Chapter Text
What else was left to remember?
There was L’Manburg, clinging to life like a stubborn weed.
There was Tommy, as stupid and reckless and predictable as ever.
There was George, the new king, who seemed less interested in ruling and more interested in spending listless, lazy hours with Sapnap and Quackity.
And there was Dream. Dream, who watched over New L’Manburg, writing cold calculations into his heart. Who had a plan for Tommy. Who followed the sound of his friends’ laughter only to hear it die away by the time he reached them.
One day, the trail of sound led Dream to a small house being built into the side of a hill. Dark, mossy wooden planks and the smell of earth. Mushrooms sprouting from the soil in soft clusters. George sat on the roof, his sleeves rolled up and hands rough with dirt, his sun-warmed face crinkling up with laughter as Quackity rambled on meaninglessly.
(There were many emotions Dream had lost since giving himself over to divinity, but jealousy was not one of them.)
Dream stood in front of the house, a bitter taste in his mouth. When George and Quackity noticed him, their conversation slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Quackity cleared his throat, got to his feet, and muttered a goodbye as he hurried in the opposite direction. George only stared.
“How are you?” Dream called. He walked around the fence and climbed up the soft springy grass on the side of the hill, sitting carefully at the top.
George’s gaze was flat.
“Making yourself a new house?” Dream asked. “An entire castle isn’t good enough for you?”
A shrug. “Castle’s too cold. Besides, I’ve never had my own house before.”
That stung. “What about ours?”
“That’s your house,” George said, picking up his hammer. “Not mine.”
The nail embedded into wood. Dream fought to keep himself from scowling.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t think you should be spending so much time with Quackity.”
That got George’s attention. “Why not?”
“You know he’s still a part of L’Manburg, right? That he’s in the cabinet?”
“Who cares?” George said.
“Who – who cares?” Dream asked incredulously. “George, you’re the King. You’re not supposed to be taking sides.”
“I’m not taking sides. Quackity is my friend, I’m not gonna –”
“He’s a politician, he’s probably just manipulating you –”
“Oh, shut up, Dream,” George snapped. “Leave me alone.”
A possessive cold stab in the center of his chest, a fast and blinding rage: George was supposed to listen to him, not Sapnap, certainly not Quackity –
He leaned forward and took George by the wrist, and George nearly lost his balance from how quickly he recoiled, pulling his hand away. Dream froze, and the two of them stared at each other, wide-eyed.
“Dream,” George said, a warning in his voice. “I said to leave me alone.”
Dream had to fight to unclench his jaw. “Fine,” he grit. “If that’s what you want.”
It wasn’t like Dream needed the company. Not at all. He – he was doing George a favor, had been for years, and if George was too blind and stupid to see that, then he wouldn’t waste his fucking time. Dream’s story eclipsed this minor conflict. He had isolated the cause of all of his problems and had crafted the solution.
Everything came down to Tommy.
The logic went like this:
L’Manburg was the separation, the act of division, that resulted in the perpetual conflict plaguing Dream’s land. And L’Manburg lived as long as Tommy could bring life to it. Tommy was L’Manburg’s breath, its blood, its heartbeat. There was no independence, no revolution, no resistance without Tommy.
But Dream couldn’t kill him. The memory of a man could shoulder a heavier cause than he did in life. A martyr was the last thing Dream needed.
Not a saint, then, but a scapegoat. Tommy needed to be blamed. He needed to be broken. He needed to be defeated.
The task was simple enough. All Dream had to do was wait until Tommy did something worthy of punishment, which happened often, because Tommy was young and foolhardy and knew no life other than one of perpetual conflict. Dream would demand retribution. Threaten retaliation. Watch Tommy’s friends turn on him, one by one, until he had no other option but to follow Dream’s orders. Until Dream was fully in control.
A cold breeze swept through the streets on the day George’s house burned down. Dream saw it happening, or rather felt it, like a shift in the air; an action that couldn’t be retracted. He walked slowly towards the site, saw Tommy running away from the flames which licked up the side of George’s house with wild abandon.
He stood at the entrance and watched the house burn to the ground with a smile spreading slow across his face. Planks of wood cracked and fell into the flames. The little red mushrooms, scorched black. The fire stark red against the deep blue night.
It was perfect.
And now.
The threat is made and made physical through the obsidian walls surrounding L’Manburg, quarantining the virus spread. Dream demands exile. Tubbo agrees to a summit. Tommy disappears; he is hiding or being kept under watch. His countrymen are starting to turn on him, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
And George stands next to Dream on top of the hollow castle, the wind ruffling their hair and pulling at his cloak, asking, “Do you remember when we first came to this place?”
Dream studies him. His dark eyes, the curve of his brow. “Of course I do,” he says; he remembers everything.
“Do you remember what you told me then?”
Dream lifts his chin. “I told you I would protect us.”
George holds his gaze.
“I told you I would keep you safe.”
George’s lips purse. “And?”
“And, I told you things would be complicated.”
“And?”
“And?” Dream parrots back at him, annoyed. “What do you want me to say, George? I told you lots of things, we’ve said lots of things, I don’t –”
“You told me I wouldn’t lose you,” George says in a surge.
Dream freezes. The words ring, distant and bizarre, in his head.
“You told me you wouldn’t misuse your power.”
“I haven’t. I only –”
“This isn’t misuse?” George snaps, his gaze darkening. “Trapping people in – isolating a country because you want to punish a sixteen-year-old kid? Taking it all out on Tommy?”
“You know just as well as I do that Tommy is a liability and a danger,” Dream says, anger snapping in his chest. How dare George speak to him like this, like Dream is in the wrong, like he’s the one who corrupted this land and turned it into a place of war and politics and never-ending strife. “I’m trying to create peace. I’m trying to make this land safe.”
“You’re trying to control them,” George says. “And you’ll lose.”
Dream grits his teeth, fury swirling like a blizzard, clouding his thoughts. “You have no right to speak to me like this.”
George’s face darkens.
“Just because I made you king –”
“I’m not speaking to you as king, Dream, I’m speaking to you as myself.”
“Do you ever speak to me as king, George? I gave it to you because I thought you’d listen to what I told you, but you seem more interested in listening to your buddies –”
“Stop it,” George says harshly. “You leave them out of this.”
“Who?” Dream mocks. “Sapnap, the idiot, who doesn’t know how to take two steps without me? You know he’d turn on you in a second if I told him to, right? Or Quackity, the traitor, who runs back to Tubbo every time shit gets real? You think either of them give a fuck about you, George? Because I guarantee they don’t. And if you’re too stupid to see that –”
"STOP!” George shouts, his voice bordering on a scream, and takes a hard step back. “Shut up, Dream!”
The space between them, only a few feet, a chasm.
“You don’t have as much power over people as you think,” George finally says.
He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. He certainly isn’t convincing Dream, who tilts his head and says, “Don’t I?”
He holds his hand out, palm-up, over the rift. George stares at it uncomprehendingly.
“Give me your crown,” Dream says.
George’s gaze snaps to his. A disbelieving smile tugs at his mouth. “Really, Dream?”
“You don’t deserve it,” Dream says. “Eret made a better king.”
George laughs, though the sound holds no humor. He lifts the crown from his head, where its heavy imprint leaves a halo of dark soft hair. Carelessly, he throws it heavy and cold into Dream’s hands. “Take it. I never wanted it.”
Dream turns back towards L’Manburg, weighing the crown in his hands: the gold and the message it sends. “Go home, George.”
Instead, George shifts sharply towards him and grabs his face. Dream flinches back, but George isn’t attacking him – he’s just holding him by the jaw, forcing Dream to look at him. Their eyes meet: George’s, desperate and sincere – Dream’s, defensive and hostile.
George’s eyes flicker. He’s looking for something.
“I’m asking you,” he says.
And Dream remembers:
The path leading to their house. The breeze, playful and sweet. The land, unmarred and beckoning. George’s hand, his mouth soft under Dream’s, and the connection between them, private and precious and real. And George’s eyes, the same as they are now, dark and afraid, and his voice saying:
“I’m asking you not to do this,” he says, bringing both hands up to cup Dream’s face.
His touch burns.
Dream pulls away.
He takes one, two steps back. He watches George’s face fall.
“You think you understand, but you don’t,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I’m doing this for everyone. If you’re not going to help me –”
And he takes a step forward, but it’s not to touch, it’s to tower, rising to his full height and letting power lace into his words as George shrinks away.
“Stay the fuck out of my way.”
Tubbo may carry the authority of the Presidency, but he has fought and lost against Dream too many times not to be afraid of him.
(Sometimes, Dream thinks Tubbo still sees him as he was in the final control room, when the walls opened up around him, and the L’Manburgians, defenseless, were speared on their swords. Sometimes, he thinks Tubbo is stuck in the moment of the Festival: that he’s been frozen in time with all of his childish excitement and optimism, hovering forever on the edge of that moment of terrible clarity.)
All it takes is a little harsh word and a sharp forward motion for Tubbo to wince and start talking about compromise, and satisfaction spreads cold in Dream’s chest.
Tommy, naturally, fights back. He scratches and claws for leverage, for anything that might give him an advantage, and when he produces the pathetic piece of leather as something to hold over Dream, all he can do is laugh, a hysterical cackle bubbling out of his chest and freezing the grin on Tommy’s face.
He brings them along, this time, so they can see how easy it is to build up those obsidian walls. It only takes an ounce of concentrated thought, barely more than a flick of his finger. He watches Tubbo’s eyes turn large as dinner plates, Tommy’s hands go weak at his sides. The walls stack higher and higher.
He puts his free hand on Tommy’s shoulder, leans close, and hisses: “I don’t give a fuck about that piece of leather, Tommy. Go ahead, burn it. You think I care? You think I couldn’t remake it from the atoms in the air? You think I couldn’t resurrect Spirit himself, if I wanted to?”
Tommy’s face drains of color and he tries to pull away, but Dream’s grip goes iron and he forces him around until they’re staring into each other’s faces.
“I could tear this country apart,” he says, his voice rising, as Tommy’s eyes flare. “I could rip up the earth and swallow it whole. I could – I could double the amount of TNT Wilbur used, I could triple it! I could bring this land down to bedrock, if I wanted to!”
Then he lifts his gaze and pins Tubbo to the spot; Tubbo, who isn’t even trying to stop him. Who doesn’t know how.
“But I don’t want to do that,” he says, almost kindly. Rationally. “All I’m asking is for you to punish your citizens appropriately. Tommy – Tommy here has proven that he can’t follow the rules. So he needs to go.”
He turns his gaze back to Tommy, sees the fright there and revels in it. “I want you gone.”
And the boat is silent and cold on the way to Tommy’s exile, the boy himself stunned into astonished silence, Dream facing forward to hide his eager grin. This is only the start.
There was a time when Dream was afraid of losing George, but now he sees that George was a dead weight all along. He doesn’t need him, and it’s good that he doesn’t need to bother with him anymore.
He contracts Sam to build a prison for him. He wants it to be perfect, a pit from which no one can escape. He doesn’t know who he’ll need it for – Tommy, if his plan doesn’t work, or Technoblade, if he ever changes his mind about peace. He trusts Sam to build it; Sam, who was here from the start, who has always treated Dream with the respect he deserves, who is hard-working and transparent and true to his word.
(Sam asks after George and Dream ignores him.)
Dream pays Sam well. He pays Punz, too, as a kind of mercenary. Punz follows Dream’s instructions, watches after L’Manburg, and reports back to him what he’s heard. He’s an adequate replacement for Sapnap, who is nowhere to be found.
(Maybe George told him what Dream said. It doesn’t matter.)
Every day, without fail, he visits Tommy.
He visits Tommy and speaks to him. Watches, in real time, as Tommy falls into ruin. He can’t go home; Dream won’t let him. His clothes start to tear. His eyes go dim. His hands shake while Dream helps him with basic tasks, and Dream wonders if he’s eating. It’s not that Tommy is incapable of taking care of himself, it’s that he’s starting to not want to. He doesn’t do well on his own, he mutters to Dream. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this.
It’s perfect. It’s exactly what Dream wants.
He wants Tommy like this, lonely and compliant and desperate for company. He wants Tommy to lean on him, to confide in him when he’s feeling sad or angry or scared. He wants Tommy to trust him, to listen to him, to follow his instructions.
The training is methodical like it is for an animal. Every day, he destroys Tommy’s armor in front of him. Negative reinforcement when he fights back, positive reinforcement when he complies. By the second week, Tommy stops arguing entirely. The fire has drained out of his eyes.
Nobody interferes. A few of them could, but Dream takes care of them.
He thinks Techno might have stopped by near the beginning, but Tommy’s own pride took care of that potential complication.
He informs Tubbo that Tommy does not want to see him, and further that he shouldn’t be seen visiting someone he’s exiled – if he wants his decisions to be taken seriously, that is. Tubbo, who is young and unsure of himself and desperate to be a good leader, believes him.
He tells the ghost of Wilbur, who haunts L’Manburg with a hollowed-out voice and a vacant smile, to take a long trip, far away. He tells him, “Tommy doesn’t want to see you. Don’t you remember what you did to him while you were alive?” and the ghost flees before Dream needs to go any further.
There’s nobody left to stop him but Tommy himself, then, and Tommy breaks easier than Dream thought he would. He starts to throw his armor unprompted to the ground, starts to smile when he sees Dream approaching.
Maybe he breaks a little too well. In the days before Christmas, Dream lets him get close; they travel through the Nether together, Tommy nearly skipping with anticipation. But when they reach the portal to home, Tommy slows to a halt. Through the distorted shifting purple of the gate, he can see the cheery Christmas decorations strung up around homes and buildings. He can hear the happy shouts and pealing laughter of his friends. He can barely find the smell of peppermint and freshly baked bread.
L’Manburg has not frozen in time; it has moved on without him. Maybe Dream’s words to him are not so far from reality.
Tommy takes a half-step towards that vision and Dream puts an arm in front of him, stopping him. “It’s not for you,” he says, and Tommy closes his eyes.
That day, Dream finds Tommy staring into the lava with longing rather than fear, his arms wrapped around himself, shivering and searching for warmth.
It infuriates Dream. He places a hand on his shoulder and shoves him back. Tommy sees his disapproval and wilts and doesn’t do it again.
Tommy does not get to choose when his story is over.
(George’s voice: You’re going too far. I’m asking you to stop.)
At night, when there’s nobody to oversee, Dream walks through his forest and listens to it speak. He feels the places where it’s wounded and scarred. He knows that some of these marks were left by his hands. He knows he is at least partially to blame. His land knows it, too, but his land has no independent will to blame him or separate itself. The land moves underneath his control; the trees bend, the earth shakes, the sky collects in blanket-folds when he pulls it down in his hand.
“If only everything were so easy to control,” Dream murmurs to the crumpled sky, and watches the distressed twist of the stars.
Tommy disappears. In his place, a crater burnt into the earth. In his place, a tower scraping the sky.
Dream can explain the crater; he left it there, the day before, when he found Tommy’s little hiding place underneath the base Dream allowed him. He had felt the emptiness of the earth under his feet. It only took a second to find the diamonds, the weapons, the armor.
Before he had even looked up, Tommy was apologizing: “Dream, I didn’t mean anything by it, I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear. I wasn’t trying to go against you,” as Dream stood and willed the explosives into his hands, “I wasn’t trying to fight you, please don’t – don’t –,” as Dream placed them not only in the pit, but around the perimeter of his base. “Dream, I’m sorry, please don’t – I won’t have a place to sleep, I can’t rebuild this by my – you can’t do this, it isn’t right,” as Dream lit the fuse, “Dream, please!”
He can explain the crater, but he can only guess about the tower. An escape attempt, maybe.
Tommy isn’t dead, though. He would know it if he were. And there is no body.
Dream sends his power crackling into the earth, a surge of ice in his blood, and finds Tommy’s footsteps, stumbling unevenly away from the site. He follows them steadily. Tommy was limping. Maybe he hurt himself on the climb down from his tower. He leads Dream north, into the cold. He’ll have to be punished again for trying to escape, but it’s okay. This is a minor setback and Dream is playing the long game.
Tommy’s footsteps lead Dream past a village, where it seems like he stopped briefly, perhaps to get out of the snow constantly drifting from this region’s graying sky. Dream is less familiar with this land, lying just outside of where he usually draws his borders.
Finally, Tommy’s footsteps slow. Dream looks up and sees the outline of a small cabin jutting over the frozen horizon, smoke curling lazily from its chimney. Tommy’s steps hesitate, circle back, then head again towards the house. He’s uncertain and desperate. Dream doesn’t know who lives here, but he knows it won’t matter.
Technoblade answers the door and Dream grins in surprise.
“Technoblade,” he says in greeting as Techno’s eyebrows raise slightly in surprise. “Is Tommy here?”
Because he is. That much is obvious. If Dream tried a little harder, he could probably pinpoint exactly where he is. But he won’t have to, because he and Techno have an agreement. He and Techno are on good terms, and there’s absolutely no reason for Techno to tilt his head, like he’s thinking, or cross his arms, like he’s defensive, and there’s especially no reason for him to say, “No.”
Dream stills. He studies Technoblade’s face, human and unreadable, his eyes sharp through the angular frames of his glasses.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
Techno purses his lips. “Haven’t seen him.”
A moment of silence, the snow falling in muffled flurries around them. Techno’s breath huffs warm in the cold air, but Dream feels no difference in his lungs. They both know what’s happening here.
“You know, Techno,” Dream says, “you kind of owe me a favor.”
An arched eyebrow. “Do I.”
“Yeah,” Dream says, “you do.”
“Whatever for.”
“For letting you stay here. For letting you keep your” – Dream jerks his head towards the second blue cloak on the wall – “temporary friend.”
Techno’s eyes widen, though it looks like he’s holding back a smile. Dream doesn’t know what part of this is funny. “You mean Phil?”
“Yeah.”
“Phil can take care of himself.”
“Can he?”
Every word a veiled threat. Laced with a promise, threaded with a question: are we doing this?
Eventually, Techno shakes his head. “Tommy’s exiled from L’Manburg, right?”
“Right,” Dream grits.
“We’re not in L’Manburg, are we?”
“No, but –”
“Then unless you’re prepared to get past me,” and Techno’s head lowers and shifts into the wild boar, dangerous and unfiltered and ready for a fight, “I think we’re done here.”
And Dream considers it.
But when he clenches his fists, he realizes that the cold he’s feeling is artificial and surface-level; that the power he’s used to have crackling through his veins splutters and melts.
Techno laughs at the look on his face. “What’s wrong? Too far from home?”
Dream glowers, hisses, “This isn’t over,” and stalks away.
Techno calls after him, condescension curling the edges of his words. “Come visit anytime!”
He’s going to have to finish that prison sooner than he thought.
(Because Tommy doesn’t get to decide how his exile works, Tommy doesn’t get to be with other people, Tommy doesn’t get to cower behind another protector who will only make things worse for everyone.)
If Technoblade won’t listen to him, Dream will put him in the prison to rot, and if Tommy won’t fall in line after that, he’ll go in there as well, and then Tubbo, and Eret, and Sapnap and George and Quackity, if they want, and even the harmless ones like Phil and Niki and Ant – there’s a room for everyone who needs one. The prison will always be an option, standing severely in the long shadow of the castle, lurking like an austere alternative to the safe and happy life Dream is trying to build for everyone that they keep fucking rejecting.
The prison is full of complex and coordinated machinery, which Sam explains to him in excruciating detail. There is something increasingly strange about the prison, something detached from the land, detached from his influence over it. Sam is creating something so divorced from the natural, so atomized and regulated, that even Dream has difficulty altering it. It’s good; it means it will be strong enough to hold Techno.
One night, as he helps Sam place piece after piece of obsidian, their conversation peters out, leaving them in a tactful silence. The moon’s weak light is swallowed and extinguished in the perfect black of the prison roof.
And Sam asks: “Who are we building this for?”
Dream sighs. “Anyone who needs it.”
Sam hums and slides another obsidian brick into place, his hands skilled and sure. “I wish things could be like they used to,” he says carefully. “When we all just got along with each other.”
“I do too, Sam,” Dream says. “I really do.”
Tommy returns to L’Manburg as surely as the tide to the shore. He does it first as a sort of antagonist, which is fine – that will divorce him even further from the group, Dream thinks – but even then, there’s something dangerous about it, some potential for reconciliation. And then Punz informs Dream of a plot by the New L’Manburgians – to kill him.
It would make Dream laugh if it didn’t make him seethe, dismissing Punz with a bark so he can stalk up and down the halls of the community house, passing empty room after empty room. He’s the only one who lives here these days. The house is cold and still, interrupted only by his heavy footsteps and frustrated mutters.
“They’re idiots,” he seethes to himself, “idiots, all of them.”
He needs to do something more. He needs to do something worse. He needs to give them a common enemy that isn’t him, and the idea comes to him in a flash: Technoblade, Tommy alongside of him. Hand them over to the angry mob, let them tear each other to shreds. And when they face what they’ve done, with Tommy’s blood on their hands, L’Manburg will be destroyed.
This is his flawed line of logic when he destroys the community house.
It is, after all, the oldest place on the server, the only place that every single person here has a connection with. Dream used to count himself among them but he knows – he knows this house is just a structure of brick and wood, temporary and meaningless except for the meaning assigned to it. And Dream assigns no meaning to it. He assigns meaning to nothing except the one thing he cares about, the one thing he’s always cared about, which is making this land safe, making it peaceful, making it his.
He douses the community house with gasoline. He stands in front of it on the path, alone. The night air is clear and close-knit. The stillness surrounding him gives every movement meaning.
(The memory of George threatens to slide its hand into his. The memory of Sapnap shouts at him from inside, the memories of Sam and Alyssa fish from the roof, the memory of Callahan waves from the water’s edge. Dream feels a brief, ever-brief, ever-fading rush of warmth in his chest, hears something pleading with him, please, not this.)
He lights the match.
The community house is devoured in a single searing breath, the flames tearing up the side of the house, licking at the curtains and turning them to tatters, peeling pieces of wood from the brick and sending them crashing to the ground. Debris slowly fills the lake; the soot sinks heavy, clogging the water. Will the fish survive? Are there still fish in this water?
Dream stokes the fire when it threatens to die out. He makes sure it claims everything. He returns it all to dust.
He will do this to every last structure living on his land, if he has to.
The next day is the date of his supposed execution, but instead Dream leads them to the community house and lets them panic and shout and ask, “Who did this?”
“Who else?” he says, watching the entire population of his land scramble around the remaining ruins of the community house, looking for anything salvageable. “Tommy. And Techno.”
Tubbo shrinks, and Fundy’s ears pin to the back of his head, and Niki looks like she might be capable of murder.
(But Sam just stares at him with this sad, dark look.)
“You’re wrong!” comes a sudden shout, and then Tommy is standing in front of him, scowling, the effects of his invisibility potion wearing thin. “This wasn’t me!”
He’s regained some of his rebellious spark, Dream notes unhappily. It’ll die out soon enough. “You can’t keep lying to everyone, Tommy,” Dream says, lifting his voice. “I cared about this place! We all cared about this place! You can’t keep destroying –”
“Tommy,” Tubbo interrupts. “Was this really you?”
Tommy looks to him. He walks close, grabs Tubbo’s hand, and Tubbo doesn’t fight it. “Tubbo,” he says. “I swear on my life” – turning to everyone else – “I swear on my discs I didn’t do this.”
“I’ve been with him,” says Technoblade, and Dream flinches and turns to see the wild boar pacing towards the group, his dark glassy eyes pinned on Dream. “It wasn’t him.”
(Sam’s gaze hasn’t wavered.)
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dream says, and Tommy responds with a cry, “No, you listen to me!” and the group falls still.
Tommy is glaring, pulling himself up. He’s regained something, some spirit, that Dream thought he had destroyed in exile. “This is Dream’s fault,” he says, his voice carrying strength. “Dream is – he’s fucking evil, he is. He’s been manipulating me. He’s been manipulating all of us.” He turns back to Tubbo and grabs for his hand. “He’s driven us apart. We never should have let that happen.”
And Tubbo – Tubbo nods – and this –
Dream feels this spiraling out of control.
“Tommy,” he snaps, “shut up,” and takes a harsh step forward, making Tommy wince.
Technoblade is there immediately, standing in between them. “Don’t get any closer.”
Every gaze is pointed at him, he realizes. They’re grabbing their weapons, they’re setting their stances. They were going to kill him today. They were going to kill him, and now Tommy and Techno are on their side, and –
Dream grins at them, wild, feeling something snap and let loose inside of him, some frantic freeze that cracks sharply in his chest. It manifests in a laugh, harsh and nearly painful.
“You know what?” he breathes. “It's time for this to be done.”
He brings his hands up and crashes down the last vestiges of the walls, dust billowing into the air as scattered shouts ring out. Amidst the chaos, he stalks towards L’Manburg.
“Stop him!” Tommy cries, and Dream slides into a run. Some manic happiness rises up inside of him, and when he reaches the country, which is empty and built over a crater and just waiting to be destroyed, he climbs into the air as though on invisible stairs, unattached and untouchable. He stops a mile above the crater Wilbur left behind. Above the country they all tried so violently to save.
The rest of the useless group is rushing towards him, Technoblade and Tommy among them, but they’re all land-locked and their arrows are futile at this distance. Dream laughs and laughs, the power dizzying and giddy in his head and chest, and he reaches down and starts to rip up L’Manburg from its roots, feels the earth start to tear from its very mooring. The entire nation is ripped from its foundation and hovers unbelievably in the air.
“This is over,” Dream says, and he destroys it.
There are screams – vaguely, he registers Tubbo grabbing Tommy just before he can be pulled into the abyss – and it is an abyss – Dream is finishing what Wilbur started, what Wilbur didn’t have the courage or the capacity to do, which is finally, finally, reduce this place to dust. He crushes and crumbles it underneath him, every foot of the traitor country, every inch of the rot infesting his land, infesting his home. This place, these people, they’ve caused so much goddamn nuisance, and it feels right to assert his control over it again, it feels good to dictate what it will be. It will be nothing more than earth and ash. Dream digs deeper, goes further, as the buildings capsize and splinter and crash and are swallowed up by the earth; Technoblade is shouting something, but it doesn’t matter; he may be powerful, but he can’t reach Dream up here, he can’t fight him on his own domain; Dream laughs and tastes blood in his mouth and doesn’t care –
Something slams into him and he falls, catching himself mid-air, scrambling to his feet just in time to see a blade swiping a vicious arc towards his head. He dodges and whirls to face Phil – Phil? – who –
Who shines, with some kind of divine light, whose face shifts so that Dream can’t ever quite make out its form, at once a lion, an eagle and a man. Behind him stretch four wings made of pure blinding darkness, like a void ripping through the reality of the sky, and covered with eyes – hundreds of eyes blinking constantly in and out of existence. There’s a tidal wave of energy that knocks Dream back a few steps, and Phil – Phil is –
“You’re a god,” Dream gasps, “how?”
When Phil speaks, it’s with many voices.
“So arrogant,” he says, angry and wise and condescending and amused. “You young ones, bleeding out all over the place, practically begging to be found. You don’t think we’ve learned to keep ourselves hidden?”
His wings lash through the air like lightning and he’s on Dream in less than the space of a blink, ramming against him and sending him tumbling. He grasps for leverage but feels Phil’s power halt the atoms in the air, and he falls like a stone, his back slamming into the torn-up earth and collapsing the breath in his chest. From above, Phil cracks towards him.
One thought: it doesn’t end like this.
Dream gathers rocks around his fist and slams it into Phil’s chest as he lands, throwing him off balance for a second so that Dream can scramble to his feet. He grabs for a weapon, finds it in the air, and slashes his sword down on Phil’s head – but it’s caught by a shield, and Technoblade shoves him back, filling the air with the metal scent of blood. And then the two of them are clashing, equal and opposite forces finally meeting, vicious, violent, furious. Dream feels each blow resonate down to his center, grits his teeth and gives himself over to the fight: he becomes nothing but the action, the motion, the burn and tear of muscle. What remains of L’Manburg shakes and crumbles beneath them.
Dream will win. Technoblade may be a war god but Dream is the earth itself, this land is his, he speaks to it; he finds his focus and concentrates it, for a second, on swallowing Techno whole and crushing him miles below the surface of the earth, and a crack starts to form under Techno’s feet.
Before it can open, there is a thunder-crack from behind, a foot on Dream’s back which slams him face-first to the ground. Dream shoves desperately up but something even stronger crushes him down; he tries again and fails; he tries again;
“Let me go!” he cries, and realizes he’s being surrounded by those void-wings, that lack of space, an empty chasm that glitters like crystal. Phil’s wings are isolating him, severing from his land, from his power. He grasps for it and doesn’t find it – a phantom limb. He is alone, he is – he is falling – he hears –
“Do we kill him?” Technoblade says from a million miles away.
“Do we have another choice?” Phil responds grimly. “He’s obviously lost control.”
“NO!” Dream screams, his voice muffled and falling fast to silence.
“It’s all gone,” he hears Tommy say with grief, “L’Manburg,” and the voice sends such pure rage ripping through him that he just barely throws Phil’s wings off of him, manages one stab of power in Tommy’s direction before he’s forced down again by wings and a pair of strong hands. “Fuck OFF!” Tommy screams, stubbornly alive.
“That’s it,” Technoblade says, closer this time – it’s his hands on Dream’s arms, pinning him down. “It’s time to end this.”
NO – NO – NO –
“Stop,” says one more voice, and Techno goes still.
Dream opens his eyes, blind and black-filled, flickering desperately. Looking for him.
“We have another option,” says George.
This.
This is worse than death.
They wrestle him inside his own prison. They throw him into his cell.
It was built strong enough to hold a god. It was built strong enough to hold Dream.
The irony of it, the pure, bitter humor of the whole thing makes Dream laugh. It’s a hysterical, panicked laugh, but it’s a laugh all the same. He placed the obsidian that he’s scraping his fingernails against. He wrote the designs for the lava that pours down all around him, enclosing him. This is his prison. This is his doing.
He tries to escape. He tries to crack the glass, but the awful effects of Sam’s magic drain his strength. He tries to move the obsidian, but it won’t listen to him. Sometimes, he tries to bring the lava close enough to burn his skin, but it never moves.
Dream is dull, listless, weak.
He sits in the center of his cell and he rots.
This is worse than death.
When they first put him in here he fought back. He screamed and tore against their grip, but nothing could stop the inevitable. Phil and Techno together were too strong. When they finally locked him behind the impenetrable glass barrier, he had slammed his fists into it again and again, staring desperately into Technoblade’s neutral, impassive face.
“You let me out of here,” he cried. “You let me the fuck out of here!”
Technoblade’s mouth twitched. “The people want to live peacefully,” he said. “You were makin’ that impossible.”
“Bullshit,” Dream hissed. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t fucking do this to me.”
“And why not?” Techno asked, his gaze cold.
“You can’t treat me like – like one of them!” Dream shouted, his voice taking on an inhuman quality as his power started to snap, lashing against the walls in dizzying whips. His deity tore itself to shreds searching for some weakness, some fallibility in the design – but he knew, even then, it wouldn’t find any. He made sure of it himself.
Technoblade had looked at him with pity, then, which was even worse. “We are them,” he said, shaking his head. “Losin’ sight of that is what gets you stuck in a place like this.”
“Techno,” Dream said desperately, as he turned his back. “TECHNO!”
“I’ll come back to visit,” he said, and walked to meet Sam – and, Dream realized, George, who was staring at him so, so sadly.
“George,” Dream had begged, and then, when he didn’t move, angrily: “George! George! George, you let me the fuck OUT OF HERE! GEORGE!”
George flinched and turned away.
There’s no use for displays like that anymore, and nobody to witness them, anyway. Dream sits in his cell and he rots, and he feels himself drain slowly away.
Tommy visits him, days or weeks later.
He sits on the opposite side of the glass. Dream barely looks at him.
“Thought I’d come keep you company,” Tommy says. “Return the favor.”
Dream doesn’t respond.
“What have you been doing in here? Keeping yourself busy?”
Dream’s eyes flicker briefly upwards.
“I hope you haven’t been too comfortable,” Tommy says with a grin, but Dream knows he doesn’t really mean it. Tommy is too soft and too good to wish real harm on anyone. And it sickens him and awakens some little part inside of him that still feels anger, that still is capable of lashing out.
“I should have let you die,” Dream spits.
Tommy’s eyes widen.
“I should have let you kill yourself.”
Tommy scrambles to his feet. “Techno told me I shouldn’t visit –”
“I should have made you kill yourself,” Dream says, standing and rushing forward just to see the way Tommy flinches back, the way he’s still afraid of him.
“You couldn’t have,” Tommy says, glaring.
Dream snarls. “Oh, but I could have. I can do anything, haven’t you learned?”
Tommy backs towards the exit. “Sam?”
“Can’t you see the story isn’t over? I’m going to win, Tommy, I’m going to get out –”
“Sam!”
“And when I do, you’re fucking dead, Tommy. You’re going to lose everything.”
"SAM!”
The lava parts and Dream falls back into a sitting position, watching with satisfaction as Tommy pauses briefly in the hallway.
“You don’t control everything,” Tommy says bravely. “And you won’t win. We beat you, Dream. You’re trapped in here. And I’m free.”
Maybe he’s right. But he’s still trembling when he leaves.
These days, Dream takes power where he can get it.
There’s only one other person who would want to visit him, and it takes him several months to do it.
Dream is hollowed-out and empty by the time it happens. He has folded further and further into himself until there is no Dream, and there is no cell, and there is no bitter, dying deity still tearing his chest to shreds. But when George appears on the other side of the glass, he feels a flicker – of something. He doesn’t know how to identify it anymore.
“George,” he says. His voice is hoarse and cracks with the effort.
George is clearly horrified at his appearance. He stands, stock-still, as though he hasn’t decided whether he’s staying or not.
Dream gestures forward – his first outward motion in several weeks. “Please, sit, I’m – I’m happy to see you.”
George moves slowly, as though approaching a wild animal. He sits, his eyes scouring Dream’s face. Looking for something.
Dream clears his throat. “How – how are you?”
A flicker of annoyance, or maybe amusement. “We’re doing small talk?”
Dream laughs softly, a little smile surprising him. “I missed you.”
Does he mean it? Does it matter anymore?
Either way, it looks like it hurts George, who recoils. “You understand what you did?” he asks. “You know why you have to be here?”
Dream casts his mind back and tries to think.
“You think I did something wrong,” he eventually says.
Grief shades George’s face. “You did.”
“I hurt you.”
“You hurt a lot of people.”
“I was trying to keep everyone safe.”
“No,” George says ruefully. “You were trying to control everyone.”
“There’s no difference between those things,” Dream says. The words come from somewhere lost inside of him. “Controlling everyone was the only way to keep them safe.”
George shakes his head. “You think that’s true, but it’s not.”
Dream takes a breath in.
“I told you,” George says. “I told you what would happen, if you tried. I told you you’d lose everything. Do you remember?”
All Dream does is remember. All he does is sit here, day after lightless day, night after sleepless night, and remember. The journeys through jungles and endless deserts with George and Sapnap. The wheat fields they planted on the lake. The horse Dream tamed and brought miles back home. The path through the wilderness they built plank by plank. The spruce trees, and the rushing river, and the solemn mountains, and everything used to be so beautiful –
“Of course I do,” Dream says, and realizes there are tears on his face.
George is crying, too. “I knew this would happen,” he whispers. “All that time I spent, trying to pull you back, trying to remind you of who you were, and I still knew. I knew I would lose you.”
The words, you haven’t lost me, die before they can form in Dream’s mouth. He knows they’re a lie.
“George,” he says instead, a broken plea. “George, get me out of here. Please get me out of here. I can’t do it myself, you have to – you have to get me out of here.”
George’s face immediately shutters, the emotion in his eyes fading. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Talk to Sam.” Dream leans forward, presses his hands up against the glass, and George looks away. “You can talk to him. He’s – he’s your friend. George –”
“I can’t,” George says. “It’s not my decision, and –”
“You can convince them, you can –”
“I wouldn’t do it even if I could,” George cuts him off.
Dream goes very still.
“I’ll come back, though,” George says, as though that matters at all. “I’ll come talk to you more often, if – if you want me to. I’ll –”
“You’ll pity me,” Dream snarls, and sees a familiar fear in his eyes. “You’ll sit on the other side of the glass and feel bad for me, and give me that sad pathetic fucking look, like you aren’t the one doing this to me. You’re the one doing this to me, George, you’re the one who told them to put me here –”
“I saved your life!”
“You betrayed me!” Dream cries with two voices.
George stands abruptly. “This was a mistake.”
And Dream scrambles to his feet, too, feels the weakness in his legs. “Don’t leave.”
“Sam,” George calls.
“Please, George, I’m – I’m sorry, please don’t go,” Dream says, his fingers clawing desperately against the glass. “George –”
“Sam!”
“Listen to me!” Dream screams, his voice ringing off the glass. George jerks his head towards him as Dream says, “If you’d just fucking listen to me and do what I fucking told you, George, then maybe I wouldn’t be in this hellhole in the first place!”
He smashes his foot into the glass as his power lashes out, bashing against the barrier, and George stumbles back. The lava opens up behind him, giving him a way home. But George pauses for one moment longer.
He comes close to the glass. The two of them are suddenly eye-to-eye. George’s gaze seems to pierce right down to the center of him, but what he finds doesn’t satisfy him. He’s looking for something that isn’t there anymore.
“If you are still in there,” George whispers, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you from this.”
George turns and disappears into the path that carves through the lava, which swallows up the space he leaves behind.
Watching him leave drives a dagger of ice through the middle of Dream’s chest. A cold that spreads, and freezes, and finally consumes.