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George rips up the grass beneath him, pulling it out from the ground in handfuls. He lets the blades get swept up in the wind, uncaring of what happens to them once they’ve been ripped up. It doesn’t particularly matter.
It’s not so fun in his dreams once he realizes he’s dreaming. And he realized as soon as he showed up here that he was dreaming. Every once in a while he actually notices quickly, rather than it taking almost the whole dream for him to start catching on.
Things were just off enough that he noticed immediately. He supposes he could go off burning things down, killing any dream versions of people he knows, taking over the server, whatever. He could do anything he wanted to, but there’s not so much fun in it when he knows it’s not real.
There’s not much fun left in anything anymore, he thinks.
So he’s just ripping grass out of the dirt, he has nothing else worthwhile to do anyway.
And then…well he feels it first.
His shoulders raise slightly, almost without his conscious permission. The air thickens, the next breath George takes is a gulp, like he’s about to dip underwater. His hair stands on end, and he closes his eyes because he’s not quite ready to see it.
But that just means he hears it, the distorted voice, “ George. ”
He opens his eyes, tilting his head to look up at the god.
George has been trying not to indulge in this too much. He tries not to take everything XD wants to give him, he tries not to seek him out, he tries to ignore that every moment he’s sleeping is a moment that XD could come visit. He tries to pretend that he doesn’t want to see the god at all.
It makes things a little easier that way, like oiling rusted joints. It doesn’t fix the rust, but it slides better together at least.
“I’m kinda busy,” he says.
He has a handful of grass clenched in his fist, he’s all too aware of the dirt under his fingernails.
He looks up at XD and he tries to seem disinterested. He tries to make it seem as though he was actually doing anything with his time before this.
“ Stand. ”
George wants to spit that XD isn’t the boss of him, and he can’t just go around telling him what to do. But what would the point of that really be? He isn’t really in the mood for getting told off by a god.
George swallows just a bit of his pride so he can unclench his fist and let the grass go. And then he stands, facing XD with his chin up. He refuses to back down, at least. He refuses to be treated like an animal. He has to have some dignity in times like these.
“ Do you miss him? ”
This isn’t the first time XD has asked him this question. It’s something that seems to be on XD’s mind a lot, actually. Maybe it’s because XD looks incredibly similar to him, maybe it’s because he’s on George’s mind that often.
The mask helps, kind of. The mask has an X firmly over it. It’s not Dream’s mask, Dream’s mask that was worn by time and battle, with the smile on it, the blood that George was used to scrubbing out for him while he rested. George knows Dream’s mask as well as he knows the feeling of ripping up grass. If he focuses, he can feel the grooves and scratches under his fingertips. If he really focuses, he can feel Dream’s face under his fingertips too.
His hand twitches, and he focuses.
He can’t let his mind wander, not right now. He needs to lend his attention to the god in front of him and nothing else.
“He belongs in the prison,” George dismisses.
XD’s mask is much more unsettling to him, it’s perfect. There are no flaws on it, and that’s off putting.
“ You were gone a long time. ”
“I was awake a long time,” George agrees. “I’m asleep now, though.”
“ Did you look for him? ”
When Dream escaped prison, George bit his tongue and just nodded when Sapnap told him where he was going. He didn’t have any emotions about it, because he already knew that whatever emotions he would have would be wrong. So he’d prefer to feel nothing at all.
He made it so he didn’t have to feel anything. He tries not to wake up often. He tries not to wake up at all, but he hasn’t quite managed that yet.
“No. Sapnap is handling it,” George hums.
He trusts Sapnap to do the right thing, more than he’d ever trust himself.
XD reaches for his face, an arm emerging from his cloak.
It’s like this that it’s hardest for George to remember that XD is different. Because that’s Dream’s arm, he would know it anywhere. Bare and tanned and freckled, with a hand that he’s intimately familiar with. He knows that hand, that hand he once held every day. Everything about this image reaching out for him is so familiar that it aches.
But he takes a deep breath, and he reminds himself of the truth. He has to let himself down gently, that while XD may have a body like Dream’s, they’re different entities. He can find familiarity here, but he can’t overdo it. The comfort he takes, he has to pace himself. He can’t overindulge.
XD puts that hand on his cheek, cupping the side of his face with a gentleness that Dream hasn’t had in a long time.
It’s not about Dream, George reminds himself. Now he has to be harsh, because his heart is not getting the message. None of this has to do with Dream, this is his dream and XD is here.
He has to let go of that warped reality. Dream wants nothing to do with him anymore, he knows this.
“ Is it really so hard to not see him when you see me? ”
George is shaking, he can feel the tremor working through his body. Every other blink only gives him the image of Dream’s face, a face he knows better than his own.
“No,” he whispers.
But he’s lying, they both know he’s lying. All he wants is to lean into the made up reality in which Dream is here for him, reaching out for him, wanting him again. Missing him like George misses him.
“ I’ll leave you with him then. Let’s see how much you really miss him. ”
And then XD is gone.
XD is gone, and George is no longer in the middle of some random field.
He’s on the bridge to the community house, and Dream is standing in front of him. Looking down at him, steel in his eyes, a downturn to his mouth.
George’s heart aches so badly he’s worried he’ll actually drop dead.
He feels tears sting his eyes, but he tries desperately not to let them fall. He clenches his jaw until it clicks into place, and that tension helps keep him grounded at least.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dream asks. “What, are you feeling some regret right about now?”
His voice sounds off, but George doesn’t know if it’s the dream itself distorting it, XD, or just George’s memory failing him. The lack of knowledge is eating at him, his brain has nothing else safe to focus on. Everything is wrong.
George is wrong. George is wrong for the way that his heart still jumps at Dream’s voice, still reacts and moves for Dream like the man he once loved is actually still there.
“No,” George argues.
It’s weak, his voice is too weak. His shoulders are caving in, the tears are invading his voice and making him seem soft. He knows it, Dream knows it. This isn’t even real, and George still can’t face Dream in his own domain.
“Really? You don’t feel an ounce of guilt?”
Dream seems too tall suddenly, an insurmountable difference between them. It’s a distance that can’t be crossed the way it once may have been.
“I didn’t do anything, you dug your own grave,” George spits.
There’s little power to his words when his eyes are welling up more and more by the second. When his body is trembling from the top down, his heart yearning in a way that can only be painful.
“Oh, really? You’re just the innocent, helpless victim here? You didn’t aid in the war against L’manberg? You didn’t take the crown I offered you? You didn’t do anything wrong, ever? Are you sure this was all my doing, or have you put the blame on me to feel better about your own wrongdoings?”
“Stop,” George begs, closing his eyes.
The tears finally fall with that. He can’t help it.
George knows that Dream has done so much wrong. He knows that Dream can never be forgiven for his crimes, he knows that whatever “too far” may be, Dream went too far.
It doesn’t stop his heart from crying out, louder than his brain can drown out. Because despite everything, George still misses him. He can’t stop. He doesn’t know how to. If he did, he would in an instant. Because the pain that comes with it is unbearable.
“Always the fool, are you? The fool who fell for the orchestrator of all this tragedy,” Dream taunts.
“It’s not my fault.”
George struggles to open his eyes, but it’s so hard. It’s so hard to look at a face of freckles, bright green eyes, scars that he could name off the top of his head. Slight stubble, messy dirty blond hair that’s left blonder in all the sun. The details he once knew by heart, once smiled over, once pressed his lips over reverently.
These details now stick to his brain like molasses, like a parasite he can’t get rid of.
“Don’t you want to take some blame? If you did, maybe you could stand by my side again. Isn’t that what you want?” Dream taunts him, an unfitting soft smile on his face.
It’s not fair, it just isn’t.
Why can’t George just give it up?
He can’t keep fighting these feelings, it’s more than he can stand. He’s not strong enough to keep it up. He’s not strong enough to let Dream keep leaving him behind. Because despite himself, despite knowing better, or maybe because he doesn’t feel so above it anymore, he wants Dream back more than anything. He wants those early days back, when things were as simple as knowing that at his sides lived Dream on one and Sapnap on the other. Believing that things would always be that way.
He reaches out to cling onto Dream, to just fall into arms that are familiar for once.
But the moment he makes contact, Dream disappears.
“ I thought you knew this was just a dream. ”
George falls to his knees, wrapping both arms around himself and screaming to drown out whatever XD is saying to him. He screams and screams and swears and yells incoherently at the ground until his voice gives out on him.
He allows himself to weep openly then, letting his heart bleed where it’s been ripped out of his chest. His ribcage is left empty. It feels like it’s going to cave in at any moment, with nothing in there but cold air.
“ Next time, tell me the truth. ”
George can tell XD has left because the air is suddenly a lot lighter in his lungs, but it doesn’t help much when he can hardly breathe in the first place.
He supposes that, at least, he should start to get used to the idea of spending his life alone.
He can only hope that his heart catches up soon.