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Crying obsidian was still dripping. Lava was still popping. His blood was still spilling onto the floor but despite all of that Dream couldn’t seem to focus. He couldn’t tell how long ago it was now that Quackity had left. He just knew that the man who’d been torturing for the last months had walked out of the cell cheering and laughing and taunting. It was a day of celebration he’d said.
It was a day to laugh in the face of gods.
It was the day he said he’d broken one.
Dream didn’t think he was broken.
He’d blacked out and screamed. He’d cried. He’d pleaded for the pain to stop. Quackity didn’t stop. Dream never gave him the book. The day he gave over the book would be the day he considered himself broken but he knew that he wouldn’t do it.
The revival book was the only thing in this world that was stopping him from being killed. The revival book was the one thing that gave his life meaning to the people he once upon a time would have called his family.
He still would call them family.
When he thought about all of them he thought of them laughing together. He thought of George and Sapnap sitting beside him in the grass or on the wood path leading to the community house. He thought about baking muffins with Bad. He thought about testing redstone with Sam. About playing games and laughing with Quackity and Karl. He thought about fishing with Ant and hunting together. How he hung out with Punz and built the holy land with Tommy. How he munched on cookies and fresh bread in the bakery with Puffy and Niki. The trades and playful banter he shared with Tubbo.
He still called them his family. Even though every one of his relationships was shattered and broken into a fogged filthy mirror of what it once was.
He remembered so vividly how the axe had felt when Tommy plunged it into his chest. He remembered how it felt when his head fell from his shoulders. He remembered the cold of the void replacing the warm blood in his veins.
He thought he felt it now in the cell. The pool around him was only growing. He felt cold. He didn’t want to do it again. The crying obsidian looked like stars.
Tubbo was scared of him. Most of them were scared of him. He’d turned himself into a monster for the sake of uniting the people who’d been split apart by a dead man. He’d lost his family for the sake of making them whole again. He’d sacrificed himself just to see them smile but he never saw it. He never saw them be happy. Even the cheers when they took him to the cell were tainted with sneers.
Karl had been fading into the background for a while now. It was slow but he still noticed it. He wanted to help him but he wasn’t sure that he could. Punz was off limits for contact for the sake of his own safety. He hadn’t wanted to do it but Dream hadn’t budged. Even when it pained him now he didn’t regret that. He would never regret that.
Puffy had told him he deserved this. That he deserved whatever was coming. His mother hated him. She abandoned him and replaced him with someone better. But that was fine. Dream was okay with that. It made them happy. All he wanted was for his family to be happy. Niki hadn’t spoken to him in ages. She turned and walked away from him the moment she saw him out of the corner of her eye. The last time he properly spoke to her he’d been buying flowers for George only to find his house burned into rubble and ash.
The beginning of the end of the heart of his family.
Sapnap hated him now. George had yelled at him with tears rolling down his face and Dream had felt his heart shatter when they turned their backs on him. He’d watched them leave and felt their bridge together burn no matter how hard he clung to the rope connecting them. His best friends. The one he hung the world on. The ones he made the world for. He’d sobbed himself to sleep in the middle of the woods without them that night. He thought they would trust him a little more. He’d wanted to fake an argument with both of them to keep them safe but he supposed he didn’t need to anymore. Not when their love he thought was eternal turned into hatred that sacrificed him like nothing but a lamb.
Quackity had turned them against him. Quackity had hated him from the moment he started to put his family back together. He tried to erase the lines that kept them apart and he was hung as a monster for it. Someone who once had been his friend now walked in each day with weapons in his hand to listen to him scream and call it music.
He supposed he wasn’t surprised that Sam was a cruel Warden. That he offered his body forward to be carved and beaten and maimed day in and day out for the sake of power.
The cell turned darker. He didn't want his vision to go yet. It always scared him when the cell went dark. Quackity’s use of blindness made him terrified of losing his sight. He didn’t want to close his eyes. He didn’t want to lose the one thing that had a chance to prepare him for the pain he knew was coming.
It stung to think about his broken bonds. Bad had been like a second father to him. Ant had been like a brother just as much as Sam. He knew they were guards here. He knew they knew about what was happening. There was no way they didn’t. Sometimes Bad would drop the lava to give him time away from the heat and bring him a sandwich to break the cycle of rotting raw potatoes.
Their checks had become less and less. He didn’t see anyone but Quackity and maybe sometimes Sam if he turned his head fast enough to check. Sapnap didn’t want him. Sapnap promised him death. No one in the world wanted him anymore but he hoped his family was happy. He hoped they were okay.
He tried to move his legs. He tried to change himself into a more comfortable position if he was going to die. He didn’t want to do it half slumped against the wall like some pathetic sake of flesh and meat rather than a human being. But he supposed no one really saw him as a human anymore. He was only their monster. Nothing more, nothing less.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t move. His lungs were wheezing as they struggled around the blood in his throat for air that wasn’t filled with the stench of his own rot. Tears would be welling in his eyes if he had any of the energy for it. If his water wasn’t filled with filth and half gone from the heat of his room.
He was going to die in here. Alone and afraid. Hurt beyond repair and without anyone to hold his hand. When he was younger he would imagine, sometimes, his death. He’d always thought it would be surrounded by his family. And he was in a way. Surrounded by the memories he still had left of them even though some of their faces were beginning to blur. Some of their voices were too soft to really hear. Some of their phantom touches weren’t matching correctly.
When was the last time he’d been hugged? When was the last time someone touched him without the intent to harm him? When was the last time he’d experienced an ounce of kindness from the people he loved?
He didn’t want to see his cell if he was dying. He wanted to pretend that he was laying on the grass of the hill beside the community house back when he first made the world and they weren’t quite finished building. He wanted to imagine Sapnap and George cuddling beside him and Ant Sam and Bad making food down at the house. He wanted to pretend he was just taking a nap before it was time to get up and be a family together.
He wanted to pretend he was still loved.
He couldn’t see the lava behind his eyelids anymore. Maybe he was already in the void. It made him scared to try to open his eyes. It made him worried to risk it even further than he already had. Time and time again it felt like he made mistakes in this cell. He didn’t want to do another. He didn’t want to be in pain when he died.
Muffled sounds reached his ears.
He remembered after his last deaths he heard the echoes of the reactions around him. He thought it was just the people who were there but maybe it was reactions. He thought he recognized Ant as the voice talking but he couldn’t make him out enough to be sure. He felt hazy. He felt like he was floating but there was still pain. His organs felt wrong. He felt like his insides had been twisted around and shaken with boiling water filling all the space between.
He was too cold. He knew he was too cold. It just felt like heat instead. He’d lost too much blood to be warm. He’d faded into the void too much to have heat.
Something touched his lips. It scared him but he couldn’t move. He didn’t remember this from the last times he’d respawned. He had felt his wounds stitch themselves back together. He’d felt his heart knit back into one piece after the Axe of Peace had sliced it in half. He’d felt his head reattach to his body after his own blade was used to remove it in the first place. He’d felt pain and agony. He’d been dizzy and sick and he’d struggled to keep his body under control. Everyone knew you needed to recover after a canon death. He was not offered such a luxury.
Part of him hoped this one would be canon too. That it would be his final and that he wouldn’t need to experience the void again. Quackity had killed him in this cell before. Over and over and over again until the constant respawns left him feeling more like an empty shell than a person.
He’d had more than a few occasions where he felt like he was watching his body from outside of it. Where he felt like he could simply dissolve his soul in the lava and leave behind nothing but a corpse that still breathed.
He wanted this to be canon. He thought it was going to be canon.
He couldn’t give up the book but he couldn’t do this anymore.
No one ever considered that his punishment was not prison. His punishment was not torture. His punishment was losing the ones he loved. Forgetting their faces. Forgetting their laughs. He couldn’t focus. He couldn’t stay awake. He couldn’t breathe, or walk, or speak for himself without his tongue being torn from his body.
There was liquid in his throat. He thought he was being choked. He thought he was going to be drowned. That bleeding out wasn’t fast enough and they wanted to add more. He thought maybe someone agreed that he deserved to die here cold and alone.
He wished they’d leave him alone.
He wanted to die surrounded by the ghosts of who he loved. He didn’t want to give Quackity the satisfaction of watching his heart stop.
But then the taste reached his sluggish mind. Melons. It wasn’t a drowning attempt. It wasn’t a harming potion or poison or weakness to make him silent if he’d been whimpering without realizing it.
It was health. It was healing.
He didn’t want to drink it.
Sometimes Sam would come into the cell and force feed him potions. He hated the interrogations. He would heal him and then drug him to get him out of it in hopes it would loosen his tongue. It never did. It only made him vomit until his stomach felt like it was shredded. It only made him dizzy and ill to the point he couldn’t eat even if he wanted to. He hoped Sam would overdose him. He hoped he’d give him too much and he’d die before his Warden decided it was real and took him to the prison’s infirmary.
He felt the potion sliding down his throat. He felt hands on his face. He heard panic in the voice that was talking to him.
“Come on. Come on Dream, stay with me. Stay with me; you can do this. Come on.”
His head was spinning. His eyes were closed. It was too dark. He didn’t want to open them. He didn’t want to see the void and the false hope that someone still cared.
“Come on. Come on. Let it be enough. Wake up Dre. You can do it. Stay with me. Just stay with me.”
His body felt more real. It was slow but it was coming back. He heard shuffling sounds before there was something else being placed against his lips. He tried to protest. He tried to say no and reject it but he wasn’t strong enough to stop it. He was never strong enough to stop it. He was just the prison’s toy to be kicked and hit until the people meant to be guarding him felt satisfied.
It tasted different. Salty and bitter. It made him want to gag but his head was being held and his throat was being massaged just gentle enough to make him drink.
He could feel his body being knit back together again. He could feel it stitching and mending and his organs going back to where they belonged. He felt blood slowly fill his veins again and he felt the obsidian beneath him dig into his legs once more.
The moan of pain that left his mouth came from nothing but instinct alone.
Quackity liked to hear when he was in pain. Sam left faster if he made noise.
“Dream,” It was Ant. He knew that was Ant. He hadn’t seen him since his arrest. “Dream come back to me. You’re doing so well just come back.”
Obsidian was pressing on his back. It hurt. It burned. Everything burned. He hadn’t been clean in ages. He was covered in his own bile and vomit and blood. He was greasy from the lack of a shower and the tears of his cell.
He didn’t want to open his eyes and find out all of it was a hallucination. He didn’t want to find out all of it was just a dream.
“Open your eyes? Give me a sign, come on.”
He tried to speak. His voice was shattered and grating but he tried. All he managed was a small rasp before his lungs seized and he was coughing and gagging against the wall but there were hands on him immediately. Gentle and caring and supporting him to straighten him up and lean him to breathe.
This time he opened his eyes. He saw the cell with the lava down. He saw the blood pooled and smeared around him. He saw shining netherite knelt beside him and Ant’s worried face. He saw him watching him. Everything was blurry. He felt like he was still seeing things but he felt Ant cupping his face. He felt him guiding him through breathing.
“There you are. You’re okay. You’re alright. Just hold on for us.”
He tried to show his confusion at the words. He tried to understand what he was saying but he had to be wrong. Licking around his mouth and relishing in the fact that there was actually spit to wet it with thanks to the regen he tried again to speak.
“Us?”
There was relief on Ant’s face. He looked happy. He looked ready to cry. He nodded.
“Yeah. Yes. Bad and I. Bad’s making sure Sam and Quackity are gone and then we’re breaking you out of here.”
He didn’t understand. They knew. They knew what was happening to him. What changed now? It had been months.
“We heard the screams before but Sam always told us you were just trying for attention and he didn’t let us come down. He kicked us out and Bad tried to tell me that you didn’t look okay when he came in here but I never listened and I—”
He was rambling. He remembered faintly that Ant rambled if he was stressed or worried or scared. He talked to fill what he worried would be silence. Dream just wished his head hurt less so he could actually hear him.
“We weren’t supposed to come today. Sam told us not to but we came anyway. We heard you screaming. We hid in the guard tunnels and we saw how blood soaked Quackity was. I didn’t think— I—”
Dream was trying to understand. He really was. It just wasn’t working. They hadn’t known? All this time they hadn’t known?
“You didn’t—” He coughed again. His body was on fire. “You didn’ know?”
There was desperation covering his face as Ant shook his head.
“No. We didn’t know it was this. We knew Sam was interrogating you and we knew Quackity was visiting but we never thought this. We didn’t know they were doing this. And when the lava lowered and we saw you just laying here with blood all around you I—”
He felt himself be pulled into a hug. He felt tears hitting his shoulder. Ant was crying. Ant was hugging him and he was crying. He was protecting him.
“We’re getting you out. Bad’s making sure it’s safe and we’re getting you out. We won’t let anyone hurt you anymore. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Dream. We didn’t want this.”
He tried to look down at himself. He could see the potions doing their job. He could see fresh scars covering his skin but the pain made his breathing hitch and the emotions weren’t helping. He was too dizzy to fight against it. Too weak to do anything but watch and attempt to cling back to Ant and hope his hands didn’t fall through him.
He hoped Quackity wasn’t here. He hoped this wasn’t some new drug they’d pumped into his system to make him slip up in the interrogations. He hoped he wasn’t breaking like Quackity said he was. He wanted to be strong. He wanted to make sure there wasn’t another power gap that threw his family apart into shambles of hatred and pain.
If he didn’t stop it the cycle would never end. This was for the best. His agony was for the best.
His breathing must have gotten Ants attention because he was holding him closer and whispering encouragements.
“I know it hurts. Just breathe. Keep breathing. Oh my god; keep breathing.”
He’d scared him. He knew that he’d scared him. He must have been nearly dead when they found him if Ant was reacting like this. He’d typically had a pretty strong stomach when they found badly graphic scenes during manhunts or challenges. He was good at being level headed when Bad was too worried or too stressed. He was good at focusing when Dream was too stuck on his goal. When Sapnap was too fired up and George was too reluctant to move forward.
Ant and Sam had both been solid figures who helped him when he needed them. Now Ant was holding his broken body while Sam escorted his torturer to the freedom of his world outside.
He should be happy but he just felt numb. He didn’t know what to do. He still wasn’t sure it was real. But he heard someone come back and a faint voice he thought might be Bad. He thought it was the distance until Ant sounded far away too.
He was being shaken. It was gentle, kind, worried. He felt strong arms under his legs. He felt himself be lifted into a chest and the obsidian fall away. The world was blurring all around him but he tried to hold on.
The lava grew warmer. The world spun and then it was gone. Hands were fluttering on him but they didn’t hurt and he didn’t know where he was enough for him to care. He was exhausted beyond comprehension. Maybe it was the potions or just simply the events he’d endured as his body realized it was safe. For the first time in months Dream allowed himself to think maybe, just maybe, someone out there still loved him.
He hoped he was right. He thought he was right.
They’d show him he was.
