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Talking to a god is alright, but they’re nothing like the real thing.
Dream ex-dee - (Deus ex machina, George thinks through a laugh, the first time they introduce themself. Kinoko Kingdom isn’t much more than a library at that point and George knows all of the tropes. This one feels a bit like ‘Alternate Universe,’ even though it’s not.) - is a xerox of a being. A scratched record, an echo in the wind.
They are temperamental where Dream is callous. Demanding where Dream is pliant.
Here, even though Dream is gone.
They try, George can feel it, but he didn’t ask for power or prophecy.
They hand him a golden tapestry and he sees a party in its pattern (dazedly watches it play-out, live, only half an hour later); when they suggest he join them in something, his answer is the same as before.
George came here to live. Tommy burned his house down and Karl keeps disappearing and who knows what happened to Quackity at this point (they meet, when the plan is still a bud in the back of George’s mind, he shuffles his feet and changes the subject quickly), but none of that is going to make him want to give up what’s his and take divinity by the hand.
Sometimes it’s tempting. He wonders if it would burn.
But Dream burned too. Ran a fever after he shot an arrow through Tommy’s head and they put him on bedrest for a week.
That was living; it’s something Dream’s god-shadow will never be able to do.
“You don’t need him,” they say, the thin line between threat and promise.
George shrugs, reaches out and swipes a hand through their projected image. “I don’t need anyone.”
The plan is simple.
Stay away from Sapnap (who has a very different attitude on this subject), break into Sam’s maximum-security prison (he’s done it before, what’s a couple more blocks), and get Dream out.
Somehow, the last step scares him more than the others combined. If Dream looks at him and sees a stranger, what then? What will George do if Sapnap and Tommy were right and he was just a pawn in someone else’s chess match?
Probably what he’s doing now, sitting around Kinoko Kingdom, nothing but unruly deities to keep him company.
(He wonders, distantly, if Karl knows that he hired a god to build his country, but it doesn’t ultimately matter.)
Dream’s-likeness (read: the server embodied, a dreamwalker, a higher power that kneels) isn’t happy with his decision, George can tell, but he’s going to do it with or without them and they know that. They’d rather him not go in alone.
The afternoon is overcast and the Badlands are empty when George approaches the prison. He brings with him a pickaxe, some ender pearls, and the memory of the feeling of success in his subconscious.
When the first pieces of obsidian and blackstone crumble, George holds his breath.
Like his breath is gonna be the thing to give him away. Yeah, sure. His tongue sits pinched between his teeth as he crouches, ear pressed to the prison’s roof.
George rubs a palm against the paneling, feels the grit dig into his tendons and skin. Sam doesn’t appear behind him, so he gets up cautiously and looks around before striking the stone again.
He hasn’t gone mining in a long time; hasn’t done physical work in even longer. His limbs feel fatigued, but he just has to get this done. Then he’ll be able to see what comes after.
His locating was perfect. George drops down into the cell just as the last pieces of crying obsidian collapse underneath him.
Steadying himself and muttering a thank-you - his success hinges on things that should be impossible, and he knows it - George picks debris off of his shirt as he stands up.
He rolls his shoulders back and is immediately met with cold eyes.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
Wilbur Soot speaks like they met at a bar; as though this is his opening line. He’s shooting his shot and it strikes the wall behind George, sticks upright in the ground as it falls, a false-flag of surrender.
“You’re alive,” George can’t help but state the obvious.
Wilbur smiles. “And you don’t care, do you?”
Well, it’s not like they’ve ever been friends.
George was almost vice-president (politics were boring, Schlatt was annoying), but that’s about it. He’s seen Wilbur’s face on campaign posters, watched him give speeches, heard his name spoken - spat, whispered, swallowed - but his death was just about the only thing that really left a mark in George’s memory.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what happened. What this means.
“No,” George agrees. “But plenty of people will.”
“Ah,” Wilbur steps aside and gestures to the ground with an over-exaggerated flourish. Something that looks like a lump of random fabric upon first glance stirs and makes a muffled sound. “This is what you do care about.”
He leans down and rolls the figure over; George does not gasp, but he comes close.
Dream’s mask is still-intact, impenetrable, it seems, but his lips are bruised and bloody and scarlet trickles down his cheek. He looks sallow and pale and, as George takes him in, he curls tighter into himself, clutching at his chest.
“What did you do to him?” George demands, kneeling.
Wilbur makes a sound of disapproval, like George’s made some kind of mistake. “Not me.”
“Who, then?”
“How’d you get in without triggering the alarms?” Wilbur asks, disregarding the question entirely.
He watches with amused light in his eyes as George shuffles, putting himself between the two of them. Fallen stars, still-deadly; if this is chess it’ll be a gambit on either side.
“It’s not something you can copy,” George says.
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
“And satisfaction,” Wilbur spreads his palms flat like an offering and an actual, literal cat - of all things, a weirdly familiar cat, though George can’t imagine how or why - just sort of warps into existence. Space seems to blur and stretch to make room for it; Wilbur grins, “brought it back.”
George narrows his eyes. The cat hisses.
Wilbur is… different. Than what, it’s hard to tell - it’s not as though George has much to go off of - but this person, this version of him, is so obviously dangerous. In a way Dream never mentioned, which leads George to believe that it’s entirely new.
Charisma, sure, that was his thing - George remembers the debate floor - but more than that. There’s darkness in his every movement.
Not some kind of faux-deep, broody ex-president’s darkness; a snuffed-out candle. The gasp of air before drowning. The bedrock-reaching pit where L’manberg once was.
He’s like a walking corpse. A dead thing wanting.
“I have a god,” George says finally, “on my side.”
“Quackity.” Wilbur answers in the same tone, as though this is a casual conversation.
Under George’s palm, Dream shivers and whines, rubbing his hand awkwardly against his jaw. Something cautious fills George’s chest; Dream would be so mad to know that people have seen him like this.
Even George. Especially George. Dream’s pride has always been near-fatal and now he looks like a broken man.
(In George’s memory, he sits unmasked and his eyes glint back sunlight. Dream asks George about godhood like there’s a crime in the question and George answers with a joke he can’t remember now, wonders why anyone would ever want their fate to be so set.)
Quackity.
His fist unwillingly clenches around dirty-gold fabric, bunching up Dream’s sleeve. George lets it go and smooths it out, thinking back to that day. Quackity and his horse, crestfallen; George had invited him back to his home and he was, what? Torturing Dream in the downtime?
Bits and pieces stutter out of his brain, wisps of the past he can’t quite pick apart. A mushroom house and a hand outstretched toward the sun.
This land is yours, George. Your crown is plastic.
He’s an ally, a soldier for no reason other than out of loyalty, a king with a stolen throne, a vice-president, and nothing, nothing at all.
George feels really tired, all of a sudden. Like he wants to curl up on the dirty floor and rest. But he can’t, Dream is - Dream is lying there like he has cracked edges (broken ribs, probably, bruised at least; George learned medicine for him when he wanted to take Wilbur down and now, well, everything’s different, isn’t it) - and the entire scene is an awfully constructed reprise of some kind.
Trope: Friends to [?] to Enemies to [?]. Trope: Moral Ambiguity.
(Subversion: the way Wilbur sits down, like he’s mimicking how humans move.)
George cradles Dream - he’s terrifyingly light, it’s not as though George is particularly strong - and fishes a pearl out, watching Wilbur.
“Are you going to -”
Wilbur shrugs as the sentence hangs. “I won’t tell them when they come.” The implication is clear; Wilbur knows that George knows.
George isn’t alone, just early. People are coming soon, with much more than questions in their clasped hands. They want Dream. He has no idea how they’ll react to Wilbur.
(He passed Tommy on the prime path once, remembered a destroyed home, thought of Callahan, noticed the sword, said nothing.)
“How did you know they’re coming?”
The cat walks circles around Wilbur, marking its territory. There is a golden tapestry locked somewhere in George’s mind, a god-granted gift with a timeless bow.
Another shrug. “How did you?”
They stare at each other in silence. It’s check on every file and neither of them are stupid enough (or have enough trust) to trade kings. Wilbur inclines his head and George nods.
An agreement, then.
George makes sure he’s holding Dream properly before throwing an ender pearl through the hole in the ceiling. The last thing he sees before he’s teleported up is Wilbur, sat cross-legged in front of the wall of lava.
The picture of serenity. Waiting.