Chapter Text
Punz didn't know what to expect as he walked through the deep forest...in all honesty he was in a heightened panic at the moment. An hour ago he'd been sitting in his tower eating a snack when he had suddenly received a DM from Dream over his communicator. The message had given away almost no information, it just said :
"Help ME-"
and a list of coords that Punz could only assume was his location. Now, why was Punz so concerned by this message? Well, he'd known Dream long enough to know that 1. he never sent Direct messages... ESPECIALLY not coordinates! (He had said it was because DMs were too easy to hack and that it was a "safety hazard". 2. he had directly asked for help...that alone sent a chill up his spine...this was *SERIOUS*.
So as the blonde man walked into the cave, he was looking for any sign of Dream he could find... but of all the indications he'd expected...the last one he expected was a tiny blob in a yellow cardigan trembling in the corner of the cave, and what looked to be the remains of a shattered mask on the ground at its base.
Punz froze in his tracks, not knowing what to make of the creature... he thought for a moment that this was some weird prank... but as he gave the blob a closer look, he noticed it was shaking like a leaf, barely staying upright from the force of it...he didn't know what this was, but it was clearly in distress.
So, Punz did the most logical thing he could think of in this situation...He bent down to the blob's level and tried talking to it.
He tried gently talking to the shaking blob as he slowly crept forward. "H-Hey buddy...what are you doing here?...are you lost?"
without saying a word, the blob just looked up at him for a moment with a look of terror in his eyes before desperately trying to make a break for the cave entrance behind him in a mad dash.
Punz, instinctively reached out to catch the tiny creature in his outstretched hand, like a cat pouncing on a mouse. This action caused the blob to start letting out a series of shrieking cries in his hand, wiggling desperately in the mercenary's hand in a desperate attempt to escape the mercenary's grasp.
Punz held his grasp firm as he looked from the blob in his hand, back towards the place the blob came from…and the mask on the ground.
Or… what was left of it that is.
If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d just think it was a collection of white pebbles or cracked shells from a bird’s nest that was long gone…But Punz wasn’t that naive… he knew what he was looking at, he helped formulate the enchantments for the damn thing!
That wasn’t just any mask… that was DREAM’S mask!
But if that was Dream’s mask, then that meant…
Then that meant…oh prime…oh prime NO–
Punz tentatively opened his hands just enough to see the form of the, now exhausted, shaking blob in his hand… with large black eyes that looked back at him with a look he could recognize a mile away…
The blob he was holding in his hands was Dream…
But…how??? How in the name of Prime did this even HAPPEN? When Punz had last seen him two weeks ago he’d seemed fine! But, clearly he had been wrong about something… which somehow made the mercenary’s heart break more…
He’d failed his one job… to project Dream… and now he was paying for it considerably…oh prime…
As he stood there looking at the blob form of his partner, the blob seemed to recognize the avian suddenly and began to quietly chirp in his hand before nestling into fingers and curling up like a cat in the mercenary’s shaking hands.
Punz started down at the blob as he tried desperately not to cry. He needed to figure out what to do with the blob version of Dream and FAST! Night was falling and the temperature had started dropping… which would probably be bad for a tiny little blob like Dream.
Punz decided that the best course of action now would be to bring Dream back with him to his tower, and figure out what to do with him later after he could figure out whether the poor blob had caught a cold or not.
Before taking off, Punz decided to grab a spare wool cap out of his bag and offered it out for the small blob to hop into. Punz stared at the baggy hat for a few moments with a look of trepidation before surrendering to his exhaustion and hopped weakly into the cap.
Once Punz was off the ground and gliding through the clouds high above the setting horizon, he could hear the faint sound of Dream yawning in the cap and start letting out a short, wheezing snore.
Well… at least he was getting some sleep I guess?
It wasn’t until Punz had touched down on the balcony of his tower that he started to hear a series of fitful squeaks and whines inside the makeshift blanket hat. The Mercenary immediately started to panic and almost rip open the cap to get him, to find the blob clearly in distress, but there seemed to be no obvious source of his anguish. But blob Dream continued to let out screeches of pain that almost sounded like he was being murdered.
Punz desperately tried to comfort him by petting the trembling blob’s head, but that caused him to draw back suddenly in a panic, before suddenly his tiny eyes burst open in a dazed panic, clearly still in agony from whatever he’d been Dreaming about. Punz tried to get his attention, but every time the blob looked at him, Punz could tell he wasn’t looking at him.
The blonde gently moved over to his bed and sat down as softly as he could so he wouldn’t jostle the scared blob in his hands.
It took several more minutes of mostly unsuccessful communication between Punz and Dream before he was able to calm him down enough to look at him.
“Hey…Dream honey…listen…its me…Punz…You remember me right?”
The tiny blob looked up at Punz, his yellow cardigan covering most of his head in a messy heap. He slowly started to nod, then stopped as if to try and remember, only to start crying again. Punz quickly shook his head in frustration with himself. Of course, he wouldn’t remember… he was in blob from right now… He probably wouldn’t remember any of this later…
But it still confused Punz that Dream didn’t remember him at ALL I mean…They had spent the last 500 years together…you’d think he’d remember at least SOMETHING! But he also knew the tiny blob in his palm was exhausted and pushing it further right now wasn't going to help anything…it would probably be for the best if they both just got some sleep… A naive part of Punz believed that this was still all a dream… that he would wake up and his partner would be back to normal…and not a tiny blob that was hiding in his hat, acting like the world would end if he moved too fast… Punz genuinely wanted to help him… but he wasn’t exactly flowing with options right now…
Punz curled up at the foot of his bed, blanket roughly thrown over him as he fell into a fitful sleep, waking up at every slight noise thinking something had happened to the bundle in the middle of the bed until he finally fell into a deep sleep around sunrise.