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Dream stumbled his way through the spruce forest. His lungs aching as he tried to focus on what he needed to do. He had gone through the plan a thousand times in his head. He knew where he was supposed to meet with Punz and how he was supposed to get there. It was part of his plan that Techno would bring him back to his house and that he would guard him for the time it took for him to get out of the prison. It was part of the plan that he wouldn’t be able to stay.
He would admit to himself that it wasn’t part of the plan that he was going to be kicked out. He wasn’t expecting for Technoblade to take back the armor and send him off on his way without anything else to protect himself with but he was doing what was smart for his home and the both of them in the long run. Dream had known already that he wouldn’t be able to stay.
The server had seen Techno breaking him out of the cell and the both of them fighting together. They’d already attacked Techno in his home once before and he knew full well that none of them were above doing the same kind of thing twice. He knew that they were arrogant and had no sense of honor when it came to a war. They were fighters and cowards in the same breath and they hated anyone that was stronger than them.
They used a cell and a trapped defenseless enemy in order to win anything they’d ever won because it was the only way they were ever strong enough to do it. It was the only place they could ever hold power when their enemy had none. They were pathetic and they were weak and they were useless.
And still Dream was scared.
He was scared that each time he closed his eyes he was back in that cell. That he was finally losing his mind like they told him he would be. That he was finally slipping away into something else and he was never going to be able to get himself back to what he’d been before. That he was never going to be able to recover what he used to be. That his mind was shattered.
He kept feeling the heat of the sun against his skin and blinking to see if iut was really just the lava awol around him. If he was imagining the cold and the snow and the spruce that was surrounding him. If he was breathing in clean fresh air or if it was the filthy recycled bloody air of his cell.
He didn’t know and the more he walked the more his reality blurred.
One moment he was here in the present and the other he was ther.e Time after time he was withering himself into a hole and he was choking on it. His breaths catching in his lungs and he was strangling inside his own body. He could imagine the hands of Quackity and Sam around his throat. He could imagine the potions that were force fed down his throat. He could see it all so clearly and he couldn’t stop the images that poured through his head. He couldn’t control any of it. It was sitting against him like it wanted him gone and he was scared.
He needed Punz. His wounds were reopening and he knew that he should have asked Techno for a potion to help him a little bit more but the thought of taking one right now made his fear grow worse and he wasn’t sure he could stomach the thought of it.
He wasn’t sure he was able to do it again. For the rest of his life, maybe. He wasn’t sure that he was ever going to be able to look at a potion and not think about the way Sam would hold his jaw open and force the potions down. How Quackity would pull his body apart and then make him watch as he sealed it back together piece by little piece. How he would carve up his skin then dip it in regen and seal it back to his muscles.
The pain, even in his memories, was enough to make him stumble. Was enough to make him vomit the small bits of food he’d eaten while running from the fight. It was enough that he was terrified of what was coming next.
Legs wet from the snow he was against and his joints feeling stiff and locked against the cold. His fingers were turning color. He was trying to find the strength to shiver but he felt it fading fast. There was so much that was wrong with him and the cold should have felt like heaven compared to the heat of the cell.
Instead he felt it like it was too much.
Like he couldn’t breathe around the damage that was laying inside of him. Like he was smothered inside himself and he couldn’t get out.
He couldn’t find Punz so he had to go back. He wasn’t supposed to go to Techno and he knew that his friend had pushed him away. It was for his own safety and it was the right call for the both of them to make but right now if he didn’t get help then he was going to die and he would tell Techno that he owed him a favor in turn. That if he helped him stay alive that he would help him with whatever he wanted in the future to come.
So long as there was a future for him to run to he could do it. He could try his best for it. He could make it something that they could have. He could fight for it. He could follow their goals. They could make it real.
Real for them.
He forced his body to move even when it fought against him. He pushed himself to be stronger. To push harder. To do more and more and more until sickness was twisting in his gut again. He had nothing left that his body would be able to give but he was going to try no matter the cost. He was going to do everything that he could so that he could make it through this and he was going to fight like his life depended on it.
It did depend on it.
He had no other choice.
Making it to the cabin was far easier said than done. His lungs feeling like he was breathing in shards of ice rather than air around him. His hands were too cold to move anymore. Pain and heat that was too hot for the temperature outside coursing through his veins. He could see them swollen and thick and any twitch he tried to give made him want to cry out with pain. His toes were following and each step turned to agony through his body. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t know how to do this. He didn’t know how to make it through and he wasn’t sure that he could.
With all that was said and done he wasn’t sure that he was going to make it.
He wasn’t sure he would ever make it.
Dream stopped watching where he was going. He stopped being able to see the world around him. He stopped being able to process what was happening here and there and the world was twisting too much at the edges for him to see it anyway. A merge that was gaining against him and he wasn’t going to make it.
He couldn’t make it.
His body was falling before he could stop it.
Tipping sideways down into the snow and the cold and wet of it soaked into him in seconds. His prison uniform was thin and the bandaging wound beneath it was shoddy and rushed at the best of cases. It wasn’t enough for him to be able to make it through this. It wasn’t enough for him to be able to survive out here. It wasn’t enough for him to—
“Dream.”
Hands were turning him. His back was in the snow now. A hand cupped around his face.
“Dream, look at me.”
He knew that voice. He wasn’t close enough. He was trying to get there.
“Open your eyes.”
They were frozen shut. He couldn’t. He couldn't do this. He couldn't—
“Alright, Nerd, hang on.”
He was being moved. Arms beneath his shoulders and knees and then Dream was being folded into a chest strong and warm. A cloak wrapped around him and he couldn’t help the moan that dragged its way out of him at the heat of it. He could barely feel it but it was there and anything was better than the daggers of pain that was the wet and cold of the snow touching him before.
“I thought you left.”
He tried to talk, it didn’t come out as anything more than garbled sound.
“Yeah, I gathered that.”
Techno had always humored his deliriums in the prison too. In the cell when he was too hot and he would lose where he was. When the potions would bear down on him and he couldn’t breathe. When the torture and the pain turned into too much and he couldn’t keep himself sane anymore. Techno had been there and he had saved him time after time. He had protected him over and over again and Dream could have never asked for someone more loyal.
He couldn’t have asked for a better friend.
Once upon a time he would have said that for a man he called his brother.
Once upon a time that man hadn’t promised to kill him the first time he saw the sun.
“You need to warm up, Dream. We need to get you out of those clothes. Come on.”
He felt the pull on his uniform and the fear returned full force. The pain and the panic and the terror that he was going to be cut into and taken apart and healed and—
“Shh,” a heavy hand on the back of his neck. What Techno had always done for him in the prison to ground him. To bring him back to the world. “You’re safe. You aren’t there. It’s just me. You came back to me, remember?”
He tried to nod. His head spun. His stomach clenched. He was in so much pain. He was so cold. They were inside now, weren’t they? Why was he still so cold? Why did his blood feel so hot when his skin felt like it was ice? Why did he feel one second from shattering?
“You going to let me help you?”
Techno would help him. Techno would protect him. Techno would keep him safe.
He nodded. Techno sighed.
“Alright, Nerd, then let me help.”
He waited for him to say yes. He waited till then to begin.
“It’ll be alright.”