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It started with Quackity burying him alive.
George collapsed into the hole, elbows rubbed raw, his knees dirty. He was laughing, letting his fingers sink into mud as Quackity talked and talked, like this was really serious. It wasn’t serious though. Nothing was serious.
George couldn’t stop laughing. He kicked his legs up, trying to find his footing, before falling even deeper into the hole, throwing his head back as he tried to find the air. But every time he tried to swallow, another giggle tore past his lips, and soon he was flushed, tears streaming down his cheeks.
It was just so funny. Quackity was always funny.
“Oh yes, are you going to kill me Quackity?” George shouted mockingly, voice high pitched and screeching in his ears. It wasn’t like this was real, he thought genially. He could do anything. There were no consequences, nothing for him to hold onto. He was at no one’s mercy.
Quackity did not laugh. His eyes were dark and cold, his hair suddenly ragged. The shovel was wrapped tightly in his fist, and George wondered where he’d gotten it from. It was slick with black muck, the edges blunt and rusting when Quackity dug it back into the ground, lifting it back up and throwing dirt over George’s face.
“Wait, what?” George said, spitting soil back up. “What’re you doing?”
Quackity didn’t stop.
“Quackity, stop.”
George raised a hand, wiping rain from his cheek. When did it start raining? George blinked, the smell of it seeping behind his eyes, wrapping tight around his head. He blinked again. Worms under his palms, roots crawling up from the earth, the rain turning swampy, filling the hole up and up and up. George did not float. Water rushed into his mouth, weeds twisting around his limbs, keeping him planted. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t--
“Quackity, stop!” he screamed.
“You spend all your time dreaming,” he heard Quackity mutter, his voice too close to be possible, whispering against his ear. “Doesn’t do a fucking thing, does it? It doesn’t change anything.”
George thrashed on the spot, mind reeling. Was this real? Was this real? He was warm all over, his limbs flailing until they lost all their energy, wilting into decay. He was decaying, then. The thought was sobering. Familiar, even. He’d been decaying for a long time. The rose garden was overgrown, neglected. Nothing reached him anymore, not even the snakes. Not even Dream.
Dream.
This always happened. No matter how hard George tried to escape it, or lose himself in laughter and daydreams, everything led back to Dream. His best friend, his heartbeat, his final undoing.
The phantom pain of it ached, numbing him from the top of his head all the way down to his toes.
It wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t allow itself to be processed.
“Please,” George whimpered, his vision fogging. “Save me, save me.”
It felt pathetic. George could save himself, he just didn’t have the energy. Didn’t have the willpower to force himself up, to drag himself out of the bog. Everything inside him was rapidly deteriorating. There was no clean water to soothe him in, no sunlight to soak up.
Maybe if he asked, Dream would somehow hear him. Maybe he would grin, lift the mask from his face and let George take him in, let him wake him up. He just needed to see his face again. That would be enough.
“Please, please. Don’t leave me here.”
It didn’t matter that Dream was a monster. George couldn’t care less. He literally couldn’t, he didn’t have it in him to care much about anything anymore. Reality had fallen through a hole in the bucket. There was no picking it back up. All he remembered was the Dream from their beginning. Anything that came after was distorted, nightmarish.
And George was more than happy to forget.
He let his eyes drift closed, the white hue of day leaving him as he succumbed to the soil. Maybe Quackity was right to bury him. Maybe he just needed to fall asleep again, to let the water take him.
Sleep was good. It felt like swimming in the summertime. He’d roll down the hill, wrestling Sapnap and tangling himself in Dream’s arms. He’d laugh big and loud, throwing his head back and staring through the gaps in the canopy. Pinpricks of sunlight would fall onto his face and he’d run a palm down his larynx, feeling giggles flow up his windpipe and escape in bubbles. Then he’d fall into the river water, Dream’s hand grasped in his own as he pulled him down with him, wrapping his arms around his waist, their bodies warm and sweet and …
George shivered.
He couldn’t hear Quackity anymore.
The bog was so small.
George forced himself into a deeper sleep, letting everything vanish from his fingertips. He needed to be formless, he needed to be beyond flesh. Loneliness, heartbreak, solitude: all needed to wash away.
George was free falling in his mind, plummeting into the void. To him it looked like night, thousands of stars blurring around him as he fell down the wishing well.
He looked at his hands, now gloved. Then to his shoes, polished and tied in neat little bows. A red cape fluttered from his shoulders, longer than it had ever been when he was king. It twisted around the space like a blanket, snaking to the floor and piling, piling. George raised his hands to his head, lifting the crown and holding it close to his chest. He grimaced. He’d discarded these things months ago. The memory was clear to him, how he’d run from where Dream had dethroned him, ripping each garment off and throwing them to the forest floor, silent tears flooding down his face.
He hadn’t screamed, hadn’t made a sound.
His face had been blank when he set the clothes on fire.
George shook the memory away, forcing his eyes down.
At the bottom of the pit stood Dream, mask held loosely in his hands. George grinned, floating down and prying it from his fingers. He’d always hated it, ever since Dream had insisted he needed to wear it, that he needed to hide everything that made him himself.
George was never good with words, but right now he didn’t need words. In this world, the one where Dream had let him take his mask, George could act and trust he would be understood.
He threw the mask and the crown to the ground, watching them shatter completely. Stupid, stupid things, George thought, grasping Dream’s jaw instead and drinking in every detail of his face.
His shattered, crooked face. Scars turning his skin to ribbons, starting from the corner of his forehead and travelling across his nose. Diagonal slashes like rain – all the damage he didn’t want people to see. He’d call it weakness if given half the chance.
George sighed, stroking his thumb down the rupture. He’d been there when they’d formed, was the one who'd wiped the blood away. George had always been there, every time. Cleaning his wounds, telling him off, forgiving him, staying up all night and talking to him, listening to him. Always. Before Dream started fighting everyone, paranoia creeping into his voice, insisting George rule a kingdom he’d never cared for before stripping it all away again, obsessively trying to prove he was powerful, that the world couldn’t crush him like it crushed everyone.
George looked over the scars again.
Ichor spilled from the cracks.
But Dream wasn’t like everyone. He was the first player in the new world, finding George and speaking to him with a voice that echoed thousands. This world was his, and so this world adored him.
Still, George liked to think Dream had been human once, back when he was still his.
“Fuck,” George whispered, voice thick in his throat. “Fuck what happened to us? What happened to me?”
Dream said nothing. He just leaned further into his touch and sighed deeply, like he was an animal curling into its den, sleeping the winter months away. George pressed his forehead against his, nuzzling close enough to burn.
“Dream,” he muttered, unsure what he wanted to say. His name was enough. His name was not enough. George clenched his teeth, trying again. “You’re … you’re such an idiot.”
Nothing.
“And stupid.”
Still nothing.
“And lost. I don’t want to play anymore. Can we go home now?”
A slight shake of the head. No.
“Why? I thought … I thought we said we were going to stay together forever. Didn’t we promise?”
But Dream hadn’t promised, had he? George had, maybe, but Dream had always been more of a when person, George struggling against him, insisting if, if, if, denying the inevitable. Clinging to hope, to sleeping.
George pushed Dream away, shaking his head. To hold him here was stinging, and George didn’t want to touch him anymore. It was too hard. His brain refused to take it in.
George forced himself deeper into sleep again, flying away with his hands pressed to his eyes. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t want to see.
…
George lurched out of bed, breathing rapidly.
Oh.
He looked around.
His bed was lying in the middle of some field, the grass yellow and dry. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, wondering when he’d dozed off. He tried to remember when he’d dragged his bed outside, or why he’d thought it was a good idea. What if it rained?
George sunk back into the pillows, staring up at the sky. Cotton candy clouds marked an afternoon so blue George thought he could see the atmosphere, as if he could suddenly comprehend the shape of it. He stretched his hand out, flexing his fingers. He squinted and spotted an array of paper kites soaring high above his head, their tails swishing like fish. George giggled to himself.
He didn’t know if this was real either.
His giggling turned into full bouts of laughter. He didn’t know where the kites were coming from, there were no strings, no squealing children to pull them along. But George let them swarm his vision anyway, pulling his quilt up to his chin.
“Do you like that?”
George leaned back far enough for the crown of his head to hit the headboard, until he was peering cheekily up at DreamXD. “You’re upside down,” George quipped.
DreamXD tilted his head. “I am indeed.”
His voice echoed, filling George with something he couldn’t explain. It was both comfortable and nauseating.
George tasted acid in his mouth when he spoke.
“Is this real, Dream?”
“DreamXD,” the god reminded gently, though his voice was quickly darkening. “There is no Dream here.”
“Mmm,” George hummed, swinging himself off the mattress. “Doesn’t really matter, I guess.”
It was better like this, George thought as he stretched, pulling on the shoes he’d left discarded to the side. He didn’t feel sad here, didn’t feel much of anything. It was good, knowing the sun beat his back and the wind combed through his hair. It was all too sweet to wander in dreamland, real or otherwise. A place where nothing bad happened, where he could drink tea with god and stay inside all day and lie in the grass, wasting the hours away. Head heavy, mind light. Drifting into the sky like a balloon.
“Are you okay?” DreamXD asked, sharp claws digging into his shoulder.
“Yeah ‘m fine,” George mumbled, not turning to face him. But his grip worsened, keeping George in place.
Hot breath traced down his neck. George kept looking forward, eyes focusing on nothing. “You’re crying.”
George touched three fingers to his eye. They were wet when he pulled away.
“Oh," he breathed, "I don’t know why … that’s weird.”
But the tears wouldn’t stop.
Not even when DreamXD let go, floating by his side and tracking his every movement, like he was a bug squirming under a microscope. Not even when George walked without direction, without purpose.
Not even when they landed at the front of the prison, sitting cross-legged together.
…
George didn’t care for much, he really didn’t. He slept outside Pandora’s Vault knowing Sam wouldn’t touch him, curling into himself like a deer in the woods. And in the days that followed he didn’t care if the people around him were screaming and crying, or engulfed with rage, or playing together, or whatever else real people did.
George was free.
George visited the prison every day.
But George was still free.
Buried alive or otherwise. He was fine.
And yet when he slept at night, mushrooms growing in a fairy ring around him, he spoke to himself, writing the words in the deepest parts of his subconscious, never to be seen by waking eyes.
It was a bird’s call in the darkest night of the soul.
Shrieking, crying, wounded.
And this is what he said:
Sometimes I think we’re playing hide and seek
And you’re across the way, curled behind a tree
All I need to do is cross the river to you
Pull you out and squeeze your fingers
And you’ll be back with me
And I’ll be home
But you’re always slipping
It doesn’t matter how fast I run
How much I cry
Or call your name
You phase through the wood and you’re gone
Just wait for me
Let me catch up
Don’t leave me behind
George did not wake up.