Archive of Our Own ^beta

    Puffy hated the quiet. There was a difference in stillness and quiet. There was a type of peace that came with standing on the deck of her ship and watching the glittering waves. Sitting alone in the woods in a hunting perch waiting for food to come by and meet steel to come to her table. Listening to the wind rustling through the trees and the chirps of birds and animals as they went about their day. 

    She enjoyed the times like that. 

    What she found herself hating now was the fact that everything the server had once been seemed to be sapped and gone from them. The colors of everything seemed dimmer now than they were in her memories. 

    The server used to be full of laughter and smiles. Ringing sounds of blades and cheers of victories in the end of friendly duels and spars. Trades happening and people begging others for materials. Signs that were asking for help in gathering materials for random projects. The server held community. A family that scattered far and wide through love and fun. 

    It was poisoned. 

    Hurt and beaten down time and time again until all of it had fractured. Trust was rare and joy turned few and far between. 

    The quiet stillness that smothered everything now was too much. There wasn’t even a breeze to move the leaves or grass. Nothing to shift around the world and nothing for them to have for normalcy. Their normal had been broken by a man in a smile mask. A man that had destroyed her home. 

    A man that had once been her son. 

    Puffy sighed deep in her chest as she walked down the too quiet of the Prime Path. She hated seeing everything like this. She hated how their home had become but there was no way to save any of it. There was no way to protect what they’d become. It was just acceptance. 

    Acceptance that the boy she raised had become a monster and terrorized everyone to the point it looked and felt like the server itself was dying. 

    Her eyes strayed over to the black eyesore that was the Prison containing Pandora’s Vault. All bad things of the world. All things Dream. 

    Puffy remembered raising him. How she had found him as a baby abandoned in the woods and had taken him in without question. He’d been sick. She figured that whoever his parents were hadn’t been able or hadn’t wanted to deal with a sick baby and so they got rid of him. 

    The sea spray had helped. She took him to countless doctors over the years and all of them would tell her the same things when she would describe what she observed of him and Dream would tell about his own experiences. The salt of the sea spray eased his coughs when he was at sea rather than stuck on land. His lungs didn’t constrict as easily and he beamed under the bright sun. 

    She remembered when Dream realized he wasn’t coughing anymore at all. How he had cheered and half bounced around the ship in circles until he tired himself out. He was thrilled and so was she. 

    She remembered how Dream, when he was young, would help around the ship. How he would work on knotting the ropes and testing all the ways he could tie them. 

    How he would work to cook with the limited supplies and he would defend his poor skills even though he improved each time he tried. 

    He would be lookout and he would fight and she had taught him how to fight. She had taught him how to size out their marks and how to tell who was a threat and who wasn’t. Puffy had taught Dream everything he knew about fighting and conning. About truth and lies. About how to handle a weapon and a crowd and being outnumbered. 

    She had taught him everything and still she had missed what he was doing to her. She had missed what he was doing to the server. She hadn’t put the dots together that the son she raised was a monster. She didn’t even know when he had turned into one. When he had become something so vile that he would hunt innocents and kill them for power and greed. 

    He wasn’t the boy she raised anymore. 

    That was why she had sided with Tommy in the end. Why she had stood by his side and left Dream to be attacked and cornered and brought to the prison. She hadn’t brought herself to visit him. Not wanting to see the nightmare that was trapped inside where her little Dream had been. 

    She didn’t want to look at him without his mask and see the young happy face she saw all the time dark and covered in scars. She knew the fighting he’d done. She knew that he’d been killed. She knew he was on his last life 

    If the server was this silent she wondered how it was in the cell alone. 

    If Dream was alt all repentant for the things he had done. If he felt anything at all about the fact that he had commit crime upon crime to the server and destroyed everything all of them had made with each other. She wondered if Dream even cared. If he felt anything at all or if his heart was simply rotten and turned to a black hole in his chest. 

    She wanted to know that Dream knew what he’d done. 

    She wanted to see any sign that the boy she raised might still be inside. That she hadn’t fallen for such a lie that that child had never existed at all. 

    She remembered how Dream would come to her room in the middle of the night with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders and clutched tight in his tiny fists. How he would tell her he had a nightmare and wanted to sleep with her. How he would nestle against her and curl up in her arms with his head tucked to her chest and he finally could sleep. She remembered waking up with a warm heavy bundled in her arms and the joy that it had brought her. 

    She needed to know. 

    Before she even realized it, Puffy was walking her way toward the prisons looming form. Letting her thoughts spin and swallow around her as she moved until she was finding herself at the front gate and ringing the button for Sam to let her in through the Nether portal on the other side. 

    Security was easy to follow. Giving up all of her weapons and armor and letting Sam pat her down for the ease of making sure Dream had nothing he would be able to fight with and turn against them. She appreciated that her friend was keeping such a good grip on Dream in here. Making sure that the rest of the server was safe from the monster that Dream had become. 

    She told him as such. Something flickered in Sam’s eyes too fast for her to catch. 

    He hadn’t answered. 

    Leading her back through the winding halls of the prison and she appreciated the security of it. Just knowing that if Dream ever managed to escape he would be caught before he could get out and the server would still be safe. They would be able to manage their lives away from him. They would be able to be safe from him still. 

    She wasn’t silent about her compliments. Sam’s control, the winding halls, the complicated redstone. All of it was bound to make Dream have impossible odds to ever leave without the consent of the server and it brought her a comfort that even if she found the worst case here she would be able to leave him to rot. 

    The monster he became was not her son. 

    The little boy she raised had died. 

    The lava wall lowered and she heard Sam’s voice call out soft to her. 

“Puffy,” she turned, “Dream can’t hurt you. If he does anything, let me know.”

    She nodded at the assurance. 

“I taught him how to fight. It’s more what he would say that I might need your help.”

    Sam watched her. 

“That won’t be a problem.”

    The bridge arrived before she could ask him what that meant. It didn’t matter. Not when she was stepping onto the platform and balancing to walk with it so she wouldn’t fall into the mass of lava and heat below her. There was so much that she knew the cell suspended in the center was completely untouchable. 

    Inescapable. Exactly what they needed for Dream. 

    Her eyes stayed down until she was stepping into the edge of the cell. Turning to Sam and signaling to him that she was all good. She watched the mechanics as the lava curtain fell back into place and the barricade behind her lowered with a metallic thunk. Only then, did she allow herself to turn and face the cell. 

    Puffy froze. 

    She had expected to see Dream standing and waiting for her. She had expected a quip at the tip of his tongue and she had expected anger in his eyes. She was ready for a fight with him. Violent and arguing and cruel from the start to the bitter end that would confirm her thoughts that her son was dead. That he never existed at all. 

    That wasn’t what she found. 

    She turned to see a cell covered completely head to toe in blood and carved chunks of flesh. She found it marred with claw marks and gouges that looked like they were made by a weapon striking down repeatedly. 

    In the middle of the floor, she saw Dream. His body bound and tied so tightly there were indents and the ropes were cutting into his skin. Adding to the mess that was made of the cuts and slices that made him look like he’d been skinned alive. She stared at the way he was laying for a moment before he realized he was facing in her direction. 

    Hair matted, eyes dull and glazed and unfocused to a point she didn’t think he realized she was there at all. None of that was the worst part. 

    The worst part was the stitching she could see sewing his lips together. 

    Bile washed up her throat in an instant. Remembering how Sam had told her Dream’s words would not be an issue. Sam knew. Sam knew this was the condition he was under. 

    Dream’s body convulsed. His breathing turning ragged and shallow and she could hear something wet in each strangled breath through his nose. His eyes started rolling. Bloody foam spurting through the threads of the stitches. 

    She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to help. Her knees against the burning obsidian soaked through with his blood. She tried to feel his pulse to try to assess what was happening to him only to feel it stutter and stop. 

    It stopped. 

    His body relaxing and his eyes drifting to the distance where she could not reach him. 

    Puffy choked on every word she was going to yell at him. 

    Watching as his body disintegrated from her touch and she was left with nothing but a blood caked cell. She tried to breathe. The mechanical click and a splash of something all too heavy made her eyes snap to the corner where a small hole of water waited. 

    Where Dream was clumsily dragging himself from it and onto the burning stone of his cell. His mouth still stitched closed. His wounds still bleeding. Exhaustion still in every mark of his movements. She still didn’t think he knew she was there with him. 

    Respawning was meant to heal whatever killed them. It was meant to fix all the damage they had taken on and it was supposed to restore their energy. It was meant to fix them and Dream was anything but. 

“Duckling?”

    Dream’s eyes opened when he looked to her. His face staying blank but she could barely pull her eyes from the stitching at his mouth. 

“Dreamie, can you hear me?”

    He nodded. He barely looked alive. 

“Did Sam do this to you?”

    A pause. A nod. 

“Was someone else involved?”

    A nod. His eyes were closing. He looked too much like he did when she first came in here already. If he wasn’t healing anymore then was he dying over and over again? Was he simply suffering to drown in his own blood endlessly? 

    She grabbed for her comm. 

    You whisper to awesamdude: You stitched his mouth shut????

    awesamdude whispers to you: He was keeping secrets. It was the only way to stop his lies. It was a fitting punishment. Less than what he deserves but that can be fixed.

    Her stomach rolled. Looking back to Dream to see him losing his grip of everything around him again. The wetness of his breaths coming back and small whimpers and whines pulling from his throat. She tried to get to him. Tried to hold him, comfort him. 

    He died in her arms. 

    Puffy caught him as he fell to the water this time. Feeling his bones against her and the limp weight that was too light for what Dream should have been. He was coughing. He was choking. When she turned him in her arms, he wasn’t awake. He was dying. He was going to lose his final life. To torture. To punishment none of them had agreed on. 

    Punishment that was illfit, even if Dream was a monster. 

    Now she wasn’t so sure. If it was all of them, why only punish the one? 

“It’s going to be okay, Duckling. Mama’s here.” She felt the stitches against her shoulder. “Mama’s here and I’m going to protect you. I’m going to keep you safe.”

    She knew the first step to doing it too. 

“I’m going to get you out of here.”