Work Text:
Dream had been eight years old when he first learned that he can stop death.
Well, not exactly. He can only put essentially a pause to it.
Every morning, on the way to school, he would see a friendly cat on the road. Every day, it greeted him. Until one day, to his horror, he had found it brutally killed, its blood splattered everywhere on the pavement. He had left the vicinity, not brave enough to get it and bury it. As he did his homework, he had found himself wishing that the sweet cat was alive, and wasn’t at all dead. Or maybe he had been mistaken, maybe it wasn’t that cat at all. Maybe it was another cat that had been killed.
He decides to sneak out of the house, just to check. There was no blood on the pavement, and there was no sign of the dead cat. It was as if nothing at all had happened. Instead - the same cat - now alive, walks towards him, and when he’d gone to pat its head like he usually does, he found himself scratched instead.
He got sick after. For days, he was bedridden with fever, and Dream found himself wishing that the cat really did die that night instead. After all, if the cat hadn’t been alive to scratch him, he wouldn’t be as sick as this
When he woke up the next day, he’d found the fever gone. He went up to his mother to inform her but she’d looked at him with confusion. “Were you sick?” she had asked.
Dream frowns. “What do you mean?” He had been bedridden for almost a week… except he had also gone to PE class yesterday. He remembers taking maths and studying history. The things he remembers contradicted each other. Looking down at his hand, he saw that the wound had gone.
The next day, he had gone to where he had found the corpse of the cat and found the splatters of blood again.
And that’s how he learned he had the power to “undo” things, but only temporarily.
Theirs was a relationship built on lies.
They became pen pals when they were twelve, but as the years passed by, they both began lying to each other. They write to each other about how they were both living happy, successful lives, despite the abuse Dream receives daily and the people’s neglect of Fundy.
So when they finally meet up, at seventeen, and all the lies unfold, they just think of each other as silly.
They become each other’s friends. Solidarity, perhaps, from the cruel world who only knows how to take from them.
Dream can feel his cheek smarting still, and he knows there’s a bruise forming around his eye. Fundy sits beside him, as they watch the night sky. He had helped him run away, but they’re both still high school students with nowhere to turn to. Maybe the police will find them. He wouldn’t be surprised, really.
“Pain, pain, go away,” Fundy gently whispers to Dream’s hand, the one still intertwined with Fundy’s.
Dream laughs. “What was that?”
“A charm. For it to stop hurting.”
He laughs harder. “Well, I-... It worked, I'll give you that.”
He sidles closer to Fundy, pulling his hand away to place it on Fundy’s waist, on a half-hug. He nuzzles his head on Fundy’s shoulder.
“I hope it worked on other things too,” Dream whispers. He hasn’t asked anyone for help before, and this is what he’s doing right now.
Fundy’s touch is feather-soft when he pats his cheek. “Dream, if it becomes too hard on you…”
Dream opens his mouth before Fundy can say anything “encouraging” or “consoling.” Things like that always felt hollow to Dream. But Fundy beats him to it anyway.
“...tell me, alright? So that I can kill you.”
The shock of what Fundy had said made Dream freeze at first, but after that, he smiles into Fundy’s skin. “You’re a cold man, Fundy.”
The moment Dream came to, he came face to face with his mother’s prone body. She was not moving.
He feels the familiar pain in his back - no doubt the burns, and hisses at the cuts all over his body. He’s tried to protect his face from his father, just in case, just so Fundy would never have to see it when they meet up, but it must have been hours since then. He feels something hard in his mouth and spits it out with blood, and he doesn’t need to look to know it’s a tooth.
He waited first before his father stood up and left the room before he crawled towards his mother to check her pulse - there was none. She was dead.
His thoughts raced. But mostly, they were of needing to leave this place, right now. Lest he is killed too.
He supposes he should have postponed and undone it. He should have undone the death right there, and it would have been okay, it would have been fine. Two different sets of memories in his head, one where his mother dies and he gets beat up by his father, and one where she lives.
There was a point, perhaps, that his brain separated from his body, because when he blinked back the haze and the blood he’s already escaped to the outside of the house, and Fundy’s right there, gathering him in his arms and asking him what had happened.
Dream never wanted Fundy to see this. But what he had experienced must have overwhelmed him, because he told Fundy in broken sobs what had happened: that he came home to find his mother unconscious, and before he could call for help, his father had hit him and beat him up for hours and hours on end. When he finishes his story, Fundy wraps his black jacket around Dream, and places his hat on his head.
“Don’t worry, It’ll end soon,” Fundy said.
Dream closes his eyes. Fundy did promise he would kill him. But he’s surprised to find Fundy’s warmth had left him. Instead, five minutes later, Fundy emerges from the house all bloodied with a knife in hand.
Dream can almost cry again.
“Idiot. You killed the wrong person. You promised you’d kill me.”
“What can I say? I’m a liar through and through. A con, if you will.”
Fundy takes Dream again, carrying him on a piggyback.
“You know,” Dream says, “let’s run away. Far away from here. Where they wouldn’t find us.”
Fundy grins. Dream’s a liar too. They both know their elopement wouldn’t take them far. They just needed time to say goodbye to each other.
Fundy had pedalled his bicycle far. People stare at them, at these two bloodied and bruised high schoolers, but they can honestly care less.
They eat at a convenience store with the cashier looking at them with the dryest expression known to man. They’ve just killed someone and they’re living on borrowed time.
They go to the park, where a festival is being held, and it’s almost like a date. Hell, maybe it is a date. Although given the circumstances, maybe it shouldn’t be one. But Fundy’s hand is clasping Dream’s, as they weave their way through the crowd.
He loves Fundy, Dream thinks. And maybe that’s his saving grace.
So later, when Dream almost gets hit by a car, and he watches, in horror, as Fundy pushes him out of harm’s way and he sees how Fundy dies in front of him, he knows what he has to do.
Fundy wouldn’t be here to die if he hadn’t met up with Dream. Fundy wouldn’t have had to murder his father if he hadn’t met up with him.
So, with a bittersweet smile, Dream undoes their meeting.
“Thank you,” he whispers.