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It had become hard to ignore the grief that welled in his chest over the years. Dream had known that the day was going to come but he still caught himself thinking about it from time to time. The weight and the pressure that was brought to him for the fact that all of this was over now.
He had watched their series grow, the fans go from tens to hundreds to thousands and more. He had seen the artwork of them and their characters and he had been proud to be an actor and story writer for the streams they made.
The SMP had been shining and bright and full of life as all of them would live and laugh and move around each other. The chaos that occurred in their house and the push they all gave to one another.
He remembered starting everything. Setting up the first cameras when it was just him and Sapnap and George. How the three of them had run around with each other. The places they explored and the things they did with one another. He’d laughed and they’d joked and the world had slowly grown as more and more people watched them look after it.
They invited others in and then the story started to build. The chances for them to make the server from just a random home and streams showing the days of their lives into something so much more. Characters they made that matched them and yet were still so different. They had seen chaos going in and out of their interactions. All of them growing up beside their characters and their fans and the house they lived in together turned into a loud and vibrant mess that all of them got to enjoy.
It was happy for them. It was content.
At least for Dream it had been.
He knew, logically, that it wouldn’t get to last forever. That at some point in his life he was going to see an end to the story and they would need to go back to the world just being a home for them. The tourism from other serves and the chaos they invited in. The people that toured the Prime Path as it stood and saw the places and nations they built through their stories. The prison that loomed in the corner of the map and held over his head like a mark of death itself.
None of the story fighting had been real. All of them had stayed close with each other and worked to make sure their acting was just that. All the nightmares and doubts he would have and Sam would check on him through every step of their prison performance. He knew that his friends cared about him and he’d known that he would be safe with them.
Their home was strong and safe and Dream had his family around him all the time to keep him from letting his doubts get too loud in his head. He knew that he was safe with them beside him. He knew that things would be alright.
But now?
Now that the world around him had turned quiet ages ago and new servers had been built. The DreamSMP had not been streamed in ages by any of them. Their story had come to a close with silence that stretched too long to be safe in the house. Disagreements that turned into arguments that turned into real anger that shouted through the house and down the halls and through the doors. One by one Dream had watched the family he carefully built fall apart around him. He had seen how they all shied away from one another and how they all avoided the fighting like it was a plague against them. It was, Dream knew that it was, he just didn’t know how to fix it for them. He didn’t know how to make anything better from what it was.
Each time he tried to step in a new fight would break out. Each time he tried to settle things the accusations turned and pointed at him. Too many people that wanted too different things. They couldn’t agree and the notion that they could all stay together and work on their own projects seemed to make them even more mad.
They accused him of trying to take their ideas if they stayed on his SMP. They accused him of taking credit for their work because they were known by their roles attached to him. They accused him of more and more and more and all of it piled up until he was here.
Standing alone on the path of a long abandoned server.
The lights that had once been so bright here as the people had loved and explored the world now dim and broken. Cobwebs that covered the untouched surfaces of everything he could see and it drove a spike through his heart at the notion of it all. He could see the shadow of the prison even from here and Dream held his arms around his body just a little closer at the memories it dredged up.
The group of them had all been discussing what to do for their next season. What direction they all wanted their characters to go and how they wanted to remake the directions. If they were going to hold parallels to the original versions of their characters or if they were going to just fully refresh all of them to start something almost totally new for the world and let the viewers theorize and figure things out as they went.
Tommy had started yelling at them but by now Dream couldn’t even remember what. He remembered telling Tommy he didn’t want to fight. He remembered trying to break things down so that they could all go back to their discussion and he wouldn’t have to have the screaming in his ear to remind him of all the things he’d apparently done wrong to his friends even though none of them ever had issues with him before.
He’d asked Tommy to sit down so they could all talk like adults.
Tommy told him to go back to the prison so they could make it real.
He remembered how quickly Sapnap had stepped into the fight at that. How sharply he had cut into Tommy with his words but Dream never could forget the look of his old friend’s face when he’d said it. How much Tommy had meant it. How much he wanted him in there for real.
He’d taught Tommy how to use a trident. He’d worked with him for so much over the years. He’d thought they were friends.
He didn’t know where it all went wrong.
Sapnap had stayed a bit closer to him after that. When the attacks started happening and he learned that some of the others had started saying he was as monstrous as the character he played. He had nightmares about the kidnappings and attacks that happened to him before in the past and now there was a threat of it happening again and this time he wouldn’t have the same safety he’d had then.
He could barely sleep. He could barely eat. He thought about the prison and all the times he’d been scared that it might be real. All the ways his friends had tried to comfort him and tell him that it wasn’t. That he was safe with them and nothing would ever change that.
Something had changed that.
All the family he thought he had found had left him.
One by one they had moved and left and removed themselves from the server they once all used to share. They had a safety with each other in the past and all of it was gone now. They weren’t talking to each other and any messages he tried to send were all left to be unread and unanswered.
Somewhere in time he had lost them.
Sapnap, George, Sam, Ant, Bad, Puffy.
They were the only ones he had left.
Dream breathed deep on the cool evening air of the SMP. The silence of it settling around him like a blanket wrapped gently around his shoulders. There weren’t people here to fill the silence that surrounded him and there was nothing left for him to call upon to know that it was done.
He knew it was done.
There was nothing left.
None of the family he thought he forged here for better or worse. All the promises and all the memories. He’d spilt so much blood to make this world better and better and to give them all the fighting chance of a path in life they wouldn’t have gotten before.
He didn’t think acknowledging he had a part in things meant he was taking credit.
He had been there, he had opened the door. They did all the work. It was because of who they were that they stepped through the door. That they kept walking once they made it through. It wasn’t everybody. Dream had given openings for others to join and some of them hadn’t. Some of them had come just for a little while and vanished away into the cracks.
They all had made something of themselves.
Acknowledging that he was there did not erase that.
Dream didn’t think he should be punished for simply existing. He didn’t think he was evil for trying.
That was the way so many thought of him now. That was the way so many of them called after him. With hate in their eyes and anger on their tongues.
It made him sick.
It made turning the cameras on harder to do.
He kept going. He refused to let himself stop after all the things he worked toward. He refused to let the words of people who clearly no longer cared dictate the way he spend his life. He was proud of them. He would always be proud of them. If they hated him then he would learn to live with it.
Even if it felt like a knife to his heart.
Sapnap whispers to you: Are you coming?
Sapnap whispers to you: I have everything set up on the test world
Sapnap whispers to you: George and D are hate flirting and if you don’t get here to distract this purple mf I’m going to lose my mind.
At least there were still some that stood with him. At least he still had some he could go home to.
At least there was a home where he was still wanted.
You whisper to Sapnap: I’ll be right there.
You whisper to Sapnap: I’m just saying goodbye.