Chapter Text
Clay grew up in a small house with his family. The number of people changed a lot over the years as people left or joined…
Father got angry a lot. Crops were tedious to harvest, especially during the harsh winters that always came earlier than expected, freezing whatever remained so that it was completely unusable and inedible. The ground thawed too late, and never quite as much as Father wanted it too.
The summers were harsh too, the sun scorching the ground unhindered for weeks on end, the sparse rain never falling when it should. The crops were small, and the ground unyielding.
Their few cattle produced little milk despite the large amounts of hay they would consume daily, and the sheep enjoyed frolicking in mud and thorn bushes a little too much for anyone’s liking.
It was Clay’s job to pull them from the thorns and wash away the mud from the moment he could walk without the furniture to help.
Mother’s loom was old and worn, breaking more often than it stayed together, her weaving often ragged. She blamed the wool. The wool came from the sheep. The sheep were Clay’s job.
When Mother and Father were angry, it was invariably Clay’s fault in some way.
It wasn’t their fault he was so bad at everything, he reasoned. It wasn’t their fault he bruised so easily.
Father liked to drink from green glass bottles that burned Clay’s nose with the smell. He got angrier the more he drank. Sometimes Mother would drink too, and they would spend hours screaming, long after sunset, long after every star was easily distinguishable in the dark of night. Sometimes Mother wouldn’t drink, and she would seek shelter in the barn for the night. Clay would remain in the house, only because if he were missing in the morning, he would get more bruises.
Some nights Clay was sure that it would be worth the retribution to escape his Father’s fists the night before, but he never dared to run.
He was five when he met the spirit for the first time when he was pulling a sheep from a thorn bush farther in the forest than he had gone before.
It laughed at his struggles, but quieted when he got a deep scratch on his arm, deeper than usual. It didn’t speak, instead looming over both him and the sheep with an air that would have been threatening if Clay weren’t so naïve.
But he was, so he just stared up at it, green eyes shining with tears he knew better than to shed, and asked it, bottom lip trembling, if it could please help him.
It laughed a bit more, but pulled the brambles from the wool with ease, and waved when he thanked it and began dragging the sheep back towards home.
It was there the next time he dared to venture that far, hot on the tails of a runaway sheep, bare feet too calloused to care about the rough underbrush.
“Hello.” The spirit said, voice deep and whispery.
“Hello.” He grinned back. “Can you help me catch the sheep please?” He asked. It complied readily.
The spirit was always there, watching, venturing nearer as the days flew by, until it followed him home.
No one else could see the shadowy form with red eyes. Mother said it was an imaginary friend, when Father complained when he spoke to it. She insisted that he would forget it when he got older. He resolved that he wouldn’t. If the spirit wasn’t real, he would pretend that it was forever.
It was his first and only friend.
The spirit, introduced as Dream, didn’t need to eat or drink or sleep, but spent the night draped over Clay, a blanket of warmth that usually made him shiver until he settled.
He was six the first time Dream saved his life. Despite being previously incapable of interacting with anything besides Clay, before everything went black, he heard its distinct shriek, and saw Father turn and run.
(Dream couldn’t always save him, but when it couldn’t, it was always blood loss that took him in the end. This server gave its inhabitants fifteen respawns, he found out when he asked Mother.)
He was seven when Drista was born. He spent a lot of time with the blonde baby Mother didn’t have time to deal with. She became another one of his responsibilities.
He didn’t resent her like he did the sheep. She didn’t seek trouble like they did, it just found her.
And if Drista liked to roll in the mud and eat the berries from those detestable bushes, well, it wouldn’t ruin Mother’s weaving. And no one cared when his hands and arms were covered in scratches, so why would they care if hers were too?
They didn’t care. They protested when she cried about the pain, and they yelled when she complained, and they slapped him when she woke screaming and sobbing. But none of that was her fault. She was small and special.
When Clay was nine, Father left for the village; he never returned. Whether he had died in a raid or from drinking too much from the green glass bottles, Clay would never know.
Father’s responsibilities fell to Clay; he found that the fields weren’t quite as unyielding as Father had claimed. Winter was early and cold, and summer was scorching and dry, but the crops were resilient.
Drista helped where she could, barely able to walk but happy to pull potatoes from the ground and rips the weeds from around the melons.
Dream liked Drista, intent on helping her by scaring the sheep from the brambles and providing shade to keep Drista from fainting in the heat.
Clay worked till he dropped, unable to keep up with the many responsibilities falling on his shoulders. Mother weaved to her heart’s content in the house; she drank where Father would have before.
She was not above hurting Drista; the blonde toddler was kept firmly at his side every minute of every day after that. The dark bruise on her arm faded from reality, but it was always at the back of Clay’s mind.
When he was ten, Dream explained that he would die if he didn’t find a host, a body to inhabit, soon. Unwilling to lose his first friend, Clay agreed immediately.
Dream functioned poorly in a human body. He ran into things a lot, and forgot to eat and drink. Dream couldn’t feel pain or sleep.
At first, Clay was scared his mind would be only a black abyss, eternally empty and lonely. Instead, he found that it could be a wonderful place.
Vast fields of flowers and towering forests, stone castles and abandoned villages. It was easy to manipulate, he found, spending mere hours doing things that would take months in real life.
His only companion was Dream, who was never physically there, but they chatted for most of the time.
The first time he was forcefully thrust from his mind was far more terrifying. He could feel every inch of his skin again, all aching and burning from exhaustion, several places stinging from cuts. His mouth was dry, his tongue felt swollen and like sandpaper. His lips were chapped and cracked.
His stomach was simultaneously twisting in sharp pain from hunger and rolling from nausea at the thought of eating. His eyelids drooped, like they were attached to heavy weights. He ought to get up and drink something, at least, but found he would much rather sleep.
It was his worst respawn to date. Not because it had been particularly painful or terrifying, he still had about ten lives left, but because Drista had watched it happen, screaming and sobbing for him to get up.
Mother was angry at the noise.
Drista was bruised again.
It was his last respawn on that server. (It was not Mother’s last respawn; Dream had been so angry, and Clay couldn’t find it in himself to stop him.)
Afterwards, Clay woke about a day before he might die from it, and Dream got a bit better at hydrating, at least. He remained conscious until he had recovered.
Miraculously, Dream didn’t forget Clay’s numerous responsibilities.
He took care of the sheep. He planted and pulled weeds and pruned and harvested and took it to market. He cared for Drista and made sure she ate and drank enough, and kept her from getting sunburnt, and calmed her when she woke crying from nightmares.
He spent days at a time working, without breaks. He fought away mobs with a hastily fashioned wooden sword in the night. The rotten flesh became fertilizer, and the string from the spiders became a lead to keep the sheep from leaving.
Dream told him that Mother drank more, got angrier as the weeks flew by. As long as Drista remained unharmed, Clay didn’t care.
Mother’s slaps were hardly reminiscent of Father’s harsh fists. She had sharper nails, and she might dig them into his skin until he bled, but it was only a short stinging pain that would fade in a few hours if he was even conscious at the time.
The crops flourished under their gentle hands, even if Mother’s weaving decreased further in quality. (She still blamed the wool; the problem was clearly the broken loom and her shaking drunken fingers.)
The sheep became Drista’s responsibility, although she would invariably come back to the field when a sheep got stuck.
Drista liked to talk. It contrasted well with Clay and Dream’s general silence when in the body. They were each the calm to the other’s chaos.
He loved fighting the mobs, first with a wooden sword, but later with a stone axe. Her nimble fingers pulled thorns from the sheep, caressing them kindly. She told stories of battles and death while he gently pulled carrots from the soil.
And Drista could apparently tell when Dream was in control.
Drista had been watching him work through rows of wheat in uncharacteristic silence. Clay was still recovering from Dream’s control, fingers thinner than they ought to be as he pulled up a weed.
“Other Clay was here for a whole week this time.”
“What?” He started, ripping the leaves from a weed. The roots stayed firmly in the ground. He glared at it in annoyance.
“Other Clay. He doesn’t know how to eat or drink. That’s why you’re so skinny.”
“Oh. I know.”
“Okay.” Her legs swung from where she was perched on the fence. “He’s nice like you too. He hides Mother’s bottle juice.” She told him. “I wish you could both live at the same time though.”
“Other Clay is a spirit.” He explained. “He lives inside me so he won’t die. His name is Dream.”
“I have two big brothers. I just can’t see them both at the same time.”
“He can hear you. He just can’t answer.”
“Hello, Dream.”
Mother died when Drista was six.
When Drista asked, they told her that Mother got sick. They pretend that it wasn’t because she had thrown Drista into the table. (There had been so much blood. They couldn’t control themselves.)
In the end, neither Clay nor Dream regretted that she was gone.
They told Drista that they had to leave because they couldn’t pay for the farm, and not because people had started looking for Mother.
They found a new server, public and with far too many people. Dream got a white mask to hide his face; he felt less exposed that way. Drista got one too, but she mostly left it hanging around her neck, while neither Clay nor Dream ever removed it from his face unless they were alone with Drista.
Drista insisted that the masks were creepy; he drew a smile on them.
Since most people met them when Dream was in control, it was just easier for Clay to introduce himself as Dream.
Drista still called him Clay when he was in control, but only when they were alone.
Dream found a good source of income in tournaments. They bought a small private server and built a farm. They had one cow and one sheep. It had two fields and a small garden.
Drista got the field of flowers that she always wanted; Dream farmed between training and tournaments.
Dream couldn’t cook at all. They were lucky if anything he cooked wasn’t poisonous, and it always burned. Clay could cook though, and he taught Drista, who insisted on taking the role of making Dream eat and drink.
They would survive together as siblings, just the three of them, just like they always had.
Maybe Clay enjoyed the tournaments a bit too much, maybe he enjoyed the blood a bit too much, and maybe he lost a part of himself he never thought he could, but Drista was safe and happy, and as long as that was true, nothing else mattered.
They made a few friends, eventually, and together they played games, violent games feeding off bloodthirst, but games nonetheless. They enjoyed them more than he should. It was fine.
His friends still cared for him, and Drista was safe and happy. Drista made a few friends too, other young kids at the tournaments, while she waited for him. If they knew who he was, he didn’t know. He was never in sight when they were around, but he was stalking them from the trees to make sure they wouldn’t hurt his sister.
Drista insisted that they were being paranoid and overprotective. They agreed, but they would rather not take the chance. They were not going to lose the last thing they really cared about.
He did eventually trust a few of her friends enough to leave when they were present, and to send them whitelist cards so they could come and go without Drista specifically inviting them. He still never met them, remaining permanently the elusive brother, but he trusted them enough.
(So maybe he insisted that Drista get 6+ dogs first. That was besides the point.)
Dream got a more public server with his friends. He was unwilling to bring them anywhere near Drista, but having a place with them would be nice.
The server Dream eventually bought was a wide and empty expanse. The four friends built the community house together. It became one of few things Clay might actually care about. (So what if he built a replica in his mind. It just felt like home.)
Attachments were dangerous, and if he would guard them with his life, then he would also need to keep himself from getting attached.
Some nights, when they laid awake, when Dream was bored enough to give Clay control despite not needing it, he watched them sleep. He wasn’t that tired, not really, and he wanted to spend some time with people he cared for.
Sometimes Dream thought of blowing it all sky high, just to rid himself of the dangerous attachments. Clay insisted he shouldn’t. They didn’t always need to get attached. They could just have fun here, and if they ever had to move on, well, they could leave pure destruction in their wake if they wanted to.
Maybe, if they were particularly bored, Clay would build something unimportant in his mind, and they could burn it to the ground, or blow it to ashes in the air.
Clay wouldn’t admit it, but Dream wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the explosions.
But he didn’t want to blow this home sky high. It would give him one less thing to worry about losing, but he found that it almost hurts to think about.
He visited Drista at least once a month, as promised, making the dumbest excuses to his friends until they stopped asking why he disappeared for a couple days every now and then.
Other people eventually joined the server.
(Dream didn’t trust them. He didn’t like them. His friends insisted. He allowed it grudgingly.)
Above all, Dream longed for blood and chaos. Dream found solace in the tournaments, and in the bloodbaths. It was amazing, and thrilling, and everything his instincts had ever wanted. Clay loved it too, on the off occasion when he was conscious when one came up.
It was for Drista, he told himself. It was only half a lie, but a half-lie was still half truth.
Dream thrived on every kind of turmoil, though, even when Drista was in no way benefited by it. Maybe even more.
Promise you won’t permanently kill them. Clay insisted. Dream reluctantly agreed.
Dream let people they didn’t trust into the server. People he was sure would bring the chaos he longed for.
It was an odd decision to let danger near the few things he cared about, but he rarely had time for tournaments anymore, and there were only so many times he could play Manhunt before even he got bored.
Ironically, it was not the trigger-happy teenager that brings what Dream wanted. Instead, chaos came in the form of Wilbur Soot, a man who relied almost entirely on charisma, a man who couldn’t really fight at all, at least not the way they could.
Wilbur might be an odd opponent to face, but Wilbur was nothing if not independent and problematic to Dream’s power.
He built the Camarvan, which both Dream and Clay agreed was an odd front for the drug cartel he was clearly starting. Whatever. It was only the first step.
It was in direct violation of the rules Dream had set for the server.
Wilbur pulled in a few friends and together they declared independence. Dream laughed. This was perfect.
Clay disagreed, when Dream recounted what was happening. This felt wrong. They shouldn’t be hurting people. But Clay wasn’t in control of their body at the moment, and wouldn’t be for at least another week, so it didn’t matter.
(Drista was safe, away on their private server. One of her friends was over right now. Nothing else really mattered.)
Dream cared about no one except Drista and their own survival. Clay cared about their friends too, but it didn’t really matter, in the end. He was rarely in control enough to do anything important.
Clay stumbled into the castle, completely exhausted. It had been another week, and while he enjoyed his Mind World, as he called it, reality was always a sharp transition. He didn’t feel pain or hunger or thirst or exhaustion while he was in the Mind World, but every return to reality sent all of those crashing over him.
He needed to get food, and water, and maybe patch up a wound or two, and then he needed to sleep. He’d sleep for a few days, not a few days straight because that wasn’t possible, he still had nightmares, but when he woke, he would be back in the Mind World. (He just needed to find a place where no one would hear him if he woke from a nightmare.)
Sleep might come first, this particular time, given how tired he currently was. He needed to find somewhere soon, or he’d be passed out in the middle of nowhere, completely defenseless.
There were beds in the castle, if he remembered correctly. He just had to find one.
“Dream?” He spun around at the deep voice, hand reaching for his axe. It was slower than he would like.
It was only Eret. He couldn’t see their eyes, but from the tear stains, he knew that they would be red and puffy. Eret had been crying but why, he didn’t know. They ought to be happy, since they were crowned king of the SMP just yesterday.
“Are you alright?” It was a weird question to be asked, considering Dream always looked like he could never not be okay. He leaned against the wall anyway.
“Yeah, ‘m fine.” He mumbled. “Why’r y’ cryin’? Som’thin’ wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine.” It was clearly a lie. Dream couldn’t really hold himself up, he realized, as he slid down the wall, unable to get up. He patted the ground next to him anyway, motioning for Eret to sit next to him.
Dream had never been one to be disobeyed. Eret sat next to him.
“What’s wron’?” His words slur from sleep deprivation, but Eret seemed to understand.
“Nothing. It’s fine.” They protested. Whatever was bothering them wasn’t something they likely should tell Dream. He knows it was likely about the Final Control Room.
He hadn’t gotten many details from Dream, except that they’d convinced Eret to join Dream’s group, and taken a life from everyone else in L’Manberg.
“Tell me.” His head fell onto their shoulder.
“They’re just kids, and I led them to their deaths.” They finally said. Tommy and Tubbo, Clay assumed. They were just sixteen, if he remembered correctly. Clay was more than a decade younger the first time he was hit, less than half that age when he died the first time.
But Clay was different than they were; he grew up far younger than they did. (They hadn’t grown up yet, he realized. But neither had Drista, and she didn’t deserve that either.)
“They’re big kids. They’ll be fine.”
“They’re sixteen! And they’ve already lost a life!!” Eret exclaimed angrily, throwing their hands up in the air. It jostled Dream’s head a bit, but he barely noticed, fighting to keep his eyes open.
“How ‘ld were yo’ the first time?” He asked, curiously.
“The first time I died?” Dream nodded. “Nineteen. It was a pillager raid I couldn’t handle alone.” They answered. If Clay were fully conscious, he might be shocked, but he was too exhausted to care. The silence only dragged for a moment. “You?”
“Six. It was my dad.” He didn’t know why he admitted it, because no one ever gave the right reaction if he even bothered, but some days he just wanted to tell someone that it happened, even if it was humiliating. Eret’s shocked face was the last thing he saw as his eyelids drooped closed. He was fast asleep.
When Clay woke, he was back in the Mind World.
He rather liked Eret, he thought. They were more caring than anyone he had met in a while. He wondered what they had said after he told them, but he didn’t particularly care all that much.
He had another house in his kingdom to build.
The next time he woke to consciousness, a few days had passed. Time passed in the Mind World just like it did outside of his body. It helped, knowing just how much time had passed since he’d last felt pain.
He didn’t have the bone-deep exhaustion he’d felt a few days ago, but he was severely dehydrated. Dream had forgotten to drink again. Judging by how dry the flask at his hip was, it had been empty since the last time he’d filled it.
His head pounded in protest at the abuse, and he grumbled to himself. It wasn’t Dream’s fault he was so bad at doing basic stuff, but still, he should have learned after so many years sharing the body.
Dream was forgetful when he didn’t think something would kill them if he didn’t. Apparently the spirit had enough confidence in Clay’s ability to fix things. They were definitely headed towards an early grave at the age of thirty-five. If they were lucky.
He’d chosen to share a body with Dream though, and as long as he had his friends and his sister, he could die happy.
He needed to get water now, though, instead of contemplating how short his future would be as a result of this.
He had at least a day before he lost control again. He could afford to spend it with his friends here.
He filled the bottle, and began drinking with a straw he also kept in his person so he wouldn’t need to lift the mask.
After hunting down Eret to make sure she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, tell anyone, he spent the day with George and Sapnap, just fooling around, like the days before Wilbur joined the server.
It felt wrong, like he should be doing more, doing something to fix the mess they’d made. Except there was simply nothing he could do without drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself.
He should visit Drista before he returned to the Mind World again. He had another day.
Neither Clay, Dream, nor Drista had ever wanted to visit their home server ever again. Others often spoke of their home server with fondness, returning occasionally to visit the place they grew up.
It wasn’t just that the former two knew that returning might be dangerous, if anyone suspected what had actually happened to their mother.
The three of them didn’t have any good memories attached to the place. Sure, they’d met each other there, and they’d cared for each other there, but they hadn’t left anyone behind, and the places where they’d had those memories were just that. Places. Unimportant in the long run, because the place had had no effect on the memory.
Their private server was more home than their home server could ever have been.
He checked the logs when he entered, to see who was currently present, and pulled his mask down when he saw that it was only Drista.
“Clay!” She shouted as she ran towards him, almost a dozen dogs on her heels, all panting and barking happily.
“Drista,” He grinned, wrapping his arms around her as she crashed into him.
“It’s been forever since I’ve seen you.” She complained, as she pulled him into the house.
“We were here a few weeks ago.” He was pretty sure they had been, anyway.
“Yeah, but Dream was here the whole time. I didn’t get to see you at all.” Drista was rather young, he realized. Fourteen, if he had to guess.
“I’m sorry.” He apologized, twisting a strand of the blond hair that fell in curls over her shoulders.
“It’s not your fault.” She insisted, handing him a cooked steak. “Dream, you need to make sure I get to see Clay more, okay?”
Dream rumbled an ‘okay’ in the back of Clay’s mind.
“He says okay.” He told her.
“Are you feeling alright?” She asked. The house hadn’t changed while he was gone. A bit of an organized mess, but it hadn’t changed. He could still see where everything was, and where it should be.
“Yeah. Dream will be back by tomorrow, I think. I’m just a bit thirsty.” She frowned. Years of experience had taught her that when Clay said a bit thirsty, he actually meant that he’d woken from dehydration this time, and needed as much water as he could get.
“There’s a few buckets of water in the kitchen.” She told him. “Were you gone long this time?”
“Three days.” He answered. “It was a week last time though. Just like always. Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure I can’t be gone for more than a week because Dream can’t sleep, so I’m usually okay when I wake up. How have you been here?”
She let him change the subject, telling him all about how well her cornflowers were doing, that she’d had to resort to bonemeal on the poppies again because that particularly persistent strain of beetles were back again, that Bleach and Clay Junior Junior had a puppy, which she had named Clay Junior Junior Junior Junior.
They laughed at the name. It had started as a joke, when she couldn’t decide what to name her first puppy. Clay Junior, he’d suggested jokingly, and when she grew too frustrated at having no other names, she agreed. Then the puppy had a puppy when it was barely a year old, which she’d named Clay Junior Junior. Clay Junior Junior had been determined to keep up the tradition, and had now given birth to Clay Junior Junior Junior. (They were all girls, something Drista had found incredibly funny, and teased him about for days, though he hadn’t minded.)
He found that he didn’t want to go back to the train wreck that the Dream SMP was becoming.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to leave, because the next morning, he bid Drista goodbye and returned to Mind World. Dream took them back to the SMP, but Clay didn’t have to see it.