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Tommy knows Dream from the beginning of the Disc War.
In some ways, Tommy thinks he’s the closest person to Dream: he spent weeks exiled with only him to talk to, he’s the focus point of so many of Dream’s plans.
But it was never so… desolate. Before jailtime, before crying purple, before blazing orange and red and a half-functional clock. Even before that, before red-and-white, before craters. Even further back still, before separation and war itself.
Dream said Tommy had brought attachments into the world.
Tommy did no such thing.
Before Tommy and his discs, there was Sapnap and his foxes, (Dream and his foxes). The community house—which is, was, halfway between their own and everyone’s.
(When Tommy can pull himself out of his head, raw and ripped open, he sees the barely glimpse of neon green smiles. And, when he leaves himself right between these two, he can see just beyond neon green smiles as well. A distinctly human face—how had Tommy forgotten that Dream had a face of his own?)
But Tommy doesn’t think too hard about it anymore. He has to help his friend to build a new city, has to help other people through their loss. There are too many things to do, and none of them feature the green bitch and whatever he had planned.
Tubbo had known Dream since before Tommy.
(It is one of his earlier memories, one of his early ones and his most painful, one of his early ones and his most beautiful.)
He sees a face, one that he doesn’t quite remember anymore. When his brain is thinking about it, it is simply covered by a wide smile, menacingly friendly.
(When he dreams about it, he thinks he can just barely grasp the image of a face. A dusting of freckles. Green eyes. But it’s all too vague to be meaningful.)
So it is not for a lack of trying that Tubbo does not recognize Dream when he goes to visit.
He is collapsed on the ground, or maybe just lying on the ground. He doesn’t move, doesn’t twitch at the sound of a bridge retracting. Tubbo does not disturb Dream.
(He does not know if it would be more painful if he saw Dream, awake.)
Tubbo sits on the gently pulsing obsidian. It’s almost like water, the soft way it presses against his fingers (like an insistent tide, like an insistent heartbeat.) Nobody really pays attention to the sound of lava until it is the thing you are surrounded by. It bubbles, soft poppings like a gentle pulse.
Tubbo has a little trinket for Dream. Just an ordinary ballpoint pen, nothing too fancy. The feather, he figures, is inconvenient.
He, maybe for the last time, sits by his brother. Tubbo also has stories for Dream, but he figures because he is half-asleep (or maybe-just-collapsed or maybe-just-dead) that he will say them quietly. He muses about Snowchester, and nukes. Technoblade, too, and he says he has not seen Ranboo in a while.
Dream does not respond. Tubbo does not know what he was expecting.
He leaves the blue pen by Dream’s face, and as he gets up to go, he swears he sees the slight twitch of his hand against the scrabbling obsidian.
Tubbo will not see it. He refuses to see it. There is nothing left.
Puffy knows her duckling the best.
She thinks she knows her duckling the best. She knows he loves parkour more than his life (he used to love parkour more than his life, for sure) and that he is too reckless for his own good (Puffy does not know how certain she can be of this anymore).
But: how well can you know a bird who flies the nest too quickly?
Puffy knows the span of his wings, the colour of his body. The content of his feathers, the shape of his movement. But these are just superficial: anybody could tell you he has dirty blond hair, he has calloused fingers.
So maybe Puffy doesn’t know her duckling best.
She’s not sure.
She’s even less sure when she comes to the prison, a hulking monstrosity on the horizon. Sam, her old friend, his old friend, looks over at her from behind dark sunglasses. His eyes are ones of warning, ones of pity.
“You know you won’t be able to see him for too long, right?” It is another warning, another apology.
She bristles slightly, as though she didn’t know. “Wasn’t planning on staying too long anyway,” she replies curtly.
Sam slides up his glasses and looks at her. “Very well. I’ll talk you through all the procedures, just so you know why I’m doing certain things…”
He lists off procedures, rules, rule-procedures, procedural-rules. She doesn’t remember the journey very well anymore.
(Just as well.)
She sees him, sitting on the ground, criss-cross apple sauce. Like a good boy.
She does not cry, she does not break down. Her duckling made her decision. If he flies into a storm, Puffy does not stop him.
He smiles at her from behind the barrier, and when it is dropped, from behind an invisible wall. He does not come closer. She does not come closer.
“Tubbo came to visit you.” This is neutral ground.
“Yes.” This is also neutral ground. “He gave me a pen.” He gets up, goes over to his lectern and uncaps a blue pen. “It’s much more convenient than writing with a feather, you know.”
Puffy doesn’t get closer. They still feel distinctly apart. Puffy doesn’t recognize her duckling anymore.
“Well, you can come closer you know.” He looks directly at her, and, seemingly finding his answer, nods. “I can respect that.” Dream walks around his room, brushing calloused fingers Puffy used to know against the scrabbling rock.
Points out various features of his room. His chest of books, a little pool. A clock that looks slightly warped on one side, a Salvador Dali clock that has not completely melted off of the branch yet.
“It’s a shame about the clock,” he mutters. “It doesn’t really tell the time anymore. Sam tells me it’s off by about a minute because of the heat.”
“The hands hit against the edge, Sam says, and slows down the passage of time. Still, he doesn’t come and replace it. Probably because he figures I would somehow hijack this one if he gave me a new one. He’s right, you know.” Dream laughs, mirthless and tight. “I’d almost be obligated to pry it apart. Maybe use the sharp edges of the clock hands to…” He looks around the room.
“Cut open those books. See if they’d be set on fire by the lava, see if they’d set fire to the obsidian as well.” He laughs again, this time dry and genuine. “Or maybe just set fire to it for the hell of it.”
Dream does not look over at Puffy anymore. Puffy is still watching the edges of Dream’s mask, the little skin underneath barely visible and immediately humanizing.
Even if his voice, as chipper as when Puffy last heard him, is bright: Puffy knows.
Because she knows her duckling best.
Still, she sets that aside for a moment, allows herself to relax a little. Even if she cannot engage Dream as her duckling, she can engage Dream as Dream.
“I don’t know if Sam would look to kindly to that,” she points out. This is not an endorsement.
Dream’s face turns, just a little too quick to be the molasses-slow arrogance she was so used to. Aha. He tilts his head, and Puffy knows that under that grinning mask there’s another grin, just as sharp, just as mischievous.
“That’s the point,” he says laughingly. “Angry company is better than no company, right?”
“Why didn’t you talk to Tubbo?”
Dream shrugs, a graceful motion too soft for the harsh warmth of the prison cell. “I was tired. Didn’t he tell you I was lying on the ground?”
Puffy does not answer that. There is no right answer.
He shrugs again, apparently seeing Puffy’s dissatisfaction with the answer. “It was really hot that day. And it was nice listening to Tubbo talk quietly, like I was falling asleep and he were telling me bedtime stories. Sorry,” he adds quickly.
Puffy feels her heart thump painfully. “Why say sorry?”
He looks once more at Puffy, smooth white, unnerving and soothing. He doesn’t say anything for a breath, a beat, a minute, before he moves forwards and Puffy takes an instinctive step back, an instinctive step behind the netherite line.
“Don’t worry about it.” His voice is gentle. Dream sits back down, criss-cross apple sauce. “Anyway, I think your visit is over.”
He has his messaging opening, presumably to tell Sam to send the bridge back out. She watches him—a breath, a beat, a minute, before she moves forwards to say something—
And the netherite barrier comes back up. He is sitting back there, armor-less, still sitting cross-legged.
Perhaps it is less accurate to say that Dream was her duckling so much as Dream decided to be her duckling.
She had heard of his fearsome reputation, of course. Of his friends, his allies, of his razor sharp wit and ferocity in battle.
But she was never concerned with the battlefield all that much: she knew Dream from when she was still first mate on Captain Sparklez’ ship, when he talked about his two kids.
So when she first saw him, neon green in the breeze and smiling mask on his face, she could only think of the way Sparklez talked about his kids. How Dream was a mischievous little scamp, crawling over everything he could and taking the most inconvenient route from point A to point B. How Tubbo was ingenious, using all the things lying around to make occasionally fearsome inventions.
The first time he properly interacted with her, he shot her.
He had the decency to appear a little ashamed of it, moving far away from where she was and hiding behind a pillar. Or perhaps he did it because he was afraid she would retaliate, shoot back. Puffy brushed it off with an annoyed little shout.
He continued to shoot, each time getting closer and closer, till he was within punching distance. Puffy considered it—maybe even just a light flick to let him know to cut it out—but she figured it would egg him on more.
And like that—he’s gone. She shakes her head, continues down the prime path. Pulls out the arrows, wincing at the sting of pain, throws them down to the side.
She hears footsteps behind her, ones just barely soft enough that if the SMP was just a little louder, she might not’ve noticed. She turns, and there’s Dream, blank canvas across his face, divested of his armor.
He doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t say anything.
Puffy shrugs, continues on her way. If Dream chooses to go unprotected, that’s his decision. She sways her sword by her side, thinking about what she might need. Wood, maybe. Cobblestone, as well.
When she arrives at her destination, Dream has gone. She huffs. He could’ve said something, maybe. With the stuff in her inventory, Puffy starts to fill in the holes of her build. She hums a half-tune mindlessly, something left over from her time on Sparklez’ ship.
She hears footsteps and she turns, again, and Dream is dropping materials on the ground. Wood and cobblestone. She looks up, and Dream has his hands in his pockets, nonchalance bleeding out of him.
Puffy smiles, pats him on the head, goes back to working. Dream is just barely staying out of her way, watching her build.
They stay like this for the evening, Dream trailing before Puffy, bricks lain and wood fitted together, up until someone else logs on the server. Ponk, maybe, or Niki. He looks up and she has to swat at his legs to get him to move away from where she’s trying to build.
He cocks his head at her, moves back, and dons his armor once more, before bounding off of the half-completed build.
Captain Puffy shrugs, and goes back to finishing the building.
It happens a couple more times.
Dream wears armor when there’s somebody else on the SMP, takes it off when it’s just them.
They never talk.
(If Puffy were to guess, she would say maybe Dream enjoys not being anything. He has to play the part of fearsome villain at all other days of the week. Puffy is his break, she suspects.
And she enjoys it too, the quiet of their relationship, the ease with which he approaches her.)
Then, he blows up L’Manburg.
Dream is the only one who knows himself.
He thinks he knows himself too well. His body has become too comfortable, a glove worn till the fabric becomes thin and he knows holes will start growing.
There is no monster, no dreamon. There is only human—human—human.
No matter how hard he tries.