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Dream had been convinced that the amount of time it took him to find Punz wouldn’t be this long. To be fair, he also hadn’t expected Techno to immediately strip him of the armor he was given and throw him into the snow. He should have expected it. He and Techno weren’t friends. The only reason the man broke him out was so that his favor would be repaid. Nothing more. Nothing less.
A part of Dream wondered if the time they spent together in the prison was nothing more to techno than keeping an old ally alive. That the man would have done it for any person who was in that cell. They weren’t friends. Dream didn’t have friends.
He wondered how many times it would actually take him for that lesson to actually stick in his head. He was getting tired of having the tiniest bit of faith he had in people to be squashed in the worst way possible. He was constantly being betrayed by the people he had hope in.
He was tired of being hurt over and over by the people he thought at one point he could trust. That’s what lead him to being in situations like Pandora’s Vault. As much as he pretended to preach about the risks of attachments, he never could really separate himself from his own. Even now, after Sapnap had promised to kill him after he escaped that prison, a small part of him still wanted to trust the man. Still had faith that when it really came down to it, he wouldn’t hurt him. He knew that faith was going to get him killed. But he couldn’t stop himself from having it.
His feet were freezing into the snow beneath him. The crappy old boots that Techno had so graciously not stolen off of his feet weren’t doing anything to keep the water from sleeping into his skin. His entire body was shivering. The numbness below his knees was starting to set in and he knew realistically that he wouldn’t be able to survive the night like this.
He would pass out from the blood loss if the hypothermia didn't get to him first. He was in a lose-lose situation at the moment and things were not looking good for him at the moment. He could only hope that Punz would find him soon enough to where he didn’t freeze out in the snow.
He kept moving forward, ignoring the sharp pins and needles tearing through the bottom of his feet. Snow flakes floated down from the sky, landing and melting against the warm skin of his face. He was sure his nose was bright red against the whiteness of the world around him.
His skin had always been sensitive to the cold and the sun. He remembered being scolded by his best friends after he had run around shirtless with them, only to have ended up with bright red shoulders. It had only taken a couple hours in the sunlight for his skin to be completely burned. He remembered Sapnap huffing at him as he rubbed crushed aloe gel over the burnt skin, telling him to be more careful next time.
Now, he mourned the heat of the sunburn. His skin was burning, not with the pleasant ache of heat, but the sharp sting of the cold. Relentless and unforgiving. It dug into his skin and soaked into his bones.
If he did come out of this alive, he would no doubt be completely sick from the whole ordeal. He used to have a good immune system when he had spent the nights running around in the rain with his two best friends. Not so much after he had been locked in an obsidian box for more than a year.
Since then, he has had zero immune system, zero strength, and zero of all the things he had prided himself on before being locked in that box. He gritted his teeth as he tripped over a hidden route. The pain washed up his leg in a painful wave. He had to stay focused. If he let his mind wander for too long he would be face first in the snow before he even realized that he stopped. Pain seemed to do that at a certain point.
It would numb your body and cloud your mind until you had no idea of what was going on around you at all. He knew the feeling all too well.
Through the pain and aches in his entire body, he kept moving. He wasn’t going to let the snow be what finally took his out. For the next few hours, there was nothing but the pure whiteness of the sun reflecting off of the bright snow.
He kept himself moving until the sun began to set. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t a death sentence. The brief moments of direct sun were heaven compared to the cold that he knew was bound to follow. The second the light dipped completely behind the horizon, the odds of the cold killing him at least tripled. He tried to keep pushing. He tried to keep moving through the snow.
But with every passing moment his legs got heavier and heavier. His eyelids were weighing down against him. No matter how much he tried to peel his eyes back open, they wouldn’t stay. He knew that his time was coming out. Every couple of moments, his vision tricked him into seeing Punz in the distance. Each time he tried to call out, his voice wouldn’t work. He would blink his eyes and the figure would be gone again.
He knew by hallucinations that his time was running out. At some point his understanding of the world began to slip away. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know if he was even still moving or not. His entire vision was grey and dark.
It didn’t take long for his consciousness to go with it.
The last thing Sapnap had expected from making his way to Technoblade’s house, was somehow coming across Dream on the way there. He had expected some tense and long awaited confrontation. He expected the man clad in armor and ready to start a fight. He expected to finally get to fulfill his promise to the server and to the man himself.
Instead he found a body crumpled against the snowy floor. It was a miracle Sap had even seen him through the blizzard of the arctic. The only thing he could see for miles was dark snow. It was like some invisible force had pulled him to find the man crumpled in the snow.
Sapnap leaned down towards him, falling onto a knee. Dream was completely passed out. It would be so easy right now to just end this all. One move and none of the server would ever have to do this again. But when his fingers grazed over the frozen man’s skin, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t even bring himself to think to hurt the man.
His skin was cold as ice. Despite looking dead, the man’s entire frame was shivering and small puffs of air were trickling from his lips. Sapnap started at the man he used to call his best friend. The person he used to call his brother. They had kept each other alive on the streets. They had come from nothing together and climbed the ranks together. He didn’t know when everything had gone so wrong. He supposed by the time either of them had figured out how far they had fallen, it was already too late for both of them.
He missed the boy he used to know. The boy who had come to him about his crush on George. The boy who had cried with him through the dark nights. As he stared at the man who had been so recognizable for so long, he saw his old friend. The light freckles dusted across his cheeks, cheeks that have gotten so pale. He looked sickly. Skinnier than should be humanly possible. When he started to look closer, he noticed the arrays of wound that overlapped the man’s body.
It didn’t feel just. Keeping his promise didn’t feel right. Killing a defenseless man was cowardly. He wasn’t going to let his former brother meet an ending so weak. He couldn’t find it in himself either to leave him there to rot in the cold. Neither of those endings seemed satisfying for a man like Dream. He didn’t deserve so little.
At the same time, Sapnap could say that he didn’t deserve so much. He had never been sure how much of Tommy’s overcomplicated stories had been fully the truth or not. He never made an effort to ask either. By that time, he and Dream had fallen so far apart that he didn’t care enough to ask. The man had already been so recognizable that the actions being spewed from Tommy’s lips hardly even correlated with the man that Sapnap used to know.
Despite it all, against his better judgement, Sapnap slid his hands under his knees and upper back. He wasn’t difficult to lift at all. His body was even lighter than it looked. Sap straightened himself up. He sighed and pulled his cloak off of himself, using it to shield Dream’s face from the piercing wind.
He turned around and began making the trek back to Kinoke. The kingdom hadn’t been very far from where he found Dream. Part of him wondered why Dream was going that way to begin with. Maybe he had been coming to finally get his revenge. Something in Sapnap told him that it wasn’t the case. Whether his intentions were malicious or not, the man obviously hadn’t been strong enough to make it to wherever he had been going.
It only took him a short half hour for the tundra to transition to taiga, and then to a forest. It wasn’t warm, considering it was late November, but it was better than the blizzard going on behind them. He kept Dream curled tight against his arm’s, face hidden. He quietly made his way into Kinoke and all the way to the house that he called his own. He kicked the door open with his foot, closing it carefully behind him. He made his way to the couch and carefully set Dream down against the cushions, making sure his limbs weren’t folded awkwardly beneath him.
He threw a blanket over the shivering man before moving around the house to light a couple candles. He opened the back door, carefully searching for his tarp covered logs. He grabbed a couple and brought them inside. He places them in the fireplace, positioning them into a tee-pee shape. He used a candle to light some wood shavings and threw them in the middle of the shape, watching as the previously hatched logs quickly caught fire. He stoked the fire until it was consistently blazing before sighing and sitting back on his knees.
What was he doing? He had his sworn enemy inside of his house, sleeping on his couch. If anybody on the server saw this, they would think he was crazy. Sapnap wasn’t sure they would be wrong. He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to collect his thoughts and figure out where to go from this moment when there was a pained groan from the couch.
He quickly stood up, facing Dream first, then moving closer. The man’s eyes weren’t open yet, but his body was twitching under the blanket.
“Dream?” Sapnap asked. The once so familiar name felt forgiven coming off of his tongue. The man twitched again, another soft noise of discomfort spilling from thin, fragile lips. Sapnap sighed, gathering himself, before moving closer to the couch. As he did, he saw green eyes start to peel open. The movement looked like a struggle. Once his eyes focused, they quickly widened and he began scrambling against the couch.
Sapnap cursed, rushing forward.
“Sap-” His voice was raw and torn, laced with underlying panic.
“I would have already killed you if I wanted you dead,” Sapnap hissed, “Calm down.” He knew it was pretty harsh for someone who had just woken up after being half dead, but he knew the man in front of him deserved it at least a little.
Dream closed his mouth. His body stilled and he nodded carefully, eyes darting around the room. Before he could even ask the question, Sapnap was answering.
“You’re in Kinoke,” The younger man hummed, “Nobody knows you’re here.” He saw the information spinning inside Dream’s head. The other man sat back against the couch a bit.
“Why?” His voice cracked on the question. Part of Sapnap wondered how they had gotten to the point that his own brother had to wonder why he saved him from passing in the snow. The other part of him knew.
“You looked cold.” It was a foolish and simple answer. One that really had nothing to do with the mind tangling dilemma he had gone through out there in the snow. He wasn’t going to let Dream know much simply seeing him messed with Sapnap’s head.
The other man didn’t press against the crappy answer. Sapnap was grateful for that. He didn't know what he would say if Dream started questioning him. There wasn’t a good answer.
Right when the silence had started to get awkward, a gasp of pain forced it way from Dream’s throat. Sapnap’s eyes widened.
“What?” He fretted, staring at the man in front of him. Dream only groaned.
“F-feet,” He shivered through gritted teeth. Sapnap moved the blankets. How was he so stupid as to not moved the soaked and sorry excuse for shoes that were trapping the cold against his feet. He cursed, moving forward quickly and gently untying his shoes. He pulled them off of his feet, then carefully peeled the wet sock off with them.
His feet were discolored to an unnatural gray. They looked like they belonged to a dead man. It was then he realized that Dream’s entire body was covered in icy, wet clothes. Sapnap sighed, he carefully pulled the blanket back over Dream’s feet. The man whimpered and Sapnap shushed him gently.
“Hold on just a minute,” He assured, moving into the kitchen. He quickly grabbed a couple clean socks and searched his cabinets. He pulled out a bag of rice and filled a couple, tying them off. Before leaving the room, he set out a pot of water to boil. He quickly stumbled back towards the fireplace. He hung the filled socks with clothes-pins above the flame, letting the rice inside heat up.
He moved back towards the couch where Dream lay, freezing, shivering, and bloody. Sapnap sighed. The man was hardly conscious anymore. The younger one took a deep breath before pulling the blanket off. He carefully worked Dream out of his ragged and torn garments. He didn’t make the removal of his old friend’s clothes awkward. It was simply medical.
Once he got Dream out of all the wet undergarments, he quickly move back to the rice filled socks that were now heated up and warm. He carefully unclipped them from the fireplace and carefully laid them on top of Dream’s center of body. His chest, his armpits, his groin, and his neck. Once he made sure the small patches were not too hot, he pulled the blanket back over his body.
Sapnap watches the man shivers slowly disappeared. He let out a sigh of relief when Dream was no longer freezing to death. He sat back, letting himself enjoy the moment of peace before standing up and heading to the bathroom. He washed the blood that had leaked from Dream’s torn prison garments off in the sink. He grimaced at the red tainted liquid as it ran down the drain. Opening the cabinet, he pulled out some healing potions and bandages.
He brought them back out to the room Dream was in to find the man half awake, staring at Sapnap with lazy eyes. Sapnap sighed.
He set the dressings down beside the other man and once again pulled the blankets back to reveal the man wounded body.
Without saying a word, he quickly got to work cleaning out every individual wound. He rubbed the dirt from cuts and disinfected gashes. The larger ones he poured small amounts of healing potions onto. He watched Dream’s skin stitch itself back together under the power of the bright pink liquid.
When he was no longer actively bleeding out, Sapnap began carefully wrapping each wound in clean bandages, mindful to not pull them too tight on the other man. He didn’t know why he was being so careful or why he cared so much to begin with.
He swore just this morning that if he had come across the man tonight, he would put an end to his all. He would be the one that held the blade as it tore through Dream’s organs. He would be the last one his brother would see as he gurgled up blood and took his final breaths.
So why was he here, care-taking to the older man whom he had sworn to kill. He didn’t know the answer himself.
Once all of his bandages were tightened and laid on nicely, Sapnap stepped back. Everything looked wrapped to a good enough extent. He made sure the make-shift heat pads were still warm before pulling the blankets back over Dream’s body, trapping the warmth.
Dream was watching him with half closed eyes, but he wasn’t saying anything. He only observed Sap with soft eyes as the younger man smoothed out the ruffles in the blanket.
Sapnap walked back into the kitchen, pulling the now boiling water off of the stove and soaking leaves to make the familiar tea they had loved to enjoy together years ago. He really missed the simplicity of those days. It had all been so easy back then.
He poured a filling amount into two different mugs and carried them both back towards the couch. Dream flinched slightly when he entered the room, and Sapnap couldn’t help the stab of guilt that he had been part of the reason a once so brilliant man had been reduced to this.
He offered a mug to Dream. Neither of them spoke a word as Dream sat up and took the mug They both took slow sips, careful not to burns their tongues or mouth. The warmness settled over them, thick and comforting. For just a moment, the other things didn’t exist.
Pandora’s vault didn’t exist. Tommy didn’t exist. L’manburg didn’t exist. None of it.
It was just him and Dream as it was all of those years ago. He closed his eyes, letting the feeling wash over him.
Neither of the men spoke as they finished their team. Nor did they voice a word and Sapnap blew out the candles, leaving the fireplace burning, and grabbing a blanket of his own. They didn’t acknowledge it as Sapnap laid down on the carpet beneath the rug, listening to Dream’s soft breaths. The noise was quickly putting him to sleep.
He had no idea if Dream would still be there when he woke. The man could kill him in his sleep if he really wanted to, but the foolish part of Sapnap knew that he wouldn’t.
The heat of the fire and the comfort washing through the air, quickly pulling him into sleep.
And for once, neither man fought the call of rest.