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They pulled him out of the prison for a reason. They pulled him from the prison for nothing but the sole intent that he would use the revive book and there was no other way. He told them he needed more room to revive so many people.
He’d lied.
Surprise surprise the monster lied again but the reality was that he wanted to see the sun again. If it had been Sam or, god forbid- Quackity, who’d demanded that he revive the five newly deceased members of the server he would have probably said no. But when Sapnap had come into his cell looking like a wreck telling him that Karl was gone he just couldn't. He couldn’t look at his brother and ignore his pain like that. Sapnap might have been able to ignore his but he couldn’t ignore it. Not when Sapnap looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks and that he’d hardly taken care of himself since the apparent explosion took out the five.
To revive so many people at once he would use a lot of energy. Before the prison he probably would have been able to handle it but now? After so long of nothing but starvation and torture he knew it would kill him. He knew he wouldn’t survive it. So yes. He lied. He lied because he couldn’t let his brother suffer anymore and he wanted to see the sun one last time before he killed himself.
So even though he stood in the community house surrounded by people who only wanted him dead he didn’t care. He could feel the sunlight hitting him through the windows. He could breathe air that wasn’t suffocated in lava. He could enjoy his last moments alive.
Sam and Sapnap were standing as guards. Both of them were watching his every move like he was going to try to escape. It wasn’t like he could blame them. If the roles were reversed he would be doing the same things. He wouldn’t have trusted him with the track record Dream knew he had. He knew that he was a flight risk and he knew that he was dangerous to be let out on his own. It was a fair trade to be watching him like this but it only made him work more to hide the tremble that was trying to consume his hands.
Dream was meant to be the big bad of the server. He was meant to be this untouchable powerhouse but the torture had left its mark in him. The nightmares were extreme enough he couldn’t remember the last time he’d properly slept. The wounds that dug into his body had left most of him numb and Dream had been stuck watching his skin be carved into and he couldn’t even feel it. The nerves dying away and breaking under the constant pain and stimulation. The damage he wore from the greed Quackity and Sam felt in their bodies.
They’d wanted the book.
Sam was watching him now so that he could learn it.
Dream worked himself over the table of ingredients. He didn’t need any of these. The book was something that was stronger. Something that came from the fact that he was the Admin. It wasn’t something that could be given to anyone else. It wasn’t physical.
Dream memorized it.
He was it.
Dream was trying to brace himself. To take in everything that was going to be his final staging ground. The wood. The memories of this place. The way the sun felt hitting his face.
It was astounding how cold someone could feel in a cell that was surrounded by lava.
The memories Dream had here were warm. The thoughts of him and George and Sapnap all building it together. The three of them laughing and the promise they all had that they would be with each other forever. It was the way things were meant to be. How they were all supposed to stay with each other and they weren’t meant to be apart.
Somewhere along the line their world had changed and their goals were different. I twas too late for Dream to be able to save anything for himself but that was fine.
It was a long time ago now that he’d accepted that no one wanted him alive. That no one wanted him to stay living or make it through the hell that would be his final home. Dream knew that they didn’t care. That they didn’t want him and that no one cared about the torture he was enduring inside. He knew that they hated him and the proof of it had only been seen when he was being walked here. The glares and shouts and sneers that were all thrown out in his direction to make him feel like he was the worst thing that had ever walked the face of the earth. He knew what he was and he knew how terrible that was to the rest of the world. He knew they wanted him gone.
His family wanted him gone.
Dream had built this server so that it would be a home. He’d made it so that it could keep all of his family safe and protected and so that they would all have a place to go if things got bad. They could have friends and family around them and all live together in peace.
Dream hadn’t started the first war or the conflicts in general. He was always the one reacting and still he was the one that wore the blame for everything. The world refused to believe that the teenager leading the enemy side was to fault for anything. They used his age as if it were a weapon and excused any wrongdoing he did as if Tommy didn’t know the things he was doing.
He did.
He laughed about the fact that he did. That he wanted to hurt people because he could. He wanted to steal because he could. He wanted to destroy everything that he couldn’t have because he was selfish enough to believe the world belonged to him and no one else. That was the Tommy that the others chose over him.
All of them attacking Dream for fighting back to say that he was a child and needed coddled.
Dream saw a criminal.
Even over a year of torture, he still only saw a criminal.
Dream hadn’t broken once. Not even a little. He refused to give Sam or Quackity the satisfaction of seeing him break. He refused to allow them the chance to watch him scream and choke and beg for mercy. He would not plea for them. He would not give in.
He wouldn’t give them any of the answers they were looking for.
If he did this, if he brought back the people of the server he’d once made for the sake of family, Dream would die.
He knew that.
He knew he was staring down the end of his life and that he was going to have to deal with it, come what may.
Dream took a deep breath.
Settling himself for what he was doing before he turned to face the people that had once been his family.
“I’ll need space, while I do this.”
They didn’t want to let him out of their sight. That was fine. They could watch. He would make sure this killed him and they wouldn’t have learned it well enough to bring him back to put him in the prison and torture him for the end of time. They wouldn’t do that .
He hoped Sapnap wouldn’t do that.
That Sapnap would at least fight to keep him dead so that he couldn’t be a threat anymore.
Dream saw the glare on Sam’s face. He saw the words ready to spew from his mouth before he’d even parted his lips.
“You’ll get space when we deem it necessary. No tricks on this, Dream.”
He looked at Sapnap. The man that was his brother in all but blood.
“They’re probably going to be confused when they come back.”
His brother was listening to him. He looked ready.
Dream wasn’t ready.
“They’ll need help, rest. Water and blankets for them would be a good idea. Food should be light while they get used to being alive again.”
His throat ached. He was determined not to let his voice crack while he was giving instructions as his last words.
“They’ll show up before I’m finished bringing them back.”
Sam was stepping into the conversation again.
“Once they’re back we don’t need you. You’ll be returned to the—”
“Revival is three steps. Body, mind, soul. The body is first. I need somewhere to put everything else when I get it out of the void. They’ll show up. Don’t touch them, don’t touch me.”
“What if we do?”
Unlike Sam, Sapnap sounded genuinely curious.
“Something could go wrong. The mind or soul might not go into the body and fall short and they’ll be stuck here without any real way to show themselves. Or they could go in the wrong body. Revival is complicated, it’s not—”
“Just do it.”
Sam was once one of his closest friends. Dream nodded all the same. He knew this would be how it went. He knew that he wasn’t going to die on calm terms. He knew that he would never get to die surrounded by his family. He would be hurt and marred and destroyed. He would never have comfort until he was flayed and bleeding in front of them and even then he was more likely to be spat on than kissed.
What a crime it was, to wish to be held.
Dream readied the ingredients. The book. He squared his shoulders and tried to make himself look like the strong Admin he was meant to be. He tried to mimic the stories he used to read. He tried to be something worth believing in.
Something that might just be worth saving.
He closed his eyes with Sapnap being the last person he saw. Not Sam, not Quackity. Not the people that hurt him over and over for the sake of their own enjoyment. The last person he was going to see was going to be his brother.
The man that Dream thought would be with him till the end.
The man that Dream was making sure was.
He focused into the void. Reaching deep and looking for the five of them that had been killed. He was trying to do the right thing but he could already feel the drain that was pulsing through his body. The way the void was trying to latch into him. He tried to give it the promise that he would be joining into it soon. That he would allow himself to give in and he would take the strikes as it wanted him to.
He just had to save all of them first.
Reclaim the bodies. Find their bodies bring them back. Pull them to the front of the world again and have them with him.
He couldn’t hear the room anymore. He couldn’t tell if Sam or Sapnap had moved to react to what was happening or if they were actually listening to him for a change so that they could have the people they actually wanted alive back in their lives.
The bodies were finished sooner than he thought.
His heart was pounding in his chest.
Dream searched for their minds. His own focus wanted to drift away. It wanted to slip out of his grasp and hide from him but he couldn’t let it happen. He had to keep going. He knew that he was going to be cutting it close before this ritual killed him but he thought he’d have more time than this. He’d thought he would last longer than bringing husks of people back.
Dream finished with their minds.
They would know who they were. They would have their memories and they would have their experiences but until he was able to get their souls and put them back inside the bodies, they wouldn’t be the same people. Logic and critical thought and nothing else. They would simply be soldiers to their minds, not people.
The soul was what made them into people.
Dream pushed himself more. He forced the souls out of the void. Ignoring the pain he beard from all of them. He was running out of time. The longer he waited to do this gently the more he was going to risk dying before he could finish this. He had to finish this.
He couldn’t let Sapnap down.
He couldn’t—
“Karl!”
Dream blinked his eyes open. Vision spinning and doubling over itself as the community house slowly came into focus around him. His body turned cold. Sparking out his vision as he felt hollowed through on the inside.
Dream took half a step back as others rushed into the room to greet their person that was brought back to life.
All Dream felt was the pain spreading through his chest.
Sapnap was holding Karl. He could see the way he held him and guarded him. How protective the hold was as he began to lower him to the floor to help him get his bearings. Dream tried to step away again. He tried to give them their room as his lungs felt like they were collapsing onto his heart.
He couldn’t get air in the right way.
He couldn’t breathe.
His head was spinning.
Dream had done a lot of things through his life. He had fought and pushed and he had been the fighter that was determined to never give up through anything. He was the one that made his mark on the world and he was the Admin that had the power to revive the dead. He was impressive and he was powerful.
He was dangerous.
He was dying.
He stumbled back again. Tripping over his own leg and falling back to hit the table of ingredients. His vision blurring and spinning bad enough that all he saw were blurs of colors. He could feel the sun trying to warm him.
He still felt far too cold. He felt far too sick. He was wrong. Something was wrong.
He was dying. Dream didn’t want to die.
“Dream?”
“Prisoner.”
His heart was crushing under the weight of everything else. Breaking apart and pulling hard enough Dream thought he might actually be feeling it falling apart in his chest. The pieces of it unwinding and leaving him with a mess of blood and veins instead of the pump that was meant to keep him alive.
He heaved. He choked.
He didn’t hear the yell of his name as he fell to the ground.
Dream barely registered the hands that touched him. The grip as his body was being lifted and pulled up onto a lap. He heard the muffled orders for help and the fingers that dug into his pulse point.
“Dream? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“He’s faking, Sapnap.”
“No he’s no. Sam. I can— Dream? Dream!”
He was so tired. He didn’t have anything left he could give.
“S’rry…”
He wasn’t trying to escape. Not from their grips. Just from his torture.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
He should be with Karl. He should be with the person he actually loved.
Dream felt his body be pulled again. Closer to the chest that was holding him and he felt warmth finally seeping in through his skin.
“He’s so cold.”
“It’s the Void. He wasn’t strong enough for that. He wasn’t—”
Another voice. It sounded like Karl. Dream let the world slip away just a little bit more.
“Hold on, Dream. Hold on.”
He didn’t want to be saved. He just wanted his family. He wanted to pretend that he was still loved.
“L’ve…” He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He only felt the buzz of the chest under his ear that told him Sapnap was talking. But Dream couldn’t die without saying this one more time. “Love you…..Pandas…sorry….’m sorry…..”
Sapnap was yelling for him. He could make out sobs. Panic. Fear. Want and hope.
But Dream couldn’t hold on.
And the Void came to bring him home.