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When Dream wakes up it's already late in the morning, the sun creeping from the blinds in his bedroom, inside the comfortable and familiar cabin in the Arctic that he has lived and recovered in for the past few months. Not a lot of things have happened since the jailbreak: people are searching, waiting for him to slip up, to let his guard crumble just the littlest bit so they can throw him again in that hellhole of a cell he has been trapped in for almost a year. They even came to the cabin searching for him multiple times. Those times he hid under the floor boards, in a small, hollow space Phil and Techno created in forecast of this situation. It wasn't even that bad: of course, he didn't have good food -he made sure of putting there food that wouldn't rot in short time- and it wasn't a big space, but he could live with it. Often he needed to hide there for multiple days in a row, when the "inspections" became more insistent- those times were harder. It was easy for his mind to wander a bit too far, a bit too deep, and slowly pretend the stone walls were obsidian, imagining the dim light coming from a single torch hanged on the wall was actually from a wall made of hot, bright lava.
(And if he let his hand move to touch the wall in front of him, getting met with cold stone instead of the comfort that the lava brought in form of pain, then it was his and one else's business.)
Days went on, turning into weeks and, eventually, months. Dream was healing, the wounds crossing his body, making a mosaic -a permanent demonstration of the cruelty of the human mind- were no longer infected. His hair was usually tied in a bun or a ponytail- the thought of getting shears near his face almost made him gag. His eyes (were they always this dull?) held a bit more light now. He was also gaining weight back, now that he was eating something different from potatoes every day.
That day, Techno and Philza went out to get more resources (not before giving a lot of recommendations and warnings regarding his safety, of course), so Dream was alone in the cabin.
Lately a thought kept wandering in his mind; not loud, but still overwhelmingly present. It's gonna be Techno's birthday in a few days, and he...well, he has nothing. He still can't go out and mine resources- people could find him easily and, well, it's not like the prison left him anything more than a scarred body and a broken mind. But he still had his "pie maker talent", as Sapnap used to call it, back in the days, before the SMP.
(He pretends reminiscing about those memories doesn't leave a sour taste in his mouth).
Normal people actually call it baking.
And so, he gets to work. First, he takes some flour and eggs (the latter had been a pain to get; Dream swears those chicken hate him); then, he proceeds to search in the entire house for some sugar, finding the exact quantity he needed, luckily. By noon, he gathered all ingredients: sugar, milk, salt, butter, cream, strawberries and, finally, cake yeast.
Welp, time to put his "magic hands" to utility.
Time seemed to pass faster in the kitchen, and after some hours of back pain and sticky frosting everywhere, he was finally done.
Dream moves to go check out of the window, his heart skipping a beat recognizing the familiar figures of Philza and Techno in the distance.
He flees to the kitchen, maybe faster than his legs could take, still weak, and quickly shoves plates, cups and glasses in an angle of the counter, covering them by moving the fruit basket in front of the pile of dirty utensiles. He'll wash them later.
Almost tripping on himself, he grabs the strawberry cake and as gently as he can puts it in a chest. He'll have to remember to cover it and out it in the fridge, so it doesn't go rotten.
Right as he throws himself on the bed, forcing himself to act normal, the door opens, revealing two familiar people.
He glances at Philza, then at Techno. They both stare back.
After some moments, Philza speaks up:
"Did you feed the dogs like I asked you to?"
"God fucking damnit."