Chapter Text
Sirens wake him the next morning. Karl is running down the stairs as Sapnap opens his eyes blearily, squinting through the sunlight streaming in from the windows. Karl shouts to Sapnap to get up and meet him at the end of Kinoko Kingdom, but as he uprights himself on the couch, a strange foreboding creeps over him. Pushing a blanket from his legs that hadn’t been there last night, he unsteadily makes his way to the mailbox.
There’s a letter inside, and it’s not one of Sapnap’s.
Dear Sapnap,
I know you promised, but please don’t.
I have to. I can’t stand it in here anymore, I’m losing my fucking mind. Please. I just need to see the sky again. It’s so dark in here.
Your letters reminded me of what makes it all worth escaping for. I need you to let me keep that. I broke every promise I ever made to you, so think of this as revenge, or something. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m going insane.
Maybe we can meet each other again. I didn’t want to abandon you. I never did.
Dream
“You promised.”
Dream stares up at him, watery green eyes unreadable as they tear through Sapnap’s skin, burning into his heart and his thoughts and muddling his brain. The netherite sword glints in the dying sunlight, tiny red beads bubbling at the edge of the blade where it’s pressed up to Dream’s pale throat. His Adam’s apple bobs.
“I know,” Sapnap says hoarsely. “It was — you weren’t supposed to —“
“You have to keep your promise,” Dream interrupts, his voice impossibly small, wincing every time the movement of his throat tugs his skin closer to the sword.
A pause, where they stare at each other and maybe Dream is preparing himself for death but Sapnap’s hands are shaking so hard that he doesn’t know how he hasn’t accidentally done it already. And it was so much easier to say those words when his friend refused to say anything in response, when he was shrunk up against that black obsidian wall and refusing to meet his eyes .
“You have an awfully easy time saying that,” says Sapnap, voice wavering, “as if you didn’t promise me too.”
Green eyes slide shut for a heartbeat. “I guess we all have promises we need to keep.”
Anger sparks in Sapnap’s chest, and he shakes his head harshly, biting the inside of his cheek. “If I kill you, you can’t keep your promise. You break it.”
“I already broke it,” corrects Dream, fingers digging into the grass as he smiles slightly, bitterly. His tone is reminiscent of better times.
“Then how are you going to lie there talking about promises and keeping promises and …”
He trails off, frustrated and unable to find the right words, but Dream just inhales. His voice is impossibly cautious and hesitant when he says, “I remember when you visited me in the prison, you said—“
“You are not going to use my own words against me,” Sapnap snaps, kneeling harder on Dream’s legs. They have a staring contest for a second, but Dream gives up easily, opting to change his approach.
“Listen, Sapnap, I don’t get it,” the former prisoner sighs, the frustration building in his voice. “You’re the one who made this promise, yet you’re the only one who doesn’t want to keep it. Why?”
“You think I want to kill my own fucking best friend?” Sapnap practically screams, voice cracking with tension. Dream stares at him dubiously, as if it should be obvious, as if it’s that easy.
“Well, yeah, I do, because you’re the one who fucking said it to me,” he matches Sapnap’s change in tone stubbornly, who falters.
“Did … if you knew I was going to kill you —“ the words struggle from his dry lips, “— why would you escape?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dream snorts. “I feel like it should be obvious.”
Every syllable stings.
“Listen, I didn’t know what I was saying,” tries Sapnap, desperate at this point. “I just don’t think …” I can kill my best friend. The silence rings in the forest. Even the bugs and the birds hold their tongues.
His friend lets his head fall back on the smushed grass with a groan. “Great. Know anyone else who’d be willing to kill me?”
Sapnap breathes in deeply, then pulls his sword away as carefully as possible and holds out a hand to Dream. His friend stares up at him in disbelief, half sitting up. “Wha—?”
“I’m bringing you back to the prison,” says Sapnap firmly, “so take my hand and get up, unless you want this to go the hard way.”
There’s a second of even more smouldering silence where they glare at each other, impossible anger and hurt piling behind each gaze—then Dream clasps his hand in Sapnap’s and lets himself be pulled up onto unsteady feet. Resignation sets in his clenched jaw.
“I’d rather die than go back to that hell-hole,” he spits, but Sapnap doesn’t even look at him, just takes a rope and ties his hands behind his back. They begin the long walk back to the prison in silence.
“Listen …” Sapnap gathers the courage to speak once they’re getting closer to the main SMP area. “I want to revoke my promise.”
Dream grunts. “I think you already did, when you refused to kill me back there,” he points out, though there’s no malice in the words: he’s looking at Sapnap with a strange look on his face. Something like gratitude, maybe, or just seeing him with new eyes. Sapnap tries to ignore it and keep up his facade of gruffness, but he can’t stop thinking about the way things used to be. How much this feels like that.
For a moment, it’s comforting. He lets it be comforting.
“I just didn’t think that I could do something like that to someone I care about, as much as you’ve hurt me. And George too. Everyone, really … Still, I’m sor—“
A quiet whistling sound builds in the air around them, and Sapnap breaks off, releasing his grip on Dream’s shoulders and looking around them. A second later, a flaming arrow plunges into the wooden planks of the path beneath their feet, a cloud of smoke shrouding Sapnap’s vision. He reaches an arm out for Dream, panicking, but feels nothing. “Dream?!”
The panic rises when he realizes Dream must’ve made a break for it.
When he’s staggered from the cloud of smoke, coughing and waving his hand in front of his mouth and nose, he spins in a wild circle, scouring the area for a sign of Dream’s path. Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. There’s nothing.
He just runs.
“The prisoner! The prisoner escaped!” he screams, throat growing hoarse in his desperation. “Bad! George! Dream got away again! I --”
Each breath tears painfully through his heaving chest, and he stumbles to a stop, wheezing for air. His hands collide with his shaking knees, and he slowly sinks to the ground, exhausted. Desperation melts away into resignation. There’s an ache in his chest, a wound cleanly reopened, as if something Dream had said to him had knit it together patchily--
The path beneath him wavers with a sudden wet blur.
When he looks back up, he sees him.
Without thinking, summoning the last of his energy, Sapnap takes his bow out and nocks an arrow, training it on Dream’s shuddering figure where he stands, frozen, behind a bush. “Dream,” he pants, slowly rising to his feet and approaching carefully. “If you move a muscle, I’ll fucking shoot, I swear I will--”
“Sapnap …” Eyes wide, Dream wavers where he stands, something battling in his gaze. The second Sapnap sees a decision flash in that gaze, his finger slips instinctually.
The arrow takes through the air in a clean shot, straight through Dream’s chest. His shoulder is flung back, body jerking as if a rope pulled him from behind.
He didn’t mean to shoot.
The former prisoner—no, his best friend —clutches at the arrow stuck in his heart, deep red blooming across the ratty prison uniform. His knees hit the grass with a soft thud, body folding in on itself as Sapnap scrambles into a kneeling position next to his friend, his friend whose blood soaks the ground and it’s Sapnap’s fault, it’s his --
His hands shake, heart pounding and blood roaring in his ears as he flips his trembling body over in a blind panic. “Dream? Dream, oh my god, please say something,” he chokes, voice scratching his throat. His hands cup his friend’s cheeks, eyes searching all over his face then dropping to the arrow piercing his heart. “Oh my god.”
Tears pool in his eyes, hot as they slip down his cheeks to hit Dream’s, who startles so slightly and opens his own eyes. They’re glossy with terror as he blinks up at Sapnap. For a second, Sapnap’s heart leaps with hope.
Then he opens his mouth, and Sapnap stares in horrified awe as nothing comes out but a horrible gurgle and a bubble of dark, dark blood. Dream grips Sapnap’s shirt with all the strength he has left, mouth moving senselessly as the sobs build in Sapnap’s throat until finally they all come crashing from his lips, nonsensical. He collapses onto Dream’s heaving chest, the movement weakening beneath him. He can hardly breathe, but he talks anyway, babbling in an attempt to reassure Dream, or maybe himself.
“Just hang on, okay? I’ll get someone, and they’ll help you get better, and you can go back to the prison and you’ll be safe there, you just have to hold on for a bit, okay? God, this is … I never …” Gasps for air between cries rip through his words as he speaks to someone who doesn’t listen anymore. Empty. “I thought I would die like a hero, going down in some crazy battle. I was arrogant and stupid and I’d never experienced war then—but you never wanted that. And maybe this is the part where I … tell you that you’re more of a hero than I could ever be, that you redeemed yourself and … but I …”
Looking down at Dream, no one would think he died like a hero. Sapnap tries to convince himself he disagrees, but he can’t even summon a coherent thought with this crippling guilt. Clutching his limp body closer, trying to ignore the way the blood soaks through cloth and sticks to his fingers and everything on him, Sapnap sobs hollowly. Every shuddering breath shakes them both.
Dream wanted to die.
Sapnap gave him his wish.