Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They’re sitting around the fireplace, Sapnap and Punz and George, waiting for Dream to come back with the extra swords and shields. Punz isn’t nervous, not particularly; they have Eret, if things go south, and Dream’s an excellent shot. Punz has few doubts the Dream SMP will see this whole thing through.

Still, there’s a simmer of doubt on the back burner in his mind, one that he’s trying to avoid bringing to boil by occupying himself with sharpening his axe on the communal whetstone, beating back his nerves with a satisfying, hair-raising shink every ten seconds. Weapons maintenance is something Punz just likes in general, something he does to take his mind off things every once in a while. Therapeutic in a mind-numbing way. Soothing in its monotony and obvious usefulness.

Sapnap and George are both busying themselves, too; Sapnap’s worrying his flint and steel together in his hands, which Punz is keeping a wary eye on, and George is re-stringing his bow with overwhelming care. There’s probably something to be said for how all of their selected pastimes are somehow related to destruction, but Punz is the server’s self-designated merc and someone who knows how to pick and choose sides; he’s learned to avoid reading too far between the lines.

George looks up once he’s tested the give of the bowstring, his eyes narrowing behind his clout goggles as he looks at the clock on the wall. “Hasn’t it been, like, fifteen minutes since Dream left?” he says, less of a question and more of an observation. “The warehouse isn’t that far from here.”

Sapnap’s flint and steel catch against each other with a loud shatter of sparks, and when both Punz and George shoot him alarmed looks, Sapnap snorts and returns to not setting Punz’s very woodsy house on fire with a deceptively light, “He might just be taking his time, y’know. Taking in the scenery.” He pauses, then lowers his voice, eyes flitting to George and Punz, more serious: “I don’t think... well, he doesn’t like... you know. Doing this. Death.”

George presses his lips together, tweaks the arrow rest. “He doesn’t do it without reason,” he says, firm. “He never has. This whole thing with L’Manberg - Dream thinks he has to do it.” George sighs. “He always thinks,” he mutters, “that he has an obligation to us all.”

“He doesn’t,” blurts Punz, then bites his tongue when Sapnap and George glance over at him. He hadn’t intended to jump into the conversation - Sapnap and George are Dream’s best friends, have known him since childhood where Punz and Dream have only been friends for a few years, and Punz usually stays out of the discussion whenever the topic moves into personal territory out of respect - but the insinuation that Dream believes he owes something to them had made his hackles rise.

Finally George smiles, slight, and it softens his countenance. “You’re right, he doesn’t,” he says gently, “and sometimes I think he knows that, and then - ” the corners of his lips turn down, “ - and then he does something like this.”

Sapnap shrugs, scrapes the flint and steel together. Says, grimacing, “Well, he made his bed, now he’s sleeping in it. It’s not like he’s faultless. L’Manberg’s not faultless either.” He glances at the door, then says, fast, hushed, “It’s a stupid war.”

Punz has to agree with that; he nods conspiringly with George, though, to keep up appearances. Punz honestly doesn’t believe there’s anyone who thinks the “war” (which he can’t bring himself to refer to without quotes; they’re all kids, and they were all having fun, and they were getting too into it) is worth it. Punz had thought Dream had been taking it lightly, too, for how distant he can seem, but all along, he was right there beside Tommy, the two egging each other on, feeding off of each other’s energy and reflecting it in a constant loop. Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem - Punz shudders to imagine the two in the same team for a Championship, how potent the combination could be - but in this case, it was... devastating. With every battle they fought they got more invested in the end result; with every drop of blood spilled they became determined to spill more. Desperate to protect their friends, ready to sacrifice any and everything for them: Dream and Tommy are shockingly alike.

George is outright glaring at the clock now, lips a thin line. An intense internal debate is happening all over his face, but he remains frozen with his fingers laced around the bow until Sapnap rolls his eyes and says, “Dude, quit being gloomy and just go check on him if you’re that worried.” He perks up and adds, “Maybe he’s organizing things. You know how he gets when we don’t put shit back where it was before.”

“That’s your own fault. Stop putting the Sharpnesses with the Fire Aspects, that’s a dick move,” George tells him matter-of-factly, and stands up as Sapnap squawks, setting the bow against the wall beside four more bows. He rolls his shoulders, adjusts his helmet, keeps his hand on the hilt of his sword as he strides across the room and pulls the door open.

Punz flies into a standing position, his axe clattering to the floor; Sapnap nearly drops his flint and steel when he sees what’s going on. George claps his sword hand over his mouth.

“...Hi,” says Dream from the doorway, sounding small, perhaps because of the fucking cut on his throat that is bleeding all over his clothes and chestplate.

“Holy fuck,” says Sapnap, and he probably would have made it to Dream’s side before Punz if he hadn’t gotten his feet twisted in the carpet and caught himself from falling with a yelp. Punz mostly ignores him in favor of running over to the door and helping George help Dream over the threshold into the house with extreme care; there’s really no telling what happened just some looking at the wound, and Dream is breathing all fast and wheezy in his chest, so Punz is inclined to err toward caution rather than worsen Dream’s condition.

As soon as they get Dream into a chair George is all business, barking at Sapnap to grab a healing potion, asking Punz a bit more nicely for a flask of water, and is scrutinizing Dream’s wound as discreetly as he can when Dream rasps, “No potion.”

“What do you mean, no potion? Dream, we have a lot of healings, we can spare one, that’s all it’ll take - oh god, wait, is it worse than it looks?” George twists Dream’s upper body so they’re properly in the firelight, moves Dream’s head around gingerly but deliberately to get a good look at the injury as Dream clenches his jaw and Punz wrings his hands beside them, feeling a little useless. He knows basic first aid, as all fighters should, but there’s not exactly a manual for how to react when your friend comes home from a twenty-minute excursion that should have taken ten sporting a distinctly alarming wound to the neck that’s gushing blood all over himself and your floors.

“Your talking sounds fine, so there’s no way it got past muscle, and you’d be dead if that were the case,” decides George, drops his hands and sets them on Dream’s shoulders, leans back onto his heels to scrutinize his best friend. Punz scoots around them so he can see Dream’s face and is startled by the careful blankness of his expression, as though he were deliberately avoiding giving away what he’s feeling, which. Dream isn’t exactly the best at hiding how he feels behind stoicism. He’s much more adept at putting on a smiling front, beaming mouth and blizzard of freckles a better disguise than an attempt at a serious character.

Punz feels his doubt mutate into a quiet kind of anger. “Dream,” he says slowly, “who did this?”

George shoots him a warning look, which Punz does his best to ignore. It’s no secret amongst those who’ve known Dream for longer that there’s an unspoken agreement not to pry, but sue Punz, his friend just staggered in from a simple errand looking like he met his fucking maker, and no matter what people say about shallow injuries, neck wounds bleed like no tomorrow. Punz can see from this angle - an inch or two further and Dream would’ve come back to Punz’s house via respawn instead of walking, and that knowledge is what keeps him from taking his words back.

Dream brings a hand to his throat to stem the flow of blood as best he can and says, wincing, “It doesn’t... matter. ‘S not a problem.”

“It’s not a - Dream,” says George imploringly. “Don’t pull the self-sacrificial tendencies out now, I’m begging you. It’s a big deal to us, okay?”

Punz blinks at how forward George is about the whole thing, considering he literally just nonverbally reprimanded Punz for hitting too close to home - but then again, he amends to himself, best friends that grew up together and all. There’s a line there he can’t breach, not like this. They may be close friends but digging up deep-rooted self-destructive tendencies probably isn’t part of the fine print.

Dream tilts his head then winces again when it aggravates the injury. He gingerly adjusts his hand, hesitates, then mumbles, “Don’t be angry with her. She was scared.”

Punz feels his breath hiss between his teeth. Now that Alyssa’s gone, there are only two people on Dream’s world who use she/her pronouns, and Eret has been upstairs humming softly the entire time, so - “Niki?” he says, not believing Dream for a split second, thinking of the kind smile and soft cheer and mild timidness. “Niki cut your throat?”

“Niki Nihachu did what?” demands Sapnap’s voice, and Punz looks up in time to see Sapnap striding over, a vividly magenta potion bottle in one hand and loops of cloth bandages in the other. His eyes are round as ender pearls, disbelieving, as he kneels beside Dream and mops some of the blood off his chestplate with the bandages. “What the hell - how’d she cross the - well, we don’t have border patrol or anything, but - holy shit, Niki did this?”

Dream does the exaggerated head roll that indicates his eyes rolled too. “You underestimate her.”

“I didn’t think she was the type to do this kind of thing,” admits George, leaning back onto his haunches and pulling the healing pot from Sapnap’s fingers when Sapnap tries to administer it.

Punz didn’t think so, either. During the few weeks she’s been present, Niki established herself as the soft one; she’d bake often and let people stop by for a bite, grew copious amounts of flowers on the walkway outside her house, doted on her few pets as though the world would end if they were ill-cared for. She in no way struck Punz as the kind of hellions Sapnap or Tommy or Dream are, nor did she seem the person who would willingly and unflinchingly commit murder in the name of what amounts to a game the other half of the server is playing.

He says as much, and Sapnap shrugs one shoulder in agreement. George, busy with smearing a styptic over the wound, doesn’t acknowledge the statement. Dream, however, purses his lips and makes a sound of disagreement.

“The thing is, they... don’t think it’s a game. They’re taking this dead serious.” Dream pauses as George pokes the open cut on accident, hums noncommittally when George murmurs a quick apology and takes the bandages from Sapnap. “For their sake... so am I. To be honest... I kinda expected something like this. Just caught off-guard.” His sentences are disjointed, broken up where he inhales sharply in response to the sting, but Punz can piece the picture together now, and he bites his thumbnail when he realizes why, exactly, Dream’s made the decision to kill Tommy.

Because that’s what’s going to happen tomorrow morning without a single doubt and they all know it, the Dream SMP and L’Manberg both. Tommy’s good but he can’t hold a candle to Dream, and at this point in the fake (real?) war it’s become abundantly clear that Dream isn’t going to do an about-face. Tommy’s going to die tomorrow, and Dream’s hand will be the one releasing the arrow.

Punz is hyper-aware of all the mines in the conversation. Ever-so-delicately, he asks, “Is that why... is that why Niki tried to...?” He mimes a slashing motion across his throat.

It makes Dream laugh quietly, which Punz counts as a point for himself. Once George kicks him and tells him to settle down unless he wants to be throttled by the bandages that are supposed to staunch the blood flow, he says, “No... well, not really. I think it was about... trying to see if I had... any mercy. Checking if I was still... me? Like... proof that I’m... not the bad guy.”

“You’re not,” Punz says immediately, ignoring the way his heart buckles a little when Dream looks startled. “You’re not the bad guy in this story. You’re just as much caught up in this as we are. We all got too invested.”

“Hear, hear,” Sapnap says supportively from the floor, cutting strips of bandages for George.

Dream does the same half-shrug Sapnap did and says lowly, “Like I said. It doesn’t matter. I’m the world - the world owner... I have a responsibility to everyone.” His eyes burn green beneath the mask, and Punz swallows the placating denials he’d been about to offer. It hits him like a sack of bricks, standing there helpless as George winds bandages around Dream’s neck and Sapnap passes the roll of them back and forth between his hands: in this, Dream will not be swayed. It’s nothing like delusion, but Dream sees through the heart of the matter so piercingly that he forgets that there’s pain involved in the middle step between action and consequence; he forgets that this will hurt.

Punz can’t help how desperate he sounds when he reaches out to clench one of Dream’s still-bloody hands (and fuck, if that doesn’t take him back to a month prior, his sword jammed up to the hilt in Dream’s chest, the slick of Dream’s blood on his hands and shirt and pants and the grass of the clearing until everything glistened red) and asks, “Are you sure, Dream?” because there’s no taking this back.

Dream tilts his chin high and his voice is as unyielding as obsidian when he says, “I am,” and Punz has no idea why it sounds as much like divine ordination as it does, but it chills him to the bone to see his friend, pale, bloody, burning eyes and straight back, committing his words to the air as irrevocably as though he were carving it into stone: “I’m sure.”

Chapter Text

Eret walks into the official MCC 12 afterparty twenty minutes late and holding a thermos with four tea bag tags dangling out of it.

There’s something gratifying about the way nobody bats an eye at how overdressed they are for what’s typically a pretty casual event. The afterparties have always felt more like sleepovers than formal gatherings, and there’s been more than one occasion where players have spent the night in the venue after crashing from the adrenaline high or just for the sake of staying. The afterparties are where decorum and primping go to die. Eret can’t count the number of times they’ve woken up wedged between several tangentially familiar people, sighed in acceptance, and fallen asleep again.

Still, fuck gender roles, and they really just didn’t know where they were going to wear the beautiful strawberry dress outside of special occasions, so here they are, crashing a Championship they didn’t actually compete in for the sake of wearing an outfit that’s just too extra to wear in day-to-day life. Regardless of what HBomb said, it’s definitely a valid reason.

“Eret!! The heck’re you doing here, you weren’t even in the event!”

Speaking of HBomb.

Eret can feel the grin overtaking their face even before a pajama-clad HBomb dives off of the nearby table (good to see the table-claiming has already begun), performs a decent shoulder roll both to soften the impact and to look cool, and launches himself into Eret’s arms. Eret yelps and raises the thermos out of splash radius so they don’t accidentally make a Zuko out of their friend.

“You look so extra!” HBomb tells them cheerfully once the hug is over, stepping back to survey the full outfit. It’s nothing particularly earth-shattering - just the shimmering strawberry dress and the five-inch black leather heels and the jewelled crown just for the vibes - well, okay, so maybe it is a little earth-shattering, Eret knows full well they look great, and their ego is further boosted by HBomb pursing his lips into a whistle and saying earnestly, “But actually, dude, you look amazing. The dress is so neat.” He squints down at Eret’s feet, then groans, “God, that’s why the hug felt weird. You’re, like, ten inches taller right now.”

“Five,” they tell HBomb proudly. HBomb puts his head in his hands.

“You’re a foot taller than me, Eret,” he whispers despairingly. “What the fuck. What the fuck. This should be illegal. You’re taller than Sam right now, for fuck’s sake.”

“Wow,” comes an admiring drawl, and Eret finds themself smirking down at Sapnap, looking like the pinnacle of both comfort and fashion in a puffy panda onesie, who’s trying very hard not to seem short in comparison to them and is failing miserably. “Eret, you’re objectively the best dressed here. How are you walking in those? I’d probably snap both my ankles.”

Eret feints like they’re going to kick Sapnap and laughs when he dances out of range. “Go celebrate with the winners. Go on, get,” they tell him fondly.

“Don’t wanna,” he replies petulantly, mock-pouting at them. “I literally can’t congratulate them anymore, my jaw’s gonna fall off. Anyway, I’m gonna eat my body weight in pretzels. Wanna come with?”

“If Bad were here,” announces HBomb mournfully, still hung up on the full twelve inches of height difference, “he’d stop you from making inadvisable decisions.”

“Well, parental unit’s not here,” Sapnap gloats back, mostly joking. “He can’t tell me not to make bad choices.”

“I don’t think he could stop you even if he were here,” Eret says thoughtfully.

“Amen to that.”

“Eret, come on, it’s afterparty! Fun times, horrible decisions, waking up as victims of our own hubris tomorrow,” Sapnap says coaxingly. “Pretty please? Your outfit fuckin’ slaps, you can’t just sit in a corner and gossip with old boy forever.”

Eret chokes at the look of utter devastation on HBomb’s face. “When we get back home, I’m calling Punz on your ass,” he whispers brokenly.

“Not if I call him first, boomer,” says Sapnap without a moment of hesitation. Eret drags him off to the snacks table before HBomb suffers any more trauma at the hands of the SMP’s beloved pyromaniac.

Of course, it’s afterparty, so it’s bound to be fun. It’s one of Eret’s favorite public events, a laid-back get-together after the adrenaline trip that is Championship (which Eret’s been pushing as the new tagline, because they think the rhyme is cute and also really funny) that feels more like a forty-ish-person sleepover than anything else. Everyone always attends, though plenty crash as soon as they walk in and don’t wake up for around twenty hours. Afterparty’s attendees are limited to previous Championship participants and Noxcrew; altogether, it makes for a relaxed time after performing several death-defying feats in a publicized three-hour hell game.

Eret is drowned under a wave of compliments when they walk further into the room with Sapnap leading them through, him clearly focused on the row of snack tables and them smiling and feeling like their heart is going to explode as people alternately scream over their dress and scream about their height. No one else in Championship is especially tall with few exceptions, adding to the illusion that they’re a spruce in a forest of oaks.

By the time they finally reach the refreshments, someone’s turned on the music - it cycles through three different deep house remixes of “That’s What I Like” amidst the howls of an enraged TommyInnit before settling on girl in red to general approval - and people have begun to spread out. Eret spots Pete passed out at the corner of the dance floor with his head on Burren’s stomach, and Fruit, Illumina, and Punz in a heap beside the drinks table.

They lean against a table casually, survey the crowd. They hadn’t seen the last few rounds of Dodgebolt because they were trying to find a way to put the strawberry dress on that didn’t involve shedding unfortunate amounts of glitter everywhere, so they scan the sea of heads for the tell-tale glint of winner’s crowns - it was between Lime and Green, if they recall correctly - and a smile breaks out on their face when they spot the four forest-green figures at the end of the row of tables.

Green won, by the looks of it. Phil’s radiant, his bucket hat skewed and his wings all aflutter with excitement; he keeps tapping Wilbur with them and grinning giddily when their eyes meet, which just makes Eret’s heart fucking melt, the father and son gleeful on the thrill of victory. George, for his part, is speaking animatedly to Scott, Dan, and Shelby, all four of them making some sort of hand motion that suggests they’re talking about Hole in the Wall. TapL is...

Eret pushes off the table, frowning, when they see TapL.

It’s nothing too bad. He’s not outright panicking or anything like that. Still, the sharpness of his smile is dulled somewhat, and he keeps passing his hand over his face, a nervous motion. Eret can tell his teammates have noticed, judging by the way they’re very clearly not leaving him alone, how they keep bringing him into conversations, how Wilbur, the designated clingy one of the team, has his arm looped through TapL’s, but Eret can tell even from this distance he’s more concentrated on breathing than on the talk.

Eret is winding their way carefully through the throng of people when they feel something - a call, a laugh, a breath - so strikingly familiar and out-of-place their head snaps up toward the Green Guardians.

Dream’s gliding through the crowd like a fish through water, easy to pick out thanks to the flashy fake crown and scarlet fur-trimmed cloak and golden hair that tapers down into pink thanks to the hair extensions he got for his quote-unquote “Technobraid” (“I’m going all in or not at all. I’d probably be a good cosplayer”). He’s making a beeline for Green, his gait discernibly purposeful, and for a moment Eret thinks he’s just going to talk to George or something.

They inhale sharply when he waves cheerily at TapL.

They don’t know what tips them off. It might be how much of themself they see in TapL all of a sudden, jittery, unsure, trying to get a grip on himself, just like that night in the northernmost turret; it might be the steel-solid resolve in the line of Dream’s shoulders under the velvet cape as he strides toward TapL. Phil, George, and Wilbur are all visibly distracted.

quiet qui -

Eret snatches Dream’s arm away and chirps, “Hi, TapL! Congratulations on your win!”, pointedly ignoring both their swelling relief and the startled look Dream shoots them.

TapL lights up when he sees them. “Eret! Nice to see you!” He gestures toward all six-foot-eight and shimmering strawberry skirt of them with arms that shake only slightly and says, “You look awesome!” His smile turns a little shy. “And thanks.”

“Dude, you were legendary in To Get To The Other Side,” Dream interjects, and Eret’s fingers loosen on his wrist, gratified by the earnestness of his voice. “I saw the block clutch from the back, it was cool as hell.” Something in his tone is stilted, but it’s not that obvious, and TapL smiles wider down at his shoes.

“Thanks,” he repeats, bashful. Wilbur, who’s pulled himself away from a five-way conversation between Tommy, Tubbo, Quackity, HBomb, and Quig, grins and nudges TapL gently with his elbow.

“You feeling better?” he asks, low, kind, the voice of a seasoned older brother. “You were a little shaky up there earlier.”

Wilbur doesn’t catch Dream stiffen, his attention fully on TapL; Eret does, though, and they lean over to step firmly on the hem of Dream’s cloak, effectively keeping him pinned in place, just in case he’s planning on doing anything stupid.

TapL rolls his shoulders, quirks his lips. “Yeah,” he confirms, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a gusty sigh. “Just post-Championship nerves, you know? First time I’ve ever won. It got to me all of a sudden, I guess. I feel way better now, though! It’s the good kind of jitters.” He shakes out his arms to demonstrate, and Eret has to laugh with him, as carefree and lighthearted as he is about it. It dispels the lingering fear at the back of their mind that hisses He might feel the same way you did on election night, he might need help that can’t be given by you.

Dream flashes that incandescent grin of his and reaches out to squeeze George’s hand to congratulate him, stumbles because Eret’s forgotten to move their foot. They laugh in his face when he turns to give them a look full of more betrayal than they thought someone whose face is almost fully obscured could muster, and he wails to a truly unimpressed George about it, and Phil pokes at him with his wings and teases him. TapL is settling back down, cackling at some quip Wilbur throws out, and then Niki cuts in to get Eret to dance to “two queens in a king sized bed” because she loves them and also the dress (“Mostly the dress, to be honest, Eret”), and TapL gets dragged into dancing by Gizzy, and Phil sweeps away with Tubbo. Between getting passed from Niki to FWhip to Fundy to Puffy, they catch glimpses of Dream twirling under the laughing Captain’s arm, Sapnap monopolizing the pretzel bowl and fending off attackers, Tubbo and Tommy screaming with laughter as they spin one another around like a Beyblade from hell. At some point, as is tradition, everyone clears the dance floor and watches on as Landlord and Dream, staring deadpan into one another's eyes, do a waltz you could perform on a pie plate in dead silence. Noxite wheels in the cake not long after, and Scott smashes HBomb’s face into his slice. Fruit wakes up periodically to adjust his feet so that passersby will trip over his legs. It’s glorious and delirious and Eret wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Things start winding down around two in the morning. Some participants leave for their home worlds; a lot stay behind, pulling out pajamas (if they weren’t already wearing them) and sleeping bags (if they had the foresight). Wilbur gallantly offers Eret his own pajamas because he’s the only person present whose clothes would fit them, much to Eret’s chagrin, but by the time they gather their wits enough to try to protest, he’s already climbed headfirst into his own sleeping bag still wearing his jumper and joggers from Championship, so they let it go, fold the dress as carefully as they possibly can, and drag their sleeping bag over to the bright green one because they want to ask the owner of it something.

Dream’s gold-and-pink head is just barely visible under the quilt, but when Eret sinks down beside him, he stirs. “Whozzat?” he mumbles, reaching out with a familiar friendly friendly kind patient dedicated familiar “Eret?”

Eret snuggles in closer to avoid prying listeners and whispers, “How are you doing that?”

“Mm?”

“Your - the settling. You’re a minor god, but you didn’t create this world - Noxite, Stuart, and Landlord did that. How are you using your powers?”

“Hmm.” Dream turns so he’s facing Eret, and the mask, stark white, glows dimly in the dark as he whispers back, words drooping at the ends drowsily, “You’re right, ‘s weird... I didn’t think about it too hard. I can’t use any world-editing powers, that’s normal... Maybe it’s because, y’know... settling’s not a minor god power.” His eyes may be mostly concealed by his mask, but Eret can just barely make out Dream blinking blearily as he says, “I told you about them, right... the elder? They gave me this. Might be why I can use it all the time?”

“Oh,” Eret says back, throat tight. “Maybe.”

“Why?” Dream asks through a stifled yawn.

Eret bites their lip, thinking of TapL, thinking of themself a month prior, thinking of Dream with his boiling-hot fever that none of them were sure he’d wake up from. “What you were trying to do with TapL?” they opt to say softly. “Promise not to do it again?”

Dream shifts. “It’s my power, Eret,” he murmurs chidingly. “It helps.”

“I know it does. Believe me, I know.” A panic attack washed to sea, a dam built atop regrets. “But TapL is fine now, see? And he was okay, it just didn’t look like it from the outside. I can’t stop you from settling people,” they acquiesce, “and like you said, it’s your power, and you’re an adult - you know how to use it wisely. Just - promise me - promise us - you won’t jump to conclusions next time, settle someone who doesn’t need settling, and just make yourself feel worse? Promise, Dream?”

Dream hums sleepily, “Mm-hmm,” and sighs, and is asleep with his next inhale.

Eret calms their racing heart, finds Dream’s arm in the dark, twines their arms around his, and falls asleep themself, assured of his safety.

Chapter Text

“You,” Tommy tells Dream very patiently, “are such an idiotic wanker.”

“You’re not making your case any better,” says Dream, like the idiotic wanker he is.

Phil pinches the bridge of his nose.

It’s all so fucking stupid. Dream and Tommy were talking about something - L’Manberg, probably, its future and the walls they tore down, whether or not to keep them that way - and Tommy hadn’t been looking were he was placing his feet, which is just so stupid, he’s literally an agility-based fighter, and Tommy could slap himself, but, well. They were walking around a ravine and Tommy had slipped because he’d stepped on an unsteady slide of dirt and gravel. He’s honestly lucky to have landed in the thick exposed cobwebs of a mineshaft, but it’s the misstep that landed him with a goddamn sprained ankle that had stung like a bitch for all of thirty seconds until Dream had scrambled down the face of the ravine wall, disentangled Tommy with a neat swipe of his sword, and looked Tommy dead in the eye as he took the pain away.

“I’ve had plenty of sprained ankles, it’ll go away by itself,” Dream is saying, like an arse. George, sitting crammed up beside him in the armchair, looks like he agrees with Tommy’s assessment, judging by the scowl he shoots at his best friend even as he twines the swirls of Dream’s hair into a braid.

“That’s not the point, Dream,” he snaps, with a tug on Dream’s hair to get his attention. “The point is that you shouldn’t be doing that at all. Tommy’s also had his fair share of sprained ankles - ” he hasn’t, actually, most of them are fully broken legs, “ - and even if he hasn’t, it shouldn’t matter.”

Wilbur, sitting with his head pillowed on his arms beside Tommy’s propped-up leg, pipes up, “Well, Tommy doesn’t want to bother with regens for something as small as this, but Phil’s paranoid about administering potions when Tommy can’t actually feel the effect of it, and at any rate it’s a good reminder for the child to actually look where he’s fucking going, so - ow!” Wilbur reels back, shielding his face with one hand and cupping his nose with the other, where Tommy had kicked him with his bad foot.

Phil, of course, immediately climbs up his arse about it. “Tommy!” he cries. “I already told you not to move it - I don’t give a shit that you can’t feel it, it’s still sprained!”

“This is why Techno doesn’t fucking love you,” says Wilbur thickly through his fingers.

“Loves me more than you,” Tommy snips back, then, just as a fuck-you to Phil, rolls his ankle.

“Tommy!”

Dream scowls and says, “Don’t do that,” pointing at Tommy with his toe. “Just ‘cause you can’t feel it doesn’t mean you should.”

George makes a sound of outrage as he tugs one of Dream’s colorful hair ties from his wrist. “You are the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever met,” he says through gritted teeth, his tone completely offset by how carefully he ties Dream’s braid.

Phil finally stops metaphorically banging his head against the wall and comes round to sit beside Tommy, unfurls one wing to wrap around him and uses the other to pat the seat beside him when Wilbur slinks over sullenly. He watches Dream and George bicker for a moment before saying, “Hey, Dream,” in that very specific Dad Voice that makes both Tommy and Wilbur exchange looks.

Dream cuts off his teasing “That’s not what you said when I - ” and cocks his head at Phil.

Phil leans forward, bracing his elbows on his legs, and says firmly, “I need you to listen to what I have to say from the start to the end without interrupting me, okay?”

“Okay?” Dream replies uncertainly, clearly off-put by the shift in atmosphere.

Phil regards Dream for another moment in the dead quiet - Tommy’s holding his breath, trying desperately not to interrupt by breathing too loud or some shit, because Phil’s pulled out the Dad Voice and Tommy’ll be damned if he fucks up his groove, and one glance at Will tells him his older brother’s doing the same - and then he says, easy, “Minor god to minor god.”

George sucks in a sharp breath, shoots a glance at Dream. Dream, for his part, hesitates, then shifts - shifts in some way, maybe rolls his shoulders or something, something that makes him seem closer to Phil in carriage - and there’s something quiet and serious in his voice when he leans in with a small wince and echoes, “Minor god to minor god.”

“Okay.” Phil reaches out with a wing to pat Dream’s head. “Stop being such a fucking trainwreck.”

Dream squawks. Tommy chokes on his own spit.

“Phil!” says Wilbur, somehow managing to sound scandalized whilst clamping both hands over his mouth to stifle his laughter. “Be nice! You’re the worst therapist I’ve ever met!”

Phil rolls his eyes fondly and plows on, “I’m serious. You wanna help people - your friends - you made this world for them. I get that. I do.” His face clouds briefly, and with a start Tommy thinks of earlier years - a blistering cold and a quiver of arrows and the flat look in Phil’s eyes as he wound a diamond between his fingers. SMPEarth was Will’s brainchild and Phil’s masterpiece, a thing of profound beauty that the whole world marvelled over, because something like what Phil had created was unheard of - a server on such a scale, with such little backlash against the minor god who made it. Phil was laid up for a few days, then was right back up-and-at-'em. Tommy was ten or so, then, Tubbo ten as well and Techno fourteen and Wilbur freshly eighteen, and they were all ready to stretch their legs in a different world than the one Phil had moved them into when they were toddlers, but now, four years and several vaguely memorable conflicts later, Tommy gets why Phil did what he did in SMPEarth. It’s almost the same reason why Dream did what he did to L’Manberg, after all; Tommy has some perspective he didn’t before.

Phil spreads his wing to gesture at the cozy sitting room enclosing them, lit warmly by the crackling fireplace and bathing all of them in a soft amber. “A place for them to be safe and happy and for them to explore. Of course I get it.”

“SMPEarth,” murmurs George.

“SMPEarth,” affirms Phil, a brief smile flickering over his face. “But Dream, you’re unique in both your skillset and the extent to which you can use them. Your settling? That’s only you. I’ve never encountered a power like that, ever. The problem is, it hurts you in return. And so do your normal minor god abilities, to an extent.”

Dream cringes. “Phil, it’s not that bad.”

Phil crosses his arms, unimpressed. “No, it really is,” he says emphatically. Pauses, softens, and continues, “It’s not a bad thing. You’re not weak because of it. It’s just a thing. Some minor gods just have a higher tolerance than others, and your settling is unprecedented.”

“I know that,” mumbles Dream, sulkier than Tommy’s ever heard him, sounding not unlike a child getting a scolding. It kind of hits Tommy just then that Dream and Techno are the same age, and to cover for his mildly disturbing epiphany he experimentally adjusts his foot slightly and immediately gets poked, hard, by Wilbur.

Phil, valiantly ignoring him and Will, says gently, “I know you know. But you should also know that just because you’ve got these powers doesn’t mean you should use them all the time.”

Dream’s eyes snap up, a glint of sharp green under the smooth white mask. Low, deceptively mild, he says, “I know how to use my powers wisely, Phil. I’m not some fresh-spawned god, I’ve been doing this for a while.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tommy sees Wilbur wince, but Phil says patiently, “And I’ve been at it for longer. Told you to listen to me without interrupting, mate. Part of being a good minor god is being hands-off. I get that you wanna protect your friends, and take their pain away, and all that. I know.” The bucket hat casts a slant of shadow across Phil’s eyes when he bows his head. “I can’t count the number of times a friend or one of my kids has come home hurt, and I wanted to just put a potion effect on ‘em, and fly to whoever or whatever hurt them and hurt ‘em back with everything I had at my fingertips.” He looks back up now, and Tommy’s startled by the intensity of certainty in his grey-blue eyes as he says, “But you gotta learn to do things humanly. Give them a potion. Help them walk home. Ask for help from the people you love; sure, you invited them, but they accepted your invitation, yeah? Love - respect - all that stuff is a two-way street. You can’t do everything by yourself, and you shouldn’t have to, and your powers aren’t a way for you to just negate everything bad that ever happens, ever. We learn from bad things.”

George is outright staring, jaw dropped, looking like he has half a mind to stand up and start applauding Phil. Dream, however, has pulled back slightly, just enough to lean his back into the armchair, fingers twisted together. He starts to turn his foot side to side, gaze intent on his ankle where the sprain is on Tommy’s foot, and Phil reaches out and lays his hand on Dream’s leg, just lightly enough to give him pause and not to forcibly stop him.

“Dream, you have to let things happen,” Phil says softly.

Dream practically flies into a standing position. Wilbur yelps in surprise, but Dream only has eyes for Tommy; he limps around the coffee table and drops to an awkward crouch before him and asks, quiet, “Are you sure?”, and it takes Tommy longer than it really should for him to process the fact that Dream’s asking if he’s sure he wants the pain of the sprained ankle back.

He puffs out his chest as best he can whilst seated and declares, “Of course I’m sure! You think a man as big as I am can’t handle thirty seconds of pain? Joke’s on you, I can’t even feel pain!”

Dream’s chuckle sounds forced, but it is still a chuckle, so Tommy takes it with a thrill of triumph, and when Dream offers Tommy his hand with his palm facing up, Tommy drops his own hand into it without hesitation.

“What?” Tommy demands when Dream stills. “Go on, get it over with.”

“That was quick.”

Tommy rolls his eyes as vigorously as he possibly can and enunciates clearly into Dream’s face, “Pissbaby. It’s fine, I trust you.”

Dream’s fingers twitch. “...Right, then,” he says, with something like dazed awe in his voice. He breathes out slow relinquish the pain the pain it was nothing big but it was yours yours yours and now it returns is it his is it his and ow, son of a bitch, that stings.

Wilbur pops up next to Dream with an obscenely cheery “Here, drink this, you gremlin,” shoving an uncorked healing potion into his hands. Tommy knows better than to chug it - sprained ankles ain’t shit, half a flask will have him bouncing off the walls in no time - so he throws back what he judges to be the correct amount and grins as he physically feels the ankle right itself.

“Oh, yeah. Back in business, boys,” he announces, hopping up and leaning all his weight to his right a few times. When there’s no flare of pain, he whoops and pumps his fists in the air amidst Wilbur and Phil’s laughter and George putting his head in his hands.

Dream sighs quietly, shuffles back so he’s sitting beside his suffering best friend, settles canted to one side to test his foot.

“See what I mean?” asks Phil, gentle.

Dream bites his lip, considers. Finally decides on, “I guess.” Shoots a look at Phil that’s warier than warranted and hedges, “I don’t think... I don’t. This isn’t...”

Tommy watches as Phil looks Dream over, opens his mouth to say something with his expression twisted, then changes his mind at the last second. The look on his face melts down warm into a smile and he reaches out to ruffle Dream’s hair (and messes up his braid, which George makes a miffed noise about) and says, “We can work on that.”

Absentmindedly, Tommy kicks at Wilbur’s ankle, just because he can, and as Wilbur shrieks, thinks of an empire built on ice - an empire built on something so glacially cold no one could touch it, but reached out anyway with its frostbite fingers. Thinks of his father, all encroaching frost, the world at his fingertips, choosing humanity, choosing tangible over unattainable. He’s the best god Tommy knows.

He sets his weight more firmly on his newly-healed foot and hopes Dream learns from that.

Chapter Text

Dream heaves out a relieved sigh as he slumps onto the stone steps leading into the End Portal, taking a few minutes just to sit there like a shapeless lump and breathe. For all that he’s a minor god and a pretty good fighter he’s just as clueless as the next person when it comes to the End; it’s the first time he’s tried tackling an Ender Dragon, and being unable to die is honestly just a disadvantage in these types of battles. Dream had had to pack twice as many regen pots as the average adventurer and maintaining consciousness through searing pain, while familiar, isn’t exactly fun.

When Dream finally feels his heart rate settle into some semblance of normalcy, he grins, stretches out his arms and neck, and allows himself a hoarse whoop of victory. It hurts his throat for how much he’d been yelling both profanities and in terror, but it’s triumphant nonetheless - two full weeks of tracking and preparation and he’s done the thing all kids hear about for bedtime stories. The adrenaline hasn’t ebbed yet, so he’s all buzzed even as feels like he could sleep for the next decade, and he honestly feels so weird - in a good way - that he jumps up onto his feet, ignoring how loudly his body protests, and sets off down the corridor outside, intent on ransacking the stronghold.

It might’ve been beautiful, once. As far as Dream can tell, the stronghold stretches out over six or seven chunks, a winding labyrinth of smooth stone bricks, ivy eating into the walls, a few stray chests filled with worn armor and enchantment books that hum in his hands welcomingly. They’re also completely overrun by hostile mobs, silverfish scuttling over his feet, and Dream swears he can feel muscles that he didn’t know existed yelling at him to stop fucking moving as he ducks and rolls under the arm of a skeleton and decapitates it sloppily.

His footsteps echo hollowly as he trots around, rearranging his riches in his pack as he goes. Bad and Sam both insisted he take as much of their best gear as he could even though he told them he was probably going to break them (“Better them than you, you muffinhead!”), and a sharp clink underlines his every move. It gets annoying enough after a while - as he thought, both his leggings and chestplate, which were taking the brunt of the abuse from the occasional Enderman and the dragon, broke, so he’s only protected by the boots and helmet - so he ducks into an alcove to remove them and is debating whether or not to toss them when he glances up and freezes.

“Oh,” he whispers, straightening. “Oh, wow.”

It’s - it’s a library, dust speckling past the torches like snow, that shade of poorly-lit that adds mystique, amber light down cracked leather spines. When he peers in, tucking his boots under his arm, the torchlight slants away, as though disturbed by the new presence after eons of remaining just so.

Dream sidles in, wary of hostile mobs, but no telltale moaning or rattling can be heard, and he relaxes as he runs his fingers over the books. He likes reading, spent many a day sequestering himself in Sam’s tiny study in the corner of the house poring over the medicine books and combat manuals Sam scrawled in, and the library’s fairly overflowing with them, pages upon yellowed pages of red and blue and green.

Dream’s first impulse is, stupidly, to take as many of the books back home with him as he can carry. You can only read Sam’s spindly nether wart, sugar, water and sketched diagram for so long before you get sick of it, no matter how useful the information is, and these books are ancient and untouched; when he swipes a finger over one of the books on a nearby shelf, a chunk of cobweb follows. His common sense roundhouse kicks him in the face about ten minutes into him cramming books into his pack, though, and he decides, like a functional teenager, to curate his experience and pick out what books actually interest him to take back.

It turns out to be a sound decision, because some of the books are empty save the occasional scribble (“What the fuck,” says Dream blankly to a wild chicken-scratch “THE SQUIDS HATE BUTTER” in one of the journals that aren’t completely blank) and others are so old they literally crumble in his hands. Dream makes it through about half the shelf he’s decided to concentrate on before he actually gets his hands on a book that doesn’t either disintegrate or contain mad rambling.

It’s neatly printed, a good sign, and the pages weigh heavy in his hands for how thick they are. Dream drops his pack to the side and sinks down into a sitting position, wincing as his legs and his back curse him out for it, spreading the tome out on his lap to leaf through it.

One knows, it tells him, of the elders. They are ageless (though not timeless) and impervious to wound and illness. Under their tier are the minor gods, those who walk amongst us mortals, offering us their gifts as creators of new worlds, guardians of the human realms.

There’s a thrill down Dream’s spine, a bolt of recognition. He smooths out the illustration on the page describing minor gods intently: gold on cream, a stylized human profile limned in swirls, a hand clasping another. It’s viscerally familiar in a way Dream can’t quite process - he knows the feeling on the page, he knows it from his own opinions and experiences, he just can’t reconcile it with other people. It’s strange, knowing there’s something bigger than what he knows out there; strange, knowing his old god came from a concept he can’t comprehend then vanished into thin air. He thinks about them often, wonders if they’re doing well, wonders at the purpose of the gift they left him with that lets him soothe George’s skinned knees and Ponk’s nicked fingers.

He shakes himself, mutters “Focus,” turns another page. The intricate, boxed-in letters that greet him give him pause.

The primordials, eldest of the elders, the very essences of space and time, gave the gods their power, their wisdom, their kindness. However, as is the way of life, what is given may also be taken away. To keep their gods true to their calling, the primordials invoked the cardinal laws, the three ways of life that no immortal is permitted ever to break, lest they incur both the wrath of their origins and the direct consequences of their impudence.

Oh.

Wait, oh, fuck, wait, wait.

“Oh, shit,” says Dream out loud, a quiet sort of panic stirring in his gut. “Uh oh.”

He’s never heard of - of “cardinal laws” before. He couldn’t have - born in a hardcore and going almost straightaway into world jumping, between growing up with Sapnap and finding Sam and forming a makeshift family out of himself and seven other bright-eyed, restless kids, he’s never concentrated on his... status too much, especially because this is Bad’s home world and not one he made. The only power in his hands is the gift from the old god, his ability to settle hurts, and -

What if it’s illegal or something, what his old god did? What if that’s why they never came back? A million worst-case scenarios flash by Dream’s eyes - how the hell is he supposed to swerve the fucking elders - before he slaps both hands to his face and the sting brings everything back into clarity.

“Don’t be stupid,” he tells himself out loud, stern. “It can’t be that bad.”

He ignores the traitorous little voice in the back of his head that hisses Yes, it totally could be that bad, you are a literal god, dumbass, and runs his thumb over the three inconspicuous lines at the bottom of the page.

Thou shalt not needlessly harm humans.

That’s... way more ambiguous than Dream expected it to be. What constitutes “necessary” harming? Better just to outright say “Thou shalt not harm humans” - but then, that’d be way too solid and specific for a god to insist on, Dream supposes. The elder-godly MO seems to be “be vague and be terrifying.” At any rate, his heart rate relaxes a little at the words; he likes humans, loves his friends, wouldn’t dream of hurting people. All in all, it seems like a simple rule.

Thou shalt not disrupt the order of the universe.

What the fuck does that even mean. Dream scowls at the sentence just out of spite; he doesn’t have anywhere near the means to disrupt anything about the universe, so he’s positive he’s fine on that front.

And thou shalt not forsake thine godhood.

Dream stares blankly at the page for a solid minute before setting the book aside and scrubbing his hands over his face.

“Useless,” he tells it frankly. “Why are these the rules. Why are they literally the easiest things in the world to follow.”

The pages flutter at him reproachfully.

(He does skim the rest of the book, because he's not stupid enough to just leave it at that. It’s all myths, tales of the birth of the world as they know it, stories of the old gods as they molded the earth. The first few pages were just a contextualization, groundwork for the reader. Why else put the cardinals there? Why else remind a new god of an oath they were never told?

Dream leaves the stronghold with the book placed back into its shelf.)

Chapter Text

Fundy is about two seconds away from having an ugly breakdown, which is - he just - god fucking damn it, he just needs to focus.

He’s crashing through the woods, graceless, tripping over every root possible, nearly twisting his ankle at one point with the speed of his flight. The fact that it’s the smoke-grey of early dawn outside doesn’t help matters, and only the knowledge that his fiancé is lying in the woods keeps Fundy from running into a tree or stopping to catch his breath.

Dream’s base is closer, and Fundy’s frantic enough to not notice how brightly lit it is inside; he throws open the door with a resounding crack and takes about three steps in before someone grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him back. If he had enough air to yelp, he would. Instead, he braces his hands on his legs and tries to suck in breaths as deeply as he can as three - no, four sets of boots clomp up to surround him from inside the house.

“What the - Fundy?”

Fundy’s head snaps up.

“Ant?” he pants back, swiping the sweat away from his eyes to stare at the motley crew scrutinizing him. “Bad, Sapnap, George - what are you doing in Dream’s base?”

The manhunters - because that’s what they are, Fundy can see it now, the four people slated to chase Dream down as the madman hunts down an Ender Dragon - exchange loaded looks that Fundy can’t decipher. That’s five seconds too long for Fundy. If they’re going to stand there staring, that’s fine by him, but he has places he really needs to be. He sweeps past them to rifle through one of the multipurpose chests Dream keeps in the living room, pawing past the fire resistances, dropping the three regens he manages to extricate with trembling hands into his pack, and then a gloved hand is on his.

“Fundy, who are those for?” asks Bad slowly, his tone a side of neutral that’s careful, approachable, that makes Fundy’s heart buckle in his chest. Fundy looks up, and when Bad gets a good look at whatever face Fundy’s making, a quiet, horrified realization dawns on his face.

“We - we have to hurry,” says Fundy, his mouth stumbling over the words, panic making everything roar in his ears, his own voice incomprehensible to himself. “We have to go.”

Bad’s surprisingly strong; he stands Fundy up in one swift move and pulls him gently toward the doorway, a stark contrast to how authoritatively he barks “George, see if you can find Dream’s other potions chest. Sapnap, Ant, you two come with. Where is he?” he says urgently, steadying Fundy when he stumbles over the threshold, the adrenaline going nowhere and making him shaky. “Fundy - ”

Fundy grunts in annoyance, flaps his hands, claps them to his face, and the sting brings his vision back into focus. Summons up the half-broken image of Dream splayed under a canopy of stars and leaves, squints into the thick expanse of oaks, and starts to lead Ant and Sapnap and Bad to where Fundy’d left him, panting, “Not that far.”

“What the fuck happened?” demands Sapnap from somewhere behind him, voice sharper than the edge of an axe. “It’s the middle of the night - morning - and sure, Dream’s sleep schedule is wack, but this...”

“Language,” hisses Bad.

“Not the goddamn time, Bad - ”

“I just,” says Fundy, hoping the fear suffocating him doesn’t strangle out his voice, “wanted to talk to him. I never got to. This is the first time in weeks.”

Silence descends upon them save the swish of their steps in the grass.

“Okay,” says Bad, gentle. “Okay.”

Because the festival is two weeks out, now. Dream was finally able to walk around without help a day ago, and helped George and Sam whitelist Phil yesterday, and has been smiling unprompted, and the color and freckles have come back into his face from sitting in the sun, and now - stray arrows, a night too black; Fundy didn’t know that those were the things that could take a convalescing minor god down. He can’t sit beside Dream all pale and brittle and watch their twin rings glint under his tears again - he can’t.

Fundy’s so caught up in his inner mantra of I can’t I can’t I can’t that he nearly slips in the blood.

“Oh my god - holy shit, oh my god.”

Even having been there to watch it happen, Fundy still reels backward, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing through his mouth so he doesn’t have to keep inhaling the thick scent of blood. It’s a fucking crime scene, Dream sprawled across the roots of a tall, grasping tree, an arrow in his shoulder and two in his stomach and the one that Fundy gags to see again, traitorously prominent, buried up to the shaft in the right of Dream’s chest. His face is that awful paper white it was when he first woke up. Fundy tries not to think about what it was like then, either.

“Oh, Dream,” breathes Bad, and in a blink he’s crossing over to kneel beside Dream, and Fundy finds himself stumbling after him, handing Bad a regen with numb fingers when the other holds out his hand expectantly, attention fully focused on the minor god bleeding out before him.

“Fundy, why...?” says Ant, distracted, sinking into a crouch on Dream’s other side, scooting over to let Sapnap monopolize the position of grabbing and clinging to Dream’s slack hand. “It’s... it’s nothing that can’t be fixed up with a regen. Why...?”

Fundy’s hands start shaking again.

“Listen,” he whispers, swallowing hard, pressing his hands to his chest, trying not to hyperventilate. “Ant, Sapnap, Bad, listen.”

Bad’s fingers, shiny with blood from the two arrows he’s pulled from Dream’s body, still on the cork of the potion flask. They all audibly hold their breath, and Fundy feels his head sting from the lightheadedness of wrestling with his terror.

A frown flickers across Sapnap’s face. He eases Dream’s hand back to the forest floor and plants his own on either side of Dream’s head, angles his ear close to Dream’s mouth, searching for - blood bubbling in Dream’s chest, or the stutter of his overtaxed heart; something. Anything.

The first weak rays of sun inch over the horizon, peter over the planes of Sapnap’s face the instant he hears what Fundy means.

“Oh my god,” he says.

Fundy feels the tender skin of his knuckles break under his nails. He says, hands bloody, barely a whimper, “Please tell me it’s gonna be okay,” and Bad flies into action.

“Get the other arrows out of him now,” he orders, addressing Sapnap, who’s still in a daze that’s starting to work itself into a distraught one. Smacks Sapnap’s arm when Sapnap doesn’t react the first time, snapping, “Now, Sapnap!” and Sapnap startles out of the glazed eyes into grieving fury, a raging fire of a feeling that sparks over his face. He reaches over to wrench the two remaining arrows from Dream as Bad grabs Ant, whose hands are clamped over his mouth, by the shoulder with a “Take this regen, okay, as soon as Sapnap gets that arrow out give it to Dream, the way I showed you that one time. A bit at a time, or it’ll get in his lungs and won’t do any good, okay?” Ant nods vigorously, white and shaky but resolution on his face. “Okay. Fundy - hey, Fundy?” Bad turns to Fundy now, expression completely open, fear in every crease of it but the line of his mouth steady for all that.

“Bad,” Fundy says, almost pleading. Bad’s sharp, determined expression softens, then splinters.

“It’s gonna be - it’s gonna be just fine,” he promises, and even though his voice fails him halfway through the sentence Fundy believes him. He laces his ringed finger through Dream’s.

George stumbles across them halfway through Ant’s meticulous ministrations, and Fundy, buzzing from the dregs of the all-encompassing panic of just ten minutes past, watches George’s expression cycle through three variations of horror in high definition. He hands Ant another regen and, after a clink and a curse, a healing pot.

“Healing I or II?” asks Sapnap, voice hoarse but tone keen, his eyes trained unwaveringly on Dream’s face.

“II,” replies George, just as distant. They’re all quiet in earnest now, staring as Ant bites his lip and tips the potion bottle intermittently, as Bad binds the arrow wounds for want of something to do. It’s stupid, how innocuous they seem, tiny tears in Dream’s bright clothes all to show for the garish red arrowheads by Bad’s feet.

Ant gets a third of the way through the healing potion when Dream’s chest rises suddenly, and even in unconsciousness he splutters on it. Ant immediately shoves the flask into George’s hands and tilts Dream’s head in a direction he won’t choke, and Fundy twists his tail in his hands so hard he’s certain he’ll regret it later, but he can’t feel it right now, not through the overwhelming relief stampeding through him, the bone-deep certainty that Dream is alive, and the breath shivering in Dream’s chest is enough to make him dig the heels of his palms into his eyes and whisper, heartfelt, “Oh thank god.”

Ant lays Dream’s head back down and sighs in relief; George and Sapnap both find each others’ hands and hold on so hard Fundy can see their hands go white. Bad pushes his glasses up onto his head and drags his hands over his face, suddenly looking ten years older, eyes dully aglow.

“...What happened?”

Fundy shrieks in surprise, as does Sapnap. George jumps, almost dropping the healing potion, and swears at Sapnap, gets “Language!”-ed by Bad in return. Ant glares at all of them balefully and turns back to Dream, who’s stirring slightly, his breath still uneven but definitely there.

“Dream, you’re in the forest with us - Ant, Sapnap, George, Bad, Fundy.” Ant’s eyes flicker up to meet Fundy’s briefly; he adds, “You were walking with Fundy in the morning. Do you remember anything?”

Dream hums in thought, his words softened at the edges by exhaustion. “...Skeletons. Too dark... didn’t see them. Or sense them. ...Was a mistake.”

“You idiot,” begins George, voice swelling in the relative peace of the woods, but one sharp look from Bad and George backs off, albeit scowling. Bad, for his part, says, butter soft, “That’s completely fine, Dream. Do you think you can walk? We should get you back to your house. I don’t want you to - to catch a cold or something.” His voice catches on the word cold, and Fundy remembers the look on Bad’s face when he’d laid his hand on Dream’s cheek to check his temperature in the cot in the White House and had pulled his hand away to show off the ash-grey of a first-degree burn, face stricken. Fundy remembers pressing his face into Niki’s shoulder, remembers someone hissing “That’s a hundred and twenty degrees,” remembers beginning to cry.

Dream makes a cut-off sound of effort, manages to rise onto his elbows, then abruptly sinks back down and admits, laughing quietly and breathlessly, “Sorry... Don’t think so.”

“That’s fine,” says Bad again immediately, reassuring. Plucks at Sapnap’s sleeve and says emphatically, “Sapnap can give you a piggyback ride back, can’t you, Sapnap?”

Sapnap scoffs, but it’s all for show: he’s already reaching over to roll Dream over on his side with an acquiescing “Yeah, sure, but only because Dream gave me so many piggyback rides when we were kids. Tall motherfucker,” he tells Dream as he pulls said tall motherfucker onto his back, with help from Ant and George and a pointed “Language” from Bad. “Not on me if I drop you because your legs are dragging on the ground.”

“...’m fine with that,” mumbles Dream into Sapnap’s hair, manages a chuckle when George swats at his arm in vehement rejection of his words.

Fundy graciously accepts Ant’s hand up because he’s not sure if his legs will support him, leans into them to get the blood flowing, and they all set off for Dream’s base again, though at a significantly more relaxed pace, mostly because they’re all so drained from the frantic pace of the early morning. The sun crawls steadily up over the treeline as they trek in comfortable silence, throwing them all into relief in pale pink, and Fundy’s admiring the light of the sunrise in Dream’s wild, leaf-snarled hair when George suddenly says, “Dream, we wanted to talk to you.”

Something in his tone makes Fundy’s ears flatten, not so much out of nervousness as out of mild apprehension. It’s not meant in animosity, Fundy can tell; none of the people on the server actively seek to hurt one another, especially not anymore, and George rarely tries that with Dream anyway. Still, the looks the hunters throw one another again prompt Fundy into grabbing his tail and wringing it in his hands once more.

Dream is either too tired to pick up on the odd tone or is purposefully ignoring it. “What about?”

George starts to work his jaw, clearly trying to build up momentum into a proper long ramble, but Ant beats him to it with a sharp, succinct “You weren’t breathing earlier in the forest.”

Dream doesn’t respond. Sapnap stops, and everyone else stops with them.

“...It came up when we were discussing starting up manhunts again,” ventures Bad carefully, his voice deliberately void of accusation or acid. “It hadn’t occurred to us up until then. But we were talking about it, and - Fundy, you know how minor gods can’t die? In the books?”

Fundy, startled at being suddenly inserted into the conversation, nods on impulse. It’s another tidbit of mythology that almost everyone grows up having learned at some point: the system of death and life. Respawn, the gift given to mortals by the elders, for their little people who wanted so desperately to create and explore but were too fragile to withstand those journeys. The gods crafted it. They themselves had no need for it; they’re immortal to time, safe from injury and illness. Or at least the old gods certainly are. Minor gods tend to be a little cagey about their own ties to the respawn cycle, and it’s an open secret that it’s because minor gods can still feel pain, still suffer from sickness, still have to endure recovery from wounds. Fundy’s always thought minor gods kind of got the short end of the stick.

Manhunts. Minor gods. Dream’s lung pierced through by an arrow.

Fundy feels his stomach drop out into the void.

“Dream,” says Sapnap, soft and serious, “how were you doing the manhunts, if you can’t die?”

A long, tense pause. Fundy thinks Dream might’ve passed out but the purse of his fiancé’s lips tells him otherwise. He twists his tail into itself, set on edge by the heaviness of the silence, and from the corner of his eye spots Ant’s tail twitching from side to side, close to the grass. He nearly bursts out laughing in that crucial moment from the sheer hysteria that’s built up from this morning; two of the members of the server whose self-image involves animals showing off the tells of their tails.

Dream says, muffled, “You won’t like the answer.”

Fundy winces. For Dream of all people to admit that whatever it was he was doing to cover for his godliness on manhunts isn’t something his friends are going to want to hear is - it’s progress, certainly, but also particularly telling. Judging by the grimace on Sapnap’s face, the outright devastation on Bad’s, they’ve come to the same conclusion.

“Just tell us,” says George bracingly, squaring his shoulders. “We can take it.”

Dream worries his lip between his teeth for another moment before he finally murmurs, “...I’d... I’d make the manhunt worlds. They’re small... ‘cause we only need one stronghold. I’d take a day to chill from that... and play manhunt straight. If one of you ‘killed’ me...” Dream’s mouth curves in what could be a smile if it weren’t so completely tragic. “...would fake respawn with teleporting. With a healing effect. Stay awake til I was alone, y’know. It... that’s how.”

Ant snatches up his tail, mirroring Fundy; they both press their respective tails to their faces, and Fundy’s pretty sure Ant’s feeling the same chasm of abject horror gape open like a fresh wound in his chest.

“If you weren’t fucking on my back right now,” says Sapnap, voice wobbling treacherously, “I would punch you so goddamn hard. And then I’d hug the shit out of you.”

“What the fuck, Dream,” agrees George, looking sick. “All this time? Is that why - why you don’t like killing people? Because that’s how it is for you?”

There’s a flash of green under the mask that Fundy can make out when Dream’s gaze darts to George; Dream says, low, “I love manhunt. It’s our thing, all of us... ‘s why we do it. I won’t... won’t give that up.”

They stare at one another for another silence, this one far more oppressive in its palpable, unspoken rage. Sapnap looks highly uncomfortable; Bad looks like he’s torn between intervening and reprimanding George and Sapnap for their several past swears. Ant is glancing from George to Dream and back again.

Fundy’s hands are still shaking. It doesn’t stop him from reaching over and burying his hand in Dream’s curls.

“I’m not part of this,” he says, cautious, as Dream freezes. “I’m not part of manhunt, so it’s not up to me to say. But I watch it, for all of you and because it’s amazing, and I think it’s worth everyone listening to each other. Dream wants to keep manhunt - that’s fine, it’s part of him, keep it, but new rules might be in order to newly accommodate, all that.” Fundy unspools some of the worst knots in Dream’s hair. “Honor code? Making Dream quit if there’s really no way out? The audience can think it’s death all they want, can’t they?”

Fundy shuts up once he’s done monologuing, focusing resolutely on Dream’s hair, because he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising, indicating they’re all staring at him. Dream is looking at him wonderingly, and Fundy manages to flash him a weak smile.

“Those,” says Bad solemnly, “are very good points, Fundy. Ten out of ten.”

Fundy lets go of the breath he didn’t know he was holding and directs the selfsame shaky smile now to Bad, who mirrors it with a little more confidence. To Dream, Bad says soothingly, “It’s totally okay if you want to keep manhunts. To be honest, I do too. I just think you need to learn your limits, though. Know when to stop.”

“It’s gonna be impossible to teach him those things,” snarks Ant, and dodges with a yelp when Dream kicks at him halfheartedly. Unbidden, Fundy snorts, and then Sapnap smirks, and then they’re all laughing over the stupid joke, probably because after such a hectic morning they desperately need all the lightheartedness they can get.

Later, Fundy will make Dream pinky swear not to do that again. Later, Dream and the hunters will have a blowout fight over the manhunt parameters that forces Fundy to evacuate from the house. Later, Dream will explain, haltingly, the feeling of being suspended between life and death.

For now, Sapnap hikes Dream higher up on his back, and they twine their way through the trees toward Dream’s base, and Fundy rolls his ring on his finger, thinking of freckles under the sun, thinking of the brightness returning to Dream’s laugh, thinking of a future they all get to forge forward.

Chapter Text

The thing with factions servers: power, territory, claims, these arbitrary terms have not-so-arbitrary definitions and implications attached. Factions servers end up fewer and farther in between than games servers - take, for instance, the famous Hypixel, which rakes in hundreds of thousands of visitors daily - because of the attention required to maintain them. Plenty of anarchy servers start life as factions, after all; the intricacies of factions themselves, let alone the semi-worldbending powers each individual player is granted by proxy of being a member or founder of a faction, mean the world creator, owner, and at least a few admins need to be on deck at all times.

Phil will be the first to admit he wasn’t really thinking about all that when he created SMPEarth. His heart bleeds, sue him - Wilbur was eight when Phil had first found and adopted him, and now, ten years later, Wilbur with his head in Phil’s lap as though he were a kid again, laying out the semantics of a world he’d dreamt up in his head for his friends and family -

Yeah, you try not to let your heart explode from that one, mate.

So, yes, after brainstorming with his eldest for weeks, Phil raises the curtain on SMPEarth on a brisk November morning. It’s his best work by far - massive landforms and even bigger oceans, sprawling mountain ranges and rolling fields, cuts of desert and spires of ice, pockets of Nether within the Overworld. Wilbur had near passed out when he first saw it, which Phil takes as a success, or as much as he can whilst he’s lying in bed for three days alternating between being vaguely drowsy but somewhat coherent and being out stone cold.

He conveniently forgets until the whitelisted members start jumping in that factions servers, especially on this scale, require maintenance.

It’s incredibly last-minute, but he ends up bestowing admin upon Wilbur and Techno at spawn, and grabs Chip before he sets off to do the same for him. The moment he does he feels the pressure ease; even with his massive stores of power, just the fact that he needs to be constantly exerting it in order to keep the factions systems running smoothly makes him apprehensive. Admins, almost always human, at least have the power to whitelist and ban, so Phil can shift some of the weight around as he gets his bearings and figures out how to keep SMPEarth running for as long as he can manage (which, if he has any say in it, is forever, but the pessimist in him laughs him off the stage, so).

Since Wil wanders off on his own in search of territory to claim and Tommy and Tubbo have been expressly barred from joining the server until Phil can guarantee they won’t be jumped at spawn, Techno becomes Phil’s staunch ally in the establishment of the Antarctic Empire. It’s good to see him looking livelier, more like a teenager instead of the grim, deadpan shadow on Phil’s heels he was when he was eight. He’s an excellent fighter and even better strategist and they carve their names into their ever-expanding territory, stamp a legacy into their swathe of sea. Their faction blossoms into an empire.

And Phil is, more often than not, exhausted.

He’s young and he’s stubborn so he makes do, but six months later finds him sitting out on the terrace with frost gathering in his hair, a wing in his lap that he thinks he might have been preening, and he has no idea how long he’s been outside.

“Shit,” he says out loud, largely for the sake of hearing himself. His voice doesn’t shake, so he can’t have been out too long, but his fingertips are going blue on the grey of his feathers and his teeth chatter, both bad signs, so he manages to hoist himself up, bundles his wings close to his cloak with a wince, and stumbles in through the dark wooden doors just in time to run straight into a haggard Techno.

They both nearly go down, Phil with a yelp and Techno with an aborted noise of surprise; ultimately it’s Techno who rights them, plants his hand on the wall and snatches Phil’s fur-trimmed cloak with the other. Phil flaps out his wings once to regain his balance and for a second they stare at each other.

“...You are just the pinnacle of grace, Phil,” Techno finally says drily.

Phil barks out a laugh and buries his icy fingers in Techno’s hair, skews Techno’s circlet aside with the force of his ruffling, replies fondly, “D-Don’t you know it.”

Techno’s eyes dart up at the light stutter. The beginnings of the smile that was dawning on his face cool into a frown as he scans Phil up and down and asks, “How long were you out there?”

Phil, with the ease of a well-practiced storyteller, says airily, “Oh, about an hour or two,” and muffles a smirk into his alula when Techno swells indignantly without a single change in expression.

“Phil, your wings are gonna freeze,” he says, dropping his gaze pointedly to said wings. “You never put anythin’ over them. Yeah, we’re the Antarctic Empire, but that doesn’t mean you can just casually hang around outside doin’ whatever it is you’re doin’.”

Phil waves him off, though not unkindly; four kids adopted into his family by age nineteen meant all four got into the habit of pestering him into taking care of himself, parroting his own words back at him, and he’s gotten used to it over the years. “Yeah, mate, I hear you,” he says, grinning at the unimpressed Techno and the irony of it all. “Won’t stay out for hours at a time, won’t drink and fly, won’t stay up past midnight, got it.” He pauses. Fonder, softer, he adds, “Anything else you wanted to tell me, Techno?”

He doesn’t expect Techno to clamp his mouth shut all of a sudden, for his shoulders to hunch in, and the collapse into himself is so abrupt that Phil reaches out reflexively in alarm, gets his arms around Techno as if to shield him from something, and his legs choose that precise moment to give out on him, so they both sink down to the stone brick. Phil would think he were pathetic if he weren’t so busy pulling back, smoothing his hands over Techno’s stricken face, searching his best friend's expression.

“What’s wrong, mate?” he says breathlessly, worriedly. Techno’s always been the strong, silent type, after all - where Wilbur might slam doors or snap, where Tubbo might seethe and storm, where Tommy might scream his poor throat out, Techno shuts down so completely and utterly that he might as well be a statue. Phil often gets the distinct feeling it’s an internalized issue, but he’s never had the opportunity to bring it up to Techno in those moments of vulnerability, because afterward, he’s right back to his monotone ribbing and casual thrashing of his brothers at spars. Phil always tries to be there - they have to be safe, he’s their family and their friend, he has to protect them, he has to - but he also tries to let the others come to him first. It’s a matter of trust, always has been; he wants them to know he’s there, but he’s also willing to stay hands-off. It’s how he managed to keep his family unit running relatively smoothly all these years.

But the crack of fear that glints through Techno’s well-adjusted mask, that flicker of uncertainty that clubs Phil over the head soundly with the knowledge that Techno is still sixteen -

“Techno,” he says as gently as he can, even as his ears ring, even as his hands shake with how much power this world and this empire have leached from him, drawing his wings around his friend, “Techno, what’s wrong?”

And Techno’s face crumples, and he crunches over til his head rests on Phil’s shoulder, and with a shuddering exhale he admits, hushed, “Been hearin’ things, Phil,” and Phil wraps his wings tighter around him.

“Hearing things,” he repeats, head buzzing both with lightheaded relief and with the speed his thoughts are going. “Hearing what, exactly?”

Techno hesitates, but only for a moment; “Voices,” he admits quietly, and Phil is violently torn for a moment between appreciation that Techno trusts Phil enough to tell him these things so candidly and a wave of alarm.

“...Okay,” he says slowly, reaching up to pass a hand through Techno’s hair. “They say anything to you?”

Techno tenses. Phil lets his hand still.

Take care, always take care. Phil knows better than anyone that Techno’s old life was harder - hardcore-born, Nether-tainted, anarchy-raised, he has landmines built in that Wil, adopted earlier, and Tommy and Tubbo, adopted younger, don’t necessarily have. Phil knows, and Phil tries.

“You’re my family,” he says to the wall behind Techno, voice fierce in spite of how tremulous it sounds even to him. “No matter what it is - no matter what atrocities you commit, or kids you punt, or whatever - I’m here for all of you, always, forever. If the voices are cussing you out all the time? I’ll give ‘em the boot. They demanding, like, a human sacrifice? I’ll help you work around that.” A thought occurs to him, inspiration landing like a bolt of lightning. “Y’know what? Hey!” He draws away to plant his hands on Techno’s shoulders, shouting into Techno’s bewildered, beleaguered face: “You! Whatever the hell’s back there! Give him a break, yeah? He’s struggling, here, and I’m tryna help him - chill out for ten minutes!”

He and Techno stare into one another’s faces for another brief silence.

It’s Techno, in the end, who bursts out laughing, and Phil smacks his arm with no real heat.

“I was serious!” he complains as Techno gasps for breath between chuckles. “Are they at least calmer? Was that effective at all?”

Techno pauses, tilts his head, his ears flicking, his laughter dying out in his mouth. He blinks, once, then turns wide eyes onto Phil that shine with something approaching wonder.

“They... you made ‘em quiet down, Phil,” he says, astonished, and Phil, taken aback, says, “Wait, that - how? What?”

“They, uh - it’s - they talk about blood, sometimes,” Techno confesses in a sudden rush, “wantin’ blood, or just pesterin’ me for the heck of it, but they, uh.” A corner of Techno’s lips twitches up as though unbidden. “They stopped when you told them to.”

“Did they?” It’s convenient, then, that Phil and Techno are effectively quarantined together most of the time in a palace of a faction base with no one else for company. Techno can call on Phil any time the voices get out of hand. “Good to know.”

Techno fiddles with his hands for a moment before plowing forward, “They were just whispers, really, at first, but they started to get a lot louder and a lot more insistent in the past few weeks. That’s - they were around for Fit, like three months ago, and I think that’s what made them stronger.”

“The death?”

“I dunno. Just - the blood, or the violence itself, maybe. Haven’t exactly tested it out.” Techno shrugs with one shoulder. Adds as an afterthought: “Started around... what, around December? Probably just before Tubbo’s birthday - whoa, Phil, whoa - Phil, steady, you good?”

Phil can hear his heartbeat roar in his head, echoing with the force of its ba-dum, ba-dum. Almost seven months ago - around the time they established the Antarctic Empire, around the time Phil started getting his energy sapped in earnest, devoting every drop to keeping the server going and keeping the faction strong. Phil has been practically gushing power for months, like some wound that never clots because he keeps picking at it, and being exposed to the brunt force of the energy of a minor god, especially one as powerful as Phil -

“The voices - they might be my fault,” he says, his own voice nearly failing him.

Techno gives him a startled look. “What?”

“I... I made you and Chip and Wil admins, but I never granted owner,” Phil recounts faintly. “So I’ve been keeping SMPEarth alive, keeping the factions framework up, so I’ve been putting out energy constantly, right? I think...”

Phil’s fully prepared for Techno’s eyes to go cold, or for Techno to reel back in shock, or even for a punch to be thrown, and he can feel the feathers on his wings puff up instinctively as he braces himself.

He’s not expecting Techno to slap his hand to his face and groan, “Phil - you didn’t make an owner? I thought you gave it to Wilbur.”

“...No, I didn’t - he’d gone by then, and since I’m a minor god - ”

Techno looks Phil dead in the eye and says, “Phil, you are just so incredibly dumb.” His expression tightens for a moment before smoothing out; he tacks on a “and the voices agree with me, they’re all sayin’ ‘Wow, kinda weirdchamp’ and ‘idiot, LOL’.”

Phil has to grin at that, if weakly. “Two minutes into telling me and you’re already best friends with them. I don’t know why I expected any different.”

Techno shrugs that one-shouldered shrug again and says matter-of-factly, “Well, yeah, you mighta put voices in my head.” Phil winces. “Can’t be all that bad. Look on the bright side, now I can bully you into giving Wilbur owner and you can talk me outta, like... a bloodthirsty rampage, or somethin’.” At the look Phil gives him, Techno says hurriedly, “It’s just the first thing that popped into my head, don’t take it too seriously.”

Phil sighs, leans back so that he’s sitting properly with his elbows braced on his knees, straightens out his wings as Techno arches an eyebrow at him with far too much self-awareness for a teenager.

Fact of the matter is, Techno’s right, and Phil knows he’s right. Owners are made owners to let world creators ease off on the amount of power exerted into running a world, especially for games servers and the like. It’s more common for minor gods running personal servers as places to come back to to remain both as creators and owners, since such plain worlds require little effort to maintain, nowhere near the nonstop attention demanded by games and factions. Owners have far more abilities accessible to them than admins, can worldbend to some degree regardless of whether they’re human or minor god, have more sway over functions like factions, essentially taking on a chunk of the creator’s burden. If Phil were reasonable, he’d probably have made Wilbur owner from the start, but he didn’t, and here they are, one son with incessant chatter in his head and Phil himself too dazed to function efficiently.

“...Alright, mate, you win this one,” Phil finally acquiesces, shifting his hat to his hand to run the other through his hair, letting his heart melt a bit when Techno lights up before coughing to cover for it. “I’ll call Wilbur this week. Maybe we can get Tommy and Tubbo as well - have dinner, have them stay the night.”

“I’m fine with that,” says Techno, his brusqueness belied by how gingerly he helps Phil to his feet, “as long as you don’t make Tommy bunk with me again.”

“What, you don’t love your youngest brother, Techno?”

“Phil, he bites.”

And if the chatter in Techno’s head retreats to the corners to listen to the minor god and his emperor hold their bright, lighthearted conversation, who’s to tell?

Chapter Text

There’s a kid following Puffy through the fair, flitting in and out of her peripheral vision. They’re fairly tall, folded into a bright green hoodie a touch too big, their tawny curls peeking out from behind their hood and the stark white mask with an unsteady smiley face scrawled onto it. The only part of their face Puffy can actually see is their mouth, surrounded by a storm of freckles, and they move easily, very aware of their surroundings and themself.

“Puffy,” murmurs Niki with perfect calm, never taking her eyes off of the kitschy starglobe she’s turning in her hands, “there’s someone following us.”

Puffy shrugs at that, glancing over the globe. It’s cute - a standard scene of the birth of the world, a stereotypical depiction of the primordials as twin dragons circling the earth, the void swimming with white flakes - but it’s not particularly Niki’s style, and she knows Niki’s examining it from every angle for the sake of having something to do while she keeps an eye on their tail. “Looks like a kid to me. Tall as hell but they’re so awkward about it.”

“They walk like they know how to run,” Niki says mildly. It’s an understatement; when Niki and Puffy move on to a different stand, Puffy looks away for just a moment in order to accept change from the cheery pancake vendor, and when she looks back they’re gone. It takes her and Niki the five minutes needed to finish the pancake to catch sight of them again, leaning against a wall between two vendors with enough casualness to come off as relaxed, as confident, as older and wiser than they actually are.

And Puffy would be wary in any other occasion, given how well the kid blends in with their environment, how smoothly they incorporate themself into the people around them, but as she and Niki round the corner to the next street she manages to catch the shine in their eyes under their mask when their eyes meet and -

“Niki,” she says abruptly, stopping and watching the kid stop dead in their tracks too, neither of them breaking eye contact, “kid looks a little scared of us.”

“As they should,” Niki replies primly, but she stops with Puffy all the same, squinting her eyes at the green figure in the middle of the street. “Why? Do you want to go talk to them? Is this an extrovert thing?”

Puffy snorts. “It’s a fair, the entire purpose is to make friends,” she reminds Niki teasingly, nudging her with her elbow, but she starts off toward the kid all the same, chin tipped high. Most people find Puffy’s exuberance, her confidence, her calm intimidating, and she parts the crowd easily as she makes a beeline for the bright green person frozen a half-chunk from the corner she and Niki were about to turn.

“Hey there,” she says without preamble, offering her hand. “I’m Puffy, and this is Niki. Want to tag along with us, duckling?”

The kid had been hesitantly taking her hand, but they sputter when she says “duckling,” their free hand flying up to tug down their hood farther with a surprised choke of “Duck - ”

Niki covers her mouth with her hand to stifle her snort, then points out lightly, “You were following us around like one. I like that name, Puffy.”

“Duckling,” repeats the kid, like a broken jukebox, the gape of their mouth giving away how dumbstruck they are.

“So it seems,” Puffy replies, amused. “Do we get your real name and your pronouns before we start exploring together?”

Duckling hesitates, then offers timidly, “I use he/him. Um...” His fingers round the edges of his mask as he hedges, and his hood rides further down over his face as his shoulders hitch up, and it’s compassion, as well as common decency, that prods her into saying placatingly, “You don’t have to say your name or anything if you don’t want to, Duckling. We can just call you that, if you like.”

Duckling brightens visibly, nods his head once. “That would be great,” he says, then pauses and flushes and tacks on hurriedly with all the awkwardness of a teenager still growing into his own skin, “Not that, you know, I’d go by that forever, I’m just saying for right now - ” and Puffy feels fondness thread through her chest despite the fact that she makes it a rule of thumb to at the very least suspect people of suspicious activities if they’re over a half block taller than her. Judging by the smirk Niki stifles into her hand, she’s noticed Puffy’s impulse to take anyone so much as a second younger than her under her wing, so Puffy rolls her eyes and kicks halfheartedly at Niki’s ankles and sets off for the next street, tossing over her shoulder, “Let’s go, Duckling - I’ll buy you sweetberry cookies.”

Niki and Puffy hopped onto the world nearly an hour ago, now, but streets upon streets they haven’t traversed yet sprawl out before them anyway, winding their way through the tall, narrow buildings mostly there for the sake of shaping the snakelike fairgrounds. True to her word, Puffy drags Niki and Duckling to a chipper baker with a heart-shaped face for a small pail of sweetberry cookies they pass between one another as they wander. Duckling gets a streak of the jam painted over his mask between his third and fourth biscuit and Niki almost makes herself sick laughing when he daubs it all over the mask to add a blush to the smiley face with only mild chagrin. She and Puffy make him clean it off right away because it’s fucking sticky and he’ll get it everywhere, but all the same, Puffy finds Duckling more endearing the more he thaws out of his quiet, abashed front, with his easygoing nature and thoughtfulness, but she can tell there’s another layer there: he’s clever, his mouth working too fast for his mind, and deliberate in a way that hints at the fact that he’s definitely a capable fighter or traceur, gliding through the crowd with an ease that can’t come just from practice. It’s clear to Puffy, and probably more so to Niki, the hardcore-born between the two friends, that Duckling knows how to survive.

It’s partly curiosity and it’s partly - well, actually, it’s all curiosity, a hundred percent, so five streets and a paper boat of strips of fried cod later, Puffy asks, “So what brings you here, Duckling? Haven’t seen you around before.”

Duckling shoots her a quicksilver grin, the kind that lights up his face, the kind that tells her he trusts her implicitly, in all lowercase with five-point font. “I haven’t seen you and Niki around either,” he says cheekily, dances nimbly out of range of her teasing swipe. “What can I say? It’s a big thing. A lot of people come. I probably missed you.”

“Fair point,” concedes Puffy, pauses to reach out and dam Niki’s hair from falling into her melon soda. “Still, we’ve been coming for ages - I think I’d notice someone as tall as you, y’know?” Delicately, “And with the mask and all.”

Duckling doesn’t flinch away from the reference to the mask like he did just fifty minutes prior; he laughs, shrugs, thumbs the rim of his mask and tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear. “I wasn’t this tall last year,” he says ruefully. “And there are plenty of people who come by that wear masks. I saw Fruitberries earlier. Illumina, too.”

Niki arches an eyebrow up at him, stirring her soda with her straw. “How do you know those two?” she asks, not unkindly. “Fruit and Illumina are both in traceur and Endchaser circles, and those aren’t as popular as Hypixel groups.”

Puffy blinks at her childhood friend, not so much out of surprise as out of contemplation. She’s right - Fruitberries and Illumina aren’t in the limelight like the up-and-coming Technoblade or household name Philza, one having climbed the ranks of the Hypixel masses and carved his name into history as one of the best Bedwars players and all-around fighters the world has seen and his father renowned for surviving alone in a hardcore for sixteen years and afterward as a laid-back minor god with an admirable breadth of knowledge at his fingertips. The two that Duckling named are still people only really well-known within select communities - traceurs and Endchasers, like Niki said - and while they’ve begun to work their way into the mainstream public’s eye, traceurs and Endchasers tend to be a more closed-off community than builders, than redstone geniuses, than Hypixel players with a lot of talent to show. The only other people Puffy can think of off the top of her head that are currently rising among the ranks of Enchasers are Pete, or the newcomer Punz, or -

Puffy’s train of thought screeches to an unpleasant halt, and so does she, dragging her two companions to a stop with her.

“Puffy?” asks Niki after a brief moment, her voice lilting in mild concern, but Puffy only has eyes for the boy beside her in the bright green hoodie and telling white mask complete with its lopsided smiley face.

Barely managing to lower her voice at the last second, Puffy hisses, “Dream? What the fuck are you doing here?”

Puffy didn’t really need confirmation that she was right, but the way Niki sucks in a sharp breath between her teeth in startled recognition and the way Duckling’s shoulders tense up again tells her everything she needs to know. Dream’s another rising star, except where people like Technoblade and Fruitberries and Philza claw themselves out of the woodwork with time and patience and constant attendance, Dream is beginning to see a meteoric rise the likes of which are as of yet unheard of. It’s definitely because of the manhunts - a niche that hadn’t yet been fully tapped into, but one that appeals to audiences regardless of interest because it combines so many different aspects that the average person can appreciate - but he’s now just familiar enough for Puffy to put the face to the name, for her to clap her hand to her face when she realizes how dumb she’s been.

“Just hanging out,” Duckling - Dream - says, sounding not a little miserable. “People don’t really know my features on the fairgrounds. I was gonna bring my family.”

Niki cocks her head. “Fair enough,” she says, then winces and adds, “no pun intended. Why didn’t you tell us your name? We wouldn’t have treated you differently just because you are a popular figure or whatever. Puffy and I don’t care much about that.”

“Speak for yourself,” Puffy says absentmindedly, only half joking. She likes the company of interesting people, of people who are passionate about their areas of study, and a lot of those people happen to be in the public eye. She’s eighteen and can cut a row of falling apples cleanly in half and she's known for it, who’s gonna stop her?

That gets a weak chuckle out of Dream. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Just, like. Self-preservation? Wait, no, that’s - that sounds narcissistic. It just - feels weird to have so much support in so short a time. That just doesn’t happen. And, uh...” What little of Dream’s face Puffy can make out under the mask goes scarlet as he mumbles shyly, “I didn’t mind being called Duckling.”

Puffy feels her heart physically melt. “Aww,” she coos, just to watch Dream pull his hoodie strings so far that none of his face can be seen with a vicious kind of fondness.

“Puffy, please,” he says, muffled.

“I hope you know she will call you ‘Duckling’ forever, now,” says Niki lightheartedly, swirling the dregs of her melon soda and grinning widely at Dream, who groans and bitches and pretends to drag his feet when Puffy spots another starglobe shop and maneuvers him over as he tries to untie the knot he made of his hoodie ties.

Puffy ended up buying a starglobe for Dream, too, just because. It was similar to the one Niki had been scrutinizing earlier, the birth of the world, the twin dragons, the End, just because Puffy knew what the End meant to the duckling, now. Dream’s entire face had lit up and he’d practically caressed the starglobe close to his chest and promised to cherish it forever far too earnestly, and Puffy and Niki had laughed and pulled him along to the next street as the sun seared orange and the lanterns overhead began to flicker on in green and pink and yellow.

Niki wasn’t wrong, in hindsight. Puffy may very well call Dream by that first, sickly-sweet nickname for the rest of her life. Sue her, it’s cute, she likes the way it sounds, and if it starts with the same letter, it’s damn near close, isn’t it?

Puffy steps through the whitelist portal into Dream’s lovely, lush world with a sigh of contentment, spots the boy she bought sweetberry cookies and a starglobe at a fair four years ago hanging onto a friend for dear life, pale and beaten but his smile no less bright when he spots her back, and Puffy stamps down the impulse to throw herself at him for a hug. Cants her head, smiles at her friend, and the easy breeze combs at the white of her mane as she calls, “Hey there, Duckling. Nice world you got here.”

Dream grins back and says, “Thanks - I made it myself.”

And at least five different people, including a weary, white-blonde version of her childhood friend, will intercept her on her way back to the “Community House” with Dream and his guide, a six-foot-five terror of a man who wears his hair in his eyes and talks like a theater kid, explaining the state of the world and its creator. Puffy’ll reach up on her tiptoes to nudge Dream’s cheek with her hand, feel a soft stir of staid kind levelheaded well-spoken well-meaning like the figurehead of a ship at sea head tossed back proud and staid and kind and tears spring to her eyes. Puffy will know that this is a world that has been rent at the seams.

But it, and its creator, are on the mend, and Puffy has a sword and a crossbow and her teeth - she’ll make it work.

Chapter Text

Captain Puffy takes one look at Ranboo and announces, “Guys, we have to return this one, they’re too tall,” which is probably the aptest introduction he’s ever gonna get to the Dream SMP.

Not that he needs one. Ranboo thought he was going to pass away when he’d gotten a completely unexpected invitation from Dream, who’d dipped out of the public eye all of a sudden for nearly a month due to alleged health issues, to join his server. It’s common knowledge that Dream’s server is under lock and key, meticulously maintained by said owner and flock of admins, and the vast majority of Dream’s time is spent in that world; speculation has been thrown around about the place being his home world, but Ranboo himself would put money on Dream being hardcore-born - he just gives off that vibe - and at any rate, it’s nobody’s business but Dream’s and the other people who live there.

Still, it’s a huge honor, and Ranboo recognizes that, realizes at some level that he may be on thin ice, so at Captain Puffy’s lighthearted needling, he hikes up his shoulders and hunts in vain for some kind of witty comeback that also establishes respect for Puffy, but his mind draws an immediate blank, and he ends up just not saying anything at all. It really doesn’t help that he’s currently surrounded by another half-dozen SMP members that are scrutinizing him intensely, and being the tallest and strangest-looking in a crowd of people both older and more experienced than him isn’t exactly pleasant.

Finally, a boy with a golden mop of hair and a loud, plum-colored hoodie - Purpled - plants his hand on his hip and says apologetically, “Sorry Dream’s not here - he had a bad turn last night so Alyssa and Callahan are pretty much holding him at gunpoint right now so that he doesn’t do something stupid,” and wow, if Dream’s been laid up this whole time, it must really be pretty bad, but before Ranboo can wrack his brains for some suitable expression of condolences or well-wishes or something, there’s a delighted call of “Ranboo!” from further off by the crumbled walls hemming the world spawn, and Purpled shuffles out of the way to turn and look over at one of the blown-out holes.

Ranboo feels a smile creep across his face when he sees who it is - Eret, swaying like a willow in the cutting November wind, one hand to the ridiculous yet somehow fitting wide-brim sunhat on their head and the other waving at him. Ranboo and Eret go back a fair bit - Eret and Niki were the ones to get Ranboo more comfortable in English, after all, following a childhood of Ender - and it’s good to see them again, brighter-eyed than usual, as they jog across the grassy clearing to the cluster of people.

“Good morning, Puffy,” they say pleasantly, tipping the sunhat for show and eliciting laughs from everyone. “Purpled, Schlatt, Ponk. Sam. Fundy, Skeppy.” They click their tongue as they look Ranboo over, their eyebrows lifting. “Are none of his vouchers here? Was that my job? Sorry I’m late, I got caught up with making beacons.”

“You’re fine, dude, he just got here,” says Schlatt dismissively, waving Eret off, though not unkindly.

“My vouchers?” blurts Ranboo before he can help himself. He feels his ears wilt back when the others look over at his words, but Eret smiles, adjusts their hat and sunglasses, and gestures for Ranboo to follow them, so follow them he does, a little confused, a little lost. Ponk gives him a commiserating pat on the shoulder and a “Welcome to hell,” which Purpled socks him in the arm for, but as they disperse, Ranboo feels the stir of anxiety he’d felt settle - the other server members, scattering in various directions are all smiling kindly as they watch him go, and when he catches Ranboo glancing back, Skeppy grins and waves, and Ranboo manages the brainpower to wave back weakly, taken aback somewhat by the friendliness, the openness, the familiarity that permeates this server.

“So, vouchers,” says Eret, jerking Ranboo’s attention back to his tour guide. “Dream makes it a rule of thumb to only let people join if people already on the world vouch for them. It’s not that he doesn’t trust us,” they add hurriedly, “it’s a matter of safety. Dream’s very proud of this world - it’s like a safe haven.” Lower, soft, “He made it for us. He respects us and he loves us, and we do too in turn, so - vouching. Easy way for all of us to vet incoming members.”

“Oh,” says Ranboo, almost wonderingly, at the idea that people asked for him to be here. Him, painfully awkward and still unsure of who he is. Eret must read it on his face, because they smile warmly and reach out to squeeze Ranboo’s arm and say, “You’ll fit right in, Ranboo, don’t worry. Dream doesn’t invite people we don’t like.”

It’s not exactly the vote of shining confidence Ranboo had been half-looking for, but it’s better than what he expected, and Ranboo feels himself straightening up further and further out of his self-conscious slouch as Eret leads him down what they call the “Prime Path,” past various sprawling houses in various styles (they pass a towering, extravagant palace that Eret introduces proudly as their own abode, while several chunks down there’s a scattered collection of suspended blocks that looks like the burnt-down skeleton of what once might have been a neat, if conventional, house). Ranboo didn’t exactly have a traditional upbringing in his home world - though it’s difficult to label any childhood as “traditional,” given everyone has different experiences in their home worlds, and Ranboo’s definitely not the first to have been raised by other mobs - seeing as he spent a fair portion of his formative years surrounded by Endermen culture. It’s a mystery why the Endermen chose to rear him instead of, you know, killing him, curious wandering child that he was, but Ranboo knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. He likes that part of himself, anyway - in spite of the strange half-and-half mottle of his skin, his left side distinctly human in its fair complexion and chestnut hair and the right distinctly Enderman in its black scales and bright green eye and whip-thin, tufted tail, he likes being able to nod and wave when he passes an Enderman in a server, or ask for a block to hold from an adult, or ask questions in Ender that are answered in kind.

He still has to be a functional member of society, though, especially given he’s some kind of minor public figure now. Ranboo has Eret and Niki to thank for his fluency in human tongues and human culture, them having stumbled across him in his home world while they were worldhopping. They were all young, but they all tried their best (though quirks of speech from his first language carried over - Ranboo still can’t pronounce his vowels tall like Eret and Niki do), and Ranboo knows how effective they were, considering how conventionally human he looks now; he looked nearly like a full Enderman as a kid.

“I should probably explain how the hierarchy works here,” says Eret suddenly, pulling Ranboo from thoughts of childhood and grasping hands that patted him on the head and handed him ender pearls still cool to the touch. Catching Ranboo’s apprehensive look, they laugh and push their sunhat further back from their face. “Don’t worry, it’s not anything terrible! It’s just, ah... some discretion is in order.”

“Okay,” says Ranboo, slowly and still a little warily.

Eret turns away slightly, facing toward the end of the prime path, which juts off to the right abruptly and winds down into a flight of stairs that Ranboo can’t see the end of. “Dream,” they say emphatically, “isn’t just the world owner. He’s also the world creator.”

Ranboo blinks at Eret once. Twice.

“...The creator?”

“Yeah...”

“As in. You mean as in a minor god?” Ranboo feels his brain boot back online, and then start to make him jittery. “Oh my god. Dream is a minor god?”

“You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would,” observes Eret, mild as milk. Ranboo makes a strangled noise.

“There aren’t even any rumors,” he whispers, “about Dream being a minor god. How quickly does he shut those down? Even I get questions if I’m a minor god and I’m nowhere near as popular as he is. I mean, they’re not serious or anything, of course, but - Dream? People don’t wonder if he’s a minor god, with how good he is?”

“Dream’s skill comes innately, not from his godhood,” Eret says, not sharply, but the defensiveness is there, and Ranboo bows his head, chastened. Eret pats his arm and adds, “And at any rate, his being a minor god is actually supplemented by a considerably more surprising fact.”

“Next thing I know you’ll tell me he’s an elder,” Ranboo grumbles at his friend with no real heat, letting himself get tugged along down the oak planks toward the runoff toward the -

Ranboo stops dead in his tracks for the second time that day with an awed, hushed “Wow,” falling involuntarily from his mouth as he takes in the land below.

“This is Man - this is L’Manberg,” says Eret, smoothly passing over their stutter, gesturing with a flourish toward the sweep of gently sloping hills, thick clusters of trees gathered round cheery wood rooftops like flowerbeds in village gardens (and it’s always a good sign when server occupants build their houses with flammable materials, one of the biggest signs of unvoiced trust you can get), the occasional rise of larger communal buildings like the somehow cute glass dome housing what Ranboo can vaguely make out as beehives and an eye-catching quartz mansion sitting on the peak of a taller hill. Afternoon spills golden over L’Manberg nestled cozily into the forests, and Ranboo can’t help how his mouth drops open at the ethereal sight of it.

Eret sighs. “You never get a view quite like this of the Badlands or the Greater SMP,” they complain jokingly.

“No kidding - Eret, this place is - it’s beautiful,” Ranboo manages helplessly. Unbidden, the thought rises to the back of his mind: Dream made this place for them - does that count me too, now?

The corners of Eret’s mouth quirk up, and their gaze is butter soft as they scan the country before them. “L’Manberg,” they say quietly, “was founded practically as a joke. The fighting that came afterward, too, was almost a joke. It was Dream and Punz and George and Sapnap against Wilbur and Tommy and Tubbo, me and Fundy, Jack and Niki. We couldn’t have won even if we’d had the best gear this world could offer.” Eret chuckles, but some part of it rings hollow, and Ranboo feels his breath catch and stop in his chest as Eret continues. “I betrayed my - my country, in the end. Dream offered me kingship of the Greater SMP if I sold them out, so I did, because I thought I could - I could fix it, or something. It was still a game, then, Ranboo. Tommy offered his life for his country, and he and Dream had a duel - Dream shot him in the heart, an instant kill, but Tommy gave up his discs, his most prized possessions, for L’Manberg, and that was that.” Eret shrugs, wraps their arms tighter around themself. “Even though we all came out of it a little shaken, it still felt lighthearted. War games. It’s always like that, isn’t it? Us with our infinite lives?”

Ranboo can’t interject. He’s mesmerized by Eret’s quiet, familiar cadence, the finality with which they describe the abridged history of this server. In the fading afternoon sun they look evanescent even as their voice remains admirably steady, and Ranboo can’t bring himself to break their groove.

Eret’s voice breaks off hollow. “Schlatt joined, and something went wrong.” They tug at the brim of their sunhat absentmindedly. “It’s not his fault. It’s not Wilbur’s, either. Wilbur wanted to hold an election - for the bit, you know - and Schlatt joined mostly as a joke. Dream brought him back, after his... his prank, back during the summer. Everything seemed fine, at first, Wilbur leading the pack and everyone else trailing behind, the debates and the banter. All in good fun. And then - and then on election night, Schlatt told us he’d pooled his votes with Quackity. That he’d absorbed Quackity’s party and his votes, and he’d won. He exiled Wilbur and Tommy.”

Eret’s eyes drift far away, for a moment. “...Dream said that night he’d try to do everything he could. Idiot,” they tack on, half-fond and half-pained. Ranboo sucks in a sharp breath at the indescribable, visceral expression on their face.

They snap out of it in their next blink, clear their throat, and continue brusquely. “Wilbur and Tommy formed a commune, of sorts - a rebellion? An opposition against Schlatt and his Manberg - that’s what he renamed the country to.”

“Pretty bad name,” Ranboo offers lamely, in an effort to lighten the mood. It works a bit - Eret snorts - but then they dive right back into the history lesson, and really, the more Ranboo hears the more concerned he becomes for the mental state of the people who lived through it.

“We all... the people of Manberg, especially, suffered. Schlatt - well - it wasn’t him, not really. Schlatt and Wilbur both - we’re still not entirely sure who or what it was that did it, we’ve been calling it ‘the madness,’ but both of them sort of... lost sight of themselves. They were - they were possessed, really, and they said and did horrible things, but - but it wasn’t them.”

“Possessed?” repeats Ranboo, horrified. “Eret - ”

“This place isn’t dangerous,” Eret amends hurriedly, head whipping around to focus on him again. “This leads into my point, actually - Dream has this... thing. A gift, from an old god. He calls it settling.” They sigh. “It would be easier to explain if he were here and he could show you... but he can sort of - sponge up hurts? Pain?” They trail off, gnaw on their lip, then say quietly, “He can take hurting from people for himself.”

“Oh no,” says Ranboo, his hand covering his mouth; he doesn’t remember doing it. There’s dread in his gut, even though this has already all passed, even though everyone has clearly lived past this. Dream dipping out of the public eye for a month, whispers of grave wounds and severe illness and the occasional baseless rumor that he’d died - Ranboo swallows hard and says, “He did that for Schlatt and Wilbur. Am I right?”

Eret’s smile is mirthless. “And the people of Manberg, as well. It’s - he said he’s passed out for weeks before just making this world.” They lift their hands to indicate the quiet, charming Eden around them, and Ranboo feels a sudden prick of - of something. Guilty gratitude? How is he supposed to feel knowing the ground he stands on might have been born of blood? “He spent a week in a complete coma with a fever so high it would’ve killed a normal person - ”

“Good thing I’m not a normal person, then,” rasps an amused voice behind them, and Ranboo gets whiplash from how fast he jerks around.

Dream is standing there - or, well, leaning against the cliff face that arcs up beside the Prime Path, smirking lightly. Ranboo’s almost impressed with how put-together he looks given what Eret told him; his hair’s a fair bit longer than it was before, though still pulled back into his signature half-up half-down, and despite being much paler than he used to be his freckles still stand out stark on his face and bare arms. He’s not in his usual hoodie and cargos, swamped instead in sweats and a t-shirt in spectacularly clashing shades of lime green and orange, but none of it takes from the fact that Ranboo is currently staring down one of the biggest public figures and the person who invited him here and a minor god right now.

“Hi, Ranboo,” Dream offers gently, and Ranboo jolts out of his staring.

“Um, hi - I’m Ranboo, which - which you probably know, since you invited me here and all - oh, my god,” Ranboo mumbles, burying his face in his hands. Strong start, voidwarper.

There’s a snort from Eret, and then a shuffle of cloth and Eret saying, sharp, “Dream.” Ranboo looks up from trying to smother himself in embarrassment to see that Dream’s strolled over to stand in front of him, looking up into his face carefully, something deliberate in his expression. He holds out his hand, palm facing up, and Ranboo, without thinking, drops his hand into Dream’s

gentle gentle smooth the waves down at sea hills more than crags curious warmhearted there is no cliffside here

“Oh,” says Ranboo again, surfacing out of the settling - because that’s what it was, he gets it now, what Eret was trying to put into words - and draws his hand away to clasp it to his chest because some kind of - of huge, heartfelt feeling is welling up under his ribs and he thinks inexplicably that he might cry.

“Dream - you settled him?” demands Eret, and the flicker of disapproval in their voice anchors Ranboo back down; he blinks up to see them striding over, taking Dream’s hands in theirs with incredible care, scrutinizes him. “No - okay, wait, sit down for a bit. Do Alyssa and Callahan know you’re here?”

“I didn’t settle him,” says Dream, faking hurt, shooting Eret some of the most effective puppy eyes Ranboo’s seen in his life (and he’s seen Tubbo beg his way into two extra slices of pumpkin pie at a fair before). “I only reached out. There’s a difference and you know it.” He does sit down, though, and pretends not to sigh a little in relief when he does. Ignoring Eret’s smug look, he adds, “And Alyssa and Callahan know that I’m gone.”

“Do they know where you are,” says Eret exasperatedly.

“Don’t you start parenting me, too, we’re the same age,” says Dream, expertly dodging the question. Their light banter startles a laugh out of Ranboo, and Eret and Dream both shoot glances up at him when he does; he flushes and almost apologizes before Dream’s expression softens. He tips his head up to look at the sky simmering orange and says, kindly, “Welcome to our home, Ranboo. It’s nice to meet you.”

Ranboo tries not to choke up too badly as he says, “Thank you for having me - it’s nice to meet you too.”

Judging by the fond looks Dream and Eret exchange and the handkerchief he gets handed, he doesn’t do a great job at it.

Chapter Text

Wilbur takes one look at the shivering, skinny kid on his doorstep and says, “I’m adopting you.”

The kid’s eyes flicker up to Wilbur, startled. “What?” they say slowly.

“Sorry, that’s awkward - here, c’mon in, let me just - ” Wilbur plucks at the threads that hold the world together that he can just barely make out thanks to his new ownership (and that’s a whole different can of worms - Wilbur hadn’t yelled at Phil before in his life, not like that, but it ended up working out well enough), rearranges the faction power of Newfoundland to cloak the younger stranger. The kid blinks, holds out their hand toward the doorframe, isn’t shocked away like they were just moments previously when the territory refused them entry.

“There we go,” says Wilbur proudly, grabs the kid by the rain-soaked cloak and ushers them inside with a harried “You’re gonna catch a cold, come in, and I’ll call my dad. Can I get your name? And your pronouns? I’m Wilbur, he/him.”

“Fundy.” Fundy sloughs off the cloak, about as useful as a water bucket in the Nether at this point, twists it in his hands anxiously. “...He/him.”

Wilbur nods at him, takes the cloak and wrings it out right onto the wood floor, because there’s mold anyway, what’s a little more. “Alright. Wait one moment, let me get my communicator...” He lays the damp wool over his crackling furnace to dry and pats himself down, completely blanking on where he put it for a second. Fundy - who’s got sharp features, hair that might be bright orange if it weren’t for the weak torchlight and storm-black sky dullling it, and black-tipped, triangular ears struggling to lift themselves off of his head - surveys the cramped sitting room.

Wilbur’ll be the first to admit it’s not pretty (“You live in a state of constant entropy, Wilbur,” Techno had said, deadpan, the first time he’d set foot in the scruffy Newfoundland cabin decked out head-to-toe in enchanted diamond) but Niki, upon visiting, told him that the disaster added personality (it might just have been his best friend being overly nice, as she’s want to do, but Wilbur will take what he can get). To Niki’s credit, every inch of the clutter screams Wilbur; it’s a five-by-five of furnaces piled high with jumpers and empty guitar cases sagging over their edges, two stands filled to bursting with meticulously-packaged discs and their accompanying two jukeboxes, a uke and two guitars draped over his faintly ratty sofa, a box rolling around somewhere hopefully containing his backup capo and extra strings. A crafting bench can barely be seen under the five ceramic pots of miscellaneous plants that both Eret and Phil are trying to convince him to grow, but the orchid, daisies, and tomatoes are all dead or dying, and Wilbur doesn’t really have high hopes for the bluebells and tulip, either.

Wilbur finally digs out his communicator from his pants pocket with a triumphant shout and rings Phil on autopilot with one hand whilst pawing through a pile for some sort of towel with the other. He passes the first one he finds, bright green and patterned with sunflowers, to a bewildered Fundy right as someone picks up.

“Phil, I’ve found meself a son,” he announces. Fundy freezes and turns to stare at Wilbur in the middle of drying out his hair, every inch of him perfectly still.

“What the fuck,” replies the other end, in a very familiar voice that is absolutely not his father’s. Wilbur blinks, then winces and jerks the communicator away from his ear just in time for his youngest brother to screech away from the call, “Dad, Wil’s drugged up or some shit, he’s talkin’ nonsense!” Closer to the communicator, Tommy adds, with that special brand of condescension that can only be mustered up by eleven-year-old children, “You high on life, big man? How much have you taken?”

Wilbur pinches the bridge of his nose. Fundy keeps staring.

“Oh - Tommy, go find Tubbo, alright? Tell him Techno’s bringing back bear for dinner.” Rustling as the communicator changes hands, then, “Wilbur? You good, mate?”

“Found a kid in the rain,” Wilbur tells his father patiently, as Fundy, albeit slowly, resumes ruffling his hair. Now that he’s turned away, Wilbur can see a bushy tail, as well, sopping wet but sweeping back and forth tentatively. It's very endearing. “I think I’ll adopt him.”

“Wil,” sighs Phil exasperatedly, and Wilbur can hear the telltale shuf of Phil adjusting the sheaves of his feathers absentmindedly. “Details? How old is he? Do I need to go over there? Should I send Techno?”

“Isn’t Techno busy hunting bears or whatever it is you’ve got him running around for?”

“He’s just wandering ‘round the citadel. I’ll call and ask later. And don’t you try to swerve the question.”

A smirk creeps into Wilbur’s voice. “I mean, as long as you’re willing to babysit, I won’t make you suffer. All you have to do is send perfunctory holiday cards.”

“Wil...” says Phil warningly.

Wilbur snorts, then softens; lowers his voice against the lash of rain against the windows and says, more seriously, “Yeah, his name’s Fundy. Knocked on my door just now. He’s soaked, but I’ve given him a towel and I’ve cranked up the furnaces.” Lower, “I don’t think he’s got a place to go, Phil.”

“Well, hardly any of us do, now, don’t we?” says Phil, but the matter-of-factness of his statement is heavily outweighed by the salient sympathy that seeps through the call. He sighs again, tinny, then asks, “Is he in danger or anything? Did it seem like he was running?”

Wilbur cups a hand against the communicator mic and asks Fundy bluntly, “Are you in danger?” Faintly, he can hear what sounds like a hand impacting against a face on the other end of the call.

Fundy startles; his eyes dart up from where he was patting down his tail. He’s not exactly dry, but nowhere near the drowned, scrawny thing he was just minutes prior; his ears swivel back, flicker, and he blinks at Wilbur warily.

Good grace prompts Wilbur to add hastily, “Not that - SMPEarth - that’s the world you’re in, I came up with the concept and my dad made it, it’s a long story - but SMPEarth is a safe place, and especially with me. I can promise no harm’ll come to you. Just - y’know - ” Wilbur gestures helplessly, “ - are you safe? Are you okay, Fundy?”

Fundy’s ears honest-to-god wilt against his head, and Wilbur’s only seen that happen with small animals when they’re backing away from him, and this five-foot-something teenager’s expression falling like that in combination with what Wilbur knows about mammalian body language all just serves to maim Wilbur deeply. He hangs up on Phil without a second thought (which he’ll probably get shit for later, but that sounds like future Wil’s problem) and crosses the room in two strides to crouch before Fundy, peering up into his stony face.

Being the first of Phil’s adopted children is his saving grace right now - he still remembers, if with a little difficulty, how Phil approached all four of his very different sons. Wilbur knows he’d been a slightly distant, wary kid with a crippling weakness for music and books; Tommy was a goddamn biter, and to this day is one of the main reasons why Wilbur hates toddlers; Tubbo had been a wily little gremlin that charmed people by acting all cute and innocent and then proceeded to do a complete one-eighty. The brother that Fundy reminds Wilbur of, though, is Techno: quiet, politely standoffish, and with certain lines drawn that Wilbur always found difficult to navigate. It’s only recently that Techno’s begun to look more and more human, after all, where when Phil first found him in the Nether he was nearly fully piglin in appearance. Only after Wilbur was older did he consider the fact that physical appearance reflects self-image, that piglins are known for their insatiable greed and individualistic, eat-or-be-eaten culture, and confront the fact that Techno had been eight when they’d found him like that.

Foxes, culturally regarded as tricksters, as beings of cunning, and occasionally as heralds of famine or drought amongst villagers when they’re spotted toting wheat or animal hides.

“How’d you come to be in SMPEarth, Fundy?” Wilbur asks gently, maneuvering them both over to the sofa. He sits Fundy down, pushes his guitars firmly off to the side to make room for himself, all whilst maintaining eye contact.

Fundy opens his mouth, then purses his lips as he apparently rethinks what he was about to say. Wilbur can see the awkward ridge to the line of his mouth where there must be the molars of an actual fox, which, okay, Wilbur might have to rethink the snacks he’d been about to offer.

“I,” Fundy finally ventures, careful, deliberate, “was worldhopping. I came here by accident. I would have left as soon as I came, but - ” Fundy’s tail wags once in his grasp, “ - it’s, ah. It’s - this world is amazing, and I was exploring. I... got caught in the storm by accident.” There’s not a single waver to his words. If he’s lying, Wilbur’s incredibly impressed. At any rate, if his gut’s anything to go by, Wilbur thinks Fundy’s telling the truth (tails don’t lie, as Wilbur’s seen from Techno before the tail disappeared, and Phil before the tail feathers were shed), if omitting things, which is his prerogative.

“Okay,” he tells the kid chipperly, ignoring the fact that his sofa might be further molded by the rainwater off of Fundy with practiced ease. “Well, alright then. I mean, thank you for liking the world. I’m glad! It sure is something, innit?”

Fundy looks caught-off-guard by how casually Wilbur accepts his explanation. “Uh, yeah,” he says awkwardly, but Wilbur doesn’t miss the way his shoulders relax from where they’d been pulled taut against any potential backlash, and he has to preen internally at the fact that the boy doesn’t even flinch at the harsh peal of an incoming voice call.

“Hello - ”

“Phil had to leave to help Techno haul in the bear,” reports the imperious voice of TommyInnit, most obnoxious prat to ever prat in existence, “but he told me to tell you that you’re a wanker, Wilbur Soot.”

Wilbur allows himself to shoot a wry, commiserating look at Fundy, who, surprisingly, shoots it back with a halfhearted shrug. Judging by the way the corners of his lips are tugging up, he’s finding Wilbur’s suffering a tad too amusing for comfort. “He did not. Give the comm back to him, you child.”

“I am not a child,” Tommy hollers back immediately, predictable as always. “I’m the biggest man in this entire fucking Empire!”

“Techno’s taller than you by two inches,” comes Tubbo’s voice, mild, from further away. Wilbur cringes at the sound of the communicator being tossed aside and smothers the unbearable screeching with his shirt sleeve as he says with near-manic cheer, “Siblings, am I right?” He tips the communicator to check whether the two youngest have killed one another yet, and when he glances up his breath catches in his chest as he gets a good look at the expression on Fundy’s face.

It’s nothing so one-dimensional as longing, though a skim could probably fool someone. There’s wonder there in the tip of Fundy’s chin, the roundness of his eyes, and interest and curiosity and a faint pang of envy that Wilbur can hardly fault him for; not to toot his own horn, but the dynamic of his family is truly impeccable.

“Are they your...?” Fundy asks tentatively, and Wilbur physically feels his entire body warm at the prospect of introducing his brothers to someone, even if they’re practically a stranger that Wilbur has efficiently psychoanalyzed and has now decided upon officially adopting, although for legal reasons and Phil’s mental health, that’s a joke.

“Welcome to the family,” Wilbur says, only half-wisecracking, and doesn’t miss the grin that snakes across Fundy’s face before he ducks his head to hide it. “Yeah, the irritating child was Tommy, the littlest. I can’t guarantee you won’t hate him on first sight, but if you give it time...”

Chapter Text

It takes Wilbur about three rings to pick up. Without even waiting for Wilbur’s cheery “Hello there, Techno!” Techno plows forth with “I’m stagin’ an intervention.”

Wilbur pauses. “...If this is about me feeding the child warped fungus stew, I swear I didn’t mean to make him throw up.”

“This isn’t - what do you mean, warped fungus stew?” demands Techno, derailed by the completely irrelevant subject; the chatter limning his hearing converges with a delighted clamor of technoworried technoworrried f in the chat for the child lmao sickinnit sickinnit sickinnit. “When was this?”

“He didn’t do anything other than throw up,” Wilbur amends hastily. “It was a culinary experiment!”

Techno drops his communicator from his ear to pinch the bridge of his snout. “You’re gonna kill one of ‘em with your cookin’, Wilbur. How you’ve made it this far on your own is a mystery.”

Wilbur laughs and sings airily, “It’s all in the midnight cereal, brother dearest.” Techno chuffs out a chuckle and lets Wilbur wax poetic about various non-perishables, tucking the communicator between his ear and shoulder as he straightens out the leather-bound novels in the bookcase in his room. It’s nice to hear Wilbur’s voice after what amounted to a month of radio silence, during which Phil dipped into the humming End portal alive in the belly of their base to haul back a staggering amount of riches for the rest of the Empire. From what Techno can tell, Wilbur essentially entered full dysfunctional cottagecore mode, planting crops that would’ve wilted without Niki and Fundy and trying to feed his visitors his disastrous kitchen concoctions. Phil called Tommy and Tubbo and begged them into staying with Wilbur for a few days while he reorganized the loot and Pete started working on the railway, a transparent effort to keep Wilbur distracted from accidentally giving himself food poisoning, but it seems the attempted assassination has only been diverted to Tommy, instead.

“But that’s beside the point,” Wilbur says decisively, jolting Techno back into the present. “Who’s the intervention for, then, if not me?” With an audible smirk: “Trouble in the almighty Antarctic Empire?”

Techno snorts reflexively, a half-hooved hand coming up to skim over the ley-lined sun emblazoned over the drape of his cloak. “None of your business,” he snarks, just to hear Wilbur cackle. “And the intervention’s for Phil.”

Wilbur’s laughter trails off slowly. He sounds deliberate, careful, when he asks, “You said - Techno, is something wrong with Phil?” and.

The thing is, it’s hard to tell with Phil. He’s more than Techno’s entire world, and even then, it’ll take Techno noticing Phil’s got more tired lines to his easy half-smile, or Phil ignoring the cooling bowl of potato soup in front of him in favor of readjusting the bladed span of the elytras he scavenged from their now-closed End portal with movements too tentative for the breadth of his knowledge, or weeks ago when Phil had practically collapsed onto him with frost dewed into his eyelashes, and after, when he’d confessed he’d shirked passing responsibility to others for a world that was all but starving the energy it needed to run right from his veins, and Techno’d had to help Phil sit at the foot of his bed and rung Wilbur and watched Phil close his eyes gingerly and the set of his smile tighten, as though he’d been trying to brace for a punch through the call, as his older son ranted and raved and swore to high hell and every old god that he’d kick Phil’s arse, then let his voice go soft and serious and something sore as he’d said, “I’ll be there in the morning,” and he’d let Techno put his face into his shoulder when he’d arrived.

So - it can be hard to help Phil, especially when it’s something big, but the first signs are always easier to see and easier to tackle. To Wilbur, he says, “Nothing, yet, but... he’s not takin’ care of his wings, Wilbur,” and listens to the tinny shrill of Wilbur inhaling sharply. Wilbur understands, he always has; Phil’s first lost boy, bright-eyed and brilliant, music caught under his tongue, always. He knows exactly how to make all of them laugh, and is quick to smile in turn. Techno’s endlessly grateful for him.

“Be there in twenty,” says Wilbur breathlessly, a bluster of wind on the other end of the call that pulls the room back into focus. The slam of a door closing, a plane engine humming alive, a chopped-up demand of “Wilbur, where the hell are we going?”, and Techno doesn’t have to glance out the high-arched windows to know Wilbur is wrestling with the collection of threads that make up SMPEarth.

“You’re abusin’ your powers? Kinda cringe,” he tells his brother, spotting the airplane pop into view in the middle of the seal-grey clouds, just there between one moment and the next.

Wilbur cackles over the twin shrieks of their youngest siblings and replies smugly, “See you on the ground,” and Techno watches, something faint and fond in his stomach, as Wilbur performs a haphazard barrel roll that sends someone’s cap hurtling off into the glaciers, bursts through the faction barriers with an audible crash, and nosedives for the stretch of half-cleared snowbank feeding into the entrance hall of the stronghold.

It probably shouldn’t make Techno laugh as hard as it does when he sees the three specks stagger their separate ways from the plane, one gesturing wildly and the other two spilling dizzily out over the snow before collapsing onto jelly legs and unsteady hands, but, you know, what’s family for.

The fact that it takes Phil as long as it does for him to realize that there are three more residents within the walls of the castle than there usually are is a red flag all on its own, but come dinner, Pete working overtime in his mines and Arlus’s name sitting untouched in the list of Techno’s contacts, Phil walks into the dining hall toting three elytras and a shulker box, sets them down beside him, spreads a silver wing with finely trembling fingers, and looks up in time to see Tubbo slingshotting a pea into Tommy’s mouth.

“Score!” he cheers, as Tommy catches it nimbly and chokes.

“Er,” says Phil intelligently.

“This is an intervention,” says Wilbur mildly, like he’s talking about the weather. Techno sinks his teeth into his bread and looks Phil dead in the eye when he turns to shoot an accusatory look at him.

“What’s the intervention for, exactly?” he asks warily, setting the outstretched elytra wing down beside his chair and folding his hands before him. Techno has to admire the composure, but he also thinks it’s bullshit on Phil’s part; it’s the genuine uncertainty glinting in Phil’s eyes, maybe, or his general unkemptness, or -

Techno sees the moment Wilbur catches sight of the state of Phil’s wings and has to agree at the split-second spasm of shock it generates before Wilbur smoothes his expression down again. Phil loves flying - it’s the one thing he will never, could never, give up, a distinct and fundamental part of his self-concept so strongly felt he was granted wings - and he makes it a rule of thumb to keep them in some semblance of order, but - they’re dirty, enough that it masks their iridescent sheen, enough that the diamond markings streaking his primaries are nearly grey, and the feathers are mussed to the point that Techno can tell from just a passing glance that Phil hasn’t flown in days.

Wilbur leans forward onto an elbow and orders, slapping the spluttering Tommy on the back with his free hand, “Turn around, old man, we’re gonna preen your wings.”

Tubbo and Tommy still, look at one another with round eyes. Phil stares at Wilbur, then at Techno, blinking. “Uh. Come again?”

“Well, chop-chop, mate,” says Wilbur encouragingly, taking the tone of an overeager teacher to an underwhelmed preschool student, and Techno stifles his snort into his steak when Phil puffs up in mock outrage, the tiny clusters of feathers lining his jaw and ears fanning out as he glares.

“I’m perfectly capable of cleaning myself up, thanks,” he says snootily, and makes to spread his wings in demonstration, but he gets halfway before wincing heavily, the limbs flinching close back to his shoulders, and Techno’s up before he realizes, has taken a step toward Phil with his hand outstretched. The minor god takes a rallying breath and tries again, mantling his wings with far more caution than he had the last time, and once they’re relatively stretched out he offers his frozen sons a flicker of a smile, apologetic; “Haven’t used ‘em in a while,” he admits, and Techno has to physically restrain himself from throwing something at him.

“How long is ‘a while?’” asks Tubbo delicately. Phil hums, a deflection.

Wilbur’s eyes are narrowed, but his voice is as gentle as it gets when he says, “If you’re not going to take care of yourself, will you at least let us?” and even though it’s not toward him, the butter-softness of his tone makes Techno’s heart clench up a little.

technosoft, e, e, emoblade, e, good son wilby pog, dadza self care arc, chitters Chat, and Techno really needs to figure out a way to make sure they stop ruining emotionally charged moments.

Phil hums again, lower, lighthearted defeat already written all over his face. He spins in his chair so he’s straddling the back, leaning forward onto his arms, shaking out his wings with his shoulders once before settling back down. To Wilbur, Techno says, “You take left, I take right?” searching less for an answer and more a confirmation, even as they both pull up their chairs with Tommy and Tubbo trotting up beside them.

“As per usual.” Wilbur pulls Tubbo over and says, keeping his eyes on the vaned feathers at the top of Phil’s wing but addressing the two youngest, “You two can watch, just don’t bother us too much. You should learn how to do it, anyway.”

“Is it hard?” asks Tommy with a surprising amount of tact, peering over Techno’s shoulder as he sifts through the heavy feathers.

Techno shrugs one shoulder, passes his hoof through the plumage when Phil makes a caught, wincing sound at the back of his throat. “Not particularly. Just gotta know where to start. And don’t go around yankin’ feathers out, ‘cause that’s just rude - just the ones that need to molt, like here, and here...”

It’s a surprisingly stress-free activity, for how tense the leadup had been. Phil’s head starts to dip somewhere around a third of the way through, and Techno, without missing a beat, told him gruffly to take a nap or somethin’, it’s not like we’re gonna achieve world domination if you’re passin’ out on me, and had watched with some satisfaction as Phil sighed quietly and the muscles in his wings had relaxed, practically melted into his arms.

“I take it you guys have been busy,” Wilbur says conversationally, watching Tubbo, hawk-eyed, as the boy breaks open a pin feather with so much care you’d think it’d explode. Techno doesn’t actually trust Tommy to go hands-on yet - for all he knows, Tommy’ll get overzealous, and the next thing you know, Phil will be bleeding all over the dining hall floor - but he’s murmuring instructions to a determined Tommy intently enough that he doesn’t catch what Wilbur says the first time, has to be told a second.

“Oh, yeah,” he replies casually once he gets the message. “Big plans. Things to do. People to see. Just - ” Techno nods toward their softly snoring father, setting the cloth caked in grime from the unkempt wings aside, “ - with the whole End portal thing and then the railway and all the plannin’, he’s been really pushin’ himself. I thought things were fine ‘til I saw his wings.”

Wilbur accepts the explanation without further pressure, reaching out to correct the set of Tubbo’s fingers when he breaks open the feathers. “Fair enough,” he says distractedly. “Just know you can call me and Toms and Tubs anytime, yeah?”

Techno doesn’t know why that makes something inside him warm the way it does. He fights the smile threatening to split his face, bares his teeth at Tommy when he accidentally makes eye contact and immediately looks delighted, the little gremlin. Tugs a scraggly feather from Phil’s wing, scrubs a thumb over the down fuzzing in, says, soft, “Sure. Yeah, Wil. ‘Course I know.”

Chapter Text

They’re not enemies, not really - or at least, not in the way a microscopic corner of their respective fanbases seem to see them as - but they’re not friends, yet, either, so it’s an understatement to say it’s awkward when Techno limps into the infirmary during the mandated halftime break and right over his opponent, who’s perched on one of the cots and hunched over his hand, clearly too preoccupied with an injury to notice Techno’s entrance.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but cold sweat breaks out on the nape of Techno’s neck at the prospect of making small talk. He’s a fighter, not a speechmaker, and despite the telltale twinge in his ankle that he thinks is probably a sprain, he’s honestly considering just walking right back out again, unsteady gait be damned, when the other occupant of the room makes a cut-off, strained noise that stops Techno in his tracks.

It’s familiar in a roundabout way - he and Phil’s kids can get out of most bad wounds with a respawn, since none of them are particularly in the habit of getting into situations that warrant permanent injury, but Phil’s got a longer life to live and that he’s already lived for a bit, and Techno’s seen the way heavy storms make Phil’s face tighten sometimes, has heard the same wincing sound from the minor god when he moves wrong, and it’s reflex that prompts the words to tumble from his mouth: “You good, or...?”

Dream whirls around with a surprised “What the h - ” and then flinches, muffles a curse into his right hand, the other resting in his lap.

Techno blinks. His opponent’s shield arm is shaking.

Or experiencing a localized seismic event might be more like it; Techno can make out tremors wracking from Dream’s loosely-curled fingers all the way to the junction of his collarbone and shoulder, a shudder that’s all-too-visible with him half-twisted to face Techno. The guy’s facial expressions are hell to try to discern, but Techno doesn’t have to be an empath to read the frustrated pain in the tight set of Dream’s jaw.

Well, he’s already made his presence known. Techno bites the bullet and offers bracingly, “So not good, huh. You mind if I sit?”

E E E, chirps Chat uselessly. Awkwardblade. Awkwardblade.

“I mean, yeah, go for it,” says Dream, breaking through the cloud of ribbing from Chat, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. With good grace, he adds, “And you don’t have to ask. It’s not like Mr. Beast made the infirmary for just one of us to use or something.”

“Haha, yeah,” says Techno as he sits at the rickety round table that looks like it came from a seedy server sale, and then tries to think of creative ways to throttle himself with his braid.

Dream, to his credit, only lets the silence get a little painful before breaking it with a long, measured exhale that fishes Techno from bemoaning his (lack of) conversational dexterity by reminding him why, exactly, he stayed in the first place.

“Bad arm?” he asks bluntly. He has the battlefield awareness to know he couldn’t have caused the damage that Dream’s apparently grappling with, so it’s probably an old injury. It’s possible, of course, that Techno wrenched Dream’s arm or something and it slipped his mind, especially given that it’s a no-respawn duel (which had actually done a fair bit for Dream’s rep in Techno’s eyes; he himself doesn’t have a preference either way, but deathmatches are usually to cover for shoddy duelling, and anyhow it’s harder to keep your opponent alive than dead), but still, Techno thinks the result is too severe for the kind of blows he’s been dealing. Techno’s a good fighter, but he’s not cruel.

Dream hesitates, and Techno almost fumbles to assure him that he doesn’t have to answer over an eager clamor of L!! L L L Awkwardblade!!! before Dream laughs lightly and admits, “Yeah, sometimes.” His eyes flit to Techno’s ankle, which he’s very gingerly maneuvering around the chair legs, and nods to it. “You, too?”

“Nah, probably just a sprain or somethin’,” Techno drawls, lifting said ankle to his lap and attempting to flex it. It’s not too bad, just a sharp splinter of pain when he tries to swivel it outward, so he shrugs and reaches over to grab the conveniently-placed first aid kit at the other end of the table, fishes out a roll of bandages and a pack of crushed ice from the box.

The flash of green that Techno catches when he looks up tells him Dream’s eyes were following his movements. “Sorry about that,” the latter says contritely, and Techno raises his eyebrows at him before realizing it’s about the leg, and it almost makes him laugh.

“Dude, it’s a duel. The whole point is to incapacitate your opponent. I’m not holdin’ it against you or anythin’.”

“Still,” Dream says doggedly, then cuts off whatever words had been clinging to his lips to hiss another curse; as Techno watches from the corner of his eye, Dream opens and closes his hand once laboriously. His entire shoulder flinches as he tries, and Dream grits his teeth.

Social anxiety tells Techno to ignore it.

HELP HELP HELP, shrills Chat, who are obviously the louder voices in Techno’s head.

One of these days, Techno thinks ruefully, and gives in to the pestering fucks.

“You, uh… you want some help with that, or… uh, y’know?” Techno ducks his head so the burn of his face is less visible in the glowstone-light, focuses on securing the ice pack to his ankle with the bandages as Chat howls with laughter and KEKW KEKW L AWKWARDBLADE L L BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. He’s so preoccupied with snapping back at Chat that he actually startles physically when Dream drops into the chair opposite him with a half-stifled wince.

“That’d be nice, thanks,” he says, a determined edge to his voice, and Techno stares at the proffered arm before it clicks in his head what exactly he’d offered to do.

“Right - yeah, one second, uh… is this, like, a chronic thing, or an old injury?”

Dream reaches up to touch his left arm, almost self-consciously. “An old injury,” he replies, a bit faraway. “I’ve… respawned since then, but it stays.”

Interesting. “Psychosomatic?”

“I guess.”

“Mm.” Techno studies Dream over tented fingers. “Muscular? A bone break?”

A brief smile pulls at Dream’s mouth at that. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. It was when I was a lot younger. I…”

Techno hears more than sees the impersonal glaze glass over Dream’s words, ice on a winter lake, and, well. Techno gets that. It’s not like his past is pretty, either (a childhood twined with the pyres of the Nether, the honey-sweet scent of gold in something more hoof than hand, a tongue at once familiar and foreign as the day); it’s only recently that his physical appearance has morphed closer to what he thinks he might have once looked like before the excursion to hell that never ended. He’d made Phil cry when he first held Phil’s hands in his own, shaped newly like a human’s, proof of what Wilbur mused gently was Techno beginning to see himself as something more than savagery and bloodthirst and greed for things he couldn’t have. Pasts can be messy. Techno’s above rooting around for details he doesn’t need.

“S’fine,” he says firmly, holding up one of those selfsame human hands now to stop Dream’s stilted story in its tracks. “No need to tell me if you don’t wanna. There’re some rice packets in the kit, to make heat packs - just stick ‘em by the torches for a couple minutes and keep ‘em on your arm - shoulder - wherever ‘til we go back in.”

Dream blinks, jaw still hanging open from whatever fantasy he’d been trying to feed Techno. Techno raises an eyebrow back - staring makes his skin prickle - and it seems to break Dream from his dumbfounded trance.

“What - oh. Oh, yeah, um.” Dream shakes himself, sifts through the first aid kit lying open between them. “Yeah. I’ll do that.” It takes him a few seconds, but when he locates the packets he holds them up with a triumphant slant to his mouth, and Techno snorts, “Nerd.”

Dream gasps in mock offense as he rises, clasping his good hand to his heart. “How could you? You give me great advice and then turn right around and insult me to my face? I’ll never trust again.”

“Probably a good call, seein’ as we’re about to beat the livin’ heck outta each other again,” Techno shoots back good-naturedly, and Dream doubles over into a laugh that sounds like he’s being strangled of air.

They’re probably going over their allotted time, actually, and the entirely different form of anxiety that raises its ugly head at the thought of keeping important people waiting urges Techno to his feet and to the entryway of the infirmary, but just as he’s about to round the corner, Dream calls, “Hey - Techno?”

Techno doubles back, hand on the doorframe. “You’re gonna be late, kinda cringe - ”

“Thanks.”

Techno stills.

Dream’s fidgeting with the heat pack, winding it between his fingers, keeping it close to his opposite shoulder. He’s tied his hair back for the duel, but the few locks that hang free run into the flicker of green behind the pinhole eyes of his mask as he says, softer, “Thanks. I mean it.”

Techno clears his throat, tells the AWWW WE’RE KEEPING HIM WE’RE KEEPING HIM-ing Chat to shut up, and replies, with only minimal shyness, “Yeah. Uh. You too - no, not that one. You’re - you’re welcome.”

Dream brightens.

“Nerd.”

Dream deflates.

And under the hilarity of it all, something like Chat humming contentedly (having, very rudely, not shut up) thrums, an undertone, a whisper, so close Techno thinks it’s the voices in his head: learn to know this learn to love this stronger prouder a shield and a sword a rod and an axe unflappable irreplaceable equal in power equal in kindness stronger together together together.

Chapter Text

It’s not Nox’s first rodeo, and it isn’t for the rest of the admin team, either. Six is coming along smoothly, with its rainbow banners and energy drink-fuelled minigame construction, Nox waking up curled up on the brainstorming table with the sad remains of the communal crisps bowl in his hair, and it’s riding on this high that he reaches out to the prominent Endchaser Dream, extending the invitation to join Championship for good. He knows Scott and Lauren have both been keeping tabs on the newcomer, and once they pester Nox himself to sit in on one of his manhunts, he has to admit that the guy’s brilliant; fresh blood is always interesting, and Nox can practically see the split-second calculations flickering through Dream’s expression at any given moment, subtle shifts in balance and carriage, his composure even through the most hair-raising of situations. There’s a brief debate over whether to introduce Fruitberries to the same Championships as Dream (“Don’t their images overlap too much?” “Scott, I’m begging, Aeltumn and I didn’t stay up watching every single one of his UHC videos on repeat for you to veto us now.”) but in the end, they go ahead with it anyway, similar fanbases be damned.

Nox shifts his focus to Dream once both are confirmed, since he tries to brush up on basic background for all participants as a general rule of thumb and he did he bulk of background checking for Fruit. He’s honestly surprised by the lack of solid info that crops up from the simple forum scouring that does it for most people - Dream, it seems, has all his shit on fucking lock. The best Nox can get is that his current place of residence is the server he commissioned from an unknown minor god a while back and that he’s well-respected in the communities he’s involved in.

That said, Nox knows a private individual when he sees one. Participants are only really required to give date of birth, pronouns, people with whom they’re close (Scott’s request, since he’s the one who has to mix and match team members), and skill set, leaving a lot of breathing room for those who prefer to keep their personal lives under wraps. It’s nothing new; Nox is just surprised that such a high-profile public figure keeps to himself as much as he does.

“You’d think,” he says to Noctis, offhand, during another overnight building binge, “that I’d be able to find something a little deeper than the fact that his favorite color is green.”

Noctis straightens up from shovelling out a chunk of dirt, swipes sweat from her face, and laughs in her bright, airy way. “No, really? I never would’ve known!”

Nox shoves her good-naturedly, chuckling, “Seriously, though! It’s all details, like what some of his favorite things are and how good he is at parkour and things like that.”

“Maybe that’s all he needs.” Noctis hums and steps away from her spade to talk, dragging her hair out of its high bun. Through the bobby pin she sticks in her mouth: “We’ve always been good about respecting participant privacy, haven’t we? Asking too many questions is - it can be messy, and,” Noctis shifts her pin around in her mouth, brow furrowing in concentration, “it’s just - mean. We don’t need or require thorough background. We never have.”

“True,” Nox admits, thinking specifically of Mefs, who was as good as shoved into the deep end during MCC 2 and only confirmed that he was nineteen between Battle Box and Skyblockle, and Technoblade, who showed up to his first event with his reputation, his crown, his dry humor, and little else. “I mean, I’m not saying we have to follow up with him or anything. I just thought it was weird.”

Noctis nods, twists her hair, flashes her inordinately sharp teeth - two rows, pointed, used primarily for stealing Aeltumn’s chips. “A little, I guess! But it’s nothing we haven’t worked with before. Anyway, that was a huge tangent - were you trying to get out of building?” In mock horror, “Are you stalling, Noxite?””

Nox winks and is shooing the rest of the dirt from their feet when his communicator buzzes, and Noctis’s eyebrows raise. It’s not a customized ringtone, so it’s no one he knows; keeping his eyes on the pit and on Noctis’s footing so that he doesn’t accidentally break her neck, Nox picks up calls into his wrist, “Hello?”

“...Hello? Is this Noxite?”

The voice, despite being as crunched as it is through the teeth of server-to-server barriers, is faintly familiar. “Yeah, speaking. Who’s this?”

“Um, this is - this is Dream.”

Nox accidentally drops the entire chunk of dirt straight into the Void scrambling to settle the communicator better against his ear. Noctis shrieks after it in alarm, but he largely ignores her in favor of demanding into the receiver, “Dream? Why are you up - it’s the middle of the night.”

There’s a lilt of light laughter on the other end. “I guess it is. This is, uh... kind of important, though? Like, it has to do with Championship.”

“Oh, no kidding?” Nox takes a few perfunctory steps from the pit he’s made, and Noctis wanders over to join him beside the chasm as he asks, “Do you want to switch to a video call, if it’s serious?”

“Uh, yeah - yeah, I’m cool with that,” Dream replies, sounding not cool with it at all, and Noctis must hear the hesitance filtering through the tinny call, because she shoots him a raised-eyebrow deadpan stare that screams “I’m unimpressed with you,” but before Nox really has the time to kick her ankles or nudge her into layering over the grass with white wool (Landlord’s idea, rolls of clouds with “rainwater” for participants to trident from), Dream’s face and partial surroundings unfurl from Nox’s wrist, and he blinks dumbly at the hologram before Noctis stifles a sigh and turns on his own camera for him and sticks her head into the frame.

“Hi, Dream!” she chirps. Dream, clearly unprepared to see anyone who wasn’t Nox, aborts his words in surprise, leaving him with his jaw dangling and pinhole eyes swallowed by green as he stares back. Still, it’s gone in a crush of static, and he recovers with admirable grace.

“Oh - um - hi, Noctis,” he greets, shrinking in the screen as he leans back onto his heels. It’s hard to make out his surroundings in the pitch-dark of early morning, but vague, dusky green clouds the edges of the filmy hologram, and when Dream glances off to the side at a tinny hoot, Nox figures the other’s outside, maybe to get away from inquisitive ears or to get some fresh air.

All the secrecy. Nox will fully admit he’s curious. It’s not something he’s always proud of, but the inferences and predictions and assumptions cling to his brain like cobwebs more often than not and he tends to chase after that. He’s been told that he’s too headstrong, that he doesn’t know when to quit, that he’s almost dogged in his efforts to figure things out even if he shouldn’t. He’s gotten better at letting go of it since starting Championship, having something bigger and more urgent to funnel all that brainpower into, but that abruptneed to know yanks him forward anyway.

“Noctis, can you - ” he makes a shooing motion with his free hand, gesturing with his head when confusion wrinkles her nose. She gets the hint when he starts emphatically mouthing, “GIVE US A MO,” nodding and bounding away, reeling wool out of the satchel at her side as she goes. To Dream, he says, “Sorry - thanks for waiting. Er, I got Noctis to leave. You said something regarding MCC?”

Dream visibly brightens even through the gloom, the corners of his lips lifting. “Yeah. Okay, first, thank you so much for inviting me to participate - this is a huge honor, I’m really excited to play.”

“Ah, flattery,” sighs Nox in mock euphoria, making a show of tossing his hair back and running his hand through it. “I love the sweet-talkers, keep it comin’.”

Dream laughs. It’s a little metallic, ringing somewhat in Nox’s ears, but he can tell Dream’s relaxing from his initial nervousness, and mentally pats himself on the back for a job well done.

“Actually, though,” Dream continues once he’s stopped chuckling, reaching up to fiddle with his hood. “Uh, about, um… like, with…” He blows out a frustrated sigh, stepping back to look up at the sky with his jaw set. “Okay, wow, this is harder to say than I - than I thought it was gonna be.”

Concern worms its way through Nox. “Everything all right?”

“Oh, no, yeah, everything’s - everything’s fine, I just… I haven’t really, um… told anyone? This? Before? Or tried to?”

“...Oh?” prompts Nox, when the silence stretches and Dream doesn’t pick up his sentence.

“...How does, um… how do respawn mechanics work for the Captain?”

Oh.

Oh.

“Dream,” Nox asks, as gently as he possibly can, “are you…?”

Static swallows the screen for a moment, but it’s not enough for Nox to miss the flinch of Dream’s mouth. After a beat, when it becomes clear Dream won’t or can’t elaborate, Nox softens his voice.

“We set up separate code for minor gods. As… as you probably know, code - I don’t know if you prefer the term ‘server magic?’ I know Jordan does, the man’s a fossil - can be individualized, if you’re nice enough to it. You know, like how we grant admin or owner. For games like Hole In The Wall or To Get To The Other Side, we can just set up teleportation via checkpoint the moment they fall low enough to register a coded tripwire. For more… combat-based? Survival-based games, we usually have an admin tail them to keep track of injury and judge whether a hit counts as ‘death.’ Again, you’ll get a teleport and regen, healing, anything you need.” Nox clears his throat. Peers at Dream through the clutter of static again. “...Am I correct in assuming you need that, Dream?”

“...Yeah,” says Dream, quiet, hoarse. “Um. Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem.” No need to make this any more of a Moment than it already is, not when Dream already looks so uncomfortable. Nox is well-versed in the art of making things painless; no one suffers on his watch, not if he can help it. Still, for the sake of clarity, he has to ask, “Do you want me to let anyone else on the crew know?”

Dream’s head snaps back down, and Nox gets a flare of panicked green before that damn server barrier chews up the connection. When he finally gets the static to clear, Dream’s turned half away, weighing the question as he gnaws on his lip. The stillness pulls out like taffy, languid, far too thick, and Nox finds himself biting his own lip, mirroring the anxiety.

There was never even a whimper anywhere that Nox had searched that Dream is a minor god. For a public figure as widely-known and well-liked as Dream to be able to conceal that as effectively as he has -

“I think - I think one of the other admins should probably know?” Nox startles back into his skin as Dream starts to talk. He sounds tentative, like he’s writing the script as he goes. “Since you’re the team head, you can’t exactly be, like… keeping an eye on me all the time. You have to run the admin stream, too, so… I think you’ll have to let someone else know. Um, do you mind running them by me first, though?” Dream rubs the back of his neck as though he’s embarrassing himself and not requesting something very reasonable and valid for himself and his sense of safety, which is the main thing that’s rubbing Nox the wrong way about this entire interaction, but - that’s a can of worms, Nox tells himself firmly, for another time.

“Yeah, of course,” he replies easily, and doesn’t miss the relief that loosens the lines of Dream’s face. “I’ll let you know as soon as I vet the rest of the crew on my own.”

Dream grins briefly. “Thank you - thank you so much.”

“Hey, no problem, man. Thank you for trusting me with that. I know it must’ve been hard.”

A rueful chuckle, a shake of the head. “You have no idea,” Dream says wearily, if lightheartedly. “God. Um, yeah, thank you - uh, good night, Nox.”

Nox’s internal clock - tied solidly to the day-night cycle of this world - tells him it’s about two, so, “Good morning, more like, but - yeah, get some sleep, alright?” Nox searches Dream’s face one more time, checking for discomfort, for fear or anxiety, but the Endchaser looks far more at ease than he’d been just ten minutes prior, and it soothes the clench of Nox’s heart that had first tightened like a birdcage when Dream had shrunk back. “Get some sleep. Welcome to Championship.”

Something blinks to life in Dream’s pixellated eyes, a flicker, a plume of flame, something eager, something intense. “Happy to be here,” he says, a smile splitting his face, and Nox, studying the fire in Dream’s face, knows, with a burst of fierce glee, that he made the right choice.

Chapter Text

“Dream,” whispers Sam, “what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to remember,” Dream says, face to the sky, “what it’s like to be human.”

The prison sprawls behind them, a dissection as of yet. Sam’s building it in reverse, innards out; this isn’t meant to be a place where people can thrive. Sam has his qualms about it, had protests clinging to his teeth when he first saw the half-restrained violence in the sharp, deliberate lines of Dream’s intricate floor plans, but when he’d seen his friend’s face, they’d withered to a crisp - stone, from the lifeless luster of his gaze to the giveless line of his spine as he outlined the labyrinthine sprawl of blackstone and mining fatigue. Sam knew then, as he knows now, as he knew years and years ago: Dream will not back down. It’s not in his nature to forget, even if forgiving was once on the table.

“Okay.” Sam inches forward ever-so-gingerly, palms facing toward the strip of jet-black sky yawning open through the crease of clouds. It was a sunless day today, but no rain, and Sam’s mouth is dry as he says coaxingly, “Okay, that’s okay. Listen, Dream - come here for a second?”

Even in the backlight of the lava Sam’s half-finished installing, he can see Dream’s shoulders stiffen, and Sam freezes where he stands. A hollow clang, as Dream shifts on the edge of the rolling roof of the prison, his half-armored legs dangling over the side as though he were sitting at the New L’Manberg docks, feet in the water.

There’s only open air chasmed beneath them now. Sam swallows hard.

“There are some things,” says Dream suddenly, “that I think - ” and he cuts himself off with a clack of his teeth. Another pause, this one heavier, and Sam thinks his heart stops when one of Dream’s hands leaves his side to reach out to the stark black sky, trying to rifle through the clouds, trying to sift the stars through his fingers, his entire body straining toward the night, and his center of balance is pushed forward, and Sam can’t bear to move. Can’t even breathe, his eyes stuck fast on Dream’s fingers wedged into the seam between two blackstone bricks, the only thing keeping the player anchored.

If Dream so much as inches his fingers back, he’ll -

“Dream,” Sam snaps, this side of too sharp, and bites his lip when Dream doesn’t so much as flinch. “Hey, dude - tell me what you’re thinking of, okay? Tell me what you’re thinking about, just - not here.”

“I can’t.” Dream’s voice is unbearably soft, unbearably hollow. “I - I have a role. I have things I have to do.”

Anything to keep Dream talking; it’s grounding him, Sam can tell. Talking always helped when Dream was younger and his arm got bad, or the later days when he found solace in daydreaming and running faster than the wind. Something to tether him. Something to guide him home. “A role, you said? Dream, can you tell me more?” Sam asks gently, keeping his voice steadier than he thought possible, taking honey-slow steps closer. It feels like the earth is falling out from under his feet. “Talk to me, Dee.”

Dream’s hand spasms against the constellations.

“...It’s been a long time since you called me that, Awesam,” whispers Dream hoarsely, and the earth breaks, metaphorically, under Sam’s boots, splinters, roars. Awesam.

It’s an old nickname. Very old. The kids - they used to call him that when they were all younger. Bad did it too, for a time, and Skeppy thought it was his name the first time they met when Sam was eighteen because it was all Bad would call him. It’s dumb, but they all loved it - a piece of childhood to carry with them, as good as any photo in an album, a shard of old times, as Callahan and Alyssa escaped the growing oppressive silence of the server and George pulled away from the public eye and Ponk and Sam and Bad retreated into the Badlands to lick their wounds and Sapnap threw himself into slaughtering animals to feel something and Dream, Dream, Dream.

“Wilbur killed himself,” Dream had said blankly, after L’Manberg was an open wound in the earth. He’d been exultant in the fray - Sam had heard his hysterical laughter, the elated “YES!” - but he was grey-faced afterward, on his knees in the rubble and gore, long after Philza had forced his way into the server and run his own son through with his sword and grieved so deeply the server code still shuddered with the aftershocks of the forced world-merge. Dream had been staring at the snaggled stone, the blood, the smoke-suffocated sky. “I never knew - I didn’t think he was - that he could - he,” he finally said, in a desperate, forceful attempt to get the message across, and Sam can’t say with full confidence that he got it, but honestly, Dream’s voice said it all where Dream had started pulling his mask down to cover even his expressive mouth, so.

“Awesam,” says Dream now, carefully, as though weighing the word in his mouth and finding the corners don’t quite fit the way they used to. The nickname tears at Sam’s heart in a way very few things have been able to lately, but even that’s better than letting Dream slip, than letting Dream’s fingers lose hold, so he holds his breath, eases his way closer to the ledge, hands open to the sky where Dream can see them, though it might be a moot point since Dream’s eyes are trained on the sliver of moon straining out from behind a sheet of cloud.

“That’s it, Dee, it’s me.” Keep him talking - just long enough for you to bring him back. “Tell me more about - ” Who had Dream mentioned, “ - tell me about Wilbur.”

Dream’s entire body jerks at the mention of Wilbur. Sam has a split second to realize his words were a mistake; the rest of his mind shrieks in alarm as Dream, his body flinching into itself, lets go of his hold on the roof of the prison.

Sam remembers reading something once, somewhere, probably after they’d all moved onto the SMP: It said that individual piglins were capable of supernatural strength in dire circumstances, a reservoir untapped that could be attained when a member of their horde was in danger. A record of adult piglins tearing apart an entire passel of hoglins unarmed to protect their young, or scale a ravine with lava bubbling hungrily below to save their own lives. That great strength can come of great adversity. That in a do-or-die, fight-or-flight moment, one can do things they never even imagined they could do.

It might be true. Sam’s not sure. All he knows between one blink and the next is that he was standing a mere block from Dream, and then he wasn’t - he comes to, for lack of better word, and he and Dream are collapsed into a heap two steps away from the drop, their legs tangled, Sam’s arms drawn painfully tight around Dream’s shoulders and head, one hand shaking as he buries it in Dream’s matted curls. The air is too brilliantly crisp in his lungs, almost cold in its sharpness. The world sways under him. For a second, everything is jolted just an inch shy of where it should be, everything wrong, everything bad.

And then it’s over, as Dream lets out a sudden, nonsensical bark, too watery to be laughter but too wild to be a sob. Sam pulls his arms tighter around him.

“He’s dead,” Dream gasps, words crushed into one another. “Wilbur - the last thing he wanted - he wrote me a part, Sammy, he wrote me - he’s dead - how could he? How could I?” He sounds horrified with himself, and Sam feels dread pooling bitter in his gut as Dream chokes on his own mirthless cackle. “The last thing he wanted - and for him - for all of you - ”

Sam can’t bear to listen anymore; it feels like his own heart is being wrenched from his chest, surging up past his lungs, blood pouring from the cavity, the gory rasp of it sounding something like his last words his last wish his last wish when he wrote the symphony the story when he wrote them when he wrote you there must always be a knight and there must always be a monster there must always be a knight and there must always be a monster.

“Dee,” he coos, devastated. “Shh. Dream, shh, shh.”

“For all of you,” insists Dream, a wreck. “And for him.”

For him. For Wilbur, moldering in the ground. For Schlatt, a haphazard unmarked grave somewhere no one will tell. For them.

For the symphony.

Tomorrow, Sam will hear of a hate so visceral it seared the witnesses. He will hear of a duckling that shed its down feathers for flames, a thunderbird in the making, smoldering rage, every beautiful thing piled atop a pyre and set alight by dead men walking. Dream will demand exile. Tubbo, still half-steel from under Schlatt’s thumb, softened against the blistering heat, will bend.

Tonight, Sam thumbs tears from the rim of a mask he has never seen under and thanks the elders and stars Dream is alive.

Chapter Text

“Dream,” says Fundy solemnly, covered from ears to tail in grime, “babe. Guess what I made.”

Dream resists the knee-jerk urge to grin at his fiancé, hides his smirk with the rim of his water bottle. Clearing his throat from behind it, he prompts, “You don’t call me ‘babe’ unless you’re really proud of yourself, so what?”

“Don’t you analyze me. Come out here, look.”

Dream sets the bottle aside and, with a magnanimous roll of the eyes, lets himself be led out of Fundy’s kitchen by the hand. Their rings clink together in the slot of their fingers, and Dream pretends like he doesn’t feel a citrus-sharp burst of glee in his chest at that. “Look at what,” he complains for the sake of complaining, swerving to avoid treading on Fundy’s tail, which is sweeping back and forth with poorly-contained excitement. “Fundy, just tell me what - ”

Dream stops in his tracks in the doorway. “Whoa.”

“Well?” Fundy’s bounding on his heels, beaming. “What do you think?”

Dream purses his lips into a whistle, letting go of Fundy’s hand to prowl closer to the intricate contraption in a heap on his front lawn. It’s lissome, hand-wrought iron bars and two slender wheels sat one in front of the other. A delicate chain connects the two in some complicated cat’s-cradle, aligns them to a kind of pedalling contraption. The thing is crowned by an angular seat that looks like leather stretched out over packed cotton and a strangely curved bar over the front wheel, looking somehow simultaneously organically shaped and uncompromisingly designed, with a homely little basket dangling off of it. Dream has nowhere near the technical wherewithal to pass any sort of official judgement upon the confusing mechanical bits-and-bobs tied together as though by magic in the grass and gravel, but Fundy’s eager, expectant expression says enough; he must have spent hours laboring over this, as he does with every single one of his precious, meticulous projects.

It’s at times like this when Dream thinks, ruefully, that he wants to give his platonic soon-to-be partner the world. As it is, the best he can do is throwing his arms around Fundy’s neck and peering down at him through the mask and telling him, heartfelt, “Funds, this is amazing, I’m so proud of you,” and watching Fundy’s face go a brilliant vermillion as Dream’s settling croons quiet proud proud so wonderfully proud if the world was a shatter if you were naught but bones still then even then always a promise always always always.

“Okay, I, uh… Uh…” stammers Fundy, flushed still, removing himself from Dream’s embrace with a stunned, only slightly stupid look on his face. His tail sways behind him, pleased despite himself, and Dream laughs outright as Fundy groans and claps his hands to his face.

“You threw me off my groove!” he scolds lightheartedly, letting Dream laugh himself into a state of collapse on the ground, appearing unmoved in the slightest by Dream wiping tears from his eyes. “What was I gonna say, come on… Oh! Right!” He smacks the delicate arches of the thing, eliciting another cascade of giggles from his fiancé, and announces, “I’m gonna call it a two-wheeler until I can think of anything better, but basically, it is a… mobile object! A vehicle, I mean. It’s like… you sit on the little seat thingy, here, and you…” he mimes pumping up and down on the pedals with his legs, smacks Dream in turn when it makes him guffaw. “Gods, you idiot, stop laughing! It makes the chain and wheels turn, basically, and it propels you forward.” Fundy observes the two-wheeler for a moment with a critical eye, then adds reluctantly, “I didn’t really account for balance… but I think it’s sturdy enough that you can stay moving, given enough speed.”

“What’s the basket for?” Dream asks, finally having enough air to interject.

Fundy shrugs. “Dunno. Aesthetic. You can carry shit around. Wanna give it a spin?”

Does he ever. “Hell, yeah,” Dream says enthusiastically, and Fundy’s face breaks into that wicked grin that makes Dream feel like the luckiest player across the earths; where else can you find a kindred soul like this, who has the same (“dangerous,” if Bad’s joking reprimands are to be listened to, which… Dream doesn’t exactly have a good track record of doing) endless thirst for adrenaline as you do?

Dream stands, brushes the wayward blades of grass from his joggers, and regards the two-wheeler carefully. As is, it’s probably best to sit, adjust, and then immediately take off; like Fundy said, balance will be less of a problem once he’s got some decent speed on it. Fundy watches him run the brief calculations in his head, and raises his eyebrows when Dream turns to him.

Dream nudges the two-wheeler to what seems to be a reasonable upright position with his hip. “Help me on?” he asks, and Fundy obligingly holds out his arm for Dream to grip as he slings a leg over the seat to straddle the two-wheeler and gingerly place his hands on the bar.

“Just ride it around the lawn,” suggests Fundy, stepping back and scanning Dream and the two-wheeler up and down. “And move the seat up a bit. You’re too tall.”

“Hashtag Just Tall People Things,” sings Dream in that particular lilting tone that he knows annoys Fundy, just for shits and giggles, and cackles as Fundy squawks and bats at his arm.

“Dream, I swear - ”

“God, okay, I’m going, I’m going!” Dream readjusts the bars one last time, shakes out his arms, and then pushes off from the ground in one swift motion, shifting his legs in close to settle his feet on the pedals and yelping as the two-wheeler wobbles ominously.

Fundy’s pinwheeling his arms comically, shouting, “Pedal, dude, come on!” Dream spares himself a second to chuckle breathlessly before leaning his weight into the pedals. There’s an ominous moment where the chain emits a pained creak, but the moment’s over before Dream can dwell properly on it and in the next moment he’s actually moving thanks to the motion of his legs, the steady turning of the chain and wheels, and he laughs half in disbelief and half in delight as he guides the two-wheeler in a shaky circle around the perimeter of Fundy’s lawn, Fundy cheering him on from the middle.

“Let’s go!!” he hollers when Dream touches down back where he started, jogging over and scooping Dream from the two-wheeler with a soft yip of appreciation. “Thank you thank you thank you for testing it out - it works! Dream, it works!!”

“It does work!” The excitement is contagious, and Dream smiles broadly down into Fundy’s thrilled face, his hands clasped behind Fundy’s back. “Do you think it’s strong enough to carry more than one person?”

Fundy always crinkles his nose when he’s thinking particularly hard about something; it’s a quirk Dream’s noted, is always quietly enamored by. “Maybe,” he muses, his ears flicking. “I mean, it’s fully iron except for segments of the chain and the basket, so it’s strong enough structurally. Why - whoa - Dream!”

Dream almost drops Fundy laughing, defeating the entire purpose of picking his fiancé up in the first place. “Come ride it with me!” he manages between wheezes, ignoring Fundy’s scandalized yelp as he’s placed unceremoniously on the back end of the seat. “You invented it, so you should get a turn!”

“I’m not driving this thing,” Fundy says immediately, even as Dream drops into the seat in front of him and Fundy drops his hands to Dream’s waist almost absentmindedly.

“No, no, of course not. I’m driving,” announces Dream grandly, and kicks off without warning, choking through another strangled laugh as Fundy yelps in surprise and throws both arms around him, hiking his legs and tail up to either side of the back wheel. It’s a good day to ride the two-wheeler around, with no wind save a gentle breeze that combs through Dream’s curls, and Dream’s contented smile grows wider as Fundy’s arms relax bit by bit, as they coast through the server to the amazement of their fellow SMP members. The sun, melting down on the horizon, dips Fundy and his creation in half-amber, and Dream, pedalling with increasing leisure down the crosshatched wooden planks, thinks, Fundy’s chin dropped against his good shoulder, that it is a very nice day to be exploring with someone he loves.

Chapter Text

Techno is, by nature, an early riser. Something about a childhood without a sun makes rising with the thing that much sweeter, and even a full decade later, all it takes to wake him up is the warmth of a wayward sunbeam falling across his cheek.

His siblings, now - they’re built so different that Techno is slightly afraid of them. He’s convinced Wilbur has developed into a nocturnal creature in the past year away from under Phil’s wing, and Tommy and Tubbo have somehow perfectly synced their circadian rhythms to the point of taking naps around the same time of day as one another, a phenomenon that Techno finds both vaguely adorable and incredibly alarming from a scientific perspective. He thinks he’s the person with the Most Normal Sleeping Schedule in the family, honestly, which is just really sad, considering he falls asleep whenever he wants, wakes up to the sunrise, then will promptly fall back asleep once the novelty of the turning of the earth has worn off, but Phil is out of the running because the madman just forgets to sleep until his body gives up on him.

All this to say: Techno is consistently the first one awake in the house, especially when the other members of the Empire clear out generously for Phil to bring in his sons for the biweekly family catch-up and unofficial game night that has only descended into salient declarations of war fifteen of forty times. He has a polished routine of waking up, blinking sleepily at the sun, and then passing out again. He’s fully prepared to set this routine into motion this morning, squinting at the slice of light that cuts right into his eyes through the paper-thin crack between his curtains.

His groove is thrown at the sight of Wilbur in the doorway, mouth dropped open, one hand clutching the door frame with such force his knuckles have gone white.

“...Wilbur?” mumbles Techno, stifling a yawn halfway through Wilbur’s name. “What’s up?”

Wilbur doesn’t respond, still staring open-mouthed at Techno, visibly gobsmacked. It’s too fucking early for this. he’s so weird he’s being weird, complains Chat.

“Wilbur, dude, if you’re just gonna stand there gogglin’ me, I really think,” Techno begins, pinching the bridge of his nose, and -

Whoa. Hang on.

That’s - that's flesh.

...Chat falls silent.

So painfully slowly that Techno can feel the patter of his pulse picking up in his wrist, he pats his nose again.

His very small, very flat, very angular nose. With his very small, very callused, very human fingers.

“Oh,” he says blankly. His brain is still booting up. “Oh, hey.”

Wilbur makes a strangled sound. It’s the choking, wincing wheeze that wrings free of his brother’s throat that finally gets Techno to start putting pieces together, start to feel the vague chill of panic.

“Wilbur,” he manages, with what he thinks is a truly impressive amount of calm for someone whose skin has just shifted more fundamentally than he’s ever seen someone’s skin shift, “could you get me a mirror, or somethin’?”

The small silver oval is in his - his hands, his hands - faster than he can blink. Wilbur’s hands stay on his as he tips it toward himself, graceful and familiar musician’s fingers, a steady and unwavering pressure on the thickest part of Techno’s palms just as startledly gentle as his gaze. “Deep breaths, Techno,” he reminds, not unkindly. “You’re good. It’s all good. Just caught me off guard, man, that’s all it was.”

“If it makes y’feel better, it caught me off guard, too,” quips Techno as he angles the mirror, but the rest of his witticisms die a pitiful death in his throat when the barest cleave of morning light flashes vivid against Techno’s eyelids and leaves the image he caught of himself emblazoned there: fair skin, railway-scars trekked a shade darker over the bridge of his small, sharp nose and across the easy slope of his jaw. His ears, still oddly shaped, flicker uncertainly under a shorn sheet of hair as salmon-pink as his flesh used to be, before - this. Whatever the fuck this is supposed to be.

“What,” he says to his reflection, mostly to see the foreign way his mouth forms around the single syllable. The unfamiliar stretch makes him feel some weird combination of uncomfortable and… thrilled, maybe? That might be the goosebumps, right? What is he supposed to feel?

“You aren’t supposed to feel anything, Tech,” says Wilbur placatingly, which is how Techno realizes he’s been saying things out loud that he didn’t intend to be. More thoughtfully, he adds, “We should call dad, I think.”

“Your dad,” reminds Techno, maybe a shade sharper than he means, but Wilbur shrugs it off with a grace that stings Techno. It’s - it’s complicated, what he and Phil have got. Techno has always regarded the others - Wilbur, Tubbo, even that hell gremlin TommyInnit - as his brothers, but Phil will never be his father. Phil’s too much all at once for that. Family, certainly, but nothing that Techno could describe with petty human words. There are Nether terms for it, he thinks, with enough gravity and admiration and respect and trust and love to deliver what Phil and he have forged out of the ruins of a portal Phil has long shattered in a devastated rage, but if there was, he’s forgotten it.

“My dad,” agrees Wilbur mildly. “Yeah, we should fetch Phil, I mean. D’you think - ”

“Oh, what the hell?” comes an incredulous chirp, and with a long-suffering dread yawning open in the lining of his stomach, Techno turns his head to the door Wilbur left open in his haste to get to Techno’s side.

Tubbo and Tommy are practically piled on top of one another in the doorway, twin looks of astonishment laying their faces bare. Now that the pleasant somnolence has well and truly abandoned him, Techno can read the poorly-veiled aggression in Tommy’s stance, the wariness in Tubbo’s. They don’t recognize me, he understands with a start, and that’s - huh.

It sets him off-kilter, to acknowledge the mark that the Nether left on him. It’s always been a fact of life: the sun rises and falls, the seasons come and go, and Technoblade is the spitting image of a wild piglin. He’s spent the vast majority of his adolescence flatly ignoring what came before, and for the most part, it’s worked out for him; sure, there are some days when ingots still mesmerize him somewhere deep in his ape brain, and some days when the cold convinces him that he’s on the verge of hypothermia, and some days when he just can’t speak at all, the words choking up in his throat - some days when he looks at his reflection and can’t see anything but greed and grunts and gold - but they’ve gotten so few and far in between that Techno’s found himself relaxing, just a tiny bit. He thinks Chat gets it - on the days the world got a little too wide and a little too daunting, they’d spam him with nonsensical chirruping and half-finished stories that took nine separate times throughout the morning to complete in any meaningful way, never failed to cheer when he sat himself up and washed his face and went about his day.

So it’s gotten better. It’s gotten a lot better recently. Just a week ago, for the first time in his life since the fateful, fatal day he staggered in of his own volition (if entirely by accident), Techno had stepped into the Nether and hadn’t broken into a cold sweat, hadn’t felt the shakes set in, hadn’t even needed to take an Overworld break thirty minutes in like he used to. Tubbo had nearly tackled him back in through the portal when he returned five hours later, shrieking with glee, and there’s a flicker of warmth at the fond memory: that his family knows what that meant to him. That there’s such thing as getting better.

“Wait, holy fuckin’ shit, is that Technoblade??” demands a stupefied voice, and right, right, Techno was doing something. When he refocuses on the potential calamity at hand, Tommy has shoved Tubbo aside to peer closer at him, entire face scrunched up with the force of his searching. Whatever he sees in Techno’s face must clue him in, because he crows in shock and vaults over Tubbo’s legs (“Fuck!” yelps Tubbo) and sprints to Wilbur and Techno, still sat staring back at him.

Tubbo joins him, albeit at a more relaxed pace, expression still tight, still analyzing. “Skin change,” he observes placidly, and Techno resists the urge to roll his eyes and say, “Yeah, no kiddin’.”

“No shit, Tubs,” says Wilbur brusquely, and Techno rolls his eyes for him.

Tommy reaches out suddenly, fingers outstretched, and Techno, involuntarily, stills. Tommy hesitates when he does, and Tubbo and Wilbur, ribbing each other, both go quiet.

Techno closes his eyes. The lack of excess of leathery skin beneath his eyes is at once unfamiliar and distantly welcome. “Go on,” he nudges Tommy gruffly, and he hears Tommy swallow.

Tommy’s not particularly inclined to be gentle - Wilbur’s said more than once, loudly, to Tommy’s face, that he’s the antithesis of gentleness, once to which Tommy had roundhouse kicked him in the jaw and gotten grounded for two weeks - so the meekness with which he touches Techno’s cheek is something of a shock. He opens his eyes to a look of utter concentration on Tommy’s face as the kid pats down Techno’s nose, the stripe of scar tissue there, cocks his head to take in Techno’s still-pointed ears.

“Well, what’s the verdict, doc?” Techno asks. His mouth is too dry for a clean delivery; the joke falls just flat of where Techno would prefer, but Tommy just clears his throat and sits back onto his haunches.

“So it’s not a prank,” he announces with forced grandeur. “Big man, you’re a hundred-percent, home-grown human now.”

“That is the worst fucking way to phrase that, Tommy. I hated every second of that.”

“I’m a fuckin’ poet, Wilbur! I’m a rapper and shit, I can freestyle! I’m the god of talking.”

Wilbur scoffs. “God of talking our ears off, you fucking child.”

“Five iron Tommy jumps Wilbur,” chirps Tubbo, barely a second before Tommy does just that.

“That’s cheap,” Techno manages through ringing ears. You’re a human echoes through his head, something like a death knell, something like a judge and jury, accusation and execution; he knows full well Tommy didn’t mean it that way, never means his bluster and abrasiveness the way people think he does, but something in his chest has given way, rattles loose under his breastbone. Newly human, the implications of which are that he wasn't before. That he's - that he wasn't -

“It’s six in the damn morning, you little shits,” comes a sleepy, all-too-familiar voice that snaps Techno out of his little fugue. Tommy and Wilbur freeze as one, and Tubbo’s head darts up toward the door.

Phil shuffles into the room with a mighty yawn, stretching his neck to one side and his hands in his hair. It’s gotten long in the last few months, but every time Techno’s broached the subject, Phil has grinned and said he likes the curtain of buttercup yellow on his back, against the crest of their Empire, that it makes him feel regal. He doesn’t look especially regal at the moment, hair a rat’s nest and chin scruffier than usual and sleepless nights underlining his eyes, but all the same, fondness wells between Techno’s lungs, quells the shakiness that had thundered through his chest just moments prior.

“Hey, Phil,” says Wilbur weakly, dragging out the sentence, and Techno remembers why Wilbur wanted to call Phil the moment Phil looks up with a bright smile, dropping his hands from his head.

“Hey, mate,” he replies cheerily, then his gaze turns on the rest of them, and Techno can see the exact moment Phil takes in his new appearance, because the rosy color in his face drains faster than blood from a neck wound.

All four of them reach out in an empty soothing motion, more out of reflex than anything else, when Phil blanches. Techno would shrink back at the response if it weren’t for the concern that stampedes over it; he cares less about the abrupt and absolute skin change than he does the possibility of Phil having a fucking heart attack (he wishes he could say it would be the first time).

“Okay it’s not what you think it is,” says Tommy in a frantic rush, trying to salvage a situation that Techno’s pretty sure none of them are even sure is a situation.

Wilbur’s standing from where he’d crouched to avoid fallout, replying sardonically, “Well, what the hell would he be thinking it - ”

Phil topples forward onto his knees, his wings collapsing to either side of him in a wild fall of Void-black and blue, and Techno can’t hold in the yelp of surprise that jumps from his mouth. “Phil - ” he begins, throwing off his covers and the final sweet dregs of post-slumber warmth to lumber to Phil’s side, sets his unwieldy hands awkwardly on Phil’s shuddering shoulders, “Phil - hey, man, hey, hey…”

“Tech,” sputters Phil, reaching for Techno’s arm. Techno lets himself be dragged down to sit before Phil, his hands cradled in Phil’s, kneeling on the thick carpet in a ratty tee and pyjama pants as Phil stares down at their intertwined fingers like he’s spotted netherite.

“...Phil?” says Tubbo cautiously. Wilbur shushes him. Techno only has eyes for the golden, tangled mess of Phil’s hair. Everything is frozen, desperately precarious, and Techno instinctively braces himself for whatever may come.

And then Phil looks up to meet Techno dead in the eye, and there are tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Phil!” blurts Wilbur the moment he sees his dad crying, voice pitched high in alarm. “What’s wrong - Techno, hold on a sec - ”

“Oh, Techno,” breathes Phil thickly, and even though Wilbur’s still talking, even though Tubbo and Tommy have been asking something urgently, everything falls silent and muffled, like glass has been erected around them: just Phil, most of Techno’s everything, and Techno himself, something close to human.

“Phil,” he says back, hushed.

Phil’s eyes are so blue through the saltwater that it takes Techno aback, despite how used to it he is; he’s found it happens moments before Phil is about to say something profound, or let slip a godly tidbit or two, or is feeling a little closer to divinity than death, and so it completely floors him when Phil cups one of his human human human cheeks in his tear-damp hand and tells him, watery, “You’ve started to think about yourself again.”

The fog fades. In the newfound clarity, Techno registers Wilbur’s sharp inhale, Tommy’s confused huff, Tubbo’s musing hum.

“I’ve - I what,” says Techno stupidly, feeling inexplicably peeled raw, like he’s been put on a microscope slide and hung out to dry.

A hand lands reassuringly on his back. Wilbur, if the solid presence at his side is anything to go by. “He means,” he murmurs, voice suddenly soft as a pat of butter on fresh bread, “that you kept - I think you kept thinking of yourself like you were a - like you were a piglin, Techno. That you - that deep down, you still thought you weren’t… a person.” The analysis is piercing, nearly painful in its needlepoint accuracy, the way it drives into the heart of something Techno had very studiously avoided considering or reflecting upon, and he remains stock still as Wilbur continues, “Phil, he - he means you see yourself as more than that again. You can - you can tell that you’re a person, finally.”

“Oh,” says Tommy, very, very softly.

“Techno,” whispers Tubbo, with a feather-light hand in Techno’s hair.

Techno’s not good at dealing with this - sappy stuff, emotional stuff, it’s never come easy to him - so he defaults to his usual: dry humor. “Pog,” he deadpans through the lump in his throat as Chat coos with unbearable gentleness. He carefully thumbs the hand Phil isn’t using to comb Techno’s uneven mess of hair behind his ear and tries feebly, “Look at me, Phil - real boy and everythin’. I’m a - I’m a person.”

Phil sobs into his laugh, like he’s feeling everything good and difficult and devastatingly wonderful all at once, like he’s thrust a frostbitten hand into the fireplace, like he’s learning how to breathe. “You always were,” he insists, voice breaking on every other syllable. “You always are, mate. Even before. Even after. Regardless of how you saw yourself - you’ve always - fuck, mate, you’ve always been a person.”

It feels like Techno’s heart is splitting open raw, like his chest has been opened for everyone to see. It’s a good hurt, he thinks, feeling something sear treacherously behind his eyes; it feels cathartic, or like vindication. It feels - to be sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor, the sunlight flooding gold through the curtains, his brothers tucked against his sides, his best friend’s glossy wings shielding them from heartache, tears cupped in his flesh-pink, callused hands -

It feels human.

Chapter Text

The last three weeks have been nothing short of fucking hell. 

It’s partly because of the struggle to communicate. Callahan’s ability to talk to everyone hinges on their sight, and he’s caught himself way too many times edging over to Dream’s end of the table, turning to flick his fingers with a lofty roll of the eyes, and the world coming to a brief, jarring stop as Dream keeps staring blindly off into the wall opposite, a spoon gripped in his hand that Alyssa gently molded his fingers around for him, before the world starts again and everyone keeps laughing and talking and Callahan swallows hard and threads his fingers through Dream’s. 

They’ve established a buddy system, lately, for a multitude of reasons (Bad and Sam are worried about creepers, the others don’t want to see Dream wandering off alone again), and Callahan tries to stick with Dream for the sole purpose of talking to him by signing against his palm. It’s slow-going and partially ineffective - half the time Dream can’t make out the pattern of the signs, and more often than every single word will get brutally butchered in translation - but it’s better than sitting with Dream and seeing him there and knowing he might as well be a thousand chunks away for how well he can listen to Callahan, who can’t say anything. 

The whole thing also sucks because Dream is having nightmares. 

Or - “nightmares” isn’t quite right. Callahan’s caught Bad mulling over the term “night terrors” from the beaten medicine book that he scrounged up from a mineshaft a week or so ago, and after he read it over for himself, he’s inclined to agree; it was, in his humble opinion, needlessly wordy, even for a self-proclaimed vocabulary nerd such as himself, but the long and short of it was something like nightmares so bad the person would be screaming and flailing and having a Bad Fucking Time of it, and couldn’t wake up. 

It fits. Just last night Callahan was jolted awake by someone kicking the side of his bed so hard the frame rattled; he sat bolt upright in the pitch dark, and Dream was shrieking like someone was murdering him, and when Sapnap vaulted over Ponk’s bed to flick the lanterns on, there was no one there: just Dream twisted in his blankets, dry heaving into his pillow. Callahan thought he was going to pass out from both the overwhelming relief and the stomach-churning dread; instead of doing that, he crawled over to Dream’s mattress and pinned his shaking shoulder under his head and wrapped his arms around Dream’s chest and patted a soothing rhythm onto Dream’s stomach until Dream sank back into a relatively peaceful slumber, vaguely restless. George found him later the next morning and thanked him for calming Dream down. 

Dream doesn’t remember the night terrors afterward. Alyssa tried to ask about them once, and the faraway look that spasmed across Dream’s face was off-putting enough no one’s asked again. 

So, long story short: the past almost-month has been shit. Bad doesn’t even have the energy to reprimand Callahan and George when they swear with one another for fun, which is how you know it really sucks. Other than the night terrors, Dream himself has been weirdly peaceful as everyone frets and totes him around and tries to get him to eat more, but even that’s stressing Callahan out, so the day Bad finally looks up after breakfast and announces, “Dream, I think we can take off your bandages,” it feels - terrifying, but also like a release, like something has to give. Everyone freezes.

Dream tries to stir his stew with his spoon, succeeds only in scraping at the table. He drops it and clasps his hands together. Callahan can see them trembling. “Okay.”

So they all shuffle to the living room and sit strewn all around the floor as Bad herds Dream and Sapnap to the bedroom and walks Sapnap through taking off the bandages (not that Sapnap needs it - the kid’s changed Dream’s dressings a bunch of times now, still the only one Dream feels safe enough to show his face around, and Callahan’s let Sapnap cry on him about the blood and the fear enough that he can’t help but resent Sam and Ponk and Bad, just the littlest bit, for letting Sapnap do it). It’s nerve-wracking, and Callahan catches Alyssa’s biting her nails, a habit he’s been trying to get her to drop. Your nails are nasty, Lyss.

Alyssa scoffs, even as she drops her hand from her mouth. “You keep telling me, I know, shut up,” she says, nudging him with her elbow to let him know she doesn’t mean it. “I do it ‘cause I’m nervous.”

I know, Callahan echoes. 

Quiet. 

Alyssa whispers, “Cal? Do you think Dream’s gonna be fine?”

The question is too big, too heavy. Callahan can feel it pressing on his chest down down down, creaking on his tissue-paper organs, and he gulps. Dunno. Ask Sam. 

“Sammy,” Alyssa near-pleads, catching Sam’s eye. 

Sam cringes. “I’m sorry, Lyss. I don’t know either. I - I hope so. I hope he - ”

“Dream,” comes a throaty, distraught gasp from down the hall, and Callahan feels his heart drop with a curdling thrill to his toes as someone - Sapnap, the voice high and nasal - starts to cry in earnest. 

“Oh,” says George, brittle. 

“Um,” ventures Ponk, clearing his throat.

They’re all so frozen and silent that the stumbling green form that staggers into the living room is a shock. Callahan jumps to his feet as Ponk yelps and scrambles backward, as George curses and overcompensates onto his heels and pinwheels his arms to regain his balance. Callahan’s grabbing Alyssa by the forearm to get her to her feet when he registers the bare feet and soft green shirt, and he feels his breath clog up in his throat as he looks up into Dream’s face. 

It’s masked. Of course, it’s masked, but the winding, off-white cloth bandages have been discarded, and the mask is skewed at a haphazard angle as though it was put on in a hurry, and Callahan can see the striking glint of treetop-green dappled against the white quartz. 

A blink. 

Callahan brings his viciously shaking hands up to eye level and signs, D-E-E, how are you feeling?

Another blink. 

“I’m okay, Cal,” says Dream thickly, and screams out a laugh as Callahan dives at him to throw his arms around his neck, relief and gratefulness a thunderstorm in his chest, knocking brightly against the shelves of his ribs, like a twinkling windchime of you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay.

Chapter Text

“Tubbo? ‘S that you?”

Tubbo freezes in the foyer. Light spills egg-yolk yellow from the arched doorway leading to the sitting room - torchlight, probably, it’s a bit too late in the night for the family to have the redstone lamps cranked up - and he’s poised on his tiptoes in the entrance hall, reaching for the banister on the staircase. He holds his breath, just in case he wasn’t heard for real real, and Wilbur can go back to doing whatever it was he was doing. 

“Chat’s goin’ nuts, Tubbo, we know you’re there. C’mere,” comes Techno’s voice, gruff. Tubbo huffs. Busted. 

“That,” he announces mournfully, shuffling into the room at an awkward angle to obscure his face and right arm, “is an unfair advantage. Chat should be illegal in the house. You’re cheating, Technoblade.”

“Don’t you sass me, Tubbo Underscore,” Techno snarks back drily, but Tubbo can hear the grin pulling at the corner of Techno’s mouth, and it makes him smile too, small and victorious into his shirt collar. It didn’t take as long as he dreaded it would for him to stop tensing around Techno, bracing for a mouthful of gunpowder or the morbid fizzle of burning alive, and even though something still feels a little stilted, it’s better than it was when it looked like Dream was never going to wake up, when they were both edging around one another and the minefield they sowed between their feet. Tubbo’s good at winning wars but not cleaning up his room after, so there’s been something really nice about bumping shoulders with the player he sees as an older brother as they string up the laundry out on the lawn together or challenging him to a footrace on the Prime Path for no reason other than boredom. 

Wilbur snorts. “Well, if you two are quite done with your sass fight,” he teases, “Tubbo, brother mine, mind telling us what you were doing out at, uh… Techno?”

“Two-thirty.”

“Right, yeah, two-thirty in the fucking morning?” Tubbo can practically hear Wilbur steepling his fingers. He got into the habit of it after reading one too many Sherlock stories, and never grew out of it. It reminds Tubbo that Wilbur’s him again - the Wilbur of Pogtopia only ever punched walls and broke his knuckles and watched Tubbo like an ocelot watches a creeper: analytical, suspicious, just this side of triumphant. Wilbur with steepled fingers means Wilbur with his head screwed on straight.

“Tubs?” Wilbur’s hand lands on his right shoulder. A thousand reflexes flash through Tubbo’s head, but ultimately the one that reigns over the others is the one that has him dancing out of reach with an aborted yelp of pain, and he whips around, indignant, forgetting for a second the reason he’d been sneaking back in.

Wilbur freezes with his hand still outstretched. 

“…Tubbo,” he says, unbelievably calm, “is that blood?”

Tubbo licks his lips, mouth dry as a desert. “No?” he offers with a winning smile. 

“I don’t think that’s a question you’re supposed to answer with another question,” inputs Techno helpfully from the sofa. When Tubbo cranes his neck to peer around his older brother, Techno half-shrugs at him nonchalantly; Tubbo almost laughs when he sees the reason Techno didn’t come closer. Phil’s sprawled across the rest of the couch with his head in Techno’s lap, straw-blond hair spilt everywhere. His wings are splayed half on the floor, and his back rises and falls gently with a soft snore every once in a while. 

“New decor,” Techno says, when he follows Tubbo’s line of sight. 

“Like a bear rug?” asks Tubbo. Wilbur splutters. 

“Tubbo,” he repeats pleadingly. “What’s happened to your face, man? I’m not mad, I swear. I just wanna know so I can send you off to bed and kick some arse.”

“You’re too scrawny to do any real damage,” Tubbo responds blithely, and receives a sound noogie for his troubles. “Fuck - Wilbur!”

“You’re a fucking disaster, you child. Now shut up before you wake up Phil, he needs the sleep.” Tubbo does indeed shut up at that, since he knows full well Phil does, too. His dad’s inclined to go days at a time without a single nap, then crashing at the most inconvenient moments possible; once, memorably, Phil passed out in a ravine and almost got absolutely destroyed by a baby zombie if it weren’t for Techno stumbling upon him, dispatching the crowd of mobs in a panicked frenzy, and hauling Phil back home.

Wilbur steps back, scrubs a hand through his curls, sighs, “Okay, fine, whatever, I guess. Give me a second, I’ll go get a healing pot,” and wanders out of the room and presumably down to the cellar for the pots chest Phil has squirrelled away somewhere. 

Which leaves Tubbo alone with Techno. And Phil, technically, but he’s out cold so Tubbo doesn’t think it counts. 

“…So are you… gonna fess up to some crime, or…?” prods Techno. He doesn’t look all too surprised should that be the case, the line of his mouth relaxed; he seems way more preoccupied with thumbing the delicate little feathers that cluster around Phil’s ears and jaw. It’s absentminded but tender, and for a moment Tubbo zeroes in on the point of contact between Techno’s dull white claws and Phil’s dark, shimmering bristle feathers. There’s something beautiful there, he fancies; Techno and Phil have always been closer than the rest of the family, and even though Tubbo sees Techno as his brother, just the same as Tommy or Wilbur, he knows Phil and Techno have a very different view of their relation to one another than Tubbo does to Phil. It’s impossible to describe in a simple, digestible way - all Tubbo can do to put it into words is to say Phil cried until he couldn’t breathe properly when Techno looked human again, that Techno preens Phil’s wings for him whilst Phil’s distracted sketching builds. Techno’s hair is woven into different intricate braids almost every day, and Phil’s ears and neck are adorned with golden trinkets. They gravitate naturally toward one another, and it’s beyond anything Tubbo can label. All he knows for sure is that he’s witnessed it for years, and it - braids and tea and knowing smiles - is the kind of stuff he wants for himself, someday.

“Tubbo. You good? You knock your head or somethin’?” Tubbo blinks back to the present and finds Techno peering up into his face with a look of vague concern. He still hasn’t stood up - if he does he’d drop Phil all over the floor, which is just not acceptable - but one arm is braced on the back of the sofa, and he’s poised as if to rise. 

Tubbo shakes himself for good measure and says, “Nah, I’m fine! I just tripped, honestly.” A little abashedly, he hedges, “Er, it’s not why I’m late, to be honest?”

Techno’s stiff expression eases, and he settles back into his seat. “Am I gettin’ the truth?” he asks, shifting so Phil’s neck isn’t cricked at an awkward angle. 

The minor god himself snuffles, and Tubbo snorts out a quiet laugh at him. “I mean, yeah? It’s not, like. A big deal? I guess?”

“That’s a lot of question marks,” observes Techno drily. 

“Dude, I dunno! I think it’s not a big deal,” says Tubbo defensively, shrugging and then wincing. He did tumble, just because he wasn’t really looking where he was going and stepped wrong off the walkway and broke the fall with his right arm and scraped his chin; that part’s not a lie. 

Techno snorts and gestures with his head toward Wilbur’s empty space. “Okay, then,” he says, as Tubbo crabwalks over and sits with his back to the arm of the sofa, facing Techno, “fair enough. Why were you quote-unquote ‘late,’ disregardin’ the fact that you don’t actually have a curfew?”

Tubbo can feel the sheepish grin spreading over his face. “I was talkin’ to Ranboo.”

Techno’s eyebrows rise. “Ranboo… the new one, right?” 

“Mhm.” Tubbo pats some of the dried blood from his face with his sleeve; it’s just a flesh wound, it’s already stopped bleeding. Wilbur honestly didn’t even need to go fetch a potion; all Tubbo needs is a band-aid. “Wanted to initiate him.”

“Haze him, you mean.”

Tubbo’s mouth drops open at the audacity. “Not true!” he protests, cuffing Techno on the arm. All it does is make the corners of Techno’s lips twitch. Not one to lose a dumb back-and-forth, Tubbo complains, “You’ve got no faith in me! I want to un-adopt myself from the family. I’m putting myself up for adoption. I’ll sit in a box on the road ‘til someone picks me up.”

Techno rolls his eyes. “Puffy would take you. Schlatt, too. Bad, Fundy, H. I actually hate to tell you this, but we have a waitin’ list drawn up.”

“I’m in high demand,” sniffs Tubbo.

“Sucks for them that we’re keepin’ you. You’re stuck with us.” Techno knocks his knee into Tubbo’s. “Anyway. Back on track. Ranboo.”

Tubbo nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, Ranboo. We had a really long conversation about a bunch of stuff. Um… I don’t remember everything, but I told him a bit about Manberg, and he said he was sorry that happened, and I said it was okay.” Techno’s very still beside Tubbo, so Tubbo hits Techno’s knee with his again, harder, to let him know it’s fine. “Because it is okay. Now it is. Anyway, we talked about MCC after that, because he’s a really big fan of it, and then about, like, best enchantments? I think we got into astrophysics at some point, because he said something about the moon that I forget, and I said something about how to get to it, and he went off about rockets and rocks and maths, which was a little confusing, but he was really passionate about it.” Tubbo stops to take a breath, because they talked about more than that, and he remembers a good deal of it and it was really interesting, but stops at the look on Techno’s face. “What?”

With a wry twist to his mouth, Techno says, “I used to talk about Phil like that.”

“‘Used to?’” says Tubbo without thinking, and has to dodge a punch. “Oh fuck - Techno I’m joking!”

“Sure you are.” Techno clears his throat. “Just sayin’. Is he a good guy?”

“Dream wouldn’t invite him if he weren’t,” Tubbo points out. 

Techno dips his head. “Point taken. Still, you’re a good judge of character.”

“Comes with being a spy,” agrees Tubbo cheerfully. There’s a noise in the hallway. “I think he’s really awkward and pretty smart. D’you know he’s rich?”

“Already? He’s been on for three days.”

“He says he mines when he doesn’t know what to do. He kinda reminds me of you, y’know?”

Techno snorts. “Good to know I strike you as awkward and smart and someone who mines when I have nothing to do,” he says, like all of it’s not true. “Anything else to know?”

“He,” says Tubbo solemnly, “is six foot six. Without heels,” he tacks on, sparing a thought for Eret and zir terrifying array of platforms.

There’s a stifled wheeze reminiscent of a balloon being throttled in the hall. Both Tubbo and Techno ignore it. “I - good for him, I guess?” says Techno, voice leaning more into concern than awe. “It’s gonna be hard for him to fight with that kinda height.”

Tubbo crinkles his nose in thought. “He said he’s a Skywars specialist,” he explains, and Techno hums. “Hypixel, like you.”

“Huh. I’ll check it out.” Techno snarls a claw in Phil’s hair for a moment, silently contemplative, and Tubbo watches them both from the corner of his eye. Ranboo had let Tubbo lean his head on his shoulder when he got tired and pointed out stars and rattled off their names, and gave Tubbo a draught of juice to wake him up and send him on his way because he thought Phil might skin him if Tubbo didn’t get home at some point, and Tubbo’s had Ranboo for about a grand total of eight hours but if anything happened to him he’d kill everyone on this server and then himself. He only feels that safe around Tommy. 

“Just to be clear,” Techno breaks in gingerly, “you’re not interested in, uh… datin’ … Ranboo?”

Oh, what the fuck. A shudder runs through Tubbo just thinking about it. “No offense to Ranboo,” he says, managing to keep a fair bit of the discomfort from his voice, “but the last thing I want is to go out with him.”

“That sounds quite offensive,” announces Wilbur as he breezes back in with a health potion glowing pink in his hands, acting like he wasn’t eavesdropping in the hallway and both Tubbo and Techno heard him trying not to laugh. “Here’s your health pot,” he adds, presenting the flask with an unnecessary flourish to Tubbo. Tubbo snatches it out of his brother’s hands and takes a generous swig. 

“For your information,” he says pompously as the sting on his chin and the ache in his arm evaporate, corking the bottle, “I actually legitimately do not want to date Ranboo. I mean it. It’s like if someone asked you if you and Phil were dating, Techno.”

Disgust flashes over Techno’s face. Wilbur makes a horrified noise. “See what I mean?”

“Mhm, yeah, we’re gonna not talk about this anymore, actually,” Techno says quickly, dropping his hand from where it was scratching the back of his neck to Phil’s shoulder. “How ‘bout you just go to bed and we’ll leave you alo—”

Something slams in the kitchen. Everyone stops dead in their tracks. 

“What the fuck was that?” demands Wilbur, alarm in his voice. 

“Raccoon,” predicts Techno primly. “I’m not movin’. Wilbur, this one’s all yours.”

Wilbur spins on his heel to face Techno, betrayal written all over his face. “Techno,” he begins, a whine pitching his words high.

“Take this,” says Techno mercilessly, tossing Wilbur his sword. Wilbur nearly misses it, staggers under its weight. 

“Do I get to take Benihime?” Tubbo asks eagerly. 

Techno rolls his eyes. “No. Go fight off the intruder with your bare fists, you have it in you.”

“Damn right I do.” Tubbo cracks his knuckles and jumps to his feet, nudges Wilbur with his shoulder when Wilbur finally heaves the broadsword to his hip. “Let’s go, they’re probably going through our pantry by now.”

Wilbur sighs long-sufferingly and leads them both down the dim hall to the unlit kitchen. For a moment, they pause, as the rattle of bits and bobs falling from ledges and a muffled curse pierces the gloom. Wilbur hefts up the Orphan Obliterator wirh an effort. Tubbo tries not to burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all, fails, and reaches under Wilbur’s trembling arm to flick on the lights whilst guffawing.

The golden head of one Tommy Innit freezes in the open kitchen window, eyes round as ender pearls. Tubbo chokes on his laughter. Their older brother stares at Tommy the way a starving wolf stares at a lamb that accidentally stumbles into its path. Tubbo, from behind him, frantically motions for Tommy to abort mission; Tommy doesn’t get the notice. 

“And what were you doing ‘til three AM, Tomathy Innit,” says Wilbur flatly. 

“My many wives,” replies Tommy immediately. 

Techno groans audibly. 

Tubbo gives him two thumbs up.

Chapter Text

Ponk has a couple of habits that haven’t abandoned him since he was younger. He bites his nails, so the mask stops him from doing it. He forgets to tie his shoelaces, so most of his footwear are velcro or slip-ons. When something really bad happens, it’s like klaxons go off in his head, and he automatically covers his ears with his hands.

So when the hubbub dies down, and Bad leans over Dream to lay his hand ever-so-gently on Dream’s brow, and his expression morphs from softhearted concern to terror in the space of a breath, and his head darts down to Dream’s mouth, then his chest, and his face crumples, several things happen at once.

One: Sapnap starts to scream. He was curled up beside Quackity to soothe him, his arm slung over Quackity’s shoulders, and now he’s stood up, screaming, his face stark wide in horror. Quackity is shaking his head. He’s backing up.

Two: Sam runs back in, chest heaving. His mask is unclipped and swings from one ear as he sees Bad with his head to Dream’s chest, hunting, and Sapnap, shaking, and puts two and two together. He claps both hands over his mouth. Tears spill out of his eyes. Faintly, familiarly, he starts to hum that nonsensical lullaby about redstone that he and Skeppy made up for Sapnap.

Three: Techno’s eyes splinter. He strides through the people who’ve collapsed to the floor, their legs unable to hold them, and sweeps Bad aside with a brusque wave of his arm. He’s methodical, fastidious; turns Dream’s slack face this way and that, sinks close to listen for Dream’s breathing, touches two fingers to Dream’s neck and then his fragile wrist and finally his chest.

He bows his head.

Four: Tommy, in typical fashion, starts to cuss Dream out, only he’s half hysterical as he does it so it doesn’t land quite as it usually does. Beside him, Tubbo is pulling at Tommy’s arm, his eyes round and glassy and far, far away; the line of his mouth is loose, and even as his best friend and brother rages and tries to bend the earth beside him, Tubbo stares down at his bare feet and breathes very slow and doesn’t say a word.

Five: Niki drops her cloth into her bucket. She buries her face in her cold, wet hands.

Six: Wilbur drops to his knees, and then his hands. All the color’s drained from his face. He looks almost grey, washed out, his hair lank in his eyes, all the hope leached from his shoulders. His jumper’s a size too big. He looks brittle.

Seven: George rears back and throws his goggles aside with a sharp cry. They shatter against a seam that creeps along the wall, the dark glass strewn all around his feet, a shard shining and plasticky under his shoe; George makes a sound like a lion as it’s torn from its cub and crumbles down down down into himself, castles into sand, his pleas into ashes, dust to dust.

Eight: Eret tips aer head back into the window ae sits at. Ae says nothing, but then, ae doesn’t have to; the curtain, half-transparent, threads past aer wan face, suddenly years older, the pain picking out the hollows of aer face. A historian, a librarian, a scorekeeper: Ae knows that death in this way, a cruel and chopping-block end, is unprecedented. Eret doesn’t articulate that verbally; instead, ae leans aer entire body against the wide glass panes and clasps aer hands and clenches until aer knuckles go bloodless white.

Nine: Dream’s head lolls lifelessly on his neck. If it weren’t for the porcelain stillness of indisputable and irrefutable death, he’d look peaceful.

Ten: Ponk crouches down onto his haunches, looks at Dream’s golden hair spilled out over the red red sheets, and blocks out all of the world with his hands over his ears.

Chapter Text

Dream’s stretching by the time George arrives, a grin splitting his face. George wants to slap him. He settles instead for knocking back the watered-down strength potion concoction he cobbled together from whatever he found in Alyssa’s minifridge. It’s potentially toxic, but that sounds like a problem for future George.

“It,” he announces mournfully, swirling the flask in his hand, “is three in the morning. Why did you call me at three in the morning.”

“Not just you, I asked Sapnap too. Did you get my note?”

Like dragging not one, but both of his best friends out of bed hours before the crack of dawn is any better. George gives a long, pointed slurp from his mixmatch juice before replying, “Yes, of course I got it.” He jams his hand into his pants pocket, pulls out a crumpled slip of paper with Dream’s spidery scrawl all over it. “You taped it to my forehead. While I was sleeping.”

Dream throws him a beaming smile. “You still sleep like a log,” he says sweetly. The urge to slap him grows ever stronger.

“I hate it - when you play all cute,” comes a slurring voice, and George turns to find Sapnap tossing his arm over his shoulders for support, cutting himself off with a yawn in the middle of his sentence. He looks even worse for wear than George does, and it’s pity that prompts George to offer him a sip. Sapnap takes it with only minimal wariness, gives it a sniff, shrugs, and takes a swig before gagging dramatically and shoving it back into George’s hands.

“What the fuck is that?” he demands, eyes all but popping from his skull, staggering over to Dream’s side in an attempt to find sanctuary. “Why the shit does it taste like poison?”

George blinks at him. “I dunno. I forgot what I put in it. There was definitely a strength pot, though.”

Dream cringes as Sapnap gapes his mouth open at him and tries to get him to identify the color of his tongue. “Did you not brush your teeth, or is that because of George’s poison over there?”

“I resent that,” George says dolefully, cradling the nightmare fuel in his arms protectively. “This stuff woke me right up. See, you’re totally awake too, now.”

“Maybe ‘cause you almost killed me,” scoffs Sapnap, ignoring both Dream’s hearty wheeze and the obvious proof of George’s statement in his bright eyes and renewed vigor. Wrinkling his nose at the flask, he adds, “I think you should get it sent for testing. Anyway,” and he turns to Dream, putting his hands on his shoulders to force him to straighten up, with a little shake thrown in for flavor when Dream can’t stop laughing. “what’d you need us for? C’mon, I wanna go back to bed!”

Dream chokes on a guffaw before finally managing, “Yeah… so - oh my god, okay, wait - ” a couple more giggles, “ - okay, yeah, uh, so… you guys remember that thing I pitched, like, a while back? The… hunters thing. Where I try to Endchase?”

“Manhunt?” Dream had pitched it a while back - and by a while back, George means Dream brought it up last night over dinner and Bad had immediately shut it down because he thought it was too dangerous. He clearly forgot that insinuating something is “risky” and “more trouble than it’s worth” and “might get you guys killed” is basically begging Dream to do it.

Dream nods eagerly, eyes bright. “Manhunt,” he says, enunciating it with a very particular lilt, almost reverent. “Come on, Callahan said he’d spectate for us, and I got a friend to make us a world and everything. It’ll be fun!”

“What, getting killed over and over?” Sapnap goads, the corners of his mouth quirking up as he straightens up. Dream’s eyes flash beneath the mask; he prowls closer, humming, “Wanna bet?” and Sapnap’s grin sharpens into a smirk. George recognizes that tone from years of hearing it - Dream putting a challenge down, Sapnap picking it up. The two bounce off of one another so easily it’s a miracle they don’t get killed every other day thanks to some harebrained adrenaline-junkie scheme Dream cooks up in his ADHD-sponsored sleepless nights.

George is more skeptical and has the life skill of critical thinking, thank you very much. “Okay, wait, hang on a second,” he interrupts the two as they circle one another with matching snarls, physically pushing them apart. Sapnap rears back dramatically at the waft of poison juice he gets when George pokes him, and Dream whines like a fucking baby as George rounds on him and interrogates, rapid-fire, “First off, who’s this friend? Why’d you say ‘friend’ and not their name, like we won’t recognize them? Second, have you thought of all the things that can go wrong and how we can rectify them? Third, do we need to mod things into it? Are you going to make it into a video?” Dream’s gotten into uploading recently and it’s been going well - he’s pretty decently popular for the length of time he’s been putting out content, and he’s pestered both Sapnap and George into featuring in them - but if this is for public consumption and not good fun, other factors need to be taken into account, like -

“Entertainment.” Dream’s eyes are keen on George’s face as he nods. “I know, I’ve been working on that - with - ” and here he furrows his brow, casts a look over his shoulder as though he’s afraid of people overhearing even though it’s literally just the three of them alone in the clearing at three in the bloody morning, then beckons George and Sapnap closer. George, apprehensive, leans in.

Nothing could have prepared him to hear Dream say, “I asked Xisuma.”

Sapnap squawks. George grabs Dream by the shoulders.

“What d’you mean, Xisuma?!” George demands in a hushed shriek. “The Xisumavoid? Him?? The minor god Xisuma? Hermit Xisuma??”

“How the fuck did you get in contact with him, dude?” Sapnap asks right on the heels of George’s questions, sounding just as flabbergasted.

Dream just looks sheepish as he admits, “We’ve been, uh… talking back and forth for a little, and he said he could do me a favor.” He shrugs. “It might just be, like… a pity thing for a smaller creator, or whatever, but at least he said he’d help. And that’s big.”

“Really big,” agrees George, mind racing. Xisumavoid. Dream got Xisumavoid to help him on this - this scheme. Video idea? Potential jackpot? There’s no saying what got one of the greatest minor gods on record to invest in Manhunt, but it’s groundbreaking, and a huge deal. The Hermits on their own are revered for their abilities and skill, but Xisuma stands out as the world owner of sprawling landscapes, keeping up with every shift in nature the old gods offer the humans, manning modifications and code, spearheading campaigns to keep anarchy servers alive by offering to own them himself. He holds the record for the highest number of worlds ever upkept by a single minor god, and apparently he goes on functioning like a completely normal guy in spite of it. He’s a huge anomaly all on his own, and everyone knows to respect him and his Hermits.

“This is nuts,” George says faintly.

Dream bounces on his heels. “I know, right?” he says excitedly, hands clasped tightly. “This is huge. I just - I really think this could… be something big. And fun to watch. And we’re all good, you know? Like, we’re - I trust you guys with my life, literally. And this could be super interesting and be fun for people to watch and - I don’t know! Just…” Dream throws in a puppy-dog pout just for good measure, as if George hadn’t felt the words “I trust you guys with my life” seep warm into his chest like honey finding its way into the cracks of a clay pot, and says tentatively, “will you give it a shot?”

A cricket chirps in the night silence. Dream holds his breath. George can’t find it within him to glare at his best friend after that heartwarming spiel, so he opts for sighing so heavily he can feel something pop and chugging the rest of his semi-potion.

“Of course we will, man,” says Sapnap, rather thickly, and Dream gives him a look of deep disgust as Sapnap blows his nose into his sleeve.

“Gross.”

“You’re gross.”

George tucks the empty flask into his knapsack and tells them long-sufferingly, “You’re both so stupid,” and tells Dream specifically, “Yes, you idiot, let’s do it,” and screams as Dream whoops, does a little victory shimmy, and tackles him into the grass in what George assumes was meant to be a hug but what could probably be taken as a murder attempt.

“Thank you,” Dream breathes into his shoulder, desperately genuine through the blades of grass and stray licks of pollen, and George coughs.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies, and in spite of his best efforts, the fondness shines through the spaces between his words. “Sure. Of course, Dream.”

Chapter Text

Philza Minecraft learns the face of death when he is twenty-two and the head of a five-member family, on a fair June morning that he can’t see through the endless constellations wrapping their fingers cold around his arms and jerking him down down down.

An amateur mistake. The clinical, keen-eyed corner of his mind runs through his last five actions like clockwork, filing each careless step away brusquely: The poor pearl placement, the few shuffling steps he took backward to recenter himself, his failure to scrabble for the Unbreaking fishing rod he knows is collapsed in his pack somewhere that might have been his ticket to just another close call instead of certain death.

It’s a foreign concept, permanent death. It happens, once someone has lived their life to the fullest, once they know there is nothing left for them here and they’re ready to move on, but Phil’s young, barely able to grow peach fuzz and hair free of grey, and he’s a fucking minor god, his longevity ensured in the cupped palms of the old gods, and even though he doesn’t know what to expect, irrational terror seizes him with freezing hands anyway: he doesn’t want to die.

He has people waiting for him back home.

This is stupid. It was such a stupid fucking mistake, or a series of them, but stupid all the same; Techno, serious and awkward and clever, will probably be in the mining system Phil has mapped out for him, and Tommy and Tubbo will be marking up the dining table with the lumps of wax and dye Phil cobbled together for them as Wil tunes his ukulele with reverent hands. The rose-tinted memory chokes and burns on its way down - they’re too little, and Phil doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him.

The crux of the matter: Phil doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him.

One of Phil’s greatest points of pride is his library of knowledge. He likes to think he’s tried everything at least once, if only to learn the answer himself, and if he hasn’t, then he will. He reverse-engineered every potion recipe he knows, sketched out his own strategies for identifying valuable minerals, learned to pick out piglins who looked like they had something shiny to barter and pawned off meaningless trinkets for busted prices to villagers whom he’d rescued from zombification. He knows enough not only to survive but to thrive in the world he was granted at spawn.

However.

The Void is inconceivable. A hungry vast unfurling below the earth, under the unbreakable bedrock and simmering in the End, there have been records of objects being thrown into the Void and never returning, pearls being hurled toward the upside-down stars and drawing no players with them.

There have been records of unfortunate adventurers, hoping to Endbust, who slip.

The Void is far past the comprehension of any mortal and immortal. Phil’s spoken to other minor gods who revere and fear the Void in equal measure. Jordan, who may as well have a direct goddamn pipeline to several old gods, has only ever said that the elders bow to the Void as well. In lower voices: The stories say the Void twists any living thing that touches it beyond recognition. Because it is beyond space, because it is beyond time, that any who dare touch it will be undone and remade wrong, their organs unaligned, their core beings assessed and misunderstood. That people stumble and crawl from it broken, shattered, irretrievable, or that they are thrown centuries away from where they began, or that they are engulfed never to return to blissful, merciful life, where the old gods watch and keep safe. Death is a mercy, they say, compared to the unending winter of the Void.

Something clamps over his mouth, icy, and sucks the breath from his lungs. It must take a second, the space in which it takes Phil’s lashes to flutter: He’s staring wildly up at the spinning galactic sky, and then something dark, tarlike, unshakeable, has wrapped him in its coils, and his entire body locks up as his vision goes black.

It’s not unconsciousness. Unconsciousness would be incredibly welcome right about now, but Phil’s fully lucid to feel the sickening feeling of being thoroughly and fundamentally seen, like his ribs are being cricked apart for observation, like his limbs have been tacked down onto cork with knives, like something is swallowing him alive to see what ingestion, digestion, the breakdown of his atoms will do. It’s like drowning on land, only triply worse; water can be coughed up. Phil is being suffocated in a crib, eyes roving to identify his assailant, if his assailant were everywhere, all at once, all the time, always watching, always knowing. Sleep paralysis is a joke compared to being sundered in a dizzying hunger of the chasm in the world, falling forever, blinded by a god so far beyond being a god that it is truth and falsehood in one, your own self failing you rather than any outside being tearing your eyes from your head or your tongue from between your lips.

In spite of the desperate thoughts crowding every recess of his head, though, Phil manages to recognize something - it doesn’t feel like he’s falling. He has no concept of up or down, nor where he is, nor the position and extremities of his body, but it feels more like weightlessness than drowning or spiralling, lacking that gasping swoop of the stomach that accompanies a drop from a height. It feels like - it feels like -

It feels like he’s flying.

It’s what jolts him from his white-noise reverie - that floaty feeling that has always appealed to him, the kind of siren call that coaxes him to a cliffside with a wayward wish for those elytras that are diagrammed in his stronghold tomes. He’s always wanted to fly, not just for the ridiculous usefulness of it but just for the joy of the act; he envies birds, when he sees them migrating high overhead. He’s always had a way with them, and more often than not the inquisitive little idiots leave him trinkets after abandoning their assigned post of pestering him relentlessly, and he’s found himself envying the lightness of their bodies, the ease with which they navigate the skies. It’s a childish whim that he never grew out of, even as a whip-tongued teenager, and the insistent caress of the Void reminds him of it as he spins somewhere, sometime, rather than falls.

He doesn’t know what happens. His mind is everywhere, his bearings completely scattered, and he’s losing time, or whatever it is is passing within or around the Void; all he knows is that now he’s dreaming, not so much aware that he’s doing so as he is recognizing the dream as a means to an end. Dreams - the kind that make him float - they’re about what he wants, aren’t they, about the way he wants to see his sons and best friend again no matter what it takes, the muscles round his shoulders and back straining toward that picture-perfect still image still glassy with hope in his piercing mind’s eye. That he’d give anything. That he’d weather anything. That he would do anything it took to be by their sides and tell them he loves them, even if the Void rends his flesh from his bones and unreels him into unreality or drags his broken body through a century’s worth of hardships. Ruffle their hair one more time. Plant a kiss onto their heads even as they protest.

Something grinds out of place, a cog catching and refusing to turn. It shifts within Phil, putting something there that shouldn’t be, and if he had the breath to cry out he would; as it is, the Void’s unrelenting grip on his throat doesn’t ease, and he emits a weak, pitiful little sound from between clenched teeth.

He fancies he hears something, maybe, for the first time in - what? Minutes? Months? Millennia? It sounds hollow. It sounds too-full. The words are impossible to make out, but Phil understands anyway, nods vigorously because it’s all he can do under the monstrous pressure caving his ribcage into the tissue paper of his lungs, gnawing into his heart.

A question. An answer. A transaction, if Phil were generous.

(His family will later call it a murder.)

He’s tossed unceremoniously into dewy green.

For a few long, excruciatingly gruelling moments, Phil can’t breathe, even as the vice clamped around his neck eases like smoke. Everything is working too fast - his mind, his breaths, his galloping pulse - and he’s almost sure he’s about to die of an exploded heart.

Sensation returns in a trickle, too thin to allow him to properly identify anything. The world coalesces blurry all around him, clusters of unresolved color eddying in and out of focus. A thick earth pricks into his collapsed limbs; grass, maybe, probably. He’s shaking. He’s shaking so hard he can feel his teeth chatter even as he can’t feel anything else. It’s so cold that it feels like he’s burning up, a nonsensical sear against every inch of his flesh.

Something heavy clings to his back when he hazards an attempt to get up.

The something is heavy enough that Phil drops to the earth with a strained noise and doesn’t try again. He thinks they might be soft, if unkempt; he can feel patches of something cloying and itchy, like paint left out on the porch to dry and crack, splotching his temples, his jaw, the corners of his eyes, just like the somethings weighing him down. He moves to reach for his back, bites his groan into his shoulder when the stretch ekes a violent protest from his bones. They feel… thin, almost, like his skeleton has been reamed out into eaves of paper and soaked to brittleness, like the slender neck of a bottle: fragile, too easy to crack. Everything aches with every echoing beat of his heart. Phil holds his tongue.

It will be Techno, anxious about the radio silence, who stumbles over him and screams for help until the others come. Phil’s family will gather up the wreckage of his puzzle-pieced body and gently, gently carry him to their sturdy stone-brick house to lay him on his bed, check his forehead for fever, trip their way through their first potions for regens and healings, and then slowness, when the former don’t work, for the pain. They will beg him into spoonfuls of mushroom stew and chicken stock, take turns going out to hunt for meat or scoop up sweetberries and herbs from the spruce forest nearby, comb his windstormed hair and sing him hesitant little lullabies. They will lay him on his stomach, because those heavy somethings -

(Gifts from the Void, if Phil were generous. Make no mistake, they’re beautiful, everything he’s ever dreamed of when a crow drops a bottle cap at his feet and preens at his gratitude and takes flight once more, but the Void - she sucked the marrow from his bones for the sake of his flight, siphoned his muscle to grant him freedom of the skies. He breaks all too easily. Another gift.)

(In ten years, he will warn another minor god of the gifts of the elders.)

For now. For now.

Wilbur and Techno parse through the feathers and keep them clean. They know that someday, when the chill of the Void subsides, the person who sheltered them will grow to love them.

Chapter Text

The first time Schlatt looks into a mirror after the Festival, he has just finished throwing up what feels like an obscene amount of his internal organs and is seriously contemplating going another round braced over the toilet bowl because he does not feel better when he catches a glimpse of himself in the reflective glass and freezes like a deer in headlights.

It’s not his face that sets him off (translucently pale even in the yellowish light of the redstone lamps in the floor, the half-gelled hair sweated out of its slick-back, the thick curl of his horns around his brown ears, features that have been present since his teenage years), nor his clothing (an unacceptably rumpled dress shirt and slacks, both dusty from the dizzying run to the White House and germy from his stint knelt in the bathroom - the jacket was abandoned somewhere in his the Oval Office, and he has no plans of retrieving it any time soon), though both of those sorely need a wash.

What has him reeling backward, nausea pawing at the space behind his sternum, is the dull gleam of his greasy yellow eyes, and the horizontal black pupils that cleave them in half with finality.

(He’d checked his reflection in his communicator, moments before the whitelist portal to the Dream SMP unhinged its jaw before him. Nothing special - dark suit and dark hair and shrewd dark eyes in an otherwise unassuming face, young and careless.

He forgot that, once he stepped through. The air felt different.

He felt different.)

Horizontally slit pupils, common to ovine mammals and certain reptiles, an evolutionary adaptation that allows prey animals to spot an approaching threat whilst they’re grazing thanks to the rectangular pupil’s wide scope of vision and the fact that it turns in the creature’s head, meaning even as it eats, it is always vigilant, always searching for the next threat as its hunter is searching for its next meal.

Schlatt barely scrambles back to the toilet before the bile burns his throat again.

[...]

When he looks it up, he’s informed that alcohol withdrawal symptoms can last anywhere from the next forty-eight hours to several weeks. It’s not exactly the bright-eyed news of instant recovery he was hoping for, and he’s really not looking forward to camping out in the third-story loo and cursing out anyone who tries to enter to warn them off on his own, but he probably should’ve known better: Wilbur, always the more emotional one between them, breaks first and knocks on his door on the second day, as the sun beats against Schlatt’s pointedly drawn curtains and he tries to suffocate himself in his own pillow. 

“F’k off,” groans Schlatt, then hisses when the jostle of his voice rattles his brain in its cage. Wilbur, ever a blessing and a curse, does not fuck off and instead waltzes right in and sinks into a crouch beside his bed. 

“How’s it going, man?” he asks, soft, the question almost ridiculously inane, and Schlatt barely reins himself in from scoffing at it because he knows Wilbur will throw him those stupid big puppy eyes and act all hurt in a way that’s just a shade too close to truthful and make Schlatt feel like a rootin’ tootin’ bastard. He instead opts for lifting the edge of the pillow by the barest sliver to spit balefully, “I want to drown myself in the fuckin’ toilet, Wilbur.”

Wilbur’s chuckle sounds a little too breathless to be genuine. “Count me in,” he says, a touch absentminded, and this time Schlatt has to emit his sound of surprised irritation.

“Keep up with the program, Wil,” he says drily into his mattress. “I’m saying that as, like, an extension of the fuckin’ hack job alcohol poisoning I tried to give myself. Be more original.”

Schlatt feels rather than sees Wilbur recoil from his side with a quiet, mournful “Oh,” and sighs at the pain in it. Softens, just an inch, because he knows what Wilbur can do with just an inch of give.

“Relax, dude.” He gropes blindly in a direction until Wilbur takes the hint and his hand, curls his fingers into Wilbur’s awkward knobby knuckles and smooths his thumb over the back of his fist. “‘M just fuckin’ with ya. Well, I mean, the ‘drinking to excess’ thing still stands, but I’m just pullin’ your leg. Chill a little.”

Wilbur scoffs a little doubtfully but it’s tired, and Schlatt can already tell he’s relented. Wilbur’s always been like that - he plays all stubborn and chaotic but catch him with his guard down and he’s the easiest person to poke into giving in when it’s over something that doesn’t matter. Tommy’s especially good at that, but Schlatt’s seen Techno pull it off as well, and Tubbo -

Schlatt’s gut curdles sourly at the thought of Tubbo (eyes stretched to the size of compasses, shrinking into the corner of the cramped little box Schlatt built by hand, enchantments sparkling along the length of Techno’s crossbow), and he forces himself to stagger to his feet, almost knock Wilbur clear off his feet in his haste to make it to the bathroom, and collapse over the toilet bowl with a heaving shudder. 

He flinches when a hand flattens on his back gingerly, but he knows without glancing over that it’s just Wil, brow pinched in concern, wincing when Schlatt spits up the few sips of water he’d managed after waking up with a splitting migraine. There’s an absolutely shit aftertaste in his mouth once he coughs up the last of this particular bout of nausea, coupled with an unpleasant bone-dryness that Schlatt’s going have to choke some water down to treat, and Wilbur’s cold, shaky hand is a mercy against his clammy neck when Wilbur checks his pulse and frowns at how fast it’s going; Schlatt can literally feel the buzz against the pressure of Wilbur’s fingers. 

“You ought to check in with someone. Niki, maybe,” Wilbur suggests, then lunges to scrape back Schlatt’s hair from his face when he slumps over the seat again. This one isn’t nausea, though; Schlatt just feels a wave of dizziness at the prospect of looking anyone from Manberg in the eye. 

“I’d literally rather die, Wil,” he says caustically, bracing his head in the crook of his elbow as he turns it so that he’s not dunking his head into the water. He’s almost taken aback by how drawn Wilbur looks, the distinct hollows of his cheeks and the fragility of his expression, before he reminds himself that it’s no fun at all to play backseat driver to something controlling your stiff puppet limbs, and Wilbur must surely be experiencing the same things, if perhaps lacking in the hourly vomiting quota. More tactfully, he tacks on, “That’s overdramatic of me, ‘m sorry. Guess I might, but Ponk was my doctor back when I - back during then, y’know - ” he has zero plans of meeting with Ponk, but Wilbur doesn’t need to know that, “ - so maybe I should - you good, dude?”

Wilbur is staring at Schlatt with a strange, faraway look in his eyes, a veneer to his expression that sets Schlatt on edge. It reminds Schlatt of the few times he’d walked in on Punz, later on, or Techno, earlier, when they were dissociating, sat with their hands in their laps and gazes affixed to the wall, unresponsive; Punz called it “being floaty” and Techno flatly moved on afterward, and here’s Wilbur now, gazing down through Schlatt’s skin and into his marrow, unblinking.

“...Wil?” asks Schlatt, wobbly, reaching out to push the unkempt curls from Wilbur’s eyes.

“Do you remember everything you did?” asks Wilbur, unnervingly still.

(He does. As though they were his own actions. As though he himself was reaching for a new bottle every day from his cabinet, throwing glass at the people he’s long considered friends, grandly ordering the death of his best friend’s little brother on a stage in front of dozens of people.

Who’s to say it wasn’t him?)

“Yes.” Schlatt’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, unwieldy; he’s already dreading the answer when he asks back, “Do you?”

Wilbur’s face is leached of depth as he drops his jaw, considers. Says, faint, “No. Nothing.”

Schlatt stares back into the toilet.

Amazingly, nothing comes up.

[...]

Quackity finds him sitting out by the docks feeling sorry for himself, which probably serves him right. Schlatt hardly relishes it - he might as well have taught Q everything the guy knows about the ins and outs of intraserver conflict, as well as what happens when you chug too many potions at once - but he has to admit that he’s lonely, riding out the wake of his burning nausea at two in the morning with the stars peering down at him, and better Quackity’s company than anyone else (i.e. Wilbur, who holds his hair when he’s vomiting and tucks him neatly into bed and looks at him with so much helpless shared guilt that Schlatt needs to get away for hours at a time, no matter how ungrateful he feels about it). 

“Hey, dickhead,” says Quackity by way of greeting, and Schlatt musters up a dusty old snort for it. At least some things don’t change.

“Hi, Q,” he replies, dropping his head onto his knees. The water stretches out endlessly, even though Schlatt knows there’ll be land a couple hundred chunks west. The constellations overhead wink mockingly.

“Been a few days. You visited Dream?” Good old Q, never one to beat around the bush. Schlatt hums and shakes his head, tamps down the quiet thrill of victory when it doesn’t elicit a jarring wave of stomach-swooping dizziness. “I figured not. George and Sapnap probably woulda said.” At Schlatt’s inquiring look: “They haven’t left him even once.”

Schlatt chokes his hum into his chest. “That tracks,” he says, instead of “Because they don’t want to abandon him again,” or “Because it’s his deathbed,” or “I killed him.”  

Quackity angles a look at him down his nose, and Schlatt knows Q knows what it is he didn’t say. Still, he doesn’t call Schlatt out on it; he nudges Schlatt until Schlatt scoots over an inch, shucks off his shoes and tosses them over his shoulder, dangles his legs over the dock. The silence they naturally fall into is nearly peaceful for a long moment Schlatt wishes childishly would last forever.

It does not, in fact, last forever; it lasts approximately ten seconds, before Quackity leans forward and remarks, without looking at him, “It takes, like, two days before the worst parts of alcohol withdrawal die out, right? How you doing?”

Schlatt inhales very evenly. Of course Quackity knew why Schlatt’s been avoiding everyone after everything that’s gone down; even Wilbur’s been haunting the halls of the White House like a melted caramel ghost, swaddled in his sweaters and pyjama pants, but Schlatt’s remained voluntarily exiled within his room; letting people see him all queasy and dizzy and generally fucked up after everything he did to them hits a little too close. Even now, Quackity won’t look him in the eye. “Fine,” Schlatt opts to say, twining his fingers together and pressing them to his legs so that they stop fucking trembling. “Fine, I’m - I’m doin’ fine.” Suddenly desperate to talk about anything that isn’t himself and how he’s doing, Schlatt adds, “How about you, man, how’s everything after - ” idiot, don’t talk about it, you can’t, “ - how’s everything with you?”

It’s painfully awkward. It feels like the first time they met, Quackity having just entered his teens and Schlatt just a year older and as good as a decade wiser. trying to find their common ground. It’s hell to navigate. Schlatt briefly considers throwing himself into the ocean to escape.

Quackity saves him the trouble by saying wryly, “I mean, good as I can get? It’s - it’s bad, with Dream - with how he’s - yeah.” His voice gets smaller as he talks about Dream, dropping in octave to reflect Schlatt’s heart dropping into his toes. Quackity always gussies things up to seem better than they are, even when it’s serious, so to watch his lips thin and fists tense as he mentions Dream’s name - well, what’s one more metaphorical pike to the gut.

“You can’t… run away from us forever,” Quackity says abruptly, and he must see the visceral horror that makes itself right at home on Schlatt’s face, because he amends hurriedly, “Shit - fuck - sorry, Schlatt, not like that, I swear I didn’t mean it like that - fuck’s sake, I don’t think before I speak - I just mean - you can’t, like… avoid the people that you - that were hurt under your administration forever.” What sliver of Quackity’s gaze Schlatt can meet through the brim of his beanie is deadly serious as he says, “We know it wasn’t you, dude, but if you keep… running from us, none of us can fix this. You know? It’ll just… go on forever.” He breaks off to clench his jaw, works it a few times, then squeezes out, suddenly thick, “We miss you. Just… don’t let this be how we think of you, ‘kay?” and he’s stood, his shoelaces balled up in one hand, bolting from the pier before Schlatt can even think to reply out of his stunned stupor. 

“Don’t let this be how we think of you.”

Schlatt wishes he could see what they thought of him. He wishes he could remember the emotions in their parallelism to the actions his hands took, the directions his feet dragged him. He wishes for context, for recognition, for resolution, when all he can get is a clean film reel of his misdeeds with no emotion as a Dropbox attachment. He needs to know why. He needs to know how. 

“We miss you,” Quackity had whispered.

Schlatt grits his teeth.

(Prey eyes.)

He gathers up his legs beneath him, stands. Taps a note on his communicator. Sets off for the White House, trying to manifest a spring in his step. He’ll play this game. He can lose to Quackity. To the friends he may well lose.

(Prey eyes, golden with their horizontal pupils. Wilbur’s glazed eyes when Schaltt told him he remembered.)

He can lose.

It’s all he’s been doing, since he came here.

Chapter Text

“So.” Xisuma steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “What’ve you got there?”

Grian grins at him. His new, brilliant plumage bursts wild over his cheeks, inching down into the swathe of his scarf where there once unfurled dusky scales. “A smoothie,” he says brightly, tipping his cup for Xisuma to observe. 

Xisuma presses his fingers into his temples.

Really, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Hermitcraft houses more than its fair share of powerful, eccentric minor gods, and even amongst them, Grian is a standout with his massive wings. There’s only one other active minor god whose self-concept is that drastic, and Philza has been touched by the Void, so it’s an understatement to say Xisuma is concerned over the fact that not only does one of his resident mischief-makers have functional wings, but that they’ve somehow shifted from their original shape into those of a scarlet macaw’s, bold and startling. Dramatic skin changes tend to be a warning sign of dips in mental health or perceived instability.

“What I meant to do,” he tries again, “was ask about your wings, Grian. They’re… certainly not quite the ones you had before.”

Again, underplaying the situation. Grian’s new wings, whilst certainly eye-catching, are still less worrying than their previous iteration. Xisuma remembers the letters he’d sent back and forth with Grian; how he’d thought, startled, that their lighthearted correspondence in no way reflected the wan figure with haunted eyes and the draconic, shulker-violet wings that enveloped him wherever he went. 

“They certainly aren’t,” Grian sniffs. He stretches one out for Xisuma to inspect, each feather aligned meticulously, shining in the early-morning grey. “More like parrots! I think they’re lovely.”

Xisuma laughs helplessly at that. “I never said they weren’t.” They are lovely, Xisuma can’t lie, especially considering the effort Grian clearly took to groom them to perfection. Xisuma wonders briefly if Grian asked Philza for help before shaking himself and returning to the task at hand. “It’s just - how quickly they changed. Are you… Is everything alright with you?”

A shrewd expression pulls at Grian’s mouth, tugs it gently into a sly grin. It’s odd, seeing the bare of Grian’s teeth unhindered by the patch of discolored purple scales that used to plate his right cheek. There’s only smooth skin, now. “Why, Ex-eye-zoo-mah, is this a house call?”

“Out of all the possible pronunciations, that ranks among the worst,” Xisuma tells him, pained. “And yes, it is. I have the right to be worried, I think.” With a sudden swell of protectiveness: “I swore, didn’t I? The Hermits are under my oath, and thereby my protection. You’re ours, when you become a Hermit. Even the people who don’t live here anymore.”

Grian’s smirk softens. “I know. You promised me, and then told me you don’t go back on those. I’ve yet to see you break a promise, you know?” 

“I try.” Xisuma folds his hands in his lap again, watching as Grian swirls his smoothie contemplatively. He always checks in briefly with the rest of the Hermits before officially moving out, housing them on his home world in the interim, but he’d quarantined Grian and himself for this particular talk. Something told him it would be a story best told behind closed doors. “So… your wings?”

Grian tucks them close to his back, takes off his glasses and wipes at them with the hem of his loose tunic. Asks in return, matter-of-fact, “Will it help you, to know?”

“It’s about you, not me,” Xisuma shoots back, not unkindly. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s perfectly fine. I was just wondering if you were okay. If talking about your wings isn’t relevant to that, there’s no reason for us to talk about them.”

Grian worries his lip between his teeth for a moment, tugging at his scarf: a nervous habit that Xisuma’s noted. He’s concentrating so hard on the fraying golden threads that he almost misses it when Grian blurts, “I was the creator of Evo.”

It takes a minute to land, and then Xisuma’s eyebrows are shooting up to his hairline, eyes trained on Grian. “Evolution SMP? Grian - ”

“I know - everyone knows. About the server almost collapsing. The glitches, before. It’s on all our channels.” Grian’s voice, always so peppy, sounds unbearably unhappy. “But it was home for all of us. It was home for me . It was all so - it was supposed to be a bit of fun. Playing around with all the quests and missions, the games, the puzzles, ‘advancing’ by updating the server according to what the old gods rolled out. I mean… I was tired, but I thought I could handle it. I thought I was handling it.”

Xisuma remembers the pale shade of his pen pal stepping through the whitelist portal. Remembers Scar pulling him aside later, eyes big and shiny with concern. Grian had looked leeched of life even then, months after what appeared to be his abrupt departure from Evo, and the entire server was on eggshells around him for weeks before he started to warm up, before he started seeing the therapist Cleo recommended. If Grian hadn’t showed up even to join Season Six after practically half a year of complete radio silence on his social media accounts and channels, Xisuma would’ve raised hell and called for a search-and-rescue, had been mulling it over already.

“But then…?” he prompts, gentle, when Grian subsides into silence.

“...I didn’t have any admins. Or owners, or the like. Just me, running what amounted to a games server for the kind of coding and modifications I’d been adding.” Xisuma lets out a harsh exhale. “I know, I know what you’re thinking - dangerous. You’re not wrong. With a server of that magnitude - ”

“You could’ve hurt yourself, badly,” Xisuma finishes for him. Common sense, common knowledge - every minor god should know the limits of their power. Xisuma’s an odd one out - the air bends around him in a veil, thins before his skin with the amount of power all trapped inside one person - but most minor gods don’t have that kind of strength, and Grian’s among those that rely more on their own survival skills than any godly power. “Grian, was it like that even when you were writing me?” There’s a pinprick of conscience at the back of his throat - if he’d identified it sooner, Grian might not have been the quiet shadow that he’d been when he first arrived -

Grian nudges Xisuma’s knee with his own chidingly, breaking him out of the cloud of guilt with a cluck of his tongue. “It’s hardly as though I would have told you that it was bad,” he reminds Xisuma, grinning again. “You know how I was when I was younger - completely bullheaded.”

Xisuma snorts. “‘Younger.’ What was this, three years ago, tops?”

Grian’s smirk slips right off his face, like water running down a cliff face, shimmering out of existence. “More like two, just about,” he says, voice fading at the edges, and Xisuma feels his shoulders tense at the faraway look in his friend’s eyes. “Yeah, um… we… we had a - a series finale planned out, right. We all, um… we go to the End, and we take down the Ender Dragon, as a sort of… final boss fight, after all the stuff we pulled with the - oh, it sounds so stupid now,” he says with a tired little chuckle, “but we called the - the primordials - just called them ‘the Watchers,’ like Endchasers, we had this whole setup about it.”

“I remember.”

“Mm-hmm. And we slew the Ender Dragon, yeah, but it had gotten a good hit on me - you know how they always know who the world creator is, and she wasn’t a fan of how nuts the server’d been lately - and I hadn’t been sleeping well at all, or… I guess I was sleeping too much, then, trying to keep up with how tired I was all the time, and I… I don’t remember walking into the portal? Or being carried in at all. I blacked out, and I remember…” Grian’s voice wavers. “I remember hearing Pearl’s voice, last. She was screaming my name, and it felt like I was sinking, or something was dragging me down somewhere.” 

Xisuma reaches out on impulse, holding out his hand for Grian to take if he needs the anchor. Grian slides his hand into Xisuma’s after a moment spent staring blankly at it, and Xisuma winces at how cold it runs. Grian’s got poor circulation. 

“When I woke up, the primordials were looking down at me.”

Xisuma’s neck cricks from how fast he whips around to stare at Grian. He’s going to regret that later. “Come again?”

He’s pale, but Xisuma’s open disbelief jolts a laugh from Grian anyway. “Yep! In the flesh - or as in the flesh as they can be, I guess. Um…” He scratches the back of his neck, looking away, blinking a little rapidly. “They said they took me away from the SMP. They’d been watching over me for a while, apparently, which I can’t fathom considering there are millions of other people out there to look out for instead of a rather stupid minor god, but I guess - well. I guess not all of the pranks I’d planned as the work of the Watchers were my own doing.”

“They’d meddled in your SMP?” Xisuma - well, he can believe it, but it’s still news that shakes the earth beneath his feet. The primordials do not to such things as meddle. They remain hands-off, and they only communicate with those who adventure to the End and slay their Dragon. To have them consistently poking around in a single player’s business is unheard of.

Grian’s lips quirk. “‘Meddling’ is a bit strong. Maybe… observing? At any rate, they knew that eventually that server was going to kill me. So they just… pulled me out? Involuntarily?”

“You didn’t have admins or owners on there,” says Xisuma, eyes narrowed. “That would have permanently and fundamentally destabilized Evo. How did they displace ownership with you gone?”

Grian shrugs. “I don’t know, and I was hardly in a place to ask.” With something sheepish in his smile: “I yelled at them.”

Xisuma extricates his hand from Grian’s grip and buries his face in it. “You yelled at the primordials.”

“In my defense, it was my home,” says Grian, clearly trying for joking but whose sincerity is given away by the splinter of his voice when he says “home.” Xisuma looks away politely as Grian twists his curls in his hand and says, shaky, “I told them to - they said they’d saved me from myself, and I told them to get off their high horses, and it was just - I was just a mess.” A laugh that’s a touch too watery to be real. “I mean, in hindsight, they did, it’s just - I stopped being able to contact them, even. Servers were too far away, connections were bad, and I wasn’t strong enough to worldjump, so I just sat there and sort of - marinated in the primordials’ presence.”

“Excellent word choice,” teases Xisuma, hoping to cheer Grian. Sure enough, Grian chuckles breathily.

“It’s the closest I can describe what was going on with me. I was essentially stuck there - wherever there is. Where the primordials are. It wasn’t the…” Grian lowers his voice, eyes flickering up from behind his thick-rimmed glasses, and Xisuma huddles closer, too - superstition, and all that - “not the Void, but it was still… removed in some way. They knew everything that was happening. I know they wanted the best, they kept asking me if I wanted to leave, if there was anything they could do to help, and I knew I was loved there, it was hard not to be aware of how much they adore everything and everyone, but I just - needed out, and I wasn’t strong enough to tell them that, not when I’d just lost everyone else I loved, you know?”

Xisuma nods, because he doesn’t trust his voice in the face of the promise of the primordials’ enduring love. It’s the first lesson children learn in regards to divine function: the primordials love you, always; it is your job to know that you are loved. It’s not that Grian was ungrateful for it, but in the face of all that - it must have been too much, in more ways than one.

“Eventually, I started talking again,” Grian says finally, lacing his fingers through Xisuma’s once more. “Then walking. I was getting restless, and everything - everything sort of hurt. Physically, I mean. I didn’t know it then - I could hardly get my hands on a mirror, after all - but I’d grown my wings then, and I probably needed room to fly, or something. Just some open space that wasn’t right next to the primordials all the time.” There’s something almost bitter in his voice as he says, “They told me that I was love, and then I was in your home world.”

That day remains among the top ten of Xisuma’s most stressful days lived. It felt like something had catapulted into the server, whitelist barriers be damned, and when Xisuma had dragged Scar and False and Doc to investigate, he’d found a rumpled mess of fraying red hoodie and a reel of golden scarf and crumpled wings that easily spanned a full chunk lengthwise, with Grian swimming in the middle of it all, out cold. Xisuma had felt his heart stop when he saw the familiar tangle of sandy hair.

“And when I woke up today, I was like this!” Grian says, swinging suddenly into chipperness, and Xisuma feels the hand clenching his squeeze once before Grian lets him go and stands up to do a little twirl in the middle of the room with a giddy giggle. “I think they’re nice. I’ve been thinking about why they changed, but I’m not sure - and just the fact that they’ve changed entirely is… baffling me a bit, but they are how they are, and they’re quite nice!” 

“You like them,” says Xisuma. It’s not a question - Grian’s smiling at them fondly, reaches to pinch away a bit of down from the layers of blue and yellow and red unselfconsciously. It’s a far cry from how much he’d clearly abhorred his dragon wings, no matter how much he craved the freedom that came with them. 

Grian blinks at him. “I do,” he replies slowly, his eyes searching Xisuma’s face. 

“That’s good - that you like them.” Xisuma nods sagely in approval. Reaches to pat Grian’s shoulder, laughs when Grian preens dramatically, and, well.

Xisuma’s not a skin analyst. There are people for that on bigger servers, with their kitschy crystal balls and surprisingly feasible readings. This, though - Xisuma knows his Hermits well. He tries to make them happy. He tries to help them know themselves. It’s only because he knows it’ll help lighten the weight that has snowballed over years onto Grian’s shoulders that he nods toward the brilliant wings in all their loud, proud glory that he says softly, “Maybe that’s why they’ve changed.”

Chapter Text

Purpled peers over the ledge, squinting. “Do you recognize those guys?” he asks Walli, who’s clambering up, sweaty in red leather.

Walli stuffs his emeralds into his pack. “Blue? No, why?”

Purpled squints harder. It’s the ease with which the person with bronze hair leaps heedlessly from ledge to ledge, tailed by the fiery one that killed Walli thrice before Astelic burrowed into their bed defense. There’s a cautious player finishing up the pack, keen-eyed, all three of them bedless and defenseless.

Realization thunders through Purpled.

(There’s a fireball in his inventory.)

He’s about to beat the fucking Dream Team.

Chapter Text

Blinding color, vivid, vivisected: the rose-red carpet leading up to the podium like a reaching tongue, the stage an open jaw, the unsanded fence teeth; the stars cluster, asterisms searing his skin, like the burns shimmering on his father’s shoulders, black as the molten ash sheathing the open hungry maw thousands of blocks under; everything is a curling, twisting agony, cleaving through his flesh, Eye-of-Ender precision, and down the shaft of a candy-cane swirl the dark eyes that read him bedtime stories, warm -

Tubbo bolts upright, heaving, terror at the back of his throat.

...He needs to take a walk.

Chapter Text

“No, you gotta use your hips more,” tsks Alyssa critically. Beside her, Niki hums.

“It might help if you flounce more?” she suggests. HBomb tries his best to flounce, shifting his hips from side to side. The ruffled skirt and frills all bounce with him, but the kicker is probably the jingling emitted by the bell on his collar.

When he spins around and struts back toward Niki and Alyssa, both nod. “Good enough,” declares Niki.

“He’s seducing my fiancé,” pipes up Dream from where he’d been napping. “He can’t just be ‘good enough.’”

HBomb brains him with his sandal.

Chapter Text

“Burning alive” is one way to put it. Dream could say this: that every once in a while, his slumber is clawed into by flame, and it feels like that night ten years ago. That sometimes he misses his elder’s gentleness so much it sears just as much as their gift marked him. Like holding star candy inside his lungs, a sweet thing reserved for bygones; his elder used to be able to make all the big scary dreams go away.

It’s a pipe dream, and he has friends he’d give up divinity for. That has to be enough, now.

Chapter Text

Tubbo stares down at Ranboo, whose head is pillowed in his lap. “Big man,” he says wonderingly, utterly delighted, “did you just purr?”

Ranboo blinks slowly at Tubbo, mismatched eyes uncertain. “...Maybe?” he offers.

Tubbo immediately sifts his hand through Ranboo’s black-and-brown hair - all curly from the braids Tommy had twisted them into - and the effect is instantaneous: Ranboo sighs, and the sound trails off into a throaty hum that vibrates in his chest, the same low purr that happy Endermen emit.

“Are you two being all domestic again?” asks Tommy, disgusted.

This is the greatest day of Tubbo’s life.

Chapter Text

When Dream makes a low, keening sound and sinks to his knees, a million thoughts crash through HBomb’s head with the force of a tidal wave. He’s by his friend’s side in seconds, pawing through his pack with one hand and throwing aside his axe to place his other on Dream’s shoulder, and he startles when Dream flinches away with a sharp hiss.

“Dude?” he asks anxiously. Dream’s hunched over too far for his expression to be visible, but HBomb tries anyway, leaning in with his flask of regen. “Dream? You - you good, man?”

Dream emits a strained little noise, but straightens just enough for HBomb to see a flash of a reassuring smile before Dream’s mouth twists again into a grimace and he curls into himself, digging his fingers into -

into his shoulder.

“Ah,” says HBomb.

It doesn’t take a genius to slot the pieces together. He remembers the rambling story Dream told weeks ago just as well as everyone else on the server does - the mad god and Dream, all of five, all of ten, constantly hounded, not knowing a moment’s rest and not knowing any better. It makes HBomb’s stomach turn just thinking about it, but the point isn’t his discomfort; the point is the first story, the first encounter, Dream’s old injury, the reason he keeps his arm all wrapped up. Dream never gave specifics, and true to form, nobody’s ever asked, but that means HBomb has no clue what to do - heat the area? Soak cloths in regen? Force Dream to lie down and holler for help over comms?

“‘m okay,” Dream grits out suddenly, as though he were reading HBomb’s thoughts, and HBomb’s startled out of his flailing by the terse sentence.

“...Dream,” he replies slowly, reaching out to put an arm over Dream’s back and tip him backward until he’s sitting, “no offense, but I’ve stopped trusting your judgment on these kinds of things.”

Dream laughs breathlessly. “Fair,” he admits, wincing as HBomb hovers over his left shoulder. His entire arm is trembling just with the effort of holding it still, and HBomb bites his lip as he studies the limb. Without any information on what kind of injury it was, whether it’s healed or half-healed or never healed in the first place, he’s at a complete loss. He’s seriously considering gathering up what little lumber they’ve gathered and calling for backup from Bad or Eret when Dream reaches out with his good arm and stops him.

“It’s, um - “ Dream inhales sharply, his fingers spasming on HBomb’s arm, “ - a while ago, um - Phil, he said that it might be… psychosomatic? Is that - is that the word?”

HBomb’s not nearly versed enough in the medical field to be any help. “I - probably. Sorry, what does that mean?”

Dream grins, strained. “It’s an old wound, it’s just that - it, uh - it, like, flares up? Or I think that it - that it hurts, or it feels like it hurts, sometimes, and it’s usually when I, uh - when I strain it? Or, like - when I’m stressed. It’s usually because I’m stressed.”

“Are you stressed?” HBomb asks immediately, peering into Dream’s face. The wedding’s coming up in a couple of days and the venue’s just over half-complete so it’s hardly a surprise, but it doesn’t stop him from being worried.

Dream bites his lip, and he tilts his head in that birdlike way that tells HBomb he’s mulling over what to say. “Well…”

“No, no, don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” HBomb says hastily, patting Dream’s good hand in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. “Just - um - okay, will a hot water bottle help? I might have one in my pack somewhere.”

Dream relaxes minutely. “...It helps sometimes, yeah.”

“Cool. Great. Yeah.” HBomb rummages through the bag for his waterskin and the bundle of unlit torches he knows he always keeps around, gently ignoring the squirm of guilt in his gut hissing he’d be fine if you didn’t take him logging when he’s already stressed enough - that’s an intrusive thought for a later time. Those located, he quickly lights a torch in a shower of sparks and holds the water close, keeping a careful eye on both the fire and the tremors wracking Dream’s left hand.

“...Thanks, H.”

HBomb gives himself whiplash with how fast his eyes shoot up to meet Dream’s. Cringing against the needle of pain, he blurts, surprised, “What?”

Dream gives him a wry look. “Just… thanks. For, uh…” He waves vaguely with his good arm, and concludes awkwardly, “...the… the hot water bottle.”

HBomb very carefully goes not go into sobbing hysterics over the casual acceptance of help. He also does not run a lap around the woods shouting blessings to the primordials. Instead, he blows out a sigh of relief, nods gratefully when Dream shifts to allow HBomb to lay the heated bottle against his shoulder, and says, only a little choked, “Yeah, of course, dude, you’re welcome,” and hopes Dream knows it’s not just about the waterskin.

Chapter Text

“Wilbur,” Fundy says. His mouth is dry. Even to his own ears, he sounds a touch too frigid. “I thought you said you were coming back later.”

Wilbur stands frozen in the doorway, one hand still on the doorknob. “I - I left my shovel,” he replies lamely, shifting his satchel on his shoulder. Fundy can’t see his expression; he’d spun immediately upon re-entry, the moment he’d made eye contact with Fundy. Fundy, who’s sitting on the floor crammed between the coffee table and the patchwork sofa; Fundy, who’d been halfway through wrestling himself into his binder.

This is a landmine they haven’t touched yet, which is a miracle in and of itself considering how cramped their joint living situation is. Wilbur has said more than once that Fundy ought to move into the Empire with Phil and Techno, but even living with just one other person has been stressful, and Fundy had demurred enough times that Wilbur learned not to ask. Fundy’s been careful not to slip, anyway; waited until Wilbur headed out in the mornings to go do a little mining to change, took up the bathroom for a stretch of time every week to “shave,” pointedly ignored every reflective surface and stole Wilbur’s biggest jumpers and didn’t sing when Wilbur played guitar. Wilbur didn’t push. He said he’d had pretty bad voice cracks when he was sixteen, too, and that there was no pressure.

So this is a conversation Fundy has to have now. He would honestly rather walk out the door and not come back. “God’s sake, Wilbur, get in and close the fucking door,” he snaps, in lieu of having a breakdown.

Wilbur hurriedly scrambles over the threshold and shuts the door behind him. He drops his satchel by the shoe rack and just stands there awkwardly, gangly, clearly unsure what to do with his hands, gaze fixed firmly on the ground.

This is pain. Agony, even. Fundy shrinks as close to the sofa as he can, wriggles the rest of the way into his binder, and throws on the plain black hoodie that completely swamps him the moment he can move instead of adjusting like he’s supposed to. There are more pressing matters at hand, like how speechless Wilbur is.

“Well?” Fundy bites out once he’s caught his breath. His knee-jerk reaction may be silence but he knows Wilbur, has known him for months, has lived with him and read his moods and pulled him out of bed some days when everything was too much for him, and he knows Wilbur never knows how to start conversations like these, and Fundy’ll be damned if they just leave this situation untouched.

“Sorry,” Wilbur blurts, immediate and earnest, and Fundy does a double-take as Wilbur sinks into the opposite sofa and sits with all his limbs tucked close, pulled into his chest, like he’s afraid to take up space in this conversation. “I didn’t mean to - that is - I’m sorry I just barged in. Should’ve knocked.”

“I mean, it’s your house,” Fundy points out after the silence stretches too long and Wilbur’s expression falls a little too much. It’s all he can bring himself to say.

Wilbur blows out a breath. “Um. And sorry for - for assuming that - for assuming that you’re cis. That’s - that’s bullshit, it is. Cisnormative bullshit. I try to be good about that, but I - I’m falling off. So I’m sorry for - for everything I’ve done that made you… uncomfortable, and that… made you feel like you weren’t safe here. Because it’s your house, too.”

Fundy can literally feel himself give in. It’s the best apology he’s heard because it’s one of the only ones he’s ever gotten, and he feels his tail slow from its lashing, his ears straightening from where they’d been pressed against his head. He sighs and nods, pulling his tail into his lap and combing his fingers through it. “That - it means a lot, Wil. Thanks. I forgive you.”

Wilbur doesn’t look any less apprehensive, but his shoulders do untense, and he rubs the back of his neck a little awkwardly. He works his jaw for a moment, then snaps it shut again. It couldn’t be more obvious that he has no idea what to say.

Fundy knows full well he owes nobody an explanation, but the guilelessness in Wilbur’s eyes - and the guilt in them now - twist in his chest. Wilbur’s not a bad person, and Fundy knows that full well. He won’t kill himself apologizing, not the way Tommy does, but he feels his transgressions keenly, and he doesn’t like leaving loose planks in an otherwise solid bridge. Fundy can see him wringing his mind out for ways to broach the topic without forcing something from Fundy that Fundy doesn’t want to disclose, and as nerve-wracking as it is, it’s surprisingly touching.

Well, as long as they have to talk about it - “So, I’m trans,” Fundy says casually, and Wilbur’s eyes all but pop out of his skull.

“Shit, yeah, I figured,” he says weakly, and Fundy smirks in spite of himself. He immediately feels bad when Wilbur adds, suddenly frantic, “Wait, have I been using the wrong pronouns for - ”

“No, Wil,” Fundy interjects hastily, before Wilbur starts talking himself into a spiral. “I said when I first introduced myself, didn’t I?”

“I wasn’t sure if you said that because it made you feel safer, if you did use any other pronouns.”

Fundy bites his lip. “Yeah, I - that’s fair. Yeah, um, I’m trans. F-fem - uh, FTM. He/him exclusively. The, uh. You walked in on me binding.” Way to state the obvious, Fundy. Ten out of ten.

“Safely?” asks Wilbur, breaking Fundy from his thoughts. He looks anxious, his gaze fixed searchingly on Fundy’s face, and Fundy feels a pang at the clear concern. Wilbur wasn’t lying when he said he’s usually good about this stuff - only people who’ve researched binding know the associated risks.

Fundy’s hand finds his chest, relatively flattened under the jumper he’s swimming in. It feels like a lie. “Yeah, safely. I’ve never really done it unsafely before because of all the stuff that was like - all the shit on the Internet about permanently fucking over your shot at surgery, but it’s - um, a lot of it is, like. TERF propaganda. So. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Wilbur echoes. The silence swells again. It’s not as oppressive as before, and yet, Fundy can’t breathe under the weight of it, under the knowledge that he’s a boy and yet nothing has changed him to prove it. It’s something that’s lived in his head for years, ever since he knew, and he’s searched and searched on the Internet, but he’s never seen people talk about it, and -

“It’s just fucked up, I guess,” Fundy bursts out, a little wild, a sudden oil spill of words, and digs his nails into his arm to concentrate as the emotions waterfall in one big cascade, things he’s never said out loud tumbling from between his teeth. “That - that - that our appearances change based on how we think of ourselves and that I still have to - that I still need binders, and I - am I not really a boy? Am I just - just, I don’t know, lying to myself, I guess, somewhere deep down? Am I making some kind of mistake? I don’t know, I don’t - what makes a man?” Blood beads beneath his nails. “Am I not enough of it?”

“Whoa - Funds, hey.” Wilbur’s hand suddenly swoops into view, and Fundy blinks when it gently tugs at his wrist, leaving bright half-moons of red in the long pale of his left forearm. “Hey, hey - shh.” Wilbur twists to rummage in his pack for a moment as Fundy just stares down at his lap like a dumbass, and he only manages to find his voice again when Wilbur starts plastering Tofu-chan-themed band-aids on his arm.

“Sorry,” he says, hoarse. His arm stings. “Sorry, I have no idea where that fucking came from…”

“Sounds like you’ve been thinking about it for a while, though, right?” Wilbur’s voice is stronger, now, more in his element. He continues, steady, focusing on smoothing his thumb over the band-aids so they’ll lay flat, “You don’t have to apologize. And it’s - I don’t think that anything just - makes a man. I mean, if masculinity is, like… sports and catcalling and never crying or whatever, where would I be? I don’t like any of those things, but I’m still… I’m just some dude.”

Fundy can’t help his tired little laugh at that, and Wilbur’s mouth curves as well, relieved. “Yeah, that’s me - Wilbur Soot, founder of Newfoundland, Just Another Guy. I don’t think that - okay, I’ll have to do a lot more reading before I can say anything, and even then, I don’t think it’s really my place to make some kind of definitive statement about gender, but… I don’t think that anything just makes a man ‘a man.’ It’s not clothes and it’s not mannerisms and it’s certainly not the way they look, so… y’know? You’re just as much a man as I am. You’re not any less of anything just because you’re trans. That’s not your sole identifier. You’re a boy, Fundy.”

Fundy is not crying. He is not. “That’s pretty cool of you to say, Wilbur Soot, founder of Newfoundland, Just Another Guy,” he chokes out, the constant churn in his gut dying down into something a little more manageable, the pressure in his chest easing. He doesn’t quite believe Wilbur - not quite yet - but it’s a lot, a good kind of a lot, to see Wilbur grin at him and pat his cheek and mean it.

It’s not today, but someday, Fundy might believe him. That’s gotta account for something.

Chapter Text

Their first and last mistake is leaving a gash straight to the Void right in the middle of Boatem.

It’s not any of their faults. Curiosity is the drug of every hermit’s choice, and despite the prickling, innate fear of the Void drilled into their code, they collectively decide mossing down to bedrock is an excellent idea. Mumbo can’t believe any of them, to be honest. It’s a miracle Xisuma didn’t come down to scold them all himself; he doesn’t let Void shenanigans slide on a good day, let alone on the first day of a new season.

Still, it seems safe enough. The pole and trapdoors are as steady as can be, and make for a good photo. Most of them are secure in their elytras, but when someone - Mumbo thinks it might have been Grian - proposes a meeting on the backs of the llamas suspended ten blocks above the hungry maw of the Void, Pearl finally pales and calls it a day, and no one can begrudge her that. Wingless as she is, there’s no way she’d survive a drop, and the Void’s too close for a split-second rescue by anyone save maybe Grian. The risk, even for them, is too great.

The meeting passes as a blur; Mumbo can barely make out what Grian’s saying over the crush of static in his ears, a constant dull roar of adrenaline. The cold nips at his ankles as he clings to the neck of the remarkably unbothered llama. In some sense, though, the terror is intoxicating, even as one of the only humans in this particular corner of the Hermitcraft server. He and Scar have never been very good at doing what’s safest for them, not when Xisuma’s always been so careful and respawn is putty in their hands.

It’s perfectly safe for the most part, anyway. They’re inquisitive, not thoughtless; they stretch cloth over it at night in case anyone happens across it by accident, and after the incident during which Scar almost wheels into the pit whilst chasing Grian, they make sure to cordon off the hole and give it a decently wide berth.

Still, what’s the point of having something and never using it? Mumbo will fully admit he’s spent an afternoon or five sat by its edge, brainstorming loose schematics for his base, jotting down ideas for intriguing redstone contraptions. Grian has joined him once or twice, and sometimes Boatem will take a sunny day off basking in the warmth and intermittently throwing a paper plane into the abyss to see if anything will happen. Unsurprisingly, nothing does.

So it’s a shock - more than a shock - when everything goes utterly, horribly, incomprehensibly wrong.

Scene: the pit to the Void, a humid-hazy evening with the sun hanging low over the mountaintops. Scar is dangling his legs off the edge, Mumbo is sifting through fresh redstone on the opposite side, and Impulse is teetering his way over the trapdoors. Grian is off collecting materials for the megabase and Pearl is mulling over the framework of her starter base, a just-visible dot in the distance. 

Mumbo’s carefully picking the debris out of the handful of scarlet powder in his lap and so just barely sees it happen: the drag of color and the sharp inhale, a cry of alarm, Scar’s elytra wings slashing open. Mumbo’s darting to his feet as the black-and-yellow brushstroke of Impulse’s shirt hurtles down, down, down, into the Void, and he clasps both hands over his mouth at the burst of fireworks within the swirling starscape, the glint of elytra wings in the pitch black. He can feel his pulse thundering in his ears, sharp as a knife, as he and Scar stare into the tessellated darkness. 

It takes ten years. It takes no time at all.

Mumbo’s already screaming by the time the chat pings, ImpulseSV fell out of the world.

The next three days are one long blur. Mumbo only learns afterward that it was Pearl who came running the moment she heard the shrieks; who grabbed both Scar and Mumbo by the shoulders to keep them from trying to look for Impulse, expression hard, and called Xisuma, who’d already been halfway there. 

The Void, the great equalizer. Mumbo doesn’t even want to think about the look on Grian’s face when he got the news. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a human or a minor god or an old god with the Void. The end result is the same. If Mumbo had doubted that ever before, he doesn’t doubt it now. After all, he was one of the group that ransacked Impulse’s half-finished base looking for him, checking all possible spawn points, outright spamming the chat for any sign of him. 

He’s an idiot. It probably just broke everyone’s hearts, seeing him like that, rubbing salt in the wound. Zedaph and Tango haven’t been round to see him like the others have. He was impulsive.

Hah. “Impulsive.” Mumbo wants to plug the Boatem Hole with bedrock and never look back.

Pearl’s crushed, too, maybe even more than Grian or Scar or Mumbo. It’s her first season here after drifting through servers, barely a year since she reunited with Grian post-Evo, and she already loves the other Hermits with all her heart, but there’s a vague distance there. Gem has settled in better; Pearl was still caught up in the past she and Grian share, the one that Mumbo has never asked after out of respect. It doesn’t take a genius to know that Grian and Pearl were mired in the fallout of Evo SMP, but neither of them, nor the people that Grian had run to gather into his arms at MCC, have ever said a word, and more than that, Mumbo’s not owed an explanation. The thin shadow of a person Grian had been coming in, the scales like patches of bruises on his face and neck, then the brief but intense obsession with maintaining the vibrant wings he’d grown in Season 7 - Mumbo knows all of these to be vestiges of bygone hurts, and he knows better than to push when most of the Hermits have ghosts of their own.

It’s a mistake that does it. An honest-to-the-elders mistake. It’s Mumbo that’s not there this time to witness, who gets the news via frantic waves of messages from Grian in the chat and then eerie and abrupt silence. 

He’s never flown so fast in his life. 

When he gets back to Boatem, a crowd of Hermits are already there, and the Boatem Hole is seamed over with bedrock. There’s sobbing, and Mumbo can see Cleo and Ren shelling a shaking red figure. 

Xisuma is standing before the pit. His expression is indescribable.

“X,” Mumbo manages, then finds his words caught in his throat. He tries to clear it, but all that does is choke him with a wave of nausea, and someone reaches for him when he doubles over, gagging. 

“Gods above, Mumbo, I’m so sorry,” Xisuma murmurs. When Mumbo drags his gaze back up, he’s stunned to see the air around Xisuma shimmering. Xisuma, most powerful minor god, renowned for his strength and recognized for his control, whose very presence thins the oxygen and who very carefully reins himself in, is letting himself go in the grips of his emotion. 

“Pearl slipped. Scar - he had an elytra, but…” Xisuma grits his teeth. Mumbo’s chest rings cold.

“I saw,” Grian gasps out, thin, audible even through the quiet crying of the crowd. “They were - I was - I saw Pearl’s face before - before - oh, I’m an idiot, I - what good are these wings, if - if I - ”

“You woulda died, Grian,” Cleo says, firm, holding him tighter. “You did what you could.”

“I didn’t,” Grian bites wetly. “I didn’t.”

Mumbo fully collapses to his knees in the grass, staring at the bedrock. Unnaturally generated, it doesn’t weave seamlessly into the earth, and the desperation behind the act couldn’t be more obvious if Xisuma had tried.

“I watched them.” Grian, destroyed. “I just bloody watched…”

It’s like a ghost town. Every swish of the wind is Pearl’s bell-chime laughter, every distant bark of thunder Impulse’s warm voice. The weather is forever a toxic green-yellow, the very air sodden with the threat of rain - a reflection of the server owner’s mood. Mumbo can’t stop screaming himself awake at odd hours of the night, has torn apart every sketch in his notebook, stares at the wall for hours on end when things are particularly bad because he can’t fucking feel anything, the numb a leaching cold. 

The bedrock has done nothing, not when Xisuma has granted admin to every player; the sheet of bedrock is gone between one day and the next and Mumbo can’t help the way his eyes are drawn to it, wondering. There’s no doubt in his mind who was responsible; Grian haunts the hole for hours on end, now. Pale as a phantom. Mumbo doesn’t know half as much about what happened to him before as Xisuma or Pearl or Scar do - did - but he knows enough by the way Grian can’t stop hanging over the damn pit, staring down into the Void that swallowed half of the Boatem Village for good. His wings are the color of fresh blood, a wound that never clots. 

Xisuma and Iskall are both here, all too often, their projects kept firmly on hold. Mumbo can’t explain why.

It all comes to a head when Mumbo catches Grian soaring above the pit that he won’t let anyone build over, a thousand blocks up. He’s a bright swordstroke in the grey, desolate sky, something like a kite with no strings. Mumbo can’t explain the shock of dread that winds through his veins, cold, when he spots the scarlet shadow drawing lazy circles through the heavy clouds. 

A distant groan of thunder. Grian pauses midair. 

He pulls his great red wings into his back. 

Oh, thinks Mumbo, understanding lancing through him with the force of a lightning bolt, as Grian starts to fall. 

A drop from that height will be lethal, even if he misses the Void. The knowledge that Grian is a minor god does nothing for the acid burst of terror that eats away Mumbo’s ribs as he scrambles to the side of the pit, shoots message after message into the chat, and tracks the shooting-star descent by the steadily-growing tips of Grian’s knifelike primaries, a red beacon drawing ever closer, gathering speed, the wind whipping his tangled hair from his face.

It takes thirty seconds for Mumbo to be able to make out the dull hunger on Grian’s face. 

It takes thirty-one for Xisuma to catch him in a wave of slime blocks. 

Relief roars through Mumbo with all the force of a tidal wave, and his shaking legs give up on him as he watches Xisuma speed in with a sharp twist and pulling the tower of slime blocks with him. Grian dives headfirst into the gelatinous mass, but Xisuma rescinds the lot of it before Grian has the chance to suffocate in it, and when the sloshing slime clears, it leaves in its wake a shivering minor god and the server’s owner, the air electrifying.

“You’re a fool, Grian,” Xisuma hisses, the angriest Mumbo has ever and will ever see him, grief sharpening his tone. “You’re a complete and utter fool.”

As if on cue, the clouds break; rain slashes in a diagonal curtain through the three of them. Mumbo flinches at the pain of it; Xisuma doesn’t waver at all, and Grian hasn’t stopped shaking.

“What good is it? How could you? They wouldn’t want this. You know they wouldn’t want this. Grian,” Xisuma’s voice dips into a low plea, and Mumbo struggles to his feet in the vicious storm to shuffle to Grian’s side as Xisuma talks, “why… we love you. Please - why would you…”

Grian’s great wings, sodden to the bone, twitch against Mumbo’s arm when he reaches out to pull him into his side. 

“If I had… gone down,” Grian whispers, his teeth chattering, “maybe… I mean. The - the Watchers. The primordials… have already shown me favor.” His mouth twists, bitter, battered, around the word “favor.” Mumbo holds his breath at the mention of the primordials, but Grian’s astonishingly blithe about it. “I thought…”

Xisuma drops to his knees before Mumbo and Grian, grasps Grian’s face in his hands, clears some of the relentless rainwater away with a Nether-fire intensity in the grim, resolved set of his mouth. “Currying favor with the primordials is impossible, and foolish. You were throwing yourself into the Void, Grian. Make no mistake.”

“But if I could,” Grian interrupts, frantic. “They’re not gone forever - I could - they could - X, I could do so much - ”

Mumbo tucks his face into Grian’s shoulder. “Grian,” he mouths, barely audible over the howl of the wind. He feels like he’s dying, like his soul is being gutted from him. Grian’s the last he’s got left. “Grian.”

The things he’s not said: nights keeping vigil when Grian had first arrived, the therapists Grian’s gone through, the work they all put in to help him feel safe again. Grian’s come leagues from where he was. Mumbo’s been part of Grian’s life for years. Grian’s happier.  

Mumbo’s jaw won’t unstick. It’s all he can say: “Stay here.”

Grian freezes.

For a long, devastating moment: the inconsolable hail. Mumbo’s breath is ice in his lungs; he can’t help the spiralling, swollen feeling that his words have done nothing. That the last bastion - verbal consolation - has fallen. That Grian is too far gone, trapped in a past that’s consumed him, a future too dark to consider. 

Then Grian relaxes. Melts into Mumbo’s side. Lets Xisuma clench his trembling hands. 

“Okay,” he breathes. His exhale is harsh, almost fogging in the brutal cold, but he says “okay,” and it’s almost like a gush of blood, a dam bursting: finality. Mumbo feels lightheaded with grief, with leftover terror, with relief a heady thing in his stomach. Xisuma buries his face in his hands.

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

It’s a rare quiet night in, Dream sprawled half in Fundy’s lap, both of them engrossed in the documentary playing on the television. It’s something to do with mycelium networks, the sprawl of mushrooms that can communicate with one another in a matter of electric pulses. The subject matter itself isn’t of particular interest to Fundy - his specialty leans far more into engineering than any natural science - but still, something about the forest of fungi the host insists on calling a family prompts Fundy to ask absentmindedly, “Hey, Dream? Have you thought about adding more people?”

Dream, who’d been dozing lightly and carding his fingers through Fundy’s tail, stiffens. 

Knee-jerk guilt floods through Fundy at the nonanswer, and immediately, he murmurs, leaning over to peer at Dream’s expression, “Sorry - you don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable - you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, you know that, right?”

Dream loosens his grip on Fundy’s fur to trail a thumb along the rim of his mask in lieu of a verbal response. It makes Fundy’s stomach twist to watch. Dream had gradually weaned himself off of his mask with a dogged determination shortly after they punted Mina into the Void, but it’s still a work in progress, and when he fidgets with it, it’s a surefire tell that he’s thinking about them. 

All his hurts always, inevitably, come back to Mina.

“Well…” Dream says finally, pushing his mask aside. A chill runs down Fundy’s spine at the scar, but it’s nothing like the gutting feeling that had hit him the first few times he’d seen it, and Dream’s so deliberately casual about it that it loosens the knot that had formed in Fundy’s chest. “I don’t…”

Fundy settles his tail more firmly into Dream’s hands, and there’s a surprised spark of warmth and love and gentle all-encompassing unequivocal warm warm warm before Dream visibly gathers himself, covering for the slip with a self-conscious half-smile. Fundy, because he has no filter nor impulse control, blurts, “That was really endearing.”

Dream’s half-smile burgeons into a full one, now, and Fundy catches a flash of teeth as Dream snorts and picks at his tail. “Oh, shut up.”

“It was! It’s nice to hear you! I always knew you loved me.”

Dream chuckles. “You’re such an idiot,” he says, fond, and as he always does when Dream takes that tone with him, Fundy preens. It took months to get here, at the telly playing soft background music and the fireplace beside crackling merrily and Dream’s firework scar in the dim light, and Fundy’s never taken it for granted. The slips in settling, too - the shard of Void Dream was forced into, before the beginning of the end of the beginning - don’t snap at him anymore the way they used to, all its volatility loosened in the wake of Mina’s banishment, and Fundy’s learning to take them as gifts.

Dream’s quiet laughter eases off gradually, and he gropes for the remote to lower the volume on the documentary. “I just… I just don’t know,” he says, thoughtful, a little thin. “Logically I’d like - well, it’s complicated. I don’t - I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what - what I want to happen. And I can’t tell what would be good for - what’s best for the server, and - and what’s best for me. Does that make sense?”

Fundy hums, buries his nose in Dream’s hair. He’d gotten achingly familiar with the distance between what he wanted and what he thought he wanted with his new therapist, and before, with Wilbur and Phil. It says a lot that Dream’s taking into account what might be best for him so soon after forgetting that he counted, that he was part of the server that he loved so much. A testament to the strides he’s been making. Still, that doesn’t mean Fundy isn’t a bit out of his depth, and it’s with caution that he replies, “Yeah. Do you think… what do you think would be helpful? There’s no pressure, you know, to add people,” he adds hurriedly, “and nobody’s asking or anything. Just… I wondered if you were thinking about it - if that was one the table at all.”

“I mean, I was… I was gonna invite other people, before.” Dream worries his lip between his teeth. “Now, I’m… not so sure.”

“Because of them,” Fundy says. Dream doesn’t say their name if he can help it. Fundy knows not to push.

“Because of them.” Dream’s smile is wry.

There’s a lull in the conversation, not so much uncomfortable as it is pensive. Dream ticks the volume back up again, which is Fundy’s cue to relax back into the sofa and mull over the conversation. It’s hardly his place to ask after new additions; that’s Dream’s prerogative as the server’s creator and owner, and maybe the admin team and Phil after a point. He knows at least one person has already brought it up with Dream before him, and that the conversation wasn’t all that pretty, but it’s been a week since the last Fundy’s heard of it, and it’s a topic that he thinks probably requires some modicum of closure.

“I just,” Dream says suddenly, and Fundy snatches at the remote to mute the documentary again, “keep thinking… like, any time where I’m like, ‘Hey, yeah, maybe I can add someone new or something, like, a friend,’ I keep… my brain, like, punts me into the week of Sapnap’s wedding. And it - I get Ranboo in, and then three weeks later, we’re in ground zero.” Dream’s voice wanes. “He’s seventeen. He barely knew me, Fundy. He barely knew anyone here, and he had to fight for our lives.”

Careful, gentle, Fundy says, “Dream, you’re shaking,” and reaches over Dream’s head to clasp his trembling hands. 

Dream exhales, a shuddering sound, and clenches back. “Sorry,” he murmurs.

Fundy frowns at him, never mind that the angle doesn’t let Dream see his expression very well. “Don’t say sorry. You don’t have to be sorry. You’re just saying what you’ve been thinking about.”

“Yeah, but this is like - this is the kind of shit I’d tell my therapist, y’know?”

“Yeah, and you can tell them later. For now, I’m here. I’m listening.”

Dream’s laugh slinks from him in what’s almost a sigh. Thickly, he says, “This isn’t your job.”

Fundy pricks his ears high, proud. “I’m not listening to you because I think it’s my job, Dream,” he tells him, matter-of-fact. “I’m listening because you’re my friend. Husband,” he tacks on, with a little thrill.

A grin tugs at the corners of Dream’s mouth at that. “You’re so dumb,” he murmurs. grandly fond grandly wondrous steady on the water easing the horizon, his settling ripples.

Fundy leans back over so he can make eye contact with Dream. “Sorry, back to what you were saying. About…”

“About Ranboo.” Dream draws his hands from Fundy’s, combs them through Fundy’s tail. “And Puffy, too, honestly. I know it was… you know, bad timing. But it’s…” He grimaces. “Yeah. Really awful timing. I can’t help thinking that, like… I’ll bring someone new in, right? I get some of our friends in, and then the whole thing’s gonna go under. Mi - the old god… is gonna escape or something, or the primordials will change their minds because they love them too much, or… someone finds out about something they weren’t supposed to and the whole world knows… Something like that.”

Catastrophizing. Not without good reason, Fundy acquiesces, but harmful nonetheless. He doesn't know how to tell Dream that he’s safe, though, because even Fundy doesn’t believe that yet.

Gods, Mina did a number on us, he thinks venomously. Out loud, he says, “That’s - that’s completely valid, Dream. Thank you for - for telling me that. For telling me what about it was scaring you. And for telling me that it scared you in the first place.”

Dream, rueful, replies, “It’s stupid.”

“It’s not,” Fundy snipes back immediately. “If it’s freaking you out, then you don’t have to do it. And you don’t owe us an explanation for it.”

Dream shrugs awkwardly against Fundy’s leg. “I mean… I guess I’ll just let people know that… I don’t know. I’ll test the waters. See if anyone’s interested in vouching for people again.”

Fundy blinks, surprised. Amazed, even, after the halting talk they’d just shared about Dream and his unfamiliarity with his own boundaries. “Already?”

“Well, I know people are probably thinking about it. Hell, I’ve been thinking about it, too.” Dream huffs out a laugh into Fundy’s tail, running his thumb through the fur. “Even if I end up not doing it… it couldn’t hurt.”

Fundy muffles his proud little grin into his hand, pushes the other into Dream’s curls. “It wouldn’t,” he says softly, assuringly, and the gratitude that rushes through him with Dream’s smile is beyond words, beyond human language.

All too kind, Dream’s settling whispers, safety assurance the world at your fingertips the tide in your veins them at your side you remember forever and always one step one step one aching step at a time.

Chapter Text

Listen. Of all the things Connor Eats Pants (enunciated the way Schlatt likes to, all separate syllables) expected to arrive to in the legendary Dream SMP, a wan JSchlatt armed with a six-page lecture and a pen light was not one of them.

“ - and then - get this - and then this bitchass, right, this fucker charges at Dream screaming, after they’d already lost totally, yeah? And - ”

“Dude, hey,” Connor interrupts hastily, mindful of Schlatt starting to go red in the face. “Slow down for a sec?”

Schlatt throws him a baleful look that doesn’t come across nearly as jokingly as he probably thinks it does. Connor feels a chill frost into his bones every time he sees the golden, side-slit eyes his friend didn’t leave with.

“I’ll slow down,” Schlatt tells him imperiously, “when I’m done telling the fuckin’ story. You with me, Connor?”

“I’m with you,” Connor replies dutifully. He doesn’t mean to, but there’s a strain of gravity to his voice, and it gives both of them pause, the implications in their voices, the things they’re not saying. Schlatt eventually moves on with the grace he’s honed over two decades of smooth-talking, but Connor draws back from the one-sided conversation, clasps his hands together.

Four months.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess that something really fucking bad happened on the server shortly after Schlatt announced that he was moving in. Connor had already lost contact with Schlatt just two days into his departure, and sure, neither of them are the greatest at keeping in touch, but given the sketchy timing of the whole thing, Connor wasn’t exactly optimistic about what was going on. Hell, even for a while before that, Dream’s uploads and social media activity had been slowing down, and considering he was a guy that tweeted thrice a night at best and streamed once a month at worst, that by itself was worrying.

And then, for a week in the middle of October, everyone on the SMP went deadly silent.

It couldn’t have been more damning if they’d tried. Even the most active of them completely ceased to send out their semiregular “I’m alive and it’s everyone’s problem” tweets, and the tension was palpable between news reporters debating whether they were blowing the whole thing out of proportion, fans who were assuming the worst by the third day, and frantic close friends who were trying desperately to reach the people within.

Alright. Maybe Connor was one of the latter. So what? He called up Charlie and Ted and Minx in a late-night panic after the blackout, and they all had a collective cry in Ted’s home world after he made them come over. He knows that Ela and TapL were tearing their hair out, that Sneeg and Phil were just as tense on their streams as they were in real life and piss-poor at concealing it.

And then, abruptly, it seemed like everything was okay again. Phil joined at Wilbur’s request, and everyone on the Dream SMP was interacting and streaming and uploading again with a degree of levity that took the public completely by surprise. Dream was officially pretty much on project hiatus, citing health issues, but he still tweeted and uploaded photos of his friends, and invited affable Captain Puffy and the up-and-coming Ranboo into his home. An upwards trend.

As if to mock everyone for thinking everything was okay, things suddenly became very not okay.

There was social media activity up until Jack, who’d been liveblogging the whole wedding, said, “Oh well I really had been expecting them to kiss but I suppose homoeroticism can only take you so far in society,” and then there was another blackout - this time for weeks on end. The public mostly accepted the varied excuses of mental health breaks, off-camera grinding, and honeymoon phonelessness, but for friends, that was nothing. Connor was the one to take Schlatt’s first incoming call in four fucking months and listen to him sniffle wordlessly for an hour. Whatever happened this second time, it was bad, and more than that, it was worse than before. Dragon’s hearts, Schlatt asked after any therapists Connor knew that would keep their mouths shut.

If Connor had to guess, he’d say the climb back to normalcy was a lot harder this time around than it was last time. Dream was slower to say he was alive, and even slower to admit that he wasn’t in a place to upload at the pace he used to. Pre-recorded videos started cropping up on the channels of those who were in a state to edit, and some that had clearly been edited by someone else so that their channels would stay afloat. Phil’s stream streak, which hadn’t been broken for nearly three years before this incident, started trundling back to life. Connor’s positive Schlatt’s not the only person who’d needed professional help.

After whatever shithole clusterfuck had hit the fan in Dream’s home server, the last thing Connor had been expecting (aside from Schlatt’s lecture, which now apparently includes demonstrative illustrations) was a shiny invite sitting in his DMs first thing in the morning.

But it was there, and now here he is, watching one of his oldest and best friends fill in the blanks in the story in detail that’s clearly significantly toned down but still horrifying in context (an old god was wrecking shit on this server and trying to kill people?? Without primordial jurisdiction and breaking every cardinal law??? What the fuck????) like a man possessed. And oh, wasn’t that, too, awful to hear - Schlatt, proud and grandiose and talking out of his ass half the time, stumbling over the confession that he’d been taken over by said old god and forced to do terrible things that he can remember as if they were by his own hands. Connor shudders just to imagine it.

“ - but that’s that,” Schlatt finishes, a little out of breath, and Connor blinks back to the present. “Any questions?”

Connor hesitates.

He could ask after any number of things. Why Dream, of all people, was targeted by a mad god. Why nobody on the SMP can openly discuss what happened. Why, when Connor strolled out of spawn, all the people he passed by had ducked their heads and set their shoulders close, like buffers against some invisible hurt.

But Schlatt stands before him, and Connor can’t help the curdled feeling in his gut that his best friend is evanescent. It took so long to get back in contact with him, even longer for Connor to see him again face-to-face, and he barely recognizes the glassy skittishness in Schlatt’s new prey eyes. When Connor had been struggling viciously to find his sea legs in the public eye, Schlatt had been there. It’s not nearly the same, but Connor knows that chest-deep panic, barely there, ever-present, that swims in Schlatt’s face whenever he stops to think too long. Connor could kill whatever put that panic there.

“Sooo,” he says, emphasizing his characteristic dry drawl, “who’s the poor motherfucker that decided to put me here?”

Like a dawn breaking: Schlatt softens, as much as Schlatt can ever soften.

“I asked for you,” he replies simply.

Chapter Text

“Fundy. Hey, Fundy, come on, up up up.”

Fundy groans in response, nosing further into his pillow. It’s warm down there, still toasty with the blast furnace-heat that radiates off of his skin, and never mind his fever, he’s so cold his teeth chatter. He was dreaming of something lovely, though, with lace edges and a strawberry sky, and he chases after the wisps of it, burrowing in between the heavy quilts that have been thrown over him.

“Fundy…” the voice calling him sounds fondly exasperated. “Oh, come on. At least let me feel your forehead.”

Fundy grimaces as the comforter he’d thrown over his eyes is peeled back with so much care you’d think he were about to explode. As it is, he bares his teeth halfheartedly at the bearer of the knifelike light, and the voice cackles.

“Yeah, yeah - you’re scary, I know.” A cool hand smooths over his face, and Fundy knows the grooves and calluses of that hand, has clenched it through nightmares and held it before tournaments and put a damn ring on it.

Peering through the glare, Fundy croaks, “Dream?”

Dream’s face ebbs into view, amused. He’s perched on the edge of Fundy’s bed, a green smear against the stone-brick wall. Fundy can see one eye gleaming through the vague blur of Fundy’s lanternlight; the other peeks through the pinhole socket of his mask, canted to the side. “That’s me,” he says, soft, and turns his hand so the heel of his palm sits against the damp fringe on Fundy’s forehead. Concern flickers over his half-visible face; he says, mostly to himself, “You’re still kinda warm,” and then he slings one of his legs over the sheets and bends close and his lips touch Fundy’s face, feather-light, where his hand had just been.

As Dream leans back and nods to himself, Fundy devotes all his strength into dragging his hand up to the spot where Dream kissed him. Their relationship has never been defined by its physical intimacy, not like Karl and Sapnap and Quackity’s have been, but the fleeting moments of it are nice in their own quiet, private ways, and Fundy hums hoarsely, pleased.

“Yeah, your fever’s definitely going down,” Dream announces, bringing Fundy’s ragged attention back to him. He’s rummaging through his pack, glass flasks clinking together, and Fundy must cringe when Dream turns around triumphantly with potions in hand, because he scowls playfully and says, “Okay, just - give it a chance, okay? It’s only regen. Oh, hey, actually, look - ” Like Fundy could do anything but look away, but Dream brings one of the flasks closer for Fundy’s inspection, and it’s filled with a deep amber liquid that smells faintly sticky-sweet through the stopper, “ - I asked Wilbur if you, like - when you were still back on SMPEarth, if there was stuff he did when you were sick, and he said he made a lot of juice? And Techno said it’s because juice has vitamin C and stuff, and also it’s sweet enough that you can taste it if your nose is, like, stuffy…”

Dream busies himself with uncorking and mixing the potion and unidentified fruit juice together, chattering quietly all the while, and Fundy’s struck, all of a sudden, by how much he loves him. He’s toeing the chasm of ugly thoughts that often come with that revelation, a churning mess of how easy it could’ve been to lose him, how long it could’ve taken to get here, but it’s an old wound by now. Fundy’s learned from both friends and professionals that to linger too long is to let it fester, so he lets himself spare a passing moment of gratitude that this is where he is with Dream, and forces himself away from the brink.

“Here we go,” Dream says presently, setting aside his flasks and swirling the completed concoction with an air of self-satisfaction. “I can’t say it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted, but - well, I mean, you know.” He shrugs, and a shy something touches his mouth as he looks away: “It’s, uh… I, uh, went off-server… and got this, like, fancy mango juice-type thing.” He makes a face. “They might ask me to do promotions ‘cause I bought some. Well, that’s a problem for future me, I guess.”

Fundy opens his mouth. Closes it. Rasps, heartfelt, “That’s my favorite kind.”

Dream blinks down at him, visibly startled; then, all lanternlit and loving, he beams so bright Fundy has to squint. “Yeah? Mine’s apple - oh, shit, wait, you shouldn’t be talking, either, it’s not good for your throat,” he says, so eager he’s tripping all over his own words. “I’ll get you some slowness and healing pots later for that - uh, yeah, well - well, I mean, Wilbur told me that you liked peach-flavored things, but I couldn’t find someone on short notice.”

Dreams pauses, breathing a little hard. Fundy thinks it again, enamored: I love you.

“I got distracted,” Dream says abruptly, turning a little red. never distracted never from him never from them always the front of your front of your front of your mind, his settling whispers smugly, and Dream hisses wordlessly at it as he leans down again to help Fundy sit up so that he doesn’t spill the drink all over himself.

Given how sweet the juice is and how bitter regens usually are, Fundy’s surprised by how tolerable the mixture is. Dream tips the bottle until it’s empty, and pats the corners of Fundy’s mouth with his own sleeve, and promises to feed him soup until he dies of soup overexposure, which sounds much more comforting than he probably thinks it does.

“Just relax, okay? Get some rest. Get a lot of it, actually,” Dream says gently, carding his fingers through Fundy’s hair. It must be gross from all the sweat he’s generating, but Dream doesn’t even bat an eye, his thumb skimming briefly over Fundy’s eyelashes. “Shh… I’ll get you lunch later, and water, but Bad said to make sure you keep the pot down first.”

Fundy’s proper falling asleep - the regen takes the energy it needs to fortify his immune system from him, after all - and he just manages to catch the way the fire of the lantern sputters bright for just a fraction of a second, catching on the blown-glass-shiny scar, the inner corner of Dream’s half-closed eyes, as he murmurs, “I’m gonna take care of you, okay? You’re gonna be just fine. You’ll feel better when you wake up - go to sleep, Fundy. I’m gonna take care of you.”

Fundy, full of love and trust and Dream’s fancy off-server mango juice, goes to sleep.

Chapter Text

“Oh wow,” says Sam, the moment he walks into the Community House, and then: “wow wow wow,” because it bears repeating.

“Doesn’t arca look great?” gushes HBomb, dragging Sam closer by the arm, never mind that he’d been on his way to call an off-server redstone mechanic for a brainstorm. “Arca said arca wanted to try a different presentation, and, like… y’know, dresses and stuff! And Eret had lots that we knew would fit - ”

“ - I pierced his ears, too,” says Alyssa sheepishly. Sam sweeps in for a closer look at that, a little alarmed, but it’s nothing drastic - a pair of studs, just the same as Alyssa had calmly given herself five or six years ago as Ponk and Bad screamed bloody murder.

“Well?” says Ponk, stepping back and smoothing their front. It’s a self-conscious motion, and Sam pauses as Ponk rucks their mask back and touches one of their earrings. Their dress - summery, a lemon print with spring-green leaves and a wide fanning skirt that’s obviously been loaned by someone taller - swirls around their bare legs. The weather’s been unseasonably warm whilst Fundy and Dream have been off honeymooning - Dream had rounded up the admins before leaving and told them to keep things a little toasty while he was gone - but Sam can see goosebumps on Ponk’s arms.

Well, that won’t do. “You’re beautiful,” Sam tells Ponk firmly, stepping closer and dusting off some wayward glitter from Ponk’s shoulders. “You look very, very beautiful.”

Alyssa makes a sniffling noise and HBomb pretends to blow his nose, but really, Sam’s only got eyes for Ponk, whose eyes widen comically. She ducks her head, then, and says, smile broadening into a smirk, “Why, Awesam! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me.”

Sam snorts. “Under that logic, Sapnap’s been trying to seduce Callahan for years,” he points out.

“Jury’s still out on that one,” Alyssa cuts in diplomatically. “Anyway, we weren’t done. Ponk, come back, I want to - can I do your makeup? I think I have a palette somewhere…”

HBomb produces a flat, shimmery square that opens into colorful cakes seemingly out of nowhere. “Here you go.”

Alyssa sputters. “Where did - how - where did that come from?”

HBomb’s expression goes grave. “You don’t wanna know.”

“I wanna go on a picnic,” announces Ponk, who’d been silently swishing his skirts, making a grab for Sam’s wrist. “C’mon - Niki and Punz made these bomb-ass muffins earlier - ”

“Language,” says Sam, mostly out of reflex.

“ - shut the hell up - they made muffins, and I want to eat them, and you’re coming with.” Teasingly, they add, “Didn’t you say I looked beautiful? C’mon, let’s go. You’re not busy.”

“I’m not busy,” Sam echoes dutifully, letting himself be dragged out of the Community House as Alyssa and HBomb wave goodbye, grinning. He’d kick the both of them if he weren’t so occupied with shooting an apology to the redstone mechanic and promises to meet for coffee sometime to make up for it.

They trot down the Prime Path hand-in-hand, like always. Ponk is on the left and Sam is on the right, like always. Sam finds most of his comfort in routine, and he knows Ponk is making an effort to do that for him. It’s out of sorts for her - of the eight that make up Sam’s first family unit, Ponk has always been amongst the most adventurous, scatterbrained at times, prone to spraining ankles and bruising arms. She tones that down around him, something he’s always gratified by.

After passing the skeleton of the structure Puffy’s building and the bakery, which is giving off plumes of sweet-smelling smoke, Ponk drives them both off the road toward the rolling hills that crest just over the old White House. Schlatt still can’t quite bear to be around it, and neither can Fundy and Quackity and Tubbo, but on the good days it’s an excellent picnicking spot with the trees limning the perimeter and gentle slopes, and Sam leans against the stubby oak Ponk chose as the latter collapses into a seat and then spends a minute arranging his legs, as though he’s not quite sure how to position them.

“Hungry?” they ask when they finally settle down, reaching for the satchel they had carefully packed the muffins into.

Sam shrugs and slides down the trunk of the tree to sit between the V of its roots, holding out a hand. “I could eat.” He’d gulped down a hasty breakfast with Tommy and Purpled earlier after their impromptu redstone crash course had extended into a sleepover, but it’s just past high noon now, and besides, why would he pass up on baked goods?

Ponk passes Sam a hearty golden cake and pulls out her own as he takes a bite straight out of the top. It’s delicious, because of course it is - Sam’s never been a picky eater, and the muffins are objectively some of the best he’s tasted, dotted with bursts of mulberry and tart cranberries and garnished with some kind of oat crumble. He knows Niki and Punz have been poring over flavor combinations to send out to the MCC admin team to congratulate them on wrapping up the first full season of Championship and makes a mental note to pass on his regards.

“Do you think - ” Ponk begins abruptly, then subsides just as quickly. Sam almost lets the conversation slide into a joke, is opening his mouth to quip, when he catches the tense set of Ponk’s hands and bites his lip instead.

A cricket chirps nearby. A ways below, Sam can make out Eret and Connor crossing paths with a wave, Eret in flowy patterned pants and Connor in big blue overalls. From what Sam can see, they’re laughing.

“It’s not - it’s not this big thing,” Ponk says eventually, bringing Sam’s attention back to him. He’s studiously peeling back the wrapper from the muffin in his hand, keeping his gaze away from Sam’s. “Y’know? I mean. It wasn’t for Eret. He’s still not sure, either. Neither is Dream, in other ways. And we don’t - all of us here, we don’t define our relationships. Yeah?”

Ah. Suddenly, Sam has an inkling of what all this might be about.

It’s not exactly conventional, what the Dream SMP has got going on. Certainly, they adhere largely to the norm, what with the wide, messy family units and tangled queerplatonic relationships, but none of them have ever felt any need to… put a name on any of that. They get married, adopt kids, adopt each other, assimilate family units, and Sam’s pretty sure George had to do a bit of legal pussyfooting regarding his first marriage, which the Dream Team’s PR manager hadn’t been too thrilled about.

The point, though, is that they’ve bever demanded anything of each other, least of all a label. It’s not in their nature. Sam grips his muffin tight with one hand and leans over, his other hand hovering over Ponk’s bare shoulder, weighing his words as Ponk keeps their eyes locked on the muffin.

Ultimately, Sam decides on light, on casual. “Yeah,” he says easily, clasping her arm, because what else can he say? It’s the plain truth, though you wouldn’t know it from the half-startled shine in Ponk’s eyes. “It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It never has been. You don’t - I mean, if you want to - but you don’t have to, is the point. You’re, um - ” he flounders briefly, then stammers, “you’re you,” and then retracts his hand to cover his face with it. Well-spoken Sam, that’s him.

Ponk snorts and pats Sam on the back. “Thank you for the amazing speech,” he says pityingly, but when Sam looks up, there’s a levity to Ponk’s half-moon smile that hadn’t been there before; he feels the corners of his own mouth crick up to reflect it, and Ponk’s eyes crinkle.

“I’m me, huh,” they say, leaning back into their hands. The swish of the wind sieving through the grass echoes their words, and Sam makes the mistake of relaxing and taking another bite of his muffin. It’s just in time for Ponk to sling a look at him sidelong that’s an attempt at smoldering and say, saccharine, “Beautiful me and all that, aren’t I?” and Sam chokes on his next bite as Ponk laughs so hard they collapse down the hill.

Chapter Text

Karl remembers at the last second to loosen his grip, keep his rap on the doorframe light: knock, knock, knock, not his usual frantic banging. The last thing he wants to do, after all, is set Dream off again.

Speaking of Dream - the man, the myth, the legend himself lies sprawled onto his back on the spare bed in Karl and his husbands’ shared house, his mask discarded and his face slack. The walls are thin enough that he can probably hear the shouting through them, and Karl cringes as he crouches by the bedside; he’d quickly pulled away from the argument before it got too heated, but Sapnap’s never been the type to back down and Quackity’s too good at making and sticking to his case, so off they went, fighting to their hearts’ content.

“Are you awake?” he whispers. It’s late afternoon, the gold light dimming to gloom through the muslin curtains Karl picked out, and it feels inappropriate to speak above a mutter.

Dream stirs.

“Okay. Um… I made soup last week and froze some, but I just heated it up.” Karl holds up the mug he was holding. Dare he say, it’s ugly - the blue and white and gold painted uneven and lumpy on one side from when Sapnap left the brush propped against it - but it’s his, so he loves it, and he thinks some of that love should at least transfer over into whatever it holds within it. “It’s potato and leek and bacon… Techno’s recipe. Or Phil’s. Or maybe it’s Tubbo’s - he said it was his - but I think he was lying to me.”

Karl’s lighthearted nonsense does the trick, as it always does: Dream smiles wanly and sits up, wrapping a hand around the proffered mug. It’s ceramic, and must be scalding, but Dream doesn’t bat an eye. Karl thinks he catches a telltale curlicue of Fire Resistance wisping off of the minor god’s clothes, but, well. That’s none of his business, especially not now.

“You wanna… talk about it?” Karl turns so that the base of his head rests against the edge of the bed. He’s found that it’s easier to have heavy, emotional talks when he’s not looking the other person in the eye; they don’t have to school their expressions nor bear the weight of his gaze.

It also strikes him, as Dream makes a little sighing noise deep in his chest, how familiar it all is: him and Dream, sat huddled together in the dark, discussing one of Dream’s myriad of demons.

A quiet slurp as Dream sips at the soup, then, soft and hoarse, “Sapnap’s mad ‘cause… ‘cause of how it ended. I mean, like, he’s mad at himself. And scared. He and George both… he and George and Ant, I mean. Bad’s… he’s got nerves of steel. Even, um… even if he doesn’t look like it.”

He snaps his mouth shut with an audible click then. Karl pauses, then leans in so his temple touches the slope of Dream’s leg, murmuring, “You know I don’t mind hearing you talk, dude.”

“I was - I got - I was rambling,” Dream says, now sounding annoyed with himself.

“I’m literally saying it’s fine. Pinky promise, man,” Karl replies calmly. Even as he finishes his sentence, though, a spike of anxiety drives itself into the back of his neck. “But sorry, I interrupted you - unless you don’t want to talk, then you don’t have to, I - ”

“No, no, it’s okay, I - I wanted to - you should know,” Dream cuts him off, a little helpless, and Karl has to resist the urge to snort as they both mull over the exchange they just had. Put two people apprehensive about socializing together in a room and you get whatever that just was.

Ultimately, Dream picks back up on what he was saying. “Well… you know how we were practicing for manhunt again? As my - as our ‘hi, we’re not dead’ video?”

“Of course.” Like anyone on the server didn’t. For the last week, there had been heated debates cropping up over whether it was a good idea, whether Dream was healed enough, whether the hunters were healed enough, how safe it was, what it was for, contacting therapists, contacting psychiatrists, contacting close friends. Dream had finally put his foot down a few days ago, saying that the manhunt team were grown-ass adults and could make their own damn decisions, thank you very much, and had flounced off this morning with compasses in hand.

“So, we… we get to this world. It was a practice one so, um… Phil made it, just something tiny with barely enough size to squeeze, like, two strongholds in. Um, but anyway, we start goofing off, kinda hunting and kinda not, and I decide to tag Ant, ‘cause, you know… vibes.”

Karl nods sagely.

“I tag Ant, and we go… we all, um, we all go chasing one another, but mostly me. For obvious reasons. And I - they, um - they chased me into… a, uh, a bamboo forest.”

There is no wince hard enough in the world to accurately replicate what Karl does.

Bamboo forests overall have been a big no-no for anyone involved in trying to save Dream from Mina that first time, when they’d had him pinned to the cave wall by the throat and Sapnap screamed and almost took their arm off for it. Karl wasn’t present himself, but he saw it afterward when he went as part of the team intending to extricate some manner of confession from Mina, and even that had been enough to make him uneasy. Sapnap still breaks down at any mention of that day, and Karl’s witnessed Puffy shattering bamboo stalks over her knee once after a particularly bad day, which had seemed weird until he put two and two together a few days later.

So Karl’s perfectly prepared for Dream to clam up, a surefire sign that he panicked when he didn’t recognize his surroundings, couldn’t tell up from down and friend from foe. He’s not expecting the sudden roil of bitter bitter ache not for you not ever for you you know why and yet and yet bitter ache bitter water not your help and not your vindication, followed swiftly by, “I… I had to talk them down. That’s the first time that - that it hasn’t, uh, hasn’t been me. They all thought that - they were all trying to crowd me. Ant and George both had a panic attack, I think. Sapnap didn’t let me see.” Something twists in Dream’s voice. “Him and Bad - they didn’t want me to - they didn’t let me see. Or help.” A pause. A shift. “I - I guess I don’t know why Sapnap’s mad. None of them would fucking - talk to me. And we just ended it.”

Karl mulls that over, in the silence that follows. Normally he’d fall over himself trying to reassure, but he’s found that when things are like this, devastatingly in everyone’s head, Dream values straightforwardness and solutions.

Dream… it’s hard for him, sometimes. Karl won’t pretend to fully understand the breadth of what happened to him, but he thinks it’s hard, the way everyone keeps hovering around him, trying to bubble-wrap him against the world. During the tender period when everyone was just trying to get by, right after they’d all crashed out of the portal, Dream, more than anyone, had been so unstable that the server as a whole learned to constantly keep an eye out for him. He’s getting so much better, but Karl thinks that everyone - himself included - still wants to keep him safe from himself, from everything he’s done to himself trying to help them first.

“Well,” Karl begins slowly, thinking his words out as he goes, “maybe Sapnap is mad… because you had to see that?”

Dream startles. “What?” he demands, and the bed tips as he sits up and sets the mug of soup aside. “Why would I… that’s - that’s not - ”

He grapples with the words stuck in his mouth, but his settling does the rest of the job for him: never never never there is no shame in this your tethers your promises you would never ever ever.

“Not that you - it’s not, like, that he’s mad that you saw Ant and George having panic attacks,” Karl assures him quickly, because that’s not the problem here, and that’s not why Quackity and Sapnap are fighting. “Sorry I didn’t - okay, let me start over. Maybe… Sapnap is mad… Okay, you really should be having this conversation with Sapnap, or Bad, I think, because I don’t wanna, like, put words in their mouth or anything, but… do you think they’re mad because they’re… like, ashamed? That you saw them like that?”

“You’re not making sense.” Karl can hear Dream starting to get frustrated. “Why would - that’s the exact same thing you said before. Why would they be…”

long low heavy i wish i wish i wish he didn’t know this heavy heavy i wish he didn’t know we don’t deserve not after him we don’t deserve he’s the one suffering not us not us not us.

“…Oh.” Dream’s voice is cracked wide open. “Oh.”

Karl - well, he sniffles. Just a little. He wasn’t expecting the wave of settling, nor the confirmation that came with it. He had his suspicions, and his fair share of late-night talks with Sapnap about Mina and everything that came with them, but to hear it from his own mouth, so to speak, is… different. Harsher.

Karl’s certain it’s not just Sapnap. This is a problem across the server, and though Dream may not have been quite aware enough to give a name to his frustrations, Karl’s pretty sure this is the place where a lot of it stems from. Unanimously, wordlessly, everyone decided that they didn’t deserve to hurt when Dream was hurting worse, and maybe even because of them. Karl still has dreams about the look on Alyssa’s face when she asked, “All this time?”

But that’s something Karl’s working on in his own time. His old therapist used to emphasize free, open communication between him and his friends, and while he didn’t quite vibe with some of zir recommendations, he still values that. It’s why he clears his throat, pats Dream’s knee, and says, “You and Sapnap should talk about it. Finish your soup.”

“It still doesn’t explain why he and Quackity are fighting,” Dream mutters back, almost petulant, but dutifully picks up the mug anyway.

Karl debates between answering that and letting it be, but ultimately just says, tipping his chin back so he can see Dream, “Sapnap blames himself. Quackity doesn’t like him blaming himself. They’ll work it out fine, dude. If I’m not worried, you shouldn’t be, either.”

Dream stares at him, green eyes brilliant in the half-light, then shrugs and bends his head over the rim of the mug.

There’s a longer silence, during which Karl whips out his phone to shoot replies to his off-server friends and scroll through the endless garbage fire that is his Twitter timeline. It’s only when Dream makes a soft sound that he looks back up to find Dream staring down into the empty cup, fingers curled around it like he’s holding something precious.

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, then chokes, “It’s - it was good. The soup.”

Karl has a sneaking suspicion Dream’s not just talking about the soup. “It is,” he says, and tries to be gentle, gentle, gentle as he can as he hops to his feet and offers Dream a hand. “There’s the recipe - I got the recipe from Tubbo. It’s written up on the fridge. Come with me to get it? So you can make it on your own?”

Come outside and talk to Sapnap.

Dream looks down at the hand, all wide-eyed like Karl’s going to slap him with it or something. The second stretches into two, three, and Karl’s about to play it off as a joke when Dream puts his hand in Karl’s, then laces their fingers together like a natural.

“Okay,” he says, holding the mug close to his chest with his other hand as if he’s afraid he’ll shatter it. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Phil looks at Purpled. Then at Skeppy. Then at the gaping maw of a gorge splitting the earth between them, yawning down to what looks like bedrock, its pointed dripstone teeth bared toward the sky.

“You two want to…” he says, just to confirm what he’s insisted they repeat four times now.

“Oh my god, Phil, yes, we wanna prank Techno,” Skeppy sighs, rolling his eyes so hard it’s a wonder they don’t fall out of his skull. Phil knows instantly that it’s a habit he picked up from Dream, who overcompensates when he gestures even though he doesn’t wear the mask much anymore. 

“That’s the fourth time,” observes Purpled astutely, his arms crossed and hip cocked. What Phil wouldn’t give to swipe the smirk off his face with his wing. “You going senile, old man?”

Phil pinches the bridge of his nose. He can already feel a headache coming on. 

“Why am I part of this,” he asks despairingly. “I was minding my own business. I have builds to get to - I have to stream today,” he adds, almost begging, and both Purpled and Skeppy pause, and for a brilliant moment, Phil thinks he’s won them over.

What happens next is his own fault for conveniently forgetting that neither Purpled nor Skeppy have the streaming schedule to sympathize with him.

* * *

To say Phil hates ravines is a bit of an overstatement. He’s used to needing whatever the gashes in the earth have to offer - exposed ores and gutted mineshafts and if he’s lucky, a gapple or an enchantment book - but he’s also used to the danger presented by them. Phil sticks by his tried-and-true adage: hardcore ravines are death traps. He’s warned thousands of hardcore aspirers away from them, and he’ll warn a thousand more. Plainly speaking, they’re too dangerous. Hostile mobs can drop from overhangs, not a few ravines are home to cataracts of lava, and the mineshafts themselves are riddled with spawners. It’s too easy to get lost, and too easy to get overwhelmed. 

It definitely has nothing to do with his single, most memorable health scare. 

* * *

As begrudgingly as Phil leads the two others down the twisting caverns, it’s worth it to see their faces light up when they stumble across a geode.

The old gods rolled out something new recently - deeper caves, different flora. Phil had done a double-take when he saw the patches of lichen creeping across the walls as they traversed deeper, glowing faintly. He has a sneaking suspicion that’s just the smallest of the discoveries to be made, but the moment Skeppy’s face is bathed purple by the amethyst crystals, Phil sets the thought on the back burner, because gods above, is this beautiful.

“Wow,” Skeppy breathes, ducking into the geode properly. He jumps at the sound that his sneakers make against the amethyst - some whimsical, twinkling noise - but the surprise promptly gives way to delight, and he shimmies the rest of the way down, affixing torches to the sparkling walls as Phil slips in, then offers a hand to Purpled. 

Phil’s never seen anything like this before, though he’ll probably see plenty more in his hardcore world after today. The gifts of the elders never fail to amaze him. He runs a hand along the walls, pockmarked with shallow divots where the gemstone ebbs and flows, and allows himself, for the briefest moment, to marvel.

The beauty must catch Purpled and Skeppy off-guard, too; plans of pranking Techno momentarily forgotten, they set about carefully pulling the crystal patches from the geode with Silk-Touched pickaxes and line their packs with the stuff. They have the right idea; you never know what novel things can be crafted with the new materials.

Phil presses one ear close to the chiming blocks. Wonders if he can hear the croon of something far away, divine, as if this geode has just freshly left the elders’ hands. 

It scares him, sometimes: the proximity between human and god.

* * *

Phil remembers his twenties as a time defined by his inability to relax. Every moment was spent streaming, coming up with content, taking care of his family, exploring the world. Wanderlust lines the marrow of his bones, but at least now, he has the ability to satisfy it somewhat. Back then, he’d only had his two legs and four younger mouths to feed.

It’s not that he wasn’t happy with his choices; if anything, waking up to Tommy and Tubbo reaming him out whilst screaming that Wilbur and Techno would burn the house down if he didn’t help them was one of the small joys in life. The constant hum of activity and never-ending stream of requests was a way to at least partially ease the restlessness Phil carried like a second skin. Besides, he was a good minor god, keeping up dutifully with the infrequent summonings that occasionally drifted to him through the grapevine (clearing out a truly dead world, assisting a hardcore player out of the skeleton of their old server, accepting a commission for a new SMP), and his power kept his family largely out of trouble, soothing scraped knees and bloody noses.

So he may have been under the slightest bit of stress. It hardly mattered. The youngests were five and six respectively, Techno still struggled with settling into his own skin some days, and Wilbur needed to stretch his legs. Phil had more important obligations than giving himself a break. He’s immortal, for god’s sake. 

He’s immortal, and that’s why he doggedly ignored the quiet, twinging chest pains.

* * *

It’s different now, having partial control over the server. Joint ownership is common on bigger servers, especially games servers, but the Dream SMP is just small and intimate enough for Phil to have the fine control he’d lack on any other multi-player world. As Purpled and Skeppy wander further into the gloom, torches aloft, Phil arcs his wings behind him, flexing his primaries against the stone walls. Tubbo, who’s on preening duty tonight, will likely complain about the extra grime, but that doesn’t stop Phil from feeling out the new caves as best he can.

“Phil!” calls Skeppy from further up ahead, snapping Phil from his absentminded daze. “Keep up! This stuff isn’t gonna mine itself!”

“You just want me around to packhorse for you!” Phil hollers back, even as he picks up his pace and rounds the corner.

“Never,” Skeppy scoffs, like the liar he is. He’s watching Purpled scale the wall down into the belly of the cave, overflowing with water and dull patches of that same glowing lichen from earlier. Phil fancies he can see bits of dripstone further in and maybe the tell-tale luminescent flash of a glow squid, but it’s too dark to see that far, and he squints at Purpled instead, tracking the kid’s plum hoodie into the depths of the stone where the grey meets deepslate.

“Thanks for coming, by the way,” Skeppy says casually, pulling blocks from his pack to build a path down the wall. “I know you’re busy and stuff, but Tommy asked us to take you out - ”

“Take me out??” Phil repeats, horrified.

“ - so we thought we should just bring you with us. We were gonna prank Techno anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal,” Skeppy continues, perfectly unmoved by Phil’s interjection. Phil’s left to wonder whether his youngest family member wanted him killed or out of the house, neither of which bode particularly well for Wilbur or Techno, who usually come running to him after Tommy bullies them.

“You two are so fucking slow!” Purpled hollers from somewhere in the pitch black. Of course the little hellion doesn’t put down torches when he explores mineshafts. Phil’s willing to bet Purpled has never dissected a cave in his life, more preoccupied with hustling richer people out of said riches.

Still, he sighs and spreads his wings dutifully. “You’re so fucking impatient, you goddamn child,” he yells back, taking a running leap off of the cliff face and leaving Skeppy to shriek and suffer the indignity of building down all alone.

* * *

Phil prides himself on his split-second thinking. He will always choose flight over fight, and he’s damn good at it, mapping out escape routes the moment he slips into the mouth of a cave and having everything he could possibly need to camp an area for an indeterminate period of time should the need arise. 

He just needed more diorite for a gradient on one of his builds. That was it. He’d shouldered a pack after breakfast and told the others he’d be back by dinner and traipsed off into the deep dark unknown, rubbing absently at his chest as he went; the pangs kept coming and going, but the faint, pinprick pains didn’t bother him so long as he ignored them in favor of mining out coal for the furnaces, spawnproofing every inch of the worming tunnel, grabbing iron for Wilbur’s new armor - the kid was growing faster than Phil himself ever had, and he’d thought ruefully that Wilbur might be taller than him soon. 

A mineshaft caught his attention. That was his first mistake.

He knows better than to lose his bearings underground. He doesn’t have a compass on him - lodestones hadn’t existed then yet, so force-enchanting compasses to hone in on a specific location was still finicky, and Phil’s house hadn’t been close enough to spawn for him to bother with one anyway - but the mineshaft was too tempting to ignore, and it had been so long since he’d indulged himself in a little adventure. Phil’s always been too adrenaline-seeking for his own good. He finds many minor gods are.

He gets lost. Of course he does. The frisson that runs through his chest at the realization doesn’t exactly feel great, and he loses his bearings once more as he collapses against the wall of the mineshaft beside a torched spider spawner, his hands clammy. It washes out just as quick as it came, and Phil’s left staring down at his boots, clinging to his pick, wondering what the hell is happening to him.

Despite what Techno and Wilbur might say, Phil does have perfectly functional survival instincts, thank you very much, and he decides then and there that it’s time to book it, unexplored mineshaft be damned. He retraces his steps back through the maze and manages to tell North from South based on the placement of the rails and the drop-offs on the mineshaft, and heads out through a different entrance from there, placing his feet much more carefully as he goes to keep from skidding on the gravel that crops up more frequently going up.

Walking on gravel is actually the second mistake, though Phil will only process that a few days later. In the moment, he’s very preoccupied by the collapsing gravel that dumps him unceremoniously into the heart of a ravine right as he caught a glimpse of the sky.

Sunlight or not, there are a million mobs down here, and they turn on him with beady, hungry eyes. Terror lances through Phil’s veins like a bolt of lightning as a horde of various undead lumber toward him with alarming speed, and that terror snatches at his heart with an ominous yank, and Phil thinks he sees stars as he collapses back into the wall. 

He’s no stranger to pain. He’s broken his fair share of bones, pulled every muscle he knows of, and spent one memorable winter in his teenage years shivering in his bed and wracked with a wet cough and a wicked fever. But whatever this is, this sharp, blinding agony that stabs through his chest with every inhale and fills his head with thorns, this agony that cuts every breath into a weak, gasping thing flagging in his lungs, turns his legs to jelly and his arms about as useful as two sticks? 

This beats everything out by a long shot.

Phil might as well be pinned to the cave wall; every movement sends an echo of pain back up to his chest, somehow so hot it loops back into cold. His fingers are numb, and he’s shooting completely blind into the crowd of clawing limbs. The pain is only just beaten out by the equally terrifying knowledge that if he stops shooting he’s as good as dead, that the zombies and skeletons and whatever the fuck else is there will tear him to pieces, and then no one will tie Tommy’s shoes or fix Wil’s armor or read Tubbo his books or teach Techno to hold a sword, and even as he crunches into himself to contain the ache in his chest, Phil keeps his bow as steady as he can and keeps firing, Infinity stinging his fingertips.

His ears ring incessantly; he can barely think over the drone of the hostile mobs, even though they must be dwindling in number. He has just enough critical thought processing working in his head - some eleventh-hour evolutionary adaptation that fires all of his synapses for him - to realize that if he doesn’t make a run for it now, he’ll stay trapped and they’ll keep spawning.

Phil crashes through his makeshift shelter gracelessly and staggers into a heap on the ravine floor, spent. Vaguely, he realizes his pack has fallen off his shoulder; the golden apples he stores inside tumble out, the sound muted through the resounding pain in Phil’s head. Even more vaguely, he realizes that he must have killed the lot of them, if nothing’s gnawing at his ankles yet.

The relief does nothing to ease the white-hot knot behind his sternum. Phil gropes for his chest, digs his fingers into the fabric over his heart, where the epicenter of the pain lies, radiating out into the very tips of his toes. It doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as it had when he first found himself surrounded, but it’s not ebbing, and his heartbeat feels weird beneath his fingers, shuddery and just shy of its usual reliable gait. He can feel his hands shake. In fact, he thinks he can feel his entire body shaking.

It’s just his luck that as he manages to drag his head up to locate his communicator he locks eyes with a baby zombie.

The fear crashes over him tenfold, and with it returns another vicious jab of pain that renders Phil soundless. He hates baby zombies, always has. The damn things are ridiculously fast and stupidly hard to hit and way more trouble than they’re worth. They’re a nuisance on a good day, a free nightmare on bad ones, and this is very, very, very bad.

Phil can’t move.

The child starts to crawl toward him.

Phil can’t move.

The child makes a ragged, angry noise, like blood bubbling through a torn throat, and reaches for his face with its cold rotting little fingers, and Phil can’t fucking move.

Wet, exposed muscle brushes his cheek, and then, all of a sudden, there’s the singing sound of a blade winnowing past sinew, and Phil blinks as the child disintegrates and in its place stands - stands - 

“Phil?!” cries Wilbur.

* * *

Phil will never have the level of split-second fight-or-flight response he reserves for the Void with ravines, or baby zombies, or gapples rolling from his open pack. Nevertheless, when he and Skeppy and Purpled drop down to tackle the last long, winding valley of the ravine they haven’t yet ransacked and he immediately locks eyes with a child, Phil stops.

If any of his family were here, they’d have noticed immediately and descended on the thing like starving harpies. Hell, they’d have noticed before he did and dispatched it in the blink of an eye. It’s a gentler reminder than others that he hasn’t voluntarily entered a ravine alone in years, though he’s been hedging the topic more and more ever since Dream forced everyone on the server to go seek psychiatric help. 

He has all of two seconds to wonder if Tommy maybe put the unthreatening Skeppy and Purpled up to this before said duo dive at the baby zombie, screaming bloody murder and waving their swords.

“YEAH!! FUCK OFF, YOU LITTLE BITCH!!” Purpled crows, swinging with merciless accuracy at the little thing. Skeppy, for his part, alternately cheers Purpled on and screams and ducks behind his shield when the baby zombie veers too close to him. The thing is particles and a heap of rotten flesh in seconds.

“...Wow,” says Phil, just to punctuate the awkward silence. Skeppy coughs and adjusts his pack. Purpled stares back blankly. It’s all really killing Phil’s attempt at lightly dissociating whilst psychoanalyzing himself in the middle of a relatively dangerous situation.

Finally, Purpled sniffs, “You’re welcome,” elbows Skeppy in the side, and sets off deeper into the cave with his sword, still sticky with gore, slung easily over his shoulder. Skeppy rubs his side balefully and follows him at a safe distance.

Phil stays staring at the lump of rotten flesh on the cave floor for just a few seconds more.

It’s that easy.

If Phil catches up with the other two and stays closer on their heels, and if he feels less inclined to keep glancing around with his shoulders tense, nobody says anything.

* * *

“Phil - easy, man, just stay with me, that’s it,” pants Wilbur. “Easy, easy. We’re almost to the house - how do you feel? Are you - are you alright?”

Phil manages a hoarse, strained little sound. It’s not a “yes,” which is his default response, and he can tell through the thick, piercing pain that Wilbur takes this as a sign of the worst. The kid’s lips thin and even though he must be exhausted he still stubbornly speedwalks to the door of their big half-painted home, knocking clumsily with his shoulder.

Tubbo opens the door; Phil sees his mouth form a perfect “O”. 

“Get Techno,” Wilbur tells him brusquely, and Tubbo spins on his heel to do just that, screaming, “TECHNOBLADE!!” Phil winces as it echoes through the forest, and then winces again, harder, when the first flinch aggravates his complaining chest.

Wilbur shoots him a worried look as they squeeze through the doorway, but just as Wilbur deposits him into the living room sofa and straightens up with a quiet groan, Tommy bursts in, frantic and wide-eyed.

“Philza, you are grey,” he gasps.

“Yeah,” Phil squeaks back.

“I think he’s had a heart attack,” explains Wilbur breathlessly, brushing his hair from his eyes.

“A what?” demands Tommy, turning on his older brother, but Phil curbs what probably would have turned into a blustering half-argument by grinding out a garbled sentence and sinking sideways into the sofa.

Tubbo chooses that moment to scamper back in, this time with Techno at his back. Techno is, as always, methodical: he spots Phil, goes pale, and strides over in three steps to study him, not touching, not talking, taking in the tremors, his pallor, the way Phil’s hands are gripping his chest. As insane as the situation has been, Phil can’t help but feel comforted by Techno’s straightforwardness. 

“Techno,” begins Wilbur nervously from the corner, but Techno cuts him off with a grunt of “You’re right. It’s - it’s… in the Nether, it’s named… a stress of the heart? Somethin’ like that. The brute elders… old, and their hearts…” Techno snorts, frustrated. “Their hearts weren’t good. So they… fell, sometimes. My… elder said that… that it felt like her heart was breakin’. Phil. Phil, does it feel like your heart is breakin’?”

Well, when he puts it like that. Phil must make some noise in the affirmative, because Tubbo instantly shrieks, shrill, “Is Phil going to die?!”

“He’s not going to die,” Wilbur says severely. “He’s a minor god, Tubbo. Phil can’t die. He just has to rest. Right, Techno?” 

Phil can just make out the look of desperation Wilbur throws Techno from his angle, but Techno completely misses it, his eyes trained on Phil’s hands. Phil realizes with a start that he can feel tackiness on his fingertips. He must have burnt them on the Infinity enchantment on his bow, which he doesn’t remember bringing back. More notably, he realizes the pain isn’t so insistent that he can actually process things that aren’t just overwhelming agony.

“He’s not going to die,” Techno echoes, gaze trained on Phil’s hands. Like he’s staring straight into Phil’s heart. Phil knows, then, that Techno knows what caused it; that his piglin elders must have known, too, what the cause could be, and that Techno doesn’t like the implications of it, because his gaze is equally as intense as he lifts his eyes to Phil’s and says, “Just have to rest. Rest. You know what I’m sayin’, Phil?”

Three months later, Phil will be dragged back home on his family’s backs with gifts from the Void. But he doesn’t know that yet, so he whispers hoarsely, “Yeah, mate, I do,” and even scrounges up a wan smile for Techno through the aftershocks in his chest.

* * *

“Is that it, then?” says Phil, mopping his brow with his sleeve. It’s almost five, and he still has to squeeze in a quick stream before Techno inevitably drags him off to go to sleep, and he thinks Punz was making dinner over in the Greater SMP which means he really wants to go before the food runs out, and his thoughts are going a million miles an hour and already miles away from the whole baby zombie thing before he notices Skeppy and Purpled exchanging sly looks.

“We were thinking…”

“Would you build it? Just above his doorstep? You know his day-to-day movements better, and I have to go record a video with Walli and Levi tomorrow, and Skeppy said Bad is taking him off-server tonight…”

Very clean excuses. Probably true. Purpled is grinning, but it’s just his usual sharklike grin, and Skeppy is looking at him with big old eyes through his lashes like he’s never done anything wrong in his life despite his entire YouTube channel being built on bullying his friends for monetary gain. 

You little shits, this is what you wanted from the beginning, Phil thinks violently, folding his arms across his chest. You live with Wilbur and Tubbo for long enough and you get good at seeing through that faux “I’m-completely-innocent” look. 

“This is, by far, the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” he says instead of giving voice to his homicidal thoughts, because knowing the “I’m-completely-innocent” look and trying to win against it are two entirely different things. He’s pretty sure he would and has let his family get away with murder. “I hope both of you know this.”

Purpled blinks. “The dumbest thing I’ve ever done is rushing a full-diamond obby team with only wooden tools and three emeralds, and I won that game by a long shot,” he says nonchalantly, then heaves a pearl into the distance and strolls off until he blinks away in a shower of violet sparkles like the unrelenting asshole he is.

“For the record,” Skeppy pipes up, startling Phil, “Tommy did ask us to get you out of the house for a bit. And, y’know - thank you for helping us. Tommy said a while ago that - that you don’t like ravines. But thanks for helping us anyway. We figured you could use some time off.”

Phil pauses, then smiles to himself ruefully. Tommy’s more perceptive than people give him credit for. 

Phil hadn’t been to dinner the last few days. He’s been preoccupied with a massive build in his hardcore world, which eats away the majority of his days and usually gets him home around midnight or later, and Tommy noticed, and Tommy remembered what the last time he hadn’t been coming home had been like. Guilt twinges at Phil at the thought; Tommy was probably worried. Hell, Tubbo and Wilbur probably were, too. Techno only knew better because they sleep in the same room.

“Yeah,” Phil says, stretching his wings carefully: each muscle, each feather, one by one by one. Careful. Methodical. “Yeah, I guess I could use the break. Thanks. Keep forgetting I need those.”

“No problem.” Skeppy smiles fast and easy. It’s endearing. Phil suspects it’s part of the reason why he and Bad get along so well. “Don’t forget to eat something, okay? I’m gonna - I’m gonna just go,” and he, too, disappears in a flurry of purple particles.

Phil stands alone in the forest, his feet at the tip of a ravine; inhale, hold, exhale. The air is cool. The sun is going down.

“Rest,” he murmurs to himself, and then turns and sets off in search of home.

Chapter Text

Past the blind whirlwind delight of the wedding, their togetherness has been the quiet sort, punctuated by one another’s brief hyperfixations, but just a day ago Dream put his latest kick—a pair of knitting needles click-a-clacking every time Fundy lingered around the Community House—down on his lap and asked, “Are Sapnap and Karl and Quackity back from their honeymoon?”

Fundy’d blinked, frozen halfway through the doorway. “Yeah, on Monday.”

“Great,” Dream had set his needles down, “our turn!” and that had been that. 

Old hurts, new hurts: they’re still tripping all over each other by the first week of their honeymoon. Fundy helps Dream cobble together a ramshackle cabin in the spruce forest they spawn in, furnishings and all, a table and two chairs and a sofa that, when sat on, is akin to sitting on a rock. It’s that weekend as Fundy’s kneading a particularly stubborn knot out of Dream’s left shoulder when he finally thinks to ask, “How’s your arm?”

Because it’s the arm that Fundy’s pressing down on, isn’t it? It bothers Dream intermittently even on good days, and Dream’s lips had thinned this morning when he picked up his axe, so it’s really anything but a good day. Fundy’s on the verge of accusing, “It hurts, doesn’t it,” and sounding wounded while he’s at it, about to lean away and paw through the bedside table for that weird cooling potion mix Phil insists Dream slather on when there’s so much as a wince when he realizes Dream’s tensed up beneath him.

“Hey,” Dream says, then falls silent again. The quiet he assumes is a miserable one, and slowly, guilt picks its way down the struts of Fundy’s spine.

They talked about this with the counselor they share, and then again with the rest of the server once they picked up on the pattern. This: the reflex they’ve all sown and grown, the one that has them scrambling after Dream, smothering him. The thing that keeps them hovering the moment Dream falters at all, which he hates, even if he can’t quite manage to say that to them. No matter; his settling does it for him, whiplike: don’t don’t don’t he can do it he just needs time needs quiet needs space don’t he can do it just don’t.

“I understand why you do it,” Fundy’s private therapist had told him later, as he subsided into a shamefaced silence. “ I do! It’s an understandable response. You saw him at his worst, Fundy. If I’ve understood you correctly, for a very long time, you were always seeing him at his worst. And maybe, as you kept seeing that, you felt that he wasn’t getting better. And somewhere along the way, as he never got better, and even kept getting worse, you realized you, and by extension, all of your friends, had to do things for him. Protect him. Save him, at times. And sometimes you had to protect him from himself. Did I understand correctly?” Fundy nodded, numb. “But if I’m hearing right, he’s getting better. He’s learning to heal and to do the things he might not have been able to before for himself.” She’d peered at him over her glasses, and Fundy bit his lip when she asked gently, “Do you think you might get why Dream’s frustrated?”

“Sorry,” Fundy says now, pulling away. Flinching, more like: he jerks his hands from Dream’s back as though burned, trying to make sure he’s not crowding Dream during a sensitive moment. “Sorry that I keep—I don’t mean to assume, man, I’m sorry. You’d—I trust you. I trust you to tell me if something’s wrong. I don’t want to push you.”

“...I know,” Dream says tightly, in that way he does when he’s still upset and he’s upset with himself for being upset. Being okay with being mad at his friends and family is still something he’s working on. “I just…”

Fundy forces himself to remain patient, to sling his legs over the edge of the bed so he’s not sitting on his husband, as Dream curls his fingers into fists on the lumpy quilt HBomb made for them. “I just want to… be… not that for a bit. Not… there. Where I was… you know? Like, you guys were treating me like… like I’m not… like I can’t do things for myself. Decide for myself.” Dream pauses. “I can,” he says, mostly to himself. An assurance, and one that Fundy feels dirty for making Dream feel like he needs to give. “Just. You know. I won’t… I need help sometimes. Everyone does. And I know that… that I didn’t… ask. Before. But I need the… the space. To ask. To be able to ask.”

let him lean let him ease there is more more more to this there is an everspace an eon let him ask ask ask.

Fundy swallows hard. This is more than Dream’s ever asked of him, he’s realizing, sitting in their rickety little log cabin with the lumpy mattress and uneven windows. It was Fundy who knelt on one knee and when Mina came, Dream never asked to be helped, so: Dream, asking for patience, asking for Fundy to just stop a second and let Dream measure his own needs, is the most important thing Fundy’s ever been tasked with.

And Fundy’s realizing, too: there wouldn’t be anything worse in the world than letting Dream down here.

“Of course,” he whispers, sliding off the bed to crouch eye-level with Dream, who’s running a finger down his cheekbone like he’s missing something vital. “Of course. You shouldn’t—I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have even needed to ask. We’ve talked about this before. All of us.” And he can’t stand to see the mask haunting Dream, so he reaches out, tentative, inch by inch so Dream can see where he’s putting his hands, and threads their fingers together. “I’m. I’m trying. But I’ll try harder. I’ll do better. I will. I’m sorry.”

Dream’s eyes soften, like butter on hot bread. “I forgive you,” he whispers back, letting Fundy slot their hands closer together and skim his thumb over their joined knuckles. “And. Um. For what it’s worth I’m sorry too, that I made you guys… feel like… I couldn’t. You know. That I made you guys have to choose to keep picking me.”

A lick of righteous fury scalds Fundy’s throat. “You shouldn’t apologize for hurting. Or wanting to keep your hurt to yourself.”

Dream’s expression is wry. “I don’t think it’s that easy,” he returns. “But anyway. Because I was hurting you guys by hurting by myself. I… I get that. And I was doing that for like half a year, you know?” Dream hesitates, then lights up, eyes winking brighter, the way he does when he’s found the perfect analogy. “You know how… what’s that thing? How you learn behaviors? How you can… like, train someone to associate something with something else if you do it long enough?”

Fundy wrinkles his nose in thought. “Classical conditioning.”

“Yeah, that. So it’s—ugh, now that I think about it it’s not a perfect comparison, but like—our hurts, all of us, we’re linked up like that because we’re so—we’re so caught up in one another. Our server. Us.” Dream lines up Fundy’s other hand with his own, meshes them together in demonstration. “Not, like, actually, but… we’ve been going like this so long we just. You guys always had to choose me. Because of how bad it was. And even though now that’s—that’s over…” Dream nods between him and Fundy, toward their linked hands, “...you still feel like you need to keep protecting me from whatever’s hurting me. Even if it’s something I can do myself. Even if it’s something I want to do myself.”

It’s… it’s a lot, not a bad kind of a lot but still a lot, to hear Dream poke holes through habits Fundy’s been taking for granted these past few months with such keenness. Fundy knows the entire server, not just him, will jump at a chance to be Dream’s crutch or shield before he can do it for them first. Somewhere along the way it’s turned into some kind of unspoken self-sacrifice contest between themselves and Dream, which is just as terrible and subconscious as it sounds, but after Karl mentioned it during one of the brunches they all brought it up with their own therapists and it’s getting better, Fundy thinks. It’s gotten a lot better. They mess up, but they’re trying. They’re all trying.

It’s a different, good kind of a lot to know that Dream’s come worlds away from the pale shade he was during Mina, and the weeks leading up to and after them. Fundy sighs the worst of the worries away and nudges his nose to Dream’s neck, grateful beyond words for him. 

“You’re right,” Fundy mumbles into the folds of Dream’s hood. “And I’m sorry, again. I’ll be better. I promise.”

Dream hums, a pleased little sound—surprised in its own way too, which Fundy plans on eradicating: the lingering uncertainty over establishing healthy boundaries—and presses his cheek to Fundy’s. Fundy can feel the dimple in Dream’s cheek when he grins.

“I know,” Dream says, soft. “I believe you.”

* * *

Neither of them are exactly the best cooks—Dream knows just enough to keep them both from getting salmonella and Fundy’s a dab hand at peeling potatoes and not much else—but Sam and Schlatt, mercy of mercies, took one look at both of them and packed them enough satchels to last them around a month in great comfort.

“‘Don’t eat pink meat,’ they told us,” Dream sniffs, stooping on their newly-sanded table to rummage through one of the hand-woven baskets. “What do I look like? Some kinda indoorsman?”

“Never,” Fundy assures him, though he’s very distracted by the potent smell of onions and dill wafting up from a paper bag that’s sodden with grease. It’s definitely one of those wraps Fundy loves, fresh from Schlatt and Connor’s kitchen. He’s in the process of undressing it with his eyes when Dream calls, “Hey, check this out.”

Fundy’s mourning every moment that wrap isn’t in his mouth. “What?”

Dream’s straightened up, shading a yellow piece of paper against the slant of afternoon sun with his free hand. It looks like it’s been crumpled into a ball then pried open again, its spiderwebbing creases like a stained glass window, and Fundy squints at it. Brushes Dream’s arm with his tail, a wordless request for permission to read over his shoulder.

Dream shrugs and angles the page so Fundy can get a good look. The handwriting isn’t immediately familiar—not Wilbur’s fastidious print nor Tommy or Tubbo’s atrocious ones nor Niki’s tiny, cramped letters—so instinctively he thinks it’s not for him, but then he reads, “Hey, m8s,” and he sighs. Buries his face into the junction of Dream’s neck and collarbone.

“He didn’t pluralize ‘m8.’”

“He did.” Dream’s nothing short of gleeful. “He also used ‘live, laugh, love’ unironically.”

Oh, this Fundy’s gotta see. “Show show show,” he demands, making grabby hands around Dream’s waist, wrap long forgotten. Dream laughs like it’s being squeezed out of him, and it burns in Fundy’s chest like liquid gold to hear it.

“Right here, after the thing about Dogchamp and cooking fish all the way…”

* * *

They sleep crushed together in the same bed mostly for posterity, which is to say, for the ultimate show of broship. It’s there that Fundy makes a whole slew of new discoveries about Dream, the most pressing probably being the fact that he’s freckled everywhere.

He has freckles on his neck. He has freckles on his knuckles. Heck, he has faint freckles dotting the shell of his ear like a spray of sea foam, and when Fundy tells Dream so, he’s treated to the incredible sight of Dream writhing this way and that like a dog rolling in the dirt in a vain attempt to see his own ears before he remembers that he can’t do that without a mirror. 

“You’re an idiot,” Fundy informs him loftily, passing his hand fondly over Dream’s cheek. Dream, ever the charmer, smiles into the base of Fundy’s palm, then, the smile splitting into something devilish, he licks it wrist to finger, and Fundy shrieks and kicks him off the bed as Dream screams with laughter.

“You’re so gross,” Fundy huffs down at him, once he’s wiped his hand clean of Dream saliva.

Dream beams right back up. “Learned from the best,” he sings, then lowers his lashes and offers Fundy his best puppy eyes. “Let me back up?”

“No.”

“I’m cold.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“Please?” Dream rolls so he’s curled up on his side, clasping his hands together, all shivering and pathetic. “Pretty please?”

Fundy heavily considers leaving his potentially soon-to-be-ex-husband on the floor. Unfortunately, the powerful desire to be the little spoon wins out over any bastion of reason still left standing in his idiot ape brain, and he sighs very deeply, disappointed in himself, as he lifts the covers and Dream clambers eagerly back in.

“Your feet are cold,” Fundy complains as he turns onto his side, back to Dream.

“I wonder whose fault that is,” Dream shoots back, obligingly lifting an arm so Fundy can shimmy into him, back to chest. 

They settle, bit by bit. It’s faintly light out still, but it had been a busy day: chores, mostly, and Dream hauling back an entire deer carcass come evening for dinner as though that’s a completely normal thing for a completely normal person to do. So venison for dinner, Fundy riding the handlebars of the newly-named bicycle Dream wheeled around at sunset, and a little serenade by the campfire after the sun dipped down; all in all, a very good way to end their honeymoon.

“Last day,” Dream observes quietly into Fundy’s ear, after a small lull.

“Yeah,” Fundy murmurs, a little fuzzy with the beginnings of sleep. He flicks one of his ears back, and Dream snorts when it hits him in the nose. 

“...Well. What’d you think?”

“Mm?”

“What did you think?”

“...About what? The honeymoon?” Fundy asks, suddenly very awake, incredulity shattering his drowsiness. “What, like you want me to rate it?”

“I dunno, I was just asking,” replies Dream, indignant. “I guess?”

“Okay, sure. Ten out of ten, would recommend. The trauma was kinda weird but we worked it out.”

“Shut up.” Dream’s chuckling now, earlier defensiveness nowhere to be seen. “We were having a bro moment—”

“You literally married me,” Fundy hollers at the opposite wall, because he’s too comfortable to bother turning around to yell it at Dream’s amused face. “You legally can no longer call me a bro—”

“But our bro rings,” pleads Dream, going all pitchy to lean into the bit. “Our brolationship counselor. Our—our bro marriage.”

“Go have a bro marriage with Sapnap and George, I’m leaving.”

Dream suddenly falls silent, and Fundy feels his entire body go cold to hear it. Again, all those old wounds, the places where they’re testing each other even if they don’t know it. Fundy’s wriggled around so he can face Dream and ask what’s wrong when he sees Dream’s face, and a little of his frozen core thaws to see it: Dream doesn’t look hurt, or angry, or dulled down. Nothing that says Fundy’s massively fucked up, like he’d been afraid of. Just… pensive.

“You know,” Dream says abruptly, “I’m… me and Sapnap and George, we’re probably going to get married too. At some point.”

“...Yeah?” Fundy says, relief over his non-misstep giving way to confusion. “What about it?”

Dream doesn’t speak again for a long moment. He’s tipping his head, studying Fundy’s face. He brings his hands up to thumb Fundy’s hair out of it, gingerly touches Fundy’s ears. It’s a privilege he’s long earned, and Fundy doesn’t say a word when he does.

“...And you don’t mind that?” Dream finally asks, feathering his fingers behind Fundy’s ears. “Sharing?”

Sharing.

It’s strange to hear it verbalized, when it’s something they’ve never really talked about. Fundy took it for granted that Dream would marry other people, that he himself would probably stick with just the one. It’s not something he’s ever been bitter about; for him it’s just a fact, that Dream’s got that much love to give. It’s hard to articulate what their relationship is founded on when everyone in the whole world has got something so individual to themselves with their own partners should they choose to have one, and neither Fundy nor Dream have really said much other than to agree their bond, even if it wasn’t romantic, was still love, so for Dream to ask is… strange. Unexpected, more like.

They’re open. They always have been, in a lot of ways. It’s just that Dream’s found more people he wants to be with forever, and maybe that makes some people wish they could be enough that their partner wouldn’t look at anyone but them. Fundy, hardly the jealous sort, is not one of those people.

“Well, I’m… it’s not really me sharing,” he says, mulling it over as he talks. “We don’t… you don’t belong to me. Or—I phrased that poorly.” Fundy sighs; words have never been his forte. “Like. We don’t… this isn’t a question of ownership, so… it’s not that I’m… sharing you. Or loaning you or whatever. You know? Like. It’s your time and your love that you’re… that you’re giving. So really I should be asking you whether you don’t mind sharing.”

wonder wonder oh wonder.

Dream blinks. He stares down at Fundy like he’s seeing the sunrise for the first time. “I didn’t think about it like that.”

“Me neither, til like three seconds ago,” Fundy mutters. 

A cackle; Dream bends forward to bestow it into the crown of Fundy’s head. As he subsides, he murmurs, “You’re so dumb.”

Fundy preens anyway. “But I’m a keeper, right?”

“Oh yeah.” Fundy can feel the shape of Dream’s smile, buried in his hair, something small and miraculous all to himself. “You’re definitely a keeper.”

Chapter Text

The entire first day alone since his… recovery, Grian just goes through the motions. 

It had stifled him at the time, how there was always at least one person hovering over him back in the bed by the window with the basil and the bluebells. He remembers waking up feeling like every organ had been twisted in their cavities and something leathery folded up neatly behind his back, and he remembers feeling so cold it was as though no fire could warm him. Xisuma was almost always there, tied by duty and maybe by personal loyalty, and if X wasn’t there then it was somebody else, a rotating roster. Stress, who knitted. Cub, who sketched. Scar, who, on his third round, brought a tiny yarnball of a kitten who he called Jellie. She was very small and very fragile, fine-boned. When she meowed it sounded like birdsong.

Scar’d offered her to Grian. Grian, mindful of the dull but pointed tips of his nails, staunchly refused.

The first day is swelteringly hot, given he’s out in the jungle. Grian can barely feel it; all he’s been since then is freezing, and he tucks his chin more securely into the crook of his scarf as he methodically cuts planks, measures out supplies, makes a mess of his storage system. He thinks he has neighbors. He also doesn’t care. He can’t, through the cold, constant anhedonia. 

It’s only the fifth day in when he looks up and suddenly realizes that he’s very tired and it’s very dark outside. Overhead, a circling platoon of phantoms shriek, the sound buzzsawing through the fog in Grian’s head. 

There’s someone at his side.

There’s someone at his side—

Grian moves before he can think about it, swiping a leg out, his hands clawed, flaring the wings he didn’t ask for and didn’t want he didn’t want he didn’t want them, if They loved him so much why did They give him them, if They loved him so much why didn’t They let him leave, he wants to go home he wants to go home he wants to go HOME

“—hey, hey, hey! Easy. Easy. There you go, that’s it. It’s just me, buddy. It’s Scar.”

The someone—Scar, if he’s to be believed—has his arms wrapped iron tight around Grian, nearly to the point of pain, practically cocooning him. His heartbeat drums steadily in Grian’s left ear where it’s smushed against Scar’s chest. They’re swaying back and forth in the gloomy jungle: Scar’s rocking them, his voice soft, casual as anything. 

Grian opens his mouth. It’s dry. He doesn’t think he’s spoken once all five days of Hermitcraft Season Six. “Scar.”

“I came to borrow some vines,” Scar murmurs, his voice just a tad above a whisper. The phantoms, losing patience, seem to have moved on to more interesting prey. “You were just standin’ there, all those phantoms clouding over your head. I thought you’d fallen asleep standing up or something. I’m sorry for scaring you. Are you okay? Do you want me to let go?”

On reflex Grian starts to say yes, because he spent so long alone and everything’s so loud and colorful now and he doesn’t need anything but himself, he knows that for certain, he’s lived this long with nothing but himself, but. 

Loss: the absence of pressure, of presence. Grian thinks that if Scar lets go now Grian’ll do something terrible, like shatter into a billion irreparable pieces, or maybe start screaming his head off and wake half the hermits sleeping in the jungle, or maybe make a crazed dive for the sword Scar has strapped across his back and try to slice off the wings himself. 

“...Please don’t let go,” says Grian. It comes out weak.

Scar pauses in his rocking with a short, sharp inhale. He sounds surprised. It must not be a bad surprise, though, because after that pause he resumes the rocking, reaching one hand up to thumb through the ragged fringe of Grian’s hack job. 

“I won’t. I wouldn’t.” Scar’s breath warms Grian’s hair. The chill in Grian’s bones eases, just a little. “I’ll never let go.”

Eventually the night deepens and Scar’s forced to half-break his pledge: they waddle awkwardly to the door of Grian’s misshapen hovel, one of Scar’s arms still belted securely around Grian’s waist. He seems to understand, on some level, what’s happening to Grian and why he’s so lost in his own head, which is excellent, because he also understands what Grian needs right now even though Grian himself doesn’t know. When they reach Grian’s barren bedroom Scar whisks himself off to what Grian presumes is the kitchen, though not without depositing two of Grian’s heaviest books on his lap. Grian stares at the embossed titles and fights the urge to drift away again with his pick and axe. 

Scar bustles back in with two steaming mugs in one hand and a plate in the other. When he tips it obligingly, Grian can see that Scar made sandies. “Secret recipe,” he says, winking.

The room settles as Scar sinks onto the mattress with a quiet groan and inches closer, gesturing for Grian to shuck off the books and draping an arm over Grian’s shoulders when they’re gone. He offers Grian the mug in his hand, and Grian takes it with his bare hands, ignoring Scar’s wince. Scalding or not, he can’t feel it, even with full contact with both his palms. It should worry him, maybe, but it doesn’t. Scratch the temperatures—Grian doesn’t think he’s felt a normal emotion since the start of the new season.

Scar takes a tentative sip from his own cup, eyeing Grian thoughtfully as he does. Grian curls his fingers into the mug and draws a long breath in, basking in the steam. It smells spicy and a little of lemon. Tea, probably, from one of the packets that’s been sat moldering on Grian’s counter for who knows how long.

Softly, breaking the tension like the yolk of an egg, Scar says, “Your nose is peeling, dude.” He ghosts a finger over the bridge of Grian’s nose. “And your cheeks. You’ve been working in the sun a lot, right? No hat?”

“I didn’t notice,” Grian says honestly. 

“It’s the jungle, Grian. Sun’s constantly beating down.” Scar peers worriedly at Grian. “You don’t look that good, either. You’re all shaky.” Gently, gently, he guides the hand Grian’s not using to hold the mug up to Grian’s eyes. “See?”

Just as Scar said: there’s a distinct tremor in Grian’s fingers. Grian bites his lip, then admits, “That might be because I haven’t been sleeping. And I don’t remember eating or drinking that well.”

Pearl would have gaped. Timmy would have given him a thorough lecture. Mumbo… Grian can just picture Mumbo’s face now. The dismay, and then the admonishment. “Grian,” he would’ve said reproachfully. Nothing else, just “Grian,” and that would make Grian feel just as guilty as any of the other two. 

Not Scar, though. Scar nods sagely, says, “Yeah, sometimes your head does that to you. You can start fixing that by drinking that tea and having some sandies, though,” and tips the plate invitingly toward Grian again. 

Grian sets his tea aside and reaches for one, then hesitates. He doesn’t know why, exactly; he’s blank, blank, blank, and then, all of a sudden and yet not at all, shame trickles in. He wishes Scar hadn’t found him like that, and wishes Scar didn’t have to overstretch himself taking care of Grian, who’s been very good at taking care of himself. He survived by himself with the primordials, didn’t he?

“…You don’t have to…” Grian tries, pulling his hand back further and placing it over his mouth, mangling the words. “You don’t… you don’t have to do this for me… It’s the middle of the night… I’m sure you’re tired.” 

It’s a monumental effort to eke the words from his throat kicking and screaming. By the end of his haphazard mumbled sentence Grian already feels a little unmoored again, like his head’s been stuffed with cotton.

He’s startled by Scar’s hand in his. No: he’s startled by the sandy Scar presses firmly into Grian’s hand. Grian’s forced to hold it before Scar crushes it to crumbs between their palms. Scar nods when he sees Grian has it, then says, “Not to be dramatic or anything, Grian, but there’s literally nothing that could stop me from being here right now.”

Grian, the sandy halfway in his mouth, blinks at Scar in something like astonishment. 

“I wish you weren’t surprised by that! Listen, Grian. Look at me?” 

Scar’s kind to a fault. If Grian didn’t look, if he didn’t listen, Scar would let it lie. They’d eat the sandies with no more words, and Scar’s arm would stay firmly around Grian until he felt better. Grian knows this for certain.

It’s what makes Grian look up, and his eyes meet Scar’s. 

The corners of Scar’s eyes crinkle. “Thanks. I care about you, dude, I really do. This isn’t because I feel obligated to, either. X might have said this, but just in case he did and you don’t remember, once you’re a Hermit, you’re ours. You’re us. And…” Scar purses his lips, tipping his chin back to look at the ceiling. 

“…you’re really sad, Grian. You’re hurting really bad.”

Grian freezes.

“I want you to be happy,” Scar continues, paying Grian’s intense emotional turmoil no mind. “I want you to feel good about yourself. And I know that… I know that that can feel really far away. Like you’ll never reach it, and you’ll just have to settle with being happy for tiny bits at a time forever and ever. But it doesn’t stay that way,” and Scar’s turning a little now, his eyes earnest, his hand light on the nape of Grian’s neck, anchoring him to the real world. “I swear it won’t stay that way, but you have to try. You have to try to let yourself live.” Scar studies Grian’s face for a moment in the torchlight—Grian can’t imagine he looks anything less than shell-shocked—then he says, sadly, “You’re just surviving right now, Grian.”

The words are thunderous. They shake Grian down to the soul.

It’s been like this for so long. Even during Evo, the green hills and the train station and the little games he’d liked to play, it had taken so much just to keep the code humming. Loathe though he may be to admit it, Grian’s world had been falling apart long before the primordials took him away. 

And then—and then, with the cold and the endless night and the voices in his head that promised they loved him—

It felt so long, his fever dream. It could’ve been days, it could’ve been years. Who knows? The dragons would put their heavy chins in his lap, chuffing worriedly, and he couldn’t even cry. All he had left was the earring of his station and the scarf that Pearl gave him. The long hair she’d braid. The glasses Martyn lent him. When his shoulders grew heavy and his step more sluggish, all that could have been exhaustion. Guilt. The guilt: constant, unchanging, gut-churning guilt. Maybe if he’d done something different that day— maybe if he’d listened when Taurtis worried at his elbow— maybe if he hadn’t let the Endwatchers dig their claws into Evo… 

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Waking up in Xisuma’s between-server was even more jarring than waking up in the stars. The sill with the basil, with the bluebells. Food. Water. Things he’d forgotten he needed. The fact is, Grian can go days without and still be alive to see things through. Minor gods live and live and live. He’s never even considered that what he’s doing doesn’t count.

Hope, oh, hope: Grian’s made this mistake before. He thought he could have the world on Evo; he thought the primordials would save him from the Void. What he got were wings and a face that felt like a stranger’s. Shearing off the long, beautiful hair that Pearl had so loved to take care of for him felt like a penance at the time, but maybe it was something more. Maybe it wasn’t for a big reason. Maybe it was just to hurt himself, looking in the mirror and realizing he’d never recognize himself in a million years like this. 

Scar’s hand is dry and warm on his. “Will you try?” he asks, so so hopeful, his eyes shining when they meet Grian’s. “Will you let us help you try?”

Grian thinks of Pearl and Taurtis and Martyn, long gone and gone forever. His life and loves left on Evo, or whatever remains of it. If they saw this moment, this outstretched hand, they’d all be waving pennants and screaming encouragement. Timmy would probably weep for joy.

Scar, sandies and lemon tea all, his legs set to quaking from the exertion, blessedly patient. Who came all this way for a couple of vines and found himself with an armful of scales.

Grian tips into Scar’s shoulder. Tucks his nose to Scar’s collarbone. He fumbles with the words trapped on his tongue, and asks back, quiet, “Can you stay? I can’t…” His tail twitches behind him, and he grabs at it, twisting it in his hands. “I can’t sleep.”

A beat of stunned silence.

Scar’s smile finds a home in the rat’s nest of Grian’s hair, and when he chuckles, it wards away some of the cold, bit by bit. “Of course, dude,” he says warmly, sounding unabashedly relieved. He sets aside his tea and wraps both arms around Grian in a mimicry of the earlier crushing hug, but this time his grip is gentle, and when he speaks, he sounds like he might cry: “Of course I’ll stay.”

Chapter Text

“Hannah!”

Hannah whirls in response to the cry. Simon clears areas of the Bedwars hub for her most days if she asks nicely enough, and she’d made it clear today was a special occasion, so it wasn’t like he was going to refuse. Besides, he’d have wiped the lobby anyway for her and Purpled, who Hannah hasn’t seen hide nor hair of for almost four full months now. Simon has a soft spot for his Bedwars players, never mind that they rake in a generous percentage of his revenue. He’s just a sucker for his warriors; he always has been. Hannah’s stood at plenty of customary Hypixel funerals, where they make firework rockets from the golden dust of a player’s permadeath and use them to slay a boss mob. Simon always stands front-and-center for them. Hell, he’s usually shooting the first arrow.

Suffice it to say today’s a very special occasion. Hannah’s missed Purpled. She gripes about him often enough when he’s within earshot just to tease, but panic had snaked through her when even Walli finally lost contact with him all those weeks ago. Purpled’s only careless to prove a point for his stupid cool-boy persona; he’s always kept in touch with Walli because their cohorts were in mixed brackets together during Purpled’s first twos tournament, and they’ve stuck together ever since. The fact that he was MIA, let alone MIA for weeks on end at the same time as everyone else in the Dream SMP, was just as telling as it was alarming. Hannah wasn’t alone in sending frightened calls to Purpled’s lifeless inbox. 

All that said, Hannah won’t say she wasn’t expecting the Bedwars invite in her DMs first thing in the morning. The other members of the SMP were starting to show signs of life, and Walli had called her a few days back with relief in every line of his face, and honestly, it’s taken longer than she’d thought it would.

She doesn’t see him at first. She’d been scanning the leaderboards for her name, scrolling through the available official clips, when she heard the call, and the names smear for a moment as she blinks and waves away her touchscreen.

“Purpled?” she says, and then Purpled crashes into her with the approximate force of a cart on a redstone railway.

“Ow!” Hannah yelps on principle, indignant, but she falls silent when she clocks the force of Purpled’s hug, how his arms are locked around her. They rock thanks to the momentum, but Purpled, despite being a good head and a half taller than her, has his face buried in her shoulder like he used to do before he hit his growth spurt. Hannah hesitates, uncertain. “Whoa, hey, you good?”

“’m fine,” Purpled mumbles. His grip tightens. 

Purpled’s hardly the touchy-feely type, and neither is Hannah, so she’s a little out of her depth. She bites her lip, imagines what Levi or Coffee or Walli would do in her place; she wraps her arms around him gingerly and pulls him just a tad closer. The fact that he doesn’t react bolsters her confidence—say what you like about Hannah’s emotional intelligence, the body doesn’t lie, and Bedwars has taught her how to read players with laughable ease—and she squeezes him, just once.

Purpled makes a soft noise. Very quietly, like he’s admitting to a secret: “I just—missed you.”

Hannah swallows hard around the sudden lump in her throat. To mark Purpled’s more emotional moments with anything other than passing acknowledgment is a surefire method of ensuring he shutters into the cold, silent fighter he used to and still can be, so Hannah just buries her nose into the crown of his head and says, “It’s good to see you again.”

They sway together for a moment longer, Hannah memorizing the shape and smell of her friend all over again, before Purpled finally pulls away, clearly having reached his sappiness quota. He clears his throat, peers down at Hannah, then says, much louder, “You got shorter.”

“No, I didn’t!” Hannah shouts back immediately, rising to the bait mostly for Purpled’s benefit. “You’re so annoying, oh my god.”

“Just stating facts. You’re a fucking four-foot goblin,” Purpled retorts in that infuriatingly nonchalant way he says everything. Hannah hates teenage boys.

“You see her for the first time in months and this is how you start talking again? I’d block you,” comes a new voice, and Hannah, startled, whirls around.

There are two other people strolling down the slab stairs toward the leaderboards, people Hannah’s never seen in person before. The voice had been vaguely familiar, but Hannah bites her tongue in surprise when her eyes alight upon Sapnap and Dream, two-thirds of the Dream Team, dressed casually for movement like any average Bedwars player and utterly out-of-place in the empty lobby.

“Oh,” she says, and fails to say anything else as the silence stretches long and her staring starts to get awkward.

“...Um,” says Sapnap, identifiable by his space buns and varsity jacket. His eyes are darting between Hannah and Dream, which Hannah is processing very obtusely through her peripheral vision. “Are… uh, hi?”

“Hannah,” Purpled hisses sidelong, “what’re you doing.”

Hannah doesn’t let up. She keeps her gaze on Dream, knowing the intensity of it is off-putting and not caring in the slightest. Walli and Xen, Squid and Rach, Astelic and Coffee and Eighty and Sammy, all of hers and Purp’s friends were too busy being overjoyed about Purpled’s return to really analyze what the fuck had been going on. Hannah had her moment, too, but her attention remained on the SMP at large, and specifically on Dream, who’s been out of touch for way longer than any of the other SMP members and has only surfaced briefly to say that he’s not going to be uploading for a while due to mental health issues. Be that as it may, Hannah hasn’t forgotten that Dream’s the one who asked Purpled to be there. Ergo, Dream, or something Dream did, is the reason why Purpled was gone, why Purpled so readily told Hannah he missed her. 

Even uneasy, Dream’s self-assured. His stance is wide, the line of his shoulders solid. He’s thinner than she last remembers him being, a little more wan. His eyes, bright green behind the battered mask, flicker from her to Purpled; she’s amazed he can’t feel the open suspicion rolling off of her in waves.

Abruptly, something clears up in Dream’s expression. His mouth softens, and he even smiles, broad, as he waves a friendly hand in greeting and says in lieu of an introduction, “Sorry to keep Purpled away for so long.”

…Huh.

Hannah snorts, more out of pleasant surprise than anything, studying Dream in a whole new light. It’s—it’s nice, that he’s apologizing. Even better that he knows what he’s apologizing for. “Thanks.” She eases up on her own intensity, adding, frank, “That means a lot.”

Sapnap, who’d been watching the interaction warily, thaws when Hannah speaks, nodding and looping his arm through Dream’s. “Sorry to barge in,” he says, and his eyes are so puppy-dog and transparent that Hannah has no choice but to believe him, “but Purpled said he wanted to play Bedwars, and then Dream said he wanted to play too, and I’m not gonna turn down Hypixel. We didn’t actually know you were gonna be here.”

“I literally told you?”

“No, you didn’t,” Sapnap assures Purpled earnestly, and Hannah laughs in spite of herself at the disgruntled look Purpled throws at him. It’s so him, so candidly Purpled, that it loosens the knot of fear she’d been keeping tied in her chest: the fear that he’d come back changed for the worse, that he’d come back hurt. It feels good to be able to lay that fear to rest alongside the fear that he’d never come back at all.

Dream tilts his head at Hannah, smiling when he has her attention. He nods toward the menus, asking, “You up for a couple of 2v2s?”

Hannah blinks, then splits into one of her own sharklike grins, and Dream readily matches it. Another check mark down for Dream: he’s not put off by how threatening she likes to make herself. 

“Sure—but bet I can take you 1v1 later,” she tells him, giddy at the thought of a good fight. The look Dream shoots back at her is nothing short of delighted.

* * *

A warm-up round and a couple of back-and-forth jabs later, Hannah’s rushing Dream and Sapnap, Purpled at her side like he’d never left. Ruins is an ugly map for a 2v2 of this size, but they make do, Purpled winding around the gen island with a whoop and abandoning Hannah to fend off both Sapnap and Dream, the little shit.

“You fuck!” she yells at his disappearing back. “We can’t play like this—are we bed trading right now?!”

“Your words can’t hurt me if I don’t know what they mean,” sings Sapnap, winding up for a devastating blow with his stone sword. Hannah zeroes in—he leaves his stomach wide open with that technique, better suited for formal combat than Bedwars—and whacks Sapnap clear off the bridge. He screams on the way down, not that Hannah’s paying attention; she’s right back on Dream’s tail, cursing her own poorer mobility as he gains ground on her. Movement is more Purpled and Walli’s strong suits than her own; all she has is—

Hannah’s fingers, feeling along her utility belt, catch on a fireball. Bingo.

Dream’s just arrived at Hannah and Purpled’s bed when Hannah descends upon him with a wild cackle, the pleats of her skirt and her left sleeve aflame, to combo him off of their base. Dream yowls and gets a good hit or two in, but the exchange ends with Hannah blowing him a consolation kiss as he plummets into the Void, still smoking gently. Just before Dream’s string of expletives cuts off, a dragon’s roar announces Purpled’s successful bed break.

“Let’s fucking go!” Hannah crows, giving the in-game chat a perfunctory skim to check death messages. Dream’s final kill is hers, and in the five seconds Hannah devotes to her screen, Purpled trips Sapnap off the map, leaving them with the victory.

“—fucking cheater! You’re hacking!” Sapnap’s complaining as they spawn back into the lobby. “How did you get in, we had wood and endstone—”

“Have you ever considered,” Purpled sniffs, “that I’m just better?”

Dream, gritting his teeth into a pretty good excuse for a smile, turns to Hannah and bites out, “That jump was really sick.”

Hannah beams back. “Fireball jumping. Ever done it before?”

Dream’s grimace flinches into an O of surprise. “No. I don’t really play Bedwars—I just watch sometimes. What’s that?”

Oh, this is great. Hannah loves talking about Bedwars. It might be unethical, but she’s been paid in prestige points to give newbies tips before. “It’s classic, players have been using it for ages,” she assures him, sitting closer and giving him her palm to create a visual demonstration. “Depending on how high you are, you can get a ton of distance by fireballing off a bridge or base or something without having to take the time to bridge, you know? You can TNT jump, too, and you can get further with that—Walli could tell you about triple jumping—but fireball jumping is faster.” 

Dream’s eyes, intent on Hannah’s hands as she explains, are sparkling with interest, earlier annoyance long forgotten. It’s gratifying to see him so engaged, so clearly eager to learn, and Hannah smiles wickedly at him as she says, “You wanna see something cool?”

“Hell yeah.”

* * *

“You taught him,” Purpled puffs out two rounds later, “how to ladder-trap?”

“It’s your fault for getting caught in it,” Hannah informs him smugly. “Besides, that’s a basic. I told him about the—”

“Hannah!” Dream calls from the mid island. When Purpled and Hannah both turn to look at him, he waves, beaming, and steps aside to reveal Sapnap howling caught in the frame of a swirling Nether portal.

Hannah snorts. “...Yeah, that.”

Purpled presses a fist to his mouth, clearly trying not to laugh. “Hey, smartass,” he yells back, “did you mean to trap your teammate?”

Dream pauses. In the time it takes for him to say “Oops,” Hannah’s soaring over him with a well-placed e-pearl, throwing two birds at him as she passes. 

* * *

Time passes in an adrenaline blur, all smearing colors and firecracker fun. Dream and Sapnap both really start to shine once Purpled moves them over to 1v1s and everyone gets their own team, and Hannah would be lying if she said she wasn’t a little proud to see Dream flying around the map on TNT momentum. 

That said, on solos, Hannah gets a little…

intense.

It’s a vestige of a bygone time, the way she plays like she’s made of thorns, the way she doesn’t bat an eye at any level of brutality on the field. Simon’s kind but it’s a stretch to call any big server owner a good guy, and especially at the lower rankings, Bedwars can be a cesspool, a merciless clawing to the top. When Hannah plays alongside teammates, she forgets that; when she plays alone, she remembers. 

So it’s muscle memory, to spot Blue at the ems and make a mad dash for him. It’s reflex like a bloody breath at the back of her head that has her clawing at his Prot I leather pelt, that has her pinning one of his arms down with her knee and tossing aside her wool to draw her sword—stone, still, and unSharpened, but it’ll do the trick. Blue bucks her off and draws his own sword—wood, Sharpened—but she sweeps his legs out before he can do it to her, a nameless something descending upon her as she throws her full weight onto him again to keep him down, and she’s got her sword to his neck, and the flesh and blood pare, they give way, they give—

“Hannah, stop,” says someone—Purpled—all of a sudden, sharply. He wasn’t there before. He sounds… off. He sounds odd, the tread of his voice unsteady. Purpled’s never anything but certain in Bedwars. 

Hannah stops short. She turns to look at Purpled.

He looks awful. He’s pale as a sheet and he’s gripping the edges of his yellow leather tunic with white knuckles, and when his eyes meet hers it’s like he’s not seeing her. It’s like he’s looking at a stranger, and he opens and closes his mouth once, twice, lost for words, breathing soft and shallow and shaky.

Blue—Dream all along, beneath Hannah—worms upright and braces an elbow under himself. Raggedly, worriedly, he calls, “Purpled?”

Purpled’s hands jerk away from his tunic with a sharp inhale, and even from a good chunk away, Hannah can still see how badly he’s shaking, how his whole body is trembling like his skeleton’s trying to claw free. “Fuck—fuck,” he gasps, lifting one hand to his chest and the other to his neck, pressing himself together. “Fuck.”

“Oh, shit,” comes another voice. Hannah tears her gaze from Purpled to see Sapnap clambering out of the divot of the emerald gen opposite the one Hannah had tackled Dream from, eyes wide as discs. “Oh fuck. Hey, Purpled—Hannah, give us a second, sorry, sorry,” and he covers the distance in five paces, reaching out for Purpled with his hands where Purpled can see them. “Hey, dude, easy. C’mere—it’s just me, it’s Sapnap—that’s it.” 

Purpled throws a wild, bewildered glance at Sapnap, then down at the proffered hands. His eyes are glassy. It dawns on Hannah that her entire body is locked up. She’s terrified. This isn’t something she can throw herself at with her sword and her teeth and her sheer blunt rage—this is in Purpled’s head. Whatever happened in the Dream SMP, it got inside Purpled, and she can’t fight it for him.

“Purpled,” says Sapnap soothingly. He’s a far cry from the menace he was moments ago, all his edges sanded down, his expression open and sweet and very carefully free of the fear that Hannah can feel thundering behind her ribs. 

Purpled makes a strangled noise; his hand spasms on his throat. “Fuck— Sapnap,” he chokes out, so plaintively Hannah’s heart skips several beats. “I—I can’t—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Sapnap chants, inching closer. “It’s perfectly okay, dude. Tell me what you see, what you can hear? Don’t hunch up, you can’t breathe like that.” He pushes his own shoulders back. “Remember what Eret said?”

“I—I—”

Sapnap’s stolid, placid expression stammers at the nonanswer, and there, there’s a flash of the fear that’s flooding Hannah’s veins. He takes one step closer, another, as Purpled shakes and shudders and makes some of the most terrible sounds Hannah’s ever heard in her life. Urgent, Sapnap murmurs, “Can I touch you, is that okay?”

Purpled wraps his arms around himself tighter, but he bobs his head jerkily as he does, and immediately Sapnap’s upon him, cocooning Purpled in his jacket and steering him away, swooping forth to catch Purpled when his legs fail him and he pitches forward. Hannah watches them go, frozen cold.

A hand taps her side. When Hannah looks down, Dream says, strained, “Hannah, can you—” and Hannah starts, rolls off of him, and lets him sit up straight.

“Sorry.” She’s sorry for more than restraining him.

“No, you’re fine.” Dream doesn’t look too miffed. He, like Hannah, is staring at Sapnap and Purpled. “Shit.”

“What’s going on?” Hannah bursts out, lowering her voice at the last moment when Sapnap whips his head around briefly to glare at her for her tone. “Sorry—but shit, dude. What’s going on? Why is he—is he having a panic attack?”

Dream nods jerkily, jaw tight. “Mhm.”

“What—what triggered it? He’s never done that in a game before, I should know. How…” How can I keep him safe, but that crashes and burns in her throat at the unhappy slope to Dream’s mouth.

“...You know Purpled’s been asking for you for a while?”

Hannah blinks, startled. “I—what?”

“The SMP,” Dream explains, not looking at her. “I—well, I mean, I have this system in place, where, you know, if you want someone on the SMP, you need a couple people to vouch for them. And Purpled asked for you, like, a week ago.”

“What does that have to do with this?” Hannah cuts in, impatient. 

“Sorry,” Dream says, not sounding sorry so much as he does pensive. It drives Hannah half crazy. “What I’m trying to say is… you would’ve heard about this anyway, if you were gonna join,” and then he reaches up behind his head and slips off his mask.

Hannah shrieks and slaps a hand over her eyes. “What—Dream, what the heck!” She’s moving to turn around so she can’t see his face, has her eyes screwed shut, when all of a sudden, something silvery goes that’s for you for you us for you.

It’s like a feather’s touch. Goosebumps rise to Hannah’s bare arms, and she shivers, even as she cocks her head to the side, trying to catch that sibilant hum again. It’s gone like a scrap of wind, though, and Hannah wheels back to face Dream, hand firmly over her eyes, saying, “What was… did you feel that?”

“I mean, yeah.” Dream almost sounds amused. “It was me.”

“That was you? It didn’t sound anything like you!”

“Well, it’s part of me. I guess that’s more accurate.” A shuf of fabric as Dream adjusts his position. “Hannah, do you like stories?”

Why do people like to talk in riddles so much? “Sure, I guess.”

Dream hums. There’s a telltale curlicue of that same quiet whispering thing under his voice, but before Hannah can grasp it, it’s gone. “Are you sure? This one isn’t… I mean, it has a happy ending, but it’s a sad story.”

Hannah pauses. The way he’s talking about it, the dampened pain, the look in his eyes when he’d been watching Purpled fall apart…

“...This is about what happened, isn’t it.” It’s not a question.

“It is.”

“Okay.” Hannah braces herself, sets her teeth. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

It gets worse, so much worse, before it gets better.

Hannah doesn’t put particularly much stock in the stories of the gods. She’s no Endchaser, full of grandiose mythos about the elders and the Endchasers’ precious Watchers. She’s liked most of the minor gods she’s come across, but it’s not like she comes across many, and the vast majority of people don’t talk casually about the old gods. It’s not exactly a topic for small talk.

What Dream says—the story he lays out for her—

He says he thought an old god loved him, once. He says he loved them so much that they gave him a gift. He says the gift sent him bleeding back to his family, that the gift had him scrambling after every scrap of hurt tossed his way like a starving dog. He says he, a minor god, has almost died twice in the past year because this god—a mad god, the madness taught about in every fable—wanted him to become Void so bad he started doing it to himself. He says there’s a piece of the Void in him. 

“Real Void,” Hannah says, very steadily, because if she doesn’t affect normalcy she doesn’t know what she’ll do with this information. “Not Hypixel Void.”

“Real Void.” The smile that touches Dream’s mouth isn’t very happy. “Not Hypixel Void.”

“Gods, how aren’t you dead,” Hannah says, then claps a hand over her mouth, shocked with herself. “Void— fuck—sorry, jeez, I did not mean to just come out with that.”

Dream quirks his lip, though Hannah can tell it’s mostly for her benefit because the settling roils beneath his words and murmurs trees toppling forest silent is there a fall is there a fall if no one is around is there a fall as he says, “No, it’s—it’s chill. I ask myself that all the time.”

Sapnap’s head pops up. Hannah’d forgotten that he and Purpled were there. “You’re taking this pretty well.”

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot,” Hannah says haltingly, craning her neck to try to catch a glimpse of Purpled. What she sees makes her soften in spite of herself: Purpled’s slumped over onto his knees, cheek pressed atop his arms, rocking gently and looking mostly asleep, his fingers snagged on Sapnap’s sleeve. It seems there’s nothing to worry about in terms of Purpled’s health back at the Dream SMP. “I just… I mean, you’re counting on me not to freak out, right? I can not freak out.”

Sapnap snorts. “Yeah. It’s… a lot. That’s an understatement.” He lets out a gusty sigh that sags his shoulders, all the tension Hannah didn’t realize he was holding leaving him. “Just… uh, I don’t think this is gonna be an issue or anything, but just… don’t tell anyone?”

“Why would I tell anyone?” Hannah demands immediately, horrified by the mere thought. The gall of anyone to throw this earnest trust back in their faces, the fucking nerve. “What makes you think—” and then she bites her tongue so hard she tastes blood at the sick look that crosses Sapnap’s face.

She knows she fights. It’s instinct, a knot at the back of her throat and a flex of her fingers; it’s what saved her a spot in the top rankings her debut year when a solos opponent dangled her off the edge of their island by her hair and snarled at her to know her place, and she made sure they knew theirs. It’s also what had her snapping at Simon for months on end, driving away allies and enemies alike with her fearsome attitude, and kept her hair shorn short for the years to come until Astelic realized why she’d changed. 

But Sapnap and Dream aren’t looking to fight, and neither was Purpled, when he messaged her this morning. Purpled wanted to see her, and Dream and Sapnap wanted to be there for him. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that something Hannah’s built with her own family, cobbled together brick by painstaking brick? Sapnap’s plea isn’t really about her, and it’s not about who she could possibly tell.

It’s about Sapnap, and Purpled, and Dream. It’s about their family, too. 

There’s a lump in Hannah’s throat. “I’d never, ever tell,” she chokes, her eyes on Purpled’s narrow back. “I—thanks for trusting me.”

Dream’s expression, painfully honest without the mask to obscure it, brightens like the sun from behind a cloud cover. The ridges of the grasping scar on his face puddle with shadows as he peers at her, nothing but gentle, and says, “Thanks for believing us. And GG, by the way,” with a sly touch to his mouth. “You’re cracked.” Softening, he adds, genuine, “I’m glad Purpled let us meet you.”

Hannah can barely breathe. “I’m glad, too.”

Dream tilts his head when he smiles. “Say, Hannah. Purpled vouches for you. Puffy and Sapnap and I do too.” His eyes glint up at her. “Would you do us the honor of joining the Dream SMP?”

Chapter Text

“It scares me sometimes,” Tommy admits under his breath, “how much he loves us.”

Wilbur blinks down at Tommy, startled. The night’s yawning into something dark, stars peppering the blue-black sky. They’re gathered around a roaring bonfire, him and Tommy and HBomb on one log and Jack and Purpled and Ant on the other. Jack’s mostly sprawled over the latter two’s laps and is drowsing over a crust of piping-hot dough, cooked right over the open fire, as Ant tears off chunks of his own bread and lobs them for HBomb to try to catch in his mouth. Watching over all this, his face aglow and the firelight catching in the craggy stretch of the scar between his eyes, is Dream, legs slung over a low-hanging branch overhead, with a smile so soft it rends Wilbur’s heart into pieces.

Dream shifts. His settling, an ever-present but deeply familiar weight, ribbons through the makeshift campsite with a giddy little oh love oh ever for you for this for you the world the stars the galaxy. Dream’s smile folds up on his mouth, turning shy, turning into the shape of a secret. all this everything all things for you.

The gravity of Dream’s love is a hefty thing to bear the brunt of. Wilbur thought he understood it when they went on that pizza date last year, and he thought he understood it again when he watched, stricken, as Dream grabbed fistfuls of Mina’s white silken tunic and upturned them both into the portal like a quiet death. He’s realized since that those two isolated events are barely the half of it.

Tommy rolls his head on Wilbur’s shoulder. His eyes are round, glassy, flashing amber against the cozy crackling fire. “Wil?” he says, plaintive in a way he rarely is anymore.

Wilbur swallows hard. Runs his tongue along the flats of his teeth. They’d torn through two full packs of marshmallows earlier, artificial and off-server, and though he can’t taste the sickly sweetness that the others can, Wilbur had tucked a pillow under his tongue and let it dissolve ever so slowly, noting the almost-sting of it, noting the way Tommy challenged Dream to a chubby bunny contest and almost passed out doing it as Dream howled with laughter. Purpled turned every marshmallow passed his way into a miniature charcoal briquette and ate each one with pride all the same, and Dream had leaned over to rib him for it, planting a smile in Purpled’s hair after being kicked at. Wilbur, chewing thoughtfully on a marshmallow, had felt his stomach clench.

The sheer breadth of Dream’s love, then, like a furious tidal wave. Comprehension crashing down over Wilbur’s head. Dream in the festival, Dream in the bed, Dream in the End with his bleeding brow and bleeding eyes: Wilbur aches, knowing Dream’s love. Knowing how easy it is to be hurt when you love that badly. There are no words to convey how much he loves in return, and how terribly grateful he is, and how much fear entails being part of Dream’s family.

“I know, Tommy,” Wilbur says finally, his words catching. Tommy curled up, a warm weight at his side. “It scares me too.”

“But he’s brilliant, isn’t he?” Tommy’s voice is decisive, and when he looks back up at Wilbur, his expression is one of defiance—not necessarily at Wilbur but at the world. At Mina. “Right genius. And a smoke show of a man—”

“No, not this again,” Wilbur complains, more loudly, sliding easily into this latest bit Tommy has grown fond of. “I’m becoming homophobic, oh no, TommyInnit is turning me anti-gay!”

Ant’s ears prick. “Anti-gay? Wilbur, I have some bad news for you.”

Tommy rolls off the log, laughing so hard he chokes on his own spit, and HBomb starts up about NDAs and diversity statements. Purpled sets another poor marshmallow proper aflame, and Jack’s nap is rudely interrupted by Dream falling out of the tree and landing right on top of him, cackling. Silvery, practically kittenish, the settling titters how to say how to encompass this all-powerful this all-consuming this terrifying terrifying terrifying love.

Wilbur presses a hand to his mouth. Pats at his eyes gingerly with the sleeve of his jumper.

Dream chose to love him, and their friends, and the world he grew out of his own blood. Wilbur can’t imagine holding all of those things any dearer than he does now, as their laughter rings up into the twinkling night sky, his mouth gritty with sugar, his baby brother choking to death, Dream’s little shard of Void telling them he loves you, he loves you, oh how he loves you.

Chapter Text

In hindsight, maybe the unthinking usage of Instant Damage pots had been a little stupid. 

“No, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Dream’s biting out, all but pallid, shaking so badly his teeth chatter. “I just—fuck,” and he makes claws out of his hands, digs them into the back of his neck, pitches forward so his head’s practically between his knees. “Fuck.”

“Breathe,” George is telling him quietly, just as pale as Dream, as Bad takes Sapnap by the arm and they both sprint off with buckets in hand. He’s kneading his palm into the knobs of Dream’s spine, eyes intent on the shivery swells of his breath. “It’s okay, you’ll be okay. Bad and Sapnap are getting milk, just breathe.”

Guilt, bitter as bile, scalds Ant’s throat. He’s standing blocks away, his tail clasped tight between his palms. Instant Damage is lethal use-only for a reason: it seeps in through the skin and permeates the bloodstream, travels to the brain and stimulates the nociceptors, until the overload of cognitive and sensory information shuts down the nervous system, then the rest of the body. For humans, all that happens in a matter of moments.

Dream, as Ant has so beautifully forgotten, is very much a god. 

It was also probably a bad idea for Phil to make the world only for him not to be present, but Dream had been so antsy, and it always takes at least a full day of recovery for him to regain enough energy to traverse the servers he shapes even now. Phil had agreed readily, warning all of them not to be too reckless; he’s servers away, too far to call and most certainly streaming. Callahan, usually their other go-to damage control, is back on the SMP helping Alyssa tour Hannah around. The manhunt team is on their own. 

What was supposed to be an easy win has quickly turned shit-sideways and upside down. Ant can’t bear to take a step closer, paralyzed simultaneously by self-disgust and terror, so he’s stuck staring uselessly as George keeps up a patient murmur and Dream makes terrible thin keening noises like he’s being stabbed over and over. 

“Is it bad?” George asks absentmindedly when the minutes stretch long without any contact from Bad and Sapnap and Dream looks like he has half a mind to pass out. He reaches out to maneuver Dream gently to the sun-softened sandstone, a feather-light hand on Dream’s shoulder. It’s a grounding technique, trying to keep Dream from getting lost in the pain. 

Dream jerks his head from side to side. An afterthought: “Nothing’s worse than the—the festival,” he admits thickly, and George inhales sharply, and Ant feels lightheaded. 

“On our way back,” Bad cuts in breathlessly over comms. “ETA five minutes.”

“Make it two,” George says sharply, then sets his jaw. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. Just—faster, please.”

“You’re fine, I gotcha,” Bad replies, audibly picking up the pace. His voice is soothing, kind and familiar; Ant knows from the stories they tell sometimes that it’s the voice George and Sapnap and Dream grew up with, one that would sing them lullabies and tell them the stories of the gods. Dream relaxes infinitesimally at Bad’s reassurance.

George has already moved on, hunching to level with Dream, his hand still drawing light circles on Dream’s back. “You hear that? They’re gonna be right back,” he says, his eyes soft as anything, soft as rotting fruit. They flicker over to Ant, and something nameless glazes over them, and Ant stumbles forward.

“Sorry,” he blurts, the word coming out garbled from where it was half-stuck in his mouth. “Shit. Dream.”

A stray curl tumbles down over Dream’s shoulder as he shudders. Ant makes out the gleam of his eye through the mask anyway—a flash of green, clouded with the kind of pain that makes Ant’s scruff stand on end. 

“It’s… fine,” Dream grits, sounding the furthest possible thing from fine that Ant’s stomach turns. “I promise. It’s fine. God—” he doubles over again, one hand clenched into a fist at his face and the other pressed to the base of his sternum, palm splayed wide. He muffles a curse into his sleeve, and George makes a wounded noise in turn.

“I have you,” he whispers, so kindly Ant feels, all of a sudden, like he’s intruding. A moment for the family Dream’s known his whole life, instead of the one that’s seen just the hardest two years of it. “I got you. Bad and Sapnap are coming. Hear my voice?” Dream, eyes squinched shut, nods yes. “Awesome. Just keep listening to me, there you go. That’s it. There’s just me, there’s nothing else, you’re gonna be just fine.”

Pounding footsteps, drawing nearer. Ant barely staggers out of the way for Sapnap to skid to a crouched halt beside George and almost slop the full pail of milk all over Dream, which at least draws a strangled laugh from the latter. 

“Stop laughing and drink it, asshole,” Sapnap tells him, not without a touch of desperation. Not that Dream needs to be told twice: within seconds the coiled-spring tension wracking his entire body has eased. Ant clasps his hands, presses them to his mouth, and mutters another one in an ever-growing series of prayers to the elders as a thank-you for yet another crisis averted.

“Ant,” Sapnap calls abruptly, his voice harder around the edges, “you got anything to say to Dream?”

Shame pins Ant’s ears back, but before he can open his mouth to cough up another frightened, guilty apology, Bad strolls up and smacks Sapnap on the shoulder.

“Ow! Bad, what the muffin?”

“It was all our ideas,” Bad reminds him tartly, and Ant starts, because: it was. Though he’d forgotten, in the heat of the moment and then the cold, too-long minutes that followed, it was a joint idea. Initially proposed by Ant, sure, but everyone at the table—including Sam, who’s looking to be joining the hunters soon—had given it a go-ahead. None of them had thought critically about the actual mechanisms of Instant Damage until Ant had already lobbed the pots at Dream and the responding scream had been one of agony, not surprise.

Bad sinks to his haunches, the severity of his expression softening somewhat when he glances over at Ant. He shrugs off his cowl and the human face shines through, careworn and scraped up, his glasses perennially slipping down his nose. “C’mere, Ant,” he says, as kindly as he’d spoken to George and Sapnap and Dream, and Ant, heart in his throat, goes.

Bad’s hand finds his and stays there, a comforting weight, as he continues, “Ant put it out there, but we all said yes. It’s not his fault. If anything, it’s on all of us for not thinking it through. Sapnap, I know you’re scared, but that doesn’t mean you get to take it out on Ant, okay?”

A gentle reprimand. Sapnap bites his lip, looking appropriately chastised, and his face is abashed when he looks up at Ant. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I—Bad’s right. I totally f— fudgin’ blanked on that. That’s—that’s on me. And on us. Not just you. I’m sorry, you’re probably super freaked out too. I’m not helping.”

Dazed, Ant assures him, “No, you’re fine. It’s fine.” Feeling a little unsteady, he drags his gaze to Dream, who’s lying silently on the temple floor, head pillowed in George’s lap, eyelashes fluttering. 

A little helplessly, Ant tells him again, “I’m really—I’m so sorry.”

The smile Dream shoots him is wan, but it’s a smile, and it’s nothing but earnest. “I told you,” he says hoarsely, sounding like he’s run four marathons. “You’re good. I completely get it. Dude, I would’ve gone for it too.” His voice suddenly goes the shade of dreamy that means the hunters are fucked. “Pots are off the table for me, but can you imagine if I found a cleric? Or a bastion?”

“Please none of those,” says Bad rather frantically. “This is more than enough excitement for today. Let’s go home, and Dream, you’re going straight to bed.”

That gets Dream’s attention. “What!” he hollers shrilly, attempting in vain to rise from the floor as George and Sapnap hiss at him and pull him back down. “We literally got Phil to make this world so that we could hop on right away—”

In what he probably thinks is a very matter-of-fact tone but what ends up coming out watery, Bad points out, “You literally compared how bad it was to the festival, Dream. That’s a lot of pain.” His voice breaks in the middle of his sentence, and Ant sees the moment Dream caves, because nobody can say no to BadBoyHalo when his voice wobbles even a little.

“Okay,” Dream grumbles, trying very hard to look like he’s mad about it and failing miserably, and Ant hides his small, relieved smile away as he helps Dream up onto Sapnap’s back and opens up the portal back home. 

Chapter Text

Bad’s jostled out of his light doze by a dull thud at the door.

It has him jumping out of his armchair, practically at the entryway before he can even critically think through his actions. Maybe it’s stupid to go jumping after every shadow, answer every knock, especially given the tension the late takeover of Manberg has left on the server—but a long, long time ago, there was a crash against the door just like this one, and when Bad opened it the snow and the blood and the body fell in—

When Bad cracks the door, it’s almost just like last time, because golden hair and pale hands and bright red blood dripping stark everywhere stumble into him headlong, and Bad chokes.

“Dream?!” he demands, terrified in an instant, grabbing the hood of Dream’s shirt and hauling him in, slamming the door shut behind them and attempting to hoist the deadweight Dream makes in his arms upright. “Dream, hey, buddy, hey, hey! Look at me, Dream, look at me!”

He pats Dream’s face frantically with the heel of his palm, tap-tap-tap, and the blood winds a thin line down Bad’s wrist. He thinks he might throw up; he remembers doing this ten years ago as the blizzard bloomed ice crystals in Dream’s wild curls. “Dream! Can you hear me?”

Dream’s head lolls back and to keep him from cracking his skull on the floor Bad capsizes with him, knees first, to break the fall. His boots make an awful squealing noise and Dream’s wheezing raggedly. He’s breathing, mercifully, though that takes a significant backseat to the fact that there’s blood everywhere —the floor, his shirt, Bad’s hands. Almost deliriously, Bad notes the fresh scar on the white slice of Dream’s face that he can see: a pink nick at his lip, fully healed, run over with red.

Bad crams one of his fists to his eyes, shaking. 

“Gods,” he whispers softly, rapidly, for no one but himself and anyone who can turn the world right side up again. “Gods.”

* * *

In the end, thank every star below, it turns out to be little more than a bloody nose. Dream comes to around five minutes after Bad stopped trembling long enough to mop his face clean with cold water, and panic attacks, at least, Bad knows how to handle.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Bad asks fretfully, fully aware he’s hovering, as Dream rises, wobbly, from the couch. “I’m serious, Dream, you came in and you were—okay, at least stay until I get the hallway cleaned up, okay? I don’t want you seeing all the blood.”

“Can’t be that bad,” Dream argues, halfhearted. He sounds tired—hurt-tired, not sleepy-tired—and it tugs at Bad’s heartstrings. “Jus’ a nosebleed.”

“‘Just a nosebleed,’” Bad echoes, limply feigning levity. “Try saying that when you’re not literally bleeding all over my floors and yourself and me next time.”

Something self-recriminating steals across Dream’s mouth, and Bad bites his lip on principle. Quickly heading off any apology, he says, “Sorry, just—fudge. You—you scared me, you muffinhead. You…” Weakly, Bad croaks, “It really didn’t look good.”

Dream blinks at him, dull green, then crunches forward at the waist all of a sudden, mask to his knees. Bad lunges for him with a yelp, caught off-guard. He’s half-thinking Dream’s lost consciousness from the sheer amount of blood lost—he wouldn’t put it past him—when he registers that Dream’s tap-tap-tapping his thumbs against his legs, a familiar little tattoo.

A lump forms in Bad’s throat.

“Stay here,” he whispers, his hand stiff against Dream’s shivering back. The server beyond his door has teeth and claws and delivered one of Bad’s family to him like a bloody beaten dog, and god knows Bad can’t keep the world from being cruel, but he can at least keep Dream safe a little while longer. “Dream, sweetheart, please stay here for just a little bit.”

Dream opens his mouth. Shuts it. Bad dares to think that maybe, having been asked to ask for help, his most terribly self-sacrificial of friends will say yes. 

“I have so much work to do,” says Dream. 

Bad closes his eyes. 

Chapter Text

It creeps up on him, funnily enough. One day he’s jotting down thirty ideas for a bundle of collaborative videos he wants to push out on his friends’ channels and the next morning he can’t get out of bed. 

Dream’s gotten good at navigating the trappings of his own mind, to a point; not being able to do certain things, like start on Bad’s problem sets when he was a kid or sitting down and then being unable to leave the chair, these things were common-enough occurrences for Dream to learn that he needed a reliable solution. He has those solutions in his back pocket, now, for rainy days or stressful moments: breathing exercises, setting timers, taking frequent breaks.

But it’s a Saturday morning with the sun coming in clean through the half-open curtains, people are puttering about in the kitchen clanging pots and pans together, and Dream feels like someone put a block of ice in his guts.

It’s not new, not exactly. It’s like the weeks following them, the End, the universe saying we love you. Sometimes the universe saying we love you isn’t enough, and he remembers waking up in various houses, various beds, and feeling some kind of sick, hungry dread in the pit of his stomach. He got up in the end, always, of course—enticed by the smell of pancakes or drawn by the promise of a spar or coaxed away from sleep by the ever-present hum of his own brain, whirring awake, pointing out chores to do and videos to make and friends to see. The fog always politely receded after a point.

Dream shifts onto his shoulder. The movement aches deeply in his chest, and he stills again, breathing quietly into the bright, airy room.

Nothing happened. He was hanging out with Ponk and George and Tommy, and later into the evening came Connor and Schlatt, and Ponk let everyone stay the night after people started yawning, wary of creepers. Dream was having a really good week, actually. Nothing stressful. Nothing sad. The biggest inconvenience of the day was tripping over his own bootlaces and getting laughed at by George and Tommy last night.

Dream makes a soft, wounded noise. Ponk, conveniently, chooses exactly that moment to knock on the door, then crick it open.

“Dream, we got—” cae announces, then stops. Takes in the scene.

See, Ponk remembers the sprained ankle, and cae remembers the little cuts and bruises over the years. Cae remembers the lemon trees and the dogs Dream would save, and when cae would grow gloomy over caer performance in the games their family would play, cae remembers how Dream would saunter near, press their shoulders together. Cae remembers the fever on Dream’s brow.

Even without his settling, Dream can read it loud and clear on Ponk’s face: the dawning worry. Cae bustles over to his side and peers into his face, then glances at the mask he left hanging on the row of hooks that lines the bottom of the window that faces the east, and all of that tugs caer eyes into a grim, determined furrow. Cae spins on caer heel and is out again the next moment.

Dream burrows deeper into his pillow and covers his head with the sheets. 

It’s not long before the door creaks open again, and socked feet come padding over to his side. The lightness of their gait is different than Ponk’s, though, and Dream’s already half guessed who it is by the time George gently peels the colorful covers away from his face. 

“Ponk said that you weren’t feeling well,” George says, crouching down and smoothing the back of his hand against Dream’s exposed cheek. “No fever, though.”

Dream clears his throat. Opens his mouth. No sound comes out, though traitorously enough, his settling bubbles, quicksand quagmire drowning deep deep dark no purchase no crag no space to breathe, and George exhales sharply as he withdraws his hand, like the little whisper burned him.

“Not a physical illness thing, then,” he says after a moment, deceptively light. He’s good at that—treading carefully. He’s not as miserably tactless as he makes himself out to be on streams. 

Dream nods, just a drag of his chin against the sheet. “No,” he agrees, mostly croaking, knowing better than to lie when his settling has fucking sold him out. “I mean. Yeah, it’s. It’s a mental health moment. I’m. I’m having Mental Health. With capital letters.”

“You’re such an idiot,” says George, fond if absentminded, remarkably unmoved by Dream’s transparent attempt to soften him up. “Was something wrong last night? Or this week? Or did you just, like, wake up feeling bad?”

“Woke up bad,” Dream mumbles, because it’s truer than the others. He doesn’t quite have the energy that he would normally be able to allocate toward psychoanalyzing himself. 

George hums. He leans back, considering Dream for a moment, expression inscrutable. Dream wracks his brains for an appropriate response to fill the silence, comes up blank, and decides to cock his head and affect his best angle. 

A grin flickers to life on George’s mouth. He still says, “Don’t,” warningly, doorstepping Dream from using silliness to squirm his way out of a heavy conversation, but it’s soft around the edges, and Dream lets himself melt into it when George reaches out to tuck a lock of his hair behind his ear. 

It’s a small burst of sweet, tantalizing joy in Dream’s throat, there one moment and gone the next. Just letting him know what he’s missing, as if he wasn’t sure. 

want want want. Even his Void is sluggish today.

George notices, of course, because he notices everything when he’s not being lively and obnoxious. He scoots closer, mulls over his words, then asks, “Are you sad?”

Dream doesn’t like lying to George. Besides, he can always tell. “I guess?” Worrying the sheet between his fingers, he says, floundering for words all the while, “It’s just… really big. I don’t know if it’s, like, sad, there’s just a lot of something. And I’m tired, and… and everything feels big. Bigger than before. Too big to do.” And then Dream has to shut his mouth and blink really fast, because George’s eyes are huge, two full moons, an entire eternity yawning dark behind them as he says, “Oh,” and he says, “I think,” and he says, “do you remember what you took from me in Manberg?”

Lying in bed for weeks at a time, sleepless and thoughtless and wasting away because to do anything more was dizzying to comprehend. George on the couch. Dream at the window.

“It’s not like I eat depression, George.” It’s a big word to use, but they both know that it was a Thing. George is too smart to think otherwise, and Dream’s settling doesn’t lie. 

“I’m not saying it’s mine,” George says, though the unhappy tightness of his eyes says otherwise. “I’m just saying that it’s similar, idiot.” He falls silent for a beat, tap-tap-tapping his fingers on the mattress, then says, “I’m saying. I’m. I get it, I guess. What it feels like.” 

“Thanks, Doctor George,” Dream says, aiming for snark but veering a little too genuine to hit his mark. To forestall the worried little crease in George’s brow he adds hurriedly, “Any verdict on the cause?”

He’a joking, and George knows he’s joking, so Dream’s not prepared for George to reach out, pressing a finger to the arrow of scar tissue he knows thorns down his cheek, and say, “I think, yeah, maybe.”

“What?”

George’s voice is careful, oh-so-careful, as he sounds out slowly, “I think… I think that you try to feel your joy a lot. You make a point to feel that. But you don’t… let yourself be sad. Or scared, or hurt. You just try to… absorb it and move on.”

The cold leaden feeling in Dream’s stomach clenches. He feels, more than hears, himself say, “Oh.”

“Especially after—after them, but even before all that, you tried so hard to be happy,” George continues, eyes the kind of piercing it hurts to be on the receiving end of them, “and you tried so hard to share that with everyone you met. And then as soon as something bad happens or you feel bad, or something, you try to just. Get it all out of the way. Like being sad, or feeling bad, is a bad thing.”

Dream traces the crater on his face with a finger and thinks, But it is. 

For the longest time, his settling was beyond his reach. It still is now. If he lost even an ounce of his long-perfected control over it, he knew he could be a devastation, bleeding out everywhere over everyone he loved. He took on other people’s poison; the point was to ensure they didn’t have to suffer, and his own suffering being foisted onto them would kinda defeat the whole fucking point. 

It’s different now. Everyone’s been trying to tell him that. Even the primordial gods tried to tell him that. 

Quietly, George murmurs, “You scare me, Dream.”

Reflexive alarm shatters through Dream’s chest. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. I’m just saying I’m scared.” George leans in, chin tucked over his arms, so close his nose is practically brushing Dream’s. His expression is the kind of grave quiet he reserves only for his most serious of moments, and George spends so much of his time being over-the-top and ridiculous and the butt of a joke that people forget he’s as grim and studied as any scholar when he wants to be, all of that keen-eyed focus directed inward more often than not. He touches two tentative fingers to Dream’s mouth and says, “I’m scared for you.”

Dream opens his mouth. Closes it. Settles on, “I think I have that effect on people.”

George snorts. “It’s not a compliment.”

“I know it’s not.”

“Stop getting kidnapped. And hurt. And sick. And dying.”

“I dunno, those are some tall orders.”

“Dream.” George drapes his hand over Dream’s, and Dream stops. Forces himself to lift his gaze to George’s. 

George doesn’t say anything more for what feels like a century, just wordlessly studying Dream’s face. Dream watches the minute ticks of George’s eyes as they flit over his hair, his mouth, the starburst scar. 

Finally, George says, “I think Ponk made lemon pancakes. You want me to bring you some or do you want to come out?” His hand is warm and comforting. The sun pours in through the window. 

Dream says, “I think I can go out.”

“It’s okay if you can’t.”

“But I wanna try.”

George bobs his head once. His hand tightens briefly on Dream’s, and he says, somewhat thickly, “Okay. Okay. Let’s do it, then, or Tommy’s gonna eat all of them before we get there and then I’m gonna have to call Punz to put a hit on him.”

Chapter Text

Most days, after something inevitably gone awry—a trigger, a flashback, a really bad breakdown and nothing but shorn hair to show for it—Grian can usually rely on Scar to be there, as he always has been. Scar’s become one of Grian’s constants without Grian even realizing it, and even more frightening is the fact that it doesn’t alarm him at all. Scar has become part of Grian himself, in a way: irreplaceable as any limb. Most days, he is there.

This isn’t one of those days.

Building the steadiness back brick by brick to prank people again had been painstaking, but nowadays Grian hardly thinks twice about it. That’s the problem: he doesn’t think. He gets so caught up in his grandiose plans, so blindsided by the giddy upswell of glee that gushes forth at the prospect of a trap well set, that he doesn’t notice the placid, perfunctory smile glassing over Scar’s features until Scar’s wheeling away.

Scar doesn’t really get angry the way Ren or Timmy or Cleo do. His anger is a quiet thing, slow-moving and subterranean—glacial. He goes quiet, distantly pleasant. He’s the one who walks away first.

And so he did, and thusly there’s no one there to grip Grian’s hand just right and comb their fingers through his feathers with good pressure and knock brows together like their skulls were made to fit together as he has one of the worst panic attacks he’s ever had in his life.

Gods, he’s an idiot. Who goes around just—just messing with hours of someone else’s life like that? All that redstone will need copious rewiring, will need another half day to restore, all wiped away in a matter of seconds with a cleverly-placed tripwire and a bucket of water, and the look on Scar’s face hadn’t been good, already, but Grian hadn’t fucking noticed—so caught up, always, in his own self-satisfaction, his own insatiable greed for the happiness he has always always always known he will never deserve—

“Whoa, hey, hey, Grian—Gri!” Hands—slender—on his wrists. Grian lashes his tail blindly, terrified for the barest edge of a breath—but it only takes him another choked inhale to remember that he doesn’t have a tail anymore, that all he’s got are the colorful feathers wreathing his hair and back and not much else, really. He buried Evo with his own two hands. He buried himself with his own two hands and thought he could get away with it, thought that he could make himself finally shut up. Idiot, absolute fucking twat.

The voice is sharper now. “Hey, none of that. You don’t get to talk to yourself like that.” A pause, then a muttered curse, and softer, the voice coaxes, “I’m going to sit in front of you, Grian.” A head drops down into view, the milk-chocolate fronds of it cutting over his feet: Pearl, with a cautious hand on his knee, smiling like it hurts her, saying, “I’m going to count to ten. I’ll do it over and over, so match with me, okay? You have to breathe deep, Gri,” she adds, a reprimand in all but tone; far too gentle, even now, to rightfully criticize. “I’m going to push your chest out, so you can sit up. Count with me.”

It’s a request, even if it’s phrased like an order. Pearl’s other hand a warm, familiar anchor in the hollow between his shoulder blades, awkwardly bent to avoid skewing his feathers. Grian puffs his chest out. Grian breathes. Grian counts.

Pearl, for all that she was never witness to Grian’s fallout, has put more than enough pieces together not to ask why Grian can’t look her in the eye as he clasps his shaking hands together. She simply slides away from his knees and takes a seat at his side instead, right there in the grass with feathers floating down all around them like some portent. He must look like a mess.

“You are a mess,” Pearl agrees easily, and Grian startles when he realizes he said that out loud. “But you’re my mess, thanks ever so, and I don’t want you to hurt all by yourself.” She pauses, long enough that the tiny delicate feathers growing in clusters around Grian’s spine start to itch, then she says, more carefully, “Do you want to talk about it?”

She said that a lot to him, back when Evo started to rot. Do you want help, do you want me to stay, do you want to talk about it. Grian, all of twenty-three and full of bravado, convinced that he was the sole buffer between whatever nonsense the Watchers were up to and his precious friends, told her no every time. Look where that got him. Look where it got her.

Grian opens his mouth, then winces, touching a tentative hand to his throat. It’s not often he gets so swept up in all of it that he goes… non-verbal, is the term he’s looking for. His throat works for a moment, the words caught fast. It’s like trying to get a wheel unstuck from a muddy ditch.

Well. There’s always the patented Evo variant of fingertalk BigB started to develop. “Me and…” Grian hesitates. Draws a hand across the brim of an imaginary tophat and continues, “Scar fought. I went too far. I didn’t apologize. He left.” His hands start to shake again. “He left.”

Pearl cocks her head. “What’d you do?”

“Ruined his redstone. Hours of work.”

“Yikes.” 

“I wanted—” Grian doesn’t even know what he wanted. The redstone was the goal, after all. A cheap laugh? He learned early that all parties should be smiling at the end of a joke well executed. The prankee should not storm off in silence and the prankster should not proceed to have a panic attack. “I. I wanted to prank him.”

“Mm.” Pearl arches her brow. He’s struck, all of a sudden, by how grown-up the lofty expression is on her. He missed three years of her, and now she’s certain and searching as she leans in to watch his hands, a faint furrow of concentration in her forehead, asking, “Did he say anything at all, or did he just leave? Has he sent you any direct messages?”

Not without difficulty, Grian swallows around the lump in his throat and shakes his head. “No.”

Pearl sucks in her bottom lip as she thinks. That, too, is an unbroken habit, a holdover from younger, leaner times. Her familiarity hurts the way Mumbo’s had hurt when he first came to weep over Grian’s scales, before Season 6. 

“We-ell,” she says finally, reaching out and taking one of Grian’s hands in her own. She slots their fingers together one by one and muses, “I mean, it wasn’t nice. I’m sure you already know that.” Grian winces and nods contritely. Pearl’s lips twitch before she goes still and serious again, contemplative. “But. Scar’s not… well, Scar’s the most gentlemanly of us. I’m sure he’s just trying to work through it on his own, Gri. He might have been annoyed, but he’ll come back.” She slants a look up at him, sly. “You can still be annoyed with someone even if you love them, you know?”

Grian somehow finds it within him to snort. Evo taught both of them that well. Even still… “He spent a long time on his project. I don’t know why I thought it would be funny, and I don’t know how to explain myself.”

Pearl knocks her knee into his harder than he expected. “Hey, that’s your job, not mine. In the grand scheme of things it’s nothing to be angry over and I’m positive he knows that, but you did mess up a lot of stuff.”

“I know. And I’ll apologize. It won’t happen again.”

The stiff lines of Pearl’s shoulders loosen some. “I know,” she says fondly. “You tell him that and I think he’ll believe you. And,” she turns to gesture at the waterfalling mess bleeding into the river just a few blocks away from them, “I can already think of a way you can make it up to him.”

Grian grimaces. “Yes, so can I.”

Pearl peers over Grian’s shoulder. “Oh, hey! Speak of the devil.”

It’s Scar, maneuvering expertly around the stray items scattered about the riverbank. Grian’s heart twists cold, reflexive, but Scar looks up just then and immediately the feeling scatters to the four winds.

He’s smiling.

Grian barely feels the loving little shove Pearl gives him to send him to his feet. He’s buoyed up, reaching for Scar, the two of them like pulled magnets, here one moment and there the next, Grian practically falling into Scar’s lap and signing Evo until he remembers that it’s the kind Scar can’t read and sliding haphazardly into Common: “I am sorry, I am very sorry.” Grian’s Common is clunky, he’s never liked some of the more delicate fingerspelling because he hasn’t regained finer mobility in his digits from the dragon’s claws, but it’s worth seeing the spark of recognition in Scar’s eyes, the fierce concentration. “I am very sorry. I will help. It will not happen twice. I will help.”

Scar laughs helplessly, drops his head to Grian’s. “I’m sorry too, for just leaving like that. I know you hate that,” he says, mostly breath, audibly unhappy with himself. “I should have at least said something. I just got so—I didn’t want to do something stupid and hurt you more, so I just left.” He holds out his open palms, tentative, and clutches Grian’s hands like they’re something precious when Grian deposits them into his. His eyes are wide, full of grass and earth. Utterly profound. “Thank you for apologizing. I accept your apology. Will you help me rebuild the redstone you broke?”

Behind him, Pearl shuffles close, brushing a light hand over his lesser coverts. Grian draws one of his hands from Scar’s to knock on an invisible door in the air, light lengthening into a dark room: “Yes yes yes.”

Chapter Text

BigB has never, ever taken Grian for granted. Not when it was just the two of them against the world in Evo, not in the terrible months afterward with the funeral and the empty houses, not even when everyone learned Grian was alive a year later. He’s tried so hard to be there, play along with Grian’s jokes. To be a good friend, maybe to make up for all the time they lost. He’s tried to make peace for the fact that he’ll never be able to take the place of the Hermits, who saw Grian at his worst and lowest and loved him so hard he became the bright-eyed wonder he is now, and for the most part, it’s worked. He’s okay with being part of the pain of Grian’s past, if he gets to make up for that now. It’s why he laughs until he cries when he sees the cookies in his chest, arranged into a crumbling haphazard heart.

It’s also why he briefly, despicably contemplates walking back out the door when he pokes his head in on Grian sitting in the middle of his base, glassy-eyed, slowly and methodically hitting his fist against the side of his head with a dull thud.

BigB instantly hates himself the next moment for even entertaining the idea of leaving Grian alone like this, that the first idea to jump to his mind is abandonment after having abandoned his friends enough. Buoyed by the urge to prove wrong whatever hissing, ridiculous thing has sunken its roots into him, BigB stumbles through the doorway and collapses to his knees in the grass beside Grian, clumsily gathering him into his arms, whispering, “Oh hey, Grian, what’s wrong? Is—”

Grian flinches, full-body, and his wings spring free from where they’d been pressed stiffly to his back and nearly bowl BigB over. BigB could slap himself, honestly—“Sorry! I’m so sorry, I’m not—I’m not meant to startle you. Gods, I’m making a mess of this, aren’t I—let me just come ‘round here where you can see me.” All the tips Pearl had let slip crowd the forefront of BigB’s mind as he scrambles to sit before Grian, his hands where Grian can see them, hoping—like the terrible person he is—that Grian’s too out of it to see how badly his hands are shaking.

Grian blinks at BigB, his fist uncurling slowly from where it had been clenched against his temple. He looks like—like Taurtis did, sometimes, back when the server was too loud, when the code raged because it knew it didn’t belong to him. Martyn, nodding sagely, had called it “dissociating,” and Taurtis had explained once that it felt a little like floating through the day. BigB always wondered why Taurtis called it floating, because that makes it sound almost pleasant, soft and cloudlike. Grian looks hunted.

“…BigB,” he says finally, his voice thick. “Hi.”

“H-hi.” BigB has no idea what to say, what he’s supposed to ask. “Is—why—” Think, BigB. “Are you okay?”

Grian stares back at him. His fist spasms in his hair. 

BigB can’t stand seeing him hurt himself a moment longer; he reaches out, not too fast but hurried all the same, and lays a hand on Grian’s wrist. “Hey, can you—” Grian’s fingers jump free. “Yeah, perfect. Don’t—do that, okay? Don’t…” 

BigB trails off. He doesn’t have the vocabulary for this. He’s all awkward, tripping over his own sentences, full of uncertainty and full of fear. How does he make Grian stop? Is he even allowed to do that, to be here? Scar went off-server for dinner break with half the Double Life cast and crew, and all the Hermits went with him. There’s no better option than BigB, but BigB feels unworthy all the same.

Tentatively, he pulls his hand away from Grian’s wrist. “I’m… if you don’t… if you don’t want me here, tap my hand twice?” He holds out his palm, hesitates, and wipes the sweat off on his pants before offering it up again. 

Grian seizes his arm with a strength BigB’s not expecting and tap-taps it fervently: no no no. There’s desperation there, and under that a current of steel-edged resolve. Grian doesn’t want to be alone.

BigB swallows hard and says, “Okay. Okay. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Do you want me to talk?” Filling oppressive silences is a skill he’s honed. Evo was full of them after Grian not-died. 

Grian slants a look at BigB, considering, then nods. He lifts his hand and echoes it with what BigB recognizes, startled, as Evo Sign: “Yes.”

“Okay.” BigB takes a deep breath and reminds himself it’s the actual least he can do. “Well, um. Okay, I know you were there, but you didn’t see it after. So after Ren gummed up that one take this morning, he started goofing off in the backgrounds of the other ones, and he got caught by Cleo…”

It’s lighthearted chatter, for all that BigB and Grian are navigating the choppy waters of their unpaid debts and unresolved griefs. The Life Series has provided ample distraction in the form of its many bad takes and even more cast and crew shenanigans. With half an eye on Grian’s glassy expression, BigB recounts Cleo upturning Ren into the river in retaliation, BigB hiding the cookies in his own pillowcase and forgetting about them until he woke up one morning with chocolate in his hair, and how loudly Jimmy yelled at the chicken Tango tried to set loose in their house.

Grian clears his throat. Says, raspy, “Thanks, BigB.”

BigB shuts his mouth with a clack. He may or may not bite his tongue. He pays the sting no mind as Grian shuffles his feathers, smoothing the fluffy topmost ones with a steady hand, and curls forward to hook his chin over his knees. All around them, the last of the sunset falls in eaves of red and gold over the ramparts, over the fine blades of grass. Past the wall, a panda grumbles.

“...Can I tell you something?” Grian asks finally, shifting on the green. “It’s kind of a secret, I suppose. But you can say no.”

Secrets. BigB’s had his fair share of them, sure—burying Evo first, cutting off his loved ones, hiding how afraid he was from the world because it was easier to be smiley than scared. He’s never been to the End since. Because he’s got a feeling Grian’s secret is similar, and because Grian is his friend, BigB nods—a jerk of the head—and inches closer to press to Grian’s side.

“It gets like this, sometimes,” Grian admits, quiet. “When there’s no one around. When it’s just me. It goes loud, and… and when your head is going I want to hurt myself, I want to hurt myself, want to want to want to— you know.”

BigB doesn’t, but he can’t say that—so desperately aware of how precious this is, Grian’s trust, after they both presumed each other into the grave. He swallows. Thumbs Grian’s palm. Waits for him to say more. 

“When X got me onto Season Six, I… well, it was worse then.” The pictures of Grian on every Hermit’s wall back in the day: hair shorn short, bruises under his eyes, all his color leached from him. “I used to… the big one was cutting my hair. After my new wings, I was neurotic about keeping them clean and preened and pretty, and I would panic if even a single feather was out of place. And there was always something new coming up, something that made living hurt, and.” Grian blinks, his eyes huge. BigB, heart thrumming in his throat, clenches Grian’s hand harder. 

Grian leans in and says, “It made life hard. And it made life feel not worth living. And I thought about dying very often.”

“Oh,” says BigB, stricken. He squeezes Grian’s hand on reflex, feeling the blood there, the faint pulse. “Grian.”

“Not so much anymore.” Grian’s smile is wan, hardly a smile at all. “I see a lot of therapists. The Hermits look out for me. And Evo isn’t—it isn’t dead. I know that now. The gods don’t hate me.”

BigB drops his gaze to Grian’s hands, feeling some burgeoning helplessness: How could anyone hate you? How could anyone dare?

 “I just have moments. I slip up.” Grian’s wings ruffle in the faint evening breeze. He breathes, long and slow, and BigB finds himself copying him. A shared inhale and exhale, in and out. Grian’s expression is warmer, now. “I feel better. Really. That was… a pretty bad one, not to lie, but I really do feel better.” He studies BigB’s hand in his, then squeezes it once. Proof of life. Softer, his eyes less tortured, Grian says, “Thank you for listening, BigB. And thank you for helping.”

BigB laughs feebly. “Gods, I felt ridiculous—I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I was afraid I was making it worse.” He fumbles, briefly, for the right words; fails to reach bravery and grasps at honesty instead: “I’m glad that I could at least… be here. Nobody should have to be alone during that.” He pauses, then repeats it, harder, because he believes it. “Nobody should have to be alone during that.”

Grian blinks, taken aback, but before BigB has time to regret it, Grian’s softened and leaned in again, clonking their heads together like BigB’s seen Grian do with Scar sometimes. For a moment, BigB’s breathless.

“Thanks, BigB,” Grian says again, kind. “You’re a good friend.”

Chapter Text

The fire is warm, painting red and gold leaves onto their face. Almost as warm as their regard, regal and quiet, but not quite—nothing compares to that. Dream likes the pine-wood smell of their soft white tunic, and since no one’s around to judge, he burrows into it. They shift to accommodate with a sighing laugh, all lilting sounds, and when he blinks up into their eyes, the night sky shimmers back.

“Aren’t you cold, little dreamer?”

Dream snuffles and dives back into their arms, safe from the seething night. Here, there’s no darkness. “No. Why would I? You’re here.”

Chapter Text

“You know,” Charlie informs Dream after a server tour rife with explosions, his voice on tiptoe like he’s telling a secret, “that this is the first home server I’ve had in decades?”

Dream stares. “You’re—you can’t be more than twenty.”

“Ninety-something, but thanks for the ego boost.” Charlie’s smile is full of teeth, robust. “I like people, and that kinda moved me around a lot. Light-footed minor god and all. I think you get that.”

Dream thinks of flying through trees, ducking a crossbow bolt like his whole body is made of wind. When Charlie grins, he returns it unhesitatingly.

Chapter Text

“Scar,” Grian says, statuesque. “What is this.”

Looking at Grian, Scar’s reminded of a bird of prey: how still they are before they dive for the kill. How there’s really only a split second between the hunt and the prize.

Also, Scar’s tattered shirt is dangling limply from Grian’s hands. Tits out, as the commenters would say.

“I’m gracing the cameras,” Scar tries. “You know. With my fantastic. Pectoral muscles.”

Grian stares. His eye twitches.

“Are you having a flashback, dude?” Scar asks out of genuine concern.

“Scar, for the love of the below, put your damn shirt back on.”

Chapter Text

Dream rocks back on his heels. He looks out through his lashes, like it makes him less frightening, and finally, he says, low, “You’re not my mom.”

Techno inhales deeply so that he can’t recoil at the thought of obsidian hair and night-sky eyes and replies, “Dream, believe me, the last thing I wanna be is your mom.”

Honestly, Techno’s surprised it even took this long. The annihilating fugue of Mina’s capture and detention kept Dream, and everyone around him, in lockdown mode, but the last few weeks have been good on him: he’s smiling more, putting on weight, his hair going that faint gold it does in the sun. Just yesterday he’d spent the whole lazy afternoon by the beach in L’Manberg whittling something while whistling through his teeth, casual as anything; stands to reason he’d be itching to stretch his legs.

And judging by the horror in every last face around them, the whole server is very against this idea.

“You’re not going anywhere,” says Puffy sharply. “You were—so sick you couldn’t even leave your bed four weeks ago.”

“Four weeks ago,” Dream echoes. Puffy either doesn’t hear the derision in his voice or summarily ignores it.

“I can’t even begin to describe what it was like, seeing you like that, and there’s no way you’re fully healed—”

“Puffy’s right,” says H, in his wonderfully mild way, stepping in discreetly to make space between Puffy and Dream. “I mean, you have to think about it this way, dude. You were super sick for a really long time, and we’re all just… kinda worried!” Which is an understatement. Techno once saw at least three separate people leap forth with pots or gaps after Dream tripped over his own shoelace. “We’re all a little on edge, is all.”

“Do I not look okay?”

“Dude—Dream, you look okay, you’re great, it’s just—”

Dream’s voice is perfectly flat. “So you’re keeping me here until whenever you say I can leave.”

“No!” Puffy bursts out, her hands clenched into fists. “No, that’s not it, you’re—misinterpreting what we’re saying on purpose! This isn’t a prison, Dream, it’s your home!”

“You gotta be reasonable,” Techno breaks in when Dream opens his mouth to argue. His rival’s head whips around, almost comically astonished, and Techno wishes he could relish the expression he so rarely gets to surprise from Dream. All he feels is clumsy and anxious, traversing a field littered with mines. “You were dyin’ not so long ago. As you can imagine, it was a little bit alarmin’.”

“I’m the one that was dying and I’m telling you now I feel totally fine,” Dream snaps, sending Puffy bristling. Even Techno has to take a few mindful breaths, pinching the bridge of his scarred nose. Sapnap, who was unfortunately sitting on one of the stray crafting benches in the Community House and has none of Puffy or Techno’s patience with Dream’s bullheadedness, throws down his crocheting and storms over to Dream. Before Techno can so much as warn anyone or lift a hand to stop him, Sapnap seizes Dream by the shirt front in both fists and near dangles the guy off the floor. 

“Sapnap,” yelps H, intermingling with Techno’s stunned “Bruh.”

“You’re such a fucking idiot, my gods, I’m going to actually knock the shit out of you,” Sapnap snarls into Dream’s placid, smiling mask. “It’s like you actually don’t fucking get it, how fucking scary that was. What, are we just supposed to go back to fucking normal and let you go to die again?! If you take a single step off this server I’m gonna make you eat your teeth, just fucking watch, SEE IF I’M LYING!” He ends his tirade in a roar, as spitting mad as Techno’s ever seen him, turning red in the face. All the while, the line of Dream’s mouth remains steady and unruffled. Like he expected it. Like he could read every reaction everyone’s having as if they were lines off a book.

predictable, sighs his settling, a serpent winding through the sea of feet. every last one.

Dream shakes his head. “You don’t get it,” he says, so bleakly that Sapnap freezes. A beat later he snatches his hands away. Thus released, Dream takes a couple of steps back, smoothing out the neck of his sweater with trembling hands. Techno notices Sapnap noticing, and Techno also notices Sapnap’s shoulders hitch up to his ears in what can only be shame. 

Dream spends a few more moments fiddling with his sweater. The Community House sits, echoing hollowly with its miserable silence. Lately it’s been filled with light, books lining the second floor and a training gym carved out beneath it, but it couldn’t be more quiet now, its occupants standing stiff as corpses.

“...I’m actually going to go crazy if I have to—to stay here, and watch you guys fucking—I don’t know,” Dream says helplessly, holding his wrists close to his chest. Techno follows the expand-hold-collapse of Dream’s ribs with his breath, not liking the near-meditative pace of it. “I don’t even get what you guys are—like, what’s the problem? Isn’t it better that you’re not constantly watching after me? It feels like I’m—I’m being suffocated. When it was… bad, it was fine.” Bad, Techno assumes, being relative, seeing as Dream, overly bright-eyed with his whole body curled in on itself like he expects to be struck for feeling things, seems pretty bad to him. “But it’s good now, isn’t it? Why can’t I just leave? I always left, before!”

“We-ell,” Techno begins, heartrate kicking up when every eye swivels to him searchingly, “not to pick at semantics, but I’d say we’re better. Not good. Better. And for another thing, you’re not just leavin’. If I understood you correctly, you said you wanted to check in on Mina.”

Everybody flinches at that name. Techno refuses to—refuses to give them more power than they’ve already had and lost, refuses to let himself kowtow when they’re not even around anymore—but it isn’t much, and it doesn’t ease the open ruin in Dream’s eyes when H and Puffy and Sapnap all round on him as if to berate him more for his poor life choices.

So he does what Techno thinks he himself might have done in that moment, had he the ability: he teleports away with a little whuff of displaced grass.

The astonishment lasts only seconds. Everyone starts screaming their heads off.

“What the fuck!” Puffy yells.

“He didn’t,” says H despairingly.

“Oh, he definitely did,” Sapnap spits, whipping out his communicator so fast he almost cracks it against the wall. “I’m calling Sam, and Bad, and Phil and Wilbur and Callahan and probably literally every person on this goddamn server, and I’m gonna find him.” He looks up. “Are you guys coming with?”

“How would we even know where he went? We can’t exactly track him.” Techno says, bewildered enough to forget his anxieties for a moment. 

“He’s not even supposed to be using his powers.” Sapnap hisses out every word like it’s offended him personally. “He’s still sick and he’s still hurt and he’s been pouring every fucking ounce of himself out like he’s an infinite water source or something, you’d think he’d get it after living like that all the time but he still thinks he can just do all the shit Phil does! Hell, that Xisuma does! What kind of dumbass fuck,” and just like that the blistering fury is gone, swept out to sea fast as any tide, and Sapnap wobbles over to the crafting bench he left his crocheting on, tosses his communicator aside, and buries his face in his hands.

Techno’s not proud: he winces when Sapnap starts to cry, choking sobs that wrack his entire body. Never let it be said Sapnap doesn’t commit to his endeavors. H, at least, is gifted with some sense of competent empathy, and he immediately glides over to drape a comforting hand over the back of Sapnap’s neck and cues up a steady mantra of “It’s okay, it’ll be okay, you’re fine, Sapnap, he’ll come back, you guys can talk it all out.” Puffy, for her part, exchanges a grimace with Techno as she pulls up to his side.

“Are you sure we can’t find him?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find him,” Techno says drily, blinking back at Puffy’s confused glance. “Hey, he said it with his own mouth, that he wanted to see Mina. I don’t think we put him off any.”

“Techno,” Puffy says, with burgeoning alarm. Techno shrugs with one shoulder.

“I don’t think there’s anythin’ we can do about it other than waitin’ up for him. Goin’ after him is definitely, ah… well, he’s not gonna be happy about it. And we pushed him enough today for everyone, I think. I’m gonna leave him alone.”

“And you think that’s for the best?”

“Puffy.” Techno closes his eyes and tries not to look tired and sad. “I don’t think anybody, right now, knows what’s best for anyone, least of all themselves.”

Techno waits as the others trudge out one by one, tearfully or otherwise, leaving their crocheting and sword-sharpening and journaling behind. Techno waits as his communicator explodes with messages, as friends and family flock in and out of the Community House, as Phil flits by to press an absentminded hand to Techno’s cheek before departing. Techno waits until the sun melts low on the horizon, the lanterns light up, the lanterns die down. He waits so long the owls start hooting and the mobs start spawning, and then he’s preoccupied for a short while as he makes quick work of the creepers and skeletons sharp-eyed enough to spot his movements. 

Eventually the intra-server portal, white and gold, blooms in long, lucent shadows down the wooden walkway. Its slender fingers loom for a moment before withdrawing, leaving lingering shapes on the backs of Techno’s eyelids, and when the smoke and wash of cold die down, Dream’s there, in the yellow sweater he’d been wearing as he left, gripping his arms.

Techno rises halfway. “Dream?”

Dream looks up. His mask is hanging around his neck, and the naked heartbreak on his face rends Techno asunder.

“Dream,” he whispers, softer, “hey, man. Hey,” and he reaches out, lets Dream come to him, and folds Dream away into his arms. He breathes in and out into Dream’s wild curls and thinks of fluffy kittens and pretty rainbows and the forgiveness that has expanded to take up at least twenty acres of Techno’s chest, too full to name—tries to wrap it all up and give it over to Dream with open hands. This is one thing he can do that will not hurt Dream. This is one thing he can do to make the Void his friend was burdened with a little kinder.

i will never ever ever, the contrary nightmare seethes, forgive myself my curiosity.

Chapter Text

The first time Landlord hears about Dream, he’s been cornered between the rec room and server portal by Nox, who’s about as intimidating as a freshly neutered chihuahua but trying his damndest anyway.

“You’re coming with me,” says Nox. He’s attempting to glare. It’s cute.

“Okay,” Landlord says easily, letting Nox drag him by the wrist to a broom closet.

Once they’ve piled into the tiny room—and it’s stuffy, too, because Nox forgot to ventilate the equipment rooms properly—Nox wriggles around to face Landlord and says, low and urgent, “One of our contestants is a minor god, and they’ve expressed that they would like accommodations.”

“Okay,” Landlord repeats, because Nox’s face is three inches from his mouth and he doesn’t want to accidentally bite his nose off. Also, Nox has successfully jammed his shoulder into Landlord’s diaphragm, and if Landlord speaks too vigorously, the resultant convulsions will launch Nox into the next room. “Great.”

“It’s—it’s Dream,” Nox says by way of explanation, tense. 

“Okay.”

Noxite looks up through his very fine, long lashes. This close, Landlord can see the few white strands in his thick, dark hair, the smatter of gray in his black eyes like faraway stars, and every single pore in his skin. His breath is hot on Landlord’s neck.

Nox says, “You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”

“Zilch,” Landlord admits, then has to twist quickly to duck Nox’s swing. “Hey! Hey, violence is not the answer—”

“You just say everything that comes to mind, don’t you, you awful goblin, you unmitigated rodent—”

Before Nox can make any further defamatory declarations about his person, Landlord crams a hand over his mouth, cackling when Nox just keeps ranting through his palm. “You dragged me into a broom closet for this? This? And here I thought you were proposing seven minutes in heaven. A conversation we could’ve had in the hallway like normal people!”

Nox subsides at that, absently tugging his jaw from Landlord’s grip. Landlord releases him readily, pressing as far as he can into the arsenal of cleaning supplies hung like torture devices on the far wall so that Nox has a little room to breathe. Friends since childhood, since they were silly little gods in a world they had too many ideas about—they’ve learned each other well, their shapes, their shadows. 

“...Dream’s famous,” Nox says finally, scratching his chin. “He has a lot of eyes on him, and not all of them in a good way. And even though he’s that famous, not a single person seems to know that he’s a minor god.”

“Mm. What does he do? Building? Redstone?”

“He’s an Endchaser,” Nox replies, accepting Landlord’s apparent ignorance with practiced ease. Noctis and Lauren are still too new to their dynamic to let it go without some heckling, as people-focused as they are. Stuart, at least, understands Landlord’s disinterest so far as they share a sharp-eyed enthusiasm for how each participant interacts with the maps they’ve crafted. There’s nobody quite like Nox. “And he does something called ‘Manhunt,’ too—almost UHC, you should check it out. Not really your cup of tea, but it shows off his area of expertise.” He pauses, then reiterates, “He’s very famous, Landlord. Unprecedentedly so. And his rise to fame has been—meteoric. There’s no other way to explain it.”

And still, nobody knows he’s a minor god, and if they do, they aren’t telling. Either he’s intensely private or has very loyal fans. “Okay. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because he asked for accommodations. The same things the Captain gets, that the Hermits get—teleportation, Regen, the works. Preferably discreetly. And I don’t know anyone more discreet than you.”

A wave of alarm washes through Landlord. “Whoa, hey, I’m not a streamer. I don’t have the experience for live modding, and I’m—wouldn’t it be telling, that a build admin is tailing a new player?”

“Not necessarily.” Nox shrugs. “It’s not like people flock to the admin stream. They rarely do, actually. And Dream won’t go out of his way to draw notice to you. I’ll have Aeltumn walk you through protocol, he mods Ren and he won’t ask questions. I,” and here he leans in to clasp Landlord’s hands, terribly earnest in that way only Nox can be, “am counting on you. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this. You know that.”

Unfortunately, Landlord does. All issues requiring sensitive handling get funneled straight to Landlord because he’s just even-keeled and unsympathetic enough to get shit done, but not so much of an asshole that he gets complaints written about him. He was the one to suggest all the changes for minor god participants in the first place. If he ever wanted proof of Nox’s astonishing ability to wholeheartedly trust even the most wretched of creatures, he has it now.

“Well, fine,” Landlord grumbles, winding his fingers around Nox’s and squeezing them once. “All right. I guess if I must.”

“You must,” Nox says cheerfully, kicking the door to the broom closet open and wrangling Landlord down the hall to the server portal. “I actually scheduled a meeting with him for right now, which is why I needed you to say yes as soon as possible, so thank you for your flexibility, I knew I could count on you.”

“You make me wish minor gods were killable,” Landlord swears, allowing himself to be herded like cattle onto the dais. “There can’t be any greater joy than to smother you with a pillow.”

The second time Landlord hears about Dream, it’s because Landlord has fucked up massively.

“Shit, fuck, shit, fuck,” he chants under his breath, trying to speedwalk through the crowd of confused players without looking like he’s speedwalking so he doesn’t tip off every single participant’s ever-astute chat, tapping frantically on his communicator with one hand and directly finagling the server’s code with the other. The code, belligerent as a tossed crocodile, snaps at his outstretched fingers, and he swears violently at it, too. 

He fucked this one up. No ifs or buts about it. He wasn’t paying enough attention, far too confident in Dream’s seeming ability to survive any and every wacky mishap to be thrown at him at alarming speeds, and when he looked back up at the end of Battle Box his player was in the fucking Void. Not as bad as real Void, but that’s a meaningless platitude when MCC’s synthetic Void is so high quality—better even than Hypixel, notorious for its efficiency—that it shreds players on the spot.

“Nox,” he growls breathlessly, “where’s my charge, have you gotten a lock on him yet?”

“No, I’ve got vitals up and they’re haywire but he’s alive, I can’t find him, just give me another minute, just stall, Landlord, just a bit longer—”

“Landlord!”

Landlord says something unmentionable and whirls around. It’s Karl Jacobs, Dream’s teammate, who immediately shrinks back, which at least takes the edge off the blindly furious haze Landlord is wading through. He raises his hands in apology. “Sorry. I’m a bit busy. You need something?”

“No, just a question.” Karl’s quick to bounce back. There’s a worried furrow to his brow, though. “You’re Dream’s admin, right? You were on the team roster.”

Not in so many words. “Technically I’m all of Fuchsia’s assigned admin,” Landlord says vaguely, glancing over Karl’s shoulders to find GeorgeNotFound and Sapnap hovering over them. They’ve always stuck to Dream’s side like glue, and he’s not surprised to see them both glowering back at him with something like accusation burning in their eyes. Or Sapnap’s eyes, at least. George’s goggles make it a little hard to discern any expression other than terminal boredom. “You’re asking where Dream is?”

“Yeah, actually.” Karl reaches up to smooth his hair nervously down, ostensibly unaware of all of Landlord’s insides wrenching with guilt. “We can’t get back in contact with him, even on the SMP chat. He’s not answering calls or anything. But he’s still online, so—”

“I’m sorry, I really do have to go sort this out, but rest assured, he’ll be with you shortly,” Landlord interrupts, unable to bear it a second longer, and bows out as gracelessly as he ever has, leaving Karl alone in his confusion to weave through the rest of the crowd. Thankfully, no one else flags him down, and by the time he makes it to the staff exit, Nox has pinged him: We found him, he was glitched in the Void, come to the infirmary.

The relief is as sweet as it is short. “Glitched in the Void” is as undescriptive as it gets, so by the time Landlord has arrived at the infirmary he’s nearly rabid with all of the horrible, intrusive images he has in mind, knowing what he knows about how Stuart designed the MCC Void. 

It’s somehow better and worse than he expected. 

Dream’s sprawled on one of the cots with a shock blanket thrown over him, a cool compress over his eyes, a half-drunk Weakness potion at his elbow. All that and he’s still shaking—shivering, more like, tremors in his clenched fists and jaw so that the sound of chattering teeth fills the room. Landlord’s lungs hurt.

It’s hard not to get attached to someone you’re tasked with monitoring for five hours straight every month, even harder if the person is friendly and likable and so openly loving that it makes everyone in a ten-meter vicinity ache with loneliness to watch. Dream is a good guy, focused and fearsome in battle and goofy as anything outside of it, fiercely competitive and just as fiercely protective. Landlord, loath as he is to admit it, likes him. He likes him a lot.

So it’s heartbreaking to be confronted with the consequences of his own inaction, his utter stupidity. Even a second earlier and he could have saved Dream full minutes of unimaginable pain, left him a little less scarred than he is, because oh, boy, is that guy scarred. Landlord swallows hard and shuffles into one of the plastic chairs beside Dream’s cot.

“I’m sorry,” he says stolidly, without beating around the bush. You fucked up, he reminds himself, and you will own up to that. “I’m so sorry, Dream. How are you feeling?”

Dream’s trembling lessens faintly. One of his hands twitches as if to remove the compress from his eyes, but he’s not quite capable of managing it, and finally, he rasps, “Floaty. So’body ga’ me Slowness for the pain.”

It’s bad, then—bad enough that Dream couldn’t articulate what he did and didn’t need. “They gave you a Weakness too, it seems. Is it very bad?” He has to ask anyway, for his own peace of mind.

Dream hums. There’s a strange, echoey quality to it—just a feather of resonance across Landlord’s fingertips, the nape of his neck. “No,” he says, like a liar who lies. 

“Very convincing,” Landlord replies loftily, lifting the remains of the Weakness potion from Dream’s side so that he doesn’t accidentally roll in it like a pig in mud and consequently black out for the rest of the Championship. “I truly am sorry, Dream. You don’t have to sugarcoat it—I know it was bad. The event’s on standby at the moment, but you can definitely bow out if you’d like. Do you need—”

“Wanna go back in.” Dream’s voice, somnolent just moments before, snaps to steel. “I’m stayin’. I’m goin’ back in. Please—Landlord—” The compress skews, and Landlord gets a glimpse of a frantic green eye, a warped mess of scar tissue —before he can think to duck and avert his gaze. Dream draws in a sharp breath, and there’s a clap of plastic to skin as Dream slaps the compress back into place. 

Silence.

“You’re not slurring anymore, so the potions are wearing off,” says Landlord, fighting to keep his voice flat and steady: the get-shit-done, devil-may-care Landlord Dream knows and is the most comfortable with. “Pop a Regen and a Healing before you go, and if you’re still unwell, I’ll spell you with Strength. Does that sound like a plan?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” says Dream, soft. Landlord hazards a peek and is met with the sight of Dream’s mouth forming a little O of surprise, one hand clamped over his face, the other grabbing fistfuls of the cot’s crinkly green blanket. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. I’m an admin. I’m your admin. I get the last say.”

“Oh.” Dream’s voice is wondering—none of the earlier distress, the desperate hunger, nor the potion-induced lethargy. He looks better. Not that Landlord is a medical professional, but Dream’s moving with more ease, his hands less shaky. The color has come back into his face. 

Landlord still pinches himself. Never do this again, he tells himself sternly, pulling out his chair and shooting a message to Nox, another to Stuart and Aeltumn. queue rocket spleef, will be back by the end of it, he texts, and gets three thumbs up in response. Turning back to Dream, he reports, “You’re on in about ten to fifteen minutes. Try to get a bit more rest.”

Dream tips his head. Landlord takes it for a dismissal and is making his way to the door when Dream calls, “Hey, Landlord?”

Landlord pauses, his hand on the doorknob. He glances back.

Dream’s smile is mollifying. It’s a glowing thing, a full-body thing, encompassing the entirety of him, like sunlight pouring out of the sky, like liquid gold. Landlord’s not prepared for the anxiety crouched in his chest like a beaten animal leaching out of him in waves, nor for Dream’s glowing smile to falter, but a blink and it’s gone, Dream’s grin just as white and square as it was before. “Thank you,” he says, honest, and all Landlord can do is cough and wave a dismissive hand and hurry out, hoping Dream didn’t notice the flush that flashed across his face.

The third time Landlord hears about Dream, it’s because he’s finally returned to MCC.

At this point, there’s no lying about it—everyone and their mother knows that Landlord likes Dream, in a baleful and bickering I hate you but not really way that upsets everyone but the two of them. Nox and Noctis both tease him endlessly about it, joking about mother geese and green thumbs, to which Landlord gripes back about maintaining a strict business relationship. Nox’s response to anything business-flavored, though, is to say, “Oh, is this just a fling? A convenient office crush? I thought what we had was real,” to which there is no acceptable response other than smashing Nox’s face into the couch cushions and attempting second-degree murder. 

Suffice it to say the rumors are exaggerated and Landlord is only a little fond of Dream, just the tiniest bit. The two of them definitely don’t text one another fantastically insulting memes of each other and giggle evilly over them. They most certainly don’t eat lunch on call every once in a while. Landlord doesn’t have an emoji picked out for Dream’s contact in his communicator. 

Which is why it’s so alarming for Dream to drop off the face of the earth, return for a brief period of lucidity in November, then vanish again, this time for six honest-to-the-gods months. He missed five Championships, six counting a non-canon event. So did most of the other Dream SMP members. Twitter, it’s fair to say, lost its collective shit. 

But MCC 15 rolls around, and the calls start being put in for participating members, and six or seven Championship regulars from the Dream SMP have shown up for 14 and the singularly memorable Pride 2021 event, so Landlord really should not be as floored as he is to glance at his communicator one day and spot Dream’s name highlighted green on the Noxcrew spreadsheet. 

His eyes must fucking goggle out of his skull or something, because Lauren, passing by with a box full of extra felt for the costume crew, does a double take and kicks it into reverse, scanning him from head to toe. “Landlord?”

“Dream’s back,” he tells her faintly, pointing at his communicator with what he feels is a remarkably steady hand. Lauren drops her entire box of felts and claps both hands over her mouth. 

When taken up to the big man at the top, all Nox says is, “Oh, he DMed me, blah blah blah,” and other things that make Lauren release the filthiest curse human ears have known and try to roundhouse kick Nox into his bookshelves. Still, the rosters have been finalized, and July 24th finds Landlord standing stiff and grim in the lobby, watching each passing participant with the eyes of a hawk in case they throw off their wig and turn out to be Dream or something. You can never be too cautious in MCC, where the team costumes are morphing more and more into drag performances than anything else. Artistry is its own reward, or so HBomb would have Landlord believe. 

Dream’s not disguised though. He’s not dressed up at all, as a matter of fact. He spawns in with a small crowd of people posted around him like a colorful guard detail, Sapnap and Fundy directly on either side of him. Antfrost, the newcomer, postpones his debut in favor of clutching Dream’s hand. 

Landlord was prepared for the worst—illness, injury, permanent and debilitating pain, a wasting sickness. He thought Dream might be emaciated, or haunted, or so warped with scars he might not recognize him. He imagined all manners of terrible things happening to Dream, so clever and so kind, so lacking in genuine cruelty. 

It is, once again, better and worse than he expected.

There’s no denying that Dream seems different. His mask has changed, for one—it’s a brighter white, potentially newer, so strongly enchanted Landlord can taste the Unbreaking on it from a distance. His hair is much longer, even leonine, a braided bronze tangle that tumbles down his back. Landlord bites his lip: Dream’s so pale that his freckles stand out like shouts. 

But he’s smiling. He’s here and he’s smiling. His friends surround him like opening petals and he’s holding their hands and he’s beaming fit to burst, overjoyed. It hurts to look at him head-on. 

Landlord presses his fist to his mouth. He refuses to cry. His reputation will be forever tarnished. Everyone will know that he loves Dream, oh gods, loves him as much as all of his closest friends seem to love him, as anyone who’s ever spoken to him for more than five minutes loves him. Landlord blinks back furtive tears. 

Dream, from the heart of the lobby, spots Landlord. His smile grows impossibly wider, and he tugs his hand free of Fundy’s to wave rigorously at him. His eyes glitter green in the sun. 

Landlord pulls in a very deep, very wet breath, then affixes an answering grin to his face. Enough blubbering. He has a wayward minor god to harass. 

Chapter Text

Ever since Tommy moved out to harass Wilbur, the house that was once ready to bust stitches is now empty most weekdays, and Techno doesn’t mind the hike up the outskirts of L’Manberg, past the rolling fields of grain and one or two stray berry patches that he detours to taste. It’s the dregs of a beautiful day, a fulfilling one: Techno went out to Hypixel to drop Purpled off at his playdate with his Bedwars regulars and stopped by Skyblock to pester Squid, and spent a golden afternoon by the old White House, watching Connor teach Jack and Niki how to square dance. Evening has found him at Phil’s doorstep with his coat tucked over his arm, pleasantly dusty, blackberry seeds caught between his teeth. Techno takes a moment to inhale deeply, smelling the high, clear, foresty air, the beginnings of the frost that the weather’s been hinting at for several days now. No need to knock—Techno undoes the latch and lets himself right in.

“Hey, Phil,” he calls as he goes, hanging his coat on the rack and dropping his satchel beside the mess of shoes Phil never wears by the door. “It’s me. We still on for dinner tonight?”

His voice echoes in the entryway, in the hollow silence of the living room and up the stairs to the second floor. In spite of himself, all of Techno’s hair stands on end. Somewhere, in the darkest recesses of his mind, Chat lifts their ugly head.

“Phil?” he calls again, sharper. “Hey, man, are you okay? Say somethin’.”

There’s a creak upstairs. Techno tilts his head to better locate it. It’s right above him: Phil’s bedroom, and Techno relaxes again, making his way up the stairs as loudly as possible to precede his arrival. Phil’s sleeping schedule is all out of whack due to chronic gamerism, much like Techno’s, and it makes sense that he fell asleep and just didn’t wake up in time. Well, Techno’s pretty beat himself, and he wouldn’t mind a nap, so he turns the knob of Phil’s door fully expecting nothing but a darkened room and some wayward feathers.

Three startled faces blink up at him in the sudden brightness.

“Oh,” Techno says stupidly, blinking back. “Yo, Wilbur. Tommy. Tubbo.”

Aforementioned brothers glance at each other, then back at Techno, eerily synchronized. They’re all sitting in a cluster on the floor beside the perfectly made bed, and it’s only then that Techno processes that Phil is there too, crouched in the middle with Tommy and Tubbo on either side of him and Wilbur to his back. His wings are curled stiffly. When his eyes flicker to Techno’s, the only reason Techno’s able to stifle the urge to take a step back is through copious combat training and his Pavlovian response to Phil’s face.

Phil grins wanly and rasps, “Hey, mate.”

“Phil called me and talked nonsense, so I came,” Wilbur says, softer. He only has eyes for Phil, gently carding his fingers through his father’s gleaming wings. “Tommy and Tubbo caught wind of it somehow, so they’re here too.”

“Phil texted me,” Tommy rebuffs with an audible sniff. 

“I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” says Tubbo.

“I’m having a panic attack,” Phil informs Techno.

“Bruh,” replies Techno, the picture of eloquence and master of the Common language.

Everybody shuffles around a bit to let Techno fold himself into the Phil Sandwich. He somehow ends up face-to-face with his partner, their foreheads pressed together, while Wilbur hesitantly belts his arms around Phil’s middle and takes very deep breaths against him. Tommy leans his head onto Techno’s shoulder and provides droning commentary that fades into pleasant white noise, a talent he’s clearly honing with successful results. Tubbo, sharp-eyed as anything, watches Wilbur’s ministrations like a hawk. The kid’s probably going to deploy that same tactic the next time one of their friends has a breakdown.

This is, by now, an old song and dance. Their ragtag family unit is a pretty anxious one in general, and Wilbur and Tubbo in particular have never handled bad feelings well, preferring to bottle themselves up until they crack. For an exercise in repression, well, the first person to get Tommy to admit that he’s not doing well is getting a solemn handshake and twenty netherite ingots from Techno. They’ve learned a lot of different coping mechanisms over the years, some of them advisable and some of them not; Wilbur’s latest kick is deep-pressure therapy, and Techno has a way with Phil that no one else does. Not bragging, just facts.

After a couple minutes, though, it’s clear none of it’s really helping. History has proven that Phil’s a champ at performing complete normalcy even in the throes of things like flashbacks and lethal injuries and actual heart attacks, so there’s nothing overt about it, but Phil’s trembling gets worse, and with their faces so close together, Techno can feel how short his breaths are. He can see the tears, glittering like gemstones, collecting quietly on the strands of Phil’s lashes.

“Hey,” he rumbles, soft and stricken. “Phil, hey.”

Phil doesn’t answer—probably can’t. Just pulls in one shallow inhale after another, eyes screwed shut like he’s in pain.

Tommy breaks off his litany to turn big, alarmed eyes on Techno, like he has any idea what to do. Wilbur’s arms tighten fractionally; he’s clearly just as helpless as Techno is, murmuring syllables that have lost their other halves. 

Tubbo bites his lip, then twists to paw through his pack. Techno nudges him with an elbow, asking, “Hey, you need anythin’ specific?”

Tubbo drops the pack and claps a hand to his forehead. “Fuck, I haven’t got my Totem on me,” he whispers back, sounding furious with himself. “I always keep my echest around, I dunno why I don’t—fuck’s sake. Do you have one?”

Techno sucks in an understanding breath, sitting back onto his haunches to rifle through his pockets. Totems of Undying are another one of the gods’ silly little antics—it’s not like a functionally immortal playerbase gets a lot out of extra-life tokens—but they’re medical marvels in and of themselves, just like enchanted golden apples. They’ve been observed to regulate the parasympathetic nervous system at unprecedented speeds, to burn away aches and pains, and boost the user’s immune system for a time. It is, as Tommy would call it, “the good shit.”

He’s got one stowed in his inner pocket for exactly those reasons, and Tubbo deserves at least twenty medals for this one, wow, the brain on that kid. He tells him so, saying, “Your brain is just—just massive, bro, I dunno how you think of these things,” as he hastily tugs one of his hands from Phil’s to fish the Totem out of his vest. Tommy cheers.

Techno firmly molds Phil’s fingers around the Totem. It’s cool in their cupped hands, unnaturally so, but it heats up rapidly as Techno digs his fingernails into the ridged gilt edges of it, its tiny emerald eyes winking up between the gaps in their fingers. With the deep, resonant toll of a bell between his temples, his pulse a heavy hammer in his head, Techno procks the Totem with a half-muttered plea and general panicky intent from Phil. 

The magic—the code, the spell, whatever—works quickly. Phil’s shaking dies down fast, his breathing evening out faster. Knowing that the first few seconds suck, because the Totem is essentially forcing the body to chill out, Techno shoves his forehead back up against Phil’s and whispers, “Hey, you’re safe, man, it’s fine. Everything is fine, you’re safe. You’re okay,” a mantra for Phil to hear and follow back to shore.

The golden swell of sound and color dies down eventually, leaving the room smelling faintly of ozone. Tubbo inhales deeply, that little whistle in his nose from that time he and Tommy brawled and broke it wheezing out in the silence. Wilbur follows suit, and then Techno finds himself doing it too, all of them taking mindful breaths like the universe’s most well-adjusted family, no doubts about it. 

Phil, because he’s a terrible person, ruins the moment by saying, “Totems are cheating.”

“They are not!” Tommy yells, throwing his hands in the air and narrowly missing clipping Techno’s ear. “You can’t cheat at mental health, what are you, Dream, he thought you could fucking speedrun mental health, or have you not been going to all those stupid fucking support meetings they keep having down by Eret’s piss castle—”

“That is not what that’s called,” Wilbur interrupts, repulsed. 

“Well, it’s a piss castle ‘cause Eret’s a pissbaby and she lives in it and also built it,” Tommy explains, momentarily and unfortunately derailed. “Obviously.”

“So it’s piss by association?”

“Yes.”

“Still cheating,” Phil breathes softly by Techno’s ear, clearly amused. Techno can feel him grinning, his stubble scratchy against Techno’s, and something bright and unguarded blooms inside of him, too big to name, something that brings Techno’s hand to Phil’s cheek and has him pulling away to just look at him. 

Phil’s eyes are as shockingly blue as his head is blond and his wings are black, like somebody turned a saturation dial up on him, like the gods love him more than they love anybody else. His face is ruddy from breathing too fast but his teeth flash white when he grins, strands of gold slapping Techno in the face when Phil chuckles. “Got something on my face, mate?”

“Nah,” Techno drawls, fitting his chin carefully to Phil’s shoulder and leaning in, no hands or anything, just a little extra pressure. “Well, maybe just a little panic, I dunno.”

“Strange coincidence, that.”

“If you two don’t stop flirting right this instant, I’m going to have a panic attack,” Tubbo declares.