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Dream’s first memory is sitting at a campfire, alone, in a cave system as a fully grown adult. Before then, his life was blank.
People around him talked of their childhoods, youths, families. Dream laughed, told them he didn’t know any of it, and pointed at the netherite bracelets around his wrists. The ones nobody else had, the ones he could never remove.
In the present, Dream breathed in and out, laying on the grass of his new server, listening to his friends laugh around him.
Maybe this could be the start of his life, he thinks.
His server grew to be popular. Fast.
He walks across the Prime path, dodging the children running past him. He yells after them to be careful, but laughs when he turns back.
Everyone here knew he had no past. They never questioned his almost open secret, whether by rumours or his own admission.
And yet, nobody knew what caused it.
George guessed a head injury, based on some scars on his scalp. Wilbur guessed the bracelets by enchantments visible on the inside of them. Dream couldn’t do anything either way. He was content to simply exist in his own present, not worry about a past he didn’t know of.
Dream stood in front of the walls of a new nation. They stretched high above him. The tall, black walls reminded him of something.
A group of players had assembled to build this… construct in the heart of the server. Dream didn’t care, if he had to be honest. He played along and smiled when he saw the glint of fun in his friends’ eyes.
So he didn’t interfere, and walked away.
Dream was, one day, interrupted in his rounds by Tommy. The younger ran up to him, catching his breath before speaking, “I’m worried about Wilbur.”
Dream didn’t react much. He knew Wilbur was slowly getting worse, talking less, yelling more, holing himself up and obviously not having fun with their playfights anymore.
“What happened?” he asked, already pulling his comm out.
“He’s fucked up, he’s- He’s getting so bad, Dream. I was… Can we call a truce?”
“Of course.” Dream typed on his comm to the rest of his side to call off the war. “Anything else? I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Tommy hesitates, “Uh, can you… invite Phil?”
“Tommy, I don’t know who that is.”
“Really?” Tommy thinks for a second, “Oh, yeah. He’s a super powerful guy, but he’s also like our dad! He could help, I’m sure!”
Dream laughs at the pause, but agrees and sends out the invite. Tommy runs off soon after, and Dream hopes he was right.
Dream stopped all chat messages for Phil’s arrival.
Dream waited for him, immediately approaching when he’d fully arrived and caught his breath.
“So, where is the shit?” Phil asks when the admin approaches. Dream immediately points in the direction of L’Manburg, leading them over to the nation and the building Wilbur had locked himself in.
On the way, Phil turned to him. Dream studied him, the man smaller than he’d expected for someone apparently well-known all over. The massive, black wings behind him, however, made his stature appear larger.
“So, you’re Dream right?” Dream nodded. “I’ve heard of you from Tommy. You don’t remember much, do you?”
Dream laughed. “Yeah, you could say that.” Phil inspected him as well, eyes landing on the bracelets. When Phil nodded at them, he raised one. “Had these ever since I’ve been. Dunno what they do, but I can’t take them off.”
Phil hummed. “I’ll take a look at them later.”
They continued walking in silence afterwards.
Getting Wilbur out had been easy enough. Phil had walked in, and a few minutes later come out with his unconscious ‘son’ asking for a bed.
Dream had led him to the community house, where they’d set Wilbur in one of the upstairs bedrooms and then retreated to the first floor for Phil to look at the bracelets again.
They sat down in the kitchen corner, Phil taking Dream’s arm and inspecting the thick, faintly enchanted bands closer.
The moment he brushed his fingers against one, his wings shuffled aggressively. He gasped.
“They’re hybrid suppressants.”
And Dream’s world seemed to crumble.
Dream had been told he behaved like a hybrid many times. He’d dismissed it each time.
He didn’t know species which showed no external traits at all, and only had some limited instincts. So, obviously, Dream must’ve just been around all his hybrid friends too much and picked it up from them. He wasn’t a hybrid.
He’d had years to build up the denial, and yet it all crumbled at just three words.
Phil watched as Dream blinked at him. His mouth moved wordlessly, until he broke off into sobs and Phil took him into his own arms, feathers wrapping around them, letting him break. It was the least he deserved.
Ever since Dream could remember, he’d worn the cursed netherite bands around his wrists.
Now, watching as Phil carefully scraped a knife along the inside of them, hands glowing with the powers of gods Dream couldn’t name, scratching out each rune on each enchantment, he felt a tightness he’d never noticed fade away, constant buzzing he’d taken for normal lessen, give way to a surge of…
The only way Dream could describe it was overwhelming, exhilarating, realness.
He barely noticed when Phil bent the first bracelet off, too focused on each breath sending weird pulses through his blood, world seeming brighter, nearer, with each one.
He missed Phil’s sad smile in his direction.
And as the scratching continued on the second one, he felt even more, even more hollow in the best way possible.
Something deep within called, screamed, to be let go. Each time he listened, it made his skin tingle, shivers run across every hair on his body.
When Phil took off the second one, releasing his hand from holding Dream’s wrist down, Dream drowned in the feelings.
He stood, legs shaking with the emotions running through him.
One moment, Dream was nothing other than human.
The next, he was taller than Phil, taller than before, wings stretching above his shoulders with metallic gray feathers brushing against the very ceiling. He watched as his now-taloned feet took a step, then another, trailing to Phil and picking him up in a hug that would never convey enough gratitude in his lifetime.
For the second time, Dream let tears come to his eyes, crying until his eyes were sore and then some.
Phil told him his memories would never come back.
The forceful way his memories were cursed away too amateurish, no regard for his code or for the ability to get them back. It was far too badly done to risk getting them back, too much time passed since it, and Dream found he didn’t care much.
Dream stood at the edge of a cliff, holding two bracelets in his hands.
They were bent out of shape, enchantments no longer legible scratched into them. They didn't work, broken forever.
He watched as the sun rose, glinting on the dark surface of the ocean he stared into.
He breathed in, breathed out, and threw the bands as hard as he could into the waves.
As the sky brightened and light crossed his scaled cheeks, wings spread to the warmth of the sun, Dream smiled on a new day.
Fresh start, didn’t they say?
Yeah, Dream thought, I think I’d like one of those.