Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Standing on his father's porch in the middle of the night isn't how Wilbur thought his day would end, but he needs help.

Knocking for the umpteenth time, he calls out, "Phil!" and perks up at the sound of usually light feet stomping down the stairs and to the door. The click of a lock rings out, and a single teal eye peeks out at him from the cracked opening of the still-chained door.

It glances at him for less than a second before the door is slammed in his face.

He knocks again.

And then he waits.

He might've knocked a few more times, but that's not important. What's important is that the door whips open and a firm hand latches onto his arm and drags him into the warm mudroom. He goes to say something, maybe even to apologize, but Phil immediately silences him.

"Shoes off. Go sit. Be quiet."

And with that warm welcome, his haggard father stalks off into the kitchen.

Yeah, he's in trouble—as soon as his dad wakes up enough, anyway.

Settling down on the old, battered couch, Wilbur pulls out the journal that's been driving him mad. The few pages that he'd managed to fill stand out starkly against the blank ones that make up most of the thing. 

He'd started it the day after the whole Meeting Incident had happened, drowning in guilt and shame. He’s been plagued by nightmares ever since, haunted by the similarities between his actions and beliefs and the actions of the people he’d grown up around. Most nights he’d wake up to the phantom smell of burning hair and skin, his mother’s screams echoing in his ears as bile rose in his throat. The image of a woman shrieking as she burned to death surrounded by kindling was seared into the insides of his eyelids.

Could his beliefs, as ignorant as they’d been to the reality of the situation, have led to that happening again?

(He resolutely doesn’t think about the handful of nights where someone had replaced his mother in that nightmare. He doesn’t think about flames mirrored in watery green eyes and hoarse, desperate pleading or the silhouette of antlers barely visible over the roaring bonfire. 

He doesn’t think about it.)

As that guilt had faded (slightly, ever so slightly he’d been able to remove those sharp claws that had latched onto his heart), his curiosity had blossomed anew. The thought that there was an entire culture left completely undocumented, destroyed brick by brick by uncaring, money-hungry hands and unfounded fears was unacceptable. Wardens deserved at least one accurate depiction of the identity that had been ripped away from them.

The only thing stopping him was Dream, specifically the possibility of making him uncomfortable. He'd be a major source of information as a living, breathing Warden—probably the only source of information until Wilbur could track down other leads. And then there was the issue that no sane Warden would willingly talk to him without some sort of collateral in case he was trying to trick them. He’d probably need Dream to act as a sort of liaison if the younger man was willing.

And that's where the real problem lies. Dream was kind of at the center of this whole internal crisis and quest for knowledge, and Wilbur had no clue where he was. Ever since The Meeting That Everyone Is Collectively Avoiding The Discussion Of Like It Has A Bomb Strapped To Its Chest—or just the Meeting Incident for short—Dream had been basically MIA.

Not to be dramatic, but Phil is quite literally his only hope right now. 

His father shuffles into the room with a tray and a jaw-cracking yawn and blinks a few times upon seeing him as his face contorts with resigned frustration. “Oh, you’re still here.” 

Phil slams down the tray onto the coffee table and collapses into an old armchair, face buried in his hands. Wilbur is kind of impressed that he didn’t spill the tea this time around, but he’s smart enough not to say that out loud. 

After taking a few minutes to get himself together, his father peers back up at him and, wow, does Wilbur suddenly feel bad about this. It seems like neither of them had any luck sleeping that night. “Wilbur, you know that I love you, right?”

Oh god. “Yeah…”

“And you know that there’s nothing in this world that I care more about than my family, right?”

Here it comes. “Yep, I, uh, I know.”

“So you know that when I say this that I’m not implying anything to the contrary, but what the actual fuck are you doing here?”

Wilbur goes to explain himself, but he can’t seem to get any sort of coherent thought out besides, “Dream.”

Phil apparently doesn’t like how that sounded, because the glare that gets sent his way screams that he’s just walked into a minefield. It only lasts a handful of seconds before his father’s gaze softens into something that Wilbur’s more used to. “Yeah, what about him?”

“Well,” he starts, feeling like his foot is hovering inches away from a buried bundle of TNT. “You know the thing that happened last month?” Phil just looks at him, face blank with one judgemental brow raised. “You know, the whole… thing.” 

“Yeah, I do,” is his father’s dry response. “I was there.”

“Yeah,” Wilbur continues, choosing to ignore Phil entirely for the moment because if he remembers who he’s talking to he won’t be able to finish. “And you know that one hobby that I have, right?”

His father must be really tired of him beating around the bush at this point because Phil’s chosen confirmation of that little rhetorical question is, “You mean the one that started as a trauma thing because you’re terrified of potentially making a mistake when it comes to other species and becoming like the people in your old village whose actions still haunt you to this day? Yeah, I know which one you’re talking about.”

Ouch. Harsh, but not unwarranted. “So you understand what I’m getting at, then?”

Phil slides a mug of tea across the coffee table before picking up his own and taking a sip. “Yeah, I get it, but I don’t get why you decided that I was the solution to whatever it is that you’re having an issue with.”

Cradling the warm mug in his hands, Wilbur quietly admits what’s really bothering him. “I can’t find him anywhere, Phil, and I don’t want to scare him.”

He stares blankly into his tea, not wanting to see whatever face his father must be pulling right now. He’s waiting for a harsh laugh or an annoyed groan, but his father just sighs.

He hears a mug being set down and looks up to find his father sitting forward, a fond light in his eyes. “Wil,” he starts, and the softness in his voice makes the tension that’s been building up in the room melt away. “Dream isn’t scared of you, he’s scared that you’re all scared of him.” 

Oh, he thinks quietly, that makes sense.

Phil huffs out a quiet laugh before standing. “You get some rest, and I’ll ask him to come over tomorrow, alright?”

Wilbur nods slowly, letting his now empty mug be taken from him without any fuss. All of the exhaustion he’d been ignoring has apparently decided to hit him now, and he’s powerless to stop it. 

The last things he remembers before drifting off are his father turning off the lanterns in the room and a whispered, “G’night, Wil.”

The next morning, Phil shoves his communicator into Wilbur’s face.

You whispered to Dream: Hey are you busy

Dream whispered to you: no?

You whispered to Dream: can you come over? Wil wants to talk

Dream whispered to you: I’m staying glamoured

You whispered to Dream: that's fine

Looking unreasonably smug, Phil takes the communicator back. "He'll be here in ten, hope you've got a sales pitch ready."

It's official, his father is trying to kill him. “Phil, what the hell?!”

He scrambles off of the couch and desperately attempts to fix his clothes, which looked as if he’d never heard of an iron in his life. His hair was a lost cause, curls snarled into a nasty case of bedhead, so he digs around in the bag he’d brought over last night and tugs an old beanie over the mess. The entire time, Wilbur manages to keep up a steady stream of, “Oh my gods, Phil, why didn’t you wake me up earlier? A bit of warning would’ve been nice, you know! I don’t have anything together, and what if I end up scaring him, or, gods forbid, I accidentally offend him? A-and how am I even supposed to explain any of this? ‘Hey Dream, I know that you’re probably extremely uncomfortable but I’m really very curious about your culture. If you need me to, I can trauma-dump the reasons why, but then that might guilt trip you. Anyway, how does the whole Warden thing work?’ What a great plan, Phil!”

There’s dead silence for a split second before a voice that is very clearly not Phil snorts, followed by a sarcastic, “Well, I mean, if you want to spill your darkest secrets to me, go right ahead, but I wouldn’t’ve shown up if I wasn’t going to hear you out.” Wilbur goes still, careful not to turn around because, oh gods, is that absolutely mortifying.

Collecting himself at a world-record pace—frankly he deserves a trophy for how quickly he managed to salvage his image, if you ask him—he turns to greet the admin. “Dream! How much of that did you hear?”

Dream huffs out a laugh, and somehow Wilbur can just tell that the younger man is smirking behind his mask. “Enough. What’s up, Wil?”

Wilbur holds out the borderline empty field journal, almost sheepish. “Well, I’m really into learning about the histories and cultures of other sapient species, a-and after the meeting last month I’ve really been wanting to ask you about it all. I mean, if everything that we’ve ever been taught about Wardens is wrong, then it stands to reason that your kind’s past and way of life has never been properly, truthfully recorded, and that’s a travesty. I’d be honored to record the real facts of your culture.”

The Admin just stares at him blankly, and he tacks on, “Of course, that’s if you’ll allow me?”

Dream turns to Phil, and the two have a silent conversation. A moment passes, a few seconds long at most although it feels like an eternity, and Phil nods, confident of whatever position he’s apparently taken in their cryptic little conversation.

That same blank mask turns back to him, and after a bit of hesitation, Dream offers him something that others in his position would only ever dream of. Wilbur couldn’t quell the insatiable sparkle of curiosity that must be showing in his eyes even if he wanted to. He feels like Christmas just came early.

“There’s an abandoned city in these lands, if you’d like to visit it. Their records would be able to tell you much more than I could ever hope to.”

Chapter Text

“So, how's it looking?"

Clawed hands gently applied a salve over the jagged, angry lines that laced up and down Dream's arms.

"Better. You really tore yourself up, huh?"

Bad's tail swayed to the music playing from the jukebox in the next room as he wrapped fresh bandages around the younger man's scratches. They were healing pretty well, and he was hopeful that they wouldn’t scar.

At his light teasing, Dream goes quiet, and Bad worries that he’d somehow upset him. The quiet continues, though, and after a moment he realizes that it's less of an angry-sad quiet and more of a contemplative quiet. The kid’s just thinking long and hard about something.

The jukebox switches through three songs before Dream says anything. Bad nearly misses it, the words so whisper-silent that the music almost drowns them out. “Did you know?”

In response, he hums noncommittally. Bad knew that he'd have to have this conversation eventually, but he still wishes that Dream would've given himself more time for a break between such emotionally taxing revelations.

He gives the boy time to collect his thoughts, cleaning up around the little makeshift clinic he’d commandeered back when this Community House was first built. Nowadays, it mainly saw use as a quick first-aid pitstop, but it also served as the room where people were kept whenever they were badly injured or stuck in a rough bout of panic.

Dream finally seems to piece together the right answer. "When I lost control of my glamour, you…you weren't surprised. You knew. You've known. How long?"

At that, Bad can’t help the laugh that bubbles up in his chest. "I've known about you for a while now, Dream. Couldn't have been more than a few months after you and Sapnap met…"

He still remembers that day clearly. Sapnap had just started going through puberty, barely twelve years old, and he hadn’t told Bad. A lot changes in a Blaze in that handful of years—their eyes take on a more normal hue, their skin becomes increasingly resistant to heat to match with the hotter temperatures they can produce, and Sapnap’s favorite: some start learning how to breathe fire.

The blaze rods that Sapnap was born with embedded into the skin around his throat were what let him truly breathe fire. At the age of twelve, they start producing blaze powder that was made to be inhaled and stored until later. The only downfall was that they had to be cleaned fairly regularly.

Sapnap’s downfall was that he didn’t know that particular fact.

It was a sunny day in early fall when Bad had first seen Dream’s true form. Sapnap had introduced him to the then-fourteen year old around the beginning of that spring.

He'd always felt that something was off with the other boy. He was skin and bone, clearly underfed, and was quick to change the subject whenever Bad would offhandedly mention Sapnap visiting Dream’s house, or Bad meeting his parents. He’d honestly just thought that the poor boy was homeless.

Then, that fateful day in early fall, a sculk sensor burst out of his floor while he was mixing some muffin batter. Startled, he recalls throwing the entire bowl of raw batter at the poor thing while shouting some…questionable things in his native tongue. The thing had chittered at him before disappearing outside, so Bad, like any reasonable person, followed it.

"You really threw a bowl at it?" Dream asks.

"Yes, now be quiet, I'm telling a story."

It slowly led him deep into the woods until they had gotten to a small clearing. It took him a moment to process what exactly he was seeing, but the second that it clicked with him he froze in pure terror.

A Warden was standing over his poor, innocent son. 

He'd tried his best to stay silent, but the Warden had noticed him immediately. Instead of the feral snarl that he’d been expecting, the voice of a child filtered through the air.

"Help him! Please, you've got to help him!"

The words barely registered with him, his mind overrun with a cacophony of alarms. Bad will readily admit that he wasn’t quite thinking properly, but the next thing he remembers is that poor, sobbing child pressing himself low to the ground, barely breathing, eyes zeroed in on the tip of a gleaming netherite sword. It hurts to imagine how terrifying he must’ve looked at that moment, completely enveloped by his own magic as he towered over the kid. A shiver runs through him as he recalls his voice, distorted and echoing.

"...you were pretty scary."

"I know."

"What did you do to my son?" he had questioned harshly. The Warden didn't answer, still locked onto the end of his sword, and Bad remembers screaming with the fury of all his kinsfolk. "Answer me!"

A strangled whimper came from below him, and whatever dam was holding back the boy’s words broke. "I-I’m sorry! I don’t know what happened, I swear! He just started breathing funny, a-and then he collapsed, and he won’t wake back up and I don’t know what to do. You can do whatever you want with me afterwards, but please just help him!"

To this day, Bad still isn't sure what had managed to snap him out of his rage, but something in the child's tone got through to him. He’d slowly backed away from the panicking, overwhelmed boy in front of him, turning his attention to his son now that the Warden was no longer a threat.

It hadn't taken him long to realize what was wrong—the build-up of blaze powder around the edges of the rods was blocking Sapnap’s vents and combining the shortness of breath with the excessive heat that had nowhere to go giving him a fever, and it was easy to see why his son had collapsed.

Settling his son’s head into his lap, he slowly began to clear out the blockage. From the corner of his eye, he could see the young Warden still sitting exactly where Bad had left him, and his heart broke. The kid was tense, trembling but unwilling to move from the spot lest he enrages the demon.

Oh gods, he’d just threatened a child. Bad can feel his paternal instincts flaring, demanding that he do something, anything, to calm the boy. He'd never been on this side of the situation—usually, he's a third party that intervenes. This time, he's the aggressor. Okay, he's got this. Totally.

Step one: get rid of any weapons. Easy. He sets down his sword at the edge of the clearing, laying it flat so that it would take more time to arm himself. A dagger from his waist follows promptly, falling with a soft thud.

Step two: subdue the threat. A little bit harder, he’d admit. Bad lowers himself to the ground a little distance away from the kid, right next to his son. He runs clawed fingers through Sapnap’s sweaty, matted-down hair, occasionally scratching at the Blaze's scalp. He suppresses a laugh when his son starts unconsciously pushing into his hand, a low purr rumbling from his chest.

He'd started with, "I'm sorry." That was the first thing he’d taught Sapnap to do if his son ever ended up having a fight with someone.

Glowing eyes snapped up to stare at Bad in shock. Had this boy never been apologized to? He was really starting to worry about the poor Warden's past. Pushing past those worrisome thoughts, he continues. "I was scared, but that doesn’t mean that it was okay for me to lash out at you. You didn't do anything wrong."

The boy scrutinizes every inch of Bad's face, and although he isn't sure what he was looking for, it seems that he’d found it. In a whisper, as if he’s afraid of shattering the fragile peace, the Warden asks, "I-Is he gonna be okay?"

"He'll be just fine," Bad confirmed. "Do you want to come see what happened?"

The young Warden slowly inched his way closer, stopping around a foot away from the demon. He points to his son’s neck with a clawed finger. "See these? They're supposed to act like vents. He just didn't listen when I told him that they could get blocked over time. He's a little bit overheated, but it's nowhere near dangerous."

Scooching forward a smidge, the boy scrunches up his nose and tilts his head. "What're they there for?" 

Skeppy is going to kill him for adopting another stray. Bad can’t help it, really! "Sapnap’s able to breathe fire, so these rods add a powder into the air he breathes that can help it ignite."

"That’s so cool," the boy gushes, "he's like a dragon!" Then, a fearful gleam enters his eyes, and with a glance down at his own torso, he asks, "Did you think I was gonna take them?"

Another red flag, wonderful. The more that the Warden talks, the more convinced that Bad is that the boy comes from a situation far worse than parental abuse or abandonment. The glimpses he keeps getting of something dangling from the boy’s ear as the remnants of his glamour flicker only help to solidify his theory.

“Sometimes I forget how perceptive you can be.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult, Dream.”

Storing that train of thought away, Bad nods. "Blaze hybrids need them to survive—they freeze to death if all of the rods are taken. They can survive with only one or two remaining, but it’s very, very painful to have one removed. There are a lot of people who would do bad things to him to get their hands on them."

"Oh," the little boy whispers. "You won't let that happen, right?"

"Of course not," Bad agrees quickly. "I don't like seeing anyone hurt," he adds with a glance at the Warden. "Thank you for getting me, I know that it must have been scary."

The child frowns at that. "It was worth it. I-I thought he was dying, sir."

A warm smile grows on Bad's face—how could he have ever thought that this boy would hurt his son? "Still," he counters, "you put yourself in danger to help someone you didn't know, someone who could have hurt you very badly. That was very brave of you."

A deep cyan tint spreads over the boy’s face, and Bad knew that he’d gotten his point across. 

The boy stands before slowly backing away from them. "Thank you for helping him."

Clocking onto the absolute flight risk that the young Warden was, Bad jolted up and reached out to the boy. "Wait!"

The Warden flinched and turned wide, terrified eyes onto the Demon. Bad took a step back with a quiet apology. "Didn't mean to startle you," he'd said. "I just—are you safe? Do you have a place to stay?"

The boy had smiled at him then, a small, fragile thing. “I think I’ll be okay, sir.”

And if days later, Sapnap’s friend Dream showed up wearing the same clothes as the young Warden, and if Bad recognized the boy’s voice, well…

Who was he to deny a child in need?

Chapter Text

Hey everyone!
Sorry in advance for the false update, but I want to let you know that I am discontinuing all of my DSMP fics. I took the time to really consider whether or not I wanted to do this, but Wilbur is a big part of both of my series and I cannot in good conscience continue to write with him. Unfortunately, simply removing him from the equation isn't something I can do, as his character plays a pivotal part in my DSMP stories.

As a thank you for being here and giving me your support, I'd like to make the Google Docs for each fic (and some extras that were never posted) publicly available.

Reconcilliation
Two Halves (Dream & XD Godling AU)
Childish (Child Dream AU)
What is Going on Inside That Head?
Unfinished Roommates Tubbo Chap
Borrowing Brothers
Borrowing Brothers Abandoned Rewrite

P.s. I made a Tumblr that I am actually going to use, so feel free to say hi here!