Work Text:
All Dream heard was ringing. Sharp and nearly blinding through his skull. He forced a breath through his lungs as pain rippled through his chest and informed him that he wasn’t breathing enough. He choked. Gagging around something wet in his throat and when he finally managed to open his eyes there was nothing but darkness around him.
He coughed. His hands shaking and leaving him feeling out blindly to find anything.
He found dust. Dirt. Rubble. Something wet when he felt near his head and Dream connected all too slowly that it was blood. His head was pounding. Stomach flipping around inside him enough to make him feel like his intestines were living worms inside of him.
He couldn’t breathe. Not well not enough to actually give himself anything to work with. He felt faint. Woozy.
He didn’t know where he was.
Dream was watching hazes of colors blur through the air. He was seeing the motion but he couldn’t make it out. Not until the memories started to make their way back in.
His neck ached when he tried to move. His head pounding through his skull and his chest screaming in agony. His leg was trapped under something. Same with one of his arms. Something was sitting on him. His breathing was limited. All he could smell was ash and blood. A fire. Something happened.
He tried to remember.
Vague flashes of memories that flit through his mind’s eye like ghosts. He saw himself talking with George in the throne room. The two of them working together with listening to nobles go on and on and complaining about everything they could think of.
He had sat with his Prince until they decided that they were done for the day. George to go up and work on his paperwork that needed done while Dream would head to the barracks and check in with the squires and knights that have retired for the day and check the yard after that. They would meet each other in a few hours to rest and go to bed.
A calmness was there for it.
A pattern and routine. Something that was gentle and close for the two of them. Something that they believed in and needed and craved. Something they wanted.
Dream hadn’t made it past the barracks.
He remembered walking through. Seeing the rooms and checking the squires. All of them retired for bed and making their check ins properly. He checked on knights. The barracks were fairly full. A few others straggling behind out in the yard or other places in the palace. That was fine. They had their work to do and they had their time to spend.
Dream was wanting to check his room. To grab a few things and drop others off before he would begin his final rounds and return to his lover’s arms.
He’d opened the door to his room.
He’d felt the heat of the explosion.
He’d felt the rubble coming down.
Dream coughed again. The pulsing behind his eyes making his stomach roll again only for him to have to swallow it back. Whatever was laying on him right now was making it too hard to breathe and with an arm and leg both pinned in addition to his chest, he couldn’t move.
If he threw up right now he would be more likely to aspirate in it than to actually bring himself any kind of relief.
He tried to find air in his lungs. Any room to expand but instead he was just feeling the bones splintering and pushing.
He was the Leading Knight of the Kingdom and this was what was going to take him out. Not the wars. Not the countless fights he’d been in. Not being the defender at the hand of the crown against assassins or anything of the sort to defend his royals.
No.
It would be a trap in the barracks. Something to cut him off without a chance.
Dream couldn’t move. He found rocks with his free hand every time he tried and the more energy he used the more exhaustion seeped through his bones. His head rocking and his neck aching almost like it was tired of holding him together.
He had no choice right now but to lay here on the ground and wait to be saved. To feel something or anything that would tell him there was rescue to come.
He thought about the rest of the palace. If there were more explosions that had been rigged up to this one. If there was a chance that more people were trapped and injured or if the entier palace went down. If he was already dead and his brain was just taking too long to catch up to that fact or if he was really still alive like some kind of cruel twist of fate.
He would kill himself if George was dead.
If Sam was gone.
His knight was down here. He was on the other end of the barracks, sure. But he’d been down here. Sapanp and Punz would have been closer if either of them had been in their room but Sapnap was with Karl higher in the palace and Punz was out in the yard for a late patrol on the wall.
If this was localized to the barracks then there was help that was coming.
He could deal with everything else afterwards. He could manage with it.
Dream laid there in the dark. Feeling the world slipping and sliding around him as he tried to focus on his breathing and staying awake. Unsure on how well he was doing with either of those with no way to see the light around him and tell what was going on. He was floating through his moments. One he was there and the next he wasn’t.
To Dream, it felt like blinks. He didn’t know what it actually was.
He was cold. Too hot and still he was too cold but he didn’t have the energy to shiver. He couldn’t take his air in correctly. He couldn’t breathe the right way and then there were yells that were reaching his ears.
Dream tried to listen.
Their voices faded out before he could figure out what they were saying. Before he knew how to understand them.
The world was still black. He didn’t have the energy to call out. He didn’t think he could get the air into his lungs in order to do it. To shout out and let them know where he was. To get their attention and tell them that he was stuck but that he was still alive.
His front felt warm but his back was cold. He was face down.
He was hurt. He was really badly hurt.
“Dream!”
“Can you hear us?!”
Sam and George. His knight and his Prince.
Their voices sounded a lot closer to him now and Dream paused for a moment. Trying to figure out if that was a good thing or not. He wanted to be close to them but he also knew that something was wrong right now and that if there was a problem or a fight then he wanted them to be safe and away from it. He didn’t want to risk them with being hurt.
He didn’t—
Light reached him from behind his eyelids. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed them.
“Oh my god.”
Dream breathed out as much as he could. Trying to exhale and feeling blood trickle through his lips. That was bad. He knew that was bad and yet he couldn’t find it in his heart to care. Not right now. Not when everything else was hurting so badly he couldn’t focus.
“Get this off of him!”
He was buried alive in his own home. His palace collapsed on him and Dream with the air forced from his lungs.
It would fit all the old things his knight used to tell him about their knights line. That all the knights of it were destined to die to air. That they would be killed for not being able to breathe or something along the lines of it.
The only commonality was air. Whatever the will of the Wind God was that day. That was the joke.
Dream couldn’t breathe in.
The weight crushing over his chest was moving. Hands and movement around him but Dream couldn’t really see it. Just moments when the light was blotting out again but he didn’t know if that was people moving around him or if he was simply passing out. He didn’t know what would bring him more hope.
More people in danger but the chance of rescue? Or him simply fainting there on the ground and hallucinating all of it as he died.
He didn’t have the strength to scream. The slab from his back being pulled and lifted and cold rushed through his veins like a shock. As if he’d just been shoved directly into a frozen lake after sitting by a fire warm and dry. He wanted to scream. The pain that exploded through him making him gag and choke and then his lungs were flooding.
He was drowning.
He couldn’t—
“Shit—”
“Dream—”
Hands were by his face. He couldn’t see anything. He didn’t know what was happening.
“Drink.”
He tried. He still felt over half of it slide down his chin and to the ground. His stomach rolled again. The hands weren’t leaving him.
“Get his arm and leg free. We need to get him out of here.”
Potion. He’d been fed potion. He could feel it running through his veins. Trying to find the energy to fix him and Dream had none to give for it. Exhaustion doubling and pumping through him like it was trying to replace all the blood he had.
“Highness—”
The hands changed on his face. Cool hands that were so familiar to him and they were the ones that found his face to frame now. That braced him and guarded over him and Dream tried to open his eyes.
"That’s it. Come back to me. Can you hear me?”
There was still a ringing in the background. Everything sounded muffled. Dream still knew his lover’s voice.
He couldn’t feel the rest of his body. The potion numbing him and making him even more dizzy when he tried to see the things around him. His stomach twisting again and now with the prospect of mobility there was nothing he could do to stop the heave that tore through his throat.
Multiple people were around him. Guarding and bracing him while he emptied his stomach onto the ground. Choking and spitting and tasting metal through it all. His vision was blurring and doubling on top of itself. Swimming at the edges and consuming him.
“Hey, none of that.”
The hands were patting at his face now. He could make out Sam’s voice calling more orders. He could feel movement all around him. Something was sitting on his face now. It wasn’t there before.
“Stay with us, Dream. Stay with us.”
He felt heavy. He couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t—
“You’re hurt. You’re badly hurt. .But we’ve got you and you’re going to be okay. You just need to stay with us for a little while longer. Alright?”
Someone was touching around his eye. Pulling it open and Dream realized the darkness meant he’d closed them. He saw blonde hair, kind eyes, he knew Phil. He knew the Lead Healer. He knew the man that was basically an uncle to him.
“Is he—”
“Concussed pretty bad but if you took a palace floor to the head, you’d be happy to be how he is right now and not dead.”
He winced. George’s face floated in front of his eyes.
“We’re going to help you. Just stay with us. We’re going to get you to the infirmary and figure this out. We’ll take care of you and we’ll find the people that did this. Okay?”
Dream tried to move his mouth. His tongue was stuck to his teeth. The best he could do was a whimper. Pathetic and broken but it was the first sound he’d made even though it came out more like a wheeze.
“You just need to stay with me, Dreamie.”
Lips pressed to his forehead. Careful and close. Tender before Dream felt more potions be injected to his arm. Before he felt the rush of them and the world floating hazy again as his body tried to repair itself.
As it stole the rest of the energy he had to give.
“He needs to rest, Highness.”
Dream tried to stay awake. He tried to keep his eyes open so that he could see his lover a bit better and he saw the floating sight of his knight moving around. The way he was commanding things to other knights and guards that told Dream he wasn’t the only one that was hurting because of this.
The trap that was clearly intended for him and it had gotten who knows how many people hurt or worse.
He felt like his head was in a vice. Like he couldn’t take it.
“Phil—”
“It’s the potions.”
Dream hadn’t even realized he’d begun shaking. His neck sparking itself in agony at the thought of it but now that he knew about the tension lining through his broken bones and muscles he couldn’t shake it. His leg was burning off of his body. The intensity of the potions pooling there making him wonder if his limb had even still been attached.
“You need to breathe, Dream. Don’t get sick on us.”
His eyes were trying to roll.
“You’re gonna be just fine, mate. You just need to relax. Let us handle this.”
George was petting through his hair. Avoiding the cut in his head from wherever he’d hit the rubble that fell but he was there and he was comforting him and he was saving him and it was all that Dream could ask.
“Just keep breathing.”
The words came with a brush of air against his lips.
Until then Dream hadn’t known what was on his face. He’d figured that it was rubble or something that he was imagining but when he felt the push trying to guide his lungs to take in air, he knew that it was one of the air pumps from the infirmary. A tool that they had only just started using after the Eastern war in order to help the soldiers and knights that came back wounded and struggling to breathe.
He was having them breathe for him.
Breathe for him while his lungs felt too weak to do it on their own.
“You’re doing such a good job right now.”
He couldn’t even keep his eyes open enough to be able to check on George.
To see his lover and know if he was safe or not. If he’d been hurt in all of this or if he was alright.
“Stay with me, Dreamie.”
His lover leaned down to him. Bending and pressing a kiss to his forehead.
Dream could have cried.
He could have died right then and he would have felt complete.
“I love you.”
He wished he could talk. He wished he could give his response. But then George’s hand was finding his and Dream realized with the little strength he had left he could give his lover this.
Three squeezes of his hand.
I love you.
Dream heard George laugh. His Prince pushing his bangs back and kissing him again.
“I love you too.”