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Dream had been alone for weeks now. Sitting in the shell of the community house and feeling it without any of the love that it had been built and designed with. It was like a husk. A tomb of memories and Dream was the only ghost that was stuck trapped inside.
It started with a call.
It started with multiple calls, actually, that weren’t answered. Calls that went left to voicemail and messages unanswered. It started with a screaming match in the woods. It started with two friends leaving behind their third in the dark. It started with a crown and a throne and heated words that cut deeper than any of them meant. It started with betrayal.
It started with Dream.
Dream taking the crown from George’s head because he’d seen his friend being attacked and he wanted to try to save him. He felt like everything else he cared for was being struck down. It was all being taken from him and he wasn’t about to let them take George and Sapnap away. He just wanted to protect them. He wanted to save them. If taking the crown away would give George more safety then he was going to do it.
But George and Sapnap didn’t see it like that. They saw it like Dream didn’t care. They saw it like he was leaving them. They thought he was using them. Lying to them to try to manipulate them and use them as nothing but tools. They yelled at him. Called him out on everything they thought him guilty of and called him a monster and a tyrant. They called him off his proclaimed high horse and yelled at him for thinking they couldn’t defend themselves. They called his excuse a weak one. They called him pathetic.
They left him.
He’d been standing there alone when Quackity had found him. When he’d stormed up to Dream and screamed and shouted at him for so long that none of the words truly stuck in his mind. When he’d started punching him and Dream had done nothing to defend himself. He’d simply taken it as Quackity punched over and over again. It wasn’t lost on him that Quackity made sure to always strike with his ring the hardest. Telling him over and over again with a how dare you for hurting Sapnap. Revenge, is what he’d called it. For all the other nations in the server. For all the horrible acts he’d done.
Like trying to protect Sapnap is what made him cruel.
Like trying to protect George is what made him into a monster.
The walk back to the community house had been slow after that. His stomach hurt from the punches. His head hurt from the force of holding his emotions back and the hits to his skull. He was sure he was bruised and scratched but no one would care.
Why would they care?
He was the monster. He was the tyrant. He was the evil creature of the SMP that didn’t even know what the word love meant.
He locked himself into his basement room and didn’t even make it to the bed. He just slid down his door and stared at the wall opposite of him. He didn’t want things to go like this. He just wanted Tommy to stop stealing from him and stop attacking the things he cares about. Was that so much to ask? Was he cruel for telling Tommy no? Was he a monster for trying to protect the people he cares about?
He must be.
If everyone was willing to call him a monster and a tyrant then it had to be true. If even the people he held closest to his heart were going to call him evil then he could never have been good.
The memories of the three of them together made his heart break. Monsters don’t have beating hearts.
He lost track of time. Trying to message into the DreamTeam group chat they all had with each other and get through to his friend.s He wanted them there with him and he wanted to try to explain. To let them listen to him and what he had to say if their friendship had ever meant anything at all. He wanted to have them with him and he was scared that this was really it.
The pain through his body only grew worse.
Something numb and cold that dripped through his veins and made his stomach churn. He didn’t know what to do with himself anymore and he wasn’t sure there was anything else that he could do. He was stuck and he was hurting and he wanted the people who once upon a time had let him feel loved.
He knew they didn’t want him anymore. He knew that they hated him now and he knew that there was no going back. That it was the end and that he was stuck with this now the way it was. But Dream still tried.
Message after message, call after call.
He knew that they wanted nothing to do with him but he was trying. He knew that they wanted him dead but he was fighting to survive. Dream was trying against a losing battle and he didn’t stop.
But now, as he laid here on the ground and he listened to the grinding wheezes coming out of his body, Dream wondered if he should. If he should let himself give up and leave his body to rest. He wondered if he should allow himself to lay down and rest. If he should quit.
His stomach was burning. Something felt like it was crawling through him. Picking up the pace as it beat through his sluggish heart.
He didn’t feel good but there was no way for him to save himself. No way for him to have the protection that he so desperately needed right now. He needed to be saved and he knew that he couldn’t be. That he was dying.
His heart was breaking.
His mind was giving up.
His spirit wilting under the weight of his own pains.
Dream called for help. For his friends so that he would at least get to see them again and he could try to apologize and explain. So that they would know that if he was dying now then at least he was trying to do it for them.
He knew they wanted him gone. He knew that the beating and the lack of attention or care when he’d said that he was attacked was just the nail in the coffin. He’d told them and he’d read Sapnap’s response telling him it was good. He had seen Geeorge’s marker that he read it and just couldn’t be bothered to answer.
He couldn’t be bothered to do much of anything if it had to do with him, it felt like.
Dream was alone.
Rotting in the basement of his empty home and wishing that someone would come in to be able to save him from the worries of his heart.
You whisper to DreamTeam: I really need to see you guys
His heart was beating wrong. For the last hours he’d felt it getting worse. He knew that they didn’t want to see him but he was worried and he was scared and Dream didn’t want to be alone if he was going to die. He didn’t want to die alone.
You whisper to DreamTeam: Please?
His vision was blurring. Faster than he thought it should be if this was just internal bleeding. Something was wrong with him. Something that started in the beating and the longer it went the more worried Dream got.
You whisper to DreamTeam: Somthis wong
His heart was starting to race. He wasn’t getting in enough air. He couldn’t do this. He was going to die.
Tears leaked from his eyes. Burning against him before they were slipping down his cheeks. Before Dream was choking on sobs that wanted to come out.
You whisper to DreamTeam: please
He wasn’t typing right. He knew that. He hoped that it would still be readable.
You whisper to DreamTeam: please i dont want tobe alone
His vision was tunneling down. He was slipping on the wall and down toward the floor.
You whisper to DreamTeam: im sorry
He needed them to know. He needed them to know he loved them. He needed his friends.
You whisper to DreamTeam: im scared
He was terrified. Scared beyond his mind and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He couldn’t do anything.
You whisper to DreamTeam: I love uo
Dream squinted at the screen. He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t read why it was. He had made a mistake.
He needed them to know that he loved them.
He needed them to know that he cared about them. That the rumors were wrong. They were wrong. Dream had never stopped loving them.
He needed them to know.
He needed to tell them.
Dream tried again.
You whisper to DreamTeam: I locs you
You whisper to DreamTeam: I lova you
You whisper to DreamTeam: I love ouy
You whisper to DreamTeam: I love you
You whisper to DreamTeam: love youu
You whisper to DreamTeam: love yiou
He was so tired.
You whisper to DreamTeam: msorry
Sapnap stared at his comm. Taking in a breath as slow as he could to keep himself calm. It had been exploding the whole way through his nap to try to rest and calm down from everything that happened. He’d fought. A fight that he thought would never come because it was against the man that he’d considered to be his brother the whole way through his life.
Now though?
Now he didn’t know if the Dream he’d been seeing recently was the Dream that had been his closest friend for his life. He didn’t know if the man that was his brother was still alive or if he’d died a long time ago to the monster that was trying to take his place.
Quackity had come to him after and told him he took care of a few things. He’d said that they were having a talk and that Dream only confirmed all the things he’d thought about. That Dream didn’t love them anymore. That he didn’t care about them. That he—
His comm went off again.
Sapnap groaned into his pillow. Pulling out the comm unit and looking at it for a moment enough to need to blink to read the rapid fire of messages coming through.
He was just going to mute it when he saw the name on them but then he looked closer.
He saw the content that was being said.
Slowly sitting up in the bed, Sapnap watched them continue in. He knew how Dream was with his typing and his spelling and he knew that he was very careful. He knew that he hated to have the mistakes in writing because it would get him teased and insulted and he was picky about it.
What he was seeing now was filled with typos enough to make him doubt if Dream was the one typing it at all. But if it wasn’t Dream, it couldn’t be anyone else.
Dream didn’t have any allies left.
It was just them.
They’d left.
He was hesitating it. Waiting to see if the nerves that were now twisting around in his gut would leave him be or if they would make him do something. And then the spams of failed “I love you’s” came through the messages and Sapnap froze.
Dream was always one to say it.
He went back through the messages. Reading the pain that was in it and the hurt that was rolling through. Knowing that his friend was the way he was and then Sapnap realized how much these messages looked like a goodbye.
How much they seemed like a suicide note written into text.
The thought put bile in his throat immediately.
Sapnap ran. Without thinking, he got his clothes changed and a sword in hand and he was running. Racing forward and knowing that the only place Dream was going to be right now was the community house. He knew that he would be there to find him and he knew that he wanted him.
He wanted Dream.
He wanted his brother.
The world moved in blinks. Blurs and flashes of color as he pushed himself forward faster and faster until it felt like his feet were trying to break through the ground and his knees were going to fall from his limbs.
Sapnap barely registered the door of the community house slamming open. The way it hit into the wall or the way it bounced.
He heard the echo of it.
He heard the silence that swallowed the air.
“Dream?!”
If he wanted him here then he would call out for him. Dream would be here and he would yell his name and he could find him and prove that he was fine and he could yell at him and things would be fine.
They would be fine.
Dream would be fine.
All he heard was silence.
“Dream!?”
He went to the staircase. Looking down it and seeing nothing but the silence and the darkness. It wrought a knife through his gut as he thought about it. The messages that Dream had sent to him and the fact that all he’d had was silence. He counted.
Waiting the seconds before he took the steps. Wishing that he would hear his idiot of a brother and he would be able to yell at him and curse him out for making him worry. For making him scared that he would be hurt or something worse.
It was easier if he was angry. Easier if he was mad at him and he could fight with him. If he didn’t have to hurt then he would yell. He would curse Dream apart until his last breath if he had to.
If it meant that he lost his brother on his own terms rather than the terms of death.
“Dream!”
He made it to his room. Pushing on the door and feeling weight on the other side.
“I’m not kidding. Open up. You wanted me here. Open the door.”
He didn’t hear anything. He knocked again.
“Dream? Hey—”
He heard a wheeze on the other side. That was all he needed to hear.
Between the space of heartbeats Sapnap was pushing the door open and seeing the body that was laying on the other side. The small sound of pain that left his brother as he was jostled on the ground.
Nothing else mattered. Just getting down to him and pressing his fingers into his pulse point to check him. To feel it racing under his tips and unsteady. To feel him breathing. To feel the clamminess in his skin and the shudder of his body.
“Dream?”
He knew the marks of poison. He could feel the fever and he saw the flush in his face. His eyes closed and his body weak but he was alive and that gave them time. Pulling out milk from his inventory, Sapnap tipped Dream’s head back and poured it in slow. Working on his throat to make sure he was swallowing it and not drowning. He held him closer as he listened to his breathing evening out. As he felt his body beginning to relax.
He never once let go of his pulse.
“I’m here now.”
He was almost too late. He was almost—
“I’m here.”