Work Text:
A rose.
Wrought in poetry and painted in blood.
A rose.
A gentle flower that brought smell and color to a garden. A flower that carried thorns on its stem that would cut and maim anyone who dared to touch the garden it called home. Something that wasn’t afraid to spill blood for the sake of its own defense. Something that was broken and yet no one saw it.
A flower that was the heat of romance and fire.
That was the smell to cover and hide the stench of death.
A rose.
Dream’s favorite flower. Red petals that he admired now twisting the stem carefully back and forth between his fingers. His gloves were long since removed in the safety of his base but still Dream felt like he could feel the leather against him.
Like his skin wasn’t real.
He felt the urge to prick a finger against the thorns just to test that thought against the rest of his mind.
So far things had been going well with the plan. The prison was nearly completed in its construction. He was almost ready to set the final moments into place.
He’d already broken all of his attachments. One by one making all of his family safe from him. Keeping them away and making them join his enemy so that they wouldn’t be attacked and murdered. Dream would be called the monster. He knew that. He understood that.
He was the monster of the server.
He was doing it to protect it.
Spilling blood of the people that tried to break it apart. Killing where he had to to defend the sake of his home.
Watching the light of the lantern and candles flicker against the deep red of the petals, Dream nearly laughed.
Here he was playing with a flower in his hands and thinking about all the things he’d done. He was going to get stuck in his own head at the rate he was going. He needed to be focusing. He had to be on his game if he wanted to actually manage through things. He’d have to get his thoughts in order.
He’d have to—
The thorn pricked his thumb.
It didn’t hurt. Despite everything, it didn’t hurt. He was Dream. The warlord of the server. The knight that fought in each and every war the server faced. The man that killed without discretion and pulled all the strings of all the players to get it exactly as how he wanted.
He watched a drop of blood fall to the table.
If he was the master manipulator that everyone said that he was then why didn’t he just use that to make Tommy behave. He’d tried, sure. He’d tried, that was exile. That’s what they would say. That’s how they would call it. The things that happened out there.
It wasn’t.
Getting Tommy to listen for a moment there had been a benefit of it sure, but that hadn’t been Dream’s plan in the long scheme of things. He knew by then already that Tommy was hopeless to work with. That the boy wasn’t going to do anything he didn’t fully want to and he was going to be ridiculous about anything and everything else.
Denying the proof that he’d attacked George, his King, so blatantly. Refusing to accept any of his punishment and instead robbing a grave to use as blackmail.
But sure, Dream was the monster of the server and Tommy was the hero.
Sure.
Tommy was a weed.
A poison into the garden that Dream called his home. He was strangling the others one by one and they didn’t even realize. Tommy was a dandelion that was distracting everyone with how bright he looked but he was going to kill the rest of them unless he was stopped. He was going to murder all of them.
Dream intended to stop that.
He was meant to be the protector of his home. He was meant to be the defender that kept the rest of them safe through everything. That was how it worked. He was the leader. He was the one that brought all of them there. He was the one that—
Protecting them had become the very thing that made them hate him.
In a garden everyone chose the other flowers. Too afraid to go near the roses for the fact that they could be hurt. Too scared to touch the petals that were the call of passion and romance because they could mean so many other things.
Dream squeezed more blood from his thumb. He watched the shade match the petals of the rose.
All of his attachments were gone. The rest of the garden had exiled him. The dandelions infested and took everything over until the roses were shunted away to the side. Bleeding on their own as their roots were torn and stomped on but no one dared to mind.
Too obsessed with caring for the weed for the bad name roses gave to it. Weeds were killers. Parasites that needed to be dealt with.
“He’s just a boy!”
“He’s a child!”
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
He did.
Dream remembered being that age. He remembered standing his ground on the things he knew were right and wrong. He knew that burning a house down after robbing it was wrong. He knew that stealing and killing were wrong. He knew that blackmail was wrong. He knew how to take accountability when someone said that his actions hurt them.
Dream had understood that.
Tommy refused to and the rest of them protected him from it.
Dream was the rose that was rotting from his insides out. Caged behind glass and chained away from the rest of his garden.
Plucked and pulled away by people who wanted to say they were brave and famous and good for plucking the rose.
All he’d ever been was a prize.
Dream knew that.
He understood that.
It still burned in his heart when he felt it. He knew that he wasn’t wanted by the rest of them anymore but he’d still wanted to try. He’d still wanted to make his attempts to feel loved. In order to do that he had to save the rest of his family. He had to stop the server from destroying itself. He had to make sure that they weren’t going to die in some explosions or war that was started because an idiot didn’t know to keep his hands to himself and made it everyone else’s problem.
For all the bad that Dream had done, he was going to own it.
For all the bad that Tommy had done he’d somehow managed to make all of them believe it was Dream’s fault.
Dream had his plan. He had his finale in mind. A way to bring his garden back together if they were determined for their rose to be rotting and withering behind glass.
Behind obsidian and lava in his case.
He would have all of them lured to the mountain base. He would have them pinned and cornered and then the others would enter. They would talk. They would banter. They would fight.
Dream would lose.
Blow for blow he would make sure that he lost so that he would be the one they kept cornered. He would allow them to think he didn’t want it. That he didn’t need it. The only way he was ever going to rest. The only way he was going to feel something that wasn’t burning hate in his chest.
Dream would let them back him and wrap him in chains. He would let them strip him down of the things that made him feel comfortable and safe and he would let them walk him into the prison. With his cuffs too tight and chains too short. Dream would let them scream and wail at him and call him a monster and horrible.
Tell him he deserved to die.
Tell him they wanted to watch him wither away until he was nothing.
Dream watched the rose sitting on his desk. Giving the thing a smile he reached for its petals. Pulling one off and watching the way it had hardened and cracked at the edges. The way it was starting to turn black as it lost its water and hope.
Flower language was a simple thing if anyone ever bothered to pay attention to it. Symbols and markers that brought in personality to the things around them. To the nature they took for granted more often than not. It was their breaking point.
Their literature written in blood.
Roses were for heat. Passion and love and romantic inclinations. They were courage and bravery and they were for the poor damned souls that pushed themselves into confessing when they were standing on uncertain ground. The people that tried to be human when they were scared they were going to be hurt.
Roses were kindness and the start of a bond that was dangerous and proud all in one.
But they were more.
Roses were damned flowers. Written and stained and the namesake of martyrs. People who would die for their faith and leave their blood on the ground. People who would mean nothing.
For the ones that thought they would win and destroy his home.
Dream would make them martyrs.
He wasn’t going to stand for anything to take advantage of his home. He wasn’t going to allow for more bloodshed of the people he cared about. He’d watched his land be sectioned and shattered and destroyed. He’d opened it up to be a crater if people wouldn’t just simply let things go.
But sure, Dream was the one with attachment issues.
He pulled another petal. Still whole. Still beautiful.
He tore it in his hands.
Anger simmered just beneath the surface. The silence of his base around him. All the things he’d lost or had to give up for the sake of their safety. He loved his family. All the people that told him what he did or didn’t feel were idiots to the highest degree.
Dream loved his family.
Dream loved his home.
Dream loved.
He was a human being. He cared for the things around him. He wanted things to be better for everyone here but until people realized that Tommy was the cause of the issues then he had nowhere to turn. Until they realized that they’d cut out the one thing trying to protect them from the weeds infesting them.
There was nothing else he could do.
Dream would chain himself into their glass case. He would leave himself to rot in iron and wither.
A withered red rose.
Death preferable to the loss of love.
Dream would write his flower language in his blood if he had to. The more he thought about the things that would happen the more he believed he’d need to. To be seen again. To be held again. If he even could.
If he’d ever earn it.
Dream took another petal. Another. Then another. Pulling them apart in his hands until he had nothing left to destroy. Feeling the paste of the petals on his fingers and seeing the stains of them.
The rose’s blood. Mixing with his own where it had dripped on the table.
He tucked the stem into his inventory. He carried it into the mountain base the next day. Holding his blade and acting out his plan.
When they stripped him down of all he owned they left him the stem. They called it garbage. They said it was useless. Tommy said it was like him.
They shackled him. Cuffs too tight and chain too short as they led him to the prison. As Sam placed him in the cell meant for the worst of the worst. As his family stared him down from across the gap and Dream closed his heart with the fall of the lava.
Only when he was alone did he allow himself to hold the stem again. Only once he was alone did he press his thumb over the thorn again. Did he allow himself to feel his loss.
Only then did Dream mourn.
Because Death was preferable to the loss of love. But then.
Well this wasn’t death, was it.