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Dream looked around his cell. Nothing had changed, his clock was still burned, maybe there was another potato bobbing in the water. It would be merely another one to the pile that he hadn’t collected anyway. He wasn’t sure if he could get up and walk over there if he wanted to. His legs felt broken, they probably were.
Dream rested his head against the wall, closing his eyes. He wanted to slip away, leave this horrid place. But he had planned this, he was going to be broken out at some point. He knew this. So surely he could just wait it out. Right?
Dream laughed to himself bitterly, he didn’t get to choose not to anyway. The only way out at this point was death and Quackity wasn’t going to kill him, he needed Dream alive. Sam wasn’t likely to either; and as often as he had thrown himself into the lava, it never stuck. None being important enough to be cannon.
Though, forced respawns were also a good way to regenerate health. Sure, they hurt like a bitch but when did anything not hurt recently.
Dream’s head was already pounding though and he wasn’t willing to deal with the persistent headache he typically got after dying as well so he just lay there. Dream didn’t know how long he sat in that position with his eyes shut, blocking out the horrible reality he had willingly led himself to.
The next time he opened his eyes it was because his stomach was twisting uncomfortably as if he were falling but then uprighting himself. But he hadn’t moved and Dream’s body was doing things he didn’t expect possible lately. The body didn’t seem to react well to torture.
But when he opened them there was, sky?
Well, not quite the sky, it was raining and clouds had painted the sky overhead a dark grey. But it was better than black, it was better than purple and god it was better than the orange-tinted lava that had been taunting Dream in his cell.
He was in a wooden house, it was a quaint place with some rather basic furniture. Whoever lived there obviously didn’t care for extravagance.
That thought hit Dream like a fist to his face. Someone lives here. Someone who probably wants him dead.
The fear numbed Dream’s body. If it hadn’t there was no way Dream would’ve been able to make it to the door before rushing out.
Then the rain hit his face and Dream stopped. He had almost forgotten what rain had felt like. It was cold, ( the water in the cell Dream had been stuck in was never cold) . It ran down his face, seeping into his clothes.
Dream never liked the rain before.
Then there were drops of water trailing down his face, but they weren’t cold like the other ones. They were at an unpleasant lukewarm temperature. He reached a scarred hand up to his face. He was crying. That hadn’t happened for years.
After the first war, he cried until he had no more tears; at least for a while, after all, they were back now. He had never liked taking lives, but after that day he couldn’t find it within himself to care. He supposed the war drove out his emotions, but here they were. Resurfacing, and for what?
Tears made him weak. Or that’s what he told himself.
Emotions made him vulnerable. And what’s so bad about that? Dream couldn’t remember.
“Who are you?!” A voice cried out, breaking Dream’s train of thoughts and freezing him to the spot. He was scared to look, afraid of who he might see.
When had he started feeling afraid?
Perhaps the fact that he knew he was afraid, and that he wanted to challenge the fear; prove he was better, was the reason he turned around. Either way, he wasn’t sure about how to feel about what, or rather who, he locked eyes with.
The figure had a green hoodie, he had once worn one of those once. They wore a porcelain smile, Dream's had cracked. The shards were still scattered somewhere within his cell (he hoped he never had to go back).
Either way the person, well it looked human, stared back at him. A carbon copy of himself. But one before the wars and prisons. Before respawning became a better option than trying to heal.
“Who are you?” The other Dream reiterated his question.
Now, Dream was bound to regret answering but it wasn’t as though he could run away. If this was actually past him, he would stand more of a chance begging for Tommy's forgiveness than actually running. So he answered, “Dream.”
“What- but that’s my name!” The fraud replied back.
God this conversation was going to give Dream a headache. Still, he replied again, ”yeah, I figured.”
“But you look nothing like me!” The other continued exasperated.
Dream felt honestly insulted by the other's words, he knew he looked like shit. Quackity had been torturing him, so it wasn’t that surprising. But surely it wasn’t that bad. He had to have resembled his past self somewhat? “I used to look like you but I’ve been tortured a lot the past few weeks, so my bad.” Dream deadpanned, sick of the other Dream already.
“Tortured?” The copy looked worried. When was the last time someone had been worried about Dream. It had been too long to remember dates. Had Techno been worried at doomsday? Probably not. How long before that had someone cared?
“Yeah, what about it?” Dream continued the conversation.
The other looked exasperated at that, “what about it? That’s wrong, you shouldn’t be..! Tortured…” The other had been nervous to say tortured that much was obvious but when neither of your legs works properly and you're probably blind in one eye, Dream couldn’t care less about being crude with his words.
So Dream rolled his eyes, he doubted anyone else thought that he didn’t deserve to be tortured. “Well I’m going to be leaving now, I don’t feel like having conversations with another me, in the rain too.” Dream thought for a moment before laughing harshly at his new realisation, “who am I kidding this probably isn’t real, just another terrible dream, giving me hope so it can be crushed.”
The other man looked horrified, “what… happened to you?” Dream couldn’t be bothered to deal with the double so he just started walking. When he felt a hand on his shoulder, he stopped, “what do you want, De?” Dream snapped.
“De?” The other repeated, “didn’t take you for the kinda guy to like nicknames.”
“Well, I'm not calling you Dream.” It’d be like calling a kind stranger a monster without a reason. The other man didn’t deserve that.
“Yeah alright, I get it calling you Dream might get a little awkward as well but I’m okay with that,” ’De’ replied, “uh, instead of running away. Would you like to come inside?”
Dream considered it, it wasn’t a bad idea after all. De didn’t seem like the kind of guy to hand Dream over either. Though what did Dream know of people's character? Obviously, nothing after George had left and Sapnap had sworn to kill him.
However, he still wordlessly followed De out of the rain and into his house. Dream noticed the other didn’t have the same flair for dramatics, as Dream sat down on his almost shamefully boring chair.
“So how’s life before the wars?” Dream prompted sourly.
De looked hesitant about his answer, “do you mean the one Sapnap and George started with Tommy?”
At De’s words Dream sat up straight, “Sapnap and George?” Surely that couldn’t be right, Sapnap and George had never started a war against Tommy? The only ones were with himself and the boy. Then it occurred to Dream, “was it a pet war?” Sapnap was known for them and it wouldn’t be surprising for it to be one of those many squabbles.
“Uhm no, it wasn’t? It was about Tommy burning down George’s house I think.” De replied, still sounding sceptical. Sapnap had never gotten involved in that dispute and that had never resulted in a war anyway. The events De was mentioning were so out of order, maybe this wasn’t the past? God the differences were messing with Dreams' head.
“Have you never started a war? With Tommy? About his disc’s or wanting to start a nation?” Dream inquired hoping to find more answers however the attempt fell short as De just shook his head at each of the rapid questions, replying simply with “I like to stay out of disputes, Tommy and Sapnap are both my friends, they meet me here at my house sometimes.”
Dream felt shock resonate within him, “how did the war end then?!”
De sighed, “it hasn’t ended yet..” Dream’s head was spinning; it only got worse with De’s next words, “oh, Sapnap is coming over today too.”
The words struck Dream hard. The flashes of Sapnap at his arrest, fully geared with his axe ready and hearing his voice swearing to kill him, a month later, circled Dream’s head. His breathing quickened. “No…” Dream mumbled, “no, nono..” Sapnap was going to kill him! He was going to die.
He was going to meet his painful end in the hands of a happier version of himself. The awful lukewarm tears started dripping down his face and onto his hands again.
Someone was talking to him but he was hardly listening. How could he? He was going to die... “I don’t want to die..” Dream murmured.
He sat there for a short while just panicking, slowly though he started to gain focus on the voice calling out to him. It was De. Dream couldn’t make out what he was saying but he was sure it was the other.
“You’re shit at calming people down, you know that?” Dream insulted when he was coherent enough to talk.
“My friends tell me that too, and if you’re meant to be me aren’t you just as bad anyway?” De responded. Dream almost laughed at how ridiculous that sounded to him. He couldn’t even imagine the look of shock on the faces of his server members if he tried to calm someone down. “I don’t calm people down, after all, I’m the one they are scared of.”
De looked as though he wanted to argue with his statement, he was clearly a very passive person. Hell, there were wars and De didn’t even want to fight in them. But instead of starting an argument De just changed the subject, “why were you so freaked out when I mentioned Sapnap coming over?”
Snorting Dream replied, scarily recovered from the panic that had overcome him only minutes earlier, “I don’t know it’s almost as if the Sapnap I know threatened to kill me if he ever saw me out of prison.” De clearly didn’t know how to respond to that statement, it seemed like the other man hadn’t connected the orange jumpsuit to prison yet, either. “You were in prison..?” The other shakily replied.
“I’ve killed, manipulated and started wars, me, not Sapnap not George . I did. You’re like the godsent version of me.” Dream didn’t know why he hadn’t walked out yet.
Just as De was about to say something in reply a knock on the door echoed throughout the house. Dream froze and De scrambled to his feet before turning around and looking back at Dream, “do you want me to ask him to leave?”
Now Dream really didn't want any universe's Sapnap to come anywhere near him, but this was De’s house, De’s life, and Dream wasn’t going to be selfish and make him turn Sapnap away, so he shook his head, “you can let him in.
( When did he start to care about other people’s lives? )
So De made his way to the door and opened it greeting Sapnap with a dampened smile, “hey Sap.” Sapnap exchanged pleasantries back and started ranting about how the war was going and how tiring it was before abruptly stopping when he met eyes with Dream. “You didn’t tell me you had someone over.” Sapnap bluntly stated.
“Well, maybe he didn’t know I was going to be here.” Dream responded equally as blunt. “Hey, I wasn’t talking to you!” The man argued back.
“Hey guys, let's not fight!” De butted in trying to ease the tension between the other two males. “Sorry..” Sapnap responded back, whilst Dream just shut his mouth. He may have started feeling sympathy again, but that wasn’t going to completely reverse the cold attitude he had adopted in the past few years.
“Who is this?” Sapnap asked not unkindly but still with an edge to his words.
“This is Dream, he’s me but…” De trailed off clearly unsure how to describe the scarred man that sat before him. “I’m the shit version of him, that’s started like 3 wars and manipulated and isolated kids to the point of suicide.” Dream wasn’t going to give himself the benefit of the doubt, he didn’t deserve it.
“You… what… but Dream is..?” Sapnap clearly didn’t understand what was going on, after all, his Dream was nothing short of a literal angel. The fiery man clearly had a lot of questions but he stuck to the most obvious one that neither Dream nor De had brought up, “how is he here then?”
That was a good question, how had Dream gotten into a different universe. He’d say it was a dream but his leg was still aching and he had already tried pinching himself. So with no answers to the question, the two similar men just shrugged.
Dream decided to dig deeper into this Sapnap and Dream’s relationship. Perhaps that was basically masochistic of him but he was curious about what he could have had. “So you guys are good friends? You both care for each other?”
De nodded rapidly whilst Sapnap cocked his head to the side, “why? Do you and your Sapnap not get along, do I even exist there?”
Dream really didn’t want to have to explain it again luckily De seemed to get the hint and leaned over to whisper something to Sapnap, the way his mouth morphed to fit the shape of an ‘o’ left no surprise to what he’d been told. All the same, Dream was just glad he didn’t have to repeat himself.
“I’m sorry man… That was really shit of your Sapnap to say,” the other sapnap empathised. Dream just snorted though, “you seem to forget that I’m a bad person Sapnap.”
“I am too! I’ve started a war here as well,” the man reasoned. Dream wished he could take the other's sympathy but how could he when he knew he didn’t deserve it.
“It’s alright, really.” It wasn’t, but what was Dream meant to say. He stood up to walk somewhere, perhaps just around the room, he just needed to distract himself but when he stood up he felt a wave of nausea run through him. He tried to take a step praying it would somehow help. It didn’t instead he fell to his knees.
Why was he so weak all of a sudden?
The other two in the room fell to their knees too, but not because they were hurting, no it was to help Dream. But he didn’t deserve it, he didn’t. “Why are you helping me… I don’t deserve it..” Dream practically whimpered, god he was so pathetic.
“Everyone deserves help Dream... Especially you right now” De responded lightly.
But Dream didn’t, he didn’t deserve help on anything remotely similar. But he couldn't force out the words. There was a kick to his stomach, but no one had kicked him, Sapnap the other Sapnap, not his, his had left him for good, and De was still leaning over him, certainly not kicking him.
But then the sensation repeated, again and again before Dream had to shut his eyes. At that point, De and Sapnap’s worried words floated away until he couldn’t hear them anymore and instead, harsh words from… sam?
No, not sam. It was the warden, at least Dream wanted to believe that there was a difference. But he was just out? He was free.
Dream opened his eyes to meet piercing green ones of the warden and the horribly dark, damp cell. He was back. Dream laughed almost manically, of course, it had been some kind of messed up dream. And even if it was real, it meant the same thing. He had hoped, and it had been all fake.
Dream was back in his cell with only the memory of what could’ve been. Of what he could have had. Of what he had fucked up.