Chapter Text
Three days. That was how long it had been since Sapnap had locked his best friend into a prison cell and left him there with the sentence of forever. Dream was his brother and he’d put him in that obsidian cage telling him that he wasn’t allowed out again.
He told him that it was so he could learn to be better. So he could learn from his mistakes. He said it was because he’d messed up and that he deserved it. Through it all Dream had stared at him like he didn’t recognize him anymore. He fought against everyone else but he didn’t fight against him. Dream never fought against him. He’d held a blade to his brother’s throat. He’d wrapped him in chains and led him into a vault that looked like the heart of hell itself. And through it all Dream had never laid a hand against him.
Sapnap had sobbed into Karl’s arms when he made it back and realized he’d lost his best friend.
He’d tried to imitate a sense of peace since then but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. He thought it was just the lack of Dream’s presence. That it was just because he wasn’t used to not having him around even though he knew that wasn’t true.
Dream hadn’t been around for a long while now. Since he dethroned George and gave the crown back to Eret. Since he made it so abundantly clear to them all that he cared about nothing but power and control. But still it felt different now.
It made him feel sick when he thought about it. The memories he and Dream shared together were more than a few. All of their challenges. All of their manhunts. Every adventure they’d had together since they were children. Sapnap couldn’t remember a time in his life where Dream hadn’t been by his side until recently.
They used to camp out beside each other. When they were kids they would climb into each other’s beds to snuggle on cold nights. They would toss food at each other from across the table until Bad yelled at them.
All of it was gone by the greed his friend had shown them. Time and time again Dream had chosen something to do with Tommy rather than just simply spending time with them. He wouldn’t let go of his vendetta against the kid. He wouldn’t let it drop. He wouldn’t let go of those stupid discs.
Dream chose discs and power over them.
Dream chose greed over him.
It had been three days since Sapnap saw Dream locked behind a wall of lava and obsidian and yet still he felt tears threaten to choke him like rope around his throat. He kept telling himself that it had been Dream’s choice but he couldn’t shake his look from his head. He couldn’t shake the betrayal in his eyes when he watched him hold the axe. He couldn’t think away the silent sorrow that he’d held when he held his arms out to be chained by the person he called brother.
He thought that title was gone and dissolved between them but he still heard Dream whisper it to him like a question when he escorted him to the cell.
He’d made Sam let him escort him. He’d made Sam let him walk him across with his hands on his arms to keep him in the center of the platform.
If anyone asked him why he would tell them it was because he didn’t trust Dream anymore. He would say it was because he wanted to make sure that he made it into the cell so that he would stay there and get his punishment. He would tell them that it was because he needed to make sure Dream was actually in prison. That he wasn’t going to get out and he wasn’t going to escape. Sapnap was one of the people who knew him best in the world. If there was going to be a chance for him to escape he would be the one to catch it in there.
He hadn’t seen any.
It was solid. It was obsidian from corner to corner. Lava on every side and stifling heat to add to the punishment. There was a hole in the ceiling that he assumed was ventilation but it was too high for Dream to reach it. Even if he did, Sam told him there were sensors and that Dream escaping would be entirely impossible on his own.
That was the reason he would say if anyone asked him why he walked Dream into that cell across the platform.
It was a lie.
That betrayal, that sorrow, it did something to him. It broke a part of him that he wasn’t sure he really knew how to fix. Long buried instincts that he’d thought were gone the moment he made his resolve to help arrest his brother in all but blood came surfacing back when he saw his eyes. Tommy had cut his mask off in front of everyone. Blood was running down his face but he hadn’t reacted to the wound. The only thing that seemed to scare him, truly scare him and hurt him, was the fact that it had been Sapanp who ordered his official arrest.
That look had done something to him. He couldn’t get it out of his head. He couldn’t get the fear out of his heart. When he saw the lava drop and the cavern that needed to be crossed he’d grabbed onto Dream’s arms. He didn’t think he was going to try to escape here. There was too much defeat in his eyes. But it was that defeat that made him need to hold him across that platform.
Dream only had one life left. As much as he promised himself and everyone else that he agreed with Tommy’s choices and he’d stood by for his first lives to be taken. He didn’t want Dream to die. Part of him in that room hadn’t felt real when Tommy was taking the axes to his brother. It felt real looking at the cell. It felt real when the only thing he could think about was Dream making it half way across and stepping off the platform to burn in the lava below him.
He couldn’t lose Dream like that. He needed to give him a chance to repair the things he’d broken. He needed to give him a chance to learn that what he’d done was wrong.
He couldn’t see that happen if Dream died. He couldn’t get his brother back if he died. He couldn’t bury Dream if he died. He couldn’t live with himself if Dream killed himself here.
He couldn’t live with himself if he never saw him again.
So he walked him over to the cell. He’d listened to Dream ask if they were brothers with a single word. He’d told him yes. And he’d walked away.
He’d sobbed when he was home. He’d broken down at the loss of his brother that he knew in his heart he still loved.
Sighing, Sapnap continued to walk around Kinoko. He wasn’t sure he really had a goal while walking around but he needed something to do. It was silent here but the celebrations in the main SMP left him sick. He heard people celebrating Dream’s deaths. He’d heard them cheering over the sound of his flesh being cut. He’d heard some of them asking Sam if they could go into the prison and torture him just to hear it again.
Punz had left looking green. Sapnap was sure he wasn’t much better.
He was frustrated. He was desperate. He wanted something to happen. Something to get his mind off his best friend that he’d betrayed. Something to get his mind off the guilt he felt building in his chest.
He felt his comm buzz on his wrist.
Dream whispers to you: Sapnap?
Dream whispers to you: I know you’re mad at me but I think somethings wrong
Dream whispers to you: The air feels wrong
The earlier messages sat there mocking him. He wasn’t sure how Dream still had his communicator in the cell. He’d thought that Sam would have taken it from him considering he could be using it to make plans to escape but he guessed not. Dream was just lonely, probably. He wanted attention and he knew all of them were mad at him so he chose to do it like this. The messages had woken him up in the middle of the night. He’d thought that Dream was doing it on purpose for a moment before he realized he wouldn’t know the time. Sam had told him he’d refused to replace the clock after Dream threw it into the lava.
More messages had come in at sunrise the next morning.
Dream whispers to you: Sapnap?
Dream whispers to you: Are my messages coming through?
Dream whispers to you: Please?
Dream whispers to you: I’m not lying somethings wrong
He could admit that he’d paused after those ones. He thought for a brief moment that he could see his Dream coming through. He thought he could imagine him when they were younger together and were just exploring. There was a time when they were kids still that they’d thought they’d stumbled into an ancient city and Dream had messaged him like that through their comms because he was too scared to talk in fear of a warden being summoned.
This wasn’t then. This wasn’t his Dream anymore. He couldn’t be trusted. Even when it made his heart ache.
Another set came while he was finishing his breakfast with Karl.
Dream whispers to you: it hurts to breathe
Dream whispers to you: Sap?
Dream whispers to you: please?
Dream whispers to you: Pandas?
Dream whispers to you: The airs too hot
Dream whispers to you: too thin
Karl had heard the buzzing but Sapnap just muted it. His fiance had tried to ask him what it was and who was messaging him so many times but he had just shook his head. He knew what Karl would say if he told him. He knew he would tell him to answer. To check back in. Karl hadn’t seen the changes in Dream like he had. Sapnap watched his best friend pull away more and more until he ended up threatening the server he once claimed to love. Until he made claims that he didn’t care about the people he once said he loved. Until he made it clear that he didn’t love him anymore.
Dream whispers to you: Sapnap?
Dream whispers to you: im sorry please just answer
Dream whispers to you: sam wont come youre my only chance
He’d glanced at the messages before he left for his walk. He’d left his comm muted. Dream needed to stay in Pandora. He wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he was still worried about him. He wasn’t going to let him know that he could lie like this still and get him to come to him. The point of the prison was to cut Dream off from the power he’d gained over people on the server. If Sapnap went to him he would only be proving it right.
He’d gone on his walk. About thirty minutes ago he’d unmuted the comm and felt silence from it. Dream must have given up. That’s what he thought.
Right up until now when he felt another buzz followed by another against the skin of his wrist. Right up until now when he read the messages that had come through while he’d been ignoring him.
Dream whispers to you: i cantbreathe
Dream whispers to you: sap?
An hour ago. Those messages had come an hour ago. Somehow the time gap just made the messages rolling in now hurt worse.
Dream whispers to you: im sorry
Dream whispers to you: i love you
Dream whispers to you: sory
He tried to swallow back his worry. He did, truly. The issue was that Sapnap had never really been the best at shutting down his emotions. He’d always been considered the fiery one of the friend group and that hadn’t changed since they were children.
Dream was talking wrong. It was one thing to be claiming the things he was but the time gaps and the errors of his messaging along with the sinking feeling he’d had since before he ever got the first messages.
It didn’t sit right.
He’d seen the vault. He knew how small it was. He knew that there had been no visitations and that Sam was dropping him food from a dispenser instead of going in to limit the risk of Dream calculating some kind of escape.
He couldn’t ignore it. He would think about it until it drove him nearly insane if he didn’t check it or do something. He didn’t want to give in if it was just Dream trying to manipulate him. He didn’t want to go to the prison if his self control was slipping this bad. He should ignore the messages. He knew that. He knew he shouldn’t pay it any attention but he needed to do something.
He was a fighter. He wasn’t ever the one who sat and thought through their plans and came up with all the different back ups. That was always Dream. He was more the type to go and shoot. He made his plans on his feet. He was good in a fight for it. He was good for fights.
He wasn’t good for locking his brother behind lava.
But he could try to rationalize the messages on his way home.
Dream said the air felt wrong. That it was too hot and too thin. He said he couldn’t breathe. There was nothing wrong with his lungs. There was nothing wrong with him. Dream was fine. There wasn’t even anything there that would change that. He was fine. He had to be fine. He wasn’t being hurt. The heat was from the lava. The—-
The lava.
He reread the messages. Dream said the air was too hot. Too thin. He said he couldn’t breathe. Lava was definitely too thick to get air through but there were vents for the cell in the ceiling. What else would that hole have been?
Dream was fed from a dispenser.
If that hole was a dispenser and not a vent then—
With his heart in his throat he pulled his comm from its clip on his wrist and clicked on Dream’s chat window. Comms were neat but they were tricky too. They pinged out death alerts to the server. Canon and non canon would be determined after the respawn typically but they were also pretty easy to tell. Comms had windows for all of it. Now normally a window like that would only be able to be accessed by the owner of that specific comm. They were tied deep enough to give vitals readings and leave marks for canon deaths so that there was no confusion on how many lives someone had left.
In the early days of the server Dream had changed their comms. He’d figured out a code line that would give the three of them access to each other’s windows. He knew George used it because that had been how he’d found out Dream had lost two lives in the final confrontation. He knew he still used it. He checked on George all the time. Paranoia that he’d picked up from Dream. Part of him had wondered in the past if Dream had ever checked on them using his before. Part of him wondered if he’d blocked them. He’d always been too scared to check.
He searched for the tab. He saw it glowing red. His heart squeezed in his chest.
One life left. He still had a pulse but it was weaker than he thought it should be. Nights spent bored and looking for something to do meant he’d flipped around with his comm. Sapnap had memorized both Dream and George’s heartbeats. This was slower than his resting heart rate. This was weaker than his sleeping one.
He looked at his oxygen. He regretted not thinking to look sooner.
Swearing under his breath he turned and ran to get to the nether portal. The main SMP had never felt so far from him before. He felt like he would die if he didn’t make it there immediately. Using the voice option of his comm he switched over to Sam and sent him a message telling him he needed to be let into the prison urgently. He would explain inside but right now he couldn’t afford him to ask questions.
He had to get in.
He had to get to Dream.
He had to get the lava down and gone.
Dream was suffocating. With what he read there was no way he was still conscious. He must have typed the messages before passing out.
He’d left Dream to die. He didn’t think to double check about the vents. He’d assumed and now Dream was dying in a cell with no one to help him. Sapnap was meant to be his brother. He was meant to be there for him. If he hadn’t unmuted his comm he would have only found out when Karl showed him the ping for his death.
He could feel it. A sixth sense or whatever. If Dream died today it would be canon. He would lose his brother forever.
He barely even realized he was in the prison until he was being forced to a stop by Sam. he didn’t notice the tears welling in his eyes or streaming down his cheeks until his friend was asking what was wrong.
“Dream’s dying.”
Sam’s confusion was immediate.
“What? No. He’s in the cell—”
He felt like his frustrations were bubbling over. He needed to go. Dream didn’t have much more time. At any moment they could get the announcement that his heart gave out or that his lungs collapsed from the pressure of breathing nothing but carbon for too long.
“He can’t fucking breathe in the cell Sam! We need to go!”
Sam startled by the yell. He hadn’t meant to yell. Not really. But he needed them to go.
“Sap—”
“Look!”
He lifted his comm with the window still showing. Dream was getting weaker. He was barely breathing now. Small jumps of the line showing shallow pants that were starting to space farther apart from each other. They were lucky he hadn’t had a seizure yet. They would be lucky if he didn’t have one while they tried to save him. They would be lucky if he didn’t die on them or if he came out of this still intact.
He watched Sam take in the issue. He saw him getting pale.
“How—”
“Where the fuck are the vents in the cell Sam? How is he supposed to breathe through lava?!”
Sam looked like a ghost when the realization sunk in. Both of them took off running. They used the guard tunnels to get there faster. The lava was barely falling. It wasn’t going fast enough but he knew that once it broke the seal of the cell opening air would flood in again. It would be okay.
Dream was going to be okay.
He had to be okay.
He saw his brother slumped on the ground near the back of the cell. He couldn’t wait for the lava to finish falling or the platform to go across. An enderpearl hit his hand and was thrown a second later. He landed in the cell and immediately felt what Dream had told him.
It felt like he’d been stuck inside of an oven. He was lightheaded just from standing in there. The rush of teleport added in with the lack of air where he landed and he felt his world fill with stars before it straighted again.
Dream hadn’t reacted to him at all. His face was flushed. His cheeks red and looking almost burned. His body was twitching. Arms and legs spazzing at random while his fingers gripped around nothing. They were weak moves. Nothing but bodily survival instinct taking over while his mind was pushed down. His mouth was open for the small pants he managed to get in but it wasn’t enough. None of this was enough.
There were tear stains on his face. He’d been crying. His last messages once again flitted through his mind.
Dream whispers to you: im sorry
Dream whispers to you: i love you
Dream whispers to you: sory
Dream thought he’d abandoned him. He was dying and Sapnap had left him. He felt sick.
He needed to fix this. He needed to fix all of this.
Falling to his knees beside his brother he fluttered his hands over him. He was trying to remember what he was supposed to do for a situation like this but it was hard. He was scared and he had never been the one to handle the medical issues. That had always been Bad’s job or George’s if he wasn’t there. George was the one that knew what to do if they got hurt. More often than not it was him and Dream getting the wounds. George had to bandage them up enough times that he’d just kind of developed the role.
He could hear Sam calling for help to the prison. He was calling for a doctor. He was saying it was an emergency. Good.
The air still felt too wrong in the cell. If it was because there was actually something wrong with it or because he was just hating the place for what he’d let happen here he didn’t know. He also didn’t think he really cared all that much.
Gentle as he could be he reached for Dream’s shoulders and turned him onto his back. No reaction. Nothing.
“Dream?”
He knew it was hopeless before the name ever left his lips but Sapnap had always been nothing if not hopeful of the hopeless.
“Dreamie, I’m here. I’m here it’s okay now.”
He felt his lungs itch with the urge to cough. He needed to get him out of here. They needed to leave.
It wasn’t until he was gathering Dream into his arms that he noticed the blood under his fingernails. He paused just long enough to see the claw marks scratching into the obsidian of the wall and floor. He thought that was it until he saw scratches and blood poking from under his shirt collar down to his chest.
He’d clawed at himself. He’d struggled bad enough to reach for help from the person who put him here and hurt himself to relieve the pressure.
Sapnap felt sick.
“Sam! I need the bridge!”
This time he did cough. The cell had a chance to air out now but it was still too much. He watched the bridge slowly make its way across to them but all he could focus on was the small pants brushing against the side of his neck.
“Hang on, Dream. I’ve got you.”
He wouldn’t let go again.
He wouldn’t ignore him again.
He’d fix this.
He had to.
