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At the start of all of it, was a fight.
Something that wasn’t meant to be like this. Dream had built this server so that it would be like a home. He’d wanted a place where he could have a family and be able to relax. He’d wanted to share laughs and joy and build fond memories where no one would have to fight in order to survive.
But they hadn’t listened to him when he told them not to build nations.
Dream had watched this home that he built be destroyed piece by bloodied piece by the groups and cliques people created. One by one they would team up against each other to spout names over and over until they forgot they were meant to be one family.
All of them together. All of them happy. All of them content.
That was all he’d wanted to make. But they didn’t listen to him and because of that Dream watched nations be built and he helped to destroy them. Craters that gouged into his earth and wrought destruction so deep he wasn’t sure he would be able to repair the server.
There were scars that were left in her now. Seething and shaking and so filled with darkness it made him dizzy to look at the codes.
The fighting got worse. And worse. And worse.
At the start, it was never meant to be like this.
More recently it was getting to the point that Dream was wondering if he should have ever made the server in the first place.
His role as the Admin made him feel the server like it was a reflection of himself. He knew the rules and the debates for what he was meant to be doing. He knew that he was meant to be the one that would push and lead them. He was the one that was supposed to have the most control.
But he’d made it a rule for himself not to use his powers against his people. The only ones that knew what he was in the first place were George and Sapnap. The ones that he could trust and the ones that would help him if there were errors that needed to be worked through. They would help him sort through the code and figure out what it was exactly that the server was needing from him.
They figured everything out together to the point that it was simple for them. An act that was like breathing. Being together.
They fought the wars together. They wee the ones that noticed when Dream started to change in reflection to his server.
They were there with him when his thoughts turned darker along with the weather of the world. They were there with him when the mobs grew more frequent and more violent just the same as the swings of Dream’s axe.
They were the ones that tried to stop him first before it got too bad. The ones that looked into the server to figure out what the cause was to try to save his life.
The rest of their family didn’t ever seem to care.
Time had moved like it was a blur around him until it was now.
Dream standing on the platform that once upon a time had held the community house that was meant for all of them to live together in. He was the only one that still called it his home. He’d had George and Sapnap move out when it became apparent that he was going to get attacked simply for standing in the way of the creation of new divides and he didn’t want them to be hurt simply because they were close to him.
He knew that the rest of their family was making it out to be a war between the heroes and villains.
The heroes; Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo, Puffy, Sam. Really anyone that was on Tommy’s side. Anyone that he decided he liked that day with his polar mood changes and his undecided hatred of everything and anything that was even remotely close to Dream.
The villains; Dream and anyone who ever spoke to him with even a shred of kindness.
Tommy stole the world that Dream had made for his friends to have peace and happiness and turned it into a war server that was so riddled with war the server was trying to forge its own Admin into a soldier more than a man. It was trying to sink its claws into him to the point that Dream didn’t know what he was doing with himself anymore. He didn’t know how he was meant to fight properly.
He didn’t know where the line was.
Sometimes when he was fighting he could keep things civil. The demands that sat in the back of his mind where his server was demanding a slaughter because that was the pattern it was accustomed to. He could ignore them and he could just negotiate. He was able to pull himself back from the brink more than a few times and offer them a peaceful end for every conflict that they had given.
They just never took it.
Dream would bring his weapons, his armor never leaving him and feeling like it was another layer of his skin by this point. He had accepted his fate and his role in the game that Tommy turned their home into.
Dream was pushed until he was drenched in blood.
To stand on the platform on the water and stare at the ruin and wreckage that surrounded him on all sides now. George and Sapnap milled around in their own armor behind him. They were all breathing hard. All of them trying to stomach what they’d just done and what had just happened.
Tubbo had built nukes.
The rest of the server had shown up in order to fight Dream. All of them standing against him and ready to try to take him down but the server had shouted loud into his head. It was calling its demands and its wants and needs. It was pushing at him to try to make him move.
Dream had.
He’d lunged forward toward all of them with his weapons out and watched the fear in all of them as they realized how outmatched they all were against an Admin that was warped now by his server.
Dream had a rule to never use his powers against them properly.
They’d watched him fight with the code swarming over him like another piece to his armor. Eyes glowing green through the holes of his mask and making him into something terrifying as the smoke overwhelmed the area.
There were fires, bombs. They started to throw everything they possibly had at him in an effort to try to make him stop but none of it was working. They couldn’t get to him. They screamed and Dream had relished in it.
It brought him pride to hear.
The fight that all of them had wanted so badly and now they had to face the consequences of losing it. They had to deal with their own inadequacies and Dream had loved it.
Until it ended.
The silence of the server taking its time to impact him enough that Dream stumbled toward his home like he couldn’t feel his own body. He was tripping on himself. He felt dizzy, sick.
The cold was leaking through him as his adrenaline left even though he was still surrounded by burning wreckage. He was on the platform.
He was at his old home.
George and Sapnap were with him.
They were here.
His real family was here.
“Do you think it’s him again or the server?”
Admins were conduits for their server to move and talk. It was still them but the entity driving their actions and words could change. Dream agreed with most of what his servers did. He loved them and they loved him and they acted like reflections easily feeding to each other.
But this one.
The DreamSMP.
His seething, hurting, bloodied child.
Full of pain and anguish and never having the chance to rest despite what he believed it should have had. It was built to be happy. To be loving. It had been turned into something sharp that would gouge a memory to the soft and comfort the ones that saw their own scars inside of it.
Dream swallowed around the ash that was now clogging his throat. He felt the stickiness and tasted the metal that told him he was bleeding somewhere but he assumed it was just because of the way he’d been breathing when he was trying to do the fight.
He assumed it was that and nothing more.
The shakes set in after.
Trembling through his limbs and pushing him into something a little worse for wear.
“We might want to give him more time.” George, he recognized George. “Let him come around to us. He might be trying to sort it out himself right now and I don’t want to bother him.”
His heart was beating hard in his chest. For a moment it was like Dream had forgotten how to actually breathe. He tried to focus on what he was doing and what he was trying to do. His vision was turning hazy.
The words of the server that were telling him to fight back and push and push and push.
All of it was slipping away.
He could feel the melt of it turning into the worse comments that were screaming in pain. The hurt and the damage that the server had taken from the weapons that were used. There was blood soaking into the ground all around them. Dream was pretty sure everyone else was dead.
It was just him.
George, Sapnap, Dream.
The only ones that were left.
Dream’s eyes barely focused when he tried to look. He managed to make out the shape of one of the bodies on the other side of the water. The mask that was on his face and the slack features now showing behind it as he lay there dead. Dream knew what Sam looked like. He knew his friend that he’d thought he’d have for his entire life but now as he was staring at him like this he knew that wasn’t the case.
Sam had threatened him with prison.
The Server hadn’t taken kindly to the threat of its Admin being locked away.
He moved his eyes over to others. He saw corpse after corpse. Some of them he knew had three lives still. They’d killed them over and over until they weren’t able to come back anymore. They’d killed everyone that was supposed to be a family for them and Dream hadn’t allowed for himself to look back. He had fought and killed and now the only thing he could smell was blood.
The only thing he could feel was pain lancing through his chest.
Screaming in agony and launching through him hard enough that his knees gave out beneath him. He hardly even felt the way he hit the ground. The shouts that came from behind him.
Not until there were two bodies kneeling on either side of him and reaching up for his face. They were alone. They were safe. Dream had shown them both his face several times, he was safe.
But when it came away he felt it was so much different.
The world slammed in around him too hard and too fast and Dream didn’t know what to do. The pain in his body like an agony of fire that he couldn’t remove. Flooding through his veins and potent enough that it turned his stomach into knots until he was choking and doubling forward to heave.
Dream struggled. Breathing ragged and forcing himself to cope even though he didn’t know how.
“It’s the server, Dream. It’s just the server.”
It was dying. All of this war. All of the fight. It was dying. Dream was dying.
“We need to get him out of here.”
“I know.”
His lungs were falling short. He was shaking but he was clinging to them. He needed out.
“The code test server. It’s Dream’s. Chaotic enough it should be able to take the weight of damage for him and give him space to heal. It’s locked, we’re the only ones with access.”
The words spun over his head. Dream barely even noticed when he was starting to fall over. When his body landed against a chest and he was pulled up to be cradled in a lap.
“We have you, Dream. Just hold on.”
His server was screaming in agony. He could feel it dying off section by section. Falling and corrupting and he couldn’t save it.
“Just hold on.”
He couldn’t save any of it.
At the start it wasn’t meant to be like this. It was meant to be a happy server. A home. A place for his family to be happy. Now it was their tomb. Now it was dying with all of them inside.
Dream, George, Sapnap. The only survivors. The ones that won the fight. Together from the start.