Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dream gasped as oxygen flowed into his lungs, trying to push himself up off the floor with one arm. He ignored the way his body was shaking, still caught in the grip of death throes. It was always unnerving, no matter how many times they'd done it before. At least he didn't have to crawl his way out of a grave. (At least the people who killed him thought he didn't deserve one)

Images flashed in his mind, blood and shears and an axe, of course it was a fucking axe- But Dream was back now, alive and (presumably) out of the prison. (Because he died there and if he was alive now he couldn't be there, because he hadn't given them the book and wouldn't in a million years, no matter what they tried, and because there was only one other person who had the book, and they were far away from the prison, that was the whole point-)

Dream looked back up and spotted Punz sitting by his side on the oak floor. He let out a shaky breath once he did, because it was Punz. They brought him back. Nothing weird happened. (He hadn't somehow given the Warden the book in a fit of delirium and desperation for it just to stop-) He was safe with them. (Hadn't he thought the same thing about Sam?)

"Welcome back to the land of the living, I guess," Punz greeted him, one eyebrow raised and mouth quirked. They didn't ask what happened, or how.

"Water," Dream managed to croak out. Punz passed him a glass of water and he drank. It was so incredibly cold. He wasn't used to that. (In the prison, all the water was the same lukewarm temperature, if not scalding, heated by the lava and the insulating, burning walls, when there was water at all) "How did you even get my body?" he asked, voice raspy. It hurt to speak. Everything hurt. Not that it was surprising, of course. He had just died, after all, and he had been hurting long before that too.

"Sam gave it to me, like an idiot," Punz stated, rolling their eyes. Dream felt his heart stop.

"What?"

Punz shrugged. "He just called me up, said he had a job for me, and, when I showed up, it turns out that the job was getting rid of your body. I mean, he paid well and I wasn't going to throw away the opportunity to bring you back, so I took."

Dream nodded - it felt so strange to move - but he could tell his pulse was still racing. That didn't answer the most important question. He needed to know if the Warden knew. "It's still lucky that he offered. Makes it easier."

"Yeah, I always expected that he'd make me work for the opportunity instead of just handing it to me," Punz responded.

"You're sure he doesn't know?" Dream checked. He trusted Punz, he really did (probably), but- "He didn't do it because he knew about you?"

"I'm sure. It'd be a really dumb move, not to mention risky, giving someone who you think might be a necromancer the body of the guy who you think they're working for and you also want dead. It was just luck, if I had to guess," Punz concluded, shrugging.

"There's no such thing as luck," Dream muttered, but he didn't think Sam knew then. It wasn't a smart move if he did, and way more plausible if he didn't. Punz had a reputation, after all; they'd had one even before they arrived on the server. They were reliable, and they weren't someone who was going to tell people about their jobs or what they were told to do. Perfect for clandestine jobs. Like getting rid of your prisoner's body once he gets killed by your business partner. Just regular stuff like that.

Dream waved his thoughts away. He was having a conversation now, and that wasn't something he got to do often. "Thanks, I guess."

"Of course." Punz's response was immediate. "I wouldn't let you die."

Neither of them said much after that. Dream could tell that Punz wanted to, wanted to ask what happened and how he died and who it was. But Dream didn't want to answer a single one, not when it was about the prison or his death.

Punz had already seen his body. Dream had no idea how much of his body Punz had seen when he was dead, but the green hoodie he was wrapped in, one of his old spares that he must of left at Punz's tower or one of their hidden bases sometime, suddenly oversized, implied that it was probably a lot, given the fact that he had been wearing his orange jumpsuit when he died. (He couldn't imagine that Sam had kept any of his stuff when he was imprisoned, let alone that he would bust out that secret wardrobe when his prisoner died)

"Soooooo," Punz drummed their fingers against their thigh, "what's the plan, boss?"

"We get going again. We experiment. We figure out how to do this. We keep the plan moving forward."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"Look," Punz started. "This is our perfect opportunity. Everyone thinks you're dead. They're not going to be looking for you. And that's great. We gather our strength. We make allies - Technoblade, for example. You heal. We can still try a few things out, but the plan's on the backburner. Now's the time for insurance and backups if things go wrong again. We can deal with the rest later."

"We don't have time-" Dream hissed.

"What, you want to go straight back to being hunted right after you just died?" Punz scoffed. "They will try to kill you again, Dream. They haven't learned a Prime-damned thing." They leaned forward, eyes overflowing with rage and deeply hidden desperation. "And they still won't. They're not worth it." They leaned back, eyes narrowed, cold bitterness replacing the burning anger. "Not after what they did to you. Not after what happened last time." They both knew that Punz was referring to the prison.

"So we should just give up? Abandon the plan? Cut our losses and leave?" Dream asked disdainfully, the word poison on his tongue. "Then everything that-that we did is pointless. Every sacrifice we made-all for nothing. This," he gestured at himself his scars, the hole in his chest sealed up by the revival. "You would rather have that?"

"I'd rather have every person on the server dead than you hurt, Dream, and I am willing to make that a reality," Punz stated. He didn't doubt that they would.

"I'm sure, but that's not exactly useful right now. I-I guess some people are liabilities and it might be smart to get rid of them before they can fuck things up more, but we're not going to kill everyone. How about we just-do what you said, make alliances with Techno and a couple other people we can trust not to mess things up, get the liabilities out of the way, but not just stop with the experiments and still keep going with the plan. We can figure it out from there." Dream had to compromise. He wasn't the one with the power here; weak, starved, and recently dead. They both knew it. They both knew that the only reason he was alive right now was because of Punz. And maybe Dream should trust Punz, and maybe he did, but that didn't guarantee anything.

"Fine," Punz conceded. "But no. More. Sacrifices. You've already made too many, Dream. And try to stay out of the public eye. That doesn't mean you can't do shit, it just means you have to be careful." They smiled crookedly. "Not to say I'm against you leaning into the ghost aspect and coming back to take some lives that way, of course."

Dream snorted. "What?"

"If they think you're dead, let them. Let them think that you're a ghost whenever you show up. Play up the mystery and vengeful spirit stuff, man. Be dramatic. You're good at that stuff. I know you are, and, if you do it well, they won't question how you're alive and won't fight back. You can't win against a ghost, after all." Punz flashed a toothy smile at Dream.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Dream could do that, he guessed. Might be a nice bit of karma. (He didn't want to die again) "Anything else?"

"If you run into someone you don't want to, you can just pretend that you lost all your memory when you died," Punz suggested. "Don't have to answer any awkward questions, then."

Dream sighed. "Fine. We can go with the ghost shtick, I guess. It-it keeps you safe. They don't find out about the betrayal. About you having the book."

Punz nodded. "Yeah. We can work with that, dude."

"Thanks." Dream cocked his head. "Anything else you want to tell me?"

Some strange emotion flickered over Punz's face for a moment, but it disappeared, leaving behind only blankness. "No, there isn't."

Chapter Text

Dream idly pushed around the food on his plate (the food that Punz had gotten him, after they both decided that sitting on the floor arguing wasn't very fun and that they had better things to do, like eat), not quite ready to eat but knowing that he should, but this was also a lot more food than he'd had in a while and he'd just get sick off it, probably, even if it might fill the gaping void in his chest that had started to simmer down, become comfortable, instinctual, normal, to the point he could barely feel it before (or remember what it felt like before, or imagine what it would feel like without it). When he glanced up at Punz, his eyes caught on the recorder they had set on the table, their hand hovering over the on button. A notebook sitting beside the recorder, already open to a fresh page. Right. They had put that off long enough.

"Dream. In limbo, what did you see?" Punz asked clinically, like they had done this a thousand times before (mostly because they had).

Dream cast his mind back to his death. He remembered how he died, of course, an axe and a poorly (expertly in any other case, the goal in any kind of battle, but that wasn't what this was) aimed blow and some much blood. The limbo-that was a bit harder. "I was in the Greater SMP," he started.

"Anywhere specific?"

"I was outside, near the world spawn and everything, just...wandering. I don't know where I was trying to go." A pause. Dream racked his brain for more. "There wasn't anyone, anywhere. I think I was looking for them."

Punz paused at that, pencil stilling as they looked up at him. "You were looking for anyone? Like-you didn't care who, you just wanted to find someone?"

Dream nodded. "Yeah. I-I just didn't want to be alone. I really didn't want to be alone, and-I wanted proof that there was someone else. That I wouldn't just be alone forever, because I was the only one there."

Punz continued jolting down notes after he finished, the pen in their hands flashing across the page. "And you didn't find anyone."

"No." Dream pushed the sorrowful note out of his voice (that was stupid, it was all stupid, it was Limbo, he had been dead, of course there wasn't anyone else, that was a good thing because it meant most people were still alive). It didn't matter, except for the implications about the afterlife. That was important. "We still don't have any proof that Limbo can create fully-formed copies when they're still alive."

"That's probably a good thing," Punz muttered, just loud enough that Dream could still hear them, head bowed as they wrote. They looked back at him once they were done, a new question on their tongue. "So, that was it?"

"Basically." Dream shrugged. "Still, we haven't had that one before."

"We haven't," Punz agreed. "It's still important, and we might get a better understanding of the scope of what limbo can create, dude. Physical limitations and all that."

Dream hummed. "Nothing's actually endless. There's always an end somewhere. We just have to find it."

He watched Punz turn the recorder off with a decisive click. They turned back towards to Dream. "I mean, it could be worse, man. We've definitely seen worse."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It was more sad than anything else, to be honest."

"Hey, it's not like we haven't faced that before," Punz commented. "Any after-effects, man? Or, like, is anything up?"

Dream laughed dryly. "I don't think there is anything else revival could-could do to me at this point. All this stuff's from before I died, I'm pretty sure."

"Did the revival do anything about that, dude?" Punz asked. "We haven't really looked into the effect on non-lethal injuries before."

Dream shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. I mean, this a good opportunity for that, then. We-we can check that all over later."

"What happened with that, dude? Like, I know stuff got fucked up, but still." Punz's tone was soft, supplicating, but Dream couldn't help the dread curling in his gut (they were mad, disgusted, disappointed, even though it was done to him, he didn't choose this, except he did). "I wasn't expecting this."

"I-look, does it really matter?" Dream asked. He didn't want to talk about it right now. He really didn't. "It's over, okay? It's done, and there isn't really anything that we can do about it right now, Punz. It's-it's not important. I can still pay you and everything."

"Well, that's good," Punz chuckled. "Hell, at this point, it would take years to burn through everything you've paid me, dude. I don't think that'll be an issue anytime soon."

Dream nodded, just relieved that they'd stopped prodding at that open wound. It didn't matter, especially not for them, he was fine, he wasn't broken (he would never give them the satisfaction). "So stuff's been going good? Like-"

"Yeah, it's mostly just petty stuff. People getting into fights over their little countries and who's allowed where and people trying to build on 'other people's land'." Punz rolled their eyes. "Really it's more annoying than anything else."

Dream ignored the little pain of they're still fighting, why don't they understand? "Anything that we're gonna have to watch out for?"

"There's a fucking mind-controlling Egg that popped up a bit ago, possessed a few people, tried to kill some more, but it got sealed up and it's been pretty dormant for a while. It shouldn't be an issue, but, hey, who knows, man." They shrugged.

Dream narrowed his eyes at that, ignoring his burgeoning headache. Okay, when he was gone, an egg showed up. Like, what the hell? "Who was involved?"

"Bad, Ant, they got taken over by the Egg-actually, uh, I kinda did too-"

"Punz, please, tell me that you didn't get mind-controlled by some egg," Dream begged, cutting them off. "Please." (He ignored how familiar the word was in his mouth, on his tongue, the pain it could never curb)

Punz sighed. "I got mind-controlled by the Egg," they admitted. "It was weird."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Imagine you're trying to tread water, but it's all in your brain, and, if you go under the water, your body acts without your permission and you don't know what you did." Punz wrinkled their nose. "Yeah, not fun. And, once you give in, you get control back, but you still can barely think and you just feel it inside of you, promising everything you ever wanted and becoming part of you the longer it's there. Just generally really weird."

"'Promising everything you ever wanted'?" Dream repeated skeptically.

"That's how the Egg works. You get close to it and it promises whatever you want most if you just let it take you over. Knowing the fucking self-control of most people on this server, I'm surprised more people didn't end up on its side," Punz commented.

"What did it promise you?" Dream asked, not really expecting an answer. They...they weren't friends, not quite (he knew how quickly someone you trusted could turn on you). They just...worked together, because they both wanted the same thing, or at least something close to that (business partners, they were business partners, but Dream wasn't going to think about that, not now, because the last pair of business partners he knew literally killed him-).

"Well, that's something for me to know and for you to guess," Punz answered, rolling their eyes as they closed the book and set it to the side.

"What, should I buy you dinner first?" Dream quipped, feeling a bit of comfort seep into him, a bit of familiarity, I know how to do this; I can do this. It was fine. It was just Punz, and, if they wanted him dead, all they would of had to do was not bring him back. He could afford to let himself relax, just a little bit.

"I'm pretty sure you've already done that, dude," they shot back. "We're on, what the fifth date or something?"

Dream actually laughed at that, though it came out harsher than he wanted. "Do you count the experiments?" That was...pretty close, right? It was spending time alone with someone, after all, and trusting them, at least somewhat. Dream thought it should probably count, even if they were mostly to explore Limbo and figure out how death worked.

"Oh fuck, we should count the experiments, shouldn't we?" Punz realized, eyes wide. "What's more romantic than bringing someone back from the dead?"

Dream scoffed. "You have a point there. If we're including all of that, we're probably on, what, the fifty-seventh date?"

"Prime," Punz breathed. "Want to get married, man?"

"I'd love to, but aren't I supposed to be dead?" Dream asked. "Like, isn't that the whole point?"

"Maybe just engaged, then," Punz compromised. "We don't need any witnesses for that."

"Give me some time to think about it, and I'll let you know, okay?" Prime, Dream hadn't realized he would miss this, just being around other people who didn't want him dead, talking without having to worry about not slipping up and getting hurt, conversations without threats or tools.

"That I can do, dude," they responded. "Just let me know if you're planning anything big so I can get a calendar for this place."

"You don't have a calendar?!" Dream exclaimed.

"I do, dude. At home. Not here," Punz clarified. "What, you think I hate keeping track of time or something?" (Dream didn't know what day it was; he barely knew what month it was, and that was more of a guess than anything, because he'd lost that clock a long time ago and counting was inefficient and he tried to keep track using visits when Quackity starting showing up but he didn't have any assurance that Quackity only ever came once a day and even if he did the concussions would mess it up every time)

"Of course not. But-about the Egg, who else got mind-controlled or anything? You only ever said yourself, Bad, and Ant." The topic change was really not subtle, but Dream wasn't trying to be subtle, and Punz was already getting paid for this, so they probably wouldn't even mind.

To Punz's credit, they took it well. "Bad was basically in charge of everyone, but, yeah, there was also Ant, Ponk, Hannah, and Skeppy, I think? And Puffy and Sam were the main two who really kept trying to take down the Egg. For some reason, Tommy was immune? I get Technoblade, the Egg's just one more voice for him, but, really, Tommy?"

"As if he needed a new reason to think he's special." Dream rolled his eyes. "Was there anyone else who-who didn't like the Egg?"

"Exactly, man. It's really fucking stupid. But, yeah, Technoblade helped stop the Egg and Purpled, too. Good kid," they commented, a little bit of pride shining on their face. Right, Punz had practically raised the younger mercenary when they were younger. "Foolish ended up getting killed by the Egg when he got invited to a fancy dinner which ended up being a trap, so I can't imagine he likes it very much, but that's about it."

"Where were you during that 'fancy dinner'?" Dream asked dubiously.

Punz grimaced. "I wasn't there, man. I kinda got blown up before that, by Quackity - he kept trying to blow the Egg up and I was in so deep at that point I took the blast for it -, but it's not like I lost a life or anything. It really doesn't matter."

Dream frowned, mentally filling the information away (it wasn't like he needed another reason to hate Quackity). "Still, it couldn't be fun."

Punz shrugged. "It wasn't. But it's been a while since then, so who really cares?"

(Dream bit back the impulse to say I do, of course I do, I still care; that was how you got yourself hurt)