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Dream had been serving hopping for ages trying to find a good spawn for a manhunt world. Perks of being an Admin. He could spawn and destroy worlds at a whim. Of course it took energy every time but if he was just simply exploring then it didn’t take too much out of him for each world. All of them were normal ones, none of them had their settings moderated like he would for an official hunting world.
The games wouldn’t do if respawns hurt them. None of them would be willing to hurt one another if that were the case. Modifications had needed to be made early into their career doing those hunts. They needed to make sure one another were safe. Friends first, opponents second. That was how it was meant to be.
When he was simply exploring the world there was no reason for the changes. The world could be exactly as it naturally was. Exploration wasn’t something he should be getting himself killed with.
He was Dream. The speedrunner who took himself over and over again to foes that he should have no chances of beating. The man who made people call him the equal of a god. The Admin that was strong enough that the others in server hubs would call him a powerhouse.
He was young still. He wasn’t that experienced. Not like the others who had multiple hardcore worlds under their belt and calling their names with pride and dignity.
Dream created hunts. He created fast worlds that spawned danger with the intent to kill. He spawned universes that begged the name of his demise. His worlds were wild and filled with life that fought not to die and did it regardless. His worlds were blood and laughter rolled into one.
His worlds were him. His heart, his love, his pain and his compromise.
He’d never made so many in one day before.
It was a challenge he’d made for himself. To see how much his powers could be limited and to make as many worlds as he could. Over and over and over again and explore them each until his powers cut him off or his body dropped him to the ground in whatever world he would land in.
His world would protect him. If he collapsed in one of them then he would be fine. The grass would shield him. The mobs wouldn’t spawn around him. The rain wouldn’t reach him. He’d be safe.
He’d only fainted while jumping to a new world a few times. It wasn’t very common since he typically knew the signs for when his body was growing tired and would stop before it got to that point but from what he knew of his previous times he knew he was safe. Waking up with a wolf pack sleeping all around him and keeping him warm in their fur while the snow fell all around them in the mountain range. Waking up to a new tree that hadn't been there when he’d fallen shielding him from the rain. Waking up to see mobs around him in the meadow that just happened not to look in his direction even when he sat up and ate snacks out of his pack on the ground and watched the moon turn above him.
He was trying to get better at how he was using his powers. He was already stronger than what he knew he should be for his age and experience. He knew from the whispers about his name that he was more than what he should be capable of.
Too bad Dream just always strived to be even more than what the stories told him about. Techno had told him once after they’d sparred with each other that he reminded him of Icarus. The boy that flew too close to the sun.
He’d warned him about wax wings.
Dream had laughed at him when he said it.
Jump after jump Dream pushed himself forward. He pushed himself beyond the feelings of numbness and black sparks that danced through his vision when he landed in the worlds. He just kept to making another right after. Exploring for the time it took the next one to generate and then jumping to start the process over again.
He was being an idiot. He knew that. Dream knew that. But it didn’t stop him regardless.
Now that he was starting to face the consequences of his actions, he was beginning to regret it.
He woke up in one of the new worlds. He couldn't even remember landing through the jump or starting it in the first place but his body had been shaking from the moment he woke and the world had error lines glitching through it. Streaks through the sky that looked nearly like static. He could see the code in some of the leaves and how they would flicker around. He knew that he was too hot but it didn’t stop the shivers that lanced through his body.
His vision blurred when he stood. Sparks and spots covering and blinding him before he was forcing his body to breathe and sucking in the air he needed to make the jump back home.
Dream woke up on the floor. Sweat clinging to his skin and nausea swarming in his gut. He’d given himself the time he needed to recover from an overtaxed system but the symptoms weren’t going away. Dream felt them like they were getting worse.
Three days.
He’d been like this for three days now.
Suffering in silence and hiding everything that he knew his friends were going to pick up on. They wanted to talk about planning the manhunt but Dream was worried for it. He didn’t want them to know what he’d done because they would scold him and yell at him.
George and Sapnap the most. The two of them were by far the most protective of him out of the hunters. His friends were great but Dream knew their lectures a little too well and he wasn’t exactly keen to get himself onto that marker. To know that they would yell and shout and scold him.
Recently things had been a little strained with the main server they were running.
His SMP that he was so proud of. They’d made a lot of new additions to it and the people were a little hectic. Dream wanted to do a manhunt for all of them to get together and hang out like they did the whole way through their pasts. He wanted to joke and let them have their time in a world that wasn’t going to risk having a death prank for the sake of robbery.
He really needed to start enforcing the rules with Tommy a little more.
It was going to get out of hand if he didn’t step in soon.
He knew that if his friends knew what he’d been doing with his powers they would be harsh. They had been trying to get him to make adjustments to the DreamSMP since he started adding in more people but he’d wanted to give as much freedom as possible. He wanted them all to feel like a family and a large home. Sure, there were some issues here and there but there was nothing that couldn’t be sorted through negotiation.
If they learned that he’d used his powers in another testing way instead of the changes they were certain that he could do, he would be more likely to be yelled at than anything else.
So Dream had hidden it.
For the last three days he’d let himself nurse on his own and he’d struggled with the weight of his own body. He had pushed himself to the edge and now he was feeling like his body didn’t even belong to him. Each time he tried to sleep he was seeing the glitches and the burns through his eyes. He was feeling the screaming of the world and his body raced between too hot and too cold like it was running a hunt of its own.
He’d lost track of how much he’d thrown up. Food tasted wrong and water was barely even tolerable to his stomach. He’d lost so much like that that he’d stopped eating all together. His head pounding more and more by his body rejecting the lack of anything in it but he couldn’t find the point in eating when he would just see it again in under an hour.
Dream had used his powers more through the three days. Working with George and Sapnap and doing some of the things they wanted him to. He was trying to set a server entity but it made him so lightheaded that he’d barely been able to stand after, let alone walk in a straight line. He’d done it. Barely, but he’d done it. Stumbling his way back into the community house as his friends told him they were going to hunt and collapsing down into his room.
He passed out. It was becoming concerning how many times Dream had woken up on the ground or floor someplace with no memory on how he got there or what he was doing when his body decided to drop.
His breathing was becoming difficult. Each time he closed his eyes he was seeing a server like it was being strangled and he didn’t know what to do. He felt the world trembling and shaking but it wasn’t his SMP.
He didn’t know what world it was.
He was stupid.
All of this for a manhunt? The trouble wasn’t worth it.
Dream tried to soldier on. Right up until the moment he couldn’t get himself off the floor. His stomach rolling hard and making him gag with just enough energy to turn and throw up onto the wood beside him.
When he woke up, Dream saw blood.
His insides feeling like he’d swallowed glass and tried to use his own organs as a blender. The world spinning around him to the point that he’d needed to hold something in order to drag his feet under him. Pushing himself up and trying desperately not to give in and collapse and hit the ground. He didn’t want to pass out again. The fear that circled his mind and told him that if he fell he wasn’t going to be waking up again. His worry thud in his chest like a hammer.
Crushing into his heart and trying to make it break.
“George?...Sap?..”
His voice came weak. Burning through his throat like he’d cut himself open from the inside out and it made Dream wonder if that was where the blood was coming from. The throbbing in his head only seemed to get worse by the notion. His vision blurring like he was underwater
“Guys?...”
He tried to yell. Nothing coming out the way he thought it should be. He was fully covered so if he ran into any of the others then he wouldn’t have to out his current situation. He didn’t even really want George and Sapnap to know how bad he was feeling, let alone one of the others who might just use that fact to their own advantage. He had overheard Tommy saying more than a few times that he wanted the badge of honor of being able to kill him. That he wanted him dead on the ground in front of him.
Dream wasn’t exactly keen to let him in on the fact that he presently felt like death warmed over.
Step after trembling step, Dream tripped his way through the house. His breaths heaving and his heart racing. He could feel the beat of it skipping around beneath his sternum but he couldn't stop it. Not when he was struggling to control everything else about him and around him. Dream couldn’t do this.
He needed help.
He didn’t know how to get help.
“Guys?”
He got himself up the second set of stairs. Up to the top floor of the community house to find his two friends sitting together and working on cleaning armor. The smell of soap and chemicals they were using making his stomach flip around and try to clench around the shreds of its lining and bubbling acid.
“Hey—”
“Look who finally arrived in the land of the living.”
Dream knew that it was meant to be a lighthearted tease. He knew that his friends were just toying with him and that they meant nothing by it other than the fact that he’d been basically MIA for the last days.
If his body and head hurt a little less he might have enjoyed it.
“I need—”
“A towel? Yeah, you can help us clean your armor. You have a ceremony to do for the opening of the world, Dream. Come on. You’re meant to be out with other Admins tomorrow and you don’t even have your armor ready? You can help—”
“I’m sick.”
Dream tried to keep the waver out of his voice so that they would understand him.
Unfortunately, it just made them think he wasn’t telling the truth.
“You are not.”
George huffed it out. Sapnap was shaking his head.
Neither of them looked up to him.
“Just because you don’t want to go, Dream, doesn’t mean you don’t have to.”
“Yeah, you’re an Admin. You have to go to this. Sorry—”
He couldn’t hear them.
He needed them to listen to him.
He needed—
Dream tried to take a step. He tried to get closer so that they would look at him and they would know that something was wrong with him. They would help him. They would protect him.
He just didn’t realize he was falling before he reached them.
George and Sapnap had been working on cleaning armor for hours before they heard the sounds on the steps. If he was being honest with himself he would admit that he felt a little on edge about it. Dream had been sleeping a lot more than he did normally. He was taking time for himself and that was good, it was fine and George was glad for it. But it didn’t change the fact that it was out of the normal for him to be doing and it set a bit of worry to him.
Dream had an event with other Admins and he figured that it was probably the stress getting to him. Dream had been nervous when it came to large things like this. Wanting everything to be perfect as much as possible and not letting others help him.
It’s why he and Sapnap were working on the armor. To try to get it good and ready and give Dream something good and one less thing on his plate to worry about. They were going to be there to support him. They were going to be there to help him.
When he heard the heavy steps on the stairs, he figured it was just from the sleep. Dream had never really been a morning person.
"Guys?”
He sounded tired. George didn’t look up from the armor piece he was working on. Instead he heard Sapnap scoff just a bit. A smile playing on both of their lips.
“Hey—”
“Look who finally arrived in the land of the living.”
George smiled more at it. A tease that the three of them had been doing for years now. Something that started back during the manhunts when they joked that the nether was the land of the dead and that Sapnap was really just something that managed to escape. Since then, when they escaped it and came back to the overworld they would use it. When one of them did something that made them seem like the dead they would use it.
For right now, it was the amount of sleep Dream was getting.
“I need—”
“A towel? Yeah, you can help us clean your armor. You have a ceremony to do for the opening of the world, Dream. Come on. You’re meant to be out with other Admins tomorrow and you don’t even have your armor ready? You can help—”
“I’m sick.”
George knew that Dream was avoiding the event. He knew that his friend was nervous and that he didn’t really want to go. That there was a lot of stress going on here as it was and he didn’t want to be doing another thing. Still, he hadn’t expected illness to be the excuse for why he wouldn’t go.
“You are not.”
George huffed it out. Sapnap was shaking his head. Both of them with vague amusement at their friend. They kept working on the armor in their hands. They weren’t going to let him off the hook that easily and they knew that the stuff needed polished.
Dream’s Nightmare set was complicated. Small plate layers with many attachments to offer him the maximum amount of motion. Complicated. Gorgeous. Deadly.
“Just because you don’t want to go, Dream, doesn’t mean you don’t have to.”
He and Sapnap were on the same page for this.
“Yeah, you’re an Admin. You have to go to this. Sorry you want to be a disney princess in more than just manhunts but you can’t—”
“I really….don’...i don’t…’mnot…s’m’thin’s…c’n…”
The second he heard the slur of Dream’s speech, George was turning. Sapnap moving with him as the two of them turned to look at their friend. To see the way he was swaying in place and moved half a step to get back. How he seemed to be shaking.
“Dream?”
“Don’.... I don’t…”
“Hey, what is it?”
They were standing now. Trying to move towards Dream without scaring him.
George saw him lift his hands for the mask. Shaking and pale and when it went up they saw the dark circles under his eyes. The bruising that was there that made him look like he truly was half dead.
“Oh my god.”
Sapnap looked like he was going to be sick.
They both saw the blood dried and staining to Dream’s skin. Under his nose and around his mouth. The way his eyes were bouncing around.
“Don’ feel good…”
It felt like he wasn’t even supposed to say that much. His eyes rolling back as he got the words out and his body starting to drop to the ground. George got to him first. Scooping his body into his arms and feeling his friend go stiff and rigid in his hold. His body thrashing at random as convulsions began and George felt his heart plummet down to his stomach.
“Seizure.”
He wasn’t a doctor but he knew that much. He knew how dangerous they could be. He knew they were serious.
This wasn’t a normal cold. This wasn’t a random sickness.
This was something worse.
“What do we do?”
He could see the fear in Sapnap. Hear it in his voice and the way it shook.
“We have to let it pass.”
“George—”
“We don’t know what’s causing it. We have to wait.”
“What if he—”
What if he dies?
The question went unsaid between them. Making him feel like he was gutted where he was standing. One glance to Sapnap and he knew that he was feeling the same. The worry that was aching through the both of them. The pain and the fear.
“He won’t.” He didn’t know that. “Dream’s strong. He can—”
Dream choked. His head falling back as he strained. His lips sealed shut and his face turning red like his body was forgetting how to breathe.
“We can’t help him until we know the cause.”
“How do we—”
“We ask him.”
It was the only way they were going to get the information they needed. Neither of them could get to the Admin panels that Dream could. Neither of them would know what was wrong. Not until he could tell them.
They had to make sure he could tell them.
“We have to wait.”
He felt Dream relaxing. His body giving up on the strain that he’d been under. His muscles starting to go limp and heavy against him.
George would admit that his fear curled sharp in his chest at the feeling.
The worry that it was something worse than the seizure simply ending. That he was about to lose his best friend to this here on the floor of their house. That they could have saved him if they had looked up sooner or not teased him and taken him completely serious from the beginning.
Dream was shivering still. Small trembles that were rolling through him in waves.
He was so pale.
He looked so weak.
“We can figure it out on our own.”
George looked to Sapnap.
“What—”
“He’s been sleeping more, right? What if that was a sing? A little longer than three days, right?”
George thought about it. Counting back as much as he could before he was nodding along to the idea. The detective work they could do to figure this out.
“What was he doing that day? Do we know?”
He thought through it all. The motions that they’d all done.
“Server training? Exploring for new spawns for a hunt.”
George kept his fingers on Dream’s pulse. Feeling his brother and the weakness he had in him. He heard the small groan that pulled from his lips.
“Do you think he overstrained himself?”
George shook his head.
“We’ve seen that before. It’s never caused a seizure before.”
“What if something went wrong with one of the worlds? What if something went wrong with Dream if he pushed too far and didn’t stop?”
He hated that he could imagine it. That he could see it so clearly that that was what Dream would have done. The idiot.
The fool.
He cupped Dream’s face. Running his thumb over his cheek to offer him something to focus on so he knew he could come back to it.
“We’ll figure it out when he can talk to us.”
“George—”
“The only way is to wait.”
He looked at Dream’s face.
The way he was laying.
The way he was sleeping.
The fear he still felt in his chest.
“We have to wait.”