Archive of Our Own ^beta

George wakes up to a hand clasped over his mouth.

It’s Dream, obviously.

George is laying flat on his back, in his comfy comfy bed, in the room that Sapnap built for him in Kinoko. He’s just awoken from a dream where he had been walking through a golden field that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. He had been walking beside someone, but he could not turn to look at them; every time he did, the figure warped and dissolved like heat waves radiating from a hot summer pavement, and so he could never look at his companion’s face, but they talked and they talked and they talked, and the golden field stretched on for miles, and they talked about nothing and everything, and it was okay. It had not been good, but it had been okay. Not happy, not exactly, but safe.

“Hi,” says Dream, straddling George’s torso, his weight pressing down on George’s chest, his hand rough on George’s mouth. Dimly it registers, at the back of George’s sleep-soaked mind, that Dream used to be heavier.

“Hi,” he says again, voice a hushed whisper, as if he’s not sure George heard him the first time. He’s excited, almost manic. “Hi. Hi!”

George can’t exactly reply, so he stares pointedly up at his friend until, he hopes, Dream realizes. It’s a comfortable half-minute, and George has plenty of time to study the curvature of Dream’s mask — a new one, without any of the chips and dents and scratches George used to know so well. No signs of wear and tear, just a plain blank expanse of smooth porcelain. Smile. Holes to see out of, though Dream’s eyes aren’t visible beyond, not in this gloom.

“You have to promise not to yell for Sapnap.”

George nods. The motion makes his mouth brush against Dream’s palm, and Dream shivers, but it’s not enough to shorten the extra minute that ticks by before he’s ready to pull his hand away and finally let George get a word in edgewise.

“Is this real?” George asks when he’s able. His voice sounds raspy even to his own ears, rough from underuse.

Dream shifts back a bit, presumably so that George can sit up, only George doesn’t want to sit up so he finds himself staring up at the ceiling, dimly lit by the glow-in-the-dark stars that Karl had given him. Or. Maybe it was Karl? George can’t be sure.

“Real as anything.”

That’s not very encouraging, but George doesn’t want to get into that now. His first instinct is to ask how long he’s been asleep. He used to do that — roll from his bed, wander groggily through the halls and gardens until he found a friend to ask. Usually it was Sapnap or Karl or, increasingly often, Tina. In the old days, George would catch Sapnap outside on the lawn, sharpening his weapons and whistling to himself, and when he saw George his face would light up and he’d tell George all about the things he’d missed on the server, gesturing with his hands like a puppeteer, spelling everything out bodily. He used to ask George where he’d been too, and George would sit down beside his friend and recount the places he’d visited in his dreams and all the things he’d done there, and the strange creatures he’d met, as if the tunnels and caverns of his mind were as real as the winding paths Sapnap traveled in the waking world.

Things are different now. Lately, when he wakes up, he wanders for a long while — sometimes hours — before he finds another person to tell him what he missed. Sometimes Karl’s around, but Karl isn’t exactly a reliable news source; half the time he can’t even recognize George even though he pretends to. Karl believes in keeping up appearances, but unfortunately he is a very bad actor.

And so Kinoko is more like a museum than a kingdom, everything still and quiet, a museum where George is both patron and exhibit. When he finally finds Sapnap, his friend’s eyes don’t light up like they used to, and sure, Sapnap smiles, but there’s a tightness to that smile that betrays exhaustion and something worse, something like despair. Yes, things are different nowadays. George doesn’t know exactly what changed, but he could make some well-informed guesses if he cared to. That’s okay. George likes Tina. She doesn’t make him tea like Karl does, or scoop him up in a sloppy crushing hug like Sapnap does, but she’s funny. She makes him laugh. It’s enough.

When Dream breaks in, George doesn’t call for Tina, or for Karl, or for Sapnap. He’s been warned about this, of course. Sapnap sat him down one day, explained that Dream had escaped the prison, that he might visit one day. The word uninvited went unsaid, but plainly obvious.

“He’ll say he wants to see you, probably,” Sapnap had said. “Hell, I reckon he might not even be lying about that.”

“But?” George prompted. Sapnap had started to speak to him the way one might speak to a dimwit or a stubborn child.

“But what he really wants is his armor back. He doesn’t care about you anymore. You gotta remember that, man.”

“You don’t sound very sure,” George had pointed out in a clipped tone.

At that, Sapnap’s mouth hardened into a firm line. “I am sure. Trust me on this.”

“What makes you think Dream doesn’t care about us?”

Sapnap ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. “Because he wouldn’t have done any of this if he cared, George.”

“Well, I disagree. I don't think he'd have done any of this if he didn't.”

Sapnap had pinched the bridge of his nose, like he was trying and failing to explain a simple equation to someone deeply ungifted in mathematics. “Maybe! Maybe. But he didn’t care about us enough to not hurt Tommy, did he?”

George doesn’t know why he’s supposed to care about Tommy. His feelings for Tommy are lukewarm tolerance at best and cold disinterest at worst, but that’s not the sort of opinion he can voice aloud. Not after everything. Inadvisable.

“I don’t see what those things have to do with one another.”

“Yes, you do,” Sapnap had said through gritted teeth. “You’re not stupid, George, and you’re no good at pretending to be stupid, either. When you love someone, you’re supposed to fight for them, yeah, but loving someone also means not fighting sometimes. Loving someone means holding yourself the fuck back and chilling the fuck out sometimes, when it counts, and Dream can’t do either, not if it means giving up on making Tommy’s life hell.”

George had merely shrugged, and Sapnap had put his face in his hands and stalked off to sharpen his weapons somewhere else, and that had been the end of that conversation.

And so, when George wakes up in the pitch darkness with Dream atop him, breathing heavily behind the mask, George thinks distantly, I was warned about this and, even more distantly, I could call for help.

Well. At the very least, he’s thinks he thinks that, retrospectively. He must have. It must have occurred to him. In the moment, he’s not sure. It’s hard to think with Dream’s hands pressing down on his mouth, their legs tangled.

“Are you wearing shoes in my bed?” is the second thing George asks, once Dream removes his hand to let him speak.

“Wh—? Oh, um, yeah. Yeah, sorry. Ha.”

George’s eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark and he can just barely make out the details of Dream’s getup: riding cloak that he knows almost definitely to be green, even though George can’t tell for certain. Boots, which should not be on the mattress, thank you very much. Mask, new. The rest is the kind of tactical wear that everybody uses, the stuff that’s lightweight and flexible, good for combat. George raises a hand to Dream’s thigh and his fingers brush what feels like a leather strap wrapped around his leg: knife? Hatchet? Dagger?

“What took you so long?” is the third question George asks.

There’s a pause. Dream goes still, and George can picture him blinking bewilderedly behind the mask.

“Your escape,” George clarifies. His head is heavy. His mouth is dry. “That was, what, nearly half a year ago?” It’s a risk, saying it out loud — he can never be truly sure how much time has passed, and any stray remark could become an admission, could give him away. George is not so far gone that he can’t tell he’s sick, and he’s not so far gone that he doesn’t know his sickness will be used against him.

But it seems his estimate of a cool half-year must be close to accurate, because Dream crosses his arms over his chest, offended.

“Wh— George, what? What’d you mean, what took me so— what took YOU so long, idiot!” His voice rises a bit, incredulous.

“Shush.” George sits up, muscles straining as he props himself on his elbows. “Somebody’s going to hear you.”

“You didn’t visit me,” Dream hisses.

It’s phrased like an accusation, instead of what it really is: a fact, plain and simple.

George shrugs. A moment passes in tense silence.

“Wow,” says Dream, after a while. His voice has gone all soft, has lost all the knife-sharp edge of a whisper. There is nothing frantic here. “Okay. So you really— wow. Yeah.”

George cocks his head to the side.

“You really didn’t visit me,” says Dream. He uncrosses his arms, letting them dangle; George can feel his fingertips brush his sides. “Didn’t try to, I mean.” A pause. “I wondered, y’know. Sam told me— he said no one came, other than Ghostbur and Techno, obviously, and…and the rest.”

And Tommy goes unsaid.

“And, and I couldn’t be sure, y’know, if he was lying, like, just saying shit because he thought it would get to me.” Dream fidgets, scratches the back of his neck. George doesn’t like fidgeting. It irritates him.

“I guess…” George raises a hand to rest on Dream’s chest, palm flat against the fabric of his shirt. This used to work. Dream has always been easy to manipulate, even when he’s angry. “I guess I must have thought I visited.”

“What— George, what does that mean?”

“I was asleep,” George murmurs, staring at the place where his hand rests. “I was dreaming. It’s hard to tell, sometimes. I’m so tired.”

Dream heaves an upset, exasperated sigh, but he visibly deflates a bit, nervous agitation and anxious fury draining out of him, and George knows he’s won again. It’s almost boring, how easy it is. Even after everything. Even after all this time.

George can feel a smile playing at his lips as he asks, voice low, whether Dream has made up his mind yet.

“Made up my mind about what?” Dream huffs, clearly annoyed. He’s grasping George’s hand, holding it close to his heart, rolling George’s knuckles between thumb and forefinger absentmindedly.

“About whether you’re going to kill me.” George’s free hand dances at the edge of the mask, teasing at the possibility of prying it off, but when he tugs at the thing for real, Dream stops him.

“Come on, I want to see.”

He lets George ease the mask off, the silhouette of his shoulders going all tense and rigid again. The night is oppressively silent. The only sources of noise are the rustle of fabric as George’s sleeve brushes Dream’s cloak, and the soft little click! sound the mask makes when George sets it aside on the table by the edge of the bed, and the sounds of two people breathing in close quarters.

When George traces a fingertip over Dream’s lips, he can feel the raised, stippled flesh of a dozen tiny scars, like someone sewed Dream’s mouth shut and ripped the stitches out roughly sometime later.

It’s too dark to really make out the details, so George reaches for the lamp on the bedside table. In a flash, Dream’s caught his arm, fingernails digging in hard.

“Ow! Let go, you moron.”

“Keep it off.”

“Oh, come now, don’t tell me you’re shy all of a sudden—”

“Off, George. I’m serious.”

For the first time that night, Dream’s tone contains the gossamer-thin threat of danger, so George relents, easing himself back down onto the mattress.

“Have it your way.” He folds his arms behind his head, sighing. “So what’s it to be?”

“Huh?”

George grins in the dark. “Axe? Pickaxe? Sword?”

Dream shakes himself, like he’s trying to shrug off spiderwebs. “Huh?  That’s not— I’m not going to kill you yet, George.”

“Oh.” George pouts. “Pity. I’m on a pet-name-basis with God, these days. I’m sure he’d give me free reign of heaven.”

Dream is silent for a second, and then: “I met him, y’know. In the vault. He was wearing my face.”

“Or,” proposes George, “you’re wearing his. Hm?”

Dream falls silent again and, for the first time in a long time, George feels something close to pleasure curl in his gut.

Finally, Dream pitches over sideways, flopping down onto the bed, halfway on top of George and halfway beside him.

“I guess I could kill you,” he murmurs. It’s not very convincing.

“Get your shoes off my bed first.”

“Is this real?”

In his dream, George is walking on the surface of a frozen lake. The ice stretches out forever in front of him, flat and placid and glassy.

“Of course,” says Dream.

He’s not wearing the mask, and in the place where his face should be is an empty void: no marring of the features, just blackness, deep and desolate.

“What happened to your face?” George asks.

A noise comes from underfoot, a heavy groaning sound and something shifts below the ice.

“Tommy stole it.” Dream walks beside him, keeping pace. “It’s okay. I’m gonna get it back.”

George frowns. “I don’t think that’s right,” he says. “I don’t think— that’s not what happened.”

Another groan from beneath his feet, followed by a sharp splintering sound that echoes in the pale nothingness all around them.

George looks down in time to watch a long crack form under his feet, right under the place where he and Dream stand. He watches it stretch outward, making jagged zigzag veins.

“I don’t think we’re both gonna make it across,” says Dream. He holds his hand up to shade his eyes as he gazes out at the expanse of the lake.

George follows his eyeline, squinting into the distance, but he can’t make out anything but the ice. “Across to where? There’s nothing out there.”

“Yeah there is.” Dream tilts his head to the side, birdlike. “Don’t you see him?”

See who?

The ice below makes another horrible sound as another crack forms. George takes another turn, trying to make out details, but the landscape is featureless. It resembles nothing on the server. It's as if he's been dropped unceremoniously into a brand new world.

“We’re too heavy, together,” Dream explains. “It can’t take both our weight. One of us has to stay here.”

For the first time, George turns to look back over his shoulder. Behind him, far away, there’s a rocky, barren shore. It’s so far, but it’s something at least.

“Why stay here?” he inquires, genuinely curious and growing increasingly annoyed. “Why not just go back.”

The black hole of Dream’s face betrays no expression, but the set of his shoulders gives away something like confusion. Something like worry.

“What’re you talking about?” He says after a few seconds trickle by.

George points to the faraway shoreline.

“There’s—” Dream shakes his head, “George, there’s nothing there.”

Beneath them, the ice creaks. George’s reflection, so perfectly illuminated only minutes ago, has shattered into a million segments, a million pieces of George. A thousand eyes blink back at him.

“We can’t both go forward, and we can’t both go back,” he mutters. “So we appear to have reached an impasse.”

“George, I already told you, there’s nothing back that way.” Dream’s voice twists in frustration. “I can’t even see what you’re talking about.”

He takes a step forward and George tries to follow, but the ice screams at him to stop. They both freeze.

“Stop,” says Dream quietly. He steps backward, in the direction of whatever it is he’s chasing, facing George all the while.

George takes a step forward. His movement is followed by a dull cracking. Something moves this time, upsetting George’s balance.

Dream takes another step away, faster this time. “Stop,” he says again, harder, halfway between a command and a plea. “I said stop.”

George follows and the ice shrieks and trembles, and Dream is still facing him, still trying to leave, his footwork light and nimble, and for a moment it feels like the two of them are doing a complicated and erratic waltz.

“Stop, stop — you’re gonna drown us both!”

“No,” George breathes, barely above a whisper. “Come back.”

The ice quakes below and he loses his footing, stumbling clumsily. The lake’s surface breaks beneath him and he’s knocked off-kilter as his right ankle plunges down through the ice into the water below. It’s not frigid, like he expected. It’s warm, like a bath. Eugh.

“You didn’t come after me then,” Dream spits, still backing away. “Why bother now!”

George pulls his leg from the water and runs. Dream cries out, but whatever he says is lost in the roar of breaking ice.

George reaches him just as they both go under.

“—and that’s how I’m gonna kill Quackity,” Dream finishes, sounding very pleased with himself. He’s laying on his stomach, on top of George’s chest, swinging his feet in the air.

It’s nighttime again. Dream only visits at night. Kinoko is quiet, save for the incessant buzz of the cicadas outside the window. It takes George a minute to realize Dream is waiting for a response.

“Um. Sorry, what?”

Dream blinks at him, then laughs. “You weren’t listening to a single thing I just said, were you?” he wheezes, “RIP.”

George can’t see much (Dream still won’t let him turn the lamp on) but he can feel the bed shake with Dream’s laughter.

“Ssh, quiet down. Somebody’s going to hear.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “And I got bits of it, okay, I just zoned out for a sec there.”

Dream presses his face into the blanket to muffle his wheezing.

“I don’t know why I bother telling you all this,” he says, when he raises his head. George can hear the smile playing at his scarred lips. “You’ve always been shit at paying attention.”

George snorts. “Because you love hearing the sound of your own voice. That’s why you bother.”

Dream chucks a pillow at him. George makes no move to dodge.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Sapnap’s face,” Dream says merrily, like this is all just another one of their inane childhood games.

George doesn’t really know Sapnap very well anymore, and he’s willing to concede that perhaps that’s his own fault, but he does know that Sapnap loves Quackity very much. In truth, George doesn’t feel like he knows himself very well anymore either, but he does at least know that it would hurt to see Sapnap’s heart break. He’s seen it before, and he doesn’t want to see it again. Too messy.

“And you absolutely have to kill Quackity, is that right?” he inquires, slow and careful.

“Oh, one-hundred percent.” It’s the happiest Dream has sounded in— well. In a long time.

“Okay, got it,” George follows up. “But d’you reckon it’s absolutely necessary to make Sapnap watch?”

“One-thousand percent,” Dream giggles. He practically sounds drunk.

George lets his head fall back, sinking into the pillow.

“He’s going to be so annoying after, though,” he whines. “There’ll be tears. And snot.” And probably a lot of blood.

“Oh my god.” Dream rolls his eyes. “My revenge is gonna inconvenience the shit out of you. Your life is sooooo hard.”

George was around after the big Karlnapity divorce. Sapnap had been a mess. It was the same story after Dream was captured and incarcerated. Tears. Snot. Punching holes in the walls. Horrid nights of sitting on the kitchen floor, bandaging bloody knuckles. It was an inconvenience, but it also hurt. It hurt a lot. George thinks, vacantly, that it might be nice to skip all of that nonsense this time around. Wouldn’t it be nice to just— to just not?

“Don’t make Sapnap watch,” he says. “Just do it and get it over with.”

Dream must know he’s serious, because he sits up a bit in bed, straightens.

“Why?” His voice is still light, still casual, still edged with humor, but there’s a tense undercurrent there.

“Just don’t, okay?” George is annoyed for real now. “You’re too much sometimes, you know that? You go way overboard.”

“Yeah, well, torturing me in prison for months was also way overboard.”

George sits up so abruptly he almost headbutts Dream by accident. “Sapnap isn’t the one who tortured you.”

“He let it happen!” There’s a note of hysteria creeping in now. “So he might as well have.”

“He didn’t know,” George presses, but it’s no use. There’s no point. This is stupid.

“Because he didn’t care to find out. He just thought he could sweep me under the rug and go back to his cute little life!”

What Sapnap has now isn’t really a life, George thinks. Drifting in the shadow of your best friend’s ghost is no way to live. And the irony of the situation is that Sapnap actually did try to visit the prison, but Sam wasn’t letting anyone in after the Ghostbur fiasco, and— and it was more than George had ever tried to do. It was more effort than he’d ever given, but George wants to keep his head attached to his shoulders, so he can’t exactly say that.

Instead, he pulls a spare pillow over his face and groans into it. “Just don’t. I forbid it, alright.”

“Forb— wh— forbid it? What the fuck, George, you’re not—” The whole bedframe creaks as Dream gets up to pace around the room. “You’re not king anymore. I mean, who the fuck do you think you are.”

“The only person with any sense left around here,” says George tightly. He rolls over to face the wall. He’s going back to sleep. He doesn’t have to put up with this.

He’s going back to sleep.

“Is this real?”

They’re out on the ice again, on the frozen lake, and George is dreaming. He's visited this place in his sleep frequently enough to recognize it. Still, the question has not lost any of its relevance. Just because something is a dream, George has found, doesn't make it not real. Sometimes his dreams are realer than real.

“Not sure,” Dream admits. “I think so?”

George turns to look behind him. No shoreline this time. Nothing in any direction, in fact. Just a vast expanse of mirror.

“How long have we been walking?”

Dream shrugs. “Dunno. Can’t have been that long.”

In the marbled surface of the ice beneath them, there runs a single crack. It smirks up at George, taunting.

“Where are we going?”

Dream shrugs mutely. His face is gone. Totally black, like it’s been smeared with coal. Looking at him in profile, George can see the silhouette of a mouth, a nose, a brow ridge, cheekbones. But the features are gone, scribbled over. Inscrutable.

“Where’d your face go?”

At that, the ice begins to shudder. That one long crack begins to stretch, to grow.

“I think I traded it,” says Dream. “I gave it away when I made the bargain.”

George shivers in the cold. “What bargain?”

“It was the price,” Dream explains, and now he sounds a little sad. “For our crossing.” He sweeps an arm wide, gesturing to the silent, frozen water all around them. “There was a toll.”

George swivels around to take a second look at their surroundings. Still no shoreline in any direction. “But— sorry, Dream, our crossing to where?”

Judging by Dream’s posture, he’s a little taken aback. “To the other side, dude. Obviously.”

George shakes himself, frustrated. “There is nothing here, Dream! There is no other side. Somebody tricked you. You’ve been duped. You traded your face for nothing.”

When the ice breaks, there’s no warning. They just go under.

“You just like him because he kinda looks like me.”

It's nighttime in Kinoko and Dream’s in his bed again and they’re talking about God. It's always nighttime when Dream comes to visit. Something to do with him being a wanted man and all that. How tedious.

George frowns. “He doesn’t. I don’t.”

Dream’s curled up at his side, with a leg thrown over George’s hips. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the bedroom ceiling are arranged in the shape of a smiley face today. George knows Dream rearranges them when he has insomnia.

“Um, yeah, he does. I met the guy, remember? God super fucking looks like me.”

George folds his arms. “Well. Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you look like God. Maybe you’re the copycat.”

Dream lets out a chuckle, his breath warm against George’s cheek. “We’ve had this conversation before.”

George folds the nail of his right-hand index finger behind the tip of his right-hand thumb, pulling it back like he’s drawing an arrow to a bow. He flicks Dream in the forehead.

“Ow!”

“Frankly, I don’t like what you’re implying,” he says. “About me and XD.”

“What am I implying?” Dream is waggling his eyebrows suggestively. It’s too dark to see his face, but George knows instinctively that eyebrows are being waggled. “Go on, take a swing at theology, why not!”

“Well, I’ve no idea what you’re implying,” says George, feigning innocence by flicking at Dream’s forehead again. “But I’m sure it’s obscene on a metaphysical level.

Truth be told, he’s a bit bored at the moment. Actually, he’s been bored all evening. Dream isn’t as much fun as he used to be. For starters, he doesn’t like being tied up anymore. Huge bummer. XD would probably let George tie him up, if he asked.

The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling change color sometimes. That must be Karl's doing, or— or whoever they were a gift from. Tonight, they're orange.

“Have you decided whether you’re going to kill me yet?” he asks.

Dream hums softly. “I don’t think I will,” he replies at length. “You’re too lazy to obstruct my, like, plans and stuff. Plus you’ve got God wrapped around your pinkie finger, apparently, and that’s gonna be useful one day.”

“Excuse you, I’m not lazy, I’m tired.”

“Whatever,” Dream yawns.

There’s a moment, right then, where everything’s peaceful and everything’s good, and then George sits up in bed suddenly. Blinks into the waiting darkness.

“Is this real?”

He feels Dream shift beside him. “Huh?”

“Is this real?” George turns his head this way and that. Darkness all around. His fingers itch to turn on the light. “I don’t remember how this conversation started. I don’t remember waking up. Were you here when I woke up? I— you didn’t come in. I didn’t see you come in. When did I wake up?”

His brain is screaming at him that he’s messing up, he’s fucking up, he’s making a mistake by telling Dream all this, letting Dream know his weak points, confessing the full extent of his unwellness…but the words just keep coming and he’s powerless to stop them.

“Is this real?” he asks again, when he’s finished.

Dream is silent for a bit. “Yes,” he says simply, after a while. “This is real.”

Another minute ticks by, and then—

“That’s, um. Kinda scary. I mean,” Dream corrects, half charming, half awkward. “I mean, it is scary. Not knowing what’s real.” A pause. “It was like that sometimes, in the prison. It started after I threw the last clock away, and Sam didn’t bring me a new one.”

George collapses back onto the bed and Dream’s arms encircle him.

“I didn’t know if it was night or day or. Or anything. Hah. I mean, it was pretty funny, I guess. Kinda pathetic, if we're being real.”

George feels winded, as if he’s just run a marathon. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this.

Dream continues, “Sometimes I’d be, like, I dunno, really far away, right? And then all of a sudden I’d be back in my body, and Quackity was already— um. Already doing stuff, y’know, doing stuff to me. And I’d have no idea how long he’d been there or when he arrived or what had happened. Haha.”

George stares at the ceiling. The stars stare back.

“That doesn’t sound funny at all,” he says evenly. “That sounds pretty shit, actually.”

Dream is quiet.

“Yeah,” he says eventually. “Yeah, it was.”

“Stop following me!” George screams. “ I told you to stay put.”

They’re out on the ice, and the ice is breaking.

This is a dream, obviously, but it matters. These days, what happens in George's dreams matters more than what happens during his waking hours. He'd have thought he'd be tired of this by now: the frozen lake and the mist and the two of them tearing each other apart. And yet, every night George returns. Just like picking at a scab.

The ice is breaking.

It’s breaking in great monolithic chunks, and the water below is seething, heaving, the product of some invisible storm. And George can see the shoreline in the distance, and he’s trying to run towards it but he’s too heavy, they’re too heavy together. Only one of them can keep going, and George wants it to be him.

“You can’t stop me,” says Dream, angry, venomous. “If you go, I’ll follow. I’m not about to let you walk away again.”

“You’re the one who walked away!” George’s hands are fists. “You’re the one who went off the deep end.”

The ice directly below him cracks, and George dodges out of the way as the place where he was just standing only a half-second ago sinks into the roiling lake.

“You can’t keep running!” Dream shouts over the din.

“At least I’m running towards something!” George shouts back.

“No,” Dream screams, and he screams it with his whole body. “No, you’re not.”

His hand closes around George’s wrist and they both go under.

“Is this real?” George asks.

It's nighttime in Kinoko.

“Of course not,” supplies Dream readily. The stars on the ceiling have gone back to that ghostly, bioluminescent greenish-blue. “Don’t wake up just yet, though. I came over so we could hang out.”

“Is this real?”

There’s no wind out on the ice. It’s just cold and silent and still.

Dream, who’s a few paces ahead, whirls to face him. He looks haggard. He’s missing his face, too. In its place, there is only a void, a kind of negative space.

“What?” He sounds tired, and maybe a little scared. “What kind of a question is that? Of course this is real.”

A warm breeze ruffles George’s hair, which should be impossible but whatever. Whatever! Here, nothing's impossible — except everything George has ever wanted.

He never gets what he wants.

“Oh,” he says faintly.

Dream heaves a sigh and walks back to meet him, his hand gripping George’s forearm. “C’mon, try to keep up, okay? We can’t get separated. I can’t— I can’t lose you, too.”

He’s making his way across the emptiness, tugging George along at a killer pace that George struggles to match.

“What, what’re— Dream? What do you mean? Dream, who did you lose?”

Dream’s answer is hurried, upset, frightened, furious as it tumbles from his lips. “Sapnap, and Bad, and Ant and Sam and—” He swallows. “There might’ve been others.” He turns anxiously to George. “Don’t you remember? They were just behind us. Then we turned around and they were gone. One by one, they were all gone, and then Sapnap was gone too—”

With a sinking feeling that is half panic and half resignation, George realizes he might have to tell Dream not to cry. He hasn’t had to do that since they were kids, not since before the manhunt days.

Thankfully, mercifully, Dream does not cry, so George doesn’t have to tell him not to. Instead, he shivers and keeps trekking.

“Something’s taking them,” Dream mutters angrily. “There’s something out here and it took them. It’s okay. That’s okay. We’ll get it. We’re gonna get everyone back.”

George shakes his head. There’s nothing out here, nothing but them. He isn’t sure how or why he knows this, but he knows it and he is absolutely certain in his conviction. There is no monster here. There is no one else.

“What happened to your face?” he asks.

Dream’s free hand frets anxiously at the tassels on the hem of his cloak. “It got stolen, too. By whatever took Sapnap and the others, probably.” He drops his hand, letting out a rattling breath. “It’s no big deal, though.”

He’s still pulling George along after him as they make their way across…whatever this place is Somewhere off in the distance, there is a groaning sound, keening and low.

The pace is too quick. George stumbles and falls hard, pain lancing up his legs. Cracks spiderweb outward from the place where his knees hit something hard, too hard.

He bows his head and a thousand blinking Georges look back, gazing up at him from the shards, tilted at odd angles where the impact made the surface uneven. It’s not ice, it’s a mirror.

“This isn’t real,” he says. “You lied to me.”

Dream crosses his arms over his chest, petulant as always. “That doesn’t even make sense. How can I lie to you if I’m not real?”

Dream doesn’t sleep soundly. Never did. He’s suffered from insomnia as long as George has known him; Dream used to wake him and Sapnap up at night when they were kids, to keep him company on the nights when he couldn’t manage to close his eyes.

It’s different now, though. Now he spends the night tossing and turning at George’s side, and the things he says in his sleep make all the hairs on the back of George’s neck stand up, and that’s if he sleeps at all.

Mostly, they stay up and chat about nothing. Dream fills him in on what’s been happening in the server. Talks about Punz a lot more than he used to. None of it’s particularly interesting, but it’s a distraction, and that’s enough. A distraction from what, George isn’t sure, but it’s enough for now. It’s fine.

He’s fairly certain Dream only visits a couple nights a month — he’s busy, after all, things to do, places to see, people’s lives to ruin — but George can’t really be sure. Dream’s erratic schedule aside, George has no reliable way to tell how long he’s been asleep, unless Sapnap or Karl feels like telling him, and these days they’re gone more often than they’re home. George doesn’t ask Dream because he doesn’t trust Dream to tell him the truth, but that’s a fact that he keeps in a box at the back of his mind.

He doesn’t always hear Dream come in through the window, but he always feels the mattress dip under his weight as he climbs into bed beside George. This evening Dream’s sitting with his back against the headboard, idly flicking a knife open and shut, open and shut.

“Things are gonna get weird,” he says.

“Things are already weird,” George replies.

Sshink! Open and closed, open and closed again. 

Dream laughs. “They’re about to get weirder.” He reaches down to smooth George’s hair out of his eyes. “Just, like. Wanted to give you a heads-up and all.”

He’s probably hoping George will ask for details. Dream has always craved attention, and George has always loved refusing him. This is how their game goes. It’s familiar and safe, and sometimes it’s exhilarating. Tonight it’s just mundane. In any case, George won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Whatever you’re planning,” says George, “it won’t work. It’s not going to go the way you think it will.”

Dream folds the knife closed and tucks it into one of the many inner pockets of his shirt. “Aw, come on. Why’d you say that?”

“Because nothing ever goes the way anyone wants, on this server. It’s not supposed to.” It's fate, or something worse: doom.

There’s a rustle of fabric on wood as Dream slumps, sliding down the headboard so he can meet George at eye-level. Not that his eyes are visible. He’s wearing the mask tonight. And it’s dark.

“Wouldn’t be any fun if everything was easy all the time,” he says.

George rolls over on his side and finds that his face is very close to Dream’s — or would be, if not for the mask.

“Is this real?” His voice is barely a whisper.

“Is this real?”

Dream doesn’t answer. George doesn’t think Dream can hear him over the rush of the wind. It’s strong today; it pushes the hood of Dream’s cloak back, exposing the ragged maw of nothingness where his face should be.

The ice is breaking fast now.

More ice falls away with every step they take and pretty soon they’re dodging holes, frigid water lapping at the soles of their boots.

“We’re too heavy,” he hears Dream mutter.

“No,” George says, and he can’t hold back the indignation in his voice. “You’re too heavy.” He points to Dream’s armor: full netherite, with an enormous axe to match strapped to his friend’s back. It must weigh a ton.

“You need to take it off,” George says.

Dream gives a little shake of his head, as if he didn’t quite hear George right. He might not have; after all, the wind is very loud today.

“Put it down,” says George, insistent. “Throw it away. We can’t keep going like this. You’re too heavy. We’re both going to fall through.”

Dream shakes his head again; the movement is more sure of itself this time, more confident.

“Maybe you’re weighing me down,” he suggests.

George blanches. “I beg your pardon?”

He squints at his friend. It’s snowing lightly now, and the wind is making little eddies of the snowflakes, whipping them around Dream’s head like a halo.

“You probably weigh about the same as my armor,” Dream muses. “I could just throw you away instead.”

George tries to call out, to argue, to put up a fight, but the sound dies in his throat. When the surface of the lake breaks beneath him, it sounds like the beating of a thousand wings.

“George,” says Dream one night in Kinoko. “Where’s my armor?”

George has got him pinned down on the mattress. Well, pinned down is something of an exaggeration; George doesn’t exactly prioritize exercise and they both know Dream could toss him off at a moment’s notice. A more accurate description might be that Dream is letting George entertain the vague notion of having him pinned down.

“Hm?”

The mask sits on the bedside table, grinning at nothing.

“Do you know where my armor is, George? Sapnap must’ve told you. Or at least— he must’ve let something slip. I mean,” Dream’s tone is light, “I’ve seen him around. It’s not like he’s wearing my shit every day. There’s gotta be someplace he hides it. I was watching him the other day and—”

“Shut up.” George interrupts, bending his head low to kiss him. “You talk too much.”

“Y’know,” says Dream when he breaks the kiss, “I think you got ruder while I was in jail.”

George doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead, he kisses Dream again, lets his tongue glide softly against the patchwork of bumpy, raised scars that dapple Dream’s lips until finally he opens his mouth.

“Is this real?” he breathes later, against Dream’s neck.

“Nope,” says Dream. “So you can tell me where my armor is.”

George stifles a laugh. “Fuck you.”

George is alone on the ice.

He spins, does a silly little twirl, squints into the never-ending fog. Nothing. No shore. No companion.

His breath forms little clouds in the air.

All good things must come to an end. Of course, the same can also be said for things that are not just good but aggressively mid.

When George wakes up this time, it’s because someone is screaming.

Dream. Dream is screaming.

It’s a horrible sound, a strangled noise somewhere between a sob and a yell, and George needs it to stop. George is shaking him by the shoulders and Dream’s sitting up now, they both are, awake, George thinks, awake.

George slams Dream back, hears his shoulderblades hit the headboard, claps his hand over Dream’s mouth to muffle the sound until his friend calms down.

“Where—?” Dream’s hands make fists in the blankets. His breath comes in frenzied little gasps as he clutches at George’s sleeve.

“Kinoko,” George answers hurriedly.

A light comes on outside the window. Then another.

“Shit,” says Dream. His voice hitches. “Shit. Fuck.”

“You had a nightmare.”

There comes a noise from below, from somewhere inside the main compound. A door slamming. Heavy footsteps on the stairs. George sighs wearily. This was bound to happen sooner or later.

Dream has already scrambled out of bed and pulled his cloak back on. George watches his friend check himself to make sure all his weapons are where they should be, movements clean, methodical, precise. Already he has shrugged off whatever torment waits for him in sleep, already he has regained total composure.

“Alright, that sounds like my cue to leave,” Dream says, leaping up onto the windowsill. “Tell Sapnap I said—”

Just then, several things happen in very quick succession. The door to George’s room bursts in on itself, sending splinters flying. (That, George will realize later, was his lock breaking.) Pinkish Kinoko light cuts through the darkness, casting every crevice and piece of furniture in a sickly pallor. There’s a twang and a familiar shuhck! noise that George recognizes as the sound of an arrow being let fly. Judging by the way Dream loses balance, the arrow hits him in the shoulder and he wobbles, grabbing at the curtains lest he fall backwards out the window to his death.

“You can tell me yourself,” says Sapnap, flicking the overhead light on from the wall switch.

The first thing George thinks is that Sapnap looks tired. The second thing he thinks is that Sapnap looks more alive than he has in months.

The third thing George thinks is, Bloody hell, Dream looks like shit. The scarring on his face is much worse than George pictured. There’s a deep cleft on the left side of his face, cutting through his eyebrow and grazing the top of his cheek. The right side is covered in what looks like a burn scar, pink skin stretching from his jawline up across the bridge of his nose in a star-shaped splatter pattern, as if somebody had spilled hot oil on his face. His nose is crooked; probably been broken a few extra times, George muses distantly.

He’s drawn a sword, but it won’t be too useful when Sapnap already has a long-range weapon out, another arrow notched and ready to be fired.

“Tell Sapnap I said hi,” Dream finishes flatly. “Hi!”

George turns back to Sapnap; he’s breathing hard, most likely from the sprint upstairs (the mushroom towers are very tall) but his eyes are alight and his mouth is a grim line. George is just about to complain about how anticlimactic this is, when a strong arm hooks itself around his neck and he feels himself being pulled backwards. His back hits Dream’s chest, and the cold slide of metal tells him there’s a blade pressed to his throat.

“Let him go!” Sapnap snarls.

Dream’s breath is warm next to his ear. “Nah. Don’t think I will. We’re besties, after all.”

Dream tugs him over to the bedside table and George has no choice but to shuffle after him.

“Stretch an arm out, won’t you, George, and grab that mask for me.”

George sighs. That’s a very awkward thing to do from this position, but he manages it.

“Okay, great. Great! Good job, George, you did good.” The blade digs harder into the soft skin of his throat. “Now you’re gonna turn around reaaaalll slow and help me put it on. I’ve, uh. Kinda got my hands full.”

George swallows a smile. “I understand you.”

He turns; it’s slow and painfully awkward, with Dream keeping the blade pressed to his jugular. He watches Dream watch Sapnap, looking sideways through narrowed eyes. He painstakingly stretches the cords that hold the mask in place as he lifts it over Dream’s head, and ties them together at the nape of his neck, tucks them behind his ears.

“That fit okay?”

“Yeah. That’s good.”

The mask goes on, and Dream’s face is hidden from view once more; in just a few seconds, George has watched him go from man to monster.

“Thanks,” says Dream once he’s finished: cheerful, upbeat. He wraps his arm across George’s collarbones again, pulling him from behind, and George finds himself staring at Sapnap from across the room.

He still stands in the doorway, looking all tensed-up like a coil of live wire.

“So where’s my armor at?”

Sapnap adjusts his grip on the bow. “You think I’m gonna fucking tell you where it’s at, huh.”

There’s a prickling sensation in the soft flesh under George’s chin. A bead of blood runs lazily down the column of his throat. It tickles. It’s going to stain his pajama top.

“Don’t tell him,” he chokes.

He feels the cool edge of the blade stroke down his neck, not pressing hard enough to cut, but just enough to make him shiver.

“You think I’m bluffing, George?”

“You are bluffing,” spits Sapnap, but there’s fear behind his eyes.

In this moment, George is aware of his whole body in ways he usually isn’t. His breathing. The sweat beading on his brow. The feeling of carpet beneath his bare feet. Dream’s hand is shaking a little; George can tell by the way the blade of the sword wobbles ever so slightly. Sapnap’s arrow caught him in the shoulder, George remembers, and while that’s not a lethal wound, it sure is an inconvenience. Especially when you have to use that arm to hold something sharp and metal and heavy for an extended period of time.

“Don’t tell him anything,” he repeats, and it’s not a request, it’s a command.

“He knows I’m not bluffing.” Dream pulls him closer, tighter, speaking to Sapnap over George’s shoulder. “It's just that he wouldn’t mind dying all that much — would you, George?” The blade glints in the light. “Sapnap would mind, though.”

The expression on Sapnap’s face tells him that yes, Sapnap would mind if he died. George rolls his eyes. Sapnap’s always been terrible at hiding his emotions.

“Can we wrap up this posturing so I can get back to bed?” He asks through a yawn, “Sapnap isn’t going to give you the armor. Dream isn’t going to kill me. This is a waste of my precious fucking naptime.”

“You sure?” Dream breathes in his ear, though the inquiry is more addressed to Sapnap than to George. “You wanna bet on that?”

“If you want to play roulette so bad,” George remarks, “there’s a casino you can visit on this server.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that, but the way Sapnap’s face drains of color at the exact same time Dream's muscles seem to tense up is, admittedly, kind of funny.

“Oh, I’m gonna visit.”

“That’s enough, Dream.” Sapnap’s hands are beginning to smolder, giving off wisps of smoke as his temper rises.

Nobody has anything to say to that, apparently. For a moment, the only sounds in the room are the sounds of breathing. Dream shifts his stance, either simply readjusting his grip on the blade or readying himself for the killing blow.

“Fuck—! Hey.”

The arrow clangs loudly off the flat of Dream’s blade as he parries, ricocheting into a corner. He ducks, pulling George down with him, and it’s unclear whether he’s trying to protect him or use him as a human shield. George takes this opportunity to extract himself from Dream’s arms, leaping out of the way of Sapnap’s next arrow and putting distance between himself and the others.

It’s all over in the next slippery half-second: Dream has thrown open the window and leapt out. Sapnap scrambles past George and swings up to stand on the windowsill. George comes to gaze out over his shoulder. Nothing there, nobody on the lawn or in the trees or on the rooftops of the neighboring mushroom towers. 

Dream is gone. He’s melted into the night, and the only evidence he was ever here is a knocked-over bedside lamp and George’s rumpled sheets.

“Whoops,” he says, turning to slink back into bed. “Bummer.”

“Wh— hey, George, hey!” Sapnap grabs him by the arm, spinning him around. The expression on his face is frightened and confused, all of it underpinned by a bone-deep concern that is written across his features.

“George,” he says again. “George. Please. You’re— are you, what, are you hurt? Did he hurt you?”

George swipes a thumb over the shallow cut under his chin. The blood is already drying. He shakes his head numbly.

“I heard you yelling—”

I wasn’t the one yelling. His friend is holding George’s face in his hands, turning his head gently this way and that, checking for injuries. It’s care, sure, but it’s also neuroticism.

“M’fine. Sapnap—” George pushes him away. “Sapnap, I’m fine.”

Sapnap backs off. He looks pissed as hell.

“The fuck was he doing here?”

George shrugs.

“How—” Sapnap takes him by the shoulders. “George, I don’t— has he been coming here? Like, a lot?”

George blinks, wordless. Sapnap lets him go and sits on the edge of the bed. He puts his head in his hands.

“You don’t understand,” he says at last, voice muffled by his palms. “You don’t. George. You don’t get how serious this is, do you? You really don’t get it.”

There’s a note of hysterical incredulity that’s pitching Sapnap’s voice a half-octave higher than normal. George comes over to sit beside him.

“He would’ve killed you,” says Sapnap. “He really would’ve done it.”

George shrugs. He raises a hand to pat Sapnap lightly on the back.

“I doubt it,” he says at last, not because he doubts it but because he feels he’s expected to say something.

Much later, in the early hours of the morn, after Sapnap’s done sweeping up the splinters from the busted door and has shuffled sullenly back to the quarters he shares with Karl, George will stand at the window and look out at the kingdom, and watch the lightening of the sky, and he’ll raise a hand to trace the hard sliver of clotted blood that welled up high on his throat where Dream’s blade cut him, and he’ll shiver, and he'll want, and he'll want.

"This is real," he will murmur to himself, to God, to nobody, and it'll hurt because for once he knows it's true.