Chapter Text
If she's being completely honest, Clay never meant for the mask to become this much of a thing. Really, she didn't. It was just a fun little avatar, easy branding, something she could throw together quickly and not spend time and energy on. It made her instantly recognisable without ever having to rely on her real life likeness, or worry about what she looked like before a stream. Knowing that was a relief to her at the time, but she didn't really take the time to sit down and think about why that was; why donning the mask was such an obvious choice to her. It’s just a harmless gimmick, like she’s a pro wrestler slipping a tiger mask on to round out her persona.
The mask makes it easier to differentiate between Dream, the persona, the professional, who is larger than life, and Clay, who still struggles to read full paragraphs and goes to bed naked and human as she was born. And it means that when Clay comes to terms with who she is, when she falls apart and rebuilds herself, Dream is just fine.
They joke about it a lot, the whole mask situation, like with everything else. She's always been the type to mess around with her friends, and to welcome them messing around with her.
Some things just–...some things hit differently. Harder.
George and Sapnap like to poke fun the most, and in a way that in itself isn’t as bad; they've both known her for so long, so by now it's mostly old jokes rehashed–the way she flirts with George and he flirts back, the banter about her height, quips about how competitive she gets. It's all fine. That's all fine.
(It's when George blushes bright pink and feels the need to clarify that it's not in a gay way, it's just for laughs. It's when Sapnap chuckles heartily and calls her a big, dreamy hunk and teases her about her quarterback past. It makes her itch to come clean about a secret she hasn't yet admitted to herself that she's keeping.)
Quarantine starts, and alongside it, the SMP grows, and it gets big. Bigger than she ever could have fathomed or imagined before it actually happened; before she and all her friends were juggling more subscribers and viewers than a medium sized city. Her subscriber count takes off like a spacecraft due for Mars, except it never runs out of fuel, never slows down, never ponders its next destination. It just keeps growing, through friendships and controversies, through more money than she knows what to do with, through MCC wins and losses and a few rounds too many of Bedwars and story arcs that random fucking people draw mind-blowing art for on the internet.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, she takes a deep breath and lets her usually shaky-at-best impulse control go all the way to hell, and ends up in a doctor's office crying her eyes out and saying those words, those infinitely scary words, that confession out loud for the first time. It's hilariously expensive even with insurance, and she shows up to her appointment at 8:30 am in jeans and a hoodie and a plain black mask, which she realises halfway through ten agonising minutes of waiting might have been a bad idea. Nobody's going to believe her, the six-foot-three fucking giant in men's jeans and a 2XL hoodie, when she pleads them for a chance at redemption, for a chance at becoming herself.
She's right.
The invasive questions they ask her without empathy or care make her want to fall through an endless hole in the ground and never resurface from it ever again.
"Have you ever had sexual fantasies about your mother?"
What the fuck does that have to do with anything–?
"What do you fantasize about when you masturbate?"
That’s literally none of your business.
"Does it arouse you to dress in women's clothing?"
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.
"Have you ever considered self-mutilation?"
Dream tried to swim in lava.
Dream fell out of the world.
Dream was slain by intentional game design.
She doesn't get what she wants. In fact, she doesn't even get a referral, and she decides right then and there to give up on the whole thing. What the internet has seen of her, of Clay, has been absolutely minimal–a hand, a blurry half-body shot from the back, a full-body with the mask on where even her hair isn’t showing, and that was by design. It’s longer now than she says it is, almost down to her shoulders, with beachy, sandy waves that make her smile when they tickle her neck, and she can almost, almost tuck her bangs–bangs!–behind her ears. It’s nice, and if she likes that it makes her face look shorter and rounder, friendlier, then that’s just for her, because she likes how she looks when it’s like that. Nobody else needs to know.
Still, giving up hurts–how could it not?–and she has a stream planned that night that she'd honestly rather die than have to smile her way through right now. They’re building something on the SMP, just hanging out, talking shit, and and usually, Dream would be all for that, but tonight her nerves are frayed to the point of no return. She can’t stop hearing every horrid word out of that doctor’s mouth ringing in her ears, and Sapnap won’t stop fucking calling her “dude”, and any other day, that would be fine, hell, she herself refers to people of every gender as dudes on occasion, it’s a slang thing across the US, after all, but today something about it feels like Chinese fucking water torture and every drop makes her want to scream for him to just stop it, already.
Then she hears the sounds of someone taking hits and the springy sound effect of the bow and arrows, and the mock-upset yells of her friends let her know it’s George yet again being murdered by Sapnap over something petty and entirely disproportionate.
“Dreeeeaaaam”, George yells, running towards her with his armor full of arrows, “Help–Dream, he’s killing me, Sapnap’s–”
She clears her throat before speaking. After her realization, she’s been speaking less and less, and she knows people can tell; knows it doesn’t go unnoticed. Her voice isn’t even that deep, like, Wilbur and Eret have her beat by a mile, but it’s just such a glaring piece of evidence that she’s not–that she isn’t–
“Now, now, children, I thought I raised you better than this.”
Sapnap fires again, hitting Dream’s character square in the chest. “Come face me like a man!”
“Sap–”
“Or are you gonna keep being a coward, huh? A little baby? Running home to Daddy Dweam?”
Something snaps in her head, like the first flash of lightning of a thunderstorm striking the ground, the raw power of mother nature untamed and unstoppable.
/kill Sapnap
“What the fuck! Did you just–”
Dream has left the game.