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“Oh, Dream,” Quackity says, a shade to the left of concern, “what happened to you?”
Dream doesn’t look up: despite weeks of training, it’s taking all his effort to continue getting changed like nothing is amiss. George has already asked these questions; the Captain, too, tugging him gently aside and quizzing him on why the SMP has been so strangely quiet, and Dream had pasted a smile on his face and told the truth - “things are quiet,” he’d told him, legs already trembling with the exertion of staying upright, “it’s just nice to have some peace in that place for once.”
Peace and quiet for the server will only be maintained if this tournament goes without a hitch. Quackity had made it quite clear to him before Sam had let them travel: had shoved Dream against the wall, had narrowed his eyes and promised hell upon earth if Dream fucks up.
“I wanna see a good goddamn performance from you, pal,” he’d said, voice rough, tense, “I’m not going to put up with mediocrity in my team, not from you.”
“I know,” Dream had murmured, words snagging in his throat, “I know.”
Why else had he been training? Why else had he pushed himself for days and days until every muscle in his body ached if not to appease Quackity? Since finding out their teams for the tournament, time had been whittling away, and all too suddenly it had been upon them - all too suddenly, Dream is pulling on a baggy shirt that had definitely fit him back in the last championships and trying to pretend the sound of Quackity’s voice doesn’t make him want to break down in hysterical fear and pleas of leave me alone don’t hurt me again I’m sorry I’m going to fuck up I can’t do this I can’tcan’tcantcantc
“I tripped,” he says evenly, “I fucked up my ribs and back and fractured my wrist. I was an idiot.”
That’s the cover story. The SMP official cover story, actually, which, unsurprisingly, is something they need often. It’s become routine for members of his SMP (the SMP, he reflects bitterly, achingly, it’s not his anymore) to show up at MCC training and tournaments battered and bruised and various degrees of traumatised - it’s become routine to replace hasty lies with sleek shiny cover stories that the rest of the server vouches for. After all, the common agreement had been that the less other servers knew about the happenings of their server, the better.
Because they’re fine. They don’t need the intervention that outside knowledge would bring.
(They’re fine.)
But, the thing is, there are two cover stories for Dream now. A cover story for the outsiders of the SMP, to keep them away from business that doesn’t concern them, and a cover story for those inside the server who don’t need to know the real reason he’s battered and starved and flighty. George buys it, barely, but Dream is terrified someone is going to ask more questions, terrified of the repercussions from Quackity, so he keeps his expression light, easy, calm as he can, with a little rueful smile tugging at his lips.
“Pretty clumsy,” Quackity snorts with practised amusement, eyeing Dream, and Dream knows he isn’t imagining the burning satisfaction in the other’s gaze when his eyes flicker over his injuries, most of them healed with potion after potion and only the shadows of bruises to show for months of grievous torture, “hope you’re not losing your touch, old man! We’re gonna fucking suck if you’ve decided to get clumsy.”
Panic makes words stick in Dream’s throat for a torturous moment, and when he laughs, he notices the Captain eyeing him oddly. “Don’t worry,” he says, resisting the urge to curl up and will the day to be over, “I’ll be more careful in future. I’m playing to win.”
He meets Quackity’s eyes, sends a desperate little I promise through his gaze.
Quackity’s lips tighten in what’s almost a smile, and Dream knows he’s received the message.
“Still,” George says, and his tone is unbothered and distracted as usual, but Dream picks up on the undercurrent of worry in his old friend’s voice, “you should be careful, Dream.” His face shadows, even as he scans Dream over once, taking in the hunch of his shoulders and dull glaze of his eyes and the pale bruises littering his body like thunder. “You haven’t been training nearly as much as you did last MCC. You don’t want to overdo it or anything, I don’t know.”
Dream receives the unspoken message - and so, it seems, does the Captain, whose gaze turns more concerned than previous. “You usually love training,” he points out, shrewd as ever - Captain, my Captain, Dream thinks nonsensically, hysterically, hit with a pang of nausea and desperation, of course he wouldn't buy the cover story, he’s too good for that, but it works to Dream’s detriment now, “what’ve you been doing that’s been keeping you busy, hm?”
“Server stuff,” Dream says vaguely, which is what he’d said days after exiling Tommy, which the Captain also hadn’t believed, “and- uh, you know, I got really distracted with it. I actually completely forgot MCC was coming up, until I was assigned a team.”
It’s not entirely the truth. His eyes flicker over his team. Fuck. Fuck, it’s surreal to be here, below a too-blue sky and talking to people who aren’t Quackity and being allowed a day to pretend he’s living his old life, no matter how unattainable that dream is now. He knows he’ll never fully recover, even if he’s given the freedom to try - too much irreversible damage has been done, and he knows there’s no coming back from some of it. But for now, his main priority is trying to find even a miniscule amount of enjoyment in the overwhelming, nauseating outdoors - and winning.
With Quackity, the priority is always winning.
“You’re too involved in that fucking place,” Quackity grins, clapping Dream on the back, and white hot pain explodes beneath Dream’s skin, a constellation of agony that sends his mind reeling too long for him to be anything other than immediately unresponsive, “we’ve barely seen you in weeks, and you show up to us looking like this? Jesus Christ, Dream, you have to start taking more breaks.”
“Quackity has a point,” George adds uneasily, but the Captain’s eyes, sharp and watchful, suddenly regard Dream in a different light entirely, “you don’t look like how you used to.”
“Dream.” Dream focuses hazily on the Captain’s words, anchoring him like a lifeline. “Are you sure that’s what happened?”
Dream goes very still very suddenly. “What?”
“These bruises don’t just look like… I don’t know, like fall damage,” the Captain tells him, and his hand on Dream’s shoulder is strong but gentle enough that it makes Dream want to cry, “you’ve been battered to shit. What actually happened, hm?”
And Dream wants to tell him, wants to shatter and sink down onto the floor and tell everything - not just his sentence in prison, but he wants to tell the Captain everything, from the Disk War to exile to L’Manburg’s explosion to the prison, to the Egg, to Dream being tortured every day until he’d started forgetting his own name, all of it, he wants to tell his old friend and mentor. But George is right there, clueless George, who knows so little despite being part of it, and Quackity is beside him too, steadying him with mock concern plastered over his face, and his fingers are like ice cubes beneath Dream’s burning skin.
This is not an escape, he reminds himself. This is a show. He has to perform.
So he lets a shadow of his old self creep into his smile - something almost mischievous, something almost cocky, something almost amused. “Oh, come on,” he snorts lightly, and Quackity’s grip retracts from his arm, “if anyone beat me in a fight, you know they’d be bragging about it. Trust me. It was an accident. I just- haven’t been sleeping very well, and I fell. That’s all.”
He holds the Captain’s gaze, heart racing feverishly under his skin - believe me, he urges through his smile, believe me and move on, believe me and move on. His friend doesn’t look entirely convinced, but lets go of his shoulder anyway, and Dream instantly misses the touch. “You’re going to be okay to compete, right?” He checks, and Dream nods sharply. “Does Scott know about your injuries? Maybe you should tell him. He might be able to-”
“Captain,” Dream complains, forcing levity into his voice, “I don’t wanna sit out of this one. I want to win.” He glances around, trying to find his old competitiveness, trying to dredge it up from deep inside him. He’s only filled with an ancient sort of dread instead. “Let’s destroy everyone in this tournament, and when we win, then we can tell Scott I’m hurt.” He laughs, lightly. “I should get an extra award for being injured if I win. That would be pretty cool.”
Deep down, he wonders if Scott and the Noxcrew already know he’s injured, and know the real reasons for his injuries too. As minor gods, they seem to know everything: there’s a reason Dream had been allowed to leave prison for the tournament, after all, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Quackity developing any sort of kind streak. Everyone knows an invitation to MCC is less of an invitation than it is a command - and not attending means being teleported to the server by the gods, and the last thing Quackity had wanted had been Dream appearing in front of everyone bleeding out.
The Captain looks at him, and for a second, Dream is terrified he’s going to call him out and continue questioning him. But then they hear an excited chatter from outside their team room, a roar of noise, and all four of them are distracted by the clock striking the hour.
It’s time.
As they move out of the room, Quackity’s hand snags against his elbow - it’s light enough, but Dream knows better than to interpret it as friendly. Freezing in place, he allows the other two to pass, neither of them looking concerned by Quackity and Dream waiting behind - Quackity’s expression is intensity disguised by concern and Dream is bitterly sure the others think Quackity is going check up on him, and that makes him want to scream. When the door slides shut behind them, Quackity’s gaze doesn’t get any less intense: he pauses, stepping back and looking over the bruises and ragged structure of Dream’s body.
“That fall did a number on you,” he notes, voice feather light.
Dream sucks in a pained breath. So it’s this game. “It’s alright,” he says, deceptively casual, if not for the way he presses back against the wall, if not for the terror in his veins, “it could have been worse. I’m lucky I can still compete.”
Quackity hums in disagreement. “I dunno, Dream, it looks pretty bad to me. You know,” he continues, before Dream can stammer out a response, “maybe the Captain was right.”
He’s getting whiplash. “I- What?”
“Maybe the Captain was right,” Quackity says, voice sad, “maybe you are lying about what happened. I mean, look at this-”
He catches Dream’s jaw in his hands, turns it to the side, gently, and Dream knows what he’s looking at: the yellowing green bruise that spans his cheek and almost looks like a handprint, complete with a healed gash of a ring: a ring, coincidentally enough, that Quackity had removed before coming.
“That looks like a handprint,” Quackity tells him, frowning, and for a wild moment, a mad moment, Dream fights the wild urge to shove him away, to hit him and hit him until he stopped moving and keep going until someone killed him too, “sometimes I wonder what the hell is going on in that server.”
Dream swallows, works to keep his voice even. “Nobody did this,” he whispers, voice catching, “I fell.”
Quackity’s eyes lift upwards to meet his. He’s smiling, the smile of a man tipping over the deep end, and Dream recognises it well, because he’d worn that smile too, a long time ago. “You promise?”
“...Promise.”
“Good!” And Quackity is all cheer again, grinning and patting Dream’s head in a way that makes him want to scream, in a way he would have once laughed at. “Good, great, I’m glad, I was- Not gonna lie, man, I was kinda worried.” He half-laughs, half-snorts, and fuck, he’s a good actor - better than Dream, whose returning smile feels so empty on his face he wonders if he’d be better not bothering to smile at all. “Though, to be fair, we’re all on the same server. Not like we’d keep secrets from each other, right?”
Knowledge of the revive book flickers through Dream’s mind, quick as lightning. “Right,” he agrees quietly, “no secrets.”
Quackity beams at him, heading for the door. “See ya outside,” he calls, almost chipper, and Dream doesn’t move until the door has closed behind him, until he can hear Quackity’s voice chattering to George outside - only then does he dare exhale shakily, only then does he dare sink to his knees and scrub his hands over his face, trying to push away the feelings threatening to overwhelm him. In and out. In and out. In and
There’s a message. On his communicator. Dream sucks in a breath, ragged, exhausted, and pulls it out.
It’s not Quackity.
Captain Sparklez whispers to you: remember i turned down your offer last year to join the server?
Captain Sparkles whispers to you: i want on
Captain Sparkles: i want to know what’s happening, dream. i want to see what the fuck is going on in that server
And Dream almost laughs, something choked leaving his throat, and he replies through blurred eyes.
You whisper to Captain Sparklez: it’s not pretty
Captain Sparklez whispers to you: i can tell that much
Captain Sparklez whispers to you: i want to help you
He hesitates. And then he pulls up his whitelist options on the communicator, stares at the options.
[Dream has whitelisted Captain Sparklez.]
You whisper to Captain Sparklez: don’t tell anyone
You whisper to Captain Sparklez: please
Captain Sparklez whispers to you: you have my word
CaptainSparklez: it’s going to be okay
And Dream does laugh this time, as he staggers to his feet and finds the strength to head to the door, because the promise seems ludicrous (nothing on his SMP has been okay in a long long time), but the Captain is joining the server. The Captain is joining the server. He has no idea if that will end up being a good thing or bad thing for him, but he knows one thing for sure, and it’s that Quackity is going to destroy him for this.
He thinks of the Captain’s steadying hand on his shoulder, and something like hope crawls up inside his throat before he heads outside.
When he rejoins his team, Quackity’s reminding nudge is nothing compared to the bloom of warmth in his chest at the sight of the Captain’s subtle nod.