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Footsteps were loud behind him. Despite the pain searing through his side and middle, Dream didn’t let himself stop. He couldn’t. Not when he knew that every step he took was the difference between life and death. Not when he knew that he was going to die if he stayed still. If he tried to talk, if he tried to bargain. None of it was going to save him from this. None of it was going to save him from their anger.
Dream had escaped from the prison months ago.
He had been healing, working on rebuilding his strength. He had stayed far away from all of the others on his server and he had let them all live in peace. He didn’t go after anyone. Techno had told him to run and he did. He’d met with Punz and sent his mercenary away and while he knew that Punz was going to obey the orders of the next steps of their plans, he also knew that new potions had been left for him in their base every few days.
They had helped, the potions. They helped ease the pain in his body. They helped to ease the nightmares when they came too sharp and in the dark of his room he couldn’t tell if it was his home or if it was the cell. The obsidian had left its imprint on the inside of his skull and through all of his skin. He reacted to things now instead of predicting them. The notion of how easy it would be to strike him was never lost on him.
It was why he was fighting so hard to recover. To heal himself and make himself into something that deserved to be feared again. He had never truly wanted to be feared by his server but he knew what had to be done in order to bring all of them together again. He knew the only way they would stop destroying themselves on the border disputes of stupid nations was if there was one common enemy all of them were able to agree on.
Dream made that enemy himself.
He was glad that his plan worked. He wasn’t glad about the cost that came with it. The cost of all of his friends that he’d called his family over the years. The cost of his home as he became unwelcome inside of it. The cost of his freedom when they locked him into the prison. The cost of his safety when it became daily torture and starvation and drugging and interrogation.
He remembered being in the cell. Trying to hold himself against everything Sam would give him so that he wouldn’t reveal his plan. So that he wouldn’t let it out what the revival book truly was. If he did then he would die.
If he did then they would have access to bargain with something so much more than any of them could handle.
Dream had escaped with Techno’s help. He had run as far and as fast as he could. Keeping himself low and trying to recover to the best of his ability. He was trying to keep himself safe for all the things he had done in the past and he was trying to nurse the pain that shot through his limbs. His scars that ached when the weather turned cool and gray outside. His head that pulsed and pounded when he looked at light for too long. So used to the dark of the cell and the blinding heat of the lava wall. Anything else now felt like it was foreign to him. Like he’d never experienced it before.
Like there had never even been a before.
Before the cell. Before Pandora. Before he was tortured. Before he was a monster.
Before he had died. Before he lost it all.
When he was human.
If he was human.
Dream ran now. Ran for his life. The thunder of people chasing after him and the shouts and demands that he stop loud in his ears. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t risk it. Not when he heard their armor.
He had none.
Not when he heard their blades.
He had none.
He’d been outside trying to calm himself down from a panic attack. Waking up in his room in the base had brought him comfort in the past but this time after the nightmares he’d had it had felt too claustrophobic. One cell for another. It was the only part that kept cycling through his mind. He needed to get out. To know that he was alive and he wasn’t there anymore. He’d been outside. Sitting at the edge of a stream that cut through the woods and letting the breeze cut into his clothes and brush against his skin. The cold that was too different from the heat of the cell. The light of the sun blinking through the leaves above his head. The trickling of the water in front of him. All of it was so different.
It pulled his thoughts out of the cell and into reality. It gave him time to close his eyes against the exhaustion nipping behind his eyes and find peace in something else. That he was out. He was free. He was safe. He was okay now and no one was going to find him. No one was going to hurt him. He was safe as far as he could be safe in the world he’d made for himself and while Dream wished he could go be with people to keep his thoughts from straying he knew that he couldn’t.
He had to deal with the consequences of where he’d ended himself.
He just hadn’t thought it would be by footsteps almost too quiet behind him. He’d thought it was Punz trying not to scare him. Dream had opened his mouth to greet his friend when heat tore through his body.
He’d looked down.
He’d seen the bloodied tip of a sword.
“You’re dead now, you rotten bastard.”
Tommy’s voice was sharp. Too sharp and too close and then the blade was being ripped out of his body and Dream was falling forward into the water. Scrambling against the streambed and trying to bring his feet beneath himself. He heard the movement then from the trees. The march of armor that he was disgusted he had missed. Half the server was there. All of them armored and armed and all of them looking ready for a fight against him.
Unarmed, unprepared, hurting, confused.
They were going to kill him.
As blood soaked through his clothes, Dream couldn’t help the fear that whispered that they already had.
He’d ran.
He ran because it was the only thing that might keep him alive. He ran because he had no other choice if he wanted to get out of this alive. He ran with his legs ready to turn numb and drop him down into the earth. Ran despite the burning that raced through him and the searing pain that made him dizzy and sick. The sparks that jumped in and out of his vision as he pushed himself to breathe deeper than he felt capable. There was a weight in his gut. Blood that was pooling between his organs where it shouldn’t be. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stop.
“Help me.”
Shame burned in his face. Up his throat. Through his heart. Hot and wet and after two blinks Dream realized it was tears slipping down his face that he was feeling. That the pain had driven him through the breaking point of his control and he could no longer keep himself still. He could no longer control his heart to be steady and safe.
“Help me.”
He couldn’t run forever and he was weaker now than all the people hunting him. He used to be strong. He used to be fast enough that he would be able to escape and win this without a question. That it would just be the matter of waiting for the right moment and he would be able to turn and disarm one of them and he would win the fight in moments. Fighting and slashing and striking until all of them were dead.
He had the joke before that the mending enchantment on armor was useless. That it never mattered if you were simply never hit. He knew how to move with and without armor and his skills had proven that on the battlefield more times than he could properly count but Dream knew he was ruined now.
He couldn’t see a weapon raised against him without knowing immediately how it felt in his flesh. How it felt burrowed beneath his skin and digging into his muscle and tissue. How his organs felt as they were cleaved into parts and pulled from his body. How it had felt watching them be dangled in front of his face while shock consumed his thoughts.
He was terrified.
His terror made him weak.
“Help me, please.”
Power he kept long hidden from the rest of the world leaked into his voice. He was getting slower. The people behind him were getting closer.
“Please.”
Dream tripped. Falling forward fast and crashing into the ground. He scrambled to find himself again. To get his body to listen to him despite the terror racing through his veins and then he heard gasps. He looked up. His lungs burning and his body aching. There was too much pain coming from his middle and his legs were numb. His sight was spinning.
He could make out the green robes and white wings in front of him. The sword held tight in his grip.
“What the fuck—”
“Back away from him.”
The voice of XD boomed and echoed through the woods. Dream could see all of the people that had been closing in on him before obey the command. Each of them taking their step away like they weren’t sure what was happening.
Tommy didn’t.
Tommy stared at the mask before him.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with George?”
Dream was trembling. He was too dizzy. He was too weak. He needed this to be done.
“Why would I be with George?”
The snap through the power in his voice should have been enough to make Tommy back down. It wasn’t.
“Aren’t you in lov—”
“Why would I be with George when my brother is hurt and begging me for help?”
This time anger poured into his tone. Dream heard the uncertainty from the crowd now watching everything happen in front of them. He put a hand to his wound but he couldn’t stop the blood on both sides of his body at once. He tried to lay down to stem it from behind. He tried to hold the spot where the blade had torn through his front.
XD stayed in front of him. Protective. Guarding.
“What do you think you were doing?!”
Tommy stared at them.
“Dream isn’t your brother.”
“Have you looked at us, Tommy?” XD’s wings lifted like a shield between Dream and everyone else. “Have you never considered why George mistakes me for him?”
Dream was younger. Only by minutes.
“Get away from him. Leave him alone. He didn’t go after you. All of you tortured him in that prison and you try to kill him when he has done nothing after escaping.”
“He came after me!”
“You hallucinated that.”
It came so factual that the woods fell silent. Dream didn’t know that. He just knew he wanted to be left alone.
“You maimed my brother, time and time again. You have hurt him and blamed him for things he had no fault in because you lacked the ability to take it on yourself.”
XD was a god. All of them should know that. They should know that he was the God of the server. That he and Dream had made it together was a lesser known fact but they could have assumed that XD had made it.
“You’re siding yourself with a monster!”
XD’s sword stopped a hair from Tommy’s neck.
“Do not speak of him like that.”
Dream’s eyes were growing heavy. He could feel the blood pumping from his body.
“I am your God who you prayed to in exile Tommy. I am the God you have begged comfort from since all of this began. I know my brother. I stand by him. I let you have your fun. I let him give you the chance to destroy him and I watched it happen. I will not watch this.”
“You’re insane.”
“I will face that the on my dying day, but today is not that day.” Dream saw blood at Tommy’s neck. “Today is yours.”
Dream closed his eyes. The sounds of screams that weren’t his own was unfamiliar to his ears but he lacked the power to force himself back. Until warm hands placed on either side of his body and he felt magic flood into his system. A breath that heaved through his chest and he saw his brother hovering above him.
“X…” He was shivering. XD looked scared. “Take me home?...”
His brother nodded. Strong arms wrapping around him to bring him to his chest. Wings that arced around him to shelter him for just another moment.
“Of course.”