Chapter Text
Dream’s eyes open, and immediately everything is utterly, fundamentally wrong.
It’s not just the violet-speckled black of obsidian caging him on three sides or the crooning heat of molten lava cascading down, honey-slow, opposite him that makes him scramble back. It’s not the lightness of his hair shorn shorter than he likes, nor the scrape of an unfamiliarly-shaped mask against unfamiliarly-angled scars over his mouth and nose and eyes.
What makes Dream cry out and scramble into a corner, cramming himself into the meager space between writing desk and wall, is the crest and descent and seafoam shatter of you you you did this to us i am broken i am ruined i have lost lost lost and everything is laid at his feet your feet the earth at your hands and you tore us asunder our voidsick country and visionless people and you you all of this was you hate hate hate.
“Where the hell am I,” he rasps to himself, to his heart beating so fast it’s nearly a hum. “Where the hell am I.”
The lava hums back.
There is no answer, not one that can be translated by anyone who isn’t a minor god. Even then, it’s like walking into a country and not speaking the language; bitter hate and burning resentment so far flung from the world he’s used to that it twists in his gut, a knife buried deep. The world echoes, it hurts and bleeds and cries its desolation around him, and he cannot block it out even if he wanted to. Because he recognises the call, he recognises the broken hearts and scarred souls that are weeping their hurts to him, letting it pour out of them like he can’t hear them, like he has never been able to hear them.
The thing is―
Dream’s brain has always worked faster than his body, blazing, brilliant, his mind a fire charge too hot to handle. As soon as he can gather his bearings he thumbs through the jumbled, incoherent scrawlings of the mauled lion that frequented this cage before him, and what sentiments Dream can make out through the frantic slashes of ink are so violently inconceivable to him that he has to set down the confessions ― because that’s what they are ― in between the lectern and the wall. Dream puts his head to his knees as his body shakes.
The most dangerous thing is a trapped animal, and that is what this must have been, this cell, this prison that resonates the hurts of this world, a tuning fork of pain and hurt and loss directly into his mind.
(―if you do not want me you do not get my eden―)
The words of this… this other him echo in his ears. He doesn’t want to think about it, cannot bear to let the words cross his mind, but the thoughts that tumble onto the page in familiar jagged handwriting connect the dots in the same hop skip and jump that lets him win manhunts. He knows that if he were to go through it it would call to the parts of himself that burn with a dark flame, whispering, here is my pride, here is my hubris, here is my loyalty twisted and turned on itself my love broke me I broke myself into sharp shattered pieces so when they try to steal more of me it will hurt them more.
Here is a Dream whose words make it clear he never heard the same melody of aches and pains and bruises and skinned knees and final blows that he does, and he can barely conceive the thought that there is a world where he has never taken a hurt unto himself. It’s like taking his eyes or his hands or his ability to just breathe, like removing his soul and expecting him to survive. Settling is his sixth sense, another way of reaching out to the world and having it whisper back. It lets him talk to the soul of his server, the intangible energy and life that he breathed through the earth and the oceans that grew into something outside of himself but connected and blessed nonetheless.
The fabric of his own world is carefully woven, dropped stitches picked up and reincorporated with care and attention, letting the pattern weave itself and each part connect to the other. Here, the loom itself is broken, the tapestry jagged and torn, its fraying edges open to the world.
Dream leans his head against the obsidian, its uneven grooves some comfort even as the heat it reflects back off of the magma feels like it’s searing him alive; it’s better than the faint cries he can sense from beyond the chunks upon chunks of obsidian and blackstone and redstone, far up into the night sky, axe on a whetstone, a dissonant song sung in nothing but flats and minors.
He can fix that, right? Dream tries to reach out, breaths shallow and sharp, his heartbeat no longer a hum but a frantic buzz, insect wings in his chest and―
hate hate hate how could you have done this to us to me to me to me a thousand souls with a thousand broken hearts scream into the night into the universe that should have protected them nurtured them but instead let them bleed themselves dry they are the people who once were happy the people who are and the people who could have been crying alongside the grass and the bees and the oceans who were poisoned by a heart that could not give what was taken it’s a flint at my neck it’s a compass in the dirt and a crater into the void down wounded wounded into the earth like a crucifix and sacrifice everything everything everything what do we earn but broken pieces look at us look at us look at us your beloved your home your everything if this was wilbur’s if this was your world
look look look at what you have done to us
His heart splinters, shatters, open to the air and elements and endless weeping souls; inflorescent. Dream screams.
Wilbur doesn’t so much awaken as he becomes. It is one thing to be corporeal and wedged comfortably between two of your brothers with the third at your feet and your father’s wing slung over all of you like a comforter as you drift into sleep, and another entirely to sink into a wall of spruce wood without resistance save a vague itch that disappears when he stumbles out onto the other side.
He yelps out of reflex; the surroundings are unfamiliar, an uncomfortable overlay from his last remembered location and the house he’s currently staggered into. The windows are shut firmly, but the snow howls outside with a hunger that makes him shiver involuntarily. The fireplace snaps with a vengeance, and Wilbur nervously looks at himself. There is a vibrant, eye-watering blue soaking his front, an eyesore against the desaturated goldenrod of his jumper, staining the palms of his hands, garish against his strangely grey skin.
“What the fuck,” he demands to the air, and his voice rings, clings to the air like a half-remembered melody, an echo into the empty sitting room in the compact spruce-and-stone house that Wilbur doesn’t know or doesn’t remember, like a ― like a haunt.
“Ghostbur?” comes a voice thick with sleep from up the stairs, and Wilbur startles, instinctively turns like a flower to sunlight when he hears the familiar cadence of his father’s voice, despite the strange name, despite the wistfulness that hangs onto Phil’s voice as he calls, blearily, “Everything okay? When did you come?”
“I don’t know,” Wilbur says honestly, bunching up the vivid blue of his shirt front in his trembling hands. “I don’t know, Phil.”
“You’ve, ah,” Phil is coming down the stairs now, footsteps light on the staircase, still speaking though the yawn that interrupts him, “Have you got one of your books? Might remind you.”
Wilbur isn’t looking to Phil anymore, his hands have come away bloody blue, and holy shit, holy fuck, he can see the floor through his stained palms, scratchy spruce of an unfamiliar house, and there is a ragged gash in his jumper from where the blue spills and what the fuck, what the fuck―
“Hey, kiddo.” Phil’s voice cuts through the wave of panic, and Wilbur blinks as the light of a lantern flicks on, only to flinch as the warm light throws his newfound transparency into harsh reality. “What’s wrong?”
“What happened?” Wilbur says, flinching at the resonating tone in his voice, a note that lilts and shakes and barely sounds like him at all, still staring in horror down at his hands, at his feet which don’t quite touch the ground. “Phil, what happened to me?”
“I thought,” Phil says, voice no longer sleepy. Instead, there is a sharpness to it, a tone that sends shivers down Wilbur’s (non-existent?) spine. “I thought you remembered that. You told me you remembered what happened to you.”
“I just woke up here,” Wilbur says, fighting to keep his voice level, forcing it downwards into his usual register, no matter the echoes behind it, “I went to sleep with you and Techno and Tommy and now I’m here, and I don’t understand―”
He lifts his head, looking for reassurance, for help, for his dad, and all his words die in his throat. Horror claws its way up, dread pooling in his stomach, damnation and condemnation resonating all at once. Phil is looking at him in concern, but his eyes are tired, and there is an exhaustion present that Wilbur doesn’t remember being there just a few hours ago.
But that isn’t what sends Wilbur stumbling backwards, his eyes wide and horrified, yelping as part of his arm sinks into the chest behind him. It’s a strange feeling he immediately knows he doesn't want to replicate, like moving through slime, or reminiscent of the rare occasions he’s swam in lava, making his entire left side numb. It calls to him, a song to drift and stay drifting, to wash up on the beaches of his friends and family with no care, no concern, and he thinks, no, now is not the time.
No, Phil is looking at him like he is the concern, as if Phil wasn’t ― as if his wings weren’t fracturing on his back, as if one wing wasn’t entirely charcoal black, stretched and healing skin instead of thick, iridescent feathers, as if the other wasn’t scattered with splintering holes, tilting his entire body weight to the side. With horror, Wilbur realises exactly why Phil’s footsteps were light when he came down the stairs.
“Mate, Wi― Ghostbur, calm down, alright? Do you have some of your, uh, blue on you?” Phil asks, frowning, his outstretched hand curling into a fist and pulling away, seemingly remembering that he cannot touch Wilbur like this. Wilbur doesn’t respond, still trying to process, to understand exactly what happened to his fathers wings (his beautiful wings, clipped and broken and ruined beyond repair and Phil doesn’t even seem to care, and he’ll never get to run his fingers through those feathers again, what happened, what happened?), even as Phil tries again, concern evident as Wilbur struggles for words.
“Ghostbur―” “Don’t!” Wilbur says, panicked and reedy, tone like a church bell, and it hurts his ears, it hurts his soul, it hurts, “Why are you calling me that? Where am I? What happened to your wings?”
A cry splits the air, pulls at the space between atoms in its intensity, a ringing across reality, and Wilbur throws his hands over his ears even though he thinks he could hear that sound in his very soul and it is grief and it is loss and it is pure and utter anguish.
But worst of all, it is familiar, because it is―
hurting shattering splintering breaking apart all over again the sky is cracked and falling and someone must hold it someone must take up the mantle carry the sky carry the hurt carry the weight carry the pain all of it mine mine mine and not mine all of it mine my fault my fault my fault bleeding and aching and scarred all my fault not me not me but mine to fix mine to heal mine to save―
Well. Wilbur would know that self-sacrificial idiot anywhere; even in a nightmare, even though his father is bound to the earth and he isn’t bound to anything at all. He needs to find said self-sacrificial idiot because the pain isn’t dying, isn’t stopping, and Wilbur is absolutely not the right person for this job.
Phil opens his mouth to protest, to say that the storm outside will be too much, to tell him that he can explain, but Wilbur is already gone, the golden thread of heartache leading him forward.
Time swims laps in the prison; it loops around in a haze of raw potatoes and lukewarm water and the taste of copper in his mouth as he bites down on his lip again, trying to stem the tide inside him, to calm the storm roiling in his blood. It burns, but then again, everything here does. The black of the obsidian and the molten heat of the lava is a lethal combination, even if he wasn’t fighting against his own power for coherence. He has clawed as much pain as he can reach into himself, only to find out at the first scoop that he is a wooden bowl in a raging ocean, already cracked and breaking. He is a lonely boat caught in a storm of pain and resentment, and he has no anchor.
Dream remembers putting sponges in the Nether to dry them out, how if he left them long enough, all of the water inside would evaporate and they would become miniscule husks of what they once were. How no matter the amount of water or sponges he brought to the nether with him, he wasn’t able to tell the difference, the nether too hot and the water too sparse. He wonders, in a detached sort of way, how long it will be until the well inside of him will dry up. It's odd to think of his demise as inevitable, but in this world, whether it be because of the world itself or the hurts endured on it, he has as much control over his settling as rain does where it falls.
Most of the time, he doesn’t bother to struggle, letting the ocean of hurt and pain pull him under, letting it fill his mouth and nose until he chokes on it. But the ocean is never ending, and the tides sweep him away again.
Until. Until.
Puffy hasn’t visited the prison. If she’s being honest with herself she’d really rather not ― the walls looming, the constant existential dread. There’s a bitter taste at the back of her throat that could be misconstrued as guilt or failure as she waits before the cell with Sam, who’s steely and silent beside her. She makes it a rule of habit not to regret things ― you’ve made your bed, now sleep in it ― but watching the lava part before her sluggishly, she comes damn close.
“Holler when you’re done,” Sam tells her, coldly impassive, and Puffy has to physically restrain herself from shaking him by the shoulders (didn’t you love him too, once?). She steps onto the moving platform steadily, keeps her chin tilted high, a buffer against the incoming tide that she knows Dream’s words will be: incisive, poisonous, deliberate.
She’s completely unprepared for what she gets.
The thing is ― Puffy can read Dream like an open book. It’s always been the one skill she flaunts that no one else has, not even the two he swore to high hell were his best friends. She raised this street kid, she kept him safe and loved him, and she knows the reason why - of all the people this SMP has swallowed, not a single hair on her head was harmed. So when she ducks through the lava and comes face to face with someone curled up against the corner of the cell, very deliberately still―
Well.
She doesn’t know how she knows, to be honest. It might be the way his hair is set ― loose all the way where her own duckling insisted on keeping it out of his face at all times ― or it might be the set of his lips, his mask ridden up to show his mouth where her own duckling shielded his face from everything: sorrow, rage, anguish. Love.
“Who are you?” Puffy asks the stranger wearing her son’s face.
The boy stirs, looking up at her with a glint of green. “Captain? Who… Puffy. Puffy?” and Puffy knows, immediately, that this is not the Dream she raised. He knows her as a companion, not a mother; he recognises her as something outside of himself, beyond his reach, beyond love or doubt.
“Oh my God,” she says faintly, the heat searing the white of her mane against her back. “Oh my God, you can’t be in here.”
“Puffy,” the Dream who is not her son says again, and there is blood on his lips, on the edges of his mask, and he climbs to his feet with all the grace of a baby animal, fingers that have been scraped raw on obsidian walls bracing him as he stumbles, trips, and falls towards her. “Puffy, let me, let me help―”
She is frozen, only barely able to reach out an arm in time to steady him, uneasiness and concern and panic beginning to rise in her chest. This isn’t her Dream, this isn’t her duckling, but he is a child, a child clearly hurting, a child offering to help her, not the other way around, and what can she do but open her arms wide and―
shh shh shh calm settle gentle a drop in the ocean but it is something it can be something does she hurt does she fear where are the scars where are the wounds left by her son the hurts from family always cut the deepest and yes yes yes she hurts yes she grieves yes she despairs in her ability to make a difference to keep her oath she regrets with every beat of her heart that she did not could not do more she stood in front of a man who was no longer her son and knew she had failed where did you go wrong were you gone when he needed you the most shh shh calm calm calm calm you didn’t fail you never did you did your best always your best you loved him and he chose to fall let me take let me soothe let me help let me fill in the cracks with blood and gold you are safe safe safe now shh
“Dream,” she gasps, the tide rolling away, her panic and her worry abating, and the sickening guilt that has plagued her for days has simply… vanished, between one breath and the next. Replacing it are whispers, whispers over whispers hanging in the air and twirling around her ears, her mind, her soul, Dream’s voice but not, bubbling over into existence as he… helps? Soothes? “Dream, what have you done?”
“Helped,” Dream says simply, his voice rasping like he just swallowed fire. Then he crumples to the floor like a marionette with his strings cut.
“Duckling, shit, duckling, darling, Dream.” Puffy only just manages to stop his head from hitting the crying obsidian floor, watching in horror as his eyes roll back, letting out a breath like a loose balloon, words falling out of his mouth. Except his mouth is pressed shut and his eyes are barely open where is coming from, what is it?
soothe soothe soothe settle and calm and gentle and safe and smooth down the sharp edges bandage the wound I cannot unburn the bridges but I will put out the fires with my blood sweat and tears until I run dry make it mine all mine mine mine they don’t know me but I know them sinew and soul and heart and home soothe settle settle settle
Pushing back the limp strands of Dream’s hair, sweat soaked and dulled in colour, Puffy whispers, “What the fuck is going on?”
Wilbur isn’t sure how long it’s been; he knows it hurt, to be in the snow, remembers Phil shouting after him, remembers being holed up in a small cave as he waited for the rain to abate. He remembers looking around and seeing a world so similar to his own, yet at the same time so distorted, like looking through a twisted funhouse mirror.
He remembers that wherever he goes, he can hear the sigh in the air, the murmur that curves through his insubstantial being, and he cannot help but follow it. Dream is somewhere out there, more than that, his Dream is out there, and he needs to find him.
It’s a siren song, a golden thread, but trying to grasp it with his consciousness only leads him around in circles, forever tracking the threads of misery in the air. He was the musician, the playwright, the poet but Dream’s settling is like an orchestra through the fabric of the universe, and he follows. He closes his eyes and lets the symphony reaching into his soul lead him forward.
He doesn’t know exactly how it happens, but he knows that he closed his eyes, felt only air under his feet, felt for the part of his soul that was detached and drifting. It’s harder to ground himself when he has no skin for his fingers to pinch, and he doesn’t like giving into dissociation, but for Dream, for the man (and part of him screams that Dream is little more than a boy) that saved him…
He lets the ghostly impulse to drift and smile and let his memories slide vapid through his fingers take over for a bit.
(It doesn't deny half of him, like it did to the shade of himself that used to inhabit this world, because his hurts are interwoven with the happy memories, and if he follows a happy memory long enough he'll remember the bittersweetness that made it such a beloved moment, and it won't be sour enough to make him forget, because he knows it turns out better.)
He blinks, and blackstone walls rise above him, eclipsing the bright light of the now-day and the whisper is now a sigh is now a murmur is almost a cry, and he knows where Dream is.
The entrance to this place is about as grim as the outside, and he is relieved to find that his palm, stained as it is with blue, is able to press the button by the portal. His mind slips away again, sand through his fingertips because if this got him here then perhaps this is what they expect.
“Wil― Ghostbur?”
He really wishes people would stop calling him that, but he doesn’t argue.
“Can I see Dream?” he lets the distant part of him ask, wincing as his voice echoes all over again, and nearly missing the instructions that will allow him entrance to this… this prison.
“Give me a second, you’re not the only one visiting today,” the warden says, and he thinks it’s Sam but he sounds so serious, so different from who Wilbur knew, even if the two of them had never been particularly close.
He nods and lets himself be taken through to a main entrance where the sounds of raised voices catches his attention.
“I’m telling you, something was different, something was wrong―”
“Puffy, I can’t, alright? We can talk about this later, but right now, I can’t.”
Wilbur almost misses Puffy with the way she storms out and past him, looking like she is ready to commit a murder, but he doesn’t miss the raised eyebrows and the surprise on her face when she recognises him.
Sam ― the Warden, has a lot of questions, but as jaded as they all are, Wilbur is already made of broken glass turned blue, so if he sands down his edges and doesn't listen to what they say before he responds, it's fine. It’s good enough to scrape by, at least, and enough to feel his heart curdle in his chest as he passes through checkpoint after checkpoint. Until — a lava pit, an obsidian box, a figure too exhausted to cry, potatoes left rotting in the water, skin cracked dry and burnt pink in some places from how close he is to the lava. Wilbur finds his friend in a monster's shadow, and knows immediately that this can't continue.
He bends, trying to take his friend into his arms, tries to hold, to comfort, but he can’t.
They can’t touch. That’s not how this newfound transparency works. Wilbur’s hands too free of another man’s lifelong agonies, but items are free game ― he could press the button outside, after all ― so Wilbur slides up the beaten mask to smooth his thumb over Dream’s drying, flaking cheek as best he can, tries to coax him back to some form of consciousness as he remembers Sapnap and George doing the few times Dream stirred during that fucking Hell Week. It’s not good ― for all that he’s an excellent big brother he doesn’t have the benefit of a childhood with Dream to draw from ― but it’s not bad, either, and Wilbur gets two vague, filmy green eyes dull with exhaustion for his troubles.
“There,” he says, relief making his voice shake, dull recognition sparking in Dream’s eyes. “There you are. It’s alright, Dream, it’s okay, it’s okay,”
“Wil…?” Dream’s voice is breathless, pain having punched all of his oxygen out of him.
“Yeah,” Wilbur says, “Yeah, it’s me. Properly me, even though I, uh, don’t remember becoming a ghost.”
Dream’s eyes widen slightly, and his hand tilts up, trying to catch the edge of Wilbur’s face, fingers fading though like mist, but his breath catches, snags, and―
mine mine mine yes one of mine this one has burn marks and his heart is ash covered and soot stains his soul but he is mine mine mine the one i saved i am lost but i know your hurts know how to help yes yes soothe the fear soothe the worry settle soothe calm―
“Dream,” Wilbur chokes out, “I’m fine, stop, stop, please,”
“There’s so much,” Dream says, tears beading at his eyes, running down and through Wilbur’s attempts to brush them away. The room’s too cramped to echo, but Wilbur can hear Dream’s voice ring anyway, thin as paper, wavering like the insubstantial shimmer of heat off of obsidian walls, as he whispers, painfully, horribly honest, “Wilbur, it hurts.”
It is this admission that nearly breaks Wilbur; this is the Dream who decided that two weeks after he woke up would be a great day for server-wide Capture the Flag, this is the Dream who thought that a week in a coma that would have killed a mortal wasn’t too long, who tried to settle Wilbur the moment he woke up just in case there was something he had missed.
Dream is drowning in the hurts he took from this world's residents, and Wilbur, for good or ill, is… selfish, at heart, just for a moment. He wishes Dream would give them back because this isn't theirs, Dream isn't theirs, he is this Wilbur's and this Wilbur is his. But he sees the pain crystal clear in Dream's eyes and so he takes a breath. He grasps Dream's hands, or tries to, fingers phasing through Dream's countless times until Dream twitches and curls them loosely around his.
Wilbur says, pleads, begs, "You’re not alone. Let me help you. Let me carry some of it, please, Dream." Let me skim the top of your cracking cup, let me stem the flow, shoulder the burden with you. I can feel your soul crying let me help.
Dream sighs, a shattered sound, and Wilbur knows that this fight isn’t over, he hasn’t won it. Not right now.
“I’m here, Dream,” Wilbur says, even though he isn’t sure where here is. Unable to do anything as his friend curls up into his side, the grip on his hand faltering and falling, fading through his torso, Wilbur murmurs, “It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”