Chapter Text
Dream builds himself a cottage, and finally has a place to call home.
It’s nothing too big; it’s a one-room little place, almost cramped despite its emptiness, but the sunlight streams in through the windows and he’s content most days sitting watching the flowers grow outside and for the first time in years he thinks he might actually be at peace, so it’s enough. For him, it’s enough.
Most mornings, he wakes up to watch the sun rise, eats a quick breakfast, and lazes about most of the morning: despite running the server, there’s not a lot he needs to do nowadays. He writes a lot. He’d always wanted to be a writer, before everything, so it’s nice to have the chance to act on that now. He writes, he thinks, he watches, and he feels calm.
Most days, anyway.
It sometimes gets lonely in the cottage, he’ll admit it freely. It’s in the middle of nowhere, with nobody around for miles and miles, and if it hadn’t been for the visitors that appear sometimes and keep him company, then he’s sure he’d have lost his mind by this point. But he has his friends, he has his home, and he feels like he’s only missing one thing.
He can’t quite put a finger on what it is.
When he wakes up that morning, stretching his sore limbs in the early sunlight, Sapnap is already at his door, watching him sleep.
Dream jerks awake instantly, startled but pleased. “Sapnap,” he says cheerfully, voice grating against the hoarseness in his throat, “hi. You didn’t say you’d come by today.”
Sapnap just stares at him wordlessly like he’s seen a ghost, face ashen and solemn and tired. Really tired. His friend looks exhausted, and Dream heads towards him, concern twisting his stomach into knots.
“When was the last time you slept?” He asks, frowning. “You look like shit.”
“Dream.” Sapnap says his name like a prayer, or maybe like a curse. A smile finds its way to his lips nonetheless, ghostlike, but present. “Like you’re one to talk about looking shit. You’re a mess.”
Dream laughs. “I just woke up,” he replies, “I have an excuse. But hey, you caught me at the perfect time. Breakfast is here.”
Because though he’s calm and at peace, that doesn’t mean he’s still - for as long as he’d lived, Dream had never been still. He’d forever been pacing and fidgeting and moving in some way; so his eyes land on the breakfast lying on top of his chest, and, with a smile, he brings it over to sit cross legged beside Sapnap. His body is in so much pain, and it hurts to sit, but he’s beside his best friend and he’s happy, not fussy.
Sapnap stiffens when Dream sits beside him like he hadn’t expected him to do so - which is stupid, in Dream’s mind, because they’re Sapnap and Dream, two thirds of a team, the team, but he knows Sapnap is still jumpy from the war and everything, so he ignores his friend’s flinch, sliding the plate over to him in offer.
“Hungry?”
“...Nah. Nah, I already ate,” Sapnap says, uncertain in his own answer, “besides, you don’t look like yourself. You should try and eat more.”
Dream rolls his eyes. “Okay, Mom, but I eat enough. And eating more means hunting more, which means going outside to find more. I’m fine with what I have, I promise.”
There’s an odd expression on Sapnap’s face that might be defeat. Dream can’t read his best friend like he used to be able to, much to his dismay. “You have a point,” he sighs eventually, “but you can eat it. I’m just glad to see you.”
“So am I.” Dream tucks in, ignoring the taste - he eats a lot of potatoes now, he realizes: when was the last time he’d had a meal without potatoes? He should ask for that to be changed. “I was almost beginning to get lonely.” He throws a teasing grin at Sapnap, who doesn’t return it. “Don’t leave it so long to visit me next time. I could cry.”
Sapnap sucks in a breath, seeming to find weight in the weightless joke. “You’re lonely?” He asks, like he doesn’t know Dream is a social person, like he doesn’t know his best friend gets agitated when he’s kept cooped up, like he doesn’t know how much this is killing Dream.
Dream laughs despite this, the negative thoughts disappearing into the darkness almost as soon as he thinks them.
“It’s not that bad, I was just being overdramatic, I promise, Sap,” he says, “come on, tell me everything that’s been going on. How is everyone?”
So Sapnap, dropping the topic despite the look on his face, begins filling Dream in on everything. Dream tucks his chin up to his knees and listens to his best friend talk about life. Niki and her bakery and the way the scent of freshly baked bread drifts through the SMP every morning at seven o’clock sharp. Quackity, relearning how to fly, learning to hold his wings up high despite being torn and tattered, a modern day Icarus climbing out of the sea and learning how to live again. Dream learns of Eret’s museum and how she gave up her crown, and hears about Purpled’s latest invention, and listens as Sapnap tells him about Ranboo diligently trying to learn Ender so he can communicate with the Endermen, talk them into a truce with the server residents. Dream listens to all of his best friend’s news, taking it all in, and he can’t help but smile.
Peace and unity. Just what he’d wanted all along.
He’s silent when Sapnap finishes, letting him gather himself, and tries not to think of the whisper in the back of his head that murmurs what would you be doing if you were out there? Because listening to that whisper only leads to pain, and to suffering, and to darkness, and Dream is done with darkness, he’s done being hurt and hurting others. So he pushes those thoughts out of his mind, slowly, steadily, and flashes a bright smile at Sapnap.
“So much is happening, huh?” He says with a rueful grin. “You always have new stories to tell me every time you visit. Sounds like things are going well.”
“I tell you the same things every day,” Sapnap says quietly, and there’s something terrible and full of grief in his voice, “you just don’t remember.”
Dream, as he does with every snippet of information he learns and doesn’t want to hear, laughs it off. “You always sound so sad, Sap. Cheer up. Things are going well, right?”
And they are, no matter what the expression on Sapnap’s face tells him. The server is at peace, the server is happy, and that means Dream’s happy. Of course he is - he’s got his own home for the first time in years, a place to sleep and a place to sob and a place where nobody cares if he screams. The walls are burning hot, and sometimes when he presses his hand against the sunlight it burns his skin, but he always wakes up in water again, so it’s not so bad. He’s got a clock that ticks in his small room and inside his head and under his skin, and he’s got so many books to write his stories in. Things aren’t so bad, especially when the rest of the server is so happy.
“What’ve you been up to?” His best friend asks softly instead of answering, and Dream doesn’t hesitate, letting his back touch the burning wall without so much as a flinch and lapsing into explanation.
“I’ve been writing, mostly.” He pushes himself to his feet, pulling out one of his favorite books and handing it to Sapnap eagerly. “I never had enough time before all this. I have so much free time now - I can do whatever I want! Within reason.”
Sapnap begins flipping through the book, a curious expression crossing his face. “Oh yeah? What do you write about?”
Dream purses his lips. He wants to see how Sapnap likes his writing. “Myself, sometimes,” he says, watching Sapnap stiffen, “and you guys. I like to write about the happy ending we all got.”
Sapnap sucks in a breath like he’s been stabbed. “Dream, man, please.”
“Because,” Dream continues, quicker, louder, to drown him out, “because, uh, sometimes I wake up and forget where I am. And I wonder if I’m imagining everything. But-” He smiles, cheek-splittingly wide. “But then I remember that everything worked out for the best.”
Looking sick, Sapnap hurries through the pages. He doesn’t look at all happy with what he finds. Oh, Dream thinks, maybe he’s not as good a writer as he’d thought. Squinting at the book in his friend’s hands, he deciphers what he can from the messy scribbles.
Once upon a time there was a boy with two masks, the first page begins.
Another page. -and everything hurt so much, so he decided to hurt everything in return-
Another page. -one mask pushed him to burn down his home, and the other mask pushed him from his friends-
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, another reads. Dream isn’t as proud of that page as he is the others. He doesn’t really remember writing it.
“It’s a work in progress,” he tells Sapnap, suddenly self-conscious of his own skill, “it’s not perfect yet, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s going. What- What do you think?”
Sapnap is quiet for a long, long time. Too long, actually. Just when Dream’s beginning to let his anxiety get the best of him, Sapnap stands up jerkily, the book falling to the floor. Dream picks it up, cradling it to his chest before it gets burned.
“I need to go,” he hears, and feels disappointment crush him, “I need- God, Dream. God.”
“Sapnap?” He presses, worried. “Hey, hey, man, talk to me. What’s going on? Are you okay?” Did I do something wrong? He can’t bring himself to ask. He’s scared of the truth.
Sapnap closes his eyes briefly. “I can’t play along with you,” he confesses like it’s a sin, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t notice that you were gone sooner.”
“Gone?” Baffled, Dream takes Sapnap’s shoulders gently. “I’m right here.”
“Where’s here?”
“My cottage,” he answers instantly, and is met with a look of devastation, “right?”
He doesn’t get an answer. Sapnap hugs him tightly - too tightly, Dream can’t breathe, he’s drowning in lava and it hurts, it hurts, there’s a sword at his throat and his plans are failing and there are too many people and for the first time in forever he feels so so scared - and leaves his cottage in a different way from how he’d arrived. Good mood gone, Dream buries himself in the corner of his cottage, chest heaving for calm, covering his face with his hands. His fingers graze against smooth porcelain.
If he forces himself to concentrate, he can almost smell freshly cut grass again and hear something outside of the sizzle of lava.