Chapter Text
Dream wakes up in a bed that isn’t exactly foreign, but it certainly isn’t the one he had been in a few hours ago.
He also wakes up warm and with his body aching in awkward places, which he only finds out as he slowly uncurls himself, neck stiff and legs aching.
He’s in Technoblade’s goddamn bed.
Fucking hell.
How did he even get here? He remembers being downstairs, with a kitchen knife held tightly between shaky hands, and then complete darkness, filled with small flashes of his nightmares, the ones where he doesn’t escape the two that tortured him.
“Hullo,” he hears Technoblade somewhere above him, voice wrapped in sleep and low, and he slowly tilts his head back to look at the piglin. He somehow looks even more tired than he did last night. “Did you know you move a lot in your sleep?”
Dream shoves at his stomach with his knee, baffled that that’s the first thing he fucking asks, offended, too, because no, he did not fucking know that.
“Fuck off,” he mumbles and Technoblade’s laugh is one that fills the air, low and riddled with sleep. “You’re fucking terrible.”
Technoblade just shakes his head, looking amused, and Dream looks around the room. He remembers it vaguely, mostly because he was too sick to properly look at it the first time, and also because he was stubborn enough to not look at it when he was here last time.
It’s a small thing, with a roof barely tall enough for Dream himself to stand upright—he doesn’t understand why Technoblade made the cabin so small, or how he moves around without constantly hitting his head. And it’s fucking full of shit, trinkets he can only imagine Technoblade has collected over the years upon years he’s been alive, a goddamn bell, for some reason, and even shelves.
It’s like a hideout.
“We gonna talk about it?” Technoblade speaks again, snapping Dream’s attention back to him.
“About what?” Dream asks, pretending he doesn’t know what Technoblade is implying, keeping his head turned away and trying to decipher the book titles he can see.
“Well, I’d prefer to know if you’re gonna be sleepin’ in my bed. There’s plenty of pillows, you know?” he motions at Dream, who is sitting up as Technoblade speaks. “You wouldn’t have to sleep with your head on the mattress.”
“Well,” he starts, almost mocking Technoblade. “I—” he tries to come up with an answer, stuttering out repeated words until he just throws a hand up and gives up, keeping his head firmly turned away.
“I didn’t say it to make you feel bad, or somethin’ of the sorts, Dream,” he hasn’t moved and Dream just shrugs, ignoring the stinging in his shoulder. Would the pains ever go away? He was getting annoyed and tired of them. “Almost hit ya when you came up, though, and I’d rather not injure you any further. So.”
Technoblade stops, mulling over his words.
“I’ll just leave a spot open,” he continues, as though finally satisfied with his solution to the current situation. “And you can do whatever you’re comfortable with, alright?”
Dream nods. He won’t come back here. He knows it. He doesn’t even remember how he had managed to get up and into Technoblade’s bed. Even when he tries to think about it again, all he remembers is the nightmare, the ache in his leg and hip from trying to flee. He must’ve been… sleepwalking. Or something.
(or, perhaps, seeking refuge. That thought makes the hairs in the back of his neck raise, makes his heart race.)
“Anyways,” Technoblade closes his eyes again, hooves smoothing over his hair and pushing it away from his face. “I’m goin’ back to sleep.”
“You slept the whole night.”
“And I’m sleepin’ again. What’s it to you, Dream? Can’t a guy sleep anymore?”
“You slept the whole night.” he says, again, baffled.
“We’re not in a war or in immediate danger, Dream, I ain’t stayin’ any more alert than I have to,” he opens an eye to look at him. “You would enjoy sleepin’ too, you know?”
“I sleep plenty,” he mumbles, frustration building in his bones as he huffs and looks at Technoblade.
“Your whole face counters that argument, man,” he closes his eye again.
“Fuck yo—” his anger is interrupted by a loud crash downstairs, and Technoblade is immediately up and descending the stairs, while he’s still trying to understand what the fuck happened and why the door to the cabin is creaking like it was attacked.
He pokes his head out so he can look down the stairs and not be caught in anyone’s eyesight, sensing danger somewhere, someway.
He sees Ranboo, first, with all their awkward limbs and bowed head, and then Punz.
Punz who is bloodied, beaten and unconscious, Punz who has a piece of a netherite sword sticking out from their guts, Punz who has Technoblade’s sword pointed right at their fucking throat.
“Punz!” he calls out for them, can’t help it, can’t help the way his heart stutters as he watches two heads turn to him as he scrambles to go down the stairs—fucking stairs and his fucking legs, shooting pains and making him go down far too slow. “What the fuck happened to them?”
The blood is days old, looking almost brown and clinging to their skin and clothes uncomfortably and stubbornly, their skin has turned into a sickly almost-blue hue, and he presses a hand to theirs and finds it freezing. His heart races.
“Punz?” he asks, voice shaking a bit, like it would spur them awake, alive. “They’re—”
“Not dead,” Ranboo supplies with a small nod, eyes unfocused and he looks between confused and awake, slurring his way through the English sentence. Dream doesn’t know if that’s the actual Ranboo, or the Ranboo he knows and gave him the necklace—he leans on it being the former. “Found—Found them…” he trails off. “Somewhere. Needs help,” his words are slurred.
Dream looks back at Technoblade, who has his eyebrows furrowed together and a sense of dread fills his stomach all over again. He had given it all away in a matter of mere seconds. What the fuck did he expect to happen now?
Technoblade’s sword lowers, goes back to its table carefully, and then he steps towards the three. That was the opposite of what Dream expected. He takes Punz from Ranboo’s trembling arms, making sure he doesn’t jolt them around too much.
“Call for Phil. And Niki,” he tells Ranboo, who nods their head and immediately steps away and outside of the cabin again. “Come on, help me get ‘em on the couch.” he tells Dream, whose shoulder aches when he brings down his arms to hold up Punz’s legs.
They manage to drag Punz onto the couch with minimal jostling, Technoblade carrying most of their weight. Then he briefly disappears into the bathroom and Dream stumbles his way to Punz’s side, pressing his fingers against their wrist and feeling the faint thump of their heart there.
It’s far slower than Dream would’ve liked it to be, but it’s there.
“Alright, let’s get to work,” Technoblade announces after standing still for a few seconds, analysing the situation before him and the panicked way that Dream taps his other hand alongside Punz’s heartbeat, slow and unsteady.
Dream nods, moves to let Technoblade have more access but remains close, in case Technoblade needs him to do something. He isn’t too sure what he can do, with the amount of strength he doesn’t have, but he can try, he supposes.
He tries not to think too much, watches the slow pour of blood that slips from Punz’s wound, and gets his hands drenched in it as he follows whatever Technoblade is telling him to do.
He thinks he does more, thinks he bandages Punz’s stomach as Technoblade takes care of scattered wounds throughout their body, thinks he looks at Technoblade with blood in his hands and doesn’t quite know what to do, thinks he remembers Niki and Philza entering the room and their gasps—he only thinks he does those, because he can feel that dread coming back, except this time it whispers in his ears that this little show is coming to an end soon, that his plans are fruitless if he’s not out of this cabin and with a sword in his hands, and it consumes him.
He knows Niki, Philza and Ranboo come in, somewhere between him bandaging Punz and him washing his hands, but he doesn’t actually hear anything of what they say or don’t, and only sits down in front of the couch once Technoblade gives the go-ahead, back turned to the rest of the cabin and his eyes laser-focused on Punz’s body.
Their alive body.
He knows he loses himself in that cabin, with a burning-hot feeling in his insides and a pale and cold wrist in his almost-equally cold but far more scarred hands.
“Dream,” there’s a hand on his shoulder and he immediately flinches away, his consciousness crashing back into place and leaving him almost winded. It’s Technoblade, who retreats his hoof once he sees Dream is back. Or at least he sees he’s paying a little bit of attention. “Talk to us. What’s goin’ on?”
He shrugs almost helplessly, the ache in his shoulder coming back like a taunt.
“They’re an ally, though, right?” he nods stiffly, hears the sharp intake that Niki does and he understands why she does it, memories of sharp words, obsidian portals and promises of money appearing in the forefront of his brain. “They keep you safe when you left here?”
“Yeah,” he speaks, though his throat feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and his voice comes out broken and scratchy. “They—” he frowns, trying to remember what happened in-between all the panic. “Kept Sam and Quackity away. But—but they’re good—they’re really good in fights, I don’t—I don’t understand.” he doesn’t understand why they’re laying in front of him, tethered between Life and Death, clinging to something he doesn’t really know.
(he knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that even if they die, he can get them back—but his fingers shake and he hasn’t held one of those books in so long, he doesn’t know if his body would even be able to handle it.)
His voice dies out at the end, his eyes sting from holding back tears because weakness is not something he can show (yet, ever, anytime), and he looks back at Punz again, ignoring the eyes on him, no matter how much they make him want to claw at his neck until his soul doesn’t exist.
“I don’t trust it,” Niki is the first to say after they gather in the kitchen, leaving Punz and Dream in the living room for a few moments of solitude. “This situation. I don’t trust it. I mean—”
She stops herself, runs a hand over her hair and sighs, letting the conversation she started lull a bit. She looks between them all, watches the tenseness in Philza’s wings, the nervous flicks of Ranboo’s tail, Technoblade’s snout working overtime in thought.
“Punz was there,” she continues, tilting her head up. “When Dream got sent to prison, Punz was there. Punz was the reason why we managed to put Dream in prison. This—this makes no sense, right?” she looks at Ranboo, who shrugs and then kind of nods.
Technoblade looks out at the two.
He’s leaning against the wall and the door is open, leaving him with perfect and precise vision to the two. Dream is still, Punz is too. The only indicator that the two are alive is the soft raise and lower of their chests as they breathe, the soft sounds of their breaths the only thing Technoblade can pick up.
“Maybe,” Ranboo starts, voice uncertain and low. He looks more like himself now, bright eyes back to their full focus and hands more jittery than before. “It was… a con?”
Niki and Philza share a confused look, Technoblade nods his head.
“If Dream’s plan was as he said it was,” he starts, the cogs in his brain turning and some things start to make sense, and he avoids eye contact with the other three. “I suppose he’d need an ally, right? Someone to keep him in the loop, maybe. Or to break him out after he… did whatever it was he wanted,” Technoblade finishes his reasoning with a hoof running over his face, rubbing at the golden scars that crack down from his hairline.
“Isn’t that… fucked up?” Niki asks, voice lilting up. “I mean… how would he know if Punz actually switched over?”
“Do you think they would’ve done that, mate?” Philza chimes in, leaning his side against a counter, wings tucked behind him and still tense.
She shrugs, tapping her fingers against the counter, she doesn’t think she knows much about Punz. Not enough to know if they’d betray Dream or not, anyways.
“Well,” Technoblade starts again. “Doesn’t matter what could’ve happened. What does matter, though, is that we don’t know how they got like that and if they got tracked ‘til here.”
“Don’t… think we were followed,” Ranboo frowns, tail moving nervously behind them as they scratch their arm. “I—well, I don’t remember the whole thing… very well. I just… I was in the snow, then I was back here again, dragging Punz through the snow.” they shrug.
“I’ll look over our traps, see if we’re still safe and sound for now, make sure you guys didn’t trigger anything,” Philza speaks up again, cane hitting the ground as he leans forward. He needs to distract himself, and what better way was there than to put himself to work and be close to the forest? He turns his head towards Niki. “Niki, mate, help me?”
She nods, nervously glancing between Technoblade and Ranboo, disliking the idea of leaving the two alone with Dream and Punz, but she still follows Philza out the door.
The banging of the door doesn’t make Dream so much as stir.
Hours pass.
Hours in which Punz doesn’t wake up.