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Their mission was supposed to be simple. It was meant to just be recon, a basic get in and get out. Something that all of them had done about a hundred times over. this was meant to be no different for them. Routine that had been practiced and perfected
The stakes for this one were high. Waiting to take down the head of one of the largest international criminal organizations. It was a team stakeout from the home nation. A group of them trying to work to bring the organization down.
Dream was the leader of his team. Standing at the ready and getting orders from their oversight. Taking in the plans and helping to strategies and set the sting.
The assassination.
Now he and his team sat hidden in a warehouse that smelled of old cigarettes and rotting wood. George was camping his spot for the snipe shot. The way the room was he had to be standing. It put Dream on edge more than he would care to admit.
He cared about George and he wanted him to be safe. He cared about all of his team but George was always the special one. George was always the one who he went to first at the end of a mission. The two of them were the ones who would check each other and make sure they were safe. They were the ones who would guard each other in the fights.
Though recently he knew that his partner wasn’t exactly thrilled about that fact.
Neither was the rest of the team.
Sapnap, Wilbur, Techno. All of them were the same team.
Their last mission had ended in a firefight. With Techno being caught in the crossfire and being carried out by Wilbur. It had been Dream’s call that got them there. A plan that had underestimated the group they were against and landed them in the hot water.
But now it wasn’t his intel they were working on. It was the other team that had told them the location and the time for the meeting. It was the other group that was gearing for them to be here. Dream was hoping that meant that the others would be kinder towards him now. The blame from the previous mission was weighing down on him like a building was crushing him. Techno had told him that it was fine after he’d gotten back from the operation to save his life but that didn’t stop the cold looks from the rest of the team.
That didn’t stop Dream from hearing the stiff comments and blames.
He let his guilt swallow him whole. Standing outside in the cold until his body was going numb to try to stop himself from crying at the weight in his heart. To dull the pressure in his head.
The group of them had barely spoken other than the debrief. They’d gotten their information and then they’d left him. Normally Dream would spend the nights with George in their barracks but he’d not been welcomed in and his invitation had been left ignored.
He tried to talk to his partner about what was happening. George had yelled at him for considering his safety over the rest of the team. That he was always put out in the safe zones of things rather than in the fighting with the rest of them. Dream had tried to point out the fact that he was a sniper and that was the way things were meant to be. That he was supposed to be out of the fighting so that he could lay down the cover fire and keep the rest of the team safe.
George had pushed him away in the way that left Dream feeling hollow about more and more of their work. He was worried about him. He was trying to protect all of them. He didn’t see how that put him in the wrong.
Wilbur wouldn’t even look at him.
Sapnap only spoke to him if it was necessary.
But now they were watching out over the warehouse as the criminal group filtered into the room and began taking their places for the meeting. George had the perfect shot. He was ready and he was hidden despite how open he was if someone were to look up and notice him standing there. It was the best place for him but it didn’t help the nerves Dream felt lighting through his skin. Wilbur and Sapnap were the ones in the most risk. Camping in spots lower and closer to the group to do the manual fight if there needed to be one. To gather the face evidence and closer images of the items that would be laid out on the table to view for discussion.
They were ready for it.
All of them were ready for it.
An easy mission.
Something that couldn’t go wrong.
Right up until it did, of course.
Dream had the feeling something was going to go wrong. He’d watched the motions of the people below them but he caught something off in the way they were moving. They’d all studied this group for so long that they knew the motions they were meant to be looking for. They knew the paths they were going to be taking.
Dream whispered to his comms to all of them regardless.
“I feel like somethings wrong. Status check?”
A series of ‘go’ came through back to him. All of them sounding vaguely annoyed that he’d dared to ask in the first place but Dream bit his tongue about it and moved on. Pushing the thoughts out of his mind and instead just focusing in on the mission. He watched until the leader they were meant to be taking down raised his voice to start up the meeting and instead called the attention to them.
“My esteemed guests and friends, the information that I have tonight is not to be shared with any person alive.”
It wouldn’t have been something to note. Until Dream watched his eyes flick to George and then back. Until he saw the guards moving. He felt the dread pooling in his gut even before he ran. Forcing himself faster and faster and making sound but he pushed George down to the ground before the gunshot reached his ears.
Dream gasped at the blinding heat that surged through his side and stomach.
George pushed him away despite the hail of bullets now sailing over him.
Dream could hear the rage and anger that was flooding through the comms. The curses and hate he heard spewing from the members of his team. George was the one staring him down the most. Grabbing his gun and shooting back as much as he could.
Dream forced himself to try to help. He tried to tell George he was hit.
His partner pushed him away.
“Get out of here! You’re going to get us all killed!”
The shooting was loud. Dizzying against the blood running down his side. Soaking into his shirt and into his pant leg. He heard Sapnap yell about being hit and the rush of curses and concern from that.
Dream was the leader.
He wasn’t allowed to be hurt.
He tried to call for a retreat but the others didn’t listen to him. They just yelled more orders back and forth until it was George calling for the retreat.
Until it was all of them running for their easiest escape.
Dream’s just happened to be through a window.
Out the glass and down into the water of the docks below.
The freezing water.
The second he’d touched it he was fighting not to swallow it. Forcing himself to the surface and gagging as he swam. Trying to make it to the land on the other side rather than the dock itself so it would be harder to be found. He could hear his comm fritzing in his ear until the voices came through. His friends getting safe.
His team trying to protect each other.
By the time Dream dragged himself up onto the shore he felt exhaustion weighing down on him more than he thought. The ground was white. Plush with powdered snow as he dragged himself into it. Steps heavy and stumbling until he was dropping down to his knees and laying in the white around him. He saw it speckling with red.
He felt the world dipping and tilting around him.
It was snowing. Slow and gentle. Laying on his skin like feathered touches and telling him to sleep.
He should hit his comm. Tell them again that he was hit and that he needed help to get back to base. That he wasn’t going to be able to make it to the rendezvous point.
His arm already felt like it was frozen in place.
The temperatures were dropping faster than he thought it would. He could feel his skin boiling hot from the heat of the fight and the rush of his blood but something was telling him that was bad. That he was too cold and he needed to get warm despite the thought of adding more heat to his body making him feel vaguely ill.
He wanted to get to his friends. He wanted to talk to his team.
Their voices crackled through his comm without him even lifting a hand.
“Dream you fuck you almost got us killed!”
Sapnap’s anger was earned. He deserved the rage from him.
“Trying to pick each one of us off and then having the audacity to be late. Do you understand the things you cost us?”
Wilbur’s outrage was enough.
“You ruined our one chance to take them down because you wouldn’t just trust us! If you were less of a greedy hero we could have actually saved people tonight!”
George’s anger was expected.
It all made Dream feel sick. His stomach cramped but he couldn’t get himself to roll. Instead he felt the clot and clog in his throat and coughed and gagged. Choking around it and getting his head to turn so he could spit it into the ground.
He saw red there.
He felt the world going hazy around him.
“Get your ass to the rendezvous so we can get you fucking reported and detained.”
The snow was laying on him. Covering him and encasing him in the soft white that it was covering the ground with. If he was more aware he would know that was bad. If he was more aware then he would be brushing it away and trying to get up but as it was Dream found it nice.
He found it a comfort.
“You’re done being our leader.”
He expected that. The dizziness wasn’t going away.
“Dream. Report.”
The steel of George’s voice was the mark of death to him. Dream felt his heart crack at the sound of it. He felt his guilt trying to burn him from the inside out.
He didn’t think it had the heat to do it.
He didn’t feel himself shivering.
He thought the blanket of the snow was nice.
He didn’t think he was wet anymore. He thought all of it had dried. He saw the water cracking over his skin.
“Dream. Report. Status.”
“He’s probably the fucking traitor. He probably wanted them to win.”
“Would explain why he’s fucked us—”
His hearing cut out. Fading and flickering until the world was just a spinning blur of colors around him and nothing else. There was something thumping in his ears but he couldn’t tell if it was his heart or something else.
All he felt was the tiredness seeping into his bones. The exhaustion that was weighing him down.
“Check his vitals. Did he get out?”
“It wasn’t my day to watch him.”
“Sapnap.” He recognized George’s sharp tongue. “Shut up and check his vitals.”
“Why does this even matter when he’s the one ditching us?”
Wilbur. Wilbur’s annoyance. Wilbur’s irritation.
Dream let his eyes slide closed. The weight was in his lungs now. In his chest and telling everything to slow down. To stop giving so much effort for things that didn’t want to move.
It was the sharp swears that made him start listening again. That caught his attention with his name in between.
It was the hidden emotion in George’s voice. Something that didn’t quite sound like anger but something he couldn’t really get himself to understand.
“Dream, answer us now.”
He tried to make his arm move to hit his comm. It nearly made him faint instead.
“Turn his comm on. If he can’t reach it we need to be in touch with him. Turn it on, we need to listen to where he is.”
This time Dream worked on making his jaw move. His chest was grinding and wheezing. The heat from his stomach was gone now. The snow around him was painted and leaking with red. The blanket he was wearing was keeping him warm.
“Dream, can you hear us?”
He tried to make himself talk but instead all he got were coughs instead. Gagging and heaving again and making his mind blank over the pain before he was choking up clumps of what looked like blood into the snow beside him.
He heard the rush of panic from his ear. He couldn’t place who was talking over who but he could hear them all speaking over one another. Words going too fast for him to hear before the world was dipping black again.
He woke up again to an urgent voice in his ear demanding he wake up and answer. Ordering him sternly but beyond the anger there Dream could hear something that sounded like fear.
“..’m here…”
He didn’t know for how much longer. He wasn’t even really sure where here was. The world looked black around him. Blurs of colors and the world numbed from his skin. Breathing was slow and easy. Short and simple. His heart was calm. He wasn’t in danger.
He wasn’t in danger.
“Stay awake. We’re trying to find you.”
But his team didn’t want him. They were mad at him. They wanted him dead. They—
“We don’t want you dead. We want you to stay with us. Can you tell us what’s wrong?”
He’d failed them. Failed them as their leader. Failed to protect them. He kept messing up and all he’d wanted was to protect them but he couldn’t even do that. All he could do was hurt them. All he could do was get them all killed.
“Are you hurt?”
He was about to say no. About to tell them he was fine and to go home without him. That he didn’t want to delay them more since he couldn’t even remember why he was here in the first place. But then he remembered the gun. He remembered running to George. He remembered pushing him down and out of the way to try to save him.
He remembered taking the bullet instead.
“Dream!”
He forced his eyes open again. Sucking in half a breath and groaning with it. His tongue felt like it was too big for his mouth but he tried to figure out the conversation again. He tried to follow it again but the words were coming out too fast.
A meeting point. A status check.
Voices that were talking over each other and making his head turn into a splitting cavern.
“We’re on our way to you. Just keep talking to us.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Dream?”
There was something shaking in the voice he heard.
“Come on, stay with us. Sapnap, how are his vitals?”
“They’re too low. He might be passed out. His blood pressure is dropping. His body temp is bottoming out.”
“Dreamie? Status? Can you hear me?”
He thought it sounded like George.
He liked George.
“It’s me. Yes. I’m here. I’m coming, just hold on for me.”
He thought George was pretty. He wanted to spend his time with him but their missions kept getting in the way. He wanted to be able to go to him and curl up in his arms in a bed together and just simply sleep. He wanted to put the violence away and just let himself feel something.
Feel safe. Feel protected.
He wished he was hear.
“We’re almost there. Wilbur, we need the medical supplies on standby.”
“Got it.”
They were agents meant to fight in shadows. They weren’t meant to be in the news or be caught by anything ever really. They were meant to be the hidden heroes who helped save lives without a single thanks but sometimes Dream wished they could have one. Just in the way of getting time to be cared for when their missions felt like they were too much.
“I need you to keep breathing, Dreamie. Just keep breathing, I'm almost there.”
Dream tried to protect all of them but now they all hated him. He hadn’t known there was something wrong with their information and he hadn’t been able to protect Techno. He’d failed them and now they hated him too.
They wanted him gone.
They wanted him—
“Dream!”
Hands were on his face. Cupping his cheeks and patting at them softly. He felt more hands on him as well. Brushing away his blanket and making him whimper from the loss of the powder that was so soft against his skin.
He forced his eyes open to try to look but only made out the blurs of people around him. He could hear their voices swimming in and out but then something was being pressed into his side and Dream felt himself scream.
Choking and broken before the hands on his face were back.
“You took the bullet for me?”
Dream felt his heart thud hard.
“All—” His eyes threatened to roll. “Always…”
The spinning was getting to be too much. He felt like he was going to faint the longer he was like this. The air was comforting. The hands on him were hurting.
Right up until a mask was being pressed into his face and he felt heat being pushed into his lungs. Almost enough to make him cry from the pain before he felt himself being moved onto a stretcher. Before he felt himself being lifted.
A hand holding his.
Worry clear far above any anger that it held.
“Stay with me, Dreamie. Just stay with me.”
George was angry with him. All of them were angry with him. He was hallucinating if he—
“We can talk about this in the morning. We can talk after you wake up again but right now you just have to—”
He didn’t hear the rest. Exhaustion weighing at his body. Frost trying to close his eyes and slow his lungs and heart. Dream knew he should fight. He knew he should push.
Do as George was asking him to.
He just didn’t have the strength to do it.