Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a saying Dream used to use, one Sapnap still finds himself saying from time to time. Sapnap had picked it up from Bad before… everything, and Dream had then picked it up from him, and eventually it just ended up sticking.

Stuck between a void and a bedrock fountain. When both your choices suck, and there’s no way out. When you're damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The thing that Sapnap’s brain is currently stuck on is that Dream almost never used the saying the way it was meant to be used. Usually, when Dream was using it, it was being used to describe something he’d managed to figure his way out of, despite the odds saying it was impossible. Or to describe something he would figure his way out of, damn the fact that he shouldn’t be able to do that. His determination and confidence had existed long before the Dream SMP itself had. It was one of the things that drew Sapnap to him in the first place.

But in the aftermath of visiting Dream, in the aftermath of delivering Dream’s message to Ranboo, it’s that stupid, unique, dumb take on the saying that’s all Sapnap can think about.

He wishes he could say that there was nothing of his former friend in the fearsome husk he met in Pandora’s Box. He wishes he could say his thoughts were consumed with shock and horror at how much his friend had changed.

And they were, they were, but–

In the change, there was familiarity too. And that was much more painful than he could’ve ever predicted it being.

What could’ve happened differently? What could he have done differently? What other choices did he have, both before the prison and while visiting Dream in it? His options were always the metaphorical void and the bedrock fountain, and so he chose. He isn’t wrong for having done what he did, said what he said, yet–

He won’t talk, Sam had warned him before Sapnap walked into the cell. And just as Sam had said, Dream hadn’t talked, not really. But– and that was an essential part of it, but– Dream had still found a way to express himself. Found that third option even when locked up in jail, even when all those options should’ve been taken away.

Sapnap keeps thinking about how in the book Dream had written in, his handwriting was the same. Maybe a little messier now. But it was essentially the same. The same a’s. The same weird o’s. The same half-cursive e’s.

And that, for some reason, hurts. It gnaws at him as he walks back to Kinoko. And to his surprise– although it really shouldn’t be– George is asleep when he gets back.

Ever since Dream’s arrest, George has been sleeping more and more. He doesn’t know why he thought today would be any different.

(He does know why. He visited Dream. How could George not care? How could George not be awake to demand the details?

How could George leave him to deal with this alone?)

But it isn’t surprising. Not in the grand scheme of things. This is a phenomenon Sapnap is almost used to by now.

It makes his stomach roll. It also, when he imagines what he’d say to George, suddenly makes him feel unbearingly grateful, and unbearingly guilty.

(He doesn’t think he’d be able to look George in the eyes right now, not after his vow. Doesn’t know if this weird, almost-regret that he shouldn’t be feeling would spill out of him, spill from his lips and onto his friend. Doesn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to actually say what he’s going to do to the Dream Team.

He has to keep reminding himself that Dream did it first. But the reminder isn’t working very well.)

Kinoko looms silently over him, and in dusk’s light, it reminds him so much of Karl that it aches. Karl’s been out for a little while, and Sapnap misses him– can practically see him in the purples and the pinks of the sky. Sapnap thinks of the sweatshirt he stole from him months ago and vows to go find it and put it on once he gets back to his place. The kingdom itself might be a bit more reminiscent of George during the day, but as the sun sets, memories of Karl showing up after days away are almost overwhelming. It always seems to be dawn or dusk when Karl returns from one of his trips. He never answers when Sapnap asks why.

“Hey, are you… good?”

The voice is sudden, unexpected, and Sapnap startles violently at it, draws his sword before he’s even thinking about it, spins around. And— strangely enough, it’s Niki who he sees standing behind him, one hand on her sword, face perfectly unreadable. Pink hair drifts around her face in the night air, a cacophony of bubblegum that couldn’t match her stony exterior less.

(Or maybe it does match her exterior. Sapnap wouldn’t know. He’s never known Niki very well.)

“Oh. Niki. Hi,” he says, readjusting his grip on the sword. “I, uh, didn’t expect to see you here.”

Niki shrugs. “I do live underneath you, you know,”

The underground city. Right. They never actually got around to following up on trying to combine it with Kinoko Kingdom. Sapnap briefly considers doing so right now, then dismisses it.

He cares, but… not enough to push it without Karl’s input.

“Yeah,” Sapnap replies, “yeah. Well, how are you doing?”

“I’m… good,” Niki says slowly, coming up to stand beside him. He slowly puts his sword away as she approaches. “I’ve been working on my city.”

Sapnap pauses, thinks back. Admittedly, he’s mostly been caught up in his own life recently, but he does remember noting that his comm kept going off recently, the contents of the messages showing up in the chat. And this probably is not the most tactful way to put it, but– “I’ve been seeing a lot of death messages from you recently.”

“Ah. Yes.” She almost sounds sheepish at that. “It’s the easiest way to regain hunger, you know? It’s convenient.”

“Mmmhmm…” Sapnap replies, not quite sure how to reply to that. Convenient or not, death is still death, and respawning can suck majorly. “Do you not have like, farms?”

A pause. When he looks over at Niki, she’s holding herself straighter than before, face closed off. “I’m focusing on building my city, Sapnap. I used to own the bakery. I know how to feed myself.”

… He’s getting a certain vibe that maybe this isn’t something he should push. That maybe pointing out that this means Niki is choosing not to feed herself is something he shouldn’t be pointing out if he doesn’t want this conversation to end in… well…

If she pulls out her sword, Sapnap will definitely win. He doesn’t need to be worried about that. But making enemies with the person who’s got an entire city underneath Kinoko probably isn’t a strategic decision for Kinoko’s Head of Military to be making. So… he chooses to shut up and instead cross his arms, and lean onto the railing in front of him.

“So why are you out here?” Niki asks after a few moments of silence. “It’s kind of late. I’d expect you to be sleeping.”

“Just… hanging out,” Sapnap replies. “I don’t– Karl’s out right now, and George is asleep, and I uh, well. I wasn’t really able to sleep.”

It’s only half a lie. He doesn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but he doesn’t know for sure– he never actually tried laying his head down. Too much restless energy from seeing Dream.

Silence. Then– “Bad dreams?” Niki asks, and Sapnap huffs out a laugh.

“In, uh, in a way, I guess. I, well, I visited Dream earlier actually, and… yeah.”

“Oh,” Niki says. She sounds awkward, and yeah, that’s probably fair. “That must have been… something, I guess. Did it go well?”

“It…” God, how does he reply to that? Did it go well? “He refused to speak to me. But apparently he’s been refusing to speak to everyone.”

“Ah.”

Silence again. Sapnap fidgets nervously with his sword. This is not an interaction he was planning on having today. Or, well, ever really.

“You know, you are my closest neighbor,” Niki says abruptly.

“Yeah?

"Well, I've been… considering trying out baking again. Maybe. In a bit. If things get better. But if you promise to stay far, far away from my pets, maybe you could be a taste-tester. You guys are practically right next door, after all. It would be nice not to have to go thousands of blocks away for a second opinion on a pie.”

Sapnap has no idea who Niki is hanging out with, no idea who this mysterious taste tester thousands of blocks is. He opens his mouth to ask, then thinks better of it. Says, instead: "I’ll stay away from your pets. That all was— a mistake. It– spiraled."

Niki’s voice is firm when she replies. "I don't care. Those were my pets. Don't let it happen again.”

Jesus, okay. “I won’t.”

“Good.”

Sapnap opens his mouth to say something, fails to actually say something. Sighs, instead, and looks out at the landscape. It’s peaceful. Quiet.

Suddenly, he finds himself asking: “Do you ever think about Doomsday?”

“What?”

“Shit, sorry, I probably shouldn’t have asked that,” he says, rapidly backtracking as his brain actually kicks in. “That was a dumb question. Yeah.”

A moment of silence. Then, softly– “of course I think about it.”

Sapnap turns to look at her in surprise. Her eyes are trained firmly on the horizon, face betraying nothing.

“I fought for it, you know. On Doomsday.” He says, and he watches her jaw clench as her fingers go white around the hilt of her sword. “Do you– miss it? L’Manberg that is. Not Doomsday. Obviously.”

Quiet. “I miss what I wish it had been,” she says finally.

“What you wish it had been?”

"Yes.” Niki turns her head suddenly, meets his eyes. “L'Manberg deserved to fall."

…Well that’s not what he expected her to say. Sapnap blinks in surprise, fights not to squirm under her gaze. It hits him, suddenly, how little he knows about Niki Nihachu. "Did it? It was— loved."

(There are better ways to phrase that, Sapnap knows, but... he can't think of them right now. Can't think of a better way to convey the emotions he knows Quackity felt about L'Manberg, the emotions he’s certain Tommy and Tubbo must've felt as well.)

Niki grimaces. "I know. I loved it once. It still needed to go," she says, and her voice is quiet but her words are certain. "Sometimes we can love things and they still hurt us."

"I know." Believe him, he knows. "But you don't think it was fixable? You don't think it could've gotten better?"

Niki shrugs. It looks– strained. She sounds a lot more certain than she looks. "Sometimes you need to cut your losses and go.”

“But… really, after everything? After all you guys went through to get it? Just… leaving it behind?” He can’t imagine fighting that hard for something, just to leave it behind. Can’t imagine caring so much, and then letting it go. The thought of it alone makes him feel nauseous.

“It had to be left behind. It was– well, it was a massive shithole. It had to go.”

Sapnap’s eyes widen. That’s… not what he was expecting. "So, are you saying there was nothing redeemable? It couldn’t be– fixed?"

"It was founded on drugs, Sapnap. It was good for a while, and I wanted it to be better, but its foundation was– rotten.” Niki takes a deep breath, looks up at the stars. Sapnap follows her gaze.

The stars are remarkably clear here, in Kinoko. He’s spent many a night watching them, waiting up for Karl, for Quackity, for George, for anyone.

“I loved L'Manberg, and I fought for it with everything I had, and it wasn’t enough. By the end of it, the best thing it could do was die." A pause. Niki nods, once, seemingly to herself. She takes a breath in, lets it out. "It was good to speak to you, Sapnap."

He nods. Any words he might say in response feel stuck in his throat, so he simply stands and stares out at the rest of the SMP as Niki walks away.

The best thing it could do was die.

Right.

Dream would kill Tommy later that spring. Upon finding out, Sapnap lurches outside and finds himself on his knees, throwing up onto the lawn.

“Locking him up was supposed to stop that,” Sapnap says when he can finally breathe again. He finds that his hands are buried deep in the grass, his grip tight on it enough that his knuckles are turning white. He can’t bring himself to let go. “He wasn’t– this wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to be– declawed.”

Punz stares impassively at him, red tint in their eyes, but hey, at least they followed Sapnap outside. That has to mean something, right? Sure, the egg had– twisted Punz, but– he told Sapnap about Tommy’s death. He followed Sapnap outside.

That has to mean something.

“Tommy was in the prison, apparently,” Punz says finally. There’s not quite regret on his face, not quite reluctance, but– a worry. A pinch between his eyebrows displaying a shadow of unease, of concern. Is it– for Sapnap? It’s hard to imagine that it would be, but Sapnap doesn’t know who else. “He went into the cell, specifically.”

“Still,” Sapnap stresses, and he puts the matter of Punz’s weird behavior out of his mind. If he spent time worrying about everyone who acted odd on this server, he’d never do anything else. “It shouldn’t have happened. How could Sam have let that happen? Isn’t he meant to be the fucking warden?”

“I don’t know,” Punz admits. “But the Egg is happy about it.”

“Oh, not the Egg again.” Sapnap groans, and Punz raises an eyebrow at him, managing to convey enough offense that Sapnap manages to let go of the grass he’d been damn near ripping out of the ground so he can use that hand to flip them off. “I’m serious, you cannot still be on about this shit. What would you even get from it? Last I checked, eggs don’t pay well.”

“You wanna know?” Punz asks, looking down at him. It’s the most engaged he’s seemed all conversation. “I could introduce you to the Egg. It would tell you.”

And Sapnap doesn’t even need to pause to think about his reaction to that one. “Absolutely fucking not.”

Punz shrugs. “You do you, man. The offer’s still there.”

“Thanks,” he replies sarcastically, and sighs, rocking back to rest on his heels. He finds himself watching silently as Punz walks away.

And– oh, Prime. Tommy is dead.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Sapnap is chopping wood and studiously ignoring his comm when he decides to not go to the Red Banquet.

It’s out of a sudden burst of spite, a flash of red-hot anger not yet buried. He’s chopping wood because he’s angry, because he’s trying to work through that, but it’s not exactly working.

Well not going to the banquet is partially out of spite, and partially because of one of the first full conversations he’s had with Karl in what feels like months, but surely couldn’t have been that long.

“Listen, I just have a bad feeling about the banquet,” Karl had said after Sapnap expressed his plan to go. Sapnap remembers having opened his mouth to argue back, just to be cut off by Karl saying: “Like, a really bad feeling. And– and you know I’m great at feeling things.”

He ended that one with a waggle of his eyebrows, which Sapnap studiously ignored. He crossed his arms instead, frowned. “Karl, it’s Bad,” he’d said. “It’s a party put on by Bad. What do you think he’s going to do? Feed us poisoned muffins?”

“No, obviously not,” Karl had replied, “but he hasn’t really been around lately, has he? And he’s been up to his neck in that Egg Cult stuff, right?”

Sapnap had quite literally bit down on his tongue to stifle the instinctive retort of ‘well, you haven’t been around enough to know if Bad has been around or not.’ Instead he’d breathed in, breathed out, stared at the wall to calm down. “Karl, this is meant to be an apology for the Egg thing,” he’d finally said, voice deliberately steady.

“An apology where you aren’t allowed to bring your armor or weapons, even though Bad should know you’d be more comfortable with them.”

“It’s a safety measure! It makes sense on this server!”

“No, what makes sense on this server is acknowledging that people have zero reasons to trust them, and letting everyone wear armor so they feel safe enough to rebuild that trust,” Karl argued back, before making a show of rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. You need to get me new Netherite, so you’re gonna be too busy to go.”

Sapnap’s jaw dropped open. “I need to get you– Karl, I just got you new Netherite, how did you already lose it?”

“Oh come on, that was a while ago.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Fucking– fine,” Sapnap said. If Karl was willing to pull the Netherite card, there would be no winning. “Fine! I won’t go, if you feel that strongly about it! Happy now?”

“I’m thrilled,” Karl had replied, dropping his arms back down to his sides. “But I still do need Netherite.”

Sapnap had aquised, and they’d left almost immediately– a decision he was now beginning to regret as he waited up for George. Before they left, he’d pulled George aside and asked him to tell Bad that he was sorry he couldn’t make it, but Karl had needed him– if George could find a good time to, of course. But as the night crept on, Sapnap found himself growing more and more antsy. Netherite mining hadn’t taken as long as it could’ve, despite Karl seemingly doing his best to slow it down, and once they’d returned to Kinoko, Karl had returned to his library, leaving Sapnap to wander the streets alone once more.

He was almost tempted to say fuck it and head to the Banquet, to show up and apologize for being late, but he’d made Karl a promise, and he didn’t want to go back on his word. Plus, in the unlikely event that Karl emerged from his library tonight, Sapnap didn’t want him to be left wandering Kinoko alone, searching for signs of life he wouldn’t find. The chances of that happening were minimal– Karl’s library had become synonymous with Karl leaving for a while– but minimal was not zero. Sapnap wasn’t ready to chance it.

Waiting around Kinoko is excruciating however, and he can already begin to feel himself regretting the decision to wait up for George. But– he wants to see George before he falls asleep again, he wants to hear about the party from someone he trusts, and it’s not that he doesn’t trust Foolish or Sam, it’s just that… well, it’s George. Dream might’ve decided to wipe his hands of them, might’ve decided he was better off without them, might’ve betrayed them and then left them and then gone and gotten himself locked up–

Anyway. Dream might be gone, but George isn’t– George won’t ever be, if Sapnap has anything to say about it– and they’re still the Dream Team. Even fragmented. It’s George’s account of the party he wants to hear.

It’s on that note that he sees a sudden flash of a torch in the distance, and he jerks, sits up straight. He slides the sword he’s been resting in his lap into its sheath, stands up.

“George!” he calls out, already moving from the balcony down to the paths. “George!”

George doesn’t appear to hear him, or if he does, Sapnap misses his response. That just pushes him to move quicker, jogging down the stairs in George’s general direction.

He notices that George is gesturing as he walks, and he appears to be… talking to someone?

Sapnap feels one of his eyebrows raise in confusion because… well, there’s no one there. It’s just George and the night sky.

“George?”

“Oh, hi,” George says, spinning around to look at Sapnap. “What are you doing up? It’s… late?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap replies, “yeah, I was waiting for you to get back.”

“Right,” George says. “Uh, why? Not that I’m not flattered, but I was kind of expecting you to be asleep.”

Sapnap opens his mouth to reply, just to be cut off by George spinning around and throwing his arms up again. “Oh my GOD, shut up, you’re literally so weird, this isn’t even about you.”

“Uh, George?”

“No, not everything is about you, actually! If you wanted this to be about you, maybe you should’ve shown up at the Banquet.”

“Gogy?”

Silence, then–

“You’re literally dogwater, actually. The time I actually needed you, and you weren’t there.” This is the most fired up Sapnap’s seen George in months. It’s got him feeling more than a little uneasy. What happened at that party?

“Let’s go inside,” Sapnap suggests, and cautiously reaches out to grab George’s arm. George startles, finally looks back to him.

“Yeah, sure, okay.”

When they get inside George and Karl’s house, George speaks again, seemingly to continue his weird, one-sided conversation. He turns, looks at Sapnap. Looks past him. Sapnap looks behind his shoulder, but he can't see anything there, just mushroom walls, wood, and three item frames.

"You didn't save me," George says. It's accusing, and Sapnap feels himself flinching back from it despite himself.

"George—"

"You didn't save me," he repeats, still looking past Sapnap. "You were supposed to."

The words hit like a blow. Sapnap didn’t know, he wasn’t there– but that’s no excuse. He doesn’t know how to reply, but he has to say something, anything. "George—"

"I'm going to bed," he says shortly, then turns to actually look at Sapnap. "I didn't get to tell your Dad anything. He kind of tried to kill us. Kind of awkward. Probably best you weren't there."

Sapnap blinks. “Um,” he says eloquently, “what?”

George rolls his eyes. “Are you even listening?”

“I am, I– who were you just talking to?”

“Oh my god, is that literally taking precedence over the fact that Bad tried to murder me?”

“I didn’t– I was going to get to that in a moment! But you were talking to someone, and there’s no one there, so I was maybe a little concerned you’d lost your marbles, my mistake.”

“Oh my God, you’re so dramatic. It’s literally just XD, calm down.”

“XD? Wait, is that the god that Dream–”

Fuck. The look on George’s face at the name Dream is enough to stop Sapnap right in his tracks, and he lets the rest of the sentence die unsaid. “Uh, anyway. What do you mean, Bad tried to kill you?”

“I mean he tried to kill me. He was sacrificing people to that Egg of his. Or, well, he was going to. Big Q kinda intercepted it after Foolish kicked it.”

“Quackity?”

“Yeah, and Technoblade, which… that was unexpected? I don’t know. I was kind of near the back, I think. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“You weren’t paying attention to the murder banquet.”

“Yeah, sorry, I was a little bit preoccupied with panicking about the actual lava blocking all of my exits to want to deal with taking notes on whatever domestic issue the Eggpire had with Puffy. It’s not my fault they decided to air all their dirty laundry before getting on with the executions.”

“I didn’t say it was your fault–”

“Your tone said otherwise–”

“No, it didn’t–”

“Anyway, your Dad and all the other Eggpire people ended up running away, so that was good, I guess? I mean, not for you, but like, for our continued survival, you know.”

Sapnap pauses, deliberately taking a breath to calm himself down. He’s only just now processing how close George came to losing a canon life tonight. The thought terrifies him. “Are you like, okay?”

“I mean, besides the fact that I was nearly brutally murdered, I suppose so, yeah.” George flicks his hand dismissively, but his words are George-typical dramatizations, and that’s both concerning and reassuring.

Concerning, because that means that the events of the night truly got to George, enough that he’s still pissed. Reassuring, because he’s feeling safe enough to actually talk about it, not just brush it off and immediately go to sleep.

And that means that Sapnap can’t distract himself with George any longer, has to actually consider the information he’s been given.

So, Bad had invited him to a murder banquet. And at said banquet, Bad nearly killed George, would’ve probably tried to kill Sapnap, had he been there.

His dad would’ve killed him, presumably for that stupid egg. Prime almighty. How can they recover from that? How does Sapnap not lose Bad too?

“I’m actually going to bed now,” George says, interrupting his thoughts, and Sapnap numbly bids him goodnight, can’t even find the fire within himself to try and protest, to try and keep George awake. He feels a bit like he’s been hollowed out, a shell of a person left out as decoration.

He sits at that table until the morning sun shines in on him.

When Dream made their server, he barely slept for a week straight.

Sapnap knows that he did sleep– once or twice he caught him dozing on the books multiple times, his eyes squeezed shut, hair hanging in his face– but it was much more likely when Sapnap went over that Dream would be awake, papers sprawled around him, quill in hand as he wrote something down. There had been a franticness in him that made Sapnap vaguely uneasy, as someone who’d seen that franticness first hand before, someone who’d seen how Dream could be consumed by his own ideas until George or Sapnap were able to bring him back to land.

Dream had always had big ideas, and big plans, and it had been the first thing George and Sapnap had really bonded over– their mutual experiences being swept up in that whirlwind. It wasn’t a bad whirlwind– far from it, in fact– but it was one that could get a bit overwhelming at times. Not usually, but… sometimes.

This idea specifically hadn’t seemed to be one that was going to be overwhelming to anyone except for Dream, though. Mainly because he wasn’t talking about it. He’d been unusually and infuriatingly tight-lipped about all his research, which had Sapnap out in the courtyards, training aimlessly, and George pouting as he denied doing any such thing with a degree of venom that wasn’t exactly common for George. After the second day of it all, Sapnap and George had wordlessly decided to switch off checking in on Dream– something Dream hadn’t seemed to notice. Dream hadn’t seemed to notice much of anything outside of his books since he first sat down, all those days ago.

So Sapnap hadn’t quite been wary when he walked into the library on day eight, just… a bit apprehensive. Not because he thought Dream wouldn’t be there or anything– on the contrary, he knew he would be, it was always easy enough to track down Dream back then. Hell, back then, Sapnap hadn’t thought he was capable of losing Dream, even if he tried. Dream was stubborn. He wouldn’t allow himself to be lost.

No, his apprehensiveness came more from the fact that he didn’t know if he was going to have to interact with anyone other than Dream while there. Dream had been caught up in conversation a few times when Sapnap poked his head in to make sure the former was still breathing, and he’d rather not have to loiter around awkwardly as Dream ordered what looked to be his fifth coffee of the day from the barista, who Sapnap had been 90% sure was a demon cosplaying as a cat.

(She’d seemed nice enough at the time. Long brown hair, shorter than him. Rather excitable. They’d made eye contact a few times, and seemingly were in agreement to not mention the mutual demon thing.

That’s still an agreement they have today. Or, at least, Tina hasn’t mentioned anything about it since she joined Kinoko, and Sapnap sure as hell isn’t about to bring it up. So as close to an agreement as they can get.)

Thankfully, Dream had seemed to be alone at his table that time. And for once, his nose wasn’t buried in a book or a journal. Instead, he had his comm out, and seemed to be typing something out on it.

“Dream,” Sapnap had called out, “yo, dude.”

“Sapnap!” Dream replied, with more enthusiasm than he’d had all week. “I was just about to text you and George, actually. You know where George is?”

“Asleep,” Sapnap said as he sat down, “or sulking under the covers. Maybe doing both at once. I’m not sure, I didn’t check when I left.”

Dream had frowned at first, but then shook his head, snorted. “Why does that not surprise me,” he said, the question coming out like a statement. Sapnap hadn’t bothered replying to it.

“So, you gonna share what you’ve been up to this last week? Or is that a secret?”

“Nah,” Dream said with a grin. “I’m sharing, I’m sharing, I just had to make sure I had everything right before doing so. What do you know about server creation?”

Sapnap’s eyes had gone wide. “Dude, no fucking way.”

“Yes way,” Dream replied, and he’d pulled out his journal, flipped to a page covered in cramped notes and diagrams. “So, it started when George mentioned liking that seed we were on the other day– or, well, other week, I guess, and then it just sort of… spiralled.”

By the end of the explanation, Sapnap was speechless, except for all the ways he wasn’t. “Are you for real?”

“Yeah, it’s our world,” Dream had said, pride unmistakable in his voice. Which, honestly? Valid. “It’s mostly ours, anyway. I, uh, made a deal.”

Years of warnings from Bad about demons and deals all hit Sapnap’s brain at once. “You what.”

Dream wheezed. “Your face– don’t worry about it, Pandas, seriously.”

Sapnap stared at him. “That was not comforting at all dude, what the fuck? Now I’m worrying about it!”

“It’s fine,” Dream had replied, waving away Sapnap’s concerns. “Trust me, I’ve got it all figured out.”

“You don’t just figure out deals like that, they’re not meant to be figured out–”

“Calm down, calm down, it’s fine–”

“It’s NOT fine, I’m gonna rat your ass out to Bad so hard–”

“Prime, I knew I should’ve told George about this first–”

“Oh, fuck off,” Sapnap said, and sighed. Despite how much he wanted to keep pressing his point, he knew deep down in his heart that it would be useless. Void, meet bedrock, and all that shit. There’s no way Dreamesp depending on whether or not everyone is recording for content would be able to convince him that whatever stupid ass deal he made was a good idea, and there’s no way he’d be able to convince Dream of the opposite. “Are you gonna at least tell me like, the terms of it?”

“I–”

“Are you getting murdered over here?” The cat cosplaying demon asked suddenly, appearing out of nowhere, causing them both to jump as they swiveled to look at her. She’d been holding something in her hands– what exactly it was escapes Sapnap’s memory, but he does remember she also had some kind of bag on her. “Because, uh, I’m clocking out, but if you’re getting murdered, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside. Company policy and all that, you see.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sapnap said, dropping his head down onto the table as he tried to get his heart rate back under control.

“Hi, Tina,” Dream had replied as he did so. “Not getting murdered, sorry for the racket. We were just, uh, talking. Loudly. Sorry about that.”

Sapnap’s memories of her response to that are foggy– he’d been more concerned with not dying of embarrassment. Dream could handle the small talk without him.

What he does remember is Dream saying, “Yeah, I’ve figured out the server. Actually, hell, maybe the server will get big enough for you to come visit, who knows?”

Sapnap’s head had shot up off of the table at that, giving Dream an aghast look, which Dream studiously ignored. Because a server that could get big enough for regular visitors required a lot to keep afloat, and the kind of deal Dream must’ve made to secure that…

“Maybe so,” the demon– Tina– had replied, cutting off his train of thought. “Well, good luck!” she said with a wave, which Dream returned as Sapnap glared him down. Once she was out of hearing range, Sapnap rounded back on him.

“What did you do?”

“Oh my god, calm down, it’s not that big a deal,” Dream had replied, before ducking his head, leaning in closer. “Actually, we need to go before Tina checks her bag to see why it weighs so much more than usual,” he whispered, hurriedly cleaning up his area. Sapnap felt his eyebrows creeping up his forehead, and he asked the same question again, with the same tone of voice.

“Don’t sound so accusing,” Dream had said with a grin, before starting to explain. “Listen, she was helpful when I was doing research, so I tipped her, right? Because like, tips. Who doesn’t like tips? And like she took the first one with no issue, but then she refused my next one, cause she said she was feeling bad because ‘it was too much, all she was doing was bringing me coffee’ which was a LOT, okay, she DESERVED those tips, I know I was being an annoying customer, I’ve literally been like camping out in their cafe, but she kept feeling too bad to take the tips I was leaving,” Dream explained, “so, I, uh, may have slipped the tip into her bag when we were just speaking. Which is why we should go, because she’s going to try and give it back, and we’ll be trapped in this whole cycle again.”

… Sapnap rolled his eyes. Of-fucking-course. Trust Dream of all people to do that. “Dude, how much did you leave her?”

“Like, twenty diamonds,” Dream whispered gleefully as Sapnap’s jaw dropped. What the fuck, Dream. “Come on, let's get George and go. We have a whole new world to explore!”

“You are not getting out of telling me more about that deal you made.”

(Dream had told him a bit more about the deal, eventually. After a lot of pushing and prodding on Sapnap’s part. But he hadn’t told him everything, and now, well–

Now, they’re in that world Dream made, and they’ve explored it and fought on it and bled for it. Now Dream isn’t a table away, but an ocean. Now, Tina is here, and she’s living in Sapnap’s kingdom, and Dream isn’t, and the only proof the three of them had ever interacted before was what Tina had mentioned, offhandedly, while moving into her apartment. She’d been carrying a box in while Sapnap helped set up her bedframe when she paused, said: “He left me twenty diamonds as a tip, you know.”

“... Yeah,” Sapnap had replied after a moment. He’d needed that moment to try to breathe through the sudden emotions that had swelled up in his chest, threatening to rise into his throat and choke him.

“But he deserves to be in that prison?”

And fuck, fuck, it hurt having to reply to that.

“Yeah.”)

Chapter Text

It’s warm out when Sapnap signs his life away to DreamXD. Too warm, especially considering the time of year, especially considering the time of night.

(Actually, the heat might be a side effect of DreamXD’s presence, now that he thinks about it– it’s not like he knows shit about how gods affect environments. Maybe DreamXD is the reason everything feels so wrong as they speak, as XD tries to get him to kill Bad, and he refuses.

He doubts it, though. Things have been feeling wrong for longer than just that night– things have been wrong since Dream escaped prison. Things have been wrong since Bad invited him to that murder banquet. Things have been wrong since Quackity left, since Karl stopped talking to him, since George fell asleep, since Dream–)

Anyway, the heat is heavy, to the point where it’s damn near palpable, and it takes everything he has to comprehend the book he finds, and use the guidelines it sets out to take the server’s god in circles, rules lawyering the shit out of him. His brain feels like mush as he argues with god, forces himself to stand up straight as he taunts the being he’s pretty sure Dream made his deal with, all those years ago. Sapnap is pushing his luck; he knows that logically, knows he’s angering an entity too powerful for him to fight, but at the moment, he can’t find it within himself to care.

After several rounds of back and forth, DreamXD gives him Dream’s location. The prison. Prime, how fucked up could Dream be, hanging out in the very place he was locked up in? Sapnap remembers the prison being miserable when he visited it– and he doubts Dream has undertaken renovating it to make it any more pleasant.

And– he doesn’t want to sign his life away in exchange for that information. Really, he doesn’t! But when he weighs his life against the server, against the havoc Dream surely will bring now that he’s out of the prison, it’s no competition. Briefly, he entertains a fantasy where George wakes up and helps him, where all three members of the Dream Team go down together, just like they always planned to, before dismissing it out of hand. This is his decision, not George’s. He won’t try to get George to help him bring Dream down, won’t doom all of them. Anyway, maybe if George lives, he’ll be able to do… something with Dream’s ghost. Fix him, maybe?

(In all honesty, the comfort of all three of them being permadead together, not ghosts, no server, no nothing, is… more tempting than it should be. They’d be together again, and the thought of that is… unthinkable, in the best of ways. Prime, he wants it almost as much as he hates that he’s even considering it.

… But he doesn’t want to be responsible for George’s death. He’s already struggling enough with accepting that he will be responsible for Dream’s.

So no, he’ll do this alone. George will live. The Dream Team will carry on through him.

… If George just wakes up, that is.)

The decision is made late on a Thursday evening, when Kinoko is empty, save Sapnap, and the skies are beginning to change colors.

Tina left earlier, saying she was going to work on the lounge and the railway to Snowchester. That’s a good thing, objectively, he acknowledges that in his mind as he waves goodbye, and again as he thinks back to it later. It’s a good thing, it’s helping Kinoko– Sapnap’s loneliness is of no matter. That’s his own problem. His own problem he hasn’t managed to fix.

(It sits cold in his heart, the reality that he’s the kind of person people leave. A nugget of truth he knows, but can’t quite seem to swallow, can’t quite seem to accept.)

That unacceptance, perhaps, is what drives him to George’s room.

The room is spawnproofed to hell and back, as is the area around it– Sapnap’s never been able to shake the fear that something will get to George when he’s not around, that George will be trapped too deeply in his slumber to fight back. It’s the fear that keeps him closer to Kinoko than not, the fear that brings him back even when Karl is gone.

And Karl is gone more and more these days.

Sapnap sits down by the bed, looks out the window. He doesn’t see any mobs there yet, which is good. It’s enough that Sapnap is able to bring himself to swallow the lump in his throat, look down at the still form of his friend.

Sometimes, George looks peaceful in his sleep. Today is not one of those days. If he wasn’t so experienced with trying to wake George up, he’d think that this lack of peace could be a good sign, but he knows from experience that it means nothing. When George is trapped in his magical slumber like this, the slumber that eliminates the need for basic human necessities, there’s nothing Sapnap can do to awaken him.

It’s worrying. There’s nothing he can do about it. Even more worrying, upon waking up, George has never questioned the chair next to his bed. Sapnap doesn’t even think George has noticed it, just like he hasn’t noticed the changing of the seasons, the way Kinoko keeps evolving. Sapnap can’t do anything more about that either, can only point it out and hope that one day George picks it up.

“George,” he tries anyway, because fuck anyone who would say he isn’t trying. “George,” he says, a bit louder, places a hand on his shoulder to shake him. “George, wake up.”

Silence. If this was a few months ago, when Sapnap didn’t know the outcome of this, he’d raise his voice, get angry. Yell. But it’s not a few months ago, and Sapnap does know the outcome of this, so he just lets go of George’s shoulder instead, feels his fear increase once again.

He has to hit a limit on the amount of fear he can feel, Sapnap tells himself. At some point, he’ll hit his limit. He has to. It can’t keep just going on like this.

(If the past year has been any indication, it will keep going on like this.)

The thought chills him to the core. It can’t keep going on like this. And–

It won’t keep going on like this, because he won’t be here to come and sit by George’s bed, to beg him to wake up. It won’t, because he’ll be permadead, and there will be no one here to stop George from simply wasting away in his dreams.

(Tina can be persuasive, so maybe she could do what Sapnap can’t, and convince George to stay, but… he won’t ask her to sign away her life to this. And Karl is never in Kinoko. Who else would there even be? Dream’s ghost? How can he trust Dream’s future ghost to have what's best for George in mind?)

He has a letter written for George in the event of his death, but no guarantee that he’ll be awake when Sapnap dies, no guarantee that he’ll be here to read it. Sapnap could kill Dream tomorrow, and George would be none the wiser. He’d just slumber on.

There’s something horribly wrong about that thought. Something that makes Sapnap’s breath catch in a way it hasn’t since he first realized what, exactly, the terms of his deal meant. He breathes in, breathes out, feels the room getting narrower. Places a hand on his chest. Tries to breathe again. His chest hurts, suddenly. That’s weird.

Wait, is he having a heart attack? Should he be calling Ponk?

The room seems to be almost warping in front of his eyes. He can’t breathe. He tries to breathe. He can’t breathe.

Dream and Sapnap will die, and George will be none the wiser.

He finds himself blinking rapidly, his attempts at breathing coming faster. Yet he still can’t breathe. Sapnap almost feels detached from himself. Like his body isn’t quite real. Like it isn’t quite his own. Is that really how the Dream Team is going to go down? Separated? On their own? Wrapped in hurt and hatred, with no final words? No goodbyes?

He thinks he may be having a heart attack. Scratch that, he’s certain he’s having a heart attack. His chest hurts. He can’t breathe. Forget Dream, he’s going to die alone in this room, despite George sleeping there, right next to him. He’s going to leave George with a dead body when he awakens. If he awakens. Oh, Prime.

The room blurs beyond recognizability. Sapnap tries to breathe. Fails to, again and again.

Prime.

He doesn’t know how much time passes until he’s finally able to actually register a breath, instead of just having it slip away from him. He’s– he’s in George’s room. George is asleep in front of him. Moonlight shines in through the window. There’s a zombie outside Sapnap needs to kill. It could’ve been a decade that passed, or a day. Maybe even only a minute.

Sapnap breathes in. Tries to think past the fear that’s still clogging up his senses. Raises a shaking hand to his face, just to find it wet. Huh. He hadn’t realized he’d started crying.

And– he’s still shaking, despite not being cold. Despite the combination of the summer air and the lack of a fan in George’s room making it swelteringly hot. He– he should get George a fan, before he goes. Make it a bit more bearable to be under all those blankets.

Or maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he shouldn’t be encouraging this, making this easier, nicer, better. Maybe he should be doing something about it.

But what?

He finds himself casting blurry eyes around the room, blinking rapidly to get any remains of tears out of them. What can he do? He’s no magician. He’s no god. He can’t break whatever it is that’s keeping George like this. He can’t make Dream love them again, and try to bring George back like that.

And– it’s the thought of Dream that brings the memories back. Memories of conversations from before the SMP. Stories of ancient libraries, of books and strongholds and strategies. Rumors of a mysterious god that guarded a dragon, a god powered by that which he protected.

Dream had been obsessed with all of it, at one point. But something about the deal Dream made, something about the SMP starting had curtailed that obsession, and now Dream is locked up in prison, and the god that holds Sapnap’s soul wears Dream’s face.

Could the two be connected? Could XD break whatever it is that’s keeping George asleep, provided he gives XD some kind of motivation to do so? (He’s a god, the answer has to be yes, right?) Could Dream’s old obsession be the key to that motivation? (Why did Dream stop caring about the End?)

It’s a wild shot in the dark. It’s a wild shot in the dark with both hands tied behind his back, a broken gun, and like sixteen unnecessary blindfolds. The chances of it working are so miniscule they’re basically nonexistent. It’s not something he should be wasting his time on, not when he knows where Dream is, knows that he should be fulfilling his promise. But for George–

Would it really even be for George?

There’s a degree of choice, in George’s slumber. Sapnap knows this. It wouldn’t hurt so much if that wasn’t the case.

So taking that away– forcefully waking him up–

It's the cruelest thing he's done in a while. It's the kindest outcome he can think of.

He'd want a fighting chance, if he was in George's shoes. Even if he’d chosen to sleep, he’d want to be awake if George was going to do anything half as stupid as Sapnap was planning. He'd want to get to yell at George, to tell him he's being a fool. He'd want to say goodbye.

That's what he's giving George with this— a goodbye. A final time to tell him how much of an idiot he’s being.

(This is what he’s giving himself: one final comfort as he walks around with his will in his own pocket. One final fuck you to the god who trapped him in this. He doesn’t want to die, but, well…

He’s going to, because he made a deal, and he keeps his promises, and after everything he’s done, it’s his duty to do this to keep the server safe. After everything he’s done, he has to declaw the server’s biggest threat, and there’s no question that once Dream is like Ghostbur was, he’ll be declawed.)

He can almost convince himself it’s not murder when he thinks about it like that. He can almost sit with himself when he reframes it in his brain that way.

Then he remembers killing Tubbo at the final control room, and the effect those deaths had on the server, and how those deaths were very real despite not being final, and the illusion falls to pieces in his mind. It cracks and shatters like those porcelain cups Sapnap remembers Karl stealing years ago– not that he’s supposed to know about the stealing part– the cups that took the brunt of George’s shock when Sapnap had to tell him what happened to Dream.

He feels sick whenever he thinks about it. About what he’s going to do. So he doesn’t think about it. It being killing Dream, of course.

(He sees Dream die in his dreams whenever he sleeps, anyway. And he’s never been able to fathom why those dreams always have him feeling sick upon waking up.)

Sapnap doesn’t like sleeping very much anymore, but that’s irrelevant. The truth is that at this rate, one of these days, George is going to fall asleep, and he won't wake up. Sapnap doesn't think he's capable of withstanding that. Doesn't think he can leave with that on his conscience, with the knowledge that the one friend who never betrayed him was doomed to follow him into a grave soon enough.

(Because who would keep out the mobs, if Sapnap wasn't there? Who would keep his body safe and alive and functioning? Karl can't always be there. Tina has a life outside of them.

But Sapnap doesn't. Sapnap never has. His life has always been his friends. No more, no less. He doesn't know if Dream knew that when he left, if he knew he'd be ripping out part of Sapnap's life-force and leaving it out for the vultures.

It's no wonder that he'd wait eons for George and Karl and Quackity. It’s no wonder he’s waiting right now.)

In the end, it's simple. He already knows he's going to pull Dream into the land of the dead after him. He won't let George do that to himself too.

“If you’re going to leave me,” he says to George’s still body, which is not quite dead but so far from alive that it hurts, “you’re going to have to walk away on your own two feet.”

That night, he writes another fake name in the Death Book to summon DreamXD again. Asks him if he’ll wake George up.

XD laughs in his face.

“HE’S HAPPIER THIS WAY,” XD says, and leaves.

And– Fuck that. Fuck XD for thinking he knows anything about George.

He guesses he’ll be doing this the hard way, then.

Chapter Text

After that, after committing to the half-cocked pipe dream that is taking on God to get George back, Sapnap finds himself on the road to Las Nevadas.

Quackity had said that he was welcome, after all. That even though Karl isn’t– and fuck, that stings to think about– Sapnap himself is still welcome in the Las Nevadas borders.

Sapnap has no reason to doubt that that’s still true. Or, at least, he hadn’t until he arrived at Las Nevadas and found that the security had increased tenfold since his last visit.

After all, he hadn’t run into the Warden last time.

“Sam,” Sapnap greets him with a wave, despite his wariness. Despite his anger. The breakout was a fucking disaster that should’ve never happened, and Sapnap doesn’t think he’ll ever be capable of looking at Sam without thinking of that.

Oh well. With the kind of deals Sapnap has been making, it’s not like he’ll be looking at anyone for very long now. There’s all but a literal timer to his death hovering over his head now.

“Sapnap,” Sam greets, cold, stern. More like the Warden than Sapnap is comfortable with. “Why are you here.”

It’s a demand, not a question. It takes everything in Sapnap not to bristle at that. He metaphorically pats himself on the back for his control. “I, uh, wanted to speak with Quackity. Is he in?”

While he speaks, Sapnap rises up onto his toes to try and look over Sam’s shoulder, like he’ll find Quackity right there if he just looks hard enough. Predictably, he doesn’t see Quackity. Just his luck. And Sam doesn’t reply for a moment, which has Sapnap tensing up, but when Sapnap turns back to look at him, he has his communicator out, and is rapidly typing something in. Which is a good sign? Maybe?

“Why,” Sam demands, looking sideways to meet Sapnap’s eyes.

“Um.” Well, that’s the killer question, isn’t it? Why is Sapnap here? “We’re– fiances,” he says, then cringes. Is that still true? It is to Sapnap, but after that last interaction with Karl… “Or friends at least. I’m not sure, exactly, but he said I was welcome here, so…”

“Hmm,” Sam says. “Wait.”

Sapnap sighs, nods, rocks back on his heels. He takes another look at the increased protections around Las Nevadas. It reminds him almost of L’Manberg. He’s not exactly sure what that means. He’s not sure he wants to actually investigate that line of thought any further.

“He’s willing to see you,” Sam says after another moment. “Follow me.”

Quackity looks good.

He's in a similar getup to last time they met: white dress shirt, dress pants, suspenders, shoes so shiny that even Sapnap, who couldn't give less of a fuck about shoes, notices. And he looks good in it. That last part isn’t really a surprise— Quackity looks good in everything— but it still hits Sapnap, especially after so much time apart.

Then Quackity gets closer and Sapnap notices the eye bags, the hollow to his cheeks, the way his shoulders are stiff, movements jerky.

Ah.

"Sapnap's here," Sam announces as Quackity walks closer.

"Thanks, Sam," Quackity says. And– there’s tension in the room, tension Sapnap doesn’t actually think he’s responsible for. Did something happen between Sam and Quackity? Could it be about the breakout?

Those thoughts are abruptly cut off when Quackity finally, finally looks up, meets Sapnap's eyes.

A weight Sapnap didn't realize he was carrying slips off his shoulders at the eye contact, and he finds himself straightening up further, feeling almost boyish with it. He can't be blamed for that— it's exciting to see Quackity again. Even considering what a sour note their last meeting ended on, even when taking in account how their relationship is at the moment— it's still Quackity.

And how could Sapnap not be excited to see him again?

"Hi," Sapnap says, and he can practically hear himself grinning like a fool as he says it, which is more than a little embarrassing. He pauses, clears his throat, tries again, tries to school his face into something cooler. "Uh, hey."

Quackity raises an eyebrow, but there’s something distinctly like amusement on his face. (Yeah… Sapnap’s pretty sure he’s failing miserably at fixing his face.)

"Sapnap, my man! It's been too long!"

"It has," Sapnap agrees breathlessly, and he hears footsteps behind him, a door opening, then shutting. It’s just them. “It really has. How– how are you? How have you been? I noticed, uh, the extra security.”

Quackity’s face drops minisculely at that last bit, and Sapnap internally curses. Right. Maybe not the best thing to bring up. He opens his mouth, maybe to apologize, maybe to just move on, but Quackity speaks before he can even think of what he might want to say.

“This server’s a dangerous place, you know,” Quackity says casually. “I need to keep Las Nevadas safe. I’m sure you understand. How’s Kinoko doing?”

“Kinoko?” Sapnap asks, feeling thoroughly out of his depth. That is… not what he expected Quackity to ask about. He didn’t expect Quackity to mention anything even slightly Karl related, and Kinoko is definitely Karl related. Could that be a good sign? “Uh, Kinoko’s good. Tina’s been talking about making like, a little cafe or something?” He pauses, thinks back to the other cafes on the server. Feels his eyes widen. “Not a maid cafe! Not another cat maid cafe. I think. I mean, she’s a cat, but I don’t think that is factoring into the cafe building. I think she just wanted like, a place to sell coffee and stuff. Or something. But it’s not a cat maid cafe.”

And– Quackity’s laughing. In fact, Quackity’s got one hand braced on his desk for balance, and he’s laughing, and Sapnap feels himself go red, but he can’t find it within himself to be angry about it. It’s a little embarrassing, sure, but Quackity’s amusement is worth it. “Good to hear,” Quackity says once he’s calmed down a bit, though he’s hiding the occasional snicker behind his hand. “Very good to hear. Smart to expand industry and all. Hell, maybe Kinoko will rival Las Nevadas someday.”

Sapnap laughs nervously. “I doubt it, man,” he says, “economy isn’t really our purpose, or like, our focus.”

“Oh? What is your focus, then?”

Sapnap shrugs. “Just making a place that’s like, safe, you know? A place we can hang out without being worried about like, everything else.”

“We’ve got that in common, then,” Quackity says with a grin. “Here, follow me. Let’s talk over dinner.”

It’s after dinner that Sapnap dares bring Karl up again.

“You know, Karl–”

“Don’t.”

Sapnap freezes in place. Shit. Okay, maybe bringing up Kinoko was not a sign that Sapnap should try to fix things. Maybe he was just… curious about Kinoko, or something. Right.

“Okay, okay, I won’t push the Karl thing right now,” Sapnap acquiesces, holding his hands up. He doesn’t know quite how to navigate this world yet– this new city, this new Quackity.

He’d like to learn how to, though.

(... He doesn’t think he’ll get to. Wonders, absentmindedly, if Quackity can see the timer ticking down over his head, if he has any idea what's coming for Sapnap. For a time, Quackity was one of the two people who knew him best. The fact that Sapnap can't say that anymore hurts.)

From Quackity, in response, there is a long moment of silence. A sudden frown appearing on his face, just to smooth out into an expression Sapnap could best describe as pained. Then, tersely– “Okay, why are you here, man?”

“Quackity?”

“Why are you here? What can I do for you? I’m assuming you came here for a reason.”

It hurts, that Quackity assumes he’s only here because he wants something. That he doesn’t think Sapnap could be here just to see him.

But is it a fair assumption for Quackity to make? At this point, he doesn’t know. What even makes an assumption fair?

I traded my life to kill my brother, he doesn’t say. I’m planning on walking straight into God’s domain and calling his bluff to try and save George, because I don’t know what else I can do, he doesn’t say. My dad would’ve killed me at the Banquet, and I don’t think he’ll ever apologize for that, he doesn’t say. Karl’s gone again, he doesn’t say. All I have left is Punz, and he couldn’t feel further away, he doesn’t say.

“I–” Sapnap starts, cuts himself off. Come home, he suddenly wants to say, and he wants to say it more than anything, wants to say it so badly he aches with it.

“You said I could come,” he settles on. “And I– I wanted to see you again. That okay?”

A moment of silence. “Yeah,” Quackity says, uncharacteristically quietly. “Yeah, it is. Here, follow me. Let’s go to the Space Needle.”

Sapnap nods his agreement, and follows him. And– he’s following Quackity when the memory, when Dream’s words worm themselves into his brain, insidious and unwanted.

Quackity was torturing me [...] he was trying to get the Revival Book, and so he was torturing me.

God. He’s been doing such a good job at not thinking about that one, too.

Dream lies, he reminds himself as he stares at Quackity’s back. Quackity wouldn't have tortured him. The very concept of it is unthinkable.

For just a moment, he finds himself thinking about it.

And– he's fucking lucky that he's walking behind Quackity when he does so, because he knows the thought makes him recoil. No– there's no way. He might not quite recognize every part of this version of his fiancé, might not know what he's missed, but Quackity wouldn't do that. He wouldn't care to, right? Sure, he hated Dream, but it couldn’t have been like– super personal or anything. Sure, he'd put Dream on the Butcher Army's hitlist– sure, Dream's interference with Techno's execution helped lead to his scarring–

Sapnap shuts his eyes briefly, a hint longer than a blink. Fuck. He can't think about this now. Not while in the streets of Las Nevadas, not with the glittering lights above him. Not with Quackity walking in front of him, uncharacteristically silent despite the noise of the city. Not when the remains of his life are like this, scattered and broken, a disaster with a common denominator– him.

Dream lies. That's the end of the story. It has to be.

"So, the casino opened, right?" Sapnap asks, suddenly desperate to fill the silence between them. "Tell me about it?"

Quackity looks back at him for a long moment. In that moment, Sapnap finds that he's breathless, practically held in place by his own suspense.

Then— a half smile, uncertain but real. Quackity slows down his steps, allowing Sapnap to catch up. "Yeah," he says, "yeah, sure, the casino opened, I'll tell you about it."

(It doesn't fix anything, not really. It's not like they talk about anything that really matters. Sapnap can't bring himself to mention the missing rings that should be on Quackity's finger, Quackity keeps the conversation on the straight and narrow, far, far away from anything that could lead them to the topic of the last few months. They're quite the duo, the two of them.

Then, stupidly–)

“He didn’t mean it, you know,” Sapnap says clumsily, then wrinkles his brow, goes back. “Or, well, he did mean it, but it wasn’t him. Like, it was him, but it wasn’t.”

Quackity freezes in place. For a moment, he’s as still as a statue, unmoving, unchanging. Then– “Don’t,” Quackity says sharply. “Sapnap–”

Shit, he has to get this out quick. Has to make Quackity understand. “Listen, there’s something wrong with it all, okay–”

“Yeah,” Quackity interrupts calmly. Too calmly. The anger is clear in his voice when he speaks. “Yeah, I’d say there’s something fucking wrong, and that’s the fact that Karl decided we have no history, that’s the fact that Karl decided he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. That’s what’s fucking wrong, Sapnap.”

“That’s not what I meant. Well, it is, but it’s not– anyway, Karl’s just been– weird. Like, in general.”

“Why do you think I care about how Karl’s been?” Quackity asks, drawing himself backwards. His gaze feels piercing. “He’s made it clear he doesn’t care about how I’ve been.”

Part of his brain pipes up to remind him that, unlike Sapnap himself, both Quackity and Dream have always gotten more eloquent in fights, not less. There’s no way Sapnap will win this fight, not when Quackity is this furious about it. He can tell, just by Quackity’s tone of voice, that he’s circling, that he’s found the weak point in Sapnap’s argument and is ready to tear it to shreds. There’s already blood in the water, despite Sapnap not knowing how he messed up. He’s already lost. It’s useless to try.

Sapnap tells that part of his brain to shut the fuck up. He’s gonna try anyway.

“No, but listen–” Sapnap says, pauses to rethink his approach. “Listen, you can’t tell me you just don’t care.”

Quackity’s head tilts slightly to the side. He doesn’t smile. “Why can’t I? I don’t care, Sapnap.”

The breath is knocked out of him. For a moment, all he can do is stare at Quackity and gape.

“That’s not– you can’t–”

“I can’t what? What, pray tell, can’t I do exactly?”

Sapnap opens his mouth to reply. Fails to have any words come out. Shuts it again, then opens it to try again. “But–”

“If you’re going to keep talking about him, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Quackity says, voice cold.

Sapnap wants to fight. He wants to dig his heels in and yell back, wants to make Quackity understand somehow.

But he’s never been good with words, and he doesn’t want to risk losing Quackity. It’s selfish of him, but he doesn’t want to die with Quackity cursing his name.

He tried. He failed. He should be getting used to that by now.

“I– won’t,” Sapnap says defeatedly. There’s a small part of him that kind of wants to crawl under some covers and never come back out. Jesus Christ, why is everything like this these days? “I– okay, we can just talk about something else. Um. Business! How’s the business coming?”

Quackity stares at him silently for a moment. “The business is going well,” he finally says. “I– do you seriously want me to get more specific about the business?”

Fuck it. “Yeah, yeah, I would.”

(Quackity sees him out of Las Nevadas right before dawn hits, when the first rays of light are just beginning to come over the horizon. "As much as I’d love to stand around talking all day, I do have a country I need to run," Quackity says, smooth as ever, "and so do you, I’d assume. Thanks for coming to Las Nevadas, man. Our borders are always open to a friend, just say the word."

Friend. Right. The word sits like ash on his tongue. He still doesn’t think he can bear asking about the lack of rings on Quackity’s finger. Not after all the blows he’s already suffered. "Yeah, thanks," Sapnap somehow manages in response. "I'll, uh, remember that. Take care of yourself, would you?"

A grin. It reminds him of the old days in El Rapids. Reminds him enough that it makes his heart hurt. "I always do, Sapnap,” Quackity says, “I always do.")

Chapter Text

The sun is just beginning to make its way over the horizon when Sapnap finds himself stopping by Tubbo's to ask him about methods of incapacitating DreamXD. Not directly of course, but… Tubbo's not stupid. He definitely figured out at least part of what Sapnap was hinting at.

(Tubbo’s place is uncomfortably close to where rumor says that Philza and Technoblade live. Sapnap’s not quite sure if he should be concerned for his own safety– surely Tubbo didn’t move in near his second murderer, so the rumors are probably wrong? But then again, this matches the descriptions he’s heard almost exactly, and Tubbo’s willing to talk to him, his first murderer, so maybe Tubbo just makes questionable decisions.)

"An area ban could work," Tubbo says as he lifts up the small zombie piglin toddler that's been following him around, and places him in a seat. The toddler makes a grab for Tubbo's hair, which Tubbo smoothly ducks away from, with the ease of a man who's done this a million times before.

And oh god, Tubbo is technically a man now, isn't he? Or nearly one, at least? That's terrifying to think about. It feels like just yesterday he was Tommy's politer, much more enjoyable to be around, shadow.

…Yeah, no, he's not gonna think anymore about that. Right now is not the time for an existential crisis.

"An area ban?" he asks instead, taking another one of the seats at the table. The toddler pauses with his quest to grab Tubbo's hair, and instead turns to glare at Sapnap.

Well that's fucking rude. Sapnap glares back at him, because yeah, no, he's not above having a glaring contest with a toddler. Some toddlers are little shits.

"Yeah, if you time it correctly, you can essentially overload an area of the server, forcing everyone in it to disconnect from the server."

"How long would they be disconnected for?"

"A… while. They'll have to delete the item entity to load back in. And you’d need to be like, an admin to do that, I think.” A pause. “Please stop glaring at my son.”

“Sorry,” Sapnap says, looking up. He’s not really sorry at all. “How would you do an area ban?”

Tubbo eyes him warily, then heads over to grab a bowl. He ladles some stew into it, brings it back to set in front of the toddler. He doesn’t look at the slightly wilted pink tulip in a vase on the table, which is kind of impressive, because the vase really is right in the middle of the table. “Well, you’ll need a lot of books. Like, a chestful of them. And quills too. You’re gonna have to write a lot, to get enough NBT data, but that’s the easy part.”

“That’s the easy part?” A chestful of books is meant to be easy? What kind of world is Tubbo living in?

Tubbo snorts. “Yeah. You ever heard of shulker boxes?”

… Oh, Sapnap does not like that tone at all. And he dislikes the fact that his answer to that question is “no” even more.

Shit, maybe the books will be the easy part of this.

He spends the rest of the week farming sugarcane, cows, and chicken, and decimating Kinoko’s squid population. The fact that he needs books and quills is in fact the easier problem to handle.

And the “needing a shulker box” problem is just that: a problem. He figures it’s smart to do something else while he tries to figure out how the hell he’s going to fix it. Tubbo said that shulker boxes were usually only obtainable by going to the End, which sucks, because well… he needs the shulker box to get to the End in the first place.

Anyway, Kinoko is quiet during that week– eerily so. It’s almost unusual, despite all the ways it’s not– things have admittedly gotten louder since Tina joined, since Callahan started hanging around, but it’s still quiet compared to the way things used to be, back at the Community House. He doesn’t remember ever feeling alone there.

Here, it’s almost all he feels.

He considers making a farm for the sugarcane, but redstone reminds him of Sam, and Sam reminds him of the breakout, and the breakout reminds him of Dream, and Dream reminds him of—

Yeah, anyway, that's a no. He can harvest the sugarcane by hand. Better that way.

During this week, he wracks his brain for ideas regarding the shulker box. The closest he gets to an actual plan is day five, when he remembers the impossible to get item Punz had been bragging about ages ago– the item that, if Sapnap is remembering correctly, is some kind of box.

So, stealing from Punz is an option. Not the smartest option, considering that Punz is one of the only relationships he has that hasn’t been completely ruined yet, but it’s also just a little bit of theft, and Punz is off playing Valorant most of the time anyway.

He doesn’t know if he could stand ruining his friendship with Punz, but this surely wouldn’t ruin it, right? This is the Dream SMP. Everyone steals. Everyone. Sure, this is an impossible item that’s irreplaceable, but like, items like that have been stolen before. Even impossible items. Even irreplaceable ones.

Well, he’ll do it if he needs to. But he’ll poke around a bit on the SMP first, see if he can find another way.

It’s not too far from Kinoko to the Prime Path, and he figures that’s probably the best place to start. Illegal items have made it onto the SMP before, be it through gifts, contests, or just gambling, and worst case scenario, he figures he can try to bait XD into gambling again. That’s probably not the smartest thing to do, considering the current state of his soul, but…

Whatever. Who cares? Maybe he could win.

He’s walking past the prison, determinedly not looking at it, not thinking about who exactly is inside it, when he catches sight of Ranboo.

Or, well, what remains of Ranboo.

It’s Ranboo’s ghost, he’s pretty sure. The figure looks like Ranboo, but he’s distinctly less opaque than Ranboo was, and he glides instead of walking. So, ghost, probably. Wilbur’s ghost had similar enough qualities anyway.

“Ranboo,” Sapnap greets with a strained smile, a small wave. “Hey.”

He is, admittedly, not exactly in the mood to interact with the ghost of the most recent person he failed to save. Sue him.

And for a moment, it seems like Ranboo’s ghost simply doesn’t hear him, as he continues hovering in place, staring out into the distance. For a moment, Sapnap allows himself to get his hopes up that maybe he doesn’t have to have this interaction, maybe—

“Sapnap!” Ranboo turns to look at him, and Sapnap barely contains his flinch. Ugh. He’s seen it before, but he’s never quite prepared for how gruesome the wound in Ranboo’s chest is, the eerie veil over his head, the eyes that are strangely responsive despite being painted on cloth. “Hi. Call me Ghostboo.”

Sapnap blinks. “I– alright. Hi, Ghostboo.”

“Heya, Sapnap. What are you doing here? This isn’t your usual haunt.” A pause, a laugh from the ghost. “It’s my usual haunt! Well, no, it isn’t actually. But it definitely isn’t yours, you’re not haunting things yet.”

Is that a… threat? Yet? “Yet?”

“We all die sooner or later. Now, not all of us stay dead, but that’s whatever, I guess.”

Well, he’s not wrong. “... Yeah. That… is true. Um–”

“Let's be honest, that other guy was kinda lame. Always crying about something. So annoying. Still, it would be nice if someone would bring him back, you know.”

“I–” How the actual fuck is he meant to reply to that. He thinks that’s a… pretty harsh opinion to have about one’s alive self, but who is he to say that? It’s not like he was friends with Ranboo. “I didn’t, uh, know, well, you, that well.”

Ranboo– Ghostboo– laughs. “Take my word for it, man. He was the lamest main character ever.”

Sapnap blinks. Right. He is just… not going to even comment on that. “So, uh, you doing anything over here?”

… He swears he used to be better at small talk.

“I mean, I was going to meet up with Aimsey, but it seems one of us must’ve gotten the time wrong, because they should’ve arrived by now, and I do not see an Aimsey yet.”

Sapnap nods. He hasn’t seen anyone else yet, so Ghostboo is probably right about that. Ghostboo continues to hover there, dead as dead can possibly be.

Well, nearly. Dead as dead can possibly be probably doesn’t include a ghost.

And– is that it? What the end of it all will be? Floating apparitions and dead bodies?

He’s going to be turning Dream into a shade like this soon, if he isn’t killed by XD first for his plan. He’s going to strip away what remains of his former friend until he’s simply an echo of his former self.

But– isn’t Dream already an echo of his former self?

How malleable truly is time? Can years of change simply be undone? How fucked of a person is he to almost wish for it? Becoming a ghost will change Dream, surely, but Sapnap definitely won’t be around to see it, around to know. Maybe it’ll change Dream back into who he used to be, just… deader.

(He’s not sure if that’s a nice thought or a horrifying one.)

Sapnap shakes himself out of his thoughts, tries to get his breathing back under control. Huh. He hadn’t noticed it getting fast. “Ghostboo–” he starts, then stops. Looks at the specter. Thinks.

When he was alive, Ranboo was rich or something, right? Sapnap swears he’s heard something about Ranboo being absolutely stacked. Like, Punz level stacked, maybe.

Could he maybe have a shulker too?

Well, fuck it. He might as well ask. "I’m actually looking for a shulker box. Is there, uh, any chance you know where to find one?"

"Oh, yeah!"

"Wait, seriously?" He’s got to be joking, right? There’s no goddamn way he’s this lucky.

"Yep, yep, Aliveboo made a deal with Foolish about one of his. I can give you it…” Ghostboo pauses.

“You can?”

Ghostboo frowns, looks down. His fingers beat rapidly against his leg. He looks… conflicted. Then, Ghostboo takes a (probably unnecessary) breath in, and turns to look him in the eyes. “If you resurrect me.”

Well, shit. “I don’t have the resurrection book, Dream does.”

Ghostboo shrugs. “It’s not my shulker. Aliveboo would probably be unhappy that I gave it away.” A laugh. “Aliveboo was unhappy about a lot of things.”

“I don’t–” Sapnap pauses, sighs. Tries to think of an answer. He could… ask XD to bring Boo back? Or, well. Threaten him into. He doubts XD would do anything for him willingly. “Don’t you like being dead though?”

“Oh great, that’s a complex question. I mean, yes,” Ghostboo says slowly, “but it’s not sustainable, you know? He was supposed to resurrect me, but he hasn’t done it yet, and so the soul is fading, and I’m fading with it.”

His confusion regarding who he could be is rapidly overtaken by his confusion at that final part of the sentence. “What? You’re fading?”

Ghostboo huffs. “Yep. So are you going to resurrect me, or not?”

“Are you saying that ‘fading’ happens to everyone?”

“Yes? I mean, I don’t know if you’d count Ghostbur as the mind, so maybe the split was different there. And Tommy didn’t have a ghost. But as a dead person, I can confirm that it’s what happened when I died.”

Sapnap stares at him. He opens his mouth. No words come out.

That’s– that’s– that’s the fate he’ll be damning Dream to?

Maybe it isn’t. Ghostbur didn’t seem like Ghostboo does, and Wilbur was resurrected long after his death, there wasn’t any fading there. Right?

It’s not like he’d know either way– he barely knows Wilbur. Barely knew him, before.

(But– here’s a secret he holds close to his chest: Sapnap fears that he’d forgive Dream in a heartbeat, if Dream asked.

Here’s a truth: he knows he doesn’t need to worry about that happening, because Dream would sooner set himself on fire than do so.

If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, he’s willing to bet it’s his best friend’s pride.)

Sapnap sighs, rocks back onto his heels. In the shadowy gleam of dusk, Ghostboo looks alive, almost. If Sapnap didn’t know that Ranboo was dead, he could probably be fooled into thinking otherwise. Ghostboo’s form is faint, but– he’s got an edge to him that Sapnap doesn’t remember Ghostbur having, an edge that he never got to see from Ranboo when he was alive.

Ghostboo does look more transparent than he did last time Sapnap saw him, though. Less… there. He waits, hovering there. Sapnap tries to imagine Dream in their place.

A slow death. He’ll be damning Dream to a slow, drawn out, fade from existence. Sapnap will get the luxury of dying instantly, but even if he kills Dream quickly, Dream’s death will still be long.

Sapnap shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t. Dream made his bed long ago, now he’s just going to lie in it. It’s not his fault. It doesn’t matter.

“So?” Ghostboo asks.

“Sure,” he says helplessly. Logically, he knows he’s speaking, but at the moment, his mind couldn’t be farther away. Because this is what he sold his soul for: the opportunity to truly, finally, end Dream. He doesn’t regret it. He won’t. This is the right course of action, it has to be. “Yeah, I’ll– I’ll resurrect you. Sure.”

Ghostboo eyes him warily. “Right, do it and I’ll give you the shulker after.”

“I can’t. I need the shulker to do it.”

“How do I know you aren’t going to scam me? Because I’m gonna be honest, you’re in a really good position to scam me.”

“I–” Sapnap breaks off. How does Ghostboo know he’s not scamming him? “Would it help if I made it an official Kinoko thing?

“Well, I’m dead. So, you tell me, how would that help?”

“I don’t know, you could like sue or something if I didn’t follow through?”

“Oh boy, I’m still dead. How would suing you help?”

“Okay, okay, fine. How about… I tell you the plan now, and you come along with me when I’m doing it to make sure I do what I said I would?”

Ghostboo hums under his breath as he considers it. Sapnap resists the urge to tap his foot. “Cool– cool, yeah, I think that’ll work out. You really need the shulker box, huh?”

Sapnap shrugs. The answer is absolutely yes, but he doesn’t have to admit to that now, does he? "And you really don't mind... breaking that deal you had with Foolish?"

"Eh, what's it matter?" Ghostboo pauses, huffs. “Foolish made the deal with alive-me, and it’s not like he’s leveraging his connection with god to bring me back or anything.”

Ghostboo sounds… well, to say he sounds bitter would be putting it mildly. But he supposes that’s a good enough point. It isn’t like Foolish brought Boo back to life yet.

Still, it seems that Ghostboo is… kind of amoral, if he’s this willing to go back on his word. Sapnap doesn't know enough about how Ranboo was when he was alive to know if this is a difference from Aliveboo. He knows Dream had had a message for Aliveboo, which must have meant— something, certainly. Maybe Ranboo was always like this. Maybe Foolish had just made a really bad decision when he entrusted his shulker box to Aliveboo.

Something in Sapnap suspects otherwise, though.

Still, it’s useful to him right now, so he swallows any potential objections he could've made, swallows his question about Foolish’s supposed connection with XD, nods instead. "I'll follow you, man.'

That was easier than he thought it would be.

Chapter Text

The improbable happens a few days later.

He’s in Kinoko when George wakes up suddenly. It’s unexpected. George is his usual degree of spacey upon waking up, half there, and half in a dream, but he’s awake. He’s walking around, he’s talking for a bit. They run around the server. They laugh. They threaten a few places– nearly destroy Kinoko’s agreement with Snowchester, whoops– then they threaten a few people.

It’s the best time Sapnap’s had in a while. It’s the most alive Sapnap has felt in a while. It’s so exhilarating that even running into Dream can’t ruin his mood. For a day, he forgets about the plan, forgets about what’s coming.

That’s what makes it ten times worse when George falls asleep again.

He waits another week after George falls asleep again before he accepts that George is asleep for the foreseeable future, before he resigns himself to going back to the plan. He doesn’t want to, but– George isn’t waking up again, and the brief reminder of what it’s like when he’s awake makes him being asleep so much worse.

Karl hasn’t been back to Kinoko since he made his deal. He thinks that’s a good thing– looking Quackity in the eyes and telling him that nothing was up was bad enough. He doesn’t know if he could stand to put himself through that again.

(He wants to tell the two of them everything. And– there was a time once when he did, but now the three of them are steps away from being strangers, and he doesn’t even know how everything went wrong.

God, he hates being alone so much.)

He sends Ghostboo a brief message, telling him to meet in the Nether for the next part of the plan. Sapnap knows that he could probably just steal the blaze rods, but Eret didn’t have any when he checked their storage, and Punz hasn’t refilled anything in ages– too busy off in Valorant– so he doesn’t know where to even start looking for them. Probably easier to just go to the Nether and get them naturally.

He runs into Aimsey on his way to the portal. Ghostboo isn’t with him– they’d agreed to meet at the Nether fortress, though Sapnap has his doubts if that will actually happen. Interactions with Ghostboo so far have proved to him that being dead doesn’t do anything good for one’s sense of time. There have been multiple times where Ghostboo has gone off to do one thing or another, promising to be back in a minute, just to be gone for hours and hours.

“Are you going to kill me again?” Aimsey asks warily. “Because Tubbo’s already canonically killed me once, and I’m running low on totems.”

Sapnap looks at him. Their last meeting feels like it was a lifetime ago, despite only being days. When George sleeps, time always seems to drag on and on and on. “No,” he says, and his voice sounds hoarse to his own ears. He clears his throat, speaks again. “No need. How’d you piss Tubbo off enough that he killed you? You sure it was Tubbo?”

There’s something about that mental image that sits wrong in Sapnap’s brain, an irregularity in it that burrows. Because– it’s Tubbo. No matter how many times he does business with Snowchester, he doesn’t think the Tubbo in his mind will ever be able to escape the Final Control Room. And if he does, Sapnap doesn’t think he’ll ever leave the Attachment Vault.

Tubbo as a killer in his own right doesn’t line up with that.

(Tubbo as a killer in his own right could line up with Exile. It– could. Maybe. It really might. But Sapnap wouldn’t know for certain. His own memories of that time are foggy, clouded by grief and betrayal. By Tommy yelling at him to gain some self respect. By his own words about how, when in prison, your friends can come visit you, but you can’t go visit them. By Dream’s overbearing presence, because all of his memories of Dream are overbearing these days.)

“Yeah, I’m sure it was Tubbo, asshole!” Aimsey yells back. “And nothing! Nothing at all! I just wanted my flower back!”

Sapnap blinks. The mood escalation feels a little unwarranted. “Well it’s not like I fucking knew that,” he snaps back. “I barely know you!”

He can be angry, if that’s what Aimsey’s looking for. He’s good at being angry, he thinks.

(It’s harder to remember on days like these, when George is asleep and the loneliness feels like it’ll eat him alive. Those are the days his emotions overwhelm him, the days he feels like he’s drowning, and that he’ll do anything to get back to air.)

“So why’d you kill me then?” Aimsey demands. “How do I know you won’t do it again?”

And at that, Sapnap finds he’s at a loss for words. The truth is unspeakable. George was awake, and alive, and I had to keep him that way. George has always thrived off chaos. If I could channel that, maybe he wouldn’t leave again.

But how could he say that when his attempt to keep George around didn’t work? When it never worked? As usual, George had claimed to be tired when they got back to Kinoko, headed back to bed, back to his unnatural dreams, without a second thought.

(Sapnap’s always been a little too willing to sacrifice his own morals for his friends’ wellbeing. It’s something he’s been working on, technically. It’s the reason he’s alone in Kinoko, after all. Why he’d stood in-between Dream and Tommy and Tubbo that day. Why he’d told George the truth he didn’t want to acknowledge, the truth Tommy hadn’t realized when they spoke about it: that Dream’s care for George was no longer care at all.

He’s been working on it. But the threat of possibly losing the final member of the Dream Team to an eternal slumber is always present when George is awake, and Sapnap finds it all too easy to let his morals slip away in fear.

Plus, it was just a little non-canon death. Everyone had some non-canon death on this server. Aimsey wasn’t any different. They might be new, but they’re nearly Sapnap’s age anyway– heck, they’re older than Sapnap was at the beginning of the server. They can handle it.)

His silence must say enough for Aimsey, as Sapnap hears him scoff, sees an almost audible rolling of his eyes. “Great. Reassuring. Remind me why you’re here again?”

“Well–”

“AIMSEY,” a familiar voice calls out, causing both Aimsey and Sapnap to jerk back in surprise. “AIMSEY AIMSEY AIMSEY.”

“Eryn!” they call back, and Sapnap bites back an annoyed retort. Of course Eryn was going to show up now. Of course! It’s not like the world would just let him do what he needs to do.

That would be too easy.

“And– Sapnap! Hello, Sappitus Nappitus.”

“Hey Eryn,” he says, dredging up some facial expression that hopefully comes across as a smile.

“What are you doing here, Sappitus Nappitus? Are you coming along on our adventure?”

“No–” Sapnap and Aimsey say in unison. They make eye contact, and then Aimsey glares at him, tilting their head slightly down. It’s probably meant to imply some kind of don’t you dare, but it looks more like a chihuahua pouting. Aimsey’s bunny ears simply aren’t very threatening.

Sapnap rolls his eyes in response.

“What kind of adventure?” Sapnap then asks, just to be difficult.

“Daisy Hollow– that’s Aimsey and I– are going to conquer a mansion, and get all of the totems,” Eryn says, seemingly oblivious to the way that Aimsey is shooting metaphorical lasers through Sapnap’s head. “Do you want to come?”

Sapnap grimaces. “I’m good, thanks. I’ve already got plenty of totems.” That’s… a bit of an exaggeration, or, well, technically more of a straight up lie, but whatever. It’s not like anyone knows his inventory well enough to call him out on it.

“Your loss,” Eryn says with a shrug. Aimsey lets out what's presumably a relieved sigh, and Sapnap doesn’t roll his eyes again, despite the impulse absolutely being there.

It's a lot of maturity from him, honestly. Dream would be proud.

And that thought sours his mood real quick.

"Anyway, I'm gonna just, well, keep going," he says, gesturing at the Nether Portal. "Uh, it was good to see you guys. Good luck with the Mansion."

“Thanks, bro,” Eryn says with a grin, giving him a punch to the arm. And– wow, okay, that kid is strong, that hurt more than Sapnap would ever admit.

"Yeah, thanks," Aimsey says, crossing his arms. His tone sounds anything but thankful.

He sends them a short wave in response, turns and continues back on the path.

Right. It’s time for the Nether.

The next step is making the eyes of ender, which means blaze rods.

This he remembers clearly from his years of traveling with Dream and George— he wouldn’t be able to count the amount of times the three of them crafted eyes of ender to find a new stronghold.

By some miracle, Ghostboo actually is there when Sapnap arrives at the fortress. Considering Ghostboo’s time issues, Sapnap is reluctantly impressed.

“Ghostboo,” he says with a wave, watches as Ghostboo floats over the lava to join him by the fortress entrance.

(The lava lake looks warm. Sapnap’s always been most comfortable in the heat of the Nether.)

Ghostboo tilts his head just a little too far to the side, nods.

“Hey, Sapnap.”

With that, they head into the fortress, and straight to the blaze spawners. Ideally, they’d be going to an enclosed one, but both of this fortress’s spawners are exposed, so Sapnap resigns himself to just having to do a lot of jumping to kill all the blazes needed.

They run into a few stray blazes on the way there, and Sapnap takes care of them, as Ghostboo provides a running commentary of… something, Sapnap isn’t actually sure what. He probably should be paying attention.

It’s fine.

Once they reach the spawner, there are a few moments of downtime as they wait for more blazes to spawn. Ghostboo continues to chatter. Sapnap, however, finds himself looking down at the lava underneath his feet.

Huh. One wrong step and he’d go tumbling straight into it, unless he managed to clutch on the side of the fortress. But he doesn’t have blocks in his hotbar. So clutching would be near impossible.

Not having blocks in his hotbar, now that’s a dumb mistake to make. He can practically hear Dream chiding him about it.

Whatever. He doesn’t bother pausing to get them. The blazes are about to spawn, and his attention needs to be on them. It’s not like he’s gonna fall anyway.

“You know, I did this with Tommy during Exile.”

“Did you?” Sapnap asks absentmindedly as the blazes spawn, and he takes a swing at the closest one.

“Yeah,” Ghostboo says. “He was just making an ender chest though. Not whatever you’re planning.”

Sapnap nods, not really listening. His attention is instead on eliminating the blazes in front of him.

After another round of blocking fireballs with his shield, Sapnap finishes off the first round of blazes, collects the blaze rods. They’ve gotten a pretty good drop rate so far– hopefully, they won’t be here all afternoon.

As he waits for the next blazes to spawn, Sapnap finds his gaze turning back to the lava lake. It bubbles just like it did in his earliest memories, the ones before Dream and George, the ones before even Bad.

He’s not totally immune to lava, but he is naturally resistant to it. And for a moment, he finds himself craving its warmth. It’s no replacement for human touch, but… everyday without a word from Bad, everyday without a word from his fiances, everyday George sleeps and Dream schemes, he feels himself getting a little colder.

He’s not gonna do anything though. He has to stay alive, to bring George back. To kill Dream. He doesn’t get the luxury of just being done, not yet.

The thought of his upcoming death at DreamXD’s hands fills him with fear. (With relief.) It’s a certainty. (It’s terrifying.) He’s almost thankful for it. (He wants to throw up when he thinks about it.)

Because– he wants to live, of course. But there are a lot of things he fucking wants. He wants to get married to his fiances. He wants his Dad to apologize for inviting him to a murder banquet. He wants Punz to stop being so goddamn distant. He wants George to wake up. He wants Dream to come back to them. He wants people to stop leaving.

Sapnap doesn’t get what he wants.

“We should have enough blaze rods soon,” he says, pulling his gaze away from the lava. “I want to get a few extra just in case though.”

Ghostboo nods, then tilts his head to the side. There’s a moment of silence before he speaks, and in that moment, Sapnap finds himself turning back to the blaze spawner, readying his axe again.

“You stare at the lava almost as much as he did,” Ghostboo says nonchalantly, and at first, Sapnap barely registers the words.

Then he does, and he finds that his veins are suddenly filled with ice.

The blazes spawn. He doesn’t notice them.

“I– what?”

“Tommy. He stared at the lava too.” Sapnap stares at Ghostboo, uncomprehending. Then he yelps as he nearly gets hit by a fireball, jumps out of the way, bringing his shield up.

Surely Ghostboo isn’t implying… that. Surely Sapnap is just exaggerating things. Surely, surely, surely.

All of a sudden, Sapnap feels sick. He blocks the next round of fireballs without thinking about it, takes a moment to swing at them with a viciousness that surprises him.

Tommy. He stared at the lava too.

Surely not.

“Did… he,” Sapnap says. It’s meant to be questioning. It doesn’t really come out that way.

Sapnap knows he definitely wasn’t any kind of help to Tommy during Exile, and there have been moments where he regretted that, moments where, in hindsight, he’d wished that he’d seen things clearer, but those were always related to Dream. Those were always about Tommy’s statements to Sapnap during Exile, the way he’d so clearly called out the situation, and how Sapnap never had the courage to actually definitively act on any of them. The regrets had never been about how he contributed to Tommy’s situation.

Not until now, at least.

There’s something burning in his chest suddenly, a feeling that makes him want to double over. He doesn’t, because he’s not gonna be taken down by a feeling, he won’t, but– by God, it’s overwhelming.

He quickly finishes off the blazes, then finds himself staring at the blaze rods laying on the ground.

“Yeah,” Ghostboo confirms. “You gonna grab those blaze rods, or should I?”

Christ. The burning gets worse. He has to breathe slowly through it, finds himself closing his eyes to focus– the way Dream had taught him to do all those years ago.

Everyday, it just gets worse.

How much worse can it get?

“You can grab them,” Sapnap says as he opens his eyes.

There’s no other way to go but forward.

Chapter Text

From the moment Sapnap wakes up, it's a bad day.

He’d dreamt of them that night, patchwork sweaters and blue tracksuits, journals filled to the brim and pocket watches, golden wings and a skeleton horse, hidden from everyone that could bring harm to it. A skeleton horse not hidden from him, despite his reputation as a pet killer.

He wakes up alone in his bed and feels cold.

He’s got a mission, though, so he forces himself out of bed regardless, shakes off the freeze the way he’s shaken off everything else life has thrown at him.

(And just like always, he’s not very successful at shaking it off. The opposite, really. It clings to him, just like he finds himself clinging to the memories of times when things were better. Not good, just… better.

And since still the frost clings to him, he soldiers up and pushes past it.)

Leaving the house is simple. Leaving Kinoko even more so. He waves a bittersweet goodbye to Tina, types out a message to Ghostboo on his comm as he crosses the nation’s boundaries. He’ll be back, maybe. Hopefully. If XD doesn’t simply smite him on sight.

He still has another mission besides this one, anyway. He still has to kill Dream after this. And he’s determined not to let that mission be anyone's burden except his own. So he has to come back.

There’s a part of him, a not insubstantial part, that wishes he could put this off longer. A part of him that’s not ready for it all to end like this, not ready for the lid to be placed on the last few years of his life like this. But he already has the ender pearls needed to make the eyes of ender, and there are no more excuses he can make for any further delays.

It’s time to finally act.

During his walk over, he sends a short message to Punz– an indirect goodbye. He doesn’t expect to receive a reply to that one.

He puts off sending a message to Bad until later. He doesn’t know quite what he’s more scared of there: Bad replying, or Bad not. Either way, he figures the safest bet there is to put it off until he has no more time to think about it.

When he enters the Community House, he sends another brief message to Ghostboo, reminding him of the meeting time and place again. He needs that shulker box if he’s going to do anything today, and he’s not about to trust Ghostboo’s memory to just get it to him.

And from there, he sits down on the cold stairs in the house, and waits.

Ghostboo shows up nearly an hour late.

It’s only months of working on his temper that has him biting back the sharp words on the tip of his tongue. He doesn’t think it’s Ghostboo’s fault, not really– time seems to be weird, for ghosts. It doesn’t seem to interact with them well. It’s almost… slippery.

Slippery. Now that’s a good word to describe his life.

“Hey, Ghostboo,” Sapnap greets as Ghostboo floats over.

“Hey, hey, it’s the big day, huh?”

“Yeah. Uh, I’m pretty sure what we’re looking for is called a stronghold. Are you… familiar?”

“A stronghold?” Ghostboo pauses, thinks. “The name sounds familiar to me. Any more details you can give?”

“Yeah, it’s got a portal room in it, which will look like this…” He trails off, grabs a quill and paper from a nearby chest, and sketches out a brief drawing of how he remembers the portal room looking. Ghostboo makes a noise of realization when he sees it.

"Oh, that’s a stronghold? I know where a stronghold is then!" Ghostboo says.

"Really?" Dream was always better at stronghold triangulation than Sapnap was— much better— and he'd rather not spend three weeks searching for the portal. If Ghostboo could lead him to it...

"Yeah! Follow me!"

They take off immediately. It’s only part way through the journey that Sapnap realizes that they’re going to the tundra– a fact that instantly has his hackles raised.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I’m pretty sure Technoblade and Philza live out here.”

“Oh, they do! But we’re not going there. Not really, anyway.”

Sapnap stops, stares at Ghostboo. “Okay, but this is Technoblade and Philza we’re talking about, Ghostboo. I’m good, but not that good. Not without backup, anyway.”

Ghostboo’s painted on eyes make a gesture that looks suspiciously like an eye roll. “Come on man, they’re big softies.”

Sapnap abruptly remembers fighting Technoblade on Doomsday, remembers the TNT, that obsidian grid. A ‘big softy’ is not how he would describe either of them.

“Anyway, we’re nearly there,” Ghostboo continues, steamrolling over any further concerns Sapnap might have. And he does have them– he opens his mouth to argue more when suddenly he feels his comm vibrate.

“Ugh, one second,” he says, fishing it out of his bag to check the message. He’s not expecting very much– maybe a response from Punz?

Then he sees who the message is from. The world outside his comm abruptly fades away into irrelevance.

KarlJacobs whispers to you: Where are you?

KarlJacobs whispers to you: When are you coming back?

Sapnap stares at his comm. For a moment, hot tears prick at his eyes, but he blinks them back.

So it’s one of the rare good days, then. One of the few days where Karl is oriented in time and space, where he knows who he is, what he’s missing.

One of the few days where Karl would actually notice his disappearance.

KarlJacobs whispers to you: I’ve got Gravity Falls here

KarlJacobs whispers to you: George is asleep, he’s being a shit watch partner rn

KarlJacobs whispers to you: hes being a nimrod

KarlJacobs whispers to you: You’d have a better one ;)

Sapnap chokes on his grief for a moment there. Prime, what is that even supposed to mean? He wants to laugh. He wants to cry.

You whisper to KarlJacobs: idk

You whisper to KarlJacobs: ill be back soon tho

You whisper to KarlJacobs: we can watch cartoons when i get back

You whisper to KarlJacobs: promise

The maybe-lie almost hurts him to type out. He hesitates before sending it, finger hovering over the delete button up until the last second.

He doesn’t want his message to be a lie. He’ll do everything he can to make sure it’s not one. He just… can’t guarantee that.

Fuck, he hates lying.

He turns off his comm and shoves it back into his pocket, looks back at Ghostboo. “I had to handle something. Uh, are we there?”

“Yeah!” Ghostboo says cheerily.

Sapnap blinks, looks around. It’s all snow and dirt, save for the lava pit in front of him.

“This is a lava pit,” he states.

“I know,” a pause. “It’s through it.”

“It’s through the lava pit?”

Ghostboo nods. “Jump in, you’ll see.”

Sapnap stares down at the lava pit. “You want me to… jump in that?”

“Yeah!” Ghostboo replies cheerfully. He then laughs at the look on Sapnap’s face. “Oh come on, I wouldn’t be telling you to do it if it was going to kill you.”

Sapnap eyes Ghostboo doubtfully. “Okay, fine, but if I die and lose all my shit, I’m gonna be pissed.”

Ghostboo laughs again. “You won’t, you won’t, calm down.”

Sapnap sighs, looks up at the sky. Wonders how exactly his life has gotten to this point. Sighs again, then resigns himself to reality, and jumps.

For a moment, it’s all fire, then abruptly he’s falling, falling– hitting water. And– wow, would you look at that. He’s not dead. Well, shit, that’s cool.

Ghostboo floats down beside him. “See? Not dead!”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sapnap replies, standing up again. There’s a chest in front of him, and an ice path. He looks to Ghostboo for explanation.

“Just grab a boat, and go down the path,” Ghostboo says, and Sapnap nods, steps forward. Suddenly, he feels his communicator vibrate in his pocket. A response from Karl, maybe?

He scrunches up his brow when he sees what really set it off.

Sapnap got the advancement [Eye Spy]

What the fuck is Eye Spy?

Whatever, it doesn’t matter. He has more pressing matters to attend to.

“Follow me,” Ghostboo chirps, floating further in. “You just go this way, and then you’ll reach the room with the portal. It’s really streamlined.”

"Thanks, Ghostboo," Sapnap says, then confirms: "I just take an ice boat to the end?"

"Yup!" Ghostboo chirps. The cloth over his head flaps like it's in the wind, despite the air being completely still. "Good luck! Please do succeed in bringing me back. But don't worry about dying, it's honestly pretty nice. Personally, if the soul decaying wasn’t a thing, I’d be so much better off now. Aliveboo was pretty lame."

Sapnap's memories of Aliveboo are limited. Their interaction after he visited Dream is the clearest, and that memory is hazy due to his general state at the time being… not great.

And then there's his memories from the prison break. When Ranboo joined the list of people he'd failed.

(He has no idea where Sam's gone. Metaphorically, that is– literally Sam is in Las Nevadas. Probably. He hasn’t exactly checked since his last visit. But metaphorically– he worries that the Warden took over, that Sam hollowed himself out in guarding Dream, that there's just nothing left of the man that was once a friend. How could Sam of all people bring himself to kill an innocent? Sam?)

"Ranboo was fine," Sapnap says. His throat suddenly hurts. "But I'll... keep that in mind. Thank you.” Probably best that he doesn't mention his suicide deal with their server’s god when talking to the teenage ghost.

... Even if said teenage ghost seems like he would probably just encourage it.

The room he reaches vaguely resembles the portal room diagrams he’s seen, but it’s obviously gone through a renovation and a half. There are chairs surrounding the portal frame, each with a stasis chamber attached to it, and the portal frame itself seems to have taken on a new life as the frame of a table.

He really is about to completely ruin this table, huh.

Sapnap places a bed down next to the table, sets his spawn, then abruptly reconsiders. He’s going to be making this room unusable with the area ban soon, and Tubbo said that DreamXD would have to clear the entity to get back online, therefore clearing the ban, but… what are the chances that DreamXD doesn’t set up something to destroy the portal once he goes through? Hell, could he just destroy the portal and get to The End another way? He’s a god after all, he doubts that they’re bound by the same limitations humans are.

So the bed he just set is… probably useless. Great. He just needs to not die.

And he’s pretty sure that endeavor might be impossible.

Instead of thinking any further about that, Sapnap turns to setting up the redstone needed for the trap. He’d gotten Tubbo to sketch out a diagram for him, thank Prime, and with the help of that, he’s able to set up the mechanism with ease.

With that finished, he turns to the portal itself, starts placing down the eyes of ender. There’s something more than a little unnerving about it all, about the alienness of it, the way the eyes slot in so seamlessly.

He places down the second-to-last eye, then pauses. Waits. Pulls up his messages to Bad, and types something out. Frowns.

Is he really going to do this? Right now, right here? When, for the first time in weeks, he has Karl waiting for him at home? When he could just turn around and walk out, no harm, no foul?

But how long will he get to have Karl be there for this time? How long will anyone be there? At the rate people have been leaving, he’ll be lucky if he gets a week.

Sapnap swallows hard. He presses send on his message to Bad, shoves his communicator back deep into his pocket.

Then he places the final eye.

Nothing happens.

Sapnap blinks. Waits. Stares at the portal. Wills it to activate with his mind.

… The portal still doesn’t activate.

“...Well that was kind of anticlimactic,” Ghostboo says, appearing out of nowhere. It’s only years of training that stop Sapnap from jumping out of his skin at that.

“It should’ve worked. I don’t– Why–”

“Maybe it’s the blocks in the middle?”

The two of them stare at the warped wood in the middle of the portal frame. Is that really what could’ve waylaid them? A measly nine blocks?

Well, it’s not like Sapnap has any better theory.

“Maybe so… does that mean we need to destroy them?”

Ghostboo shrugs. “It’s worth a shot.”

Sapnap sighs, hefts his axe up. It’s simple enough to hack the blocks into pieces, and once he finishes, he stands back, waits for something to happen.

Nothing does.

“Do we just need to find a different one?”

“I guess you do need to do that, yeah.”

Well, shit. He should’ve known it was too lucky to just think that he could avoid having to do any triangulation at all.

“Well, lucky for you, I know where another one is.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s my lab. It’s where I was testing things.”

Sapnap blinks at him. His lab? How much exactly had Ranboo been hiding when he was alive?

He decides not to ask. “Alright, let's go.”

It’s easy enough to get to Ghostboo’s lab.

His communicator buzzes three times on the way over. Once from Bad, twice from Karl. He doesn’t open any of the messages. He doesn’t know if he could bear it.

Saying no to Karl once was hard enough. And he doesn’t know what he’d say if Bad asked him what he was doing. Better not to see.

Once they get there, Sapnap surveys the room. It looks a bit closer to how the sketches did, which settles his nerves slightly. Hopefully it’ll work this time. He’s gonna run out of ender pearls if it doesn’t.

“I don’t know how accessible this room will be after I do this, by the way,” Sapnap warns, just in case there’s anything Ghostboo wants to salvage from here. Ghostboo shrugs.

“It’s fine. I haven’t been here in a while, anyway. I can just make a new lab.”

“Sure,” Sapnap replies. Not like he’s going to argue that any further, this is convenient as fuck for him. “You should probably go, though. The moment this goes off, anyone in the area will be kicked.”

Ghostboo’s shoulders drop, dejected. “Fineeee,” he says, with a slight whine. “Whatever. Good luck, man. I’ve got– I’ve got a feeling you might need it.”

“Reassuring,” Sapnap quips back, and he watches the ghost fade away through the walls. No matter how many times he sees it, it doesn’t get any less surreal.

With a sigh, he moves to start setting up, determined not to let the sudden silence get to him. This time, he doesn’t bother setting his spawn. After all, what would be the point? The room’s about to be fucked to hell anyway. Accidentally getting himself banned with his own trap would be kind of pathetic.

Instead, he moves to start placing the eyes down. Each time one settles into the portal frame, the noise it makes reverberates through his bones, startling in its unnaturalness. This isn’t solely of this world– of that fact, Sapnap is certain. Its alienness is overwhelming.

Once again, he reaches the penultimate eye, and once again, he finds himself hesitating.

He could wait. There’s nothing stopping him. He doesn’t need to do this today. He could go back to Kinoko, he could try his hand at going to Las Nevadas, he could–

There’s something in that thought that stops him dead in his tracks.

What he’s walking into– it’s certain death. He’s been fooling himself to think otherwise. He knows he’s grasping at strings, knows the chance of this working is slim to none. Is he really ready to put his life up on a platter like that? All for a chance?

George might wake up on his own. He has in the past. But–

But when?

He’s so fucking selfish. He wants to say goodbye. And he doesn’t know how much longer this resolve will last.

Sapnap places the final eye.

The portal frame comes to life with a start, and Sapnap finds himself backing up as a deep, loud noise splits through the silence, as the portal prepares itself to crack open the very fabric of this world.

There’s just enough time for him to register that there’s something a shade and a half away from a humming noise coming from the portal when suddenly he hears the firing of redstone. He’s out of time.

With a breath in, he leaves behind his hesitation, and just as he hears the crack of teleportation, Sapnap jumps in.

The world disappears from view.

Communicator Log

Server: Dream SMP

User: Sapnap

Users Online: Sapnap, DreamXD, Dream, TommyInnit, Ph1lza, Quackity, WilburSoot, Tubbo, Eryn, Aimsey, KarlJacobs, Foolish_Gamers, BadBoyHalo, GeorgeNotFound [AFK]

[14] Missed Messages

[2] Notifications

BadBoyHalo whispers to you: Sapnap? What are you talking about?

KarlJacobs whispers to you: What are you doing rn? I can come join u

KarlJacobs whispers to you: Sapnapppppppppppp answer meeeeeeeee plsssssss :(

Sapnap has made the advancement [The End?]

DreamXD left the game

Dream whispers to you: what the fuck do you think you’re doing

Dream whispers to you: I swear to god I’m going to kill you

Dream whispers to you: what the FUCK sapnap

Dream whispers to you: what did you DO

Dream whispers to you: answer me asshole

Dream whispers to you: answer me

Dream whispers to you: answer me

Dream whispers to you: answer me

Dream whispers to you: answer me

Dream whispers to you: answer me

Dream whispers to you: you fucking idiot ANSWER ME

Chapter Text

The End’s sky is dark, and vast, and starless.

Sapnap lands on an obsidian platform next to an island with large pillars on it, pushes himself back up so that he’s standing. It’s eerie, the near-silence save for the beating of the dragon’s wings. His footsteps are more than audible in the quiet.

He keeps his eyes down on the ground as he climbs up the side of the island, careful not to meet the eyes of any endermen. Once he’s on more solid ground, he pearls straight into the center bedrock fountain, quickly sets up the obsidian so that he’ll be able to quickly place the beds later. Immediately pearls back out to the outer obsidian towers.

Sapnap remembers the hours, the days Dream would spend in the Nether with an inventory full of beds, trying to get the timing just right. One of the books he’d read had mentioned that one’s spawn couldn’t be set in the End, that some servers had beaten their dragon with beds, and that had been enough to encapture Dream’s attention for the next week, leaving Sapnap and George with little else to do save joining him.

It’s been years since he actually grinded learning the technique– he finds that he’s just praying to Prime that some muscle memory remains.

(Dream had stopped talking about beating the dragon rather abruptly when they’d first gotten on the SMP. At the time, it had been easy to dismiss, easy to chalk up to Dream’s attention simply switching gears to focus on the server. Now, Sapnap isn’t so sure.)

(When did his friend leave? When did he reach the point of no return? Why didn’t Sapnap notice?)

Sapnap sighs, crouches on the odd, sand-colored stone making up the island. He dimly remembers seeing a diagram that seemed to resemble these towers in one of those dusty old books he’d read a lifetime ago.

He’s got his ender pearls ready to be grabbed, along with five beds, a respawn anchor, and his bow. He doesn’t know how long his trick with the shulker will delay XD for– he has to act fast.

The nearest crystal is easy enough to spot, a gleaming beacon of light in the dark sky, and he lines up the shot, aims– takes the shot. The arrow thankfully seems to follow the same arc as it would in the Overworld, and it hits his mark true, triggering an explosion of purple and pink light before going dark.

One down.

He takes off towards the second pillar, keeping an eye out for the dragon as he runs. It’s simple enough to nock an arrow, aim for the second crystal– shoot. It hits.

Two down.

He’s running for the third pillar when the dragon comes swooping down, opening its mouth to roar at him. And– a purplish-pink mist comes out of its mouth, straight towards him. He holds up his shield against it– like his shield is gonna do shit– and yelps as he starts taking damage anyway.

So Sapnap runs from the mist instead, forcing himself not to dwell on the way the pain seems to go straight through his armor, through his skin, into his bones. He aches with the remnants of it, curses internally as he heads away from the dragon.

Once he’s on the other side of the island, he looks back to find the dragon, and make sure it’s not directly behind him. Thankfully, it’s on the other side of the island, and just as Sapnap watches, it swoops again. Sapnap reloads his bow, and shuts his eyes as he turns his head up, then opens them once his head is craned far enough upwards that there’s no way he’d be looking at an enderman.

The dragon flies upwards again, connecting with another crystal. Sapnap shoots down the crystal as it does so.

The dragon roars, and once again, Sapnap runs. He grabs an eye of ender and throws it as far up the next pillar as he can, clutching on the side of it with a block. He towers up as quickly as possible, reloading the crossbow to bring down a few of the other crystals as he does so.

It’s exhilarating. It’s the most exciting thing he’s done in a while.

He… probably shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as he is.

Sapnap looks back out, scanning the sky for the dragon. It takes a moment for him to track the dragon down, but he catches a glimpse of it as it winds its way around a pillar, heading towards the center of the island.

He watches it turn once, turn twice. And– he dimly remembers that pattern of movement. The dragon is perching.

Sapnap grabs an ender pearl, chucks it at the bedrock fountain. His aim is true, and in a moment he’s yanked over to the pearl, body reforming where it hit. He lands on the bedrock hard, and the force of it sends his head spinning for a moment, but there’s no time for that.

So he forces himself to his feet. The dragon is coming lower and lower, and he briefly thanks his past self for setting up the obsidian beforehand. He’d hate to have to do it now.

The dragon flies down, circles. Sapnap places his first bed. The angle isn’t great, but it’s the best he can think of right now, the closest thing he can get to what he remembers. They’d never practiced on an actual dragon after all, just the unlucky hoglin or ghast. Fuck, he’s really hoping muscle memory can carry him.

(And– back then, back when they were learning these techniques, when the End was so much of what they cared about– he remembers there being fragments of a poem in one of the books he'd read. He remembers pointing them out to Dream, remembers the excitement in Dream's voice as he carefully read them out, and copied them down.)

The dragon swoops down, turns. Sapnap sets off the bed, hears a sudden roar of pain from above him.

One down. Four to go.

(Sapnap had ended up memorizing those poem fragments weeks later, when Dream was stricken by a fever so bad that he’d barely known up from down. He’d read those fragments again and again to Dream during the worst of it, when Dream was half awake and in agony, and there was nothing else Sapnap could do. It had been the first time he’d had to confront the fact that his friend was, indeed, mortal– that as invulnerable as Dream seemed, he wasn’t, truly.

Sapnap doesn’t know if he ever did truly internalize that fact. Half of him is still convinced that Dream is invincible– that he won’t really truly actually kill Dream once this is done. That he’ll plunge his axe into Dream’s heart and that Dream will just… respawn again, as unaffected as ever.

Hell, half of him is convinced that this fight itself isn’t real, that he’s not actually fighting the dragon, that it’s all one long, elaborate dream. How can he be accomplishing Dream’s dream without him? That just feels wrong. Unnatural. Untrue.)

The dragon’s wings flap above him. He prepares, grabs another bed from his inventory.

(Back then–

What did this player dream? he remembers reading, remembers laughing at the unintentional name pun the very first time he saw it. Levity wasn't treasured back then, it was normal. Expected. Sapnap aches when he thinks about it.

This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. Dream had read out loud as he transcribed, tongue poking out between his teeth as the light from the library shined down on his hair, turning it as golden as the wheat fields. Sapnap remembers grinning at the fire part, elbowing George when he spoke of water. It was so easy back then. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed.)

He places a bed, watches the dragon fly, turn its head— (It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted.)

Boom. Two down.

(It dreamed of shelter,) his memories remind him as he places the next bed.

The dragon loops around again. Sapnap holds his breath.

(The lines immediately after that were ruined by water damage. Dream had spent ages trying to decipher them, to no avail. It was only when they reached the next page that it was legible again– It cannot read that thought.)

The dragon swoops down. He sets off the bed, feels the explosion on his face.

Three out of five.

(No, the poem had read next, It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game.

Dream had taken that line as a challenge. So had Sapnap. George hadn’t quite cared enough to, but he’d been enthusiastic enough in encouraging them to go for it. Sapnap suspected he liked the adventure Dream’s crusade brought them.)

He places the next bed, looks nervously at his inventory. He has a respawn anchor if it’s needed, but he never practiced with them– he doesn’t know if it’ll blow up like a bed. Doesn’t know if he’ll be ensuring his own death with it.

He’s screwed if he does die. He hadn’t bothered to set his spawnpoint by the portal in Ranboo’s lab. He figured there was no use, not after he made that room unusable to kick DreamXD. Respawning there, if DreamXD didn’t fix it first, would be useless, as he’d just get booted from the server. And unlike XD, he’d have no way to fix it from the outside.

(Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind? the poem asked, and those lines were bitter in his mind now, ruined. XD sure as shit wasn’t kind. Nothing on this Primeforsaken server was.)

He almost misses the dragons next turn, has to rush to set off the bed. Fuck. Fuck. It’s fine. He has one more bed. He has the anchor. He has his axe. He’ll be able to do this.

(Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.)

He places the final bed.

He sets it off.

The dragon doesn’t die.

Fuck.

(But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. Sapnap remembers George hearing that line for the first time, turning to Dream, saying without hesitation:

“Yeah, sad looking at your FACE, get muffined.”

Dream’s affront had been visible in the way he reeled back, audible in the tone of his voice. “What– okay, why don’t YOU get muffined instead, you muffinfuck,” Dream had sputtered back, in one of the worst comebacks of all of comeback history.)

Sapnap rifles through his bag for his glowstone, somehow is lucky enough to procure it. Places down the anchor. Puts one glowstone in it.

Two.

Three.

And four.

Then–

In a blinding burst of light, the anchor blows. The dragon cries out like it hasn’t before, a horrible, wretched noise. He looks up, sees it writhe in the air, takes a step back as it starts to float.

Is this it? Is it over? Sapnap finds himself reaching up, almost as if to touch it, to attempt to give it a final moment of comfort despite his role in its demise.

And– he can’t reach it. Of course he can’t. It’s too high as it implodes, as purple and white light explode out from it, almost like a star going supernova. Collapsing in upon itself, cataclysmic in its ruination.

(He hadn’t been able to reach Dream either. Sometimes he thinks of that, and thinks of the book’s penultimate line– the line that they’d thought was the final line for years until Dream had managed to decode the true last line in the book just weeks before starting the server:– It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.

He’d hated that line, with a ferocity that neither George nor Dream had understood. He didn’t know quite how to explain it, why it felt so wrong to him, why he was so steadfast in his belief that there had to be a different ending.

There was just something so– bleak, about that line. About worlds with no summer, and shivering under a black sun. About that simply being reality.)

He stares up at the brilliant colors against the darkness of the End’s skies, tries to remember how breathing works.

And– it builds, and builds, until suddenly–

(The final line in the book they’d found, the one that had taken years for Dream to decode, the one that Sapnap had never figured out his true thoughts on: To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere.

And here Sapnap is, interfering. )

The dragon explodes in a burst of light, bright enough that Sapnap flinches away from it. Experience falls down around him, a shower of green and yellow bright against the End’s eternal night. It’s astounding.

He barely notices it.

Instead, he breathes in. Breathes out. Stands on the ledge of the bedrock fountain, and finds himself trembling as the exit portal opens up beneath his feet.

(Despite everything he’s done, despite all the betrayals and his vow and the reality of it all– whenever he thinks of Dream, he thinks of sunlight.)

Chapter Text

Philza joined the Dream SMP on a bright sunny day, and on that same day, he killed his son in a bunker, surrounded by the darkness of the destruction Wilbur wrought. It was quite an impression to have as your first, and as he spent his time in the nation his son had founded– the nation he’d eventually bomb to bedrock– the eyes of the people watched, wary and awed all at once.

His son had left a legacy. Phil had never figured out if that was a good thing or not. Not before Wilbur came back, anyway, and the question of Wilbur’s legacy fell off Phil’s shoulders, and back onto Wilbur’s.

In the aftermath, Phil finds himself farming wood when his comm starts buzzing like it hasn’t since Doomsday.

Phil doesn’t check it immediately though– he recognizes the tone as the one that he set for the general chat, which means it’s probably just someone getting a load of advancements or something. Once it goes off more than five times in five minutes though…

Well, he’ll admit it. That peaks his interest.

He pauses his tree cutting, puts his axe away in his inventory and pulls out his comm, thumbing over to check the main chat.

Sapnap got the advancement [Eye Spy]

DreamXD left the game

Sapnap got the advancement [The End?]

<BadBoyHalo> ????

<TommyInnit> what the FUCK was that

<BadBoyHalo> Language!

<TommyInnit> shut the fuck up

<Foolish_Gamers> Did someone just set off fireworks?

<Foolish_Gamers> Like one, incredibly loud firework?

<TommyInnit> that was not fucking fireworks big man

Sapnap got the advancement [Free The End]

Sapnap got the advancement [The Next Generation]

DreamXD joined the game

<DreamXD> STAY AWAY

<DreamXD> STAY AWAY

<DreamXD> STAY AWAY

<DreamXD> STAY AWAY

<DreamXD> IF YOU GO THROUGH THE PORTAL I WILL KILL YOU

<DreamXD> IF YOU GO THROUGH THE PORTAL I WILL KILL YOU

<DreamXD> IF YOU GO THROUGH THE PORTAL I WILL KILL YOU

<DreamXD> IF YOU GO THROUGH THE PORTAL I WILL KILL YOU

<DreamXD> IF YOU GO THROUGH THE PORTAL I WILL KILL YOU

<Aimsey> the portal???

<Eryn> GOD!?!?!?

DreamXD got the advancement [The End?]

DreamXD got the advancement [The Next Generation]

Phil stares at his comm. Goes back to reread it again. Nope, he didn’t misread any of that.

He frowns, clicks on [The End?] to check its description. Maybe that will clear things up.

[The End?]’s description says ‘Or the beginning?’ which answers his question not at all. [Free The End]’s description says ‘Good luck,’ which is somehow even less helpful. [The Next Generation] says ‘Hold The Dragon Egg’ and– wait–

Hold the dragon egg?

Phil blinks. His eyes go wide.

A dragon egg? Since when did this fucking server have dragons? He’s heard about modded servers with them, but the Dream SMP isn’t modded.

He goes back to reread the description. Yeah, he definitely read it correctly the first time. That reads ‘Hold The Dragon Egg.’

That’s… more than a little suspicious. He’s unnerved by the fact that, besides Eye Spy, he doesn’t actually recognize any of the advancements Sapnap and DreamXD just got. He’s further unnerved by DreamXD’s reaction to it.

DreamXD has always seemed like a weak, ego-driven, pathetic excuse for a god, but that kind of reaction in the main chat is not something Phil was ever expecting to see. Much too open and panicked for the usually uptight god.

And Sapnap getting these advancements after getting [Eye Spy]?

Hm. There’s something poking at him, a feeling he can’t quite place. Call it a hunch. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he’s overreacting. But maybe he’s not, maybe this feeling is onto something.

Phil sighs, silently laments the fact that he might be about to waste a solid hour of daylight, and heads towards the Syndicate’s room.

The first thing Phil notices upon arriving is that his table has been broken. A wave of irritation flashes through him, quick and hot.

Was DreamXD here? Did he do this? He thought they’d aired out everything there, thought they’d come to an agreement with the god.

But no, upon closer inspection, the frame of the portal is still here, it’s just the blocks that were inside it that are scattered upon the ground. Phil frowns, steps closer. The stasis chambers seem untouched– thank Prime– it’s just the inside of the table that’s been messed with.

Phil frowns, looks back up and around the room again. The second thing he notices is the fact that there’s a bed in the syndicate room that didn't used to be there. And– Sapnap sits on the side of it, axe in hand, staring blankly at the wall.

What the fuck is Sapnap doing here?

Sapnap doesn’t seem like he’s noticed Phil yet, so Phil takes full advantage of that to cast his eyes over the room once more. The table is still kind of completely fucked up, but nothing else seems to be out of the ordinary.

Great. Confrontation time.

He considers a few different ways of approaching the situation, before quickly dismissing them all, and deciding to go with his gut instinct. It rarely fails him, after all.

"I don't remember hiring a home decoration team," Phil jokes, keeping his tone lighthearted, because like hell is he about to acknowledge that he’s slightly unnerved by the fact that Sapnap is in his extremely secret base. Not until he’s got a better hold on the situation, at least.

Sapnap startles, like a spooked rabbit, and spins around to face him, bringing his axe up like he’s going to attack. Phil raises his hands to indicate that he means no harm. Yet, anyway. “Easy, mate.”

“Philza,” Sapnap says, blinking rapidly. He slowly rests his axe on one shoulder, uses the hand that frees up to rub at his eyes. Squints his eyes at Phil. “Philza?”

“Last I checked, yeah,” Phil confirms, almost amused despite himself. “What are you doing here?”

Sapnap blinks at him, looks around. Turns back to Phil. “I– what are you doing here?”

Phil raises an eyebrow. Fine, he’ll humor this. “Y’know, this is my… place, actually. And that was my table, until someone destroyed it.” He pauses, looks around the nearly-empty room. “And I’ll be honest, it’s looking kind of like you’re the person who did that.”

"Oh shit, this is yours?" Sapnap asks, looking panicked for a second. "Fuck, Ghostboo left that part out of the picture. Uh, I can pay you back for it, and uh, fix it. Maybe. Just— don't bomb Kinoko." A pause. It looks like it physically pains Sapnap to say the next word. "Please."

Huh. Ghostboo was involved in this? Odd. He didn’t know that Ranboo even knew Sapnap.

"Slow down, mate. Kinoko's safe.” Phil pauses, amends that statement. “Unless you're doing something really unethical in there, that is.”

"Tina's building a coffee shop?" Sapnap offers. "Karl's got a library?"

"Well, that doesn't sound very unethical."

"Yeah…” Sapnap pauses, frowns, looks at the wall. “I forgot my spawn was set here,” he says, somewhat distantly. “I didn’t– I just left the bed here, Prime that was stupid. How did I miss that?”

“Why was your spawn set here?” Phil asks, inching closer. “You’re not exactly giving me many answers here, mate.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” Phil replies. Like hell is he letting Sapnap get out of talking about this one.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Sapnap replies, and it’s refreshingly honest. Phil bites back a snicker at it, hums his acknowledgement instead. “Well, uh, to start off: your portal is broken.”

“My portal?”

Sapnap gestures to the remains of the table. It looks like, well, a ruined table. Nothing special about it, besides the frame. Still, it’s not hard to put together the implications of Sapnap’s words.

“I’m sorry, are you saying that my table is a portal?”

“It should’ve been one.”

Well, that’s not what Phil was expecting to hear today.

“Well,” he stares at the table, then puts two and two together, laughs. “Fuck, I guess that’s why God was so pressed about it.”

“XD?” A huff of what could almost sound like a laugh, if Phil was a little younger, if he had a little less life experience. If Sapnap didn’t look quite so miserable standing there. “Yeah, I can imagine that he wouldn’t be pleased. He, uh, certainly wasn’t when he found me at one of these.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t exaggerate. Instead, he turns back to stare at the table.

“Want to finish explaining that?”

Sapnap doesn’t reply. He’s just staring at the table frame.

Hm. Phil steps forward after Sapnap fails to reply once again, and upon closer inspection, there seems to be something purple and glowing dripping off him, onto Phil’s floors. He winces at that.

Hopefully it’s not acidic. He likes these floors.

“Sapnap?” he prompts after a minute, waving a hand in front of Sapnap’s face. “You there?”

“Shit, sorry, hi,” Sapnap says, turning his head to face Phil again. “Uh, what were you asking?”

Well, that’s kind of concerning. “You want to elaborate about what you meant when you said XD wasn’t happy to find you near a portal?”

“Oh. No, not really.”

Jesus Christ. Phil resists the urge to knock his head on the stone behind him. It was slightly amusing the first time. It’s not now. “Why don’t you do so anyway?”

Sapnap sighs. “I mean he wasn’t happy. I managed to uh, boot him from the server before he could do anything, but he made it clear to me that the only reason he didn’t smite me was because I was holding something over his head.”

Phil blinks, tries to process that information. On the list of everything he was expecting to hear today, that is nowhere close to it.

And in the moments after Sapnap says that, there’s just silence. He doesn’t seem inclined to say much else.

“Mate, what happened? Like, specifically? You’ve implied a lot of things, but you’re not really following through on any of them.”

Sapnap shakes his head. “It’s– I probably shouldn’t talk about it. Maybe it’s best if I don’t piss XD off any further. Even though I don’t know if that’s actually possible at this point.” A brief laugh. “I think I’ve made a god’s shitlist officially. I feel like I should be proud of that.”

Phil shrugs. “I suppose it’s an accomplishment. How does that relate to you being in my basement?”

“I accidentally set my spawn here. I was kind of planning on going through your portal before it broke,” Sapnap says sheepishly, turning back around to destroy the bed. “We– don’t need to talk about it. Like, ever. In fact, let’s just say this never happened!”

Phil raises an eyebrow, amused. "Sure thing, mate. You planning on standing there forever?"

"No, no. Uh, I'm going."

"I'll escort you out." It's not a request. Sapnap seems smart enough not to take it like one.

"Appreciated," he quips back, with a smile that doesn't quite meet his eyes.

The first part of their journey is quiet. Sapnap seems caught up in his own thoughts, and Phil’s a bit busy trying to figure out how he’s going to break it to Techno that the Syndicate’s secret base is no longer secret.

It’s a crying shame– it was such a good base too.

He’s just figured out how he’s going to breach the topic when Sapnap suddenly speaks.

“Are you going to blow up Kinoko?”

Phil pauses. Turns to look at Sapnap. “What brought that question on, mate?”

Sapnap shrugs. It’s probably meant to seem nonchalant. It is not nonchalant. “Curious. I mean, I am the head of Defense in Kinoko, so it would be useful information to know.”

Fair enough. “I’m not planning on it at the moment,” he says.

“You’re… not planning on it at the moment.”

“Yeah.” Silence. Phil rolls his eyes. "Listen, if we're going to blow anything up, we'll give you a heads up, okay mate?"

"That's not very reassuring at all."

Phil sighs. Mortals. "I might disagree ideologically with your kingdom, but your citizens seem happy enough, and you're not exactly making a themed army to carry out a manhunt on a friend of mine, are you? As long as you leave us be, and stay away from anything horrifically unethical, I've got no reason to blow up Kinoko. It doesn't sound like you are doing anything that would change that. So we're good."

Sapnap mumbles something that suspiciously sounds like blowing up a city is unethical. Jesus Christ. Phil barely restrains himself from repeating his point about them providing a warning. They aren't monsters.

And, well, if Sapnap wants to talk about blowing things up…

"You fought for L'Manberg, didn't you?"

A moment of quiet. Then, cautiously: "... yeah. Yeah, I did."

"Why?"

Sapnap shrugs. All of a sudden, he looks very young. "People loved it. Quackity loved it.”

Oh. Phil bites back several choice words about that one.

“Listen, I wasn’t fine with L’Manberg. I’m fine with Kinoko,” Phil says, leaving off the for now bit of that sentence.

“Right, until you’re not, and you blow it up.”

“I told you mate, I’m not planning on blowing up your kingdom. Calm down.”

Sapnap’s eyes flash. He does not seem to calm down. "And you won't if Dream comes to you? Says he wants Kinoko gone?"

"Would Dream do that?"

Sapnap laughs. There's no amusement in it. "Well, he's certainly no friend of Kinoko."

Phil takes in that information, digests it. Says, diplomatically: "I'll help Techno with whatever he decides. He's my friend."

"Not reassuring."

Phil shrugs. "Would you rather I lie to you?"

Silence.

"If it helps, I don't think Techno currently owes Dream a favor. And he is thinking of trying retirement again. So as long as nothing threatens that, I doubt he'll go looking for trouble."

A sigh. "Thanks, I guess."

"You good to get back to Kinoko?"

"Yeah. Thanks for leading me out."

Phil nearly snorts. They both know it isn't simple friendliness that has Phil escorting him out of their territory. "Of course."

Phil watches him walk away. He wonders, abstractly, what sent Sapnap over the edge. What it was that pushed one of the server’s original members to break Dream’s oldest rule.

For some reason, as he’s watching, he finds himself thinking of Wilbur. Maybe it’s something in his words. Maybe it’s the way Sapnap is carrying himself.

Whatever it is, it’s enough to have him pulling up his communicator, thumbing over to Wilbur’s contact.

You whisper to WilburSoot: Hey mate, want to come over this weekend?

You whisper to WilburSoot: I’m making a farm, could use some company

Then Phil looks up, and sees… a dead man walk over the horizon. He watches him stop by Sapnap, exchange a few words.

Ranboo?

No, there’s no way. It can’t be. Fuck that he just said goodbye, Phil finds that he’s moving before he’s even thinking about it, jogging towards the ghost that looks… well, not like a ghost any longer.

“What the fuck is this meant to be, mate?” he calls out as he comes closer, slows his jog into a fast walk. Upon closer inspection, it really does appear to be Ranboo– and not Ghostboo either. He’s hunched over in a similar way to how Ranboo used to hunch over, hands clasped nervously in front of him. At the sound of Phil’s voice, his face makes an expression resembling that of a deer in headlights.

“Philza–” Sapnap starts, just to be cut off by Maybe-Ranboo.

“Phil,” Maybe-Ranboo says, “can I see Michael?”

Chapter Text

Tubbo is with Tommy when the noise cracks through the sky, sounding all too close to fireworks.

“What the fuck was that,” Tommy asks– demands. “Tubbo, what the actual fuck was that?”

Tubbo means to answer Tommy. He really does, but he’s taking a moment to remember how to breathe. “I’m– not sure,” he finally says when he’s regained his voice again.

“What the fuck,” Tommy repeats, “what the fucking fuck?”

Instinctively, Tubbo checks his comm. Sees–

Sapnap has made the advancement [The End]

He scrunches his brow in confusion. That’s… not an advancement he’s ever seen before. Not one that he’s heard of, either. What is Sapnap doing?

Then it hits. Oh. Of course. He should’ve expected this. He knew Sapnap was angling to do something big when they spoke, when Sapnap asked him how to forcibly kick an admin off the server. After all, that’s not the kind of question most people would ask just out of plain curiosity.

This must be whatever he was planning on doing.

Therefore, the next notification is no surprise at all.

DreamXD left the game

Huh. Seems like the trap worked, and Sapnap successfully got DreamXD off of the server.

He imagines that DreamXD is gonna be pissed when he logs back on. Hopefully, Snowchester won’t have to deal with his fury. It’s unlikely that it will– Sapnap had taken back the Nightmare armor when Dream broke out for a reason, Tubbo doesn’t think he’s going to turn around and betray him now– but he makes a mental note to stay away from Snowchester for a bit regardless. He’s got no idea what would happen if DreamXD learned that he was the one who told Sapnap how to get him temporarily banned from the server.

The notifications continue buzzing in, and it’s a few minutes later that he parts ways with Tommy. Tommy’s anxious, bouncing on the tips of his toes, clearly eager to go back home and reinforce his walls. Tubbo can’t blame him. Normally, he’d help, but he’s aware that there might be a bit of a target on his back now, and he doesn’t want to get Tommy involved.

He starts heading back to the arctic– if there’s anyone who could throw down with a god, it would be Techno– and tries not to think as he walks, tries to dissociate from what he’s feeling, what he’s doing.

He goes back home. (He’s fine.) He meets Michael in his room, gives him the blocks he’d picked up while out. (He’s fine.) Sits down next to his son, clasps his hands in his lap as Michael coos in delight. (He’s fine.)

Then the doorbell rings.

Tubbo doesn’t jump out of his skin at that. The fact that he bangs his knee on the wall is completely unrelated.

“Motherfuck– shit, sorry Michael.” He winces, stands up and leaves Michael’s room, closing the door behind him. Better safe than sorry. “Who is it?” he calls out as he walks to the front door. “Cause I don’t have villagers ready yet, Techno, I could use some weakness pots if you have them–”

He pulls open the door. Stares at the dead man standing on his front porch. Shuts the door immediately.

“Tubbo–”

Huh. He’s hallucinating. Strange, he doesn’t think he’s been up long enough yet for the hallucinations to set in.

There’s another knock on the door. “Tubbo, mate–”

“I think I’m hallucinating, Phil,” Tubbo states matter of factly. “And I haven’t been up long enough for that to happen. Could there be something wrong with the water supply?”

There’s a choking noise from the other side of the door that doesn’t sound like Phil. Huh. Then, Phil speaks again:“You aren’t hallucinating, it’s really Ranboo.”

Tubbo blinks. Attempts to process those words. Fails miserably, and finds himself opening up the door, just to glare at the being wearing his husband’s skin.

“You’re dead.”

“Hi, uh, yeah, yeah, I was,” the being says, sounding too much like Ranboo. “But I’m not anymore. Can– can I see Michael?”

Tubbo blinks. The being shifts nervously. Phil speaks again. “It’s really him, mate, I took him through the paces before coming here.”

Tubbo stares. Steps silently to the side. Lets not-Ranboo through. Phil follows not-Ranboo in, as does… Sapnap?

Yeah, his eyes are definitely playing tricks on him. This isn’t real.

Sapnap looks out of it as he leans on the wall closest to the door, gaze firmly on the ground. He’s covered in something purplish, and Tubbo considers asking him about it, then thinks twice.

What’s he expecting to do, get a coherent, logical answer out of the dream?

Phil looks worried. He’s sending these odd little half glances Tubbo’s way that make the hair on the back of Tubbo’s neck stick up, that makes him want to turn around and snap at him to fuck off. Phil gave up the right to be worried about him long ago. He doesn’t get to just come in and pretend otherwise now.

“Michael’s in his room,” Tubbo says. “I can get him later. How are you here.”

It’s meant to be a question. It does not come out of his mouth as a question.

“Well, so, I walked,” not-Ranboo says, and Tubbo stares at him. He cannot be saying that. He cannot.

“Oh, come on mate, I think Tubbo deserves a bit more of an explanation than that.”

And as Tubbo stands there, tries to breathe, he realizes: this is not a dream. It can’t be. He’s uncomfortably in the moment right now, the edge of his shirt scratching against his skin, his hair too hot, too heavy, on the back of his neck. He can barely breathe with the way his throat feels all clogged up, the way his chest feels like it’s been hollowed out.

Ranboo huffs, but relents after Phil sends him a look. “Okay, so I was uh, brought back?” Ranboo says, sounding slightly unsure of himself. “And I woke up by the prison, where I’d died. So I headed this way.”

“And how were you brought back?”

“DreamXD,” Sapnap replies, cutting in. “It was DreamXD.”

Why is Sapnap even here in the first place? How does he know that?

“How do you know that, mate?” Phil asks, echoing his thoughts exactly.

“We made a deal,” Ranboo says. “Uh, Sapnap and I. So he brought me back somehow.”

Question 1: Why would Ranboo make a deal with Sapnap?

Question 2: How does Sapnap know how to revive people?

Question 3: What kind of deal did they even make?

None of the questions make it past his lips. Right now, he doesn’t think he’d be able to speak if his life depended on it.

Reality is that Ranboo is dead. Reality is that Ranboo’s ghost is off giving away their mansion to annoyingly naive idiots. Reality is that Ranboo’s ghost only interacts with him because of Micheal.

This? This is not reality. This is a cruel fucking trick, and for a moment, his vision goes red. That lying motherfucker.

Then–

“Oh, right,” Sapnap says, sounding slightly less out of it. “Yeah, uh, that happened. We made a deal. Uh, Ranboo, good to see you, I guess? You doing better, bud?”

“You know, I’ve been a lot worse, honestly,” Ranboo says. “This is– this is pretty good, I have to say.”

Sapnap nods. He looks slightly unsure, twitchy in a way that’s uncharacteristic for him. “How much do you remember? From when you were–” Dead, he doesn’t say, but Tubbo hears it echo in the silence all the same. And– Ranboo is dead, this isn’t a fucking were situation. This isn’t like Tommy. This isn’t like Wilbur. His husband is dead.

“I– some of it?” Ranboo replies, sounding more questioning than anything. “I remember like, the basics of our deal, if that’s what you’re wondering about. I’m assuming the plan went well, then? By the fact that I’m alive?”

“Yeah, yeah, it worked.”

“Is there any way I’m getting that shulker back from you?”

Sorry, Ranboo had a shulker? Tubbo sends a disbelieving look his way. Ranboo carefully avoids looking at him.

Sapnap shakes his head. “XD confiscated it.”

“Oh, I don’t want to explain that to Foolish,” Ranboo says. “I really, really don’t want to explain that.”

Tubbo breathes. Somehow, somehow, he breathes. Despite the impossibility standing right there, he breathes, and he stays standing. It sounds like Ranboo. It speaks like he did. He’s heard that apprehension a million times before. He almost knows it better than he knows himself.

“Yeah, sorry man,” Sapnap sounds genuinely apologetic. And– Tubbo doesn’t think he’s ever really heard that from him. Huh.

Ranboo waves him off. “It was my decision. Well, it wasn’t, but it was. Kind of. I don’t know, it’s weird.” He shifts, wrings his hands together. With a surprising ferocity, Tubbo finds himself beating back the sudden urge to go over there and take said hands in his. “Don’t worry about it anyway, it’s probably my fault.”

Of course he’d say that. If Tubbo thought he could speak, maybe he’d even say something about it.

“Oh come on, mate,” Phil says. “I might not be exactly sure what you’re talking about, but it sounds like you’re blaming yourself for Ghostboo’s actions, and you can’t do that.”

“Right, right, sorry, yeah,” Ranboo says, nodding. It’s the kind of bullshit agreement Ranboo pulled all the time when he was alive. Tubbo wants to call him out on it. His tongue feels stuck in his throat.

Ranboo turns back to face him. And– it’s all too much. It’s all too overwhelming. He can’t bring himself to speak.

He’s so unspeakably angry with Ranboo. He misses him so much that he can’t breathe. He missed Ranboo before he was dead. He wants to scream at him for everything he’s done. He needs to take a moment to process, needs to take a moment to breathe. But there’s no place to run, no way to hide. He’s stuck here. The exit is behind Ranboo, behind Sapnap, behind Philza. Out of reach.

‘How could you,’ he wants to demand. ‘Weren't we anything? How could you leave me?’

Instead, he shoves his hands into his pockets, picks at the seams of his coat pockets as he tries to calm himself down.

Ranboo doesn’t say anything, just stares at him silently. It’s almost as bad as seeing Ghostboo.

Scratch that, actually, no. Nothing could be as bad as seeing the faded shadow of his husband’s corpse walking around, talking, so vocal about how much happier he is now that he’s dead. This is bad, but it’s not nearly that bad.

“But yeah,” Ranboo finally says, “that's– that's what happened, I guess. So now I’m here.”

Tubbo nods once. Tries to figure out a response to that, tries to make his throat work, tries to make words come out. Fails, miserably.

Instead, he holds one finger up, somehow makes his way over to the stairs. Walks up them. Looks around, searches his memory for where he placed the tulip– and yes, it’s right where he left it.

The book the tulip is being pressed in feels like it’s too heavy when Tubbo picks it up. His hands shake as he holds it. His hands always shake these days.

He makes it back down the stairs, brushes past Sapnap without a look back. Keeps his eyes firmly on the book’s cover, up until he sets it down on the counter, flips it open to the page where the tulip was pressed. Stares at it silently.

The pink tulip had lived on his table as a reminder of his rage up until it started to wilt. He’d pressed it because he couldn’t stand looking at the gift from the specter of his husband. He’d pressed it because he couldn’t let the final gift he got die.

Tubbo takes a step back, gestures at the book. Ranboo’s eyes nervously flick over to it, then to Tubbo’s hand, then back to the book.

Tubbo doesn’t say anything as Ranboo pushes past Phil and Sapnap to get the counter. Leans in to look, and–

Ranboo makes a noise like he’s been punched. Good. Good. Let him feel a fraction of what Tubbo felt when Ghostboo gave him the tulip.

(He’s still not sure he could identify exactly what those feelings were.)

“Tubbo–” Ranboo starts, and Tubbo shakes his head sharply. Not here. Not now. Not with an audience, not while the rage is still so present in Tubbo’s veins.

Ranboo looks back down at the place where Tubbo knows the flower rests. There’s something almost wistful in his expression. There’s something almost angry in his expression. Tubbo wants to cry.

He’s not going to, but he wants to.

Instead, he turns back to face Phil and Sapnap. He wants to tell them to get the fuck out of his house. But he’s standing in Ranboo’s house.

“I think I should get going to Kinoko. Don’t want to piss Philza off by staying on his land for too long,” Sapnap says with an expression that’s probably meant to be a smile, but falls horribly short.

Phil, tellingly, doesn’t dispute this, just nods. “See you later, mate,” he says, friendly as can be.

“Thanks for bringing me back,” Ranboo chimes in.

Sapnap grimaces. “I couldn’t have done it without the shulker,” he admits, raises one hand up in a brief wave. “See you around, Ranboo, Phil, Tubbo.”

Tubbo watches in silence as Sapnap opens the door, walks through it. It shuts with a resounding clang.

The door shutting feels stifling, almost. He wants to feel betrayed that Sapnap never mentioned he intended to revive Ranboo when he was asking Tubbo about how to ban XD. He knows that feeling betrayed by that would be stupid. How would’ve Sapnap known that Ranboo mattered to him? It’s not like they ever flaunted it, not really.

“Could I see Michael now?” Ranboo asks suddenly, looking over at Tubbo. Instinctively, there’s an angry, hurt part of his brain that wants to say no.

Instead, Tubbo nods silently, walks back to Michael’s room. He’s napping.

Ranboo follows him in, and looks over his shoulder. When Tubbo turns back to look at him, he sees the gentle curve of a smile on Ranboo’s face, the way his eyes crinkle up at the corners.

His heart aches. It doesn’t stop the anger– doesn’t even come close– but it settles in next to it, cold next to the flame of his rage.

He’s not over it all. He’s still furious. But it’s easier to live with than it was this morning. It’s easier to breathe through.

That’s more than he thought he’d ever get.

Chapter Text

Tommy is halfway to panicking when he runs into Sapnap.

He’ll never admit it outloud– he can barely even admit it in the privacy of his own head– but the fact that he doesn’t understand the messages on his communicator has him fucking anxious in a way he wanted to never feel again. And that anxiety’s spurring on a sudden miasma of resentment– towards Sapnap, running off and getting advancements Tommy’s never seen before, towards the mysterious DreamXD and his dumb messages in chat, towards Aimsey and Eryn reacting to said dumb messages, towards Dream, for just fucking being Dream. Not knowing things is a goddamn death sentence on this server, and Tommy’s not about that, no-siree. He’s gotten the gist of it from everyone’s reactions– whatever happened was something big– but he doesn’t know enough.

He’d been hanging out with Tubbo when it happened. Things with Tubbo are… weird, these days. Not bad, per say, just… weird. Squiggly and jagged in a way it didn’t use to be.

But everything is different these days. Everything is its own brand of wrong. It’s like the Earth is being fucking sponsered by a coorperation that specializes in unifying valleys.

Hm. Unifying is definitely not the right word there, actually. It’s some kind of valley, definitely– a unique one? Un-jarring?

Whatever. It’s not like anyone is judging his brain’s lack of literary prowess. And if anyone did, they would be a bitch.

Anyway, he’s too anxious to stay in his house after reinforcing his walls, so he’s walking to the Community House instead, and he’s not panicking, because Tommy is a Big Man and Big Men Don’t Panic. He’s just being… extra aware of his environment. Like a spy or some shit. A spy that had grown an extra pair of ears and eyes, he's paying so close attention to everything.

(All this because Sapnap got some weird ass advancement earlier, and that’s unusual. Prime. Unusual might be the Dream SMP’s normal state of being, admittedly, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle.)

It’s right around then that he stumbles over Sapnap, who’s sitting hunched over, on the stairs in the Community House. He has his communicator in his hands, but he seems to be staring blankly at it.

“Hey!” Tommy calls out as he falls back on his heels. “What the fuck are you doing chilling on this rock, man? Aren’t you like, naturally hot as a Netherborn? Why would you need to sun yourself like a pussy?”

A moment of silence, save for the tweeting of the birds. Fucking, loud ass birds. They need to stop tweeting and touch some grass.

“Tommy,” Sapnap says suddenly, his head jerking upwards. Under the summer sun, he looks like shit, hair falling out of his ponytail, face hollow. Tommy tells him such.

“Thanks,” Sapnap replies sarcastically, and for a moment, he almost sounds normal. “Real flatterer, aren’t you.”

“I call it like I see it, bitch,” Tommy shoots back. “And I see that you look like death warmed over. What, did your fancy little exclusive mushroom city attack you? It seems surprisingly flammable for a place holding you.”

Tommy’s not bitter about Sapnap refusing to let him join Kinoko. He’s not. He’s got his pick of nations he can go to anyway if he wants to, both Las Nevadas and Snowchester would be thrilled to have him. It’s Sapnap who’s missing out, truly.

(Presumably Snowchester would be thrilled to have him. That is, if Tubbo’s not too tired of him. Which he isn’t. Probably.)

“Tommy, don’t burn down Kinoko,” Sapnap says tiredly. Tommy bristles. That’s not what Sapnap was supposed to take from that.

“Don’t tell me what to do, bitch.”

“I’m not– what are you even saying,” Sapnap asks, and rubs his eyes. “Fuck’s sake, Tommy.”

“Got something you want to say, bitch?” He could take ol’ Sappitus Nappitus in a fight. Probably. Maybe. Sort of.

“No,” Sapnap replies with a long suffering sigh, which you know what? Fuck you too. Tommy is a fucking gift to be around, no one should be long suffering in his presence.

“What was up with all those advancements, anyway?” Tommy suddenly finds himself asking, before he can think twice about it. “DreamXD was real pressed about it in the chat. All caps and everything.”

“I think all caps is just how DreamXD talks,” Sapnap says absentmindedly, before seemingly processing the question, as his eyes go wide. “Wait, what do you mean all those advancements?”

“I mean those four fucking advancements you got within the span of like, five minutes, bitch. I’ve, uh, definitely seen them before, because I’m a Big Man who Knows Things, but their meanings seem to have, well, slipped my mind.”

“...Right,” Sapnap says doubtfully, because he’s a bitch. He doesn’t seem to be paying Tommy much attention though, instead he’s staring at the comm in his hands, sighing loudly. Then, he flicks it on, and– his face goes through several emotions in rapid succession– shock, then understanding, then shock again, anger, hurt.

“Dream fucking DM-ed me,” Sapnap says slowly, and there’s just disbelief in the words. Tommy blinks, not quite processing at first. Then he feels himself going cold. For a moment, he can barely feel his fingers. And then– “Tommy, Dream fucking DM-ed me, what the fuck?”

The rage hits like a punch to the face.

“He WHAT?” Tommy demands, and leans forward, reaching for the comm. Sapnap bats him away, still staring at it. “Well? What did he say?”

“Uh, well, he cursed at me,” Sapnap slowly says as he scrolls. “He told me not to kill the Ender Dragon under any circumstance– heh, failed that one– he told me I’m an idiot, he said he was going to kill me, et cetera.”

Tommy’s shoulders relax a little, but– not much. “Typical Green Bitch stuff, then,” he says, and tries to ignore the anxiety rushing through him, the way it’s suddenly become so much harder to breathe. It’s like his lungs are a construction zone, and there’s something diverting his air away from them like traffic. Bright yellow vests and hardhats and all. “So, uh, is this like a logical escalation, or a Dream-being-a-bitch escalation?”

“What?”

“Is Dream’s reaction like, warranted, or is it just him being him?”

Exile wasn’t a warranted reaction. It was just Dream being Dream, taking any excuse he could to be a bitch. Tommy knows this logically, knows that he didn’t deserve any of that shit.

… On squiggly, weird days like today, sometimes he can almost believe that, too.

“Uh, warranted, actually,” Sapnap says, and it almost– almost!– sounds sheepish. But it’s Sapnap saying that, so it doesn’t actually. “I mean, the murder bit is harsh, but I’m already planning on killing him, so I guess it’s fair. The rest of it is just–” Sapnap breaks off. Goes quiet. Then quietly– “I just wish he had stayed in prison.”

“Dude, what the fuck did you do?” Tommy demands, in lieu of anything else to say. Because screw it, he’s fucking curious about what the hell set Dream off so much, about the purple-ish, silvery splatters on Sapnap, about the way his hand keeps flexing, opening and closing again and again.

“Well,” Sapnap says, with a huff of what could almost be a laugh, in another time. “I sorta, uh, broke the server’s final rule.”

“... You went to The End?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap says, and for a moment he almost looks like his old self. “Yeah, I went to The End. And then I killed the Ender Dragon, and used its egg to threaten God.”

“Haha, egg,” Tommy replies automatically, before his eyes go wide. “Wait, you did what?”

“Yeaaaaaah.”

“I– dude, that’s so fucking pog, what the hell? Good job on not being lame for once, pussy.”

“Thanks.”

“So, why did you threaten God? Was it for infinite riches? Or infinite bitches? Or infinite riches and bitches?”

A pause. “Um, the second one, I guess?” Sapnap replies, sounding uncertain. He squints up at Tommy, grimaces. “But not really. I, well, I did it to wake George up, actually.”

Tommy stares. Sapnap stares back. Surely he’s going to say ‘jk’ soon, right? Surely that’s a joke?

“Are you fucking kidding me? You did all that to wake George up?” Tommy is going to scream. Sapnap is such a fucking bitch, Prime hells. He threatened a god to wake up fucking Gogy? Gogy? What the fuck is wrong with him?

“Yeah,” Sapnap replies, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Tommy is internally making a list of all of the synonyms of the word ‘lame’ to call him. “But I don’t– well. I haven’t, uh, seen him since coming back. Any– any chance you have?”

Sapnap looks like he half doesn’t want to hear the answer, which is good, because Tommy is pissed and doesn’t want to give it. “Why in Prime’s name would I have seen Gogy?”

Sapnap huffs, rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what you do with your free time, maybe you spend all your time crying outside Kinoko or something. Maybe you and George are secret friends who hang out all the time.”

“First of all, fuck you, I don’t cry, and secondly, ew, no, I’m not Dream,” Tommy replies on instinct, then watches Sapnap flinch. Flinches himself as he realizes why Sapnap flinched, just what he said. God, Dream’s such a fucking bitchboy, ruining everything even though he’s not even here.

“No, you aren’t,” Sapnap says after a moment, and he’s not quite looking at Tommy when he says it, instead staring mostly at his communicator. Which probably isn’t even that fucking interesting. Certainly not more interesting than Big Man Tommy, at least.

“...You really did all that for Gogy?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap says, then pauses. Frowns. “Well, kind of. I, uh, technically brought Ranboo back too?”

What. “Is that a fucking question?” Tommy demands, suddenly feeling sick. It couldn’t be, right? Ranboo was dead. That was the end of it. Sapnap doesn’t even have the revive book. There’s no way Ranboo is alive right now. There’s no way that’s right.

“No, no, I definitely brought him back,” Sapnap says wryly.

“Do you have the Revive Book?”

“No, I uh, got DreamXD to do it.”

What the fuuuuuuuuck. “How the fuck did you manage that?”

“I put him in a position where his only option was to change the rules.”

Tommy frowns. “Are they changed like, permanently?”

“I don’t think so. He’s got the thing I was holding over his head now anyway.” Tommy blinks, stares. Sapnap looks back down at his communicator and fiddles with the side of it.

Ranboo, alive? There’s no fucking way, right? But… Sapnap’s never really been one for lying, and he’s always been a shit liar, anyway. This doesn’t sound like a lie. This sounds like–

This sounds like he needs to go find Tubbo.

Tommy crosses his arms. The quicker he can get Sapnap out of here, the quicker he can go to Tubbo, the quicker the two of them can band together to figure out what the hell actually happened. “You gonna like, check on Gogs? Or all you gonna keep sitting there like a pussboy, pussboy?”

Sapnap doesn’t respond. He’s just staring at his communicator still. It’s… unnerving. It makes Tommy fidgety.

“Yeah, I’m going,” Sapnap says after a moment. He doesn’t move.

And fuck, fucking hell, how is Tommy meant to deal with this one?

Maybe– Wil? Yeah, Wil. He’ll know what to do. He always knows what to do.

You whisper to WilburSoot: WIL

You whisper to WilburSoot: WIL YOU ASSHOLE

WilburSoot whispers to you: Hello child

WilburSoot whispers to you: I’m busy

You whisper to WilburSoot: GET LESS BUSY THEN BICTH

You whisper to WilburSoot: tell quackity that his fiancé fucking lost it

You whisper to WilburSoot: community house

You whisper to WilburSoot: listen hes got like purple blood and shit on hjn and hes all spaecy and wreid

WilburSoot whispers to you: Quackity says he doesn't have fiances

WilburSoot whispers to you: Stop bothering me

You whisper to WilburSoot: HE WENT TO THE END WIL

You whisper to WilburSoot: HE KILLED THE FUCKUNG ENDER DRAGON

You whisper to WilburSoot: WIL

You whisper to WilburSoot: WILBUR YOU BITCH

You whisper to WilburSoot: DONT FUCKING IGNORE ME

You whisper to WilburSoot: WIL

Wilbur doesn’t reply. Fuck, fucking fuck, fuck him and his stupid ass. Who else can he contact? Karl? He checks Karl’s account, notices that he’s not online.

That’s weird. Tommy could’ve sworn Karl was on earlier. Fuck, who else is there besides Karl? Who else is in their dumb little kingdom? Maybe– George?

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: GEORGE MOTHERFUCKING BJTCH BOY

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: YOU SLEEPY ASS MOTHERFUCKER WAKE UP

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: if you're even awake bitchboy

GeorgeNotFound whispers to you: Tommy?

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: yeah that's my name don't wear it out

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: gtf over here ur bestie lost it

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: went on another pet murdering spree except this time he killed the fucking ender dragon to threaten god

GeorgeNotFound whispers to you: He did what

You whisper to GeorgeNotFound: KILLED THE FUCKING ENDER DRAGON BITCH

GeorgeNotFound whispers to you: Omw

Chapter Text

George opens his eyes to a world of warmth and quiet.

He’s in his bedroom, he realizes, the one in Kinoko. It’s the house he shares with Karl, the room he most often finds himself closing his eyes in during the rare occasions he’s both actually awake and aware enough to go find his bed.

And– it’s peaceful in Kinoko. Quiet. Birds chirp outside his window, and the sunlight beams down onto his bed, bright and brilliant and far too much for his tired brain to handle at the moment. Instead, he shuts his eyes, groans, and rolls over to bury his face in his pillow.

Light sufficiently shut out, he lets himself simply breathe for a moment. There’s no way of knowing if he’s awake or not yet– things have been picturesque enough that it could be a dream, yet vivid enough that maybe it’s reality. He’s not quite sure if he cares enough to put any work into figuring it out. Does it even matter, in the end?

He lays there and drifts for god knows how long until abruptly, his mini-nap is suddenly interrupted by the uncharacteristic buzzing of his communicator.

George groans dramatically, flops one arm out to the side. Groans again as it continues to buzz and his hand continues to fail at finding it to turn it off. Finally, he heaves himself upwards with all too much effort, and sends a withering glare at his bedside table, the comm that lays innocently upon it. The table, coward it is, does not respond.

Then something catches his eye. Huh. There’s a chair by his bed. A wicker chair. Rickety. One that George thinks he might recognize from El Rapids. But… what’s it doing in his room?

Buzz, buzz.

“Shut up,” George snarls, whipping back around from the chair to glare at his communicator. “Oh my god, you’re so annoying.”

His communicator, predictably, keeps buzzing, and does not reply. George scowls at it again, but relents, picking it up.

The messages from Tommy have his brows steadily climbing up his forehead. Bcause, what? There’s no way. This is Tommy he’s talking about. Tommy, who’s responsible for like, ninety percent of the conflict on the server anyway. Why would Tommy be texting him about Sapnap?

Wait… Sapnap.

The realization hits him like a bucket of ice cold water. Because– Sapnap is rarely in his dreams. He’s always been the one thing George’s mind has tried to keep sacred. Kept safe. Therefore–

Therefore, George is most likely awake.

Abruptly he’s moving, trying to push the remaining sleep from his mind. Being awake is a rarity– knowing that he’s awake even more so– and the message from Tommy is. Well. It is. Tommy isn’t usually worried about someone, in that usually he’s being the one to cause the worry, and he’s definitely not usually worried about Sapnap and George, so…

This might be a trap, but it might not be. Which means that, to his immense displeasure, he needs to go.

Killing the ender dragon to threaten god sounds like something Sapnap might plausibly do. And usually, he’d just call for XD to confirm something like this, but– XD tends to be less receptive when he’s awake. Also, bitchier. So much bitchier.

George heads downstairs, pauses by the living room. Karl’s not there, but the TV is on, playing Gravity Falls. Huh. He picks up the remote, notes that the episode is only halfway over.

“Karl?” he calls out, looking around. He pokes his head into the kitchen, but there’s no one there. “Karl?”

No response. Karl must’ve left, and forgotten to turn it off. Strange. Last he checked, Karl wasn’t forgetful like that.

Oh well. George grabs the remote, pauses the show, flicks off the T.V. Then he heads onwards.

As he takes off for the community house, he briefly flips through all the other messages on his comm– and there are a lot, hell, how long was he asleep? Going outside doesn’t help answer that question either, because there are birds chirping, and flowers blooming, but George could’ve sworn it was fall when he last shut his eyes. Or maybe winter. Whatever. It’s unnerving, but he’s used to things on this server changing in a blink, used to the destruction that hits the moment he doesn’t pay attention. In his defense, paying attention is often just too much work. If things are going to fall apart regardless– and they are, they always do– then maybe he can spare himself a bit of pain by shutting his eyes.

Ugh. Having a clear mind sucks. This is the most alive, the most present he’s felt in ages, and it’s awful. He’s used to reality sliding out from under him when he has too many of these thoughts, used to the world blurring at the corners as the day goes on. But right now, everything is remaining clear and piercing and he’s fully present in it.

Bleh. He speeds up, not sparing a glance back as he exits Kinoko, heading for spawn. He makes sure to flip off Las Nevadas when he passes by that general direction, stupid fucking place. He doesn’t know what happened between Quackity and Karl that has Quackity living fucking there instead of with them, but in a detached sort of way, he knows it annoys the shit out of him. El Rapids was good, and Kinoko could be great, but no, stupid Las Nevadas had to take Quackity away. Gross.

The Community House comes into view in the distance, and just like it has ever since being blown up, it looks off. George frowns as he approaches it. He almost wishes that DreamXD was by his side. He almost wants to wring his own neck for thinking that. He almost feels like he’s standing outside the prison again, a friend within his grasp yet so many miles away it was like an ocean separated them.

With that thought in mind, it’s all too easy to swing open the Community House’s door. It opens with a simple push, and George winces upon walking in, though he’s not quite sure why. Then–

“Gogy!” There’s a brief clatter, a weak noise that’s a shade away from being a snicker, a snicker he’d know anywhere, and then Tommy is standing up, walking towards him. “Hey bitch, what’s up?”

“You’re the one who texted,” George points out. “I should be asking you that.” He steps further inside, searching for Sapnap, and in the middle of the room, seated on a stair–

Wow. Sapnap looks bad. Like, not like he’s on death’s door or anything, but still, pretty shitty. He’s obviously not been sleeping much, and his shirt looks like he got caught in a sweet berry bush, or something. There’s a weird, fluorescent looking, purplish liquid dripping from his hair, his clothes, his axe– George really wants to make a joke about that– and it appears to have stained his shirt. Ugh. If it’s anything like bloodstains, it’s gonna be hell to get out.

“Well, you see Gogy, I was just going about my merry way when I stumbled upon your dear friend Sapnap here, looking down on his luck, and also his life.”

Tellingly, Sapnap doesn’t respond to that. Tommy continues. “And you know, after all those advancements on the comm, I was curious! So I walked on up, and I, Big Man Tommy, was like, what’s up, bitch, and Sapnap was all like, spacey and shit in reply, which was kind of rude–”

“Okay, that’s enough,” George interrupts, rolling his eyes.

“Hey! Excuse you, I was not done telling my story,” Tommy fires back. “Anyway, I was–”

“George,” Sapnap says suddenly, and it sounds disbelieving. George turns away from Tommy to face Sapnap completely. “George, you’re– you’re awake?”

George pauses. “Yes…” he says slowly. Tommy has thankfully fallen quiet in the background. Sapnap continues staring at him, like he’s not sure what he’s looking at, like he’s not sure if this is real. It makes something in George shift uncomfortably, too familiar for comfort. “Sapnap, you’re being weird. Why are you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird, you’re being weird,” Sapnap shoots back automatically. It sounds more like a rehearsed line than it should. “How am I being weird?”

“OKAY,” Tommy cuts in before George can respond. “This? This is your problem now,” he says cheerfully, pointing towards Sapnap. “Later, bitches!”

Tommy grins, gives a cheeky salute, then takes off out the nearest door. George can distantly hear him yelling something along the lines of ‘Ranboob, here I come!’ as he leaves. He decides not to question it.

“I could shoot him,” Sapnap says idly as they watch him run away. His fingers twitch towards his bow.

“Do it,” George dares. “Do it, do it, do it, do it–”

“Nah, I like the kid too much,” Sapnap says after a moment. “I mean, not enough to let him join Kinoko, that would be a disaster, but… whatever. Think I should tell him where Ranboo is?”

George makes a face of disgust. “Absolutely not, it’s Tommy.”

“Yeah, but–”

“Tommy.”

“Whatever,” Sapnap says, rolling his eyes. He types something in on his communicator anyway. “So uh, how you feeling?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because we’re friends? That’s a friend thing to do.”

“You have never once asked me how I was doing before,” George points out.

“Yeah, well, today is… different, I guess.”

George frowns. “Why exactly is it different? And why do you look like…” George trails off, gestures, “that?”

“Okay, rude,” Sapnap shoots back, but it doesn’t contain half the heat it normally would’ve. “And well… I woke you up,” he says. “I, uh, made a deal with DreamXD. And he woke you up. Like, permanently. Kind of. I mean, I’m assuming you can still like sleep and shit, but no more magical comas.”

So that’s why this feels different, why this doesn’t feel half as distant as it usually does.

“You made a deal with DreamXD?” George questions. Usually, DreamXD makes deals with him. (He’s not… jealous. He’s not.) “What did he ask for?”

At this, Sapnap winces. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly a deal,” he admits. “I might’ve killed the Ender Dragon, and then, well…”

It’s all too easy to imagine what had happened when Sapnap describes it to him.

Sapnap had killed the dragon, and the egg had appeared, and Sapnap only waited a split second before lunging for it, hitting it. It disappeared, and he scanned the End’s desolate landscape desperately for it, caught sight of it on a small hill of endstone, sprinted over there. He was quick to destroy endstone two blocks underneath the egg, and replaced it with a torch, then destroyed the endstone directly under the egg. It fell onto the torch, and showed up in his inventory, where Sapnap breathed out a sigh of relief. Then, he placed the enderchest from his hotbar, used one hand to open it while holding the egg in the other. The bright red of the TNT in said chest stood out among the faded neutrals of the End, and he wasted no time tucking the egg into it, making sure the redstone was completely set up.

Hopefully, the threat of destroying the egg would be enough. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully–

His communicator buzzed in his pocket. He knew, without even looking, what it must be.

“DreamXD,” Sapnap had said, slowly turning around. “I’ve come to make a deal.”

“YOU,” XD had accused in return. He’d been hovering in mid air, directly above the bedrock fountain. His dark green cape was flowing despite the lack of wind, his mask glowing golden. Multiple pairs of hands floated by the edges of the cape, and his form, as weird and disconnected as it was, pulsed with energy. There had been eyes all around his ‘body,’ some open, some shut, all aimed at Sapnap.

“Me,” Sapnap agreed wryly. Absent-mindedly, he noted that he was cold. The dragon’s blood, combined with The End’s eternal night, had the hair on his arms standing straight up.

Or maybe it was the God staring down at him that was responsible for that one.

The dragon egg was freezing to touch, yet when he stood guard over it and the TNT in his ender chest, the only feeling he could muster up was desperation. He needed to do this. There was no other choice.

“YOU DARE–”

“Yes. We’re going to make a deal, XD.”

“I SHOULD SMITE YOU WHERE YOU STAND.”

“Sure, if you want to set off the dead man’s switch and blow up the dragon egg.”

A moment of silence. If he could’ve felt something, Sapnap’s pretty sure he’d feel smug. “YOU IDIOT. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.”

Insults. That’s an indication of– something, certainly, though he wasn’t sure if it’s good or bad. “You heard me, XD, I set up a dead man’s switch. If I die, the TNT in my enderchest will blow the egg to high heaven. Now, are we going to bargain or not?”

The god sputtered, and the form XD was wearing seemed to almost glitch out, expanding and expanding until he was towering over Sapnap, blocking out the sky. “YOU? WISH TO BARGAIN?”

“I’m kind of offended by your tone of voice in saying that,” Sapnap bullshitted in reply as he tried to wrestle down the relief that threatened to overwhelm him. XD was listening to him. He wasn’t just smiting Sapnap down. “You’re the guardian of the End, and of the dragon, right? But the dragon is gone.”

“BECAUSE OF YOU.”

“Yes. But unless you get the egg back, you have nothing to guard in the End, right?”

“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.”

“Yes, I do,” Sapnap lied. “You’ll be a God without a purpose. You’ll have no reason for existing.”

“WATCH WHAT YOU SAY, FOOL.”

“What use is a god of nothing? How much strength does a god without a purpose have?”

“OH, I CAN SHOW YOU THAT.”

“Ahahaha, let’s maybe not. But I am right though, aren’t I? You need the egg back.”

“YOU–”

“And I’m willing to give it back to you. I just need a few things from you first.”

“WHAT.”

Is it working? Is this really going to turn out well?

“First, I need you to wake up George, and ensure he doesn’t fall into another magical sleep.”

The God snorted. “WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I’D EVER DO THAT?”

“Because if you kill me, George will die anyway.”

“WHAT MAKES YOU SAY THAT?”

“There will be no one around to keep him actually alive in his slumber. A mob will break in eventually, or someone will blow up Kinoko, or he’ll fall asleep somewhere dangerous, or– I don’t know, something will happen.” And the guess, the part that very well could’ve been wrong and led to his downfall– “You can’t keep him safe, your power is already limited in the Overworld.”

“DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT?”

Fuck. Fuck. “Yes. And I’m right, aren’t I?”

This was the gamble. If Sapnap was wrong, DreamXD could’ve probably just smitten him, and found another way to get to the egg. It had to be true that his power is limited, that even here in his domain, he couldn’t just reach inside Sapnap’s ender chest to steal the egg back. The fact that he hadn’t yet implied good things.

“GEORGE CHOOSES TO FALL ASLEEP, YOU KNOW.” DreamXD said instead, and Sapnap held back his sigh of relief. Thank Prime.

“But you keep him trapped in his dreams,” he retorted, tightening his grasp on the axe.

“HE WANTS TO BE THERE.”

Sapnap swallowed hard. “Not always,” he said, praying that it was still true. He knew George was disturbed by the dreams once. Hopefully, a part of him still was. “He’s not happy like this, not really. He’s just passing the days.”

“YOU THINK HE’S NOT HAPPY?”

“He can’t be happy. Humans need connection. They need to be able to actually live life.”

“HE HAS ME.”

“He doesn’t know up from down when he’s dreaming! He’s confused, kept in a constant state of unreality. That’s not happy, that’s simply not knowing any better.”

“WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?”

“Everything! Everything is!” Sapnap paused, forced himself to breathe slower. He didn’t need to convince XD that he was right, he just had to strongarm him into agreeing. “It doesn’t– it doesn’t matter if you agree with me. You’re going to bring George out of his magical coma-thing, and you’re going to make sure that he doesn’t fall into another one, and–”

“YOU’RE BOLD,” DreamXD replied. It sounded like the furthest thing from a compliment. “WHY DO YOU THINK I’LL DO THIS? WHY SHOULDN’T I KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND? I ALREADY OWN YOUR SOUL.”

“Because if you do that, the dragon egg is gone,” Sapnap said, and snapped his fingers. “Boom. Like that. No more dragon egg for you. Even if part of the shell survives, the dragon within it sure as hell won’t.”

Tellingly, DreamXD didn’t say anything in response to that. Sapnap continued. “Alright, secondly, you’re going to bring Ranboo back to life,” he said, and he put more conviction into his voice than he felt.

“YOU DON’T HAVE THE REVIVE BOOK–”

“I don’t care, you’re going to do it.”

“YOU NEED THE BOOK TO BRING PEOPLE BACK. IT’S IN THE RULES.”

“You can change the rules. You did it for the Death Book, didn’t you?”

“THAT’S DIFFERENT.”

“Yeah, because you wanted my soul then, and you don’t want to bring Ranboo back now. I don’t care. You’re going to do it, or I’m going to pull the dead man’s switch and leave.”

He spoke it into existence, and willed it to be true. There was a part of him that just wanted to secure George’s safety and run, a part of him that didn’t give a shit about his deal with Ranboo. People break their word all the time on this godforsaken SMP. How would’ve this been any different?

There was a part of him that said fuck it, you’ll be permadead without a chance for resurrection soon anyway, who cares if you screw Ranboo over?

But he wanted to be better, didn't he? He didn’t want to be like Dream.

Fuck, it would be so much easier just to leave now. To just double down on his point regarding George, forget all about Ranboo. But–

No. No, he wouldn’t do that. Not unless he was pushed to a place where he had to.

“...FINE.” DreamXD said.

Sapnap froze. “Fine?” he questioned, not daring to breathe.

“I WILL DO WHAT YOU ASK, AND YOU WILL GIVE ME BACK THE ENDER DRAGON EGG, OR I WILL KILL EVERYONE YOU HAVE EVER CARED ABOUT.”

“Okay,” Sapnap said, forcing down his excitement. Oh Prime. Did it… did it really work?

“GEORGE IS AWAKE NOW,” DreamXD said after a moment. “HE IS NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT.”

Fuck it, he could deal with George in a minute. Maybe DreamXD was just projecting or some shit. “And Ranboo?” he asked.

“ONE MOMENT,” XD replied, sounding irritated. “THIS ISN’T INSTANTANEOUS, YOU KNOW.”

Sapnap considered pointing out that no, no, he did not in fact know, then thinks better of it. Somehow, somehow, he’s getting what he wanted. Probably best not to press his luck.

“PUT THE EGG IN YOUR INVENTORY.” XD ordered. Sapnap frowned.

“Why?”

The god rolled his eyes. All his eyes. It was more than kind of unnerving. “JUST DO IT.”

“But–”

“DO IT.”

Fuck. Sapnap grabbed the egg out of his enderchest, along with a piece of TNT. Better safe than sorry.

In a moment, the world flashed, and the End disappeared. Sapnap flinched, tightened his grip on the egg. Suddenly, there was a sky around him, bright and blue. Water lapped at his feet. There was a rickety looking wooden boat next to him.

He was by… a lake, it seemed? Or an ocean? The water flows on and on in front of him, with no visible end. There did seem to be something floating in the ocean though,

“GIVE ME THE EGG,” XD said, “THEN GET IN THE BOAT AND ROW TO THE MIDDLE. ONCE RANBOO IS IN THE BOAT WITH YOU, ROW BACK HERE. THE EXIT WILL REVEAL ITSELF.”

So this is purgatory? Or, well, the afterlife? Huh.

This wouldn’t be the… worst place to send Dream. Probably. If this was even where he would go.

Sapnap nodded, took a breath in, and handed over the egg. Waited to be instantly smited.

Somehow, he was not instantly smited.

“Uh, thanks,” Sapnap said once he was in the boat, and about to take sail.

“I LOOK FORWARD TO TAKING YOUR SOUL,” DreamXD replied, then disappeared.

Sapnap had obligingly rowed out to save Ranboo then, brought him back to the shore, and to the exit that showed up when they reached it. Upon walking through the exit, Sapnap had found himself back in the End, standing by the bedrock fountain, with the portal presumably back home open at his feet.

It buzzed in the relative silence of the End, now that Sapnap was all alone there. And– well, there was no reason to stay in the End, not really. What was there to do in the End besides kill the dragon? That had always been what Dream was fixated on when they were younger.

He’d accomplished his younger self’s dream. But he did it alone, not with his friends like he’d always wanted to.

A hollow victory.

But at least he’d hopefully have George waiting for him on the other side of the portal, right? At least he’d succeeded in that aspect of this?

Well, there was no use putting it off any longer.

He jumped.

There’s silence, for a moment, after Sapnap finishes his recounting. Silence, as George tries to process what he’s just learned.

“You woke me up,” George says dumbly. He’s not sure if he’s angry about that, or thankful. A mix of both, he supposes. “You threatened god to wake me up.”

Sapnap nods.

“Why?” George demands. He doesn’t bother to say thank you. There’s no way Sapnap would be expecting it, anyway– he knows George well enough at this point to know he wouldn’t say thank you if his life depended on it.

Sapnap shrugs. “Would it be enough to say that I missed you?”

George narrows his eyes. Sapnap has always been shit at lying, and that statement, while not a lie, could not be more obviously a misdirect. “That’s not it,” George says, “that’s not the whole reason you did it.”

“Do we have to have this conversation here?”

“Yes, yes we do,” George says. “It’s not my fault you’re shit at evading and stuff.”

Sapnap rolls his eyes. “I’m not evading, how the hell am I evading?”

“Like that!” George says, gesturing at him. “Prime, you’re so annoying. Why did you actually do it?”

Sapnap sighs, looks away from him. Looks down at the ground. “I wanted to say goodbye, okay?”

George freezes. “Goodbye?” he questions, not daring to consider what it might mean.

“Yes. Goodbye.”

George laughs. There’s nothing funny about it. “What do you mean, goodbye?”

“Do we really need to talk about this now?”

“I don’t know, what do you mean when you say goodbye?” George shoots back. “Maybe we don’t, I don’t know, YOU’RE the one avoiding my questions. Oooooh, I’m Sapnap, and I’m incapable of answering simple questions, ooooooh!”

“Okay, first of all, you’re a hypocrite,” Sapnap says, standing up to point at him, “and secondly, I just don’t think right now, right here, is the time to be talking about this!”

“HOW am I a hypocrite?”

“You just are!”

“Oh, I’m Sapnap, and I like to say dumb things without having any proof–”

“Ooooh, I’m George, and I’m British–”

“Just answer my question, okay? Just answer my question.”

In an instance, Sapnap falls silent. “My deal with DreamXD in the End wasn’t the only deal I made with him,” he finally says.

“And?”

“Well, earlier this year I found a book of his. The Death Book.”

“Yeah, you mentioned.'' This, George remembers from the last time he was awake, when Sapnap and him tore through Snowchester and Daisy Hollow. He hadn’t been quite sure if it was a dream then. Now, he knows it must not have been.

“I didn’t mention what the cost of it was, though,” Sapnap says. “It– the Death Book works by writing the name of a person down in it, and then it kills that person. It can kill anyone except for the owner of the Revive Book. And the person I wanted to kill was…” he trails off.

George has a sneaking suspicion where this is going. He doesn’t know if he wants Sapnap to continue or not.

Sapnap continues. “Well, I wrote Dream’s name in the book. And Dream owns the Revive Book, so XD couldn’t kill him. So XD… changed the rules.”

The fear that grips George’s heart is icy and sharp. “What.”

“He’s not dead yet,” Sapnap quickly says. “Dream, that is. But, uh, okay, so the cost of the Death Book working usually is… the life of the person who wrote the name down in the book.”

George stares at him. Surely, he heard him wrong. Surely, that’s not right. Surely, Sapnap didn’t–

“And not just one life either. Like, their entire life. All three canon lives, and the chance at being a ghost. That’s the cost.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. That’s not– you didn’t–” George wants to scream. He wants to go back to bed. What is this? What is this? This is a cruel fucking joke if this is XD’s idea of humor. He can’t be awake. He can’t be. He–

“So, DreamXD changed the rules. It’s how I knew he could change the rules of the Revive Book to bring Ranboo back.”

Somehow, he speaks. “I don’t give a shit about Ranboo.”

Sapnap rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay, that’s– that’s not my point. The point is that DreamXD changed the rules. Instead of killing Dream, he gave me Dream’s location, and said that– that the moment I kill him, he’ll take all of my canon lives.” Silence. “So there you have it. That’s what I meant when I said I wanted to say goodbye.”

George stands there. “This is a dream,” he says, “this has to be a dream, XD, this isn’t FUCKING FUNNY! WE’VE TALKED ABOUT WHAT GOOD JOKES ARE. THIS IS A BAD JOKE.”

Sapnap’s eyes widen, and he rushes forward, stops short of actually touching George. “No, no, this isn’t a dream,” he says hurriedly, “this isn’t– I don’t know how to prove it to you, but it’s not, it’s not.”

George ignores him, waits for XD to come down and intervene. Waits. Waits.

Waits.

“George–” Sapnap begins again, just for George to cut him off.

“Shut up,” he says. “You don’t get to talk.”

“Listen, I get that you want Dream not to–”

“This isn’t ABOUT Dream!” George yells back, and dimly, he recognizes that that’s the first time he’s said his name since he went to prison. But there’s no time to think any further about that, because– “This is about you! You’re not allowed to die.”

“It’s for the greater good.”

“What greater fucking good?”

“The good of the server! Dream is going to wreck havoc now that he’s out of the prison!”

“He’s been out for months, how much “havoc” has he wrecked?”

“Oh my god, he’s gathering supplies and shit, don’t be so naive, George!”

“I’m not being naive, you’re being naive!”

“How am I being naive?”

“You just are!” Sapnap huffs and crosses his arms. “You just are.”

George rolls his eyes, turns away. Waits again for DreamXD to show up.

DreamXD doesn’t show up.

Why isn’t he showing up?

“Listen, Dream will just be a ghost, okay? Maybe– maybe he’ll be better that way. This isn’t just– this isn’t me sacrificing myself for no good reason, this is to help the server.”

“Since when did I care about the server?” George demands, turning back to glare at Sapnap. “What I care about is the fact that you’ve decided to be an IDIOT and kill yourself!’

“I’m not planning on killing myself. I’m planning on killing him, which will sacrifice my life. There’s a difference.”

“No there fucking isn’t.”

“Yes, there is! It’s him I’m planning to kill!”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Yes I am!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No! You’re planning on killing yourself! You kill him just for him to come back as a ghost? That’s– that’s not planning on killing him, that’s just a shitty murder. That’s a half assed murder. That’s stupid. You’re stupid.”

“That’s what Philza did to Wilbur.”

“Yeah? Well, it was shitty and half assed.”

Sapnap chokes. “George–”

“You’re gonna kill yourself completely, while only half killing him?”

“I thought you’d be happy about that! He won’t be gone!”

“He’s already gone!” George yells, and– the words fall out of his mouth unbidden. “He’s– he’s already left us. You can’t leave too.”

“But there aren’t any other options!” Sapnap yells, and his hands drop to his sides. “George, there aren’t any other options. This is it.”

George shakes his head numbly. “No,” he says, “no, you’re wrong.” This can’t be it. This can’t be the way everything ends.

“I have to kill Dream. There’s– there’s nothing left for me here, okay?”

“What the fuck am I then?” George demands.

Quiet. Sapnap changes his approach. “Listen, I get that you don’t want me to kill him–”

He can’t think about Dream for more than a few seconds without feeling sick to his stomach. But for once, this isn’t about Dream. Sapnap’s just not listening to him. “I DON’T WANT YOU TO KILL YOU.”

Silence. George finds that he’s breathing heavy.

“There’s no third option,” Sapnap says, and there’s something distantly mournful about it, something akin to regret in his voice. “I– it’s the void and the bedrock fountain, man. I kill him, and I die, or he kills me. That’s it. There aren’t any other options.”

Mournful regret is not good enough for George. “Or neither of you do that,” he snaps, “have you considered that one instead? That maybe you guys just fucking don’t?”

Sapnap throws his hands up in the air. “You think I want to do this? Dream needs to die, and he has already made it extremely clear that he’s planning on killing me.”

“Well maybe there’s an option that doesn’t end with you fucking dying!”

“What option?”

“I don’t– we can find it!” He knows he sounds desperate. He is desperate. How could Sapnap even be considering doing this to him?

“No, we can’t,” Sapnap says, “it’s– it’s not there.”

“Well then, you should just kill me too,” George says, throwing his arms out as he turns around to fully face Sapnap once more. “I don’t– why did you even wake me up if you were just going to do this right after?”

Sapnap looks unbearably guilty. “I told you. I wanted to see you. Before I did it,” he says. “And– and I wanted to ask you to– maybe bury us by the community house? Like, in the sunlight. Please.”

George is at a loss for words. He thinks he might be feeling tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. That is stupid. This is all so stupid.

“No!” George yells back. “No! I’m not– I’m not going to bury you guys. You aren’t going to die. Boom. That’s it. I’ve decided.”

“You don’t get to make that decision.”

“And you do?”

“Yes! He needs to go, George.”

“If we’re using names, Sapnap, then fine. You’ll kill him, and he’ll be dead, and you’ll be dead, and I’ll be as good as! Do you care about that?”

“Of course I care!” Sapnap yells back, and an angry tear slips out of his eye. He wipes it away hurriedly. “I don’t– I can’t have this argument with you.” Sapnap shakes his head, turns around to head towards the other exit.

George freezes. “Don’t you dare,” he says, “don’t you DARE fucking walk away like he did. Sapnap, I swear to Prime–”

And for a moment he thinks that is it. For a moment, he thinks Sapnap is just going to do it, is just going to walk away. Leave him, like Dream did. He’s barely breathing as he stands there, paralyzed with fear, with premature grief.

(He finds himself thinking of a memory as waits to see if Sapnap too is going to break his heart. In it, they’re all together, the three of them. They’re in a new world, and Dream is laughing that stupid teakettle laugh, and Sapnap keeps stealing the pork out of his furnace, and George is retaliating by tackling him into the ground when he does so, trying to wrestle him to get the food back. He’s kind of losing, but it’s okay.

“You guys are so slow,” Dream says when he’s finally calmed himself down enough to speak. “I’m nearly in full iron already, how are you still struggling to get food?”

“Sapnap keeps stealing my food instead of doing his own job!”

“Hey, I can’t do my own job without food! I am taking what I need to go forward.”

“Why don’t you take what you need by going out and killing something instead of stealing my stuff then!”

“But that’s no fun!”

Dream wheezes again, and George takes advantage of Sapnap’s brief distraction to reach up and elbow him in the face, stealing back the pork. “Ha! Gotcha, you’re literally dogwater, get good,” George crows, taking a celebratory bite out of his food.

“I hateeeeee you,” Sapnap groans dramatically, “this is it. The end of everything. I’m quitting the Dream Team.”

George rolls his eyes. Dream scoffs. “Haha, very funny,” Dream says sarcastically, chucking a pair of iron boots at Sapnap. “Here, have these. Mind taking back your letter of resignation now?”

“FREE SHOES,” Sapnap cheers upon catching the boots. “Yeah, okay, sure, I’m back in, but you’re on thin ice,” he says jokingly, pointing to George. George grins, smugly takes another bite of the pork, and flips him off in reply.)

George stands there, and he stares, and he tries to brace himself for Sapnap leaving. For this truly being the end of everything.

But then–

Sapnap stops two feet from the door, turns around. “Fuck, I don’t want to fight with you,” he says, and he sounds choked up. “I won’t leave, but I don’t want to fight with you. I’m tired of fighting. It’s what I’m good at, but fuck, I’m exhausted.”

“Then don’t fight,” George says. “You don’t need to. Not now. Just accept that I’m not– I’m not gonna stand back and let you die, okay?”

“George–”

“I’ll figure it out,” he says, and it’s desperate, begging. “We’ll figure it out. There’s always another way.”

Sapnap’s shoulders droop. “Except for when there isn’t,” he says helplessly.

Fuck that. “Just– a chance. Please. Trust me.”

“Listen, either way, XD–”

“I’ll deal with XD.” George has enough sway with the god to influence something, right? “Just– let me try, okay?”

“George–”

“Let me try,” he begs. “I can’t– I won’t– Listen, you might think you’re an acceptable sacrifice for this, but am I? Are you– are you really going to just KILL the Dream Team like this?”

It’s an underhand blow. George can’t find it within himself to give a shit. He’ll hit below the belt if he needs to. He’ll fucking try and threaten XD himself if he needs to.

But– maybe he won’t need to. Maybe the blow hit. Because Sapnap just freezes there, hand half extended in a placating manner. And for a moment, he just stands there. And then–

It’s devastating, the way Sapnap’s face crumples. The way he meets George’s eyes, just lets out a hoarse, wretched cry, and slap his hands over his mouth.

“Sapnap–”

He sways, and there's a muffled cry, a frantic wiping at tears. “George,” he says desperately, “George–”

For a moment, George is frozen. How is he meant to handle this?

Then suddenly he’s moving, racing forward to support Sapnap. And Sapnap– Sapnap collapses into his arms like a marionette that’s had all its strings cut. Maybe he has.

“I miss Bad,” he chokes out, “I miss Karl, I miss Quackity, I miss you.” A pause. A sob. “I miss Dream.”

“I know,” George says, biting back a sudden wave of emotion. Not here. Not now. Not when Sapnap needs him. “I do too.”

“I– I can’t– I have to, but I– I don’t want to kill him.” A hitch in Sapnap’s breathing. George brings a hand up, combs it back down through Sapnap’s hair. It’s gotten long, longer than past-Sapnap liked it. George doesn’t know how Sapnap likes it now. “I just want it all to be better. To stop hurting. I don’t think I want to die. But it’s my duty– I think I have to.”

George shuts his eyes. Breathes.

“You won’t have to,” George reassures, and he might have no idea how he’s going to make that a reality, but goddamn is he determined to. He pauses, combs his hand through Sapnap’s hair once more. “We’ll find another way, I swear.”

Sapnap curls further into him. He’s shaking. “I have to–”

“Please.” Fuck, George hates asking for things. But– “Please, just– let me try to find another way?”

The silence is loud. George can’t even hear himself breathing– fuck, he doesn’t think he is breathing.

“Please?”

“... Fine,” Sapnap finally says. “You– you can try to find another way. We can try to find another way.”

Oh, Prime. Oh Prime. The relief is so overwhelming it practically bowls him over. He braces his feet against the wood of the Community House, shifts slightly so that he’s supporting Sapnap better. Sapnap is there. He’s not dead yet. Neither of them are dead yet. They’re going to try and find another way.

George breathes in, breathes out. Buries his face in Sapnap’s hair.

Through the windows, the sun streams in, and the light embraces both of them.