Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He could literally feel himself slipping slowly into madness.

How long had it been? A day? Three weeks? Nobody knows. He just wants out. Out. That stupid clock ticking over and over and over and ov- 

He didn’t realize he had been scratching at his face, or picking at his fingers until they bled down to the muscle, or the way it peeled under his nails. Or the way his nails remained short and painful to bite down on. These were all from him constantly being overstimulated, all of the hot fucking bubbling lava, the ticking of that clock repetitively, the sound of mechanical whirring. It was all too much.

He started doing other things, writing mainly. Attempting to keep the little shreds of hope he had for someone to save him.

I wanted a family.

I wanted to be safe.

I didn’t want it to be this way.

Am I a bad person?

Arguably since he was an administrator he couldn’t die. But that didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t want to. He really just wanted to get out. If getting out ment dying then so be it. 

So he tried to get out.

Dream tried to swim in lava.

Dream burned to death.

Dream went up in flames.

His skin picking became worse, moreso with the face scratching. He bled a lot more, the red liquid was more of a comfort now. That he was alive, that he wasn’t in hell. That he was breathing and living and not dead.

He began to think he was dead.

He didn’t pay attention to the fact his body needed food, or that he was thirsty. He was dead after all. Ghosts didn’t need food, right? Ghosts didn’t have company either. 

Dream starved to death.

Dream drowned.

Dream experienced lack of oxygen in water.

He wanted out he wanted out he wanted out he wanted out he wanted out i wanted out i wanted out i want out i want out please let me out please-

Visitors didn’t come often. When they did they said mean things. Accusing him of things he didn’t do or had a minor part in. He was confused. Were they ghosts too? Were they demons? He was in hell, it would make sense. 

I’m in hell.

This funny guy comes and gives me food. He makes me eat even though I'm dead.

I don’t like him. He’s rude.

Is he a demon?

Why would a demon make a dead person eat?

Am I Cain to whatever Abel is out there?

Who did I kill?

Why don’t I remember?

WHY DON’T I REMEMBER?

Dream, of all people, was tired of being dead. 

It wasn’t anything he could really help. But he couldn’t remember anything. Was his body his? Was he possessed? Was he possessing someone? Is that why ‘his’ body didn’t feel his?

It would make sense. He went with this theory. He was possessing someone because he was dead. He looked into the single water source block to get a peek into his borrowed body’s features.

Long, dirty blond hair. Scarred cheek, which looked like it had been because an animal scratched it. Hands that had rough skin around them, especially the cuticles and pads. No fingernails. Freckles if he looked hard enough. A scar on its lip to its chin.

It had...blue eyes. Gray? Gray. Gray eyes.

He liked it okay. Looks didn’t matter when he was trapped in a box, really. But the body was nice. He felt sorry for whatever soul inhabited it before him. He leaned up against the wall, sighing. He forgot to breath every now and then, trying to keep calm. 

He daydreamed a lot.

In the world in his head, he was safe. Safe with his friends that he had made up. They appeared real sometimes, but it’s okay.

The first friend was named ‘George.’

George was colorblind, had a skinny build, brown hair, and really really pale skin. He had a british accent. His favorite color was blue.

Dream liked him a lot. Loved him a lot. He was pretty.

The second friend he called ‘Sapnap.’

Sapnap had tan skin, brown eyes, and was a little bit more muscular than George. His favorite color was orange. He had a lot of similarities to blazes.

Dream found him funny. He dubbed the little daydream friends in his head ‘The Dream Team’ because it made him giggle. In that world, his friends were safe and happy and everyone loved him. He didn’t do anything wrong in his daydream world. Nobody could hurt him there.

Dream’s world was nice, he and George and Sapnap lived in a cottage together. They had a farm, he had a horse and a dog, and even a cat. The cat’s name was Patches.

Something about the cat was familiar. He dismissed it.

Dream lost track of time until Sam came back to install something. He didn’t speak. But Sam was putting a funny looking thing in his ceiling. 

“I won’t be manually delivering your food anymore.”

“What?”

“I won’t be delivering your food anymore.”

Dream just looked through his borrowed body’s eyes. Staring into the lava that moved consistently around his cell. His possessed body felt like it was being taken over by something else, and that Dream was just ejected out of it. Sam made some noise, but eventually left the premise.

Dream stayed like that for 3 hours.

Just staring.

Just sitting, his soul outside his body. 

As soon as he came back, he didn’t question it. He just sat there and decided to sleep off the strange feeling. The obsidian was uncomfortable but he wasn’t allowed to complain.

George was nice to return to, he kissed Dream on the nose with a giggle. They went adventuring for iron in Dream’s daydream. They loved each other, and it was the pure, good cheesy romance that Dream had thought about as a young child. They made childish vows to each other, saying they would get married. They had pinkie promised it. George even made Dream cross his heart. 

That daydream was snapped out of very quickly when potatoes dropped out of the strange thing in the ceiling. 

Dream flinched before moving back with a yelp. Tears welling up in his eyes from the sudden noise that pulled him out of his ideal world.

Those tears descended into full on, chest wracking sobs. 

It felt like his fragile soul was being split in two.

How long has it been?

I’ve been seeing George and Sapnap less. 

I’m scared.

Where am I?

I’m starting to think I need to destroy myself in order to get out.

So be it.

Dream’s dermatillomania increased with intrusive thoughts. More blood, more scars, more embarrassment when he had to be restrained by the creeper hybrid. He yelled himself hoarse once.

Dream bled out.

Dream took too much damage.

Dream was slain by Dream.

Chapter Text

He was extremely glad when a strange animal was brought in by Sam.

He told Dream that it was a cat, and the prisoner was looked at strangely when he asked what it was. The cat was black and white. He called it Oreo mentally, for some reason it seemed that it suited the cat rather well. Dream liked the cat, not only because he had something else living in his cell that could stand the heat, he also got a new food option.

Said new food option was canned cat food.

It wasn’t bad tasting. It had a sticky and bitter flavor that was overlaid by artificial fish.

It brought back memories of fishing with Tommy. 

Oreo is nice.

I like her a lot. She keeps me from visiting George and Sapnap sometimes, but that’s okay. Her fur is nice and short, I'm not sure why.

Sam told me Tommy would be coming later.

He stayed with the cat for what felt like months. Tugging at her fur sometimes simply because he was convinced Oreo wasn’t real for a few days. She didn’t like that, and gave him a nasty scratch on his already scarred up arm. It hurt to the point he refused to touch her unless she approached him first.

--

Tommy had lost his childhood.

He had been thrown into a world filled with war and was forced to make decisions no fucking child should have had to make. He insisted this wasn’t the case, but behind closed doors, by himself, he wished he had never came across the damn fucking server in the first place.

Maybe he could have had a normal childhood.

Not one filled with being passed around village to village, not one filled with being forced to pick a “side.” Not one filled with abuse. In some world, he assured himself, this was the case. He was happy in whatever world that was. With a family who loved him as their own, and there was no war and no discs and no Dream.

Because you see, Tommy was still a kid. He was just a kid.

A kid never deserved this.

--

Dream also never had a childhood.

His was more than just being thrown from house to house however.

Dream had been forced into a kingdom of a world he was unfamiliar with, and Dream had been shoved into this world with a crown and what was essentially godhood.

Dream, for this reason, was stuck in perpetual childhood. An endless slew of nostalgia and looking for something he never had in the first place. Dream had nostalgia for many things, smiley faces, jukeboxes, a plush bunny toy he had somewhere in an ender chest.

When Oreo was around, it was okay.

He was okay. Okay with Oreo.

He could be himself with Oreo.

That lost child that never had a chance to grow, to mature, because fate had decided to halt the god at her feet and trap him with a fate worse than death.

Then Tommy killed her.

Tommy killed Oreo.

Tommy killed the one person Dream still had love, and care, and hope for. Tommy killed Dream’s chances of ever recovering when he killed that cat. That cat was the one thing from keeping him at bay from physically hurling Tommy fucking Innit into the lava he himself wished had taken him from this goddamn mortal coil.

Dream decided to do the next best thing. This thing was to beat Tommy into the ground until his face was no longer recognizable. For Tommy had killed the last remnant of Dream. 

Tommy’s last words were “stop.”

Dream did stop. Dream struggled to, but he did.

He was now left with two corpses. Both of former friends.

He felt a disconnection from what he did, for a minute. Then it hit him. He had killed others before, others who had plenty of lives to spare. He had never taken someone’s final. His chest felt tight, like a balloon ready to burst at any moment. He exhaled through his nose, attempting to stay calm while the two dead bodies festered against the obsidian of his cell.

The child let himself cry. 

Bubbling, searing hot tears. The child had not let himself sob openly and cry for many years. His chest hurt. He didn’t mean to. He really didn’t. Why did it hurt? T̶̤̆͌ö̷̦̼́m̵̠̆m̷̯̗͗͑ẏ̴̛̤ was just another pain in his side, right?

Fond memories of building, fishing, battling, and genuine smiles from underneath his porcelain mask started to crack and bleed through whatever mental wall he had built. It was flooding. He was flooding. He felt a nauseating sickness overcome his head and belly for a second before throwing up the contents of his stomach.  He didn’t make it to the lava. 

He was filthy, surrounded by carcasses, and he was finally trapped and surrounded by loss.

He took a jump for one last shot. One last go, maybe he would succeed.

A notification spanning across multiple communicators, multiple worlds, and iterations of the same repeated phrase over and over and over.

Dream has burned to death for the final time.

It was his will, that overcame the very code of the server. The very code that the Universe had assigned to the young god. His soul shattered and reburned into something. Something similar to sand, sprinkled across the Universe and sewn once again into beads of silver, patched into the cloak, the very thing holding this world together.

I see the player you mean?

The young god?

The one pushed too far, the manipulator, the liar?

And yet he only wished for someone to care.

I see this player you mean.

Chapter Text

--

Does he truly deserve a second chance?

This is up to you, young god.

Do you want to truly have a second chance?

Dream stared into the universe’s eyes. Everything and yet nothing at the same time.

“No.”

So be it.

And the Universe let his soul rest.

--

Dream awoke to a white, empty plain. He ached, from his soul to whatever remained of his consciousness. He tried to get up, stars fading in and out from his vision. He finally was able to, hips aching.

The sky was a shade of grey, and there was a singular tree in the center of the clearing he landed on, people surrounding it. He dragged himself over to the tree, the people there were transparent, but they each had an energy to them that made them distinct.

He noticed the first.

Horns, goat eyes, and he was surrounded by bottles. Schlatt?   He was wearing a sweater, blue in color with what seemed to be a heart-shaped patch on his left breast. Schlatt gave him a sneer before continuing to drink from a near-empty bottle of wine.

The next person was dressed in yellow, a ever-bleeding wound across his chest.

Wilbur. 

Wilbur had pure white eyes, and he had a smile on his face despite the cut across his chest. His beanie hid most of his curly brown hair, and there was books and half-written music notes where his designated spot was.

“Hello! You’re freshly dead! Welcome to the inbetween!” the one in the yellow handed him a blue rock. “Have some blue!”

Dream took the rock gingerly from the transparent being’s hand, noticing his own was thicker in ocapacity than Wilbur’s. It turned a darker shade before he even attempted to look at it. “Do you have a name? I’m Ghostbur, but people call me Wilbur sometimes! The one in the blue sweater is Schlatt!”

“I’m....” He doesn’t remember his name. He tried to. He tried to remember, but it’s empty. There’s nothing where his name is supposed to be. Why can’t he remember it?

“The Universe called me a young god.” 

“That’s a funny name! If you don’t have one, can I call you Jubilee?”

Wasn’t that the name of a special event?

“It’s because today is rather a jubilee since we just met you!”

Jubilee it is then. He mentally giggled, a smile spreading across his face. “I think that’s a nice name. My name is Jubilee!”

“We need to make you a sweater now, I made Schlatt’s and my own! A new person! This is exciting!” Jubilee had just noticed the knitting needles and yarn in a branch on the tree. Schlatt rolled his eyes, letting out a snort before standing up and shaking his hand. “Name’s Schlatt. Not Glatt or whatever the fuck the kids in this damn server call me now.” Jubilee shook it, a slight loneliness in his soul died at the handshake. 

“What’s your favorite color, Jubilee?” Wilbur asked, holding out a myriad of thick, coiled yarns. “I took up knitting after I died, something better to pass the time with!” The one in yellow felt the need to explain himself. 

Jubilee didn’t like the green, nor the warmer colors. Something in him tensed away from the orange yarn. But the green was familiar, but it felt tinged with a empty and hollow feeling he couldn’t exactly shake. 

“Baby blue.”

Schlatt side-eyed him.

“Blue it is then!” Wilbur’s blind eyes lit up with a smile that looked like it hurt. “Blue is such a nice color…I should direct you to the mirror there, I freaked out over my appearance the first time I woke up here! Now shoo, I have a sweater to make!”

Said mirror was merely a shard of reflective glass. He closed his eyes before bringing the shard of glass to his face.

When he opened them, he jumped a little.

His eyes were entirely black, tar-like liquid leaking out of them and dribbling down his cheeks. He couldn’t feel the tears on his face, which was strange. His hair was a lighter shade of blonde, and it was pulled into two buns. Jubilee’s skin was gray, and his freckles were barely visible through the weepyness of his eyes. Discolored skin was rampant around his cheeks, a lighter shade of grey before abruptly ending at his chin. When he touched it, he winced at the rougher texture.

“It’s done!” He heard coming through the slight shock of what he felt wasn’t his face. He pocketed the mirror, Wilbur having produced a light blue cable knit sweater in under 2 hours. The patterns in the piece of clothing reflected that of fire, and Jubilee took it gingerly from his friend’s hands before pulling it over what he felt was his chest.

“That looks rather good on you! Schlatt, any opinions?” The brunette looked to the goat hybrid, who put down his bottle and gave a glance to Jubilee. “Nice.” was the only response before he went back to reading and drinking.

It felt...comfortable, warm even. 

Jubilee didn’t like warm much, but this warmth was welcome. His heart swelled a little. And for once he felt he wasn’t alone, he felt cared for. Wilbur looked expectantly at the spectre, as if expecting a comment. “T-Thank you.” was all Jubilee could get out before hugging the brunette tightly. Wilbur was somehow taller than the young god, so Jubilee had to reach on his tip-toes for adequate hugging.

They parted, Wilbur asking a question posed as quick but it was rather heavy in topic.

“Jubilee, do you remember anything from when you were alive?”

He had paused, eyebrows creasing and he shuddered. Trying to remember things....

“I remember I died in lava, so my body isn’t able to be recovered....A person in glasses, like BIG goggles, mushrooms....A blond kid, not me. And a cat.”

He listed off the vaguely important details, anything else past maybe feelings and those details hurt to think about, as if something was blocking him from recovering them.

“Maybe Phil can help?”

Schlatt was surprisingly the person who suggested this.

“That’s a good idea! He knows a lot of things, since he’s rather old.”

Jubilee picked at his fingernails, nodding. “Alright, we’ll head to...Phil then. And see if he knows anything about me.”

Chapter Text

Phil, as the angel of death, had seen many a spirit or two.

It was his job after all, reaping souls and taking them to their own limbo. (He was on break as of late, however.)

So when the ghost of his son, the poltergeist of a former dictator, and an unidentified spectre he didn’t recognize were making their way twards his cabin in the snow, he thinks he has every right to act surprised at the unknown male in a blue sweater. There hadn’t been any deaths on the SMP lately, as far as he knew. He was sure his wife or one of the crows would let him know if such a thing happened.

He sat up, stretching his mangled wings, before opening his door to the group of spirits. A small smile on his face at the sight of Ghostbur.

“Hi mate, you brought friends?” He raised an eyebrow, he knew Glatt. But the one with black eyes he was unfamiliar with. “Who’s the one in the blue sweater? Other than Glatt, of course.” He ignored how uncomfortable the sight of the ram-hybrid made him, the poltergeist’s eyes were gouged out by his horns, blue blood leaking from his eye sockets.

“This is my recently deceased friend, Jubilee! Jubilee, this is my father!” Ghostbur led on with airy happiness. Phil looked to the one with tar-like goo falling from his eyes, taking note of the scars running up his face, all of them looking like they had been boiled onto his skin.

Jubilee let out a small cough, offering his hand to shake. Which Phil took, albeit with hesitance. “We were wondering if you recognized him? He doesn’t have any large or coherent memory at the moment.” Ghostbur’s voice chimed, fingers lacing together.

“I’m afraid not, ‘Bur. What does he remember if at all?”

“A blonde kid, not me, a man in goggles, and a cat. I explicitly remember dying in lava.”

Phil winced, that explained the burns. Lava was never a pleasant way to go.

The ‘kid’ comment made him hesitate with his response. He….Tommy. Tommy had passed less than a week ago. Was Jubilee Tommy?

He ignored the pang in his gut. Shock lightly wearing off before gritting his teeth. Ender, he hoped not.

Jubilee ignored the people in the walls.

Not that he didn’t want to look at them, but staring was rude and quite frankly he was tired of them whispering untrue things at him.

“You killed Tommy.”

Who was Tommy, again?

“Why did they let you go?”

Who let him go?

They were also all staring at him.

The black beings that had no tone or features to them save for their eyes. He hated their eyes. He ignored them, at least attempted to. Unaware of his breath speeding up or the liquid pouring from his eyes becoming more sludge like, falling with a consistency similar to slime.

“D-Do you see the figures? The ones near the fireplace?” He mumbled, Ghostbur’s blank eyes widened, a concerned hand touching his shoulder. He pulled away, as if he had been burnt again. Breath speeding up more, his body felt like it was melting. His eyes, they hurt. They hurt so bad. And the mean people whispering untrue things to him were now yelling.

“YOU KILLED TOMMY.”

“THIS IS YOUR FAULT.”

It was, but he didn’t know it yet.