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There is a man in a box, trapped of his own volition, waiting for his schemes to finally come to fruition. It will be worth it. It has to be. He has given everything to this, and if it fails, he will have nothing. Sometimes, when his head spins from all the blood on the floor that should be under his skin, he does not recall what he is fighting for, but he knows that when he finally attains that which he seeks, it will be worth it. It has to be. It’s sweltering in the cell, surrounded by deadly heat, but he still manages to sleep. He still manages to dream.
And in his dreams, they are happy. They are together. They are peaceful. All disruptions have been tamed. All conflict has been soothed. All threats have been removed. He is safe. He is content. He is in control. His friends run amok, together and happy and peaceful, and all it took was removing the disruptions. No new nations, no revolutionaries, no fighting, just peace.
There is a girl in a dark room, hidden away of her own volition, waiting for her destiny to finally come to fruition. She is special, she has to be, she has to be something, or she’s nothing. If she’s not special, then she’s just another pathetic person. She’s special. She knows she is. She didn’t get a letter when she turned eleven, but that’s just one magic system. There’s loads more, and she knows every one of them. One of them has to work, though she’d prefer it if it happened sooner rather than later. The room is dark because she is dark, because she’s special, because she’s something magical. She slips beneath the covers, praying to Lucifer as she does every night to finally unlock her powers. She sleeps easily, and she dreams.
And in her dreams, she has the power she has been craving her entire life. She is right, as she always knew but could never prove. Everyone on the forums that ever told her otherwise, that told her to get a life and stop being such a fangirl about childish things, that tried to stop her from being her true self, they’re all wrong and she knows it and she makes them know it too. She is in control.
There is an anthropomorphic personification in the throne room of the palace, and he is not waiting. He is creating, sculpting, changing. He is making new dreams and new nightmares. He is making beautiful things. He is weakened, but he has strength enough for this. He has strength enough to bring new creations into his realm.
And in his dreams, he feels distant from their happiness, a trespasser in their family. He walks away, but he takes a wrong turn somewhere, somehow. He should not be able to make a wrong turn. This is his world, and he knows it far better than he knows the tracings of his flesh. He stands in a black room, dark save for torches on the walls, and he hates that he knows the walls to be something not obsidian by the way the jagged edges protrude. He turns around and sees people lying limp on the ground. He knows from the blood pooling beneath them and the contorted angles of their limbs that they are dead.
And in her dreams, the vengeance and dark magycks and screaming feels less satisfying than she thought it would, and it mostly just hurts her ears. The people she’s loathed are hurting, and it doesn’t make her happy. It doesn’t make anything better. It just makes them scream and scream and scream. She wants to stop, and it does. And she’s somewhere else, somewhere warm and bright enough to make her eyes hurt, and there are birds chirping and people laughing and she cannot remember the last time she heard a real person happy in her presence.
And there are people dreaming the same dream in different iterations, dreams of getting everything and still feeling hollow, dreams of leaving the world behind, and the dreamers cross the boundaries of the dreams which are one dream. He can sense it, a trembling dissonance between the dream and the dreamer, made worse by the similarities. The wall between dreams that are the same dream is fragile, permeable, dangerously weak. It is not a vortex, but it poses a similar danger to the dreamers’ minds. The mind is a private thing, meant to be traversed only by the self. He ceases his work and searches for the dreams that are the same dream.
And in his dreams, he backs away from the sight of the bodies lying limp, though he has seen worse and caused worse. There is something intimately horrifying about these people that he has never known and never will, something terrifying about seeing a stranger dead. When he dies, will the people he knows and loves and has killed hide his body away beneath the earth before strangers can look upon him? When he dies, will anyone care enough to set his body to rights? He does not know the answer, so he backs away, and where there should be a wall, there is nothing but air and the dim light of sunset.
And in her dreams, she stares at these happy people, laughing so needlessly, smiling as though there is something to smile about, and she turns away. There is something quietly agonising about these people that she has never known and never will, something tragic about seeing these strangers so happy. Could she ever be like that? Could she ever laugh and smile and delight in the world for simply existing? She knows the answer, so she turns away, and where there should be a hill, there is nothing but air and the dim light of sunset.
And there they are, face to face, the walls between aspects of the same dream torn apart. If they awaken now, no harm will befall either of them, but a shared dream so easily leads into the next, and the next, and the next until they are entwined in each other’s dreams and each other’s minds. He settles in their dream, ready to wake them should the last boundaries between them prove frail.
And in his dreams, there is a girl dressed in black, with leather and chains and fishnets obscuring tattoos. He has never seen this girl before. “Who are you?” he asks, or maybe just thinks. It’s hard to tell when the air feels more like water than something breathable and easy.
And in her dreams, there is a stranger dressed in bright green, with a white mask and weapons and not an inch of skin showing. She has never seen this person before. They ask her a question, and she responds. “I’m Dream.”
He frowns, though she wouldn’t be able to see it with the mask. “That’s my name,” he says, but he can see the way the word drapes over her form, and it is not right. It is not wrong, per se, but it is not right. There’s something strange about the way it covers her, as though it is something she wants rather than something she is.
She smiles broadly. “I’ve never met anyone else named Dream!” She chose the name herself, picked out of several options like Ebony and Raven and Onyx, carved to fit the aesthetic, but here is someone who doesn’t look emo at all, and she can see the way the name fits on him, confident lines and the taste of danger.
“Neither have I.” It takes him a moment to notice, but the way the grass sounds under his feet is wrong. The grass is vibrant green, so it should bend instead of break, but the sound is that of dry grass beneath the beating sun, the sound used in movies and shows. The sky looks wrong too. The sun is in the wrong place. It’s not right. Where are his friends? Where are Sapnap and George and Alyssa and Sam- Sam. The Warden. The prison. He never left. He’s still there. He’s… dreaming. He’s still in the black box of stone and lava and pain. He never escaped.
The scenery changes in an instant, and she takes a step back as dark walls made of stone surround them. It’s very nearly a fatal mistake. The wall behind her, unlike the rest, is a sheet of molten rock. The stranger is still there, except their outfit is torn and stained. Their mask has a long crack running through it, showing a glimpse of their eye. She can see scars through the tears in their clothing. They look… tired. They look scared.
The first layer between dream and mind has been breached. He must extricate their minds before waking them, lest one be trapped in a foreign mind. The two have already entered the memories of the one in green. They are not kind memories. He will have to intervene. He steps into the dream, letting the dark corners of the cell obscure him. It would be safer if they realise they are dreaming without his influence, but needs must.
He is still in the prison. He is still in the prison. He is still in the prison. He is still in the prison. But… who is she, then? He’s never seen her before, and he definitely didn’t whitelist her. There are procedures for visiting, and none of them were followed. The Warden would never be so lax. He doesn’t understand. His legs give out, but he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. People are shouting, and he doesn’t understand.
“Where are we?” she asks, fear crawling up her spine. “What is this place?” As the stranger falls, she tries to catch them. They’re a lot heavier than she expected though, and they very nearly take her down with them. “Hey, are you okay?” She can see them breathing faster and faster, gasping for breath as they stare at nothing. The room flickers, and phantom people blur in and out of existence, shouting words she can’t quite hear. Someone swings an axe at them, more solid than any of the rest, and she flinches back.
The dreamers have gone too far. He steps out of the shadows, halting the memories in their tracks. “This is not the place for you, dreamers. You should return to your own dreams and your own minds.”
It’s… quiet. No more screaming. He looks up and sees… something he does not quite understand. A hollow in the place where a person should be, but the opposite of empty. He looks into what seems like eyes and feels like falling through the void into a sea of stars beneath the earth and beyond it. He looks and sees something intimately familiar and entirely foreign. He looks and sees something he knows he does not know. He looks and sees something like home.
The world seems to freeze, the figments dissipating into powder. She looks up and sees… a dream come true. Dark hair, pale skin, a billowing cloak? So pretty. And his eyes, his eyes. She could get lost in those eyes any time. And his voice, she’d almost think this was the raunchier type of dream if it wasn’t for the persistent presence of the person in green. “You’re so pretty,” she says, immediately covering her mouth in embarrassment. “I did not mean to say that out loud.”
While the focus of the girl is not necessarily pleasant, it provides a convenient anchor to guide her out of the other’s mind. He pours some sand out of his pouch and lets it fall to the floor, consuming the cell. They now stand in an empty room with no particular links to either dreamer. “Say your farewells, dreamers. It is time to wake up now.”
He breathes, steady and slow, then pushes himself to his feet. “I’m… still there, aren’t I?” he says. It isn’t a question. “I’m still in the prison.”
“Yes,” the hollow space in the world replies. “For now.”
He nods slowly. For now. He has a plan. He has so many plans. It’s just for now. It’s going to be fine. Everything will be fine. He’ll make it fine. It will work, just like all his other plans, just like everything that’s ever fallen through his fingers. “It was nice to meet you, Dream,” he says, trying to keep his voice from shaking.
“You too, Dream,” she replies. They look so pathetic, standing there like that. Hunched shoulders, tense muscles, shaking hands. She walks over slowly, carefully, and wraps them in a hug. They go still, perfectly still, and she can feel damp spots on her arms from their tears. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No,” they reply, still crying. She wants to wipe away his tears, but she can’t do that and hold him at the same time. “No, it won’t.”
She doesn’t know what to say. She’s never been good at comfort. “You’ll be okay,” she says, and there is nothing else to say.
When the dreamers part at last, he holds up a handful of sand, ready to wake them.
“Wait,” the one in green says desperately, hopefully, fearfully. “Will I remember this?”
“No,” he replies. “It is just a dream.”
The dreamers reach out for each other again, but before their fingers meet, he exhales. As the sand reaches them, they disappear, returned to the waking world. How odd, he thinks, that of all the people to share dreams deeply enough to require his presence, it would be the ones named Dream.