bring you light I left you in darkness. I regret that, I do.”

Dream swallows around the lump in his throat shaped like an automatic I forgive you and rasps, “…You said it served its purpose.”

The god nods once, raising his head to trail his gaze across Dream’s face, “You grieved. Alone, at first. Another regret of mine…I should have been here. I or Patches or the both of us. You should not have had to be alone. But you were, and you grieved. Your hurts spilled out of you, soul-deep and core-deep. Throughout all of your mourning…as much as it hurt, you dug out the roots that would prevent the weary earth of your heart to heal. A necessity for the future turned into something that you achieved all on your own despite the paralyzation of your grief. Tell me, do you not feel lighter now?”

Does he…? He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, casting his mind down a lineup of familiar and not-so-familiar faces. Fully expecting the thunderous, nauseating mix of anxiety and contrary possessiveness and bitterness and knotted affection, his brows knit together at how…muted his emotions are. The bitterness and anxiety and even a tinge of affection exist still, but distant. Muffled. Faraway. Ignorable. New degrees of separation as spread out as a spider’s web strung out across the wide expanse of a worldscar.

Unanchored bonds he’s willingly laid aside, somehow.

Curious, he opens his eyes and gestures to pull up his code-core, lips parting at the enchantment-purple armor that now encases it completely. Each thread that connects him to the SMP’s members is also armored, most of the colors predominantly twine with a default white to denote the relation between them is admin-to-player. They’re stronger than they were when he last looked, if only just, not so weak as to risk an ejection of their holders from the server. Those he originally found to be the healthiest—noticed previously for their sheer vibrancy—are brighter still, and possess the more personal green of his adminship hidden beneath their own colors.

Inhaling, he tears his attention away from the blues and whites and pinks and reds, dismissing the projection and scrubbing his hands over his face. “How did I even—?”

“Admins do need to perform their own code-core’s maintenance,” XD offers in explanation, idly straightening out a ruffled feather, “as their connections with players can become cluttered and a healthy distance needs to be reestablished. A form of compartmentalizing, I believe. You have gone more than a year retaining data without parsing, partitioning, or otherwise tidying it in your code-core which, considering your circ*mstances, is understandable. I meant to suggest such to you at a later date, I admit—it is a good foundational method for processing one’s history for those like us who tend to balk at the idea.” The god shoots a look so filthy at the chest that Dream is shocked it doesn’t combust or delete itself on the spot, “I did not expect you to be triggered into doing so earlier—and certainly not by yourself—by your, ah, lamentable PVP equivalent.”

Right…he’s starting to recall those lectures from the academy about the correlation between data retention and data integrity failures. But first he squints at XD and asks, “Wait, hold up. My what now?”

XD blinks placidly at him, then starts to awkwardly gesture when Dream only shakes his head and rolls his shoulders in a loose shrug, “Your…PVP? Black and white? Temper? Foot in mouth disease? Loud? Short but fighty? Reckless destroyer with a chip on his shoulder? The panda one?”

Oh.

“You mean Sapnap?” Dream miraculously manages to say Sapnap’s name without choking, much to his own flatfooted surprise.

“Is that his—yes, that one. Your PVP,” the god snaps his fingers at him and points, nodding agreeably. “From whom I did not expect such heinous disloyalty, although upon reading his words I understand how it drove you into your processing state. I ought to smite him and be done with it.”

Well, emotional and mental processing intermarried with depression is an accurate summary of it, Dream supposes. “No smiting,” he chides, semi-absent as he chews on his lip, left foot hooked up on the bed to let him prop his elbow on his knee. He curls a strand of loose hair around his fingers, unsure how to name what he feels, “Let him stew on the off chance he regrets any of what he said. But uh…PVP?”

The god’s expression brightens and just as quickly turns morose, “Hm…that is an idea. Oh, yes. Your Sapnap reminds me of my PVP, if somehow more hot-tempered, flightier, and far more easily led around by the nose. I did not think such a person—in whom I saw echoes of my PVP’s best traits—could be so disloyal but…I imagine that is yet again another failing on my part. PVP would die before he ever did such a thing and my nostalgia may have blinded me to the possibility that your Sapnap could be different.”

He waits for the usual flare of defensiveness to spike as Sapnap’s shield and only relaxes once it appears to no longer be a kneejerk reaction. Maybe he knows he owes Sapnap nothing but that matters little when he has reflexive, ingrained habits tracing back years of stepping into the line of fire for his friends.

(is this relief he feels? gratitude for this newfound distance? he doesn’t know)

Before Dream can decide whether or not he then wants to prod at the cloud of XD’s own grief, the god waves away those words, “Returning to the main point, again, when I said it served its purpose, I mean that you gained stability while you grieved and rested. You did that, you began to heal yourself. You labored away alone and as I and Patches took turns caring for you. The result of which is that now you are in a far better place than you were. Not ideal, no, but helpful in the end, I imagine.” XD huffs a laugh, “I daresay you needed neither of us, really. Caring, however, was a choice we made and certainly not a burden. We are both glad to see you well again.”

Thoughtful, Dream reaches up to tug at the braid in his hair, “Maybe you weren’t here at first, and maybe I didn’t need you per se, but…I’m still glad you showed up. Both of you. It made it bearable.” He hesitates and eyes the god, “You are strangely good at caring for people.”

A softness steals over XD’s face, a gentle smile aimed at the ground, “Well, I…had a lot of practice. It was I who took care of PVP and HD when they were sick or injured more often than they ever had to take care of me. It was us against the world and someone had to look after them, who else would it be if not me? You and I are both stubborn to the point of preferring to handle ourselves, as you well know. I would rather have chewed my own arm off than inconvenience them—the tried and true mother hen experience, I suppose one might call it.”

Prime help me I can’t even tell if he’s exaggerating, Dream pinches the bridge of his nose, exasperated. Asking for clarification is not worth the headache.

With that in mind, he opens his mouth to show his genuine interest in learning more about XD’s past, capitalizing on the god’s rare sharing mood, and snaps it closed again when his stomach growls. Right, hunger is a thing he’s relearning. He tunes out XD’s burst of laughter to glance over at the door when it opens, an oddly familiar eight-legged visitor carefully edging into the room through a one-block wide opening. With…he looks closer: a soup bowl balanced on its head and knitting implements tied to its back?

What.

“Ah yes, your erstwhile visitors,” XD muses off to the side.

More important is the hovering nametag that reads Legs and the second, following nametag that says Beans tracking the creeper as it slinks inside after the spider. Interestingly, he notes that neither of them are wet despite the continued rain outside. A weight dips next to him on the bed, Patches’s guileless face peering up at him.

Dream points at the newcomers—old friends, he guesses he ought to think of them as—as he stares down at her, “Is this you making fun of me for how I named you?”

She slow-blinks at him, feline smile undisturbed at his annoyance as she purrs. Helplessly fond, he returns the blink and shifts his attention to the now-named Legs waiting patiently for him to grab the bowl from its head. He reaches out to do so, eyes catching on his light green gloves and his light green blanket and the light green scarf starter in the spider’s knitting basket.

Bowl in hand and misty-eyed, he holds it out toward XD and makes impatient noises until the god gets with the program and obliges to take it from him. With his hands free, he reaches down to cup Legs’s arachnid face and smiles—

herit’saherandshegavehimstringandlearnedhowtoknitandshemadeherowndyejustforhim

—as her mandibles click, a delighted hissing that his ears read as his name leaving her mouth.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done,” he murmurs, so very grateful, stroking the sides of her face with his thumbs. She waggles her front legs, mimicking Patches’s slow-blink before ducking away, exuding more embarrassment than he ever thought a spider capable of as she disappears under the bed.

In contrast, Beans slopes over to rest its head by his right knee, mournful creeper face just as sad and pathetic as a typical creeper’s. Cute. Again, Dream pats its head, smile widening when it immediately purrs loud enough to drown out Patches next to it, her serene face now disgruntled at being usurped by the protege she introduced to him.

“And you,” Dream starts—

ohit’saheandhe’ssokindandsogentlehewantstomakethegreenhurtless

—resumes through the pause, “were so helpful, you know that? Thanks for keeping me company.” Beans hisses an excited jumble of acknowledgment and intent and Dream’s name, supremely content to stay where he is.

It’s been so long since he’s had the chance to communicate with mobs he almost forgot how utterly joyous it is to connect with them. Their code may be simple but their existence is so earnest in what they feel and how they approach the world around them. When he last saw the spider who became Legs his ability to parse mobs’ speech was little better than translating charades and guesswork. It’s nice to actually understand, this time.

Laughing a little, he lifts his hands from Beans’s head and allows XD to give him the soup bowl again, attending to his empty stomach with enthusiasm. While he drinks the soup, over the rim he examines the god who’s fidgeting where he’d propped himself half atop the bedside table toward the far corner.

Dream leans over to set his swiftly-drained bowl onto the table with a clack, raising his brows at XD, “Okay, spill, what has you so fidgety?”

A cup is quickly summoned and pressed into his open hand. A paper cup. A paper cup with a cardboard sleeve. A paper cup with a cardboard sleeve that bears a very familiar coffee shop logo. A paper cup with a cardboard sleeve that bears a very familiar coffee shop logo only found in the main hub.

Cautious given his distaste for coffee, he inhales over the lid, perking up when he doesn’t smell coffee but hot chocolate, “XD,” he crows, chest gooey with affection, “did you really go all the way to the main hub to bring me my favorite?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, sighing in bliss at the splash of perfect-temperature chocolate that hits his tongue.

And then he stops, lowers the cup to eyeball XD’s awkward posture, “…Wait. Did you actually pay for this or? Wait, no, did you roll up to the counter looking like you or like me? Wait, wait, no! Did you use my money?”

XD rears back, hand over his heart, brows furrowing and features softening, “I go all that way to bring you a gift and you ask me this? How could you accuse me of not paying for goods? That hurts me, Dream.”

“Doesn’t answer my questions,” Dream rebuts, slurping obnoxiously at his drink just to see XD’s eye twitch. “Clear sign of a guilty conscience, I think.”

In response the god is quick to weaponize Dream’s own doe eyes, theatrically wetting his lashes and folding in on himself, kicked-puppy face broadcast to all and sundry. “Of course I traded standard denomination currency for it! As one should when engaging with merchants, as I understand it. I even tipped before I left! Your doubt is truly unnecessary, Dream. It is as if you do not trust me….”

“…Maybe I’d have a little more faith in you if you weren’t trying to sound like you have no idea what money is or how to use it,” he sighs, glancing at the cup and mildly wishing it was a book or something else heavy instead so he could whack his face on it. “Oh don’t give me that look,” Dream gripes, using his free hand to point at XD, “I know you know what money is. You’ve paid me! We had an entire argument standing in your treasure vault about what you thought were appropriate rates of payment and it was you who pulled out actual modern financial statistics to win!”

The god sniffs and adjusts the sleeves of his regalia, imperious and smug, “Is it my fault for wanting to pay you what your work was worth? I might be generous and say you were, how they call it, giving a lowball estimate with intent to hoodwink me but no, it is more accurate to say you were devaluing yourself. Rather chronically, I might add. And regardless of your reasoning I was not about to let you continue to do so.”

Mournfully, Dream longs for the extra-strength headache relievers kept at the academy’s student health center, “That…okay, whatever. I don’t really want to argue about that again. But. You’re still dodging my questions.”

“Hm,” hums XD, sly mischief replacing the vestiges of his fake hurt, “did I pay? With my money or yours? Was I you? Or myself? Oh, or perhaps even in the guise of someone else? Does it matter? I could say or I could not. Ah, I suppose you shall just have to keep guessing.”

Dream doesn’t dignify that with any comeback, busying himself with nice daydreams of downing the biggest anti-headache medicine kept on hand by the pharmacists that could legally be handed out. Trying to pry anything out of XD when the god’s in this kind of mood is a losing battle every time so it’s better to just attempt not to worry about his reception the next time he visits the shop himself. If XD did use his face and cause trouble for Dream to clean up, well, it’s not like he doesn’t have plenty of practice.

“Anyway,” he finally mutters, absently turning the cup in circles between his hands, “however it happened…thanks for this.”

Mischief fading, XD regards him thoughtfully, “You are of course quite welcome, Dream. I believe you, such as you are beleaguered by trial and tribulation both, are deserving of nice gifts and so I have done what I can to provide what you may find most acceptable.”

His fingers curl around the cardboard sleeve, warmth suffusing up through his arms toward his chest and winding down to his toes. Beneath the echoes of the fading chill strangled around his bones, beneath the patient care and fond regard bestowed upon him by gentle hands and pleasant company, it feels like love.

Flushed from the heat of his drink and the pleasant cocoon of unapologetic affection from god and server avatar and mobs alike, Dream basks for a minute until a thought occurs to him. “…Gifts?” he repeats, head tilting in prompt for explanation.

XD mirrors him before he nods and eases off his table perch to reach out for Dream’s braid, hand retreating to show off the charm that had been attached to the hair tie. Now that Dream can finally see it in full, he realizes it’s a delicate black and silver half-sphere, coiling branches of metal cradling the violet pearl safely behind the shield of the sphere…the mask; it would almost be normal—if of extremely high quality—if not for the intangible metallic particles that lazily drift down and away from the intricate swirl that spirals down into a vague point at the bottom.

“For such a gift there would typically be more pomp and circ*mstance in line with tradition, but I suppose nontraditional is more our style,” contemplative, XD taps a nail against the charm to release a sweet, bell-like chime. “An ascension gift overdue from myself to my chosen, my favored, my admin. One to anchor, to guide, to shield, to grow. The first gift is meant to be a malleable ornamentation, a link between us; the first step on your journey in establishing your future identity, time and the settling of your heart evolving its shape to suit you best.”

Wide-eyed as he glances between god and charm, he’s quiet when XD stoops over to retie it, preferring to take another sip of hot chocolate than try to wrangle coherent words out of his thoughts.

Even-toned and a bit contrite, XD continues, “Circ*mstances being what they are, your ascension is a bland fact rather than a celebration. A byproduct of my saving you. Too early. Too unintentional. I feel it would be gauche to turn it into a spectacle considering that particularly sour sequence of events, however I would be remiss if I did nothing. An understated acknowledgment felt appropriate, given everything that has happened.”

Oh the fondness clogging his throat and threatening to burst straight through his ribs is familiar.

“And!” XD suddenly brightens, straightening and clapping his hands together, “That is not all!”

“Wha—it’s not?” sputtering, Dream clutches his drink to his chest and blinks owlishly at the god’s current sunny disposition. Jeez, he swears that the whiplash he gets from being in XD’s vicinity is its own eldritch monstrosity—ancient and incomprehensible and vast as the void.

Hands parting with a flourish, an admin panel dripping with redredred code pops to life in front of the god, hooded eyes and fanged grin shining as XD purrs, “No, dear Dream it is not. What kind of god would I be if I did not save the honor of destroying this wretched virus for you?” Dream can’t look away from the infected code, pulse pounding in his ears as his mind buzzes with a core-deep need to rid his server of its presence once and for all. “While you recovered, I combed the server code perhaps a dozen times and hunted each and every last scrap of it down, waiting for you to strike the match and burn it to ash.”

Setting his half-empty cup safely onto the table without checking, all Dream can do is repeat XD’s name with various intonations as he then reaches out for the panel the god is already obligingly handing off. Divine-lite white sparks at his eager fingertips, screen edges beginning to flicker with curls of flame. The code itself has enough cognizance to tremble, its lines wavering and its crimson hue baring teeth that Dream’s own unbothered code swats away as easily as a gnat.

“No, no, if you wanted to live, you shouldn’t have hopped onto my server,” the panel withers under the pressure of flame until it’s small enough Dream crushes it in his fist, a flare of white and green and a snap permanently deleting it from existence. A weight noticeably lifts off his shoulders the second it’s gone for good, Patches next to him also exhaling a pleased catty sigh. “Well,” he muses, snagging his drink off the table after he shakes off the remnants of the sparks on his fingers, toasting the god before he drains it, “y’know I wouldn’t have minded you getting rid of it yourself…but damn if that wasn’t incredibly cathartic. Thanks, XD.”

Hunter’s affect dropped now that the virus is gone, XD shamelessly preens, “It was a threat to you and your server. I had my fun wrangling it together for you and I already destroyed what was attached to you, so it is not a hardship to give you the satisfaction of defending your server from the rest. Now,” the god draws out the word, studying him, “I do have one last gift if you feel up to it. I realize you might not be after all of…this,” XD gestures vaguely and briefly hooks a thumb at the chest, “but, despite that, I believe it may provide some hope for the future.”

Lid pressed to his lips as he seeks the last dregs of liquid chocolate, Dream leans back on one arm and turns the idea over in his head. What XD is hinting at can only be related to the wider server in some way; the same wider server that killed him and wasn’t content enough to leave it there, sending him spiraling after his own death. Yet again he’s faced with the question of if he wants to engage with it, only this time it comes on the heels of a lengthy series of breakdowns.

He should probably decline—the dismissal hovers on his tongue, a nocked arrow—yet…XD did say he could have curated what Dream saw on his communicator. As far as he understands it, he ended up seeing everything except what he was meant to when XD first cooked up that sad comedy of errors called a plan. And…he can’t deny how absurdly pleased the god has looked poking at code-cores and tracking drama Dream has had no investment in.

There is something positive there to find. Something hopeful, if XD is to be believed.

Hiding a quicksilver scowl into the lid as he admits defeat on getting anything else out of it, he dismisses the cup and drops his head back to stare up at the ceiling. Counting deliberately to twenty with crisp, pedantic enunciation, he eventually heaves a weary sigh and sits up again. His dismissive arrow is removed from the bowstring and returned to its quiver as he places his palm in his cheek, “Y’know what? Your timing is a bit…eh. But sure. I’m in a good mood.”

XD’s beatific smile causes him to squint suspiciously, You…conniving bastard. Since he doesn’t bother not to project the thought, the god’s grin turns appropriately sly in response.

“Excellent. I am glad you agreed,” says XD, snapping to open a new panel that actually has an opaque back. The expression on the god’s face goes soft as he looks at whatever it is Dream can’t see. “I think that this may perhaps lift your spirits a great deal on its own. A reminder that regardless of what many choose to think you are valued and that, as much as you might believe otherwise, your death has not gone unquestioned.”

Doubt nags at him or, at least it does until the panel is flipped by reverent hands and his breath catches in his throat. It’s—

(George? In…Dream’s armor. Wielding Dream’s axe. Holding Dream’s shield. With George’s own bow, yes, but he’s wearing the crown Dream made (the one he never had a chance to give him) and the cape XD guarded fiercer than any hoarding dragon could ever hope to match.

Grim determination is writ across George’s face, eyes stormy and dark promise in the upward twist of his mouth. He looks every inch the warrior Dream knows him to be; a powerful enemy clever enough to downplay his true strength beneath misdirection and theatrics until the time comes to shed the mask, baring teeth and blade both. There’s a stubborn crease between George’s brows that he recognizes as the razor-sharp refusal to be denied the answers he wants, one that, had it been levied at him, would have seen him waver and likely crumble should George have ever asked.

It’s too late to ask, but even still, George cuts an intimidating figure for whoever incites his wrath.

A king newly re-crowned. A nightmare marching off to wage war in Dream’s name.

(a dream he once would follow gladly to the ends of the earth))

—not just a picture but a screenshot, candidly taken and squirreled away. One of many that XD has kept hold of for just such an occasion, he’s sure.

Quivering fingers hover over George’s face, over familiar features he knows better than his own. Features unseen since that terrible dethronement debacle when his panic over Eret’s—and, frankly, everyone else’s, too—willingness to murder George in order to hurt him galvanized him to take the opportunity to cut George out. When he told himself it was fine (survivable, preferable), that he could endure as long as George was safe.

Lying. As he tended to.

(what was his existence for nearly the past two years if not a lie)

“He is not the only one unwilling to remain silent but it is he who champions your cause,” XD murmurs quietly, allowing Dream a moment to commit George’s image to memory. “Wrathful avatar of justice that he is. Your shield he kept safe already, your armor and your axe were, however…appropriated,” stolen, more like, “which he found most displeasing. It was his idea to wear it and mine to soften the blow of your death with the crown you made. And I…loaned him HD’s cape as something from myself for the necessity of the lie I sold him. He thinks you truly dead, yet he will not rest until the server—the whole of it, not just your jailers, abusers, torturers, murderers—answers for their crimes. Their hypocrisy. Their cruelty, both casual and targeted.”

An ache burrows into his breastbone, lashes damp as longing claws at his insides. George thinks he’s dead and yet he’s wearing Dream’s gear with the intent to make a clear and undeniable statement of loyalty. George is championing in his name when there’s no need to, when Dream isn’t even there, when there’s no reward but George’s own anger and demand for answers to what happened. As if he still….

“He loves you,” the god’s voice startles him, the surety of the words causing tears to spill and roll down his cheeks, wetness he swipes away with his sleeves. “He loves you and he is angry. At the server. At himself. Grieving. Bitter, just as you are.” XD huffs, nostalgic fondness in the sound, “He is also rather, ah, suspicious given the server has not collapsed. While he is content to believe I am the answer while his quest takes precedence, he is far from stupid. It is only a matter of time before he demands to know what I am hiding and, from there, to know where you are.”

Dream recoils, head whipping up to look at XD, eyes wide with panic, “You wouldn’t—!”

As much as he wants very much to see George again face-to-face without his skin bearing the scars of Pandora’s shackles and Sam’s abuse and Quackity’s cruelties, at the same time he’s not ready, nervousness fluttering in his stomach at the prospect of finally, finally getting to talk to George without any pretense remaining between them.

XD pointedly shifts his stance enough to thwack Dream’s side with his wing, “Have more faith in me. One might start to feel untrusted around here. I would not simply teleport him here as a surprise,” the pause that then hangs thoughtfully in the air is not reassuring, “that would be rude to you. I merely meant to inform you that he cares and when he lets himself think it will not be long until he will ask. Nay, demand. He will want to see you and it would do you much good to see him. I would consult with you to ensure you are ready, of course, but you should know that it is an option for the future. Something to work toward.”

Oh. Well. That’s less immediately terrifying to contemplate. He thinks he could—

(he recalls the last time he was able to wrap his arms around George without fear, how tightly he clung as he laughed breathlessly into George’s neck, strong hands clutching just as tightly to his back, a grin pressed into his hair while George laughed along with him)

—yeah, he thinks he could be alright with that, given enough time to prepare. Eventually.

“Someday, maybe…,” Dream says, hackles lowering as his gaze drops back to the screen.

Someday when he’s more settled on a foundation that does not threaten to quake beneath the weight of his demons. When he’s had the opportunity to build something for himself not shaped like war but peace, creative not destructive, farmer and rancher and village hero. An adventurer with a home filled with life to reflect the journeys he’s taken and the sights he’s seen and the wonder he used to feel so plainly and unashamedly pouring out of every carefully placed block and souvenir and tacky wall art.

A home with Patches and Legs and Beans, with visits from XD, with George one day, maybe (and perhaps if the world is kind, other long-missed faces), made cozy by light and music and laughter and all the love spilled out from Dream’s overfull heart.

Someday, he thinks, not quite a promise but a wistful longing for a future he may be so lucky to have.

Outside, the rain continues to fall, softer now as sunlight slants in through the window and bathes George’s visage in a golden glow.

The dawn of a new day’s hope spools out like spun-sugar, warm and sweet.

Chapter 11: his hopeful future, slowly crafted

Chapter Text

Later, heart full and soul warmed from XD’s revelations, Dream stirs from a contented hazy drift where he sits in the doorway to the house. Beans’s head rests across his lap, front paws tucked under his leg, and a length of Legs’s donated yarn is in his hands. He toys with the strand with its splotchy blue dye, curling and twisting it around his fingers in absent configurations in between obligingly giving Beans a few pets when the creeper nudges at his hands with his frowny little pout. The door itself is propped open as he listens and watches the rain continue to drizzle outside in the soft beams of sunlight peeking out from the overcast sky, the scent of freshly wet earth a pleasant change after being shut up in the room’s stuffy air for so long. Safely inside away from the rain, a lightly snoring Patches is sprawled in an ungainly line across the rumpled bedspread, halfway hanging off the side while Legs is still sequestered underneath the frame, busy with her knitting.

far plays faintly from the ceiling-mounted jukebox, background music to the soothing cadence of XD’s voice rising and falling as the god weaves tall tales or does godly things that Dream doesn’t want to think too hard about.

There’s hope and a gentle candle’s glow in his chest knowing that he’s not alone.

He was alone for so long with only his jailer and his torturer, left alone to struggle reconciling his misplaced trust that morphed his chosen jailer into his abuser. He died alone but for the hated company of his torturer wielding weapons crafted and donated by his abuser. He woke alone, too, inexplicably alive again but no less lonely despite his weary gratitude.

He isn’t alone, now—

(there are well-loved faces missing, still. Of course he misses George; it’s an immutable fact: Dream misses George. But George is an old ache, a bruised and scabbed-over wound freshly poked at, and so perhaps he finds he misses others just a little more after seeing his best friend wearing his armor.

He misses Punz’s exasperated gossip sessions and clever, understated attempts to trick him into taking care of himself. He misses Ranboo’s catty commentary, weaponized one-percenter attitude, and their midnight philosophical discussions where they spoke only in Ender. He even misses Techno’s annoying, dry needling to get him to respond…and the refreshing way Techno always seemed determined to see him as a person without ever feeling patronizing about it.

(he misses bad’s kindness wrapped up in homemade muffins, policing their language, and the comforting sound of every long-winded rant where bad’s inventiveness truly shined without swearing; he misses seeing skeppy play at being nothing more than bad’s shadow only to prove himself more at the perfect opportunity; he misses ant’s fretting and the potion experimenting they all did under bad’s nose to become better brewers—

(—he misses the sapnap he once knew, bold and brash with a temper to match but also mischievous and loyal and loving; he misses the sapnap who would not hesitate to call him on his bullsh*t and pester him until they finally talked; he misses the sapnap who knew dream loved him back))

—and sure, the company’s a bit odd but it’s no less good. A god, a server avatar, a spider, a creeper: they’re not a typical collection of companions, but they’re no less of a balm to the yawning chasm formed out of his loneliness, further nurtured as it was by the ever-worsening conditions of Pandora’s Vault.

Leaning his head back against the doorjamb, he turns a helplessly fond smile toward the flowers outside and scratches under Beans’s chin to hear the purring response. The sound reverberates through his fingers, up along his wrist, a wave of relaxing vibrations seeping into his thighs.

Peering out, he half expects the flowers he’d grown to have been destroyed by the endless heavy rain and howling winds, and yet as he gazes out over the clearing their colorful buds and soft petals are haloed by divine-white coronas, pristine and nearly glowing.

A sea of earthbound stars.

Did he do that somehow, despite his own bout of weakness? Protect the life he created without meaning to? Was it an unintended leftover from when he dug his hands into the dirt and willed those buds to bloom? A touch of uncontrolled power in the shape of a shield, the unsung champion tool of his defender’s heart? Or a subconscious caught spark in the midst of his convalescence?

Although he’s more than curious and his godly companion undoubtedly has the answers he seeks, the words stick in his throat. If he asks and XD chooses to not dance around the issue, Dream has an inkling it’ll lead to a lesson about his burgeoning divinity and he…well, that sounds like effort he’d rather put off for a while longer. He knows he can’t run from it forever—not now, not when it’s already a proven part of him and he cannot go back to who and how he was before—he just needs a little more time to adjust. To process and…

…to mourn the humanity he’s lost, the price paid so he could continue living.

To continue pretending anything out of the ordinary happening in his life is the local god’s doing. Just XD being delightfully and anxiety-inducing, as always. Not Dream. Not yet.

Maybe he isn’t sprouting wings or unfurling extra eldritch limbs or swaddled in his own flowing regalia or tossing power around as absently as he draws breath but he is still other, now.

As much as he doesn’t want to think about it, content to practice willful blindness as he ignores the reality of that-which-is-Dream, he also can’t quite forget either.

His form remains human-sized and human-shaped while at his core he is no longer wholly human. It’s the truth he’s witnessed every time he meets neon-bright green eyes in his reflection. In the oddities of his strength, both physically, as those poor trees he obliterated can attest, and along with the growth of his admin power—

(Dream has always been a natural, a prodigy, top of his class. Innovative and insightful in ways that had his professors expecting great things of servers created in his image. Adminship came easy. Connection came easy. His future had seemed so, so bright, an incandescent unmapped road to travel as he wished…the only way to go after graduation being up, up, up.

Until everything he was and could be went supernova, a black hole of greed and ego stealing the foundation of his server-borne dreams as the Dream-that-was, maliciously targeted by campaign and in loss-driven anguish, was destroyed and destroyed himself in turn.

That damage—to himself, to the server-at-large—was wrought without access to any admin power at all, poisoned as he was. Just plain ol’ stupid human nonsense overlaid by a modicum of personal skill and clashing ideals. But he remembers how it used to be, how it used to feel, and it’s changed. Unquestionably so. The partition between core and code is gossamer-thin, mostly for propriety’s sake lest he lose physical form and coherent thought altogether—

(and why he automatically knows that is somewhat terrifying, in all honesty; it’s possibly scarier to know that if he slipped he could end up consumed by the universe, in stasis as time moved on without him)

—and as he’s learned that, if desired, he can simply reach straight through the divide to the malleable source code of the universe, no console required. Not that he’s been in any mood or condition to dare try, but it’s nevertheless a very specific type of knowing that rattles him.

(does anyone need that type of power?)

Power may be useful, and the control it gives more so, but as Dream will freely admit to all and sundry now that he’s not stuck putting on airs and near-paralyzed with crippling fears, he’s never actually wanted to be any sort of god. As a concept, power has always been such an…abstract thing in his mind. Helpful, if available, but not outright required for living decently enough. Quite frankly he’s wary of power, both having it and wielding it; it’s a tool and a crutch and a siren’s song and it’s dangerous.

From the moment he became chosen and favored he was intended for more…but he was still just a student then, and he’d thought he had, well, a lifetime to ease into the idea. And now, even though XD is shielding him to give him time to adjust to his sudden change in circ*mstance, he doesn’t have time, not really, not if he’s going to learn how to live with this influx of power before it consumes him.

(ironic, perhaps, how dream who wanted none of it, has so much of it already…and to think he’s only a baby god who’s not done growing and evolving yet—)

(sometimes he gives into self-loathing and wonders if it was ever him at the helm of his achievements or the scraps of xd’s irrepressible brilliance leaking through the cracks; they are so alike, terribly so, how is he ever supposed to stop the unsettling thought of it?)

(where does dream end and xd begin? is any part of dream his own, free of xd? or is dream so entwined with xd that they are each other’s past and future?))

—the alterations of his biology are obviously, clearly, alit with divine power in eyes and freckles both. Hair not a light, sun-kissed dirty blond of his freedom nor the dirty, muddy, sun-starved brunet of his imprisonment but a sheer, glowing white. Lungs untouched when he submerged himself in the bath and breathed in water he did not choke on, inexplicable but undeniable proof of his otherness that he turned over and over in his head as he’d stared through the water to the ceiling as if might fix him.

As if it might return the missing shards of his humanity if only he wished hard enough.

Even as emotionally raw as he’d been at the time he did not want to fill his lungs, to drown, to die. He’d ached with a potent, miserable grief until the heavily-hung guillotine of a moment passed, where he then chose quite deliberately to set aside his questions. To withhold the building wail of confusedterrifiedpanicked despair he kept trapped behind his teeth through sheer force of will despite the way it set his chest painfully aflame. To set aside his helpless anger lest he shatter himself apart into the safe cradle offered by immersion in emotionless code. To heave himself away from the temptation to pray and pray and pray that he had some unearthed hybrid lineage that gave him natural water-breathing which he simply had not noticed yet.

(there were no magically, miraculously grown gills on his neck; there was no cool, flexible webbing between his fingers; there was no sudden, last-minute answer given by his blood; no…only another truth of how he’d changed from who he was to who he is)

The weighty, deliberate motion of a paw nudges against his foot and distracts him from his spiraling thoughts. He realizes his vision’s gone blurry, blinking slow and tired eyes to refocus on the smeared blob of red that sharpens into a delicate rose. Without looking he pats a thankful hand on Beans’s head, whose sad-edged purr upswings into a happier trill, and restarts the rhythmic, aimless motions of toying with his gifted thread.

He winds a length of it around a finger once, twice, thrice, tight enough to turn the skin a flushing red with a gentle, grounding sort of hurt. Lightly tugging at it, he unwinds and repeats the motion finger by finger, far’s notes lazily carrying his mind down a kinder path instead. Broken from his anxieties drumming his heartbeat in his ears, he feels equally cocooned by the comforting rise and fall of XD’s voice in the background, relieved enough by the company and the familiar noise to exhale and loosen the tension that’s had his shoulders creep up high in the interim.

The god’s aura echoes out from where he perches atop the chest in a careless sprawl, flickers of light bursting in fireworks in the corner of Dream’s eye. Said aura is subtly unfurled—Dream has seen it used to crush XD’s enemies, an endless pressure that might very well eclipse entire servers—where it blankets him, curled a little around his shoulders like he’s been personally tucked in to rest. A tide-borne wave that ebbs and flows along the shoreline of Dream’s awareness, a soft whisper that says you are not alone and I am here.

Dream basks in it, safe and pleased within the absolute surety XD presents just by being near him.

For as much as he might occasionally grapple with the smudged lines between them, he has never once had cause to question his place in the god’s regard. While others looked to the XD’s reputation and feared for him, pitied him—and yet sometimes were plainly covetous too—when he was chosen, Dream was the one to actually see, to learn, to know.

XD is a god of chaos, an eldritch being untethered by human morality and sensibility, an eater of souls.

But he’s also Dream’s.

(and dream is a lonely, greedy creature in possession of an earnest heart desperate to love and be loved)

With a faint tsk he stops cutting off the circulation to his fingers in favor of loosely tying the yarn end over end in a chain. As he watches the curtain of sunlit rain fall over the field of flowers he resettles stiff legs, carefully unearthing the left one Beans isn’t resting on and stretching it out to prop his foot against the opposite frame.

I want windows I can open, Dream decides, abrupt but resolute.

Surprised by his own candor, he squints an eye and rolls the idea over in his mind despite the knee jerk reaction to bury it beneath an avalanche of refusals. Something melancholy, something curiously hopeful, twines its way into the yawning chasm in his chest near his heart.

Something precious and sweet and shy canters into being, uncertain and fumbling on fawn’s hooves like a revelation offered, a priceless heirloom treasure nestled on silken pillows. Something good at its core, something he’s missed. Bled for. Longed for. Warred for.

Failed to live for.

Something with a long, deep shadow and the shape of its name caught in its unformed wordless taste between bitter ash and a well-cooked steak.

He tilts his head, listens to the quiet thud of the ornament in his braid as it hits the wood. Breathes through the burn of welling tears and the visceral, furious urge to weaponize the hurts he has received no justice for.

The Community House is a relic of an old dream. Of an old Dream. Of could-have-beens and should-have-beens and would-have-beens. Of failed intentions explosively meeting poisonous convictions. A home built on a still-settling foundation eroded away—

(the water of time, the passing of seasons, the growth beyond the bonds already made…

…the callous treatment of it as both headquarters and a symbol to be destroyed by other people and by himself. He’d meant to make a home, a well-loved waypoint, a lodestone, an earthbound northern star, to forge a family, found as it was and twice as messy, to create a true sense of community with those he invited to his server. Architect or artist he may not be, so it certainly wasn’t the prettiest thing, but it never really needed to be beautiful in appearance if it was beautiful at heart. He helped to build what he could, supported where he ought to, and by the very gods he swears that he tried.

…Didn’t he?

All he wanted was to open his home and his heart and neither was ever enough for anyone to choose to understand and to stay. All anyone else wanted was to live under flags and exclusions and the grandiose lure of Wilbur’s paradise called separatist L’man.

(is it no wonder he chose to destroy what he built even when it hurt? when it would have been kinder to rip his own heart out? at least it died on his terms that time))

—and its intended community consumed by that of L’manberg, which so very neatly splintered the server in the same breath it began to sour what the Community House had always meant to stand for.

It was a home meant for all.

A shared space, unenforced and non-compulsory but there if desired, if needed, with beds and furnaces and chests and whatever else anyone might find themselves looking for at any time.

A representation of the joint efforts and mix of personalities who originally came together to lay its frame as something more permanent than camping under the stars or quick-built shelters.

A promise made as they stood under the same sky and looked toward a future they would write together.

A legacy barely a single petal bloomed before it began to wither.

It’s the last place Dream thought of as home.

Even when circ*mstances pushed him to choose much safer bases to sleep the night through rather than in the building, he never stopped wistfully wishing things were different. Even once he could no longer ignore the genuine, if paranoia-exacerbated, chance of a blade being buried in his back or a fire being set to burn him out if he dared allow himself be vulnerable in his old room.

In an absent, nostalgic way it still is home. Or, at least the shadow of it, sepia-toned at the edges and viewed through thick, tarnished glass.

The Community House is barred from him now, as it has been for so many months by consequence and by design; he can’t go back to it, can never reclaim it as a place to live. No matter if his own safety was XD-guaranteed within its walls, if it was granted its proper status as a sanctuary, if no one infringed on the space as long as he called it his…he doesn’t think he’d ever be able to trust it. Not truly, not completely. He could pluck the whole construction of it and plop it down billions of chunks away from its original coordinates, clean it top to bottom afterward, and even then would feel an unshakable, eerie discomfort exuded by every block.

Perhaps it’s an overreaction on his part—surely he could conquer the ghosts left behind in one measly building, given time?—but the good it brought to life feels far too tainted.

And with that feeling of taint it’s better to leave the whole thing behind as a memory rather than attempt to cling to it. Better, in fact, to continue learning how to let go of what hurts him since it’s his unwillingness to let go that’s done nothing but hurt him over and over and over.

Better to take what he can from its gently buried corpse and move on while his fondness is not yet entirely soured.

So, yes. Windows like those that lined the Community House’s walls. Ones he can open to let the breeze in, air out rooms, listen to the sound of falling rain without having to open doors and risk inviting in wandering riffraff.

Dream bitterly thinks of the darkness and the deadness and the endless heat of his suffocating cell-turned-coffin. He wants windows, so many windows, enough windows to make a greenhouse: wide and tall and open to let sunlight in and allow peeks of the stars outside at night and indoor cloud watching if he were so inclined. He wants pleasantly cool spaces, all well-ventilated with high ceilings and conducive to an airflow so constant that only the most scorching of summers could invite him to overheat. He wants life in the abundant greens of plants and vines and flowers in every room, everywhere he looks, filled pots and planters and a field outside, too.

He wants a home with few reminders of the colors associated with the worst period of his life: purples, blacks, reds, yellows, oranges—

(Sam is not allowed to take shades of green from him, not when it’s his color too, when green is synonymous with himself. Not when it’s also in part XD’s. Not when Beans exists as a wonderful example of creeper-green separate from Sam’s, preferable in all ways that matter as far as Dream is concerned.

As Dream’s jailer and warden and abuser, a trusted watcher and intended caretaker who was permissive and complicit in Dream’s torture, Sam already took so much from him. Entirely too much. Of course, Quackity’s not any better but, firstly, he’s rather determined to reclaim all of Quackity’s usual colors. Maliciously, at that. And secondly…at least that bastard wasn’t going about his little torture business wearing Dream’s color.

Green and all it entails will not be another casualty. Dream f*cking refuses.)

—as there’s this pulsing kernel of blackblackblack anger with deeply buried roots in his chest at recalling the exposure to that horrid deadness he endured. Dream knows what he told Sam about the prison’s purpose and aesthetic the same as he knows Sam, ultimately, had far more power than him when push came to shove, power enough to change the very things Sam previously complained about.

(change he did, for the worse; obsessively married to his role as pandora’s warden, to punishing dream no matter what lines had to be crossed; all of sam’s gentleness and kindness gone, gone, gone as long as it was dream in sam’s crosshairs)

The same as he knows that even the Nether boasts life and color of its own, has greens and blues and more to find and see amongst its wide caverns than netherrack and lava and the washed-out palette of soul sand.

The End is more visually alive, at least on a moderately technical level. Its stone is brighter instead of obsidian-black or dark nether bricks, its purples are a lighter purpur, and it is, most assuredly, much more open.

The cell he existed—not lived, he did not live in it; he occupied its space, he survived until he didn’t, but no part of him lived there—and died in was cramped and so very dark despite its lava-lit corners, a murky, unwelcoming place. If there were bright spots at all other than the requisite lava they were his own freshly-spilled blood, the purples of crying obsidian, the slowly darkening wood of the lectern, and the cauldron interior whenever its dirty grey water drained for clearer blue.

(maybe the life in his cell was himself, somehow, although he, too, was not green but orange, robbed of everything including his color)

Dream carefully extracts his plunging thoughts from their nosedive and focuses on taking steady breaths, running his tongue across his teeth and prodding at the sharp points of his canines.

He wants someplace built up high where at least one room has a full three-sixty view, with clear lines of sight in all directions. Someplace situated quite far away from natural obsidian spawns where he could mine rather deep for however much space he wished and yet not encounter a single block of it, where he’d have to try in order to find a similarly natural lava source. Someplace located in a biome on the cooler end of the spectrum, resting away from frequent high temperatures, not too cool but cool enough to warrant fireplaces with netherrack to burn long-lasting fuel for warmth—the kinder, gentler type than the harsh scorch of lava—in the evenings.

Someplace of relatively decent size is best, not anything on par with the largest woodland manors but still more than enough for one person. With room to grow as he does, plenty of extra space set aside for various crafts and hobbies and knickknack storage. Made of warm woods and smooth stone and soft carpeting and plush furniture. The non-glass walls covered in paintings and banners and shelves of looted treasures and crafted goods—he needs to show off everything Legs ever makes, of course—and whatever else Beans might spontaneously spawn as a gift.

Jukeboxes, he lets himself think, briefly grimacing as he’s reminded of the stupid discs. The ones that barely ever seemed to be actually listened to, for all their inflated value. Lots of jukeboxes. Note blocks someplace to play around with, too. At least one room to keep every record ever made, maybe hung in frames on the wall. Just…plenty of access to music whenever and wherever I want.

(music to drown out the silence; music to drown out the endless burbling lava; music to drown out the echoing sounds of his own torture)

It’s a mildly interesting revelation to note that he’s never really…paid much attention to music. From time to time he’ll choose to engage with it, and as a background kinda thing he’ll appreciate it if something’s playing nearby, however he tends to be out and about instead of staying stationary.

He hasn’t really given attention to any hobby now that he thinks about it. ‘Scheming and plotting’ doesn’t exactly count as very hobby-ish, does it? Nor would anything he’s done purely for survival’s sake. Parkour is probably what he finds the most fun, generally speaking, the freedom of movement and the genuine thrill of adapting to the environment around him as he runs is what he might, demurely and a bit cheekily, call delightful. There is nothing quite like throwing himself off a Nether cliff with gleeful abandon only to nimbly block-and-jump his way up the side of a fortress and smoothly continue on his set path with zero fear of falling into the lava pool below.

Not that he’s had the time or the space to do any parkour except what was done out of necessity before the whole orchestrated surrender to, ah, imprisonment-torture-death pipeline overtook his schedule.

Running again just for the heck of it, for the freedom of it, for the joy of it, would be…nice. Really, really nice.

Lashes fluttering, his eyes drop to the nearby grass as he ponders. Hm, maybe I’ll build an obstacle course in a basem*nt or something. Dream idly waves his propped-up knee from side to side to dispel the rising coil of restless energy, More than one? One or two inside, another outside? And then….

Parkour is his favorite, hands down, but he does also like to spar, which then fulfills a joint purpose: it keeps his skills sharp and it’s an enjoyable way to exercise on its own merits. Not that he’s done much of that either except, again, out of necessity and some casual brush-ups with Punz when they both had the time and energy. Spending an hour or two here and there working through weapon forms solo just isn’t the same as a full-on spar.

Just another reason to miss Techno and Sapnap, all those friendly fights he’s not having. That’s not to say Dream doesn’t miss Punz, because he does and he’ll certainly never claim otherwise. As a serious opponent and as a sparring partner Punz is very good, quick on his feet, scarily adaptable, and willing to get real dirty or go full honor rules to match Dream blow-for-blow. Punz is excellent at making him work for each and every victory just as much as he’s excellent at keeping things lighthearted when they’d both be better off goofing around.

For rather…understandable reasons they weren’t able to spar as much as they’d have preferred but they both tasted quite a bit of dirt between the two of them. Ranboo could’ve been an option to make spars a little more frequent, given their conflicting availability, except Ranboo only came by for tutelage and made sure to always have a readily crafted excuse to never truly get in the ring with Punz or Dream. A shame, honestly, considering that Ranboo’s amazingly vicious when he wants to be.

(it hurts to remember spars between friends, between brothers, and then blades turned on each other in anger and desperation and then sapnap’s promise; dream means more to sapnap dead than alive; there will be no more low-stakes spars while george heckles them from the sidelines)

Techno, though?

Crossing blades with Techno is always exhilarating, it’s some of the toughest and most rewarding battling Dream has ever done in his life. Forced to put in a hundred percent of his effort just to keep up, then push himself further beyond to snag a hard-fought, hard-won victory. He’s aware that he’s fairly talented at PVP but Techno’s a master and it really does show, whether a spectator or standing opposite that feral grin. He never likes getting his sh*t rocked—though, he supposes most don’t like it—somehow Techno made it exciting, made it fun.

Perhaps he should also plan on staking out a dedicated practice field? Maybe an indoor training room? Keep his options open? Even if he’s unlikely to have any kind of company to spar with there’s no reason not to ensure he can maintain and sharpen his skills.

His academic curiosity then chooses to spark, Huh, I wonder if it’s possible to program usable sparring dummies? Fighting mobs is inevitable if I’m exploring, obviously, even if I’m definitely not going to throw myself at spawners every day. Which means I need something else. XD might humor me a couple times, sure, but since I don’t have anyone else to fight against that’d be about it. If I could make working dummies, though? It’s just code, so I think so…especially if—oh, could I merge—? Combat code between humanoid mobs should be compatible. Um. I think. I guess I’d still have to look it up to check and, well. Even if I’ve got this new power to just. Make things happen. Code’s still code. Better to go hands-on the usual way. Fail a bunch before it works. Y’know, since it’s code.

An interesting thought to tuck away for later. Much later.

Beyond parkour and sparring he, a bit pathetically, doesn’t have anything else hobby-like that comes to mind. Nothing with its own concrete yes, I like spending my time to do this, at least. When did he have time to indulge in hobbies?

Experiments with the revive book were somewhat enjoyable, sort of, although that’s no longer crucial for any plans now that both books are gone and their secrets are no longer important to know. Well, he supposes he’s still a smidge inquisitive from a historical perspective. But. That’s not much of a hobby either, is it? Business, more like. Their tests were definitely interesting enough to make all the danger worthwhile—admittedly, in his opinion—but any ‘fun’ was overshadowed by the stressful feeling that he was undergoing independent research for a final master’s project worth ninety percent of his grade.

And now I can’t even remember what I was pushing myself to find. Why was I so focused on the revive book like it had all the answers? As if it would fix everything? What was I actually looking for? I didn’t remember its link to XD either, so what could it have been? Dream huffs quietly, drumming his yarn-entwined fingers along his thigh and sliding his eyes up from the grass to a lily of the valley swaying in the wind.

With the books returned back where they ought to be, the virus infecting him gone, and his own death all altering the path he was on, he supposes it ultimately doesn’t matter. Things have changed, now. Falling down a rabbit hole to chase answers he doesn’t know if he needs is unlikely to be helpful when he’s trying to move on. To leave the past where it was smothered, where it laid down and died. Truly, fully letting go may become impossible if he keeps insisting on dredging up the same mindset that led him to Pandora’s Vault in the first place.

More questions for a far-future rainy day, perhaps. When he’s gotten settled, when his sense of self is finally well-grounded.

He boxes up those worries and sets them aside, deliberately shifting his attention to wrack his brain for what he might call a hobby.

…Adventure and exploration, maybe? He’s always liked poking around in caverns and ruins and temples and dungeons and so on. Treasure hunting in desert temples, clearing out woodland manors. Triggering and clearing out pillager raids. Sniffing out rare villager trades. Stuff like that.

It’s a sad truth that so much of his time pre-prison was spent surviving that he hadn’t really lived, not in many, many, many months. He’d been too busy doing his best to stay more than one step ahead of everyone else, carefully pulling strings and laying down the foundation most useful for his needs. Other than whatever movement could kindly be called parkour and the occasional spar or fight he didn’t do much of anything even when he wanted to.

Relaxation hadn’t been a priority. Doing things for himself just for the fun of it hadn’t been a priority. He hadn’t been a priority, not even for himself.

A bitter, sad truth indeed. But…he has the opportunity, now. The time. He can figure out what he likes, try all kinds of things, exist for more than fulfillment of The Plan.

Can learn who Dream is at an unhurried, wondrous pace. Can relearn what he’s left behind, what he’s forgotten. Can allow himself to be vulnerable again. Can try and fail and do it all with an unbothered, unburdened smile and a laugh.

In all honesty music is a good place to start, as far as exploring the intersection of hobby and personal taste. The discs are a sour, unhappy memory but he’s rather fond of far and it’s not cat or mellohi, it’s something new and different and good. And there are plenty of options to explore records-wise without ever playing either of the latter two, not until he’s ready to reclaim their sounds.

Music is, as far as he understands, a unique experience, a healing experience. He thinks…he thinks he wants to fill his future house with it, not just to drown out the silence and the echoes of worse, hated sounds. Jukeboxes everywhere, music readily at his fingertips, all for the joy of it, a soundtrack fitting for a life uncaged—a life freely blooming.

Frankly, he’d have probably dabbled in music more often before now if the server had access to a modernized bit of portable tech. A nonstandard creation that played nicer with his active, outdoorsy nature since stationary wasn’t something Dream did.

Alas, ninety percent of the issue of server stability lays in locking in the basics and unfortunately music-capable communicators or gods forbid working headphones are trickier than they’re worth.

So he’s been stuck with said basics ever since logging in, deeming it too troublesome to fiddle with nonessential code just to enable it. Technically he could’ve tweaked a solo string for ID-locked permissions but, again, troublesome in execution and consequence, ‘cause he sure as hell wouldn’t want to be badgered by everyone else demanding the same allowances. And he’d have to do it person-by-person since blanket permissions f*ck with more than people ever realize unless they’re also admins or very familiar with the back end.

In the meantime, he’s had relatively typical access to jukeboxes and records and made use of them to scratch any real itch he’s felt for entertainment but, as he’s said, it’s not ever been what he’d label a priority. A luxury, if anything. Hence, he continued to leave it alone and gave it roundabouts zero thought until right this minute.

Something for future consideration, maybe…could be an interesting project to work on if he’s bored.

As it stands, considering how he spent the last year or so, unless he was holed up in one of his better bases that had a jukebox—thanks not to him but Punz or Ranboo, of course—and in the mood to bother, well. Not really much music enjoyment going on even while he was free-ish and definitely none of it in prison.

Sam would probably have a coronary at the slightest whiff of a thought that Dream could maybe somehow possibly hear a single note of anything even vaguely, incidentally musical and derive the barest hint of positive enjoyment out of it.

Which is all the reason he needs to plaster jukeboxes everywhere for maximum catharsis of imagining Sam losing his mind if he ever learned Dream had access to something nice.

Anyway, yes, he likes music well enough but jukeboxes are generally an ‘inside’ type of thing—and unless he takes the time to fix that, it’ll remain that way—while he’s got a fair pinch of wanderlust and most things he’s ever needed to do could be done outside just fine. Prison was, in all honesty, the first time he’d been stuck inside anywhere unable to leave at his discretion.

And we all know how that went, reaching blindly, he pets Beans’s head without looking away from watching rain bend around the protective shield around the flowers. Actively listening to music for once could be fun. Or even just playing it in the background to fill the silence. Granted, anything’s better than what I spent months hearing. ‘All lava all the time’ was mind-numbingly boring, zero out of ten…hm, nah, I guess it’s at least one outta ten just for being good enough white noise to fall asleep to when I wasn’t already exhausted from pain and hunger.

With his thoughts about music more or less sorted, he considers what else he might include as a way to spend time that isn’t running around the place. One library is guaranteed for enchantments, and Dream has always found tinkering with enchants to be exciting, like an endless supply of puzzles where the solution is an amazing effect that he can then tweak to be even more amazing. He’s fairly sure that counts as being a hobby of some kind. When he futzes around with enchantments he doesn’t do it for money, which he supposes means it’s more of him doing it simply because he likes it so…probably?

In addition to the enchantment library he could build a separate one as a room to hold non-magic books. Reading for pleasure was yet another activity he left behind once he graduated, and it might be fun to hunt down copies of the books he used to own to fill a bunch of empty shelves. Not only the standard classics but checking the hub’s archive for downloadable new bestsellers should he feel so inclined, to give him plenty of variety for genres and plots. After spending a couple of years too harried and unsafe to entertain the very thought, the idea of relaxing in the sun with a good book sounds incredible.

Of course there’s plenty to try as far as crafting goes, such as the arts and making artisan goods. He’ll need to account for animal enclosures and the farm plots necessary to feed everyone and everything, and leave space if he wants to make farms for materials or mobs or not.

Then, to keep it all safe requires a security system as robust as his own paranoia just to be sure. Requires its own escape routes just in case, even if they go eternally unused. Something complex to protect himself and Legs and Beans and Patches and an entire legion of kept animals and tamed pets. Complex, but still easy to operate. Although it’s true that he has the time, now, to brush up on figuring out how redstone actually works so he won’t be forever reliant upon schematics…he’s unlikely to ever be some kind of savant. It’ll be fine as long as he, as someone who does not have Sam’s redstone degree, can manage to keep the whole thing from exploding in his face.

In other words: an idiot-proof Mumbo Special.

He hasn’t the foggiest idea what it’d look like, this collection of wants and needs. All he knows is that he wants it to be new, but he certainly isn’t what anyone may call a designer, far too utilitarian in his builds as he favors function over form. This wouldn’t be a quick-built shelter or an easily-dismantled base; Dream wants more now that he’s allowing himself to dream, and he can admit his skills do not lie in aesthetics or building planning. Still, he wants and he wants so badly. Badly enough that he can’t quite feel the embarrassment he usually would at giving voice to the desires held close to his heart.

Since he does feel such strong wants, it may be prudent to realign the sockets preventing communication with the main hub and the network so he can just bite the bullet and contract out some help once he’s found the ideal spot to build and workshopped more of what, exactly, he wants.

Either way, at his most basic, he wants to create someplace that’s secure and reasonably-sized but open for growth as he does his best to learn how to flourish again.

Someplace he can call his own.

A home.

Not another Community House, not a shade of L’man and its many soulless copycats, not a new rendition of Kinoko or the Arctic or gaudy Las Nevadas.

Not any of those places with all their bad or bittersweet memories, places that he would never be allowed to step foot in…certainly never be allowed to stay in. Not the spartan, secretive bolt-holes scattered around the server that he could stay in, either.

No, he wants to build a home for himself, where he’s never unwelcome and he never has to hide, let alone fear he might be driven out again.

A home to return to, to grow in, to heal in.

A home to live in.

It’s such a simple want when all’s said and done. Pathetic, really, after all’s said and done.

Tremble, server denizens, that the frightening monster you’ve imprisoned and tortured and, at last, vanquished has been brought so low by its one desperate weakness: its desire for a place to belong and call home. How easily it could have been corralled with promises made and kept and kindness returned with open hands and open hearts.

Dream’s lip briefly curls, knuckle finding its way between his teeth as he glowers across the clearing to glare a hole in an unfortunate tree. Judging from all this introspection he’s been doing, he’s very obviously still off-kilter from his whole…sickness episode and more than a little cracked open at the core, emotionally raw and just safe enough to start prodding his own wounds. Even with his decent company and learning about George’s efforts on his behalf, those aren’t a cure-all for his messy head and messier feelings, not that he ever expected as much.

Hastily applied bandages, sure. A quick, single-time forever fix? No.

If it was that easy he’d have folded, taken his lumps, and then complacently walked the general party line at the first impassioned rant about his supposed wrongs and overall terribleness. If it was that easy he’d have prostrated himself on his knees with neck bared for the slip of a blade and repeated all the poisonous hate aimed to tear down everything that he was or ever would be, apologies dropping from numb lips as he welcomed penance in execution just as they’d always wanted from him.

Secretly, he’d wanted someone to make an effort, morbidly curious as to if he’d ever find an opening to let that someone see he was still Dream underneath his thorny exterior. Yet, in the same breath, he was terrified that someone would—XD knows it never got any easier letting Punz in, and Punz more than proved worth it—because he didn’t know how to lower his walls anymore. Didn’t know how to be vulnerable, not without netherite-edged calculation hidden under whatever scraps of softness he whispered like a lure.

What was he supposed to do if he allowed himself to be talked down from the ledge he’d been driven onto and purposefully then claimed as his own and made camp on? How could he trust he wouldn’t get attacked the moment his back was turned? That he was allowed to return to living a normal life where he no longer had to fear? Was he supposed to extend a fool’s blind faith and believe there was a place for him to occupy where he’d be well and truly safe? Should he have set himself up for failure by willfully forgetting that his final death was the only true reparation for his sins that anyone would accept?

When the alternative was to open himself up to ridicule, to doubt, to hate, of course it was simpler to maintain the well-worn lie of a heartless villain who did evil for evil’s sake. Why would he invite total rejection of everything he is and was and wanted to be tried to be by arguing that he did have a heart? Hearts can’t be bruised and tattered and shredded to pieces if they don’t exist, after all.

(the ashen taste of that familiar lie fills his lungs like the thickest clouds of black smoke he forever chokes on; if it were true he would not have cared about anyone or anything; dream’s greatest and most eternal weakness is that he cared)

He could count the number of people who thought of him as someone with a heart on one hand with fingers left over. For the rest, well, he wasn’t permitted to have feelings, to feel wronged and hurt and angry, to have reasons behind his choices and his actions, to care—not about anything but himself and tormenting the server, obviously, just a cruel tyrant from day one. Quite a convenient excuse for most of the server to justify their campaigns to kill him if they believed he couldn’t possibly be human, had never been human.

These people would kill his ghost if they could, just to be sure. No tolerance of his spirit, no hesitation. Dutifully ensuring that every last piece of Dream disappeared from the server and they could forget he ever existed.

Fascinating, isn’t it, he flexes the hand petting Beans, kneading with a bit more strength, just what becomes accepted in the eyes of ‘good’ people when the ‘bad’ target’s personhood is stolen from them. Dehumanization, yay.

Nobody let him forget how the server thought of him, how thoroughly he’d been dehumanized and pigeonholed into a role he never wanted in the first place. Even to his very last breath Quackity thoroughly and generously reminded him of his lot in life.

How dare he ever think otherwise? How dare he cling to the charred roots of his own good, buried as they were beneath the mantle he wore? How dare he ever hope to believe anyone might finally look behind the curtain and see him?

Dream is and always would be their villain. Alive, dead, villainvillainvillain.

Villains aren’t the ones who get to smile and walk off into the sunset for their happy ending. Villains get their plans ruined. Villains get their life’s work destroyed. Villains lose. Villains die.

Why would Dream be the exception? Dream was never going to be the exception. Wilbur seems to be the only exception, free to walk the server again after his defeat, L’manberg’s conquering dark horse, who sought to tear Dream down and succeeded. Whose philosophy and impact seeped into hearts and minds and the very earth in which it left craters, who persisted before, during, and after death.

Wilbur lost and died, as a villain should. Dream lost and died, as a villain should.

Due to an uncertain gamble on Dream’s part Wilbur is alive…has won, yet again. The hero of the story, yet again. There is no last-minute miracle to do the same for Dream, not when he did not wake in limbo, not when he’s irretrievable even by Punz since there is no book and he is not full-dead. Besides which, however Wilbur’s return was received, he’s uncomfortably aware that the server’s outlook on L’manberg’s first leader is a twisted amalgam of affection and distaste, accursed attachment nigh-guaranteeing that Wilbur won’t be killed again. Not unless he does something so extremely heinous it can’t be excused away and forgiven, and he’s sure there’ll be so much leniency shown it’d be sickening to see.

People love Wilbur the way they’d never loved Dream. The man could bumble around doing f*ck-all, talking out of his ass and trying people’s patience to the breaking point and it’s fine because it’s Wilbur. Lovely, oh-so-lovely, visionary, revolutionary, good-hearted and good-intentioned Wilbur, who died, who meant to kill himself in an explosion that could have killed a dozen others, who placed the burden of his madness on his father’s shoulders, but who gets to live on—

(is Dream the only one who’s not allowed to live? He pauses, grimacing. Are he and Schlatt the only two people not allowed to live on the server as recognized parts of it? The only two whose deaths are more important than their lives? Who deserve to remain in limbo, to remain dead and gone forever?

Are he and Schlatt so detestable to their very code-cores that they would not be afforded a chance to breathe life anew and work toward forgiveness? Won’t have the option of finding a place for themselves, of finding purpose, that does not court causing hurt to those around them? Could never be given the opportunity to make new choices and undergo walking the long, arduous road of healing?

Do second chances unfairly only exist for the right people?)

—Dream, though? Well, as he’s been shown time and time again, he’s no Wilbur. He’s no beloved, struggling hero fighting the oppression of a monstrous tyrant. Rather, a stepping stone for others’ glory. Were he to be revived he’d be right back where he started pre-prison, trying his best to survive as he’s hated and feared and with a permanent bounty on his head. Forget being able to wander around freely, he’d immediately be hunted down to either be thrown back in Pandora or straight-up killed just to be rid of him again.

(gods he’s so angry)

Very few would contest another death, an exile to limbo to be forgotten. No one sane would think to oppose the entire server and make themselves responsible for The Villain, not after Sam and Pandora’s Vault failed to keep him in line.

As he’s been shown time and time again, Dream’s life means nothing when weighed against the comfort of everyone else. The same way his hopes and dreams and intentions mean nothing in the face of others’ feelings and ambitions. Stepping stone, sacrificial lamb, useful only for the betterment of anyone but himself…that’s what he’s been.

(gods he’s so, so angry)

Villains fail and die and have no future. And what is Dream but a failed, dead villain?

Wishful thinking aside, he’s not stupid enough to not realize that even had his plans succeeded he still would have needed a lifetime to yank out the last pieces of the villain label from his skin.

If he could not divorce himself from his role, how could he ever think to feel the gentle mercy of hope? To believe he could have a future where he would be allowed to live? To pray he might be gifted the time and space to build himself a new home someplace far from the shadowed wreckage of the old?

…Were I anyone else I’d never know. He blinks away the misty droplets lingering on his lashes, sparing a glance over toward the chest where he left his journals. Considering how lost in thought he’s gotten, he wishes he had one on hand to better work through the tangled feelings he’s waded through over the past however long it’s been.

His journal therapy is far more effective when he actively writes things out instead of letting his mind jump around from topic to topic without any structure. At this rate he’ll need to block out several extra hours to process everything and purge all the negative aspects before he crashes his mood entirely. That, and it would have been more convenient to write down his list of wants as he thought them rather than rely on his memory to supply the ideas a second time.

Dream hums, squinting at the projection XD is toying with that…looks a lot like a detailed representation of the central nervous system. O-kay he does not want to know—! Currently a lap-creeper, Beans abruptly snuffles and shoves upward, smushing face-first into Dream’s neck and leaning heavily against his shoulder and side.

“Good boy,” he murmurs, sliding his right hand back and forth along Beans’s spine. The resulting noise, a silly mix between a mrrw and a bwff, is muffled and the slightest bit smug. His attention drifts from studying the way sunlight reflects on XD’s rustling feathers over to the bed, where he watches Legs carefully reach up to drape a length of yarn across Patches’s blissed-out form. She’s apparently been at it for a while since there are easily a dozen already covering Patches in a little green pseudo-blanket.

Weirdos.

Losing the fight against a helplessly fond smile, he rests his head back against the frame and closes his eyes.

A god’s intervention and luck and circ*mstance did give him a second chance to create his own happy ending, to be neither hero nor villain but plain old Dream. Dream plus, even. A new Dream with newly remixed dreams who is allowed to hope and try and live.

Thinking about an actual future for himself was once like pulling teeth, a recalcitrant distaste for it tied up in the same brambles of loneliness and hurt that told him there was no point. His wants were shown to not matter, so he tried not to want anything outside his means and convinced himself it didn’t matter because it had to be that way. He could expect nothing else, so why bother?

But that’s not true—it never had been—and although it’s proving to be a difficult adjustment to recognize and accept the real truth, he can think about his future with more than absent wistfulness. He can look forward with bright-eyed excitement, make plans centered around construction not destruction and, the most important thing, above all…

…relearn how to be happy.

After every lesson life’s thrown at him since he created the SMP it won’t be an easy task. He has a tremendous amount of baggage he needs to face if he’s going to conquer his demons; his code-core maintenance to gain distance from his hurts is not, as he said and as he’s felt, a cure-all for unresolved trauma and that blackblackblack anger he can’t quite soothe.

To roll up his sleeves and kneel in the dirt to build a home with his bloodstained hands—

(to carve out a place for him to live on his first server where he has been made a pariah, a hope-filled, painful choice. Perhaps he could go elsewhere to make his home, create a new server or retreat to the hub, and it would be less bittersweet.

The third option is not yet open to him, though it would be kinder, all told. He may be godly, now, but he is too young, too inexperienced, and so he is not capable of creating a Domain to be his safest, truest home.

(xd’s is xd’s and he is welcome there; a soul-deep fear persists that if he chooses to stay within its shelter that he will not leave until he wears xd’s mantle and xd’s domain becomes dream’s))

—was never going to be an effortless undertaking, not if he was set on fulfilling his wants to craft something long-lasting that would be perfect to grow in, to live in. No, it was always going to be one of the most demanding things he’d ever commit to in this life or the next.

(the most? well—)

Regardless, he knows that all the best things are earned with a hefty dose of dedication shown through tough, challenging work and possessing the strength to persevere. More than that, though, he’s starting to think it won’t be long before he’s ready to begin the first step: coalescing his pondered-over preferences, hopes, wants, dreams into a crystallized plan of action to use as a roadmap that leads into his future.

As that thought rings its own truthful bell, a fiery resolve settles neatly into place in his chest with a featherlight click. The dusty cobwebs of his morose spirals are brushed aside for the time being—for later, when he can focus on journaling those dark frustrations into pages to archive or cleanse through burning—

—wait, time. There was something about time, wasn’t there? Something he’s missing?

Dream chews the inside of his cheek for several minutes and then cracks his eyes open, narrowed at the top of the doorframe. XD…never did answer his question about how much time passed between his death and when he woke up again. Nor did it ever get mentioned how long Dream spent laid out sick and recovering, either. He’s had a poor awareness of the passage of time since he lost his clock in prison, a poor awareness that has continued into his new existence.

Which, since his return to life eroded his humanity for the beginnings of godhood, shouldn’t be anything worth worrying over now that he has an excessive amount of time at his disposal. What does time mean for the timeless? And yet, while he might usually chalk up XD’s reluctance to the typical air of mystery the god adores cultivating, this particular occasion strikes him as suspicious. Why not just tell him? Maybe he doesn’t need to know and won’t be happier for it, but shouldn’t that be his choice?

Turning his face away, the ghost of a frown flits across his mouth and fades into a more peaceable expression as he’s reminded that XD is a flighty, forgetful entity who was, in all likelihood, waiting for him to ask again rather than purposefully refusing to give him an answer. Malice can be ascribed to many of the god’s actions but, firstly, it’s a snowball’s chance in the Nether that XD would be malicious to Dream here. Secondly, there’s no telling how many of the god’s separate partitions are wandering about attending to mischief or divine duties so it may be a simple case of too many distractions and a cluttered headspace. Thirdly, what purpose would it serve to specifically deny Dream these pieces of unnecessary information and how would XD even benefit from doing so except in receiving mild amusem*nt?

For a centuries-old being, XD is fairly transparent if you know his tics or his motivations. Dream happens to be well-placed to know both and has the oft-dubious honor of the god’s favor. He blames the leftover rawness of his emotional turmoil for being so tetchy as to presume the worst on a single dodged question and the absence of a second conversation. Volunteering info is not exactly XD’s style, even if Dream’s status as favored and chosen sometimes makes it seem like it is. And that’s before factoring in the ridiculously low chances for the topic of distinct periods of lost time to occur to the god as something Dream might genuinely want to know more about in the first place!

It’s far more common for Dream to be the audience, willing or unwilling, for random infodumps than to happen to hear a specific bit of information. Especially if he doesn’t ask for whatever it is, relying on XD’s whims and nothing else for direction which, given the lifespan and lifestyle of said god, is a fool’s errand. Asking, however, grants more direct access to XD’s vast knowledge. Occasionally he’ll still get brushed off, delayed, or denied—and there’s a fair chance to get an unrelated infodump should the god be in a mood—but, more often than not, XD will just…answer.

Shivering, Dream forcefully represses the memory of being bedridden while at the academy and slurring out an incoherent query vaguely in the direction of the blurry visitor in his room. The query that then led to a spirited recounting of one of the god’s most convoluted stories that lasted three days. He was still delirious from illness when XD then chose to quiz him about it and, despite the god’s presence contributing to his speedier than usual recovery, he had actual flashbacks every time he ate soup for a full year!

…The point is, he should probably just suck it up and ask about the time thing.

In the soft, blooming sunlight with its whispering rain he gently breaks the peace and does just that.

“XD,” he says, slow and deliberate on each syllable as he continues to mindlessly pet Beans. Since he’s facing toward the outdoors he feels rather than sees the god’s eyes fall on him in unspoken prompting, the voice that had thus far filled the quiet spaces in far’s melody no longer speaking but expectant. “I have two questions.”

Feathers audibly shuffle in his periphery, “Oh? I may have answers.” A curious tinge of wariness is threaded through the words.

He smothers the urge to turn around and level an unimpressed look right at XD’s face, “How long was I dead? How long was I sick?”

One silent, hanging, poignant beat passes, then two, then three, then four, then five.

Were those not simple questions? Did they not have simple answers? All he wants is to learn a few numbers so he can orient himself on his own personal timeline, so what’s with this bizarre sense of…? Well, strangely, he almost wants to call it embarrassment.

Again, he almost turns to stare, concern and alarm beginning to fill him with panic and an awkward, uncomfortable confusion at the god’s weird reticence. Surely can’t be anything bad, right? Dream already died and got the news of his unwelcome but unavoidable slip into godhood, so what else could it possibly be that’s making XD hesitate?

Impatient and worried, he starts to finally shift his position only to pause, brows furrowing when the verbal ‘response’ is…a stuttering mishmash of nonsense filler words more suited to a gangly, uncertain teenager than a confident god with a refined orator’s speaking pattern. Words that buzz in the air, raising the hair on Dream’s arms between one blink and the next.

What the f*ck.

XD’s voice cuts out, sharp and fast and so sudden that if Dream wasn’t frozen he would have whipped around to make sure the god didn’t outright vanish. In its absence another silence curls through the room, far’s volume tuned low enough it may as well be off if not for the barely perceptible higher notes seeping out. This silence is a weighty, ponderous thing, the press of XD’s aura as near-physical a feeling as the tumultuous thoughts being so carefully, so deliberately judged.

“Well,” the god sighs, explosive and rueful, “I admit those are reasonable questions. Truthfully, I did expect you might ask them of me at some point once you were ready to. As it stands, I gain nothing by keeping the answers from you, so there is no reason not to answer.”

That…should sound like he is going to get a useful answer, except it really, seriously doesn’t. Rather, it actually sounds like he’s about to develop a spontaneous headache called Ex-Dee.

“Ah, and I agree you certainly deserve reasonable answers to said reasonable questions. I would, in fact, be delighted to convey such information to you in order to sate your curiosity and bring you peace of mind.”

Oh, here comes that headache and some bonus homicidal urges, lovely.

Fittingly for his bullsh*t prevaricating, XD’s tone brightens, “Alas and most unfortunately, dear admin of mine…well. What an interesting matter, time. To be quite honest with you, to the question of how long in relation to your personal passage of time, both in death and in sickness,” an infuriating, baffling smile is audible, “your guess is as good as mine.”