Work Text:
The world knew that the name Dream wasn’t one to be ignored. They knew that the name came with a mask that held death behind its smile. The axe and sharp armor that would fight and defend and never quite seem fully human. The world knew not to mess with him and his demands.
Dream was titled. He was powerful and he was lethal. He was the Never Falling. The Unstoppable. Unmatched. Chess Player. He never fell. He was never seen on his knees.
Not unless it was his choice.
One single time, Dream had knelt. Lowering himself to his knee to claim himself to be George’s knight. To watch his lover with the crown on his head and see him powerful above him. It was the only way Dream would accept being beneath.
If it was George he saw above him to command him.
George was the only man he would allow to use his body as the weapon he’d made it.
Dream was unmatched with the titles to prove it. He as the most dangerous person on the server and it had been enough to warrant the defense and protection of his people and home. The borders of the Greater SMP were often the face of skirmishes but after the things Dream had done to L’Manberg and the idiots that led them, it had gotten better.
Tubbo as the president had been the right choice. After everything else they’d done there was finally a peace that was trying to settle over them.
George had been attacked, he could have been killed. Dream had reacted. Taking his vengeance swiftly and despite the consequences of his thoughts to remove the crown from his lover's head, they’d recovered.
They’d made it past that point and they were safe.
Until today, it seemed.
The morning had seemed like any other to them. They woke up in their bed and laid there to talk back and forth with denials about actually getting up. Dream had been the first of them to move. Standing and walking through the morning sun while he got himself dressed. His pants half done and his shirt haphazardly thrown over his head. He’d turned back to George on the bed. To watch him staring at him with the sunlight hitting him perfectly.
Dream was covering him in shadows.
Enough so that his lover could look at him so relaxed where the sun would be shining into his face and Dream could enjoy the view of the golden glow that took the edges of his brown hair. He got to look at his husband and know that at the end of the day he would get to crawl back into bed with him and sleep.
George watched him get ready often. Telling Dream that he liked the way the sun would hit him in the mornings and make him look like he was glowing. How it would shimmer over his body and take him over like he was truly a God. Dream had joked back with him that it was simply the fact that he was the Admin that the world favored him so.
George called him divine and Dream could only accept the words his lover called him by.
They’d gone to their breakfast together. They’d gone through the meetings they needed to do. They were discussing what they wanted to do with the few hours break they had before the call of paperwork would come when the march of boots reached their ears. The both of them left standing in the throne room and George hesitating to reach for the hilt of the sword at his hip.
Dream had made him wear it for the sake of his safety since everything happened with his near dethronement. He’d wanted his lover to be safe and George had accepted it. Telling him every day that he was safe because Dream would fight everything for him.
The sound of armor hitting the floor was different. This wasn’t one of their knights.
The steps didn’t match the pattern of Sapnap or Punz or Callahan. It wasn’t the right sound their metal would make on the stone. Which meant that whoever this was wasn’t in armor for the Greater SMP.
Which meant they weren’t supposed to be here.
Guests to the palace for meetings were either approved or barred from entering with dangerous equipment into the throne room. Call Dream paranoid but he stood his ground. He didn’t appreciate L’Manberg saying he was a monster for ordering the lack of equipment into his home where his lover would sometimes be left unguarded. Certainly not when he remembered the countless times he’d painstakingly removed his armor from his person before stepping foot into the fledgling nation.
He’d respected their rules.
They would never respect him.
“Hide.”
But he’d been too late.
No sooner did the word fall from Dream’s lips than soldiers and knights were storming into the throne room. Leading them from the back, never the front, too cowardly to lead in front, stood the Dethroned and Scorned Eret.
He fought. Immediately and without a second thought. The Nightmare sword was slipping into his hand and Dream was lunging for the first knight that was brave enough to step forward. Eret’s pack just never seemed to drop. All of them with potions at their helm and Dream saw them too late.
He heard George cry out his name.
The shattering of glass against his back almost took him to the ground.
Dream felt pain leech through his body. Sinking its claws into him and making it feel like his flesh was pulling itself apart. Ripping into him and feeling like there should be blood swallowing all around him.
It had been a while since he’d had to deal with a harming potion. A while since he’d been dealing with warfare to that capacity. Normally it was weakness or something else that they would equip when they were going in to fight but if their enemies right now wanted to do something to this level of extreme then that told Dream exactly what their motivations and intent was. He knew the kind of people they were.
Cowards.
The world turned to muddled shouts and orders around him. Blurs of colors that swarmed around his head too fast for him to really make out. He felt sick. Weak and he didn’t know what to do.
He felt the hands around his arms.
He heard George yell.
A fight happening behind him now and despite his best efforts, Dream couldn’t get his body to move the right way to help. He couldn’t get himself to react and he couldn’t breathe right around the pain that was still pulsing through him.
He needed the potion to end. He needed help.
If they wanted to use him for anything then they would need to give him milk.
Harming wasn’t used for a reason. The amount of damage that it gave if someone managed to boost the potion was borderline sadistic. It did nothing but cause pain until someone’s heart gave out. Made them feel like their body was being destroyed all around them when that wasn’t really the case. It was cruel and it wasn’t to be touched unless there was a dire emergency and storming a castle to break the treaties of peacetime was most certainly not an emergency.
Dream smelled blood. He was brought to his feet. Walking like he was being made into a show and Dream swore to himself then and there that he was going to make all of them pay for this. He was going to make them beg and scream and he was going to relish in every single second of it.
He didn’t care.
Not for this.
Dream felt the vial as it was pushed up against his lips. He didn’t know what it was but in this moment he didn’t have a choice but to drink. If he was going to die then he would summon the server to his aid and reveal his status as the Admin. If he was fine then he would be fine and handle things from there.
Dream could do this. He could handle this.
The first sip told him it was milk.
Dream waited to let his vision clear. He waited to take in the room again and when he did he felt his anger coiling around his heart like a snake.
He saw George. Held on his knees next to the throne like he was dragged out of it. A sword against his throat and Dream saw the bruising that was already starting to form. The cut that was across his cheek. The thin line of blood that was coming from it.
They’d hurt George.
They’d hurt his Kind.
They’d hurt the only person that had managed to make Dream’s heart feel like there was a reason to beat.
“Well then, Sir Dream,” Eret’s voice was smug. Dream was seething with hate. “I believe we’ve found ourselves at a stalemate?”
Eret was a fraud. A coward and pathetic and Dream hated everything that they claimed to stand for. Peace, history, record keeping and more. All Dream saw was a pathetic excuse of a coward and he had no respect for it. There was nothing that Eret could do that would make Dream care about them at all. He’d taken the crown away from them for a reason and he didn’t dare to regret it.
The only reason he’d considered removing it from George to give it back to them a while ago was because Eret was expendable. George was not. George was priceless and Dream could not lose him. He didn’t know what he would do with himself if he ever lost George. If he couldn’t have the man that made him actually feel like he was truly a person.
“What do you want, Eret?”
Dream didn’t bother to hide the bite in his tone. He was pissed and he was going to be making that fact known. Out of all the things that Eret had done and could have done to get a conversation with him, this was the worst.
“I wanted you to realize the things you’d done to wrong me. To make you take them back.”
Dream allowed his glare through the mask on his face.
“I’ve done no wrong to you.”
“You removed—”
“The crown? You’re hung up on that still?”
He would allow himself to be cocky. It was all he had right now and if it would buy him time to let his body process the milk and get his feeling back then he would take it. Right now anything that gave him time to better recover so he could save George was something that he would take. He had to keep their attentions distracted for long enough that he could.
“It was my station.”
“It was my blessing. Or did you forget that? You turned on the nation so I turned on you. I put the crown on George’s head and—”
“And I heard you knelt to him.”
Dream glared harder. His anger boiling up and over the edges of his control.
“And?”
Dream knew what the issue was. He knew what Eret was trying to reference him to.
“You didn’t kneel to me.”
“You didn’t deserve it.”
He heard Eret’s tutt.
“See, now why would you kneel to one King and not the other?”
Dream’s stomach turned into knots.
“Why would you hold us so differently unless it was because you cared more for one than another.”
“Eret.”
Dream said their name like a warning.
“I believe in order for a coup to be proper, I would need his crown.”
Dream watched them turn to face George. Walking over to him despite the way he could see his lover struggling to get out of the hands that were restraining him. One of the knights struck him for it. Kicking him in the middle of his back and Dream watched George fall in on himself in pain.
Eret grabbed the crown from his head without ceremony. Without care for the mistreatment happening in front of him.
This wasn’t justice.
Dream would give them justice.
“And now with this,”
Eret lifted the crown. Settling it down on their own head and the wrath Dream felt circling inside him began snapping and hissing like an angered creature.
“All I need is my knight to kneel.”
The knights holding him kicked him in the back of the knees. Forcing him forward as they struck at him until Dream’s legs were folding under him and he was being forced down to his knees. Dream. The knight that never knelt. Dream the unfailing and unwavering marker of everything the Greater SMP was that L’Manberg never would be.
Dream.
And he was being forced to kneel.
“Swear to me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Strike the former King George.”
Dream’s head snapped up at the sound of a slap. He caught them just in time for George’s head to have snapped to the side and for his hair to be grabbed to yank him back up into place. To force him still and force him to watch Dream where he was being held to his knees.
“Swear your loyalty to me, and I will let him go free.”
“I will burn you—”
“A knight swears to their King. You can either have George free and alive or I can have him killed in front of you if that would loosen your tongue.”
Dream’s eyes found his lover’s. He watched him intently but he saw the plan that was spinning in his eyes. Like a hurricane of his intelligence, Dream understood. He read the words that sat unsaid on George’s lips and he knew what he would do.
The order of his true King.
“A knight’s oath is sworn on their sword.”
He would test the intelligence of their enemy as he did it.
Dream watched the debate cycle through Eret’s eyes for a moment before they were nodding. Their arrogance getting the better of them as they had Dream’s sword retrieved and handed back to him. As one of the knights restraining him released him so that he could take it.
It was all the opening he needed.
Dream turned hard with his blade. This armor wasn’t that of the Greater SMP. It was worse. It was made by a pathetic smith that didn’t know how to actually forge or connect plates to allow for mobility as well as coverage.
Nightmare’s netherite sliced straight through the weak seams of the iron armor.
Dream was on his feet in moments. Getting ready to strike and fight and taking all of it in stride. He wasn’t going to be allowing this slight to go unnoticed but as he plunged his sword through the other knight’s stomach he heard George cry out and Dream turned fast.
He watched George being dragged. How his lover was scrambling and how the blade being held to him was moving like it was about to cut.
Dream didn’t even remember moving.
He pushed forward and maybe with a bit too much speed for a proper human and something more akin to the Admin, Dream was there. Gripping the knight holding George and ripping them away with too much strength. Dream could feel the server humming around him as he grabbed for George. As he assessed him quickly and still he waited for his heart to nod to him before he was letting go and taking up his blade properly again.
Dream faced off the rest of the room like he was going to eat them all alive.
Some of the guards were afraid now. Realizing the threat that they’d just angered but Dream wasn’t going to give them the chance for mercy or to escape. He didn’t care that they were just following the orders of their leader.
No one should follow a leader that leads from the back. It meant they were a coward and that they believed their soldiers to be expendable pieces. They didn’t trust their own plan.
If Eret was willing to lead these people in from the back, then Dream would teach them the meaning of expending their pawns.
He was the chess player. He was the one that controlled the board and manipulated to get what he wanted but at least he was the one on the server that knew and understood that each piece had a life and a purpose and meaning. He was the one that seemed to hold the value in that the most. He was the one that tried to defend that more than the others. He was the one that tried over and over and over again to get the others to see that there was importance in all the details but they were so consumed with their own reflections in the mirror they couldn’t be bothered to see what he was trying to build.
Eret would pay for that today.
All of them here would pay for that today.
Dream moved without mercy. Charging toward all of them and allowing his blade to sing with the sound of the server at his beck and call. He listened to them scream as he painted the floors of their throne room with blood. Over and over again until the only one left was Eret.
Trying to run.
Coward.
“Eret!”
Dream moved to get in front of them. Cutting off their exit and staring into terrified eyes that were trying and failing to hide it.
“Dream—”
“You come to my home.”
He took a step toward them. He relished that he saw their petrified step back.
Dream did it again.
“You threatened me. You attacked my King.”
He allowed his voice to growl out. The server powering his actions and tinging his voice with a bit of an echo. He knew how it sounded and he knew the terror he could make. If any of their people were to see him like this he very well could scare them from the nation. It was one of the reasons he never did it.
Eret, however, for this Dream would make an exception.
“You laid your hands on me and you laid your filth upon my royal.”
“I didn’t realize you were the Admin—”
“You just thought yourself such a fit King? To question the one that put you there?”
“That’s not—”
“It is exactly what you just did.”
“I’m sorry—”
“You tried to make me swear to you. So, Eret.”
Dream’s anger surged. Whipping itself around Eret and forcing them down to their knees hard enough that the ground nearly cracked beneath them. Dream didn’t care about the flinch. He just kept his march forward and watched the horror in the other’s eyes until he was standing directly in front of them and looking down.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
He reached for the crown still sitting upon the coward’s head.
“You are going to make me a promise.”
Eret nodded. Eyes wide and pain showing so easily.
What a pathetic excuse.
“You will never step near this palace or my family again, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
No fight. No backbone. Just cowardice and greed. False lies of pretentious justice that was full of nothing but cotton for a meal.
“You will never lay a claim to anything I have determined. You will obey anything and everything that George or I command of you.”
Eret was nodding at his feet. Fear rolling off of them in waves and Dream didn’t care.
“You will tell the others that there is reason that I am what I am.”
Dream showed the server’s power wealth behind him. Letting it push at Eret and make them feel the weight. He knew his eyes would be glowing green with the force. He watched the way Eret’s face dropped.
“You will be ensuring that none of them ever lift a hand toward me or my nation again.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He needed information still.
“You mentioned my bond to George, what do they all know of it?”
It would help him to protect him if—
“A spy overheard you talk about a wedding night. So we—”
He took Eret’s ability to speak.
“I will give this back under the condition that you answer one more question correctly. I will let you go if you do, I will kill you if you don’t.”
Eret nodded. Dream returned their ability.
“What am I, Eret.”
A demand in the disguise of a question.
“You’re the Admin—”
“Try again.”
He was. But that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.
Eret’s eyes were mortified.
“A— You’re a knight—”
Dream’s eyes narrowed. He knew that they were stupid but he didn’t think they were this stupid.
“Again. Last chance.”
He gave them a moment to think. Watching their eyes flit back toward George before something like understanding seemed to click in their eyes.
“You’re a King?”
“Without sounding like a question. Why do you obey me.”
“You are a King.”
Dream glared.
“What am I.”
“You’re—”
They wouldn’t answer him correctly. Dream bent forward. Placing his face so close to Eret’s that he knew they would see the glow of his eyes through the wall of the mask.
“I am your King. I am your royal. George is your King. You obey who.”
“You.”
“Who.”
“Both of you. I obey both of you. I—”
“Get out of my sight.”
He was being too kind. He watched Eret nod and scramble. He watched them go to make a run.
They didn’t even look at the bodies that were littering the room. The fighters that they supposedly cared about enough to stage a coup for the sake of holding more power.
Dream let Eret make it to the gate of the palace before he sent them crashing to the void.
The silence of the throne room came in swiftly after. Swallowing around them and making the stench of blood flood into his nose. He gagged. Small at first but as he tempered back the power rushing through his veins and assured the server that he would be safe, he felt it trying to consume him.
His breathing strained. He felt his heart slamming against the inside of his ribs. Pulsing there and suddenly it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough. He couldn’t get the right amount of air. His blood wasn’t pumping right.
Dream hardly even realized he was shaking before he was crumpling down towards the ground. Before his knees were connecting with the ground again and this time there was no one to hold him down.
“Dream!”
George was in front of him before he could tip the rest of the way. Pulling him into his arms and Dream sought him like this was his only true purpose. He all but ripped the mask from his face in favor of pressing himself against the side of George’s neck. Of breathing him in and feeling his lover’s pulse against the tip of his nose.
“I thought I might lose you.”
George held him tighter.
“You’ll never lose me.”
Dream breathed. His power returning to the server and leaving him feeling cold in its wake. He swallowed the bile that tried to come up his throat.
“We need to clean you up.”
“You were hurt.”
“It’s all superficial, love. You just nearly let the server have your body and anger and I know how much that takes out of you. Let me help you, okay? Let me take care of you?”
Dream sighed. Allowing his body to relax as he curled himself further into George.
“Let me sit here for a little bit longer.”
He needed to feel him. To feel George alive beneath his hands. To know he was there. That they were both safe.
“Take as long as you need.”
George’s arms wound against him. A hand finding its way to the back of his head and scratching idly at his scalp.
“You didn’t lose me.”
Dream breathed. They still had peace. They still had their peace.
“I’m right here.”