Archive of Our Own

„You’re never getting out, Dream. You will stay in here forever. “

That’s what they had told him, when he had been thrown into Pandora’s Vault. He is not getting out. Never. But everything had to come to an end, right? And if he would leave the prison in a body bag, then so be it. But at one point he would have to leave it. There was no way he would truly be in there „forever“.

***

In the beginning, he had been sure that it would be only a question of time until he would leave. Somehow, he would get out. Maybe his friends would finally come to their senses, maybe he could get one of his allies to help him out, and maybe he could call in that favour. No matter how, he would get out. He would just have to sit it out.

It had taken a while, but soon enough he was sure he wouldn’t be able to count on his friends, much less his allies. Sapnap had come to visit, but he had still been angry. He had threatened to kill him, should he ever actually leave. Bad had visited, but while he had been friendly, as opposed to the open hostility everyone else had shown him, he had been clear in his belief that Dream belongs in the prison. He had promised to come back and visit him again, but so far, he had not been back. George had never even shown up. But it didn’t matter. Maybe they just needed more time to come back around. After all. They still believed Tommy’s and Quackity’s lies in regards to their friendship. However, he was sure they would soon realize that they were lies.

They had known each other for years, long, long before the server had been established. They knew him. He knew them. He had trusted them with his life so many times; they have had each other’s back for so long. He knows he hadn’t been the best friend lately, with all the conflicts and issues around the server. He hadn’t been telling them everything that was going on, all the things he had to deal with. He hadn’t wanted to worry them too much, but mostly he had been embarrassed. It had been his idea to form a server. They weren’t so sure back then, but they had trusted him anyways. They had followed him, with a small handful of friends they made along the way. He had been so happy in the beginning.

He had been so confident in his abilities to control the server. There was no need for a tight hand, no need for endless rules. It would be fine. Then everything had started to fall apart. More and more conflicts arose, and he felt like he had to be everywhere at once. He slept less and less, constantly trying to mediate and solve the issues. He didn’t like talking about it to his friends. Every new conflict made him feel more like his control slipped, like his server was a failure. He hated feeling like that. Being out of control. He didn’t want to share these problems with his friends. Didn’t want them to think he was weak, to disappoint the trust they put in him when they followed him into the unknown. They were supposed to have a good time here. A home, even. All he had to do was solve the issues, and then they could go back to the happy days from the beginning.

But the problems wouldn’t stop. He got rid of one, and two more popped up. He wasn’t quick to anger, he didn’t have to be. He was the strongest person on the server. But he found himself less and less patient in dealing with the never ending conflicts. Eventually, even that wasn’t enough anymore. He found himself reaching for more and more extreme ways to fight the problems. It wasn’t pretty, it certainly wasn’t honourable. But Dream had always been of the ideology that ends justified the means. And it wouldn’t even be for long. He just had to fix this quickly, and then they could all go back to how it used to be.

They would understand. Once he fixed it, and everyone was happy again. Then they would understand and it would be fine. They were allowed to be angry with him for now. Everyone was angry at each other, and if he would let it go on like this, things would never stop. He could fix this. They would understand.

They would.

Of course they would.

They’ve known him so long.

They definitively would understand.

They would.

They would.

They would.

They would.

They would.

…

They wouldn’t.

They wouldn’t, he realized finally.

They wouldn’t understand. He hadn’t even gotten around to fixing it. He had tried so hard to fix it, but he had failed. He had made everything worse instead. Making everyone mad at himself had also brought trouble to his friends. In addition to them being also mad at him for being secretive and unreasonable, they also had to deal with the rest of the server stepping away from them.

He had wanted to build a home for them, but his actions had instead alienated them from everyone else. By clearly associating themselves with him, having his back, being on his side, they had everyone on the server against them. He had painted a huge target on their back and he hadn’t even realized it until it was too late. He had hurried to take George off the throne and declare his disinterest in anything but the discs, hoping it would get Tommy off their backs. But instead it had hurt them even worse.

How can he expect them to understand, when there was nothing to see?

How can ends justify the means when there were none? He had failed to accomplish anything in the end. He hadn’t fixed the problems, he hadn’t solved the conflicts. There were no ends to justify what he did.

All he had were his actions with no results. Who would understand? No one.

In the end, they had united all by themselves to get rid of him. They didn’t need his efforts, they were able to do it all by themselves. It had all been useless. Everyone had come together to get rid of him. They had all agreed. They had all cut ties with him. No one would hold them to any friendships with him, any contracts or allyships. Why would they?

They had all agreed to take him out of the picture. No one there felt like they needed to stand by him, no one there felt any obligations to him. Not friendship. Not trust. Not respect. Not even contractual obligations.

Not even in the possibility of him dying for real, had they felt any reason to step in, much less side with him. Tommy would have killed him for the third time, and they wouldn’t have stepped in. He had to beg for his own life, reveal his carefully kept secret of the revival book just to keep his final life.

They hadn’t cared, he realized. He could have been gone forever. Taken away forever out of their lives, and they hadn’t cared. Back then he had been to frazzled, high on adrenaline and rage, to truly notice. But now he knows. He had messed up so badly that they didn’t mind if he had been permanently removed from their lives.

It was then, in that moment, that for the first time in all that chaos, he wished he had never made the server.

***

After that first realization, he had become a lot less optimistic towards the near possibility of freedom. Realistically, it was almost impossible to get out without any outside help. Of course, there had to be a way. In the end, there is no thing as a perfect plan. Something is bound to change, bound to fail. He just had to play the waiting game.

And while he may didn’t have any of his friends or former allies, he wasn’t completely on his own. There was still the favour Techno owed him. Sure, the man was in “retirement”, but he wasn’t really friendly with any of the fractions within the server. Maybe civil at most. He kept away from the rest, in his little place in the arctic. So Techno had no allegiance to any of the parties that had imprisoned Dream. He also didn’t really have an allegiance to Dream, but he did owe him a favour. A life debt, even. And while Dream doubted that any of his former allies would risk to get him out, much less even want to, he had no doubts that Techno would stick to his part of the deal. Techno had honour and integrity, even if it didn’t seem that way to others. Techno had a very strong moral compass, but it was rooted within his own beliefs of morality, as opposed to the general moral codex. Dream had never betrayed Techno, so he didn’t fear for the validity of his favour.

The only problem was the way of contacting him.

During the confrontation, he had messaged Techno, but there hadn’t been an answer quick enough to turn the situation around. Since then he hadn’t been able to receive any more messages, as the prison blocked all signals of his communicator. He didn’t know if Techno had answered or reached out since then. Considering he kept away from most people on the server, it might take a while until he figured out that Dream was stuck in prison. He might be hibernating even.

In any case, at one point he would notice that Dream was kind of gone. It was really only a question of time. And then he might put two and two together and come break him out. It might be safer if he did actually make clear that this was his favour, to be broken out of the prison. But how to do that? He couldn’t just tell the Warden to inform a “war criminal” of his jailbreak plans, nor could he ask Tommy.

But that were the only people who had been around in a long time.

He needed another way. For now, he just waited. Waited and watched. He knew the prison plans, but the key to an escape was the routine. Find the routine, and then find the breaks in it. He had enough time to learn and understand every single detail he could gather. After all, he had nothing else to do.

So he waited. So he watched.

***

The break in routine came a lot quicker than he had hoped for. He didn’t know what exactly had happened, but there had been the aftershocks of detonations, and then Tommy of all people had been stuck in his cell. It was bad enough to have him visit at all, but now he was stuck here. A physical reminder of all the times Dream had failed his server. The root of all his problems too. But in the end he only had himself to blame. He was the one that had invited Tommy to his server, and he had been the one to allow Tommy to invite more people. He truly had been cocky, thinking it would be easy to keep a server of more people in check. Thinking his status of an admin would automatically give him their respect of his rules.

It hadn’t been that easy. Tommy had been a troublemaker from the start, and it had only escalated once Wilbur had joined. Respect had to be earned, but these two had never planned to listen to him anyways. He doesn’t know what their motives were. It had been a farce from the start, founding a mockery of a country on a dirty secret of drugs. It had been laughable in every aspect, which is why Dream hadn’t quite taken it serious in the beginning. Of course, he had shut down their little antics, not playing by their ridicule. Why would he take them serious when it was all so clearly ridiculous?

Sometimes he wonders if it was his rejection to play along that made them so vehement in their pursuit of freedom. If he had just let them go ahead, would they have gotten bored and just moved on? After all, its always the dangerous and forbidden things that are the most tempting. The more he had disagreed, the more he had worked against them, the stronger they had gotten in their attempts. Suddenly they had flipped the roles, instead of Dream enforcing his authority over rule-breaking newcomers, it had become Dream the power hungry tyrant oppressing the innocent and helpless. Wilbur was dangerously smart, his ability to control a crowd and sway opinions without it being noticeable a frightening asset. And Tommy had looked up to him, following his every word. They had rallied people to support their cause so quickly.

It had been almost cruel, in a way. They had built a house of lies and deception, and then invited other people to fight for this illusion. They had been united in the fight, oppression bringing them together. Doesn’t everyone root for the underdog? Doesn’t everyone look with disdain towards the oppressor? They had all wanted to be heroes so badly, willing to become even martyrs for their cause.

The tragic of it all, that their cause was a house of cards founded in a farce.

Maybe it had all been a game for Wilbur. As long as he had been able to control it, he had fun with it. But when he had been taken away from the position of control, forced out of his own playground, he hadn’t been able to deal with it. He had lost control, slipping into full on insanity. In the end, he had destroyed what he had built with his own hands, and fell to the sword of his own father.

But who was Dream to judge him. His own story hadn’t been all to different. He too had struggled when he lost control of the server, the home he had built. In his efforts to get it back he had been willing to destroy parts of it. And in the end, he had been thrown in to the prison by the hands of his own family.

True, he hadn’t been the one to start it. He hadn’t invaded a server, broken the rules and lied to cover it up. He hadn’t rallied people around a mockery and declared a revolution all for the sake of it. But he had done other things. He may hadn’t been the one to start the fight, but he surely hadn’t ended it. He tried, sure. But in his tries he had done many things that weren’t any less cruel, if not even crueller. He had manipulated people, just like Wilbur did. He had hurt people. Physically hurt them, killed them even. He had taken canon lives.

The only difference had been the motive. From the beginning on, the server had never been a joke to him. It had always been something dear, something precious. Something he had been proud of. A home, A place to build a home with the people he chose as his family.

Everything he did had been in an effort to protect that, and then, to get it back.

Lately he wonders if that truly made any difference at all, considering that none of the people he was so fond of seemed to care for his reasons.

***

Lately he doesn’t get to wonder peacefully a lot at all, because Tommy isn’t any less loud then he had been in all his time on the server. If anything, it’s like he is even louder now. Dream knows that it’s mostly false bravado. Tommy is still, after everything that happened, afraid of Dream. Even with him being physically weakened and mentally exhausted through his stay in the prison. Tommy still seems to see him as a threat, even if his loud and aggressive taunts claim the opposite. He is nervous, scared and he is stuck.

Stuck with his oppressor, his abuser. Well, and a cat. But Tommy doesn’t really seem to care for it. Dream does, though. He cares for it a lot. It’s the first time in a while someone was gentle to him. So he ignores Tommy, and spends his time thinking. And petting the cat, whenever it comes over to him.

He is tired of Tommys antics. Tired of his life always having to revolve around dealing with Tommy. But watching the way Tommy acts, Dream wonders if he ever saw himself as anything but the hero. If Tommy had ever realized that Dream hadn’t been a tyrant, in the beginning at least. That Tommy had been the one in the wrong, when he had broken the rules over and over again. That Wilbur hadn’t been the founder of a revolution out of noble reasons.

That, if you break it down in its most simple terms:

They had invaded a server, broken the rules, and then declared independence to get away with the consequences. That they had rallied innocent bystanders with lies to get them to join their revolution of deceit. That they declared the judge of their wrongdoings a tyrant to get out of punishment.

That they broke a server apart in the process.

That they had kick started the process that had taken his home and his family from him.

He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think any of them are aware of it. Aside from Wilbur.

Wilbur knew, he was sure of it now. He had enough time to think about it. Wilbur knew what he had been doing. He had been aware of the cruelty of it. He knew that he was playing a dangerous game, for nothing but the thrill of it. Wilbur hadn’t really cared for L’manberg. He had cared for the drama of it all, the grandeur, the theatrics. Wilbur was an actor, an artist, and L’manberg had been nothing but the stage for his play. Without L’manberg to fall back on, he had been nothing. What is an actor without an audience? Being exiled had been a beautiful plot twist for his role as a noble revolutionary, fighting for his people. But in the long run, it had taken him off the stage, and getting back on it had been near impossible. So in the end, he had destroyed L’manberg in a grand finale, and gave his own death the most tragic of endings.

Well, in his end. He had exited the stage and hadn’t stuck around to wait for the reaction. He didn’t have to deal with the aftermath like everyone else did.

It was unfair, Dream thought as he watched the wreck of a person Tommy had become. Wilbur had been the catalyst, and he got to leave after playing to his heart’s content while everyone else sat in the ruins of his doings.

It was unfair to Tommy as well, who had believed in Wilbur until the end. It was unfair that Tommy had to be the one to deal with the consequences. And maybe it was unfair that Dream hated Tommy most of them all. But he couldn’t bring himself not to hate him, with all his self-righteousness and hero complex. In Dreams opinion, even if Wilbur had been the orchestrator, Tommy had been the one to bring him here. Tommy had been the first one to break the rules. Tommy was the one that picked him as his enemy, and Wilbur just picked up on the cues.

So maybe it was unfair, just a little bit.

But why was he the only one who had to play fair? Why was he the one held to oh so high standards? Why was he, their self-proclaimed villain of the story, the one who had to be noble and moral in all his decisions and actions? Why were they, the heroes, allowed to be underhanded and deceiving?

Why were they allowed to be cruel?

Why were they allowed to take everything from him, over and over and

over

and

over

and

over

and

over

and

Oh.

He stopped. His hands were shaking. The potato slipped from them, stained red. Tommy was quiet. Finally, blissfully quiet. So was the cat, and yet he could still hear it. Hear the pitiful cries it made, as if begging for its life. It hadn’t even take long. Just a few hits and the poor thing had been gone, even with him trying to block it from the violent assault.

And yet.

It had felt like eternity. Watching in sheer shock as Tommy had killed it. For no other reason other then Dream caring for it. Again. Again he had taken something Dream loved away from him. And once again, no one would punish him for it. No one ever did, unless Dream himself did it. They let him get away with everything, and no one ever did anything to stop him or to punish him.

It always fell to Dream. And then they would punish him for it.

He doesn’t know when he did, but he started laughing, hysterical almost. No matter what he did, it was wrong. He had god-like powers, defeating even death with little effort. And yet he couldn’t even leave when he wanted.

This was the second time he regretted making the server.

***

Of course, he had revived Tommy. He couldn’t leave him dead, even if he embodied everything he hated and regretted. But at least he was able to prove that the revival book worked. This way he might get to stay alive for long enough to get out.

Because he wanted out. Now, more then ever. He wanted out, out, out. And then he wanted to leave. Run away as far as he could, to the very ends of the server. He was so tired of having everything taken from him again and again and then being punished for it.

What was he even here for? What did it matter? No one cared anymore, everyone hated him.

So he might as well leave and never come back. Hole himself away at the end of the server, destroy his communicator and never talk to any person again. He had been alone before meeting Sapnap and George. He could be alone again. A family wasn’t worth it in the end.

He was done.

***

And then, Quackity came. Dream had been surprised at the visit. No one had been here since Tommy. The warden had kept everyone away. But when Quackity asked for the revival book his surprise faded. Of course they’d want the knowledge after he had proven it to be true. He doesn’t know who would have been the one he’d expected to want it first, but it certainly hadn’t been Quackity. Who knows, maybe it had been related to Schlatt, since they had been… involved.

It didn’t matter why he wanted it. Dream wouldn’t give it away. Certainly not to someone who was openly hostile and opposing him. Once, he may have given it to his friends. Back when he still had them. When they had trusted each other. Back then, he would have shared the knowledge with them, after confirming it to be true. He hadn’t known for sure that it would work, but Tommy had been the proof.

He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that the revival book was the only reason he was still alive. Giving it’s secrets away would mean exactly two things:

1. His life would be worthless. They would kill him, no doubt.

2. By giving the knowledge to just one person, he would create another power divide that would wreak havoc again over the server.

So there was no option for him. He’d have to stay quiet.

And he did.

He had been surprised, shocked even when Quackity had pulled out the weapon. No one had been able to take anything into the prison, aside from the Warden. But Quackity had been quick to reassure him that he had the Wardens specific blessing. His laughter had been mocking, as he branded the name tag of the tool to Dream.

“Wardens Will”

Still, he should have expected them to resort to drastic measures to get hold of his knowledge. Knowledge was power, after all. And yet he still called out for Sam, in a fit of panic.

It wasn’t the first time he had been hurt. He had died before, lost two of his canon lives. Pain had never meant much to him. But now, it was pain just for the sake of it. It wasn’t a byproduct of his plans, easily pushed aside by adrenaline and treated later.

There was no pushing it away now. Quackity made sure that he never slipped away, that he was aware for every single second of it. He couldn’t escape a single sensation. He was quick, efficient and brutal. Although he made clear that he would take his time in the future. That he would come back again and again, every single day until he gave up the secret.

And he did.

Without fail, he showed up day after day. Quackity was meticulous and creative in the ways he made sure that Dream wouldn’t get used to any sensation. He made sure to switch between methods and devices frequently, and kept protocol about his reactions. He came up with new ways to torture him easily. Just physical pain wasn’t enough for him. He implemented rules very quickly. Rules that were harshly punished if broken.

Dream hadn’t called out to Sam again after the first week. It was clear he didn’t care.

No one cared, according to Quackity. He had permission to be here and torture him. No one had objected. They all agreed that it was most important to get the revival book. Take the last bit of power out of dreams hands. Dream wasn’t sure if he could believe that. Sure, they had all agreed to put him in the prison. But caging someone away to get rid of them was something completely different to consenting to have them tortured daily. There was no way all of them agreed. Even if most of them hated him now or didn’t care anymore. They couldn’t possible hate him this much. No, Quackity had to be lying.

But as time went on, he became less and less sure of it. Someone would have to notice Quackity going to the prison for hours every day. Someone had to notice the blood on his clothes. Even if not all of them did, at least the people close to him would have to know, right? And closest to him… closest to Quackity were his fiancés. Karl and Sapnap. They weren’t dumb. They had to notice, had to know.

Which meant that Sapnap knew that he was tortured. Every single day. For hours. And if Sapnap knew, that meant George knew as well.

Before, he had held up knowing that Quackity had to be lying. But even if he had, there was no way he could have gotten away with his secret for this long. By now, someone had to know. Someone had to know and not care for it to go on. Maybe it was a coincidence that it happened to be the people closest to him. Maybe it was Primes punishment. Once again he was punished. He wondered when he had paid enough. He wondered when it was anyone else’s turn to pay. Maybe Quackity had even said the truth and everyone truly agreed to this treatment. How was he supposed to know?

Before, he had held up. Now, he bent. He didn’t tell Quackity what he so desperately wanted to know, but he adhered to all his other rules. Addressed him only by Sir, spoke only when spoken to. Answered his questions dutiful, and thanked him for his treatment.

It didn’t matter anymore.

***

He learned quickly that death in this prison wasn’t canon unless it was intended to be. He didn’t know who the judge of intention was. They had allowed Tommy’s death to be canon, yet no matter how often he threw himself into the lava, he always came back. The first time he had thrown himself into the endless curtain of molten stone, he had been out of it. Desperately trying to finally end it. He had woken up with a start after respawning, torn in between relief for being alive, or desperation because it could have been over, and yet he was back.

It had taken a while until the second time. This time he had been aware of what he was doing. He hadn’t been frantic. It had been after another session with Quackity. He had realized, after weeks and weeks of torture that Quackity was unlikely to stop. It wasn’t a chore for him. He enjoyed the torture. He enjoyed the adrenaline rush and the twisted control he had over someone he perceived as so powerful, even though he made sure to remind him of how weak he had become every chance he got.

Quackity wouldn’t stop, and he couldn’t give up the revival book.

So he decided to end it. Take the revival book with him. Leave forever.

He had been aware when he approached the lava curtain. There was no rush of adrenaline. All there was, was a silent resolve. He faced the lava and stepped into it with finality. He welcomed the burn. It couldn’t hurt him any worse than he had been hurt before. When he stepped into it, it had been done with peace. He had made his decision.

And yet, he still woke up again in the water pool in his cell.

Opening his eyes to the dark walls, only illuminated by the very lava that should have led him to his end. The water clinging to the tatters of his overalls.

He had been bent, but now he broke.

With a cry, he stumbled to his feet, and ran into the lava again. He barely felt the burn before he woke up in the water pool again. He didn’t hesitate for a second, shaking the dizziness off and running back into the mocking light.

He repeated it for as long as he could, time meaningless in perpetual darkness. He kept dying and respawning, until he collapsed on the floor of his cell. While his body respawned easily, his mind was in agony.

It was there, on the cell floor, after trying desperately and failing to die, that he regretted making the server for the third time.

***

Considering that he hadn’t really planned on revealing the revival book, much less ever actually using it, he had been doing a shit job at it. Not only did everyone know about the existence of it, he also used it twice already in the span of less than a year. Death would have his head on a stick if this continued.

But thinking back on it? He would do it again, probably. How dare Tommy bring Ghostbur into his cell, acting like a concerned, carefree friend, while he was behind him with a sword ready to kill. Wilbur and Tommy, the source of all his problems, showing up in the prison. Not just to mock him, but to kill him.

As if it wasn’t enough to take everything from him, imprison him and subject him to daily torture, no. They had to parade his failures in his face and then try to kill him. No, he didn’t regret bringing Wilbur back. He didn’t deserve to prance around the server, all happy and innocent with his little amnesia thing, while everyone else had to deal with the aftermath of his bullshit. He deserved punishment like everyone else. He deserved to see how his actions affected everyone, how he didn’t leave a legacy but a tragedy in his foot steps.

Hearing the fear in Ghostburs voice, his pleads and begging to not die had been less hard then he would have thought. But maybe that was just the rage speaking in him. All Ghostbur was, was a fractured copy of Wilbur. A fractured copy that conveniently forgot all the bad things he ever did, and existed in innocence and laughter.

It enraged Dream. Nobody seemed to forget anything he had done wrong. No, everyone constantly rubbed his failures in his face, never letting him forget how he never did anything right. How all he did was disappoint everyone. How they would have expected different from him. He was alone with his failures, no one by his side anymore. Call it petty, call it cruel. But he refused to be the only one suffering. No one seemed to fault Tommy, poor perfect Tommy for anything he did. But he knew there were people who were upset with Wilbur. Let at least one of them experience a fraction of the consequences they deserved.

So he brought him back.

Sure, Dream had wanted to die so desperately. He could have went along with their little play. Finally at rest. But he would never leave the satisfaction to Tommy. He refused to let him take everything. If his last life was all he had left, then he would keep it from Tommy no matter how badly he did not want it anymore.

If anyone else showed up to kill him? He would have let them, probably. Pretend he didn’t see through their schemes. Act surprised, even.

But not Tommy.

Never Tommy.

***

In a rare twist of fate, he had been handed a chance. Quackity had told him to write a message to Techno. He had almost given up completely. Quackity had been getting worse and worse in his attempts to make him talk. Lately he had been more annoyed then sickly delighted. Not even Dream adhering to the rules gave him any mercy. Instead, Quackity had redoubled his efforts in getting the truth about the revival book.

He had killed Dream more than once, but it never stuck. If anything, it made him angrier, seeing Dream respawn with less of the damage that he had inflicted on him. So he made a study on how close he could bring him, until he died, so he could stop right at the threshold. He got so bad that Dream wasn’t even able to move to the food dispenser to grab a measly potato to try and heal up. Instead, Dream had been reduced to wait until Quackity left, and the Lava had gone back up, before dragging himself to the edge of the cell and tipping over into the lava. He tried to make Quackity drop him as close to the ledge as he could. Sometimes he was successful, more often he wasn’t. Lately Sam has started to keep the netherite barrier up, so Dream wouldnt be able to force a respawn so "easily".

He couldn’t count how many times he had died to the lava at this point. His communicator didn’t work in the prison, but it did show his own messages. The feed was clogged with death messages. He had also lost count of the time he had been in here. He used to have a clock in the beginning, but even that only tells the time, not the date. And that clock had been gone for a long, long time. He wasn’t even sure if Quackity still came every single day. He had no way to prove it.

But then. Then Quackity had looked at him and told him he was tired of this. Too busy to keep doing this every day. That he was planning to move on to bigger things. Dream had thought that maybe this would be it. Finally the end. It wasn’t, but it was a shimmer of hope nonetheless.

Sure, Quackity tried to lure Techno into a trap and use Dream as the bait. But that just confirmed that Techno still stayed away from the rest of the server, and was thus not influenced by them. That also meant that none of them had tried to talk him out of his favour to Dream. Maybe they didn’t even know about it.

It didn’t matter. Dream would write the message. Of course he would. He had been waiting for the chance to contact Techno since the very beginning of his stay. He didn’t worry about Techno falling for Quackity’s trap. He was smart, way smarter than Quackity could ever hope to be. He would smell the trap from miles away. Whatever Quackity planned, was destined for failure, but it would give Dream a shot at freedom.

So yes, Dream would write the message. He would hesitate a bit, refuse a bit, just to keep Quackity from putting one and one together. Let him think that Dream didn’t want to do it. Let him think he was scared for Techno. That Quackity had any ounce of a chance in actually succeeding in his plan, whatever it was. The fact that it results in a whole week without Quackity if he complied was just an added bonus. He would be able to get his strength up, for whatever plan Techno would have.

Dream would write the message, and he would get out of here.

***

When Techno shows up, Dream is surprised. Maybe a little shocked even. Surely there were better ways to get in without following all of Sam’s protocols and ridding yourself of all your possessions, effectively rendering yourself helpless. At the mercy of the warden. But it was Techno after all. He had his own plans.

So Dream tried to stay calm, even when Sam inevitably betrayed Techno and pulled the bridge back behind them. Techno had been relaxed, taking the situation quite calmly, which convinced Dream that Techno must have gotten the hints across his message. They would be fine. So Dream sat down and wrote everything techno wanted to know. Techno had a plan. Things would be fine.

Except the longer Techno’s “visit” had taken, the more had Dreams calm started to break away. Sure, Techno had still been quite nonchalant. After all, the only thing that ever happened were the deliveries of potatoes from the food dispenser. There was no active danger. Quackity hadn’t showed up, even weeks into Techno’s stay in the prison. But Techno also hadn’t been rescued as he had said he would. Day after day went by with no rescue in sight. Dream had been getting antsy.

Quackity had stayed away for way longer than he expected him to, and he couldn’t help but worry over a possible connection to Techno’s plan. What if he hadn’t been showing up because he was busy sabotaging Techno’s prison break plans? Dream was pretty sure they involved Phil in some way, and while he was very sure that Philza Minecraft was more then able to take care of himself, he couldn’t help but remember that L’manberg had taken him “hostage” before. What if that was what Quackity was doing right now? Who else did Techno have that was on his side and would risk it to break him out of prison?

And then they had summoned XD. The entity granted them a free wish for anything, and what did Techno do? Ask for a golden bell of prime, for his half-hourly prayer. They could have been free, Techno could have gone back home to his own bell. They had an out of jail free card, and he had thrown it away.

And now? Now he spent hours upon hours punching away at obsidian with his bare hands. Every time he had to pull away because Sam showed up had been like a punch to the gut. It was almost more efficient then Quackity’s torture had been on his mind.

He had barely made any progress, but at least there was the hope of doing something. Despite everything, Techno had still been surprisingly calm. Maybe they would be saved still. He hoped for it. He had almost given up on getting out alive during the time with Quackity. But now he had hope again. He wanted out. He never wanted to be stuck somewhere again. If necessary he would leave the server, even if it meant destroying it. He was done. He was so done.

He wanted to live. Even with his body in ruins, shattered beyond belief, and his mind tired and broken.

He wanted to live.

***

He wanted to live.

He wanted to live.

He wanted to live.

That was the only thought in his head as he cowered in the small space he had carved out below the water pool. His heart was racing and his lungs burned. The adrenaline didn’t let up even as the minutes ticked by.

He had never feared for his life as he did in that moment. Even when Tommy had taken two of his canon lives and was about to take the last one, he hadn’t been scared like this. He hadn’t wanted to use the tunnel yet. Dream was clear that it was only a question of time until they would find him. And when they did, all the effort he had put in would be for naught.

But he knew that if he hadn’t gone, Quackity would have killed him. If Quackity found him now, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. Revival Book be damned.

The second Technoblade had vanished from the cell Dreams fate had been sealed. He didn’t know how Techno had done it. He hadn’t revealed his plans to Dream. But he had managed to leave somehow. He had left, Quackity’s pickaxe burying itself in to the obsidian wall instead of its intended target.

He had left, at the height of Quackity’s rage.

He had left Dream behind to deal with the aftermath.

Quackity had been absolutely livid, close to foaming at the mouth. Dream took hit after hit, but he was getting low so quickly and there was no indication of Quackity caring for it, or even noticing. Dream was sure if Quackity killed him in this moment, it would be canon. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain. This would be it.

He didn’t want to die. Not anymore. Not when he finally had hope to get out again after so long. Techno hadn’t been hostile at all, hadn’t told him he belonged in the prison. And Techno was out now. Dream had given him all the information he had about the prison, and quite literally all his secret stashes on the server. He had banked everything on this. Techno was his only way of getting out, and he had done everything to set it into motion. It wasn’t fair for him to die right when he had gotten a semblance of hope. It wasn’t fair.

So the second he had gotten the chance, he took it. He didn’t think about it, he just went for it. He took a gamble to save his life. So he cowered in the water, hands shaking and his back pressed into the rough wall behind him. His eyes burned, but he didn’t know if it was the water or the tears building.

He didn’t want to die. It didn’t matter anymore, he wanted to live. He would do anything for it in this moment. He wanted to live and he wanted to get out. Away from all of them. he’d leave the server if necessary. He wasn’t sure if he could just randomly transfer the admin rights to someone else on the server. If he had to do it in person. It didn’t matter. If he wasn’t able to do it he would leave anyways. Let XD deal with it. He didn’t care anymore.

As soon as he got out, he was gone. He’d hop over to the MCC trainings server, then to Hypixel. He’d hop to as many servers as he had to, until his tracks had been thoroughly lost. Maybe he could find some old acquaintances where he could hide out for a bit to get his health back up. Or maybe not. He didn’t want anyone to find him after. Maybe He would just find an abandoned server to vanish in. He could survive on his own. He had done so before. He could do it again.

He would be on his own. He toyed with the thought of making a new private server, and then blocking all the people he knew from it. And never whitelisting anyone again. Never inviting anyone. Keeping himself safe by keeping away everyone else. It would give him security, but at the same time the thought made him nauseous. All his problems started when he made the server. He didn’t want to repeat the mistake.

But at the same time he was terrified of them coming after him. Logically he knew that Quackity was no match for him, if he was back to his full health. But it wasn’t just Quackity. It was Sapnap too. He had promised to kill him if he ever got out, and Sapnap wasn’t one to break a promise. Plus, where Sapnap went, George wouldn’t be far after. And while Dream had won most of the manhunts they had done, it had mostly been by speed and some handy little tricks. He had outsmarted and outran them, but he wasn’t sure how long he could do that, if there was an actual manhunt for his life. He wouldn’t be able to stop, ever. A life on the run was at least a life, but he didn’t want that.

He wanted to go away as far as possible and never see any of them again.

It was weird to think that, because at the core of his being, Dream was a very social person. He thrived on attention and affection. He didn’t do too well on his own. He had always been at his best when he was with his friends. The first months in prison had been hard. Even with the more regular visits of Sam back then, and even with his mind occupied by plans, anger and frustration at the betrayal, he had been lonely. Cripplingly lonely.

He had been so lonely, and yet he hadn’t been able to deal with Tommy’s extended visit. And then no one had come around until Quackity. It had been kind of fucked, having his first regular contact with another person since his imprisonment be continuous torture for weeks, months even.

He had been so close to breaking completely. If he was honest he had broken, that day when he wanted to end it. But he got himself back up. Not on his own, no, Techno’s stay had been quite defining in that. The hope he gave him still kept him going.

Now he was in a very weird mental state. He recognized that he was incredibly lonely and touch starved, but he also knew that being near any of the members of the server would probably cause him to spiral. He didn’t trust any of them anymore. He had no reason to. And he couldn’t help but evade any kind of touch aimed his way. There hadn’t been a kind touched directed to him in his entire stay in the prison, and if he was being completely honest, way before that as well.

What do you do, when you crave something just as badly as you are afraid of it?

It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting out of here. Now more then ever. It was funny, knowing that this was the closest he’s been to escaping and yet also the closest he’s been to dying.

So when Sam gave him a deal, he took it. He would give up the revival book to him, even if it was the only thing keeping him alive. Quackity would kill him the next time he saw him, so whatever it took to keep him away he would do. He didn’t trust Sam. Not anymore.

But it was the lesser evil.

It was a gamble, and he had gone all in.

CHAPTER 2: There is mercy in forgetting

Dream wasn’t sure when exactly he noticed that something was wrong.

It wasn’t really a sudden moment of realization.

No, it was a slow, gradual process. A sinking feeling that became more and more prevalent as time went on. A dreaded hope slowly growing until one day, it blooms and he knows, accepts, that they’re not coming back.

He didn’t know how much time had passed since the last time someone had come by. Well, when Sam had come by. He knew exactly the last time someone else had come by. It had been when Quackity had come to the cell, trying to kill Techno. Techno had broken out, and Dream had pretended to. Quackity had left in a livid fit of anger, the intent to kill oozing off him with every step.

Sam had found him later on, but he had been able to convince him not to tell Quackity. In return, he had to give up the revival book to Sam. He had not wanted to do that, but it was once again, either this or his life. And he didn’t regret it. Sam had kept to his word, Quackity had not come back since then. Sure, Sam had been a lot shorter with him since ever before. Maybe even more cruel. Constantly dangling the fact in his face that Dreams life quite literally depended on him.

But Sam also stayed away a lot more. He had been there right after the prison break, fixing the pitiful tunnel Dream had made. For a few days, he’d been in the prison, under the guise of searching it to find Dreams escape route. He had spent that time getting as much information out of Dream as possible, now that he was talking. However, soon enough Quackity had forced Sam to search the perimeter around the prison. Then they moved further out, trying to find a lead on him.

Lucky for Dream, Quackity seemed to be convinced that Techno had something to do with Dreams escape. That he was hiding out in the Antarctic or somewhere close by. It bought time for Dream, since Quackity had to make a plan if he wanted to attack Technoblade again. He had to get a cover-up story, he had to get resources and rally allies. It meant long days spent alone again for Dream. In the beginning of his prison stay, he had hated the solitude. During Quackity’s months of torture, he had craved to be alone. However, his stay with Techno had him appreciate the company of someone. It kept him out of his head.

Now, he was alone again. But he could deal with it. He still hoped for Techno to get him out, so it would hopefully be only a short, last stretch of struggles before he could leave. He was still shaken up by the thought of Quackity finding him here, so he tried his utmost to comply with all of Sam’s requests during the rare times he showed up in the prison. But he held up a lot better mentally, then he did before.

Soon, Sam’s visits had gotten less. He was always stressed and hectic with whatever plans he and Quackity had. When he showed up, he was angry and frustrated. Once again, Dream turned into a punching bag, but at least this time he just got pushed around a bit. Some kicks, some punches. On bad days, a few hits with the Warden’s Will. But it was never as bad as Quackity, who had delighted in finding crueller and crueller ways to inflict pain on Dream. And Sam’s visits were so rare in between days of silence that it was a lot easier to cope with.

Maybe that was why Dream hadn’t realized immediately what was wrong. Sam’s last visit had been his angriest yet, leaving Dream with wounds and bruises to heal for days. Apparently Quackity’s plan was going into his final phase, and Sam hadn’t been to happy about all the extra work and the risks. Unlucky or lucky as it was, Sam never did enough damage to actually kill him, so he was left to either do it himself or just slowly wait until it healed up. With Quackity he had no choice but to trigger a respawn, the aftermath of his sessions left him a wreck. With Sam, it wasn’t really necessary most of the time. This time however, he probably should have done it. But he hadn’t felt like it, his head heavy and his body aching. Maybe he fell asleep, maybe he had passed out. He didn’t know, but when he woke up he had felt hot and lethargic, his body aching. He was pretty sure he had a fever, but there was no way to check. He could barely move, his entire body miserable and his head foggy.

It had been an infection, caused by an untreated open wound left to fester. It kept him “bedridden”, curled in the corner of the cell. Too miserable and weak to move, he had to wait it out instead of forcing a respawn. He didn’t know how long it took in the end, until his body gave up and he was left floating in the void. When he had opened his eyes again, he had been in the pool again, still weak and shaky, but the wounds that had pained him gone. It was weird to think that a simple infection of a flesh wound was enough to take him out these days. But his body was not what it once was. He would deal with it. Once he got out, he could get his strength back up. For now, it only had to be enough to survive.

***

To be fair, it wasn’t the first time Dream had been left alone for an extended period of time during his stay in the prison. It had happened before that no one would come by for weeks, his only indication of not being forgotten the potatoes that dropped into his cell every so often. He didn’t know if they dropped daily or not, so he didn’t have a good grasp of the days that went by. But he was pretty sure that the amount of time in between the drops had vastly increased since the beginning of his stay.

The potatoes were actually what finally tipped him off.

There had been less and less dropping for a while now, with more and more time in between.

At first he had thought it was just him being antsy and impatient because he wanted out so badly. But when only three potatoes had dropped after he had gone to sleep and woken up again twice, he knew he wasn’t imagining it. He was aware that his sleep cycle in the prison was most likely not equivalent of the day and night cycle. But even then this had taken much more time then usually.

Then, he thought that maybe Sam was punishing him in a new way. Starvation is a well-known torture method after all. Maybe Sam was just sick of him, sick of beating him. Maybe he wanted to try something different. Keep him weak by reducing his rations. At least he hadn’t cut them off yet.

Or maybe Sam was just too busy with the plan going down. He knew that the food dropper had a fail save, where it would ration the food proportional to the amount inside over a set period of time, instead of dropping the programmed amount at the programmed time. If Sam did not check on it periodically to refill, replace and keep the mechanism running, the program would automatically engage the failsafe. It would stretch the food stored over a specific period with a calculated buffer in case it would take even longer.

Dream knew that Sam had an automated refill mechanism installed as well, so the storage of the dropper would be topped up anyways, even if Sam wasn’t here for a while. It had been installed with his long travels in mind, to make sure the prisoners would be fed even if he had unforeseen circumstances keeping him away. So he wouldn’t starve, even if three potatoes weren’t a lot of sustenance for the amount of time it took to drop more.

But as long as Sam wasn’t here it meant something was happening. The plan, whatever it was, was in motion. And Dream was sure Techno had the upper hand, considering all the information Dream had handed him on a silver platter. So Sam staying away was good. If he didn’t come back it meant Quackity’s plan failed, and Dream would be getting out soon.

So he could be a little more patient for now.

The end of his stay was soon.

Except when the amount of potatoes dropping had dwindled to a measly one, he had started to get seriously worried. Why had no one showed up yet? He was sure it must have been a few weeks since Sam last came by. How long could their plan take? If they had lost, why hadn’t Techno showed up yet? And if, by any chance, Techno did lose, why had Sam not come back yet? Had Sam died? But he wasn’t on his last life yet, so even then it didn’t make sense.

What was going on out there?

In his entire stay in the prison, he had never wished so much for his communicator to work then he did in that moment. He was cut off from everything out there, knowing that things were happening but not knowing what was going on. Out of everything that happened, maybe this was the one that was the most cruel. Dream was stuck in a constant loop of worry and hope. There could be truly any outcome. The longer it took, the more unsure he became. What was he supposed to expect? Was the wait a good sign?

Just what was going on out there?

And then the first rotten potato dropped. And he knew.

They weren’t coming back.

It had been so long at this point. No possible plan could have taken this long. Whatever had happened out there must have gotten rid of Sam, Quackity and Technoblade at least. Possibly Phil as well. He didn’t know about the others. But someone would have come by if they knew, right? Did they all think he escaped? Did Sam not tell? Did no one know?

He didn’t know what happened out there.

But in this moment he knew, that they weren’t coming back.

No one was coming back for him.

For a long moment, he had just stood still. Then, the gravity of the situation settled in.

If no one was coming back… How was he supposed to get out? Ever? He knew that dying by his own hand or circumstances did not stick in the cell. He would always respawn again, no matter what happened. If no one was coming back… was he supposed to truly stay in here forever? Never dying, forced into unwilling immortality?

No. He could make it out. If no one came back to check on him, he could just go back to breaking the blocks below the water pool. It would take a long time, but he wasn’t helpless. He could make his own escape and find out what happened on the outside. If everyone was gone, then there was no one left who would put him back in here.

Even Sam’s stupid alert system would be useless. It could ring as much as it wanted, if there was no one to hear it. Maybe, it would cause someone to show up, if there was still someone left out there.

Therefore, he set to punching the obsidian. This time, he did it with a lot more vigour. This time, it actually seemed like a plan. This time, it would actually do something. He punched almost giddy with excitement. Or maybe it was desperation. Insanity. Fear. It didn’t matter. He was getting out.

Breaking the first block felt like a breeze. Despite the 26 hours of punching it felt like it was just 5 minutes.

He only made it a quarter into the next one before he died of hunger. Undeterred, he went right back to it the second he respawned. But two thirds through, he realized he wouldn’t be able to break it. He had no food left. What little food dropped was rotten. Even if he ate it, it would harm him more then it would benefit him. Breaking the block drained him faster than the hunger bar would last him, now that he had no food anymore.

He tried anyways.

He made it about two thirds through before he died. And he died about 30 times more before he gave up.

***

He knew that his communicator didn’t work. He knew. He had tested it before. And yet he couldn’t help but try again. What else had he left? The only thing that showed up was his last death message, maybe unsent, maybe unseen. There were no other messages, nothing that indicated anyone was out there.

Dream: …

Dream: hello?

Dream: anyone there?

Dream: Sam?

Dream whispered to Technoblade: where are you?

Dream whispered to Technoblade: are you okay?

Dream: are you guys still here?

Dream: are you guys ok?

Dream: hello?

Dream: what happened?

Dream: Sapnap?

Dream: George?

Dream: Bad?

Dream: Tommy?

Dream: Eret?

Dream: Puffy?

Dream: Anyone?

Dream: can anyone see this?

Dream: please, can anyone see these messages?

Dream: hello?

Dream: hello?

Dream: anyone there?

Dream: if you can see this pleas e reply

Dream: plese if u can see this rpely

Dream: p lease

Dream: pelase repl y

Dream: anyone

Dream: ?

Dream: ?

Dream: please

Dream: …

Dream: are you guys still there?

Dream: are u still ther e?

Dream: …

Dream: is any one there?

Dream: please…

Once he sent a single message, he seemed unable to stop. His fingers flew across the keyboard, shaky not only from the months of torture. But no one answered. There wasn’t even any indication that anyone was getting these. That they were even sent out anywhere.

But he couldn’t stop. It was the last reach he had beyond the prison walls.

And yet no matter how many messages he sent out, there was no answer. Silence.

This moment was the last time he regretted making that server. The last time, because from this moment on, he never stopped regretting it.

***

After he had realized that no one was coming for him, and that no one was seeing his messages, he had shut down. You would expect someone to break at the realisation that they were stuck forever with no way out. That they would scream and beg and cry and curse.

Interestingly enough though, Dream did none of it. For someone so loud and expressive, his reaction was very quiet. He sunk to the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut. He just sat there, silent. Motionless.

How do you cope with a situation like that? With forever looming over you, an eternity of solitude and confinement your destined future. No end, no release, not even through death.

(Maybe he died already. Maybe this was just his limbo. Maybe this was just another punishment.)

***

Dream didn’t move until his hunger bar ran out and he woke up in the water pool. For a moment, he was snapped out of his catatonic state. He checked the messages again, but as before, no one had answered. No one had seen it.

For some reason, now that it was clear that he no one was there, that no one was hearing him. That he wouldn’t be able to speak with anyone ever again. For some reason, now he wanted to. Before he had wanted to leave everything behind without wasting a single moment.

But now? Now that their decision had cursed him with an eternity, he felt words bubbling inside him. Words that screamed to be heard. For once, he wanted them to hear and understand his side. They had never even put him on trial before they brought him here. Hell, the only reason he was here and not dead was because he bribed them with the knowledge of the revival book. They would have killed him, forever, without understanding why he did what he did.

He had meant to show them, make them understand once he finally reached his goal. Once the server had been under control, this time he wouldn’t be so weak and let it get bad again. It had all been his fault, he hadn’t been strict enough. Had he been stricter, it would have never turned out like this. If he just managed to get everyone under his control, he could go back to the beginning and they could be a happy family again. And this time he wouldn’t fail. He wouldn’t let them get hurt again. This time he would take his role as an admin seriously. All he had to do was get them under control again.

But he had never gotten that far and then they had thrown him in here without ever trying to understand.

Now he had to deal with the consequences.

Suddenly, he wanted them to know. Even if they hadn’t asked, hadn’t cared, hadn’t understood.

He needed them to know.

Dream: I’m not sorry.

Dream: I’m not sorry for what I did.

Dream: I failed my duty as an admin, and I failed my duty as a friend.

Dream: I allowed chaos to take over the server because I didn’t take my duties seriously enough.

Dream: Everything I did afterwards was to correct that misstep.

Dream: You may believe it was too harsh, but everything only happened because I wasn’t strict enough from the beginning. So I had to correct that.

Dream: In the beginning, when I made the server, I wanted it to be a home. I wanted it to be a nice place for the people that were my family. I didn’t want it to be a kingdom, a rulership.

Dream: I know now that this thinking was naïve.

Dream: I could have spared a lot of tragedy, had I not been so lenient with my duties.

…

…

Dream: It’s unfair. Where does my punishment end? Where does it start?

Dream: You broke the rules, you stole land that was free for everyone, you divided the server and ripped  my family apart. You painted me a villain when I tried to stop you.

Dream: You provoked a fight and then punished me for taking the invitation.

Dream: You took everything from me

Dream: And then you imprisoned me

Dream: why is it that only I am punished?

Dream: why is it that I have to bear the weight of everyone’s faults?

…

…

Dream: In the end, here I am. Left alone in the server. I don’t know if everyone just left, or if something happened. All I know is that I’m imprisoned in this vault forever.

Dream: The system doesn’t let me die by my own hands, and an escape is impossible.

Dream: I would say this is the end for me

Dream: But there is none

…

…

Dream died from starvation.

***

This was the first time during his stay that he actually had to confront the possibility of staying here forever. Before he had been sure that, even if they imprisoned him, his stay would end at one point, even if only with his death.

But there would be an end to it.

Now he knew there wasn’t. Nobody was left to come for him. He couldn’t get out by himself. And he couldn’t just die either.

He was well and truly stuck.

Of course, knowing all this didn’t stop him from trying anyways.

Dream went through all the plans of the prison in his mind, drew them out on the books he had left. Looking for any kind of weakness, anything that could break down without maintenance. But lava and obsidian were impossible to erode by natural circumstances and without outside help. Even if the blackstone walls of the prison succumbed to nature, the lava and obsidian wouldn’t go away. In the worst case, the lava would turn into more obsidian, encasing him even more securely.

He even tried to summon XD again, but the ritual failed. Or maybe XD wasn’t there either anymore. He tried it again just to be sure. And again. And again. But there was only silence as an answer.His communicator stayed quiet too. No answer reached him. The only thing that showed up were his death messages, neatly stacked. At least he had a somewhat reliable system of time measurement now. Instead of days he’d just count his deaths by starvation. They were regular enough, and also logged  in the communicator.

Dream started to log his trials of escape in the communicator. It wasn’t like anyone would see them and stop him. It brought a nice break to the monotony of death messages.

He made it to 47 deaths since he started keeping log before he gave up on it. He still wrote things, if only to be able to differentiate between the deaths, and keep his system from becoming unusable. Starting with random things, just writing down his thoughts. Keeping a diary of sorts, to stay as sane as he could.

He didn’t even make it to a 100 deaths before he gave up finding a way out at all. There was none.

Around death 200 he made up stories to keep himself occupied.

Around death 700 he stopped logging much more then just a word. Usually it was just his emotional state of the time, just to keep a routine going. But even that lost it’s meaning when it was the same emotions again and again.

Sad

Empty

Hopeless

Alone

Tired

Angry used to be a very common one. But over time his anger and frustration eroded. Scared was another one that used to appear a lot. But even that vanished away. He had no energy left to be angry or scared. He was lethargic, without a sense in his continued existence, and yet forced to go on.

He was tired.

He was so tired.

***

He came to in the water pool. He must have died again. He didn’t bother getting up. Maybe this time he would drown before he starved. It didn’t matter. He would respawn anyways.

He looked at the communicator. There hadn’t been a log entry yesterdeath. There hadn’t been any for a while. He scrolled up for a bit, but there still weren’t any. This might have been his longest bout of haziness yet. It didn’t matter.

Dream: aware

He noted down his first time of awareness in a while, but it didn’t do anything for him. He didn’t know what to do with a clear head. All he had were his memories and thoughts and those weren’t a pleasant company most of the time. There was no warm memory that didn’t turn bitter. Everything was tinted in regret.

He stayed in the cramped pool and stared at the dark ceiling above him. He hoped he would slip away again soon. It was easier to spend eternity in a haze.

***

He is starting to forget things. His bouts of awareness are fewer and fewer in-between, and it’s getting harder to remember. At first it was just little things, trivial things. Pet names, dates of events, what material was the prime path made of? And then it got worse. What colour were someone’s eyes? Where were certain places? Events started to slip from his mind, creating holes in his timeline. He started to forget crafting recipes. Something that was so ingrained into his very being. It’s been so long since he last had to craft something. Since he had been able to craft something.

And then it was faces and names. Slowly they started to slip, first people he had very little interaction with, but then it spread to people he had been close with. He realized it was a problem when he had thought of the castle Eret had built, but floundered when it came to their face. All he remembered had been their sunglasses. He remembered their name eventually, but it was hard. More and more was slipping from his mind as time went on.

When he first noticed, he tried to keep his mind in shape. Doing little exercises in his mind to keep him fit. He had stopped moving around a while ago, but his mind was still active when he was aware. He was terrified to forget his family. His purpose, even if it were all bittersweet memories. He retold the events of the server to himself, over and over again. But all it served was to make him sad, even rekindling a bit of the anger that used to burn so brightly in him.

Maybe forgetting wasn’t so bad. Maybe if he forgot all the bad that happened, eternity was a little easier to bear. If he just remembered the good times. The warmth of his memories might return if he forgot the bitterness that the future had brought. But even then, just remembering the good times was just as bad. The longing was much more miserable when he couldn’t remember that his family had left him behind. Longing for someone who would never come to rescue him. So maybe he should just forget them as well.

If he didn’t remember what he lost, would he still miss it?

So he stopped his exercises. He stopped recalling the events. The faces were gone quicker than their names, but once he stopped thinking about them, even they slipped from his mind.

A lot slipped from his mind then. He stopped thinking about anything at all. He just let his mind drift.

He forgot his own name at one point. He only remembered because it was right there, on the communicator whenever he typed something.

Maybe he could forget that one as well.

If he didn’t remember anything at all… Maybe the haze would never go away.

Maybe he could just go to sleep.

Maybe there was mercy to be found in his punishment.

***

Many death notifications later

***

He woke up in the water pool again. There was still only dark stone around him, and the brightness of the lava. It looked pretty, but he knew better then to touch it. Again. It was warm, much warmer than the water he found himself in every time he woke up. It was so fascinating to touch, thick, heavy, and yet still smooth and liquid. But he could never touch it for too long. It took his hand away and then the dark came and he would be in the water again. His hands would be back as well. It was like the water gave them back, but only when he was in the dark.

Still, he kind of wanted to touch it again. But his body was so heavy lately, and it was nice to float in the water and just look around. Nothing else in his cell was as bright as the lava. Sometimes he shielded his eyes from the brightness so he could see better.

There was a chest, and a wooden thing, and a sink with more water. He never woke up there. Maybe because the sink was a little small. There were books in the chest, but he did not know what they were used for. There were drawings all over and words scribbled. They were familiar but he had trouble understanding what they meant. He had put them away soon enough. There was never anything else in this place. He had checked, for a while. Every time he woke up, he would check.

But he hadn’t checked in a long time. It was hard to move around lately. Even just lifting his arm became difficult. So he stayed there, floating in the water. His arms crossed on the little ledge, his head resting on them. He didn’t get up again to check.

Because without fail, it was the same as before. The same as it would be the next time he would wake up.

He didn’t know why he was so sure of that. He just knew. It had been like this for as long as he remembered. Maybe this was truly all there is.

Maybe this was all there would ever be.

And it was.