Work Text:
“No you don’t get to do that!!!” the teen screams, teeth bared. Eyes wet and rimmed red.
“You don’t get to do that,” he weakly protests, voice choking. Tears streaming down his gaunt cheeks.
“You don’t get to do that, Dream.” he falls down onto his knees. He isn’t sure if it’s because of the alcohol or the tobacco, or perhaps maybe he did it subconsciously.
“Man — Leo,” Dream whispers out. Reaching out to hold the teen.
“Fuck you,” the teen hisses, voice thick with bitterness,“ goddamnit fuck you Clay.”
Dream just grabs the kid in his arms. Hugging him, and he’s able to see the innocence that has been stripped away from him and the tarnished youth.
He can also smell the alcohol and cigars on his breath. The teen cries, weakly pushing against Dream’s chest. Before finally giving up, and just settling onto his chest.
“Kill me Dream, you’ve already done it before,” Leo hisses through his dull human teeth. Dream just holds him close.
“I fucking hate you” Dream just hugs the teen.
"You don't get to do this to me!" Dream shouts, screaming as he pulls his hair out.
The young girl just laughs, a bitter sound that grates on his ears. That shouldn't exist in a voice so young. Though neither of them are by any means young (at least by human standards).
"This is the life nations have to lead, brother, " she replies. Her youthful voice became quieter. Faint.
Dream looked up, where his sister had stood, is nothing, but shimmery dust that is rapidly disappearing.
He screams.
Dream always wears a mask.
For as long as they could have remembered his mask is as much part of him as his body. George can't remember ever seeing Dream when he was young because for as long as he could remember Dream had only shown up within the last year.
Even if it feels like he's known the man for much longer. Since the beginning of time.
He tries not to think about how he saw the same mask dream had on in a gift store. How the woman behind the counter simply shook her head when asked if she remembered Dream's face.
The mask is a part of Dream, it never comes off. Even around the closest of his friends.
George is making is helping a revolution when he realizes that Dream doesn't have friends.
A newcomer, the scent of something else irritates the masked man.
Schlatt cocks his head to one side, horns making the movement much more obvious than it should have been.
"How do I know you aren't lying?"
Dream just shakes the man's hand.
"I only have common interests, Schlatt."
Schlatt flips idly through the book, pages yellow from age and ink smudged from so many hands.
He stops when he comes across one page in particular. It's of the old Dream leaders, but that's not what interests him.
In the background he can see the face of their nation; he's probably 16 or 17 in human years. The photo was taken at least a century ago.
"Hey Dream, who did you say personified the land?"
"I didn't say anything about a personification," the man in question evenly responds.
Schlatt hums, putting the book down.
He makes sure to not give any of his grievances away.
Nations can't hurt their citizens.
But Schlatt hasn't officially been a part of something in a long time.
Carson is a nation until he isn't.
His nation is empty, dead. No longer existing, except in the memories of a few mortals. Somehow that's enough to keep him alive. Cruel.
Then again he never really died in the first place.
No one ever gave out the final blow, not of his own kind or a mortal.
(He did, but it doesn't matter — ghosts still cry out his name)
Dream doesn't know when he met him.
It was probably when some of the others started coming in. New people. Foreign, running away from destabilized countries. The man is among the masses, poor and hungry.
He's blonde heat cut into a bowl, wears dorky glasses, and a plain, ragged sweatshirt. He blends into the masses because there is nothing extraordinary about him. Nothing that the other man wants to give away at least.
Then again, back then Dream himself was nothing more than a weak puppet nation.
He recognizes now that the other nations hid among the masses to make sure they strayed far away from his own borders.
He is ancient, and Dream is practically an infant when compared to him.
"Hey kid, what are you doing here?" The other asks, lighting up a cigarette as he says this — he extends his hand to Dream.
"Running."
"Hmm," the man hums, inhaling the addictive smoke of nicotine. Purple smoke, a foreign brand.
" Carson," the stranger, familiar, says.
Something about that name feels almost intimate, taboo. Dream's gut turns uncomfortably:
" Dream."
Carson laughs then, and Dream warily looks up at the older nation.
Carson shakes his head, and tosses Dream a cigarette box. Waving as he walks away. Dream continues on his way.
On the other side of the street, he bumps into another man, young with goat horns on his head and wearing a black suit, slightly unfit, waving him over.
"Keep them, if you're lucky they'll make you feel funny."
It's only when he's down a few streets down that Dream realizes that the box of cigarettes was really just a box of pocky.
He feels a bit scammed.
(It's fine, drugs are easy to come by in his streets.)
Carson never really died, but he also never really lived.
He smiles at a terrified half man. half goat abomination; who suddenly looks a lot younger than he ever did.
He's choking on his own blood. Acid dribbling down, where it falls the plants shrivel up and die.
There are so many people, his people, looking at him.
He closes his eyes, committing their faces to memory, even if it's useless, and the world goes dark.
He awakens.
A bowl-cut man spends most of his days wandering the land. Spending his days goofing with close friends and making new ones along the way. He doesn't bother with sleep, and his friends just shake off his stubborn insistence that sleep doesn't really affect him.
But when he does sleep, almost caught by surprise by the very human function, he's plagued by memories. His dreams are prophecies, histories best left forgotten.
He spits up acidic blood, and stares up at the moon and stars.
Familiar in all the wrong ways.