Chapter Text
“Listen,” Dream tried to keep the pain out of his laugh. “All I’m asking is for you to hear me out.”
“There’s nothing you could say that I want to hear, Dream.”
Dream had been trying to reach out to the members of his family one by one for a while now. He’d been trying to get to all of them to explain his motivations and the goals he had when he did everything he’d done.
He knew tensions were high. He understood that. He knew that his escape from prison hadn’t helped with that. He understood that his family was upset but they needed to see the things that happened to him.
He needed them to know what happened to him.
He needed to know they agreed that it wasn’t right.
That torture wasn’t the answer.
That he hadn’t deserved that.
He knew that the prison was going to suck. He planned for that. He intentionally made the conditions harsh so he would have a fitting punishment for himself for the things he’d needed to do to ensure his home could be reunited. Dream knew. He knew that when he got out of there he was going to be hungry for anything but potatoes. He knew he would want to eat anything but that and that he would likely need some help regaining his muscles. Dream had planned for that.
He hadn’t planned for Sam’s interrogations.
The regular beatings and the druggings. He hadn’t planned to be starved. He hadn’t planned to be set in the cell and left to rot. He was meant to be taken to a courtyard, sure it would be sealed but it would allow him to move and a break from the heat. He’d gotten none of that. No fresh water. No proper hygiene. Nothing
Instead he was beaten. He was starved, tortured, attacked. Drugged to try to make his tongue loose. Taunted with glasses of cold water and any break from the suffocating heat he could get.
Punz had been critical in helping to heal him when they found each other after his escape.
Now it was simply the matter of explaining it to his family. To the people he’d done all of it for. The ones that he cared about most in life.
They just didn’t want to see him.
Sapnap needed time. He knew that before he was even going to attempt reaching out. His brother had been fighting to put him back and Dream hadn’t forgotten about his promise to him in the cell. He knew Sapnap needed time to cool down before he tried to tell his side of the story.
George had been sleeping each time he went to him. From the things he’d overheard from the others that was pretty much all he did now. Sleeping and resting his days away. He’d heard from the window Karl telling Sapnap he thought it was because he’d lost Dream. That George had decided it wasn’t worth it without him. Had decided to sleep until it was over and he was back.
Dream didn’t have the heart to test that theory yet. To wake him and risk seeing that faith and care fall false.
Instead he tried with the outsiders he knew first. He talked with the syndicate. He explained a bit to Technoblade and Philza. He tried to have them understand and while he knew they were on the fence he also knew they had helped him once and he wanted to make sure they were repaid for that. He’d spoken with Wilbur. A little odd after he’d resurrected the man and he’d seen many conflicting feelings crossing over his face. He’d talked with Ponk just to find him turned against Sam and telling him that the Prison had changed him.
The evidence of Dream’s body had only solidified that fact.
Person by person he’d been trying to make his amends. One by one.
Until now he was standing on Puffy’s ship and feeling the waves rock them gently. It was starting to pick up. He could smell the storm brewing over the sea. He knew she did too. Readying the deck for the storm with Dream trailing along behind her.
He wondered if she thought it felt like old times. With him tagging along behind her to earn his nickname from her. He wondered if he would ever hear her call him Duckling again. If she would ever even look at him with kindness like she used to do when he was younger.
“Puffy, I know that can’t be true.” He could see the anger in her shoulders. “Just let me—”
“You know nothing about me.”
Her voice came cold. Nothing like she was in his memories. He remembered her being kind and caring. Being a parent and being loving. The wall he was seeing for her now, while understandable to a degree, stung.
Puffy had always been good when it came to being able to read people. She had always been skilled when it came to knowing who was telling the truth. So why did she always ignore it when he was telling the truth? Why did she only ever believe him if he lied?
“Puffy—“
“I’ve told you before to get off my ship. Now go, Dream. I don’t want you here.”
He let himself frown. He wasn’t wearing the mask. He knew she could see his expressions so that she would know he was telling the truth. But she wouldn’t even look at him. She wouldn’t give him the time of day.
“You’ll want to know what happened in Pandora.”
Short of point blank telling her right now he was tortured, he didn’t know what else to say to get her attention.
“I know what happened in Pandora.”
Her voice came cold. Enough so that Dream felt ice cold fear grip his heart.
“No you don’t.”
Puffy wouldn’t have stood for it if she did. She would have gotten him out. She wouldn't have let him be tortured. He wouldn’t believe that.
“Don’t tell me what I—“
“I don’t believe you would have allowed torture.”
It was an easy thing for him to say. It was the truth of what he believed. He was honest when he said it. She raised him. Puffy taught him what he knew and she’d raised him for what was right and what was too far.
Dream hadn’t tortured like this. Dream hadn’t done half the things that were done to him in that cell. He wouldn’t have if he was left out. He had standards for himself.
Sure he pushed Tommy. Sure he was involved in wars. Sure he supplied Wilbur the TNT. That didn’t make him nearly the monster that Sam and Quackity became in those walls. The starvation. The interrogations. The absolute agony of the sessions.
Dream wasn’t that.
He would never become that.
“Torture?”
There was anger in her voice. Something he wasn’t used to hearing from Puffy as it started to teeter on the edge of something like hysteria. He watched her stop what she was doing. Watched her turn to face him fully and the look on her face drove the spike through his heart.
Cold anger in her eyes. Nothing of the compassion of a mother looking at her son. Hatred and disgust leaking through every single word she spoke like her words were nothing but a knife.
“You would know about torture, wouldn’t you?”
What he was seeing from her was the same thing he saw from Sam in the start. When he was asking for his clock back. When he was asking not to be starved.
He saw it from the woman who raised him.
“For all you’ve done to Tommy I’m sure you know all about torture.”
Dream felt his own anger licking at his heart. He felt his own outrage at always being cast aside for the sake of a boy who knew nothing. For a child that was so far stuck up his own ego that he couldn’t tell right from wrong if it stared him in the face. He would never admit when he went too far. He would kill people just when they hinted the fact that Tommy’s opinion wasn’t god. But oh, of course, Dream was the villain. Tommy burned houses and looted homes simply because he felt like it or he got bored. Tommy would destroy the server for the sake of his own entertainment or because he decided that he didn’t like someone.
But Dream knew what happened when you weren’t Tommy’s friend.
It meant having lie after lie spread about you until your family was leaving and calling you a monster. It meant staring down the face of your loved ones and seeing them sanction your death. Watching your brother stand above you as your enemy kills you again and again for his own entertainment and calls it all justice. It’s standing alone against the world and knowing that there would be no one to stand with you in the eyes of others or else they’d be killed too.
Having to hide and deny any attachment, any love, for the sake of its life.
But sure, Dream was the villain. Dream was the monster who knew all about torture. Dream was the horrible thing that deserved to die alone.
Dream was the evil.
Dream had done everything he did for the sake of his home and his family. Dream had tried to protect the people and things that he loved. But Dream was the monster. So there was no love.
Dream was the monster. So the woman who raised him replaced him with his enemy.
Because Dream was the monster, so Tommy took everything he loved.
“Puffy—”
“No!”
Her voice came too sharp. Dream took a step back before he could even think about it. Images of Quackity and Sam hovering over him and screaming at him through the haze of potions as he tried to control himself through the interrogations. They would drug him until he was delirious. He could barely remember the things that happened in them but he never broke. He never slipped.
He never told them about Punz. He never gave them the book.
“Enough of your lies and your games, Dream!”
He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t playing games.
“I want you off my ship.”
“Puff—”
“You don’t get to come in here and tell me you were tortured when you have done—”
Dream didn’t let her finish.
“I can prove it!”
She paused. The fury still so clear on her face but she stopped. Just for a moment she stopped.
“I won’t believe you.”
He let his hurt show.
“You wouldn’t allow torture, Puffy. You wouldn’t—”
“Sam wouldn’t do it.”
Dream laughed.
Broken and hollow and so beyond shattered, he laughed.
“Sam wouldn’t do the tools, no.”
He saw her confusion. He saw her going to deny the things he was saying.
“But Sam does torture. Just a different way.”
The memories tasted like acid. Dream forced himself to push them away.
“He drugs.”
“You’re lying.”
“He beats.”
“Stop.”
“He starves and when you ask him for food he beats you again.”
“Shut up.”
“He will drain your water until you’re passing out in the heat and then he shows up with a cold bottle telling you to give up the one thing keeping you alive or he leaves.”
“Sam wouldn’t—”
“Guess what I did, Puffy?”
She was staring at him. Anger and so much more brewing on her face so quickly and so tightly he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“I watched him leave.”
He couldn't give up the book. He couldn't give up Punz. He couldn’t lose all of it.
“Shut up.”
He was done with being called a liar.
He was done with the flashes of Quackity he saw in place of his mother.
“Then make me.”
The anger was more than he should be giving her. But it was anger or heartbreak and he didn’t know what else to do. It was either anger or he shatter and beg and plead for not another day. He submits or he fights.
Dream wanted to fight.
“You weren’t tortured.”
“Tell that to Quackity.”
“So now it’s Quackity and not Sam?”
“It was both of them.”
She didn’t believe him. Backing him up step by step. He let himself walk. He let his fear drive him. The only thing she’d believe from him was his hate.
“You just want your enemies squashed.”
“I never cared about Quackity.” How could she forget him so easily? “Sam was my friend.”
“Then he punished you justly.”
And that.
That was the moment Dream broke.
“Just?”
He let his rage line his voice. His betrayal and pain.
“You call torture justice?”
His volume lifted. He felt the wash of the wind. He wished it would kill him where he stood if this was considered justice.
“I watched Quackity pull my insides out and hold them over my face as I died and respawned over and over again. I watched my body be broken over and over again over knowledge that if I gave up I would die for. I was starved and drugged and interrogated. I was beaten senseless and stripped of any human right. I was murdered over and over again as their personal punching bags because they had a bad day and you call that just?!”
He didn’t mean to scream but the burn in his heart didn’t allow him for anything else. The outrage he was feeling crawling up his throat like a snake. The pain and betrayal. He thought she was better than this. He thought he’d at least once meant something to her.
“Stop lying!”
That was all it took. All it took for her to break too.
Dream watched her storm to him. He watched with her image flickering between Sam and Quackity as she marched him back until his feet hit the edge. She didn’t stop.
“All you ever do is lie! Over and over again to try to make me turn on my friends and believe in you instead!”
She pushed him. Dream scrambled to catch himself. The ground was slippery here.
“You try to take everything away so we go back to you when you’re the monster no one wants!”
She shoved him again. This time harder.
He felt the wounds from the prison burning where they were touched.
“You’re the one everyone hates!”
Another push. He nearly lost his balance. Dream felt like he couldn’t breathe.
“You’re the monster!”
Another push. He felt his feet lose grip. He was half sitting on the edge of the ship now. He could hear the water sloshing below.
He couldn’t tell it apart from his heart.
“You’re the liar!”
He held on for his life.
“You’re the one that we want gone! You’re the one we want dead!”
She was his mother.
“I was tortured!”
His mother.
“You deserved it!”
Dream couldn’t catch himself.
When her hands gripped his shirt and shoved him back his body went with it. He felt his shirt tear from trying to hold his weight over the edge. He saw her eyes move down.
He saw her look at the scars.
The marks of the torture and the horror that was that box. He watched her take them in. The carved words. The slashes he couldn’t have done to himself.
The brand of Quackity’s smile in his collar bone.
He watched her realize the truth.
Her eyes locked onto his.
Emotions too fast for him to understand in the slightest against a mind that was too caught in flashbacks to understand.
Dream saw Quackity. Beating him and berating him. He saw Sam with the water and taunting it over him. He saw Quackity holding his heart out of his chest for him to see it beat before he squeezed it in his palm. He saw Sam raining fist after fist into his abused flesh because he’d called him by name instead of warden.
Dream saw all of it.
He saw a torturer. He didn’t see his mother.
And then his shirt ripped. Tearing the rest of the way and sending his body plummeting down into the water.
Puffy stared as he hit. Horror dawning in her heart as she realized the things that just happened. As she realized the truth that was now in front of her.
She leaned over the edge. She waited for Dream to come up.
But instead the water went still.
She saw red starting to taint it.
She saw bandages floating up.
With curse after curse on her lips Puffy moved. Stripping of the heavier layers of her outfit before she was diving into the water. Searching through the murk until she found the body she was looking for. Seeing Dream sinking with his body totally lax in the current.
Arms up. Body exposed.
The amount of blood on him. The marks and bruises. The fact that she could still count his ribs.
He was telling the truth.
All of it had been the truth.
Her own lungs burned in her chest as she swam to him. As she tried to see if he was still breathing and tell what the problem was. She saw the wounds that were split and bleeding heavy into the water. She saw the bend in his ribs that told her they were broken.
The fall must have knocked the air out of him.
He wasn’t strong enough to fight it like this.
She grabbed him without another second. Hooking her hands under his arms and pulling him towards where she knew the dock was. Dragging him to the surface and holding his head up and out of the water.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t breathe.
He didn’t even choke or splutter.
Dream was lighter than she thought he should be when she dragged him onto the wood. Laying him flat and feeling for his pulse first. She pressed deeper.
Deeper.
She felt the thud. Pathetically weak. Too slow. He felt for his breathing.
She listened to his chest.
Nothing but a quick apology and she was pressing down. Beat for beat she was pressing on his chest and feeling his already abused ribs cave and bend more under her weight. She pinched his nose. She breathed hard into his mouth.
His chest didn't move.
“Come on Dream.”
She told him he deserved it.
“Come on.”
She was meant to be his mother.
“Don’t do this, come on.”
He’d come to her to tell her the truth and she’d called him a liar.
“You can do this. Just breathe.”
She told him he deserved it.
“Breathe, dammit.”
She forced air hard into his mouth. Forcing it down and into his lungs before his body went rigid and he choked. Immediately she was turning him onto his side and trying to hold him in recovery as he gagged and heaved and threw up water and bile onto the dock.
She saw blood as well.
His eyes opened for a second before they were fluttering and rolling back. Before his body couldn’t hold out against it any longer.
But he didn’t stop breathing. The water hadn’t claimed him.
She hadn’t killed him.
But his wounds were in the light now. Burns after scars. Slashes after tears.
She saw where Quackity cut into his organs. Saw the scars that looked like surgeries she knew Dream didn’t have.
She felt sick.
Dream wasn’t the liar. Dream wasn’t the monster.
It was all of them. Every one of them who pushed him to that.
It was the server.
Dream wasn’t the monster.
It was her.