Chapter Text
The cafe is bustling with people by the time George arrives. Miraculously, his favorite corner, tucked near the back and quietly unobtrusive to the whole place, is still bereft of customers. He slides his bag onto the table to save it, and goes up to the register to order.
Wherever he’s ended up this time is a beautiful change of pace, he thinks. He’s never seen half of the marvels here—coffee, cell phones, busses, those sort of things. It’s not real. George has learned that rarely anything is.
But there is a peace to it. The world bustles around him. He sits in the corner and drinks a lemonade without enough sugar to make it taste nearly as good as he had paid for. He watches a cat video on YouTube.
Through it all, he keeps the cardboard box with his memories taped and sealed, tucked in the corner of his mind. The Dream on top of the mountain, blue eyes lost; Dream in the End, holding George tight, and then letting go.
George’s wrist still throbs sometimes, when its most inconvenient. Always when it’s most inconvenient. Like a reminder that Dream lives, still, under his skin , nestled safe and secure between his ribs.
As if George needs a reminder. He flips through worlds like a magazine and every page has Dream, Dream, Dream, always different forms, always the same smile and fondness leaking sappy and smitten into his tone, but never quite real enough to be solid. A caricature of a memory.
As if on cue, someone slides into the seat in front of him.
It’s Dream. It’s always Dream. He’s golden and glowing in the afternoon sun, radiant in his happiness. His dark green apron is snug against his striped shirt and marks him as an employee.
“Hello,” he says. George graces him with a tilt of head—more acknowledgement than he had given many of his ilk. He boots up his laptop. There’s fake work he’s supposed to be doing for the fake job he has in this fake universe, but he finds a fake video game he’s never heard of and opens it up instead.
Fake Dream plows on, determined. Maybe even a little nervous. “I was—so I—you—um.” He worries at his bottom lip. It isn’t real but George feels an amused pity wash over him nonetheless. He’s in a good mood, today. Enough to humor him.
“You have a nice name,” he says flippantly, just to watch Dream flush and duck his head, obviously embarrassed. “Dream.”
“You know it?” Dream says. He sounds hopeful.
“It’s on your nametag,” George says, though he did, in fact, already know it.
Dream laughs. “That’s not fair. You don’t have a nametag.”
“That’s for a reason,” George teases. “I don’t just give my name out to any handsome stranger, you know. You have to earn it.”
The raw joy and hope that light up across Dream’s face is almost too much to bear. George has to look away.
What is he doing? Sitting in a coffee shop that doesn’t exist, basking in sunlight that doesn’t exist, flirting with an imitation of his best friend that doesn’t exist? It’s pathetic. A last ditch attempt to revel in a world where Dream wants him. A world where they can fall easily into step, drinking lemonade out of coffee cups and sharing rent and kiss each other because Dream wants him, wants to spend time with him, wants to—
It’s a useless route to go down. It’s always been a useless route to go down.
Dream is babbling, something excited and nervous in equal measure, gesturing wildly. George swallows the bitter unhappiness. Closes his laptop and stands up.
“Sorry,” he say, though he knows there’s no real need for it. The universes will shift, and Dream will come to him, every time, no matter what. “I have to go. I have a work, uh—a work thing I have to go to.”
And then, because Dream’s face falls, George makes a promise he knows he won’t keep: “See you around?”
“Tomorrow,” Dream scrambles to say. “I know you come in every day—sorry, that’s kind of weird, I just—um, we can talk if you come in tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” George says. “Yeah, we could.”
He begins to leave. Something catches his sleeve.
“You look upset,” Dream says, hesitantly. “Are you alright? Did I say something?”
“It’s not you,” George says. All of a sudden, he feels very, very tired. “It’s—I’m working through some things. Bad breakup.”
“Oh,” Dream says. He lets go of George’s sleeve. “I’m sorry if I was being too forward. I’ve been told on occasion I….am too forceful. With what I want.”
“You’re fine,” George says. If it’s a little impatient, Dream doesn’t seem to pick up on it. “I just—look, I really have to go. The work thing is kind of important. But I’m glad we talked. We can pick this up again tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Dream says. “I’ll see you then?”
“Sure,” George says. He even waves on his way out. Never let it be said that he has been cruel to Dream. Not that it matter, but still. But still.
—
He finds himself at the cafe the next day, lingering just outside the shade of its eaves. He hadn’t meant to. Of course he hadn’t meant to.
But he goes in anyway. Dream’s wiping a table down in swift, broad strokes, facing away from the entrance. The little bell above the door jingles merrily as George enters. He turns at the sound.
“You!” Dream’s face instantly lights up. Like the sun itself had come in behind George. “You came!”
“I told you I would,” George says, though he himself had had no intention to come back. It’s hard to regret, now, the way Dream is smiling, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. The cafe is comparatively quieter today, George notes, though he can hardly tell with all of Dream’s motion. He drags George to his corner seat and bustles behind the counter, a constant blur of speech and motion and earnest affection.
“Lemonade,” Dream says, sliding a tall cup across the table. “And cake, because I um—I saw you pour a bunch of sugar in your lemonade last time and that’s kind of gross, actually, because it’s cold so all of it sat at the bottom, so um. Sugar. But in a cake.”
“How sweet,” George says dryly. He pushes a fork into the soft, spongy cake and takes a bite. It is sweet. It’s good.
“It’s good,” he says, and offers a forkful of it to Dream, who takes a bite unhesitatingly.
“It is good,” Dream says, still chewing it.
George says, “Swallow your food before you speak, brute.”
Dream swallows. His smile turns mischievous at the corners. “It tastes good,” he says again, “but the company is better.”
“You’re disgusting,” George laughs. He eats more cake. It really is delicious. Like someone had taken everything George likes and mixed it together and baked it into one showstopping dessert. “This is the cake of my dreams,” he teases.
He almost misses it: a twitch of Dream’s eyebrow, before he smooths it back over into adoration. Something wholly unreadable in the map of Dream’s familiar face.
George’s stomach drops.
It must show on his face because Dream reaches over the table, concerned, to put a reassuring hand on his arm. “George? Are you okay? Is the cake alright? I mean, you just said it was good but—”
“I didn’t give you my name,” George says lowly. “I never gave you my name, and Dream has never been—” he breaks off, setting his fork down on the plate. The metal clinks against china. “Show me your eyes.”
“You can see my eyes,” not-Dream says, something like worry bleeding into his voice. “Look, George—I just—”
George reaches over the table, fingers guided by instinct more than any rational thought, and curls his fingers around Dream’s jaw.
Under his feathery touch, Dream shudders and goes completely, absolutely, still.
Dream’s skin is cool. George finds the edge of something cold and hard to the touch and lifts it up, following the line of it until he finds a place he can slide a fingernail under, lifting it up from Dream’s face—and what comes off is a ceramic mask, pale as bone and cool as marble.
Underneath, Dream’s eyes are unmistakably blue.
“You,” George says. It comes out nearly a whisper.
“Me,” not-Dream croaks. “George, please believe me—I’ve been trying. You said you couldn’t belong with me but I’ve been trying to be better, George it’s—”
George is dimly aware that the cafe has fallen away around them, into a blank void of white and emptiness. There’s something familiar, something pulsing like a heartbeat under his skin, though he cannot quite grasp it.
He says, “Who are you?”
Not-Dream’s clear blue eyes soften. He reaches a hand to splay a palm over George’s heart. “You can feel it, can’t you? It’s why you stayed. It’s why you came back.”
His cool touch blooms warm over George’s skin. With it comes the realization.
“DreamXD,” George breathes.
“Yes,” XD says, and xyr eyes are pained and overjoyed all in one. “Yes. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last, George.”
← ← ←
In a time long past, before anyone else had walked their own private earth, George had sat next to Dream on a grassy knoll under the shade of a long-hanging oak tree, seeking reprise from the unforgiving heat of the afternoon sun.
“You’ve been distant lately,” George said.
“I’ve been normal,” Dream said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
George closed his eyes. “You don’t have to pretend, Dream.”
For a good, long, time: silence. Dream held so still George couldn’t even hear his breaths against the wind, thinking very hard. It felt unnatural, for someone so entirely made of motion and love to be frozen at this. At George. He reached over and put a hand over Dream’s wrist. It was cold under his touch. His pulse was light and fluttering.
Finally, he said, “It’s nothing you have to worry about.”
George turned to stare at him incredulously. “It’s the godhood, isn’t it? It’s getting the better of you.”
“George—”
“I told you that you don’t have to pretend,” George said flatly. “Tell me the truth, Dream. Are you leaving?”
“No, George,” Dream said hurriedly, “You know I wouldn’t. You know I’m—” he splays a hand over his heart, fingers digging sharp and frustrated into his skin. “My heart is with you,” he finishes. “I won’t let it consume me. I’ll stay.”
“I need more than that,” George said, helpless. “You wouldn’t even tell me, Dream. I need something more. If your heart is with me, give it to me. If you’ll stay, give me a reason to believe it.”
Dream breathed. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, okay. I’ll do it.”
Later, he’ll bring George to a long-forgotten stronghold, bricks cracked and mossy from time and neglect. He’ll put a hand over George’s heart and he’ll draw the godhood from his veins into a portal, dark and void-like, filled to the brim with stars.
Everything needs a purpose. DreamXD, protector and prisoner of the End, so things will never end. A promise made and sealed on George’s heart.
When Dream drew him close and kissed him after, his lips were chapped and sweet. His fingers, tangled in George’s, were warm and entirely mortal. Maybe then he hoped it would stay like that forever: just them, together. Maybe then, he’d taken it for granted.
→ → →
It’s light outside. George had never built an interior to his house—had never had the chance to—but now all the things he had dreamed of building, warm spruce walls and bookshelves, surround him. His bed is still warm from sleep but he can feel the faint chill of morning wafting in from the windows. Two pairs of boots stand side by side next to the door.
He says, “This isn’t real.”
“It is just as real as anything else here,” XD says. Whether it is agreement or not is cloaked entirely. Xe hesitates for a moment, struggling for words. “I didn’t think you’d remember me,” xe admits, finally.
“Hard not to,” George says. His chest still burns from XD’s touch. He puts a cool hand over it, as if to soothe it.
XD’s frosted eyes follow the motion, and xyr gaze softens. “Of course,” xe says. “You’re the seal. Of course you would have remembered. My apologies. I didn’t intend to doubt you.”
“It’s fine,” George says shortly. He swings his legs off the bed and stands. Suddenly, the warmth and coziness of his almost-home, reconstructed with all its layers of hope and dreams, seems to close in on him. “Let’s go outside. I’m getting tired of things that never existed.”
XD defers to him with a gentle tilt of xyr head. George does not look at the boots, or the worn green coat draped over the coatrack, next to his own cloak. He opens the door and steps out.
—
They are in the community house. They are in George’s ramshackle basement, the bare bones of a home. They are in Dream’s ramshackle basement, hidden by pistons and will alone. They are in L’Manburg, blown clean open by war. They are on the Prime Path, and DreamXD says, “Will this do?”
The sky is blue and open, warm sunlight streaming through trees and dappling the ground with shadow. George breathes the cool, dry air in.
“Yes,” he says. It’s familiar in a way that scrapes at his lungs; to miss it is to admit it was gone from him at all.
A thought occurs to him, suddenly. He says, “You’ve never been here, have you?”
XD smiles ruefully. Xe touches a hand lightly to the crown of xyr head. “No,” xe says. “Not in the most orthodox sense, no. I reconstructed it here from your memories, and a few snippets from….my other self’s experiences.” Xyr tone sours, briefly, on the last few words, and xyr hand falls to their jaw, where George had pried away the mask. Xe continues, “I hope you find it pleasing. There’s a lot I want to talk to you about.”
“Answer my questions first and I’ll listen,” George says. He begins to walk, the hard soles of his boots clicking rhythmically on the wooden slabs of the path, and XD follows. His gait is soundless as shadow.
“I can’t guarantee I’ll have the answers,” XD says, gazing at the sprawling landscape before them, “but if that’s what it will take, please—go ahead.”
He decides on the obvious, first. “Where are we?”
XD looks baffled at this. “The Prime Path, George. You wanted to be here, so I brought you here. Have you begun to lose your memory too?”
“Too?” George says, and then waves his hand. “Never mind, actually. Tell me later. No, I meant—” he struggles for the words for a minute, then continues, “—where is here? It’s not reality, because everything keeps changing. So where are we?”
“Ah.” The line of XD’s mouth pulls taut. “It’s….a space between reality, sort of. It’s how we’re able to meet, even though I’m locked in the End and you’re not—this place doesn’t really exist in the traditional sense.”
“And in the less traditional sense?”
“In that case,” XD says, “everything is real.”
“Very cool,” George says offhandedly, having little to no patience for philosophical quandaries. “If this place doesn’t exist, how did I get here, then?”
XD shrugs. “There’s only one person walking the Overworld who could do such a thing. I’m sure you can guess.”
“Dream,” George says. “That makes no sense, though. Why would he…?”
“You act surprised,” XD says, though he can’t quite hide the steep bitterness that seeps into xyr voice. “As if Dream has not proven himself capable and willing to lock away the things he doesn’t need anymore in places where no one will be able to reach them. We’re the same, you and I—unwanted, discarded things.”
George frowns. “That’s not right,” he says, though he has no real idea. His memories of before are hazy at best, fogged-over snatches of emotions and conversations. Dream loves him, he thinks. He must love him. This is both certain and uncertain, a firm conviction with loose foundations.
“I am sorry,” XD says, sounding genuinely so. “But I have learned that it’s better to be grounded in reality, rather than drift in a far-flung dream.”
George is quiet. They walk side by side down the path in silence. Finally, when they reach the community house, XD speaks up again.
“If you have no more questions,” xe says, “I’d like to make my offer.”
“I still have questions,” George says.
“You don’t want the answers,” XD says, not presumptively. As if xe already knows. Still, xe’s kind enough to give George the illusion of denying it: “Do you?”
“No,” says George shortly. He clenches his jaw. “Tell me your offer.”
The community house door opens on its own, two steps before they arrive at it. George looks at XD, who merely smiles—a strange, mild, thing on a face that is both Dream’s and wholly not—and glides through, beckoning him to follow.
They go through it. It is a liminal space now, rather than a home or a hearth. As they leave, George looks in the clear blue water of the lake below it and sees its pale reflection and his own, rippling with the motion of the wind.
“I said I wanted to make you an offer,” XD says, leading him up the stairs, to the towering architecture of the castle. “That’s not strictly true. I….wanted to give you a gift.”
“A gift,” George echoes.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Do I have to have a reason?” XD turns to him, expectant. “Maybe I just enjoy your company. Maybe I just want to give you gifts.”
It’s such a Dream thing to say that George’s chest aches with it. He folds his hands into his pockets, feeling suddenly untethered and lost. How much of Dream is XD? Is it even possible, to draw that line between them and slice them evenly in two—human and god, lover and watcher? Is it even fair?
XD places a light, cool hand on his shoulder. It feels like the breeze on a dry day, a shadow on a hot one. “Come on,” xe says. They ascend the steps to the castle and xe leads them into the throne room.
Deja vu crawls up George’s throat at the sight. It is ashen on his tongue. It is sweet and singing in his chest.
“This is my gift,” XD says, and turns. In one hand, xe grasps a sword. In the other, floating just above his palm, is a golden crown. The sun against the metal gives it the molten, transient look of colored light. “I’d like to crown you king of this in-between world.”
“There’s nothing to rule over,” George says haltingly, trying to untangle the knot of emotions that shivers through him. The crown, the throne, the god. He reaches for it as much as he wants to draw away. “What would a king even do?”
XD’s face is impervious. “Anything you’d like,” xe says. “Everything you wish for will be as you wish it. Come here. Sit on the throne. There will be people who come to worship if you’d like it. You can save them if you want. You can condemn them if you want. Anything you’d like. Everything you’d like.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“What will you do?” George takes a step forward, traces the carvings in throne’s armrest under careful, light fingers. “What if I want you to go away?”
“You won’t,” XD says quickly, though something unfamiliar bleeds helplessly into xyr tone. “Whatever you want from me, George—I’ll change. I’ll become it. This is your world.”
Distantly, George thinks it might sound like desperation. It’s a feeling he’s intimately familiar with. He closes his eyes. His wrist aches where the other Dream’s grip had chafed skin and he drags a thumb over it, suddenly furious. To keep you safe, Dream had said. Like it was his fucking choice to make. Like he hadn’t even considered that George was going mad in here, chasing and being chased but always unable to reach something or someone, falling through reality until the want mashed his fucking brains into soggy paste smeared across the ground of some half-remembered place. So there, he might say. Look at me now, Dream. How safe I am, in the cradle of your protection. So there. So there.
George is exhausted. He’s so homesick he could cry from it. XD is still looking at him expectantly. Like a goddamned mirror.
“No,” he says. “No. I won’t.”
XD’s next words are flat and deliberate. “Won’t what?”
“Sit on your throne,” he says, angry and bitter and tired. “Take your crown. Be your pretty puppet to play with. Whatever it is you want from me.”
XD’s eyes soften, then. “Oh, George. It’s just because you don’t remember. You could be king, George. And me—the god bound in loyalty to your service. Everything you want, at your disposal.”
“So let me remember again,” George spits, swiping the crown from XD’s grasp. He doesn’t put it on—just holds it, digging the golden points into the palm of his hand. “Give me my memories back. That’s what I want.”
“Anything else,” XD’s lips thin. “That’s the one thing I can’t do, George. It’s—outside my power. What else do you want?”
The setting changes, but two players remain the same every time. George, the chaser; and Dream, the chased. Dream, who is always out of reach. George, who stands before the throne that will give him the power to change the world at whim.
Except that’s not quite right either, is it? Because every time Dream has slipped out of grasp, the world has changed. Because every time George needs something, it comes to him—a place with his happiest memories, a place where it is his entire life to chase Dream and catch him, a place where it is just him and Dream and neither can let go until they do. A place where Dream wants him.
XD doesn’t have the power to give him his memories back. XD, who should have the power over everything in this world. George, who had pulled Dream—the real Dream, the one who loves (loved) him—into this in-between realm without even realizing.
It’s not fair, to ask this of Dream again. But it wasn’t fair for Dream to lock him away here, either. And most of all—
“I want to go home,” George says coldly, and reels back his arm to hurl the crown at the ground. Where it should skid and wobble on impact, intact, instead it shatters into prisms of white-gold light. Outside the high windows, he can see the clear blue sky disappearing—being swallowed, he realizes, almost nonsensically—by a dark void that reaches its greedy, starless fingers into the world and eats it.
“George,” XD says—is xe afraid, now? Or desperate, or miserable, or bitter? All those things George had felt, does xe feel them now, too?
George closes his fist and clenches it so tight he can feel his pulse under his fingertips. “Show me Dream,” he says, lowly, and the world—
—surges forward to follow his command.
→ → →
It’s hot. It’s boiling. The heat peels away at George’s skin, simmering blisters like oil, sinking its scorching teeth into his flesh. Vaguely, he recalls a time where Dream had left a bone in the fire for too long, through carelessness or genuine curiosity, and it had fractured and splintered under the intense heat. It feels like that now.
Someone barks a sharp, edged laugh. It is a voice so familiar George could weep. “You’ve finally come, George.”
The hope that crashes down on him is thick as blood on his tongue. “Dream?”
When his eyes adjust to the light—the lava that falls over the only opening in the room in a relentless curtain—he finds himself….
It’s hard, to catalogue the differences between the Dream he had known and the one curled against the wall now, when his memory has only begun to seep back in but—can they still be the same person? His shoulders are slumped but his jaw is hard and defiant in a way George knows is only for show. His knees block in his hands but between thinned thighs, George can see the curl of his fingers, the miniscule tremor he works to hide.
Have the points of his teeth always been so prominent? His hair is long now, wheat-blonde darkened by the surroundings, long and unkempt from neglect. He’s furious. He’s terrified. He’s someone else entirely.
“Go on,” Dream urges, a washed-out cocky smile stretching across his face like muscle memory. “You, of all people—you deserve this the most, don’t you? I sealed you in that dream and then when you asked for my help, I killed you. When you wanted me, I killed you. Is that what you want to hear? What you already know, so you can justify this?”
“Dream,” George says, helplessly. “Dream, what—”
“I should have known,” Dream continues, “that you would find a way to haunt me. To hurt me, even after I decided you wouldn’t. Did you dream about it, in your endless sleep? Finding me again? Hurting me? I’m sorry to say, but you’re the last person to betray me. Everyone else has beat you to the punch. Your vengeance will have to be faster, next time.”
“Dream, what are you talking about,” George bursts out. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t want to—I’m still dreaming, okay? This is my dream, and you’re in it. So.”
“You’re still dreaming,” Dream murmurs. His hand drifts over his heart and rubs it pensively. “You didn’t...get out?”
“No,” George says. “That’s why I came to you. I need you to free me, Dream.” He hesitates and then continues, carefully, “And I….missed you, Dream. I want to come home.”
Dream laughs at that, a wild, incoherent thing. “You’ve been asleep a long time, haven’t you? I’d almost forgotten. There’s no home left to come back to. I blew it up. I blew it all up.” He laughs again. “Stay dreaming, George. It’s all better there. I would know.”
“Dream,” George says again, more desperately. “Dream, please—”
“Every time I tell you to stay in there, you don’t listen.” Dream’s eyes gleam and he staggers upright, clawing against the obsidian wall to pull himself to standing. “Did you hear me the first time, George? Every connection I had, I destroyed. I don’t need you to pretend you’re any different.”
“I am,” George says, and though an uneasy feeling has solidified in his stomach he takes an unconscious step forward anyway, arm outstretched because apparently that’s all he fucking knows how to do, reach and reach and reach.
Dream lunges forward with a snarl. His fingernails drag through George’s arm and open four parallel lines of beading blood. With a twist of his head, he opens his mouth as if to tear George’s throat out—and then George feels it, a bright, sharp pull in his sternum that yanks him backwards and keeps going, back, back, back.
George lurches forward, against the pull, and meets Dream’s hand. Grips it with his own, before Dream has the chance to hurt him again. His palm is warm and dry. When they start falling, at least it is together.
→ → →
George wakes up still dreaming.
“George,” XD says, relief like a great sigh. Xyr leg jiggles—George realizes that his head is rested in xyr lap—and then xe stops it, with great effort. Xe wipes something away from his face. “George, I found you. I’m sorry about the throne—I didn’t know, George, I don’t—please, I just…I.” He stops and sucks in a breath.
“XD,” George says, slowly sitting up. “Why did you—”
He looks up. The sky is black and starless. Around them, a circle of obsidian pillars planted on an unfamiliar yellow stone surrounds them. The air is still and unforgivingly cold.
“It’s The End,” George says, softly.
XD continues as if xe hadn’t heard. Xe holds George’s shoulder like a lifeline, gripping it hard with one hand. George realizes with a start that he’s crying, soaking the sleeves of his cloak with tears.
“Please,” xe says, fast and messy. “Please. Don’t leave me, George. I love you. Please don’t leave.”
A few feet away, Dream is unconscious on the ground. His palm is open to the sky, fingers curled gently inward. Under his fingernails, George’s blood has already begun to brown.
“Did you know?” He says. “That I was dreaming, this entire time.”
“Yes,” XD says. “Yes. I’m sorry, George. Yes. I didn’t want you to—I don’t want you to go.”
Years ago, Dream had pulled out his own godhood on George’s bequest and locked it away. He had molded the keyhole into the shape of George’s heart. As long as you live, he’d said, and, I love you, I love you, I love you.
George gave Dream his heart a long time ago. At the very beginning, actually. Wherever that might be.
“XD,” he says, mouth stiff. “Aren’t you tired of being here?”
“Yes,” XD says immediately. “But George—”
When did the story begin? When Dream put him to sleep? When Dream began to doubt the strength of his love? When Dream tore god from mortal? When they first stepped foot onto the waiting land?
Or maybe, he thinks, weary, it had begun a long time before. All this time, it had been working to The End.
He stands up and walks to Dream. Puts a hand to his heart and feels the steady beat of it under his palm. This is his dream, he thinks. He has the power here—a flimsy, imagined thing, but anything can be real. Anything can be real.
“Come home,” he says.
Dream breathes. It works. Please. It has to work.
Then: he opens his eyes, just a sliver. They’re green. Like emeralds, like grass, like spring shoots peeking cautious buds out of the dark earth.
“George,” he says hoarsely.
And: “I’m sorry.”
And: “You know what to do, now.”
“Yes,” George says. Slowly, he removes his hand. In his other, he holds a sword. Just one blow will do, he thinks. Just one will be enough. It has to be. He doesn’t know if he can stand to do it more than once.
Dream’s fingers come up to brush his cheek—a ghost of a touch, brief and soft despite the roughness of his history. “I thought I might tell you—”
“I know,” George says, throat tight. “God, Dream. I know. Why do you think I kept looking for you?”
“God,” Dream laughs, a quiet, unassuming thing. His chest rattles from it. “What a funny thing. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s someone else out there, who doesn’t want this to be the end.”
It won’t be. It can’t be. Every dream George had dreamt had ended and begun again. Even before they had come here, they must have dreamed something that came before.
It would continue, because it has to. It has to. It has to. George presses the heel of his palm hard to his stinging eyes. He raises the sword.
“Dream,” he whispers.
“George,” Dream says. Faintly, he sounds like he’s smiling.
George brings it down, pierces through Dream’s skin, his muscle, twisting through his ribs, his heart. His fingers are wet—whether with tears or with blood is unclear—and clinging tight to the hilt. XD shouts something in the background but George can’t hear it over the roar of his ears, the unfolding of a starry portal sprouting from the crack between flesh and metal where Dream still bleeds.
It will be alright anyway, he thinks. Now that the End is opened, XD can go wherever xe wants. Sapnap will love xem. XD will love the grass and the sun and the flowers. And Dream—maybe where they go, there will be love and grass and sun and flowers too.
He hopes. He wants. More than anything, he wants.
The portal expands and swallows George and Dream both in its darkness. When they fall, at least they fall together.