cloak

Characters: Dream, Technoblade

Words: 7k so far (1 of 2 chapters)

Warnings: Referenced Torture, Abuse

Summary — The highs and lows of Dream and Technoblade's time together in prison.

(I've finally done it! This is the c!rivals fic I've been working on for months! It's my take on their time together during the prison arc, so expect the usual prison arc themes. The good(?) and the bad. This one has taken me a While, so I hope you enjoy it like I did!)

Technoblade’s arrival was bad. It was really, really bad. Somehow, in all Dream’s life, he didn't think he had ever been quite this fucked. He refused to look at him. He had his head between his knees, crouched tightly in his usual back corner. He didn't know how long he had been sitting like this. But he couldn't look up now, because then he would see Techno, and that would make it real. And it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. His hands fisted in his hair.

Read on AO3.

thinking about c!dream earlier on in the server just makes me sad man. like, c!dream has never been a perfect character. he's always been flawed, always been a bit of an asshole, always had control issues. but also he knew that. he tried to work on that. he and tommy were friends, despite being flawed people with their own issues that would bump into conflicts because of the ways that they differed. c!dream tried, god, he tried; he wasn't even on the server, when the drug van happened, and walked into a place with someone who was practically a stranger to him building a wall and calling for war and having turned half the people dream knew against him, apparently, for no reason that he could've known at the time, and he had looked straight at tommy and tubbo and asked if that was what they really wanted when wilbur told them that there was no such thing as dual citizenship. he tells tommy when he has to sell a disc for spirit's leather even though tommy had surrendered the discs to him at the end of the revolution because he knows it'll matter to him. he and tommy truce, multiple times, and c!dream gets tangled into conflicts that literally don't involve him repeatedly and gets targeted Because He's Dream repeatedly and he plays along with that trivia contest and he gives gifts to fundy and tommy after terrorizing them a little for fun and he plays along with the dreamon thing and he keeps getting pulled into fights that weren't his but tries to make them a little more fair when they get him involved. he fucks around with tommy and they have fun, they're friends, and when he and wilbur look like they're in danger dream is one of the first to find them and lend them real, practical, valuable aid. he calls himself "Big D" in that book and he tells the man that wrote him as a tyrant that he doesn't want to be a villain in the story anymore. he asks tommy if he's okay, and watches that kid's back when he walks alone and unarmed into manberg, and fights with him at the battle of the lake and all of that is thrown back in his face as being a lie. half the intial community structures that exist were built by him; the community house, the nether portal and hub, the prime path. during a time where every other piece of leverage got burned or killed (rip the casualties of the pet war), dream was kind of known for being one that could be fairly traded with, that would minimize permanent damage. the kills in the final control room were originally to strip lmanburg of their gear, which he had kept in a chest so it could be returned to them after the war.

like no c!dream isn't perfect at the beginning of the server. yes he's kind of a jerk sometimes, kind of an asshole sometimes, kind of neurotic most of the time. but god dammit like c!dream does try to mitigate the worst of his control issues, when they flare up early on; the initial disc war ends with tommy getting his discs back as well as a stack of diamonds, in exchange for a netherite chestplate. he's a flawed character and he's still someone pretty friendly on the whole to most of the server, he's also kind of just known for being a little weird. he gives gifts randomly. he fixed creeper holes, and houses, and went along with bits. like whatever im a c!drolo c!dream woobifier and i admit it lol but for as much evil as he ends up doing, pretty damn consistently early on, he's . friendly? kind? funny? helpful? their neighbor. their friend. c!dream isn't just some stranger that flew off the handle; he's someone they knew and lived with who had his actions taken in bad faith because the goddamn story said so and kept fucking trying anyway until he believed the lie too. like he was just a guy!! a guy they knew and lived with!!! like my god

you wouldn’t survive an hour in the asylum where they raised me

The post-prison arc has some crazy moments, but honestly the craziest part for me is that c!Dream is still like. Functioning. How well he's functioning is debatable, but just think about it—just think about how insane his living conditions had been for an insane amount of time. Think about every single thing he must have survived. How the fuck do you bounce back from that? How are you still able to walk, to hold a conversation, let alone pick up a weapon again? How do you find the strength to shove it all far enough aside to keep going?

post prison dream watching rain/snow?

literally chillin

Can't escape from memories

The Body: Coughing Up Blood

When Quackity found out about Dream disease he’s begin trying a fun activity :)

@sixteenth-day-event

Quick sketch of the prison boy :)

Guess what I found! For those that liked my canon c!Dream - I got him repaying c!Sam.

Pandora's Vault, but all the visitors except Quackity are Dream's hallucinations. Pandora's vault, but Dream talks to Sapnap and George for hours, and then finds himself in an empty cell. Pandora's Vault, but Dream throws buttons torn from his shirt at Quackity every time he comes to him to make sure that he is real. Pandora's Vault, but Sam hears Dream arguing with himself for hours, sometimes loudly shouting Tommy's name. Pandora's Vault, but Dream is petting a nonexistent cat, not understanding why Sam is looking at him so worriedly. Pandora's Vault, but hallucination faces are getting more and more blurred because he can't remember exactly what his friends looked like. Pandora's Vault, but Punz's voice is the only reason he continues to survive in this hell 💥💥💥💥💥

@sixteenth-day-event

Prompts: twisting the knife + a silent grave

(fic under the cut)

Sam is dead.

His corpse is propped up stiffly against the black wall, on the other side of the lava dividing them both. On one side, the prisoner, screaming and begging and bleeding out for the entertainment of a man with a gold toothed grin and a seemingly infinite amount of silky white dress shirts. On the other, his warden, not listening.

There's a knife stuck in his side as he lies there on his back with Quackity on top of him. His own sobs fall into background noise, mere set-dressing. The lava swirls and bubbles before him. Sam is on the other side. Suddenly that's all he can think about. Sam is on the other side, dead.

The warden's skin is pale and gray – he hasn't seen the sun in months, stalks the prison as a ghost does a haunted house – and his eye sockets are deep and dark as night. His hair is falling out. When he touches Dream, his hands are cold.

He never does anything at all.

"Who's gonna stop me?" Quackity taunts – twists the knife in one brutal jerk that rips a scream from Dream's hoarse throat. A tear rolls down his face. He can't breathe, for – "Who's gonna fucking stop me?"

The only man who could stop this monster of both of their creation is dead in the other room.

How long, Dream asks – the gods above, his own fate, whatever vague and unknowable thing men pray to when they can't think for themselves, when they are at their most hopeless and lost – will it take for this accursed cell to become his coffin as well?

It's not a question he would ever think, once. Back then in the sunlight, he had designed the prison as a safe harbor from the tumultuous, crashing waves of ever-present fear, the sea air clogging his lungs. He was desperate. It was his oasis, his escape route. His island of Calypso. The only place he could be safe – Sam wouldn't let anyone kill him. He had bet his life on that certainty.

The Sam he knew is dead on the other side of a wall of lava. Dream might be dead as well, or just barely clinging to the life that poured out of him with every slash of a blade or snap of rope against his skin. Every condescending sigh, every slap or hunger pang, or lies, a gentler form of torment that were crueler because of their subtlety. Unspeakable things had happened to him in that cell – and yet, he still lived?

No. He must be a ghost.

How many times had he thrown himself carelessly into lava? How many times had he passed out, bleeding profusely on the obsidian floor? How many times had he been told he should be dead?

He didn't remember much, now. He could have easily given up the Revival Book in some agonized, delirious haze. He would've died – he would no longer have been useful alive. He could no longer predict what Sam would or wouldn't do.

"You know how to make all of this stop, Dream."

Dream is silent.

He knows the game by now. He knows the lines, repeated over and over until they whisper in his ears even when he's completely alone. He knows they're just playacting. There is no paradise waiting for him. If Quackity gets his hands on the Book, then Dream will truly be dead, deader than he is already. He will go to Limbo. And he will never escape. Punz will not save him. Dream can't trust anyone. He can't trust even his oldest friends – did Sapnap not threaten to kill him? Has George ever even visited him, blessed Dream with some kinder presence? No. Everyone hates him, for he is a monster, the minotaur captured in a labyrinth of his own design –

Or perhaps this is already his limbo. He can't imagine a fate worse than this. It would be fitting, for his personal hell to be so like his living existence that he couldn't tell the difference between them.

He hates himself, too, in this cell. Though he'd never admit it to anyone, not even Sam who had seen so many of his vulnerable places. He hates the undead thing he is. He hates how dreamlike everything is – he's stopped even trying to count the days; he did, once, but then Sam started skipping meals, and Quackity started coming twice in one day every once in a while, and he didn't have a clock by then anyway. He lost count. Time died with him. But then, he spent both his days and nights screaming and bleeding and passed out on the floor, and there was nothing to look forward to, until the day that someone came to let him out and that he couldn't do anything about. What was the point of counting, anyway?

He hates that he's given up.

Sometimes, he puts his fingertips to his neck, just to feel his heart beating. He sleeps with one hand pressed to his chest to feel his breath rising and falling with each breath. He screams just to feel the vibrations in his throat. All of it could just be another lie – some charade made up by his subconscious mind to torture him further. Funny, that the man once best known by others for his mask and his web of lies and manipulations is now completely trapped by the lies of everyone around him. He's helpless, here. He knows nothing.

"You deserve this, you know that? You fucking deserve this."

He's lying.

"That's the only reason I'm here. Because you need to be fucking punished, Dream. You need someone to put you in your place."

He's lying.

But when he finally leaves, Dream doesn't complain to Sam. He doesn't say anything at all. He lays there, a silent body in a silent grave.

Sam's hands are as stiff and cold as ice despite the lava just behind him. You're not dead until you're warm and dead. Dream clings to that hope - that it's just the cold around them that has paralyzed them both. Someday they might see the warmth of the sun again, and then they could be friends again. The world could be perfect again.

Sam's breath smells like formaldehyde.

Ok, I recently wrote an essay [here] talking about the definition and duties of civil engineering as well as the ethics because of the brain rot @swordfright gave me with calling Dream Sam’s ultimate engineering project. So, because I actually am a civil engineer I took it upon myself to design the title and summary of quantities sheets just like I do at work for roads but with Dream as the project instead. And in honor of angst day sponsor by @sixteenth-day-event, I figured I’d share it because I feel like it kinda works for the prison of the mind prompt.

“Sam’s “ultimate engineering project” he deemed too damaged like a bumpy road or crumbling building that wasn’t worthy of patching and filling in the cracks or reinforcing, that’s too eroded to be fixed and preserved. So, Sam strived to tear him down to the bedrock so he could remake, remold, and reengineer Dream according to his design for the common safety, public health and well-fair.”

{These are very similar to the actual sheets I make day to day, which I shall not share for the sake of doxing my location, but yea pretty much everything has a significance. Some of it doesn’t necessarily make sense but that was because I was more so taking inventory of what we see in lore (so you know I counted ;) lol)}

It needs to be studied the way dreblr grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Drags you back down to the depths again. Any other fandom, we probably could've found our way out by now, but this little hellhole is uniquely persistent.

a small drabble for @sixteenth-day-event with the prompt "a silent grave"

tw for implied/referenced torture because, well, torture box, y'know? also potential slight suicide ideation

Sleep in Pandora’s Vault is fleeting, coming in flashes, quick increments that leave Dream more dazed and restless than before. It’s never an escape—even in his bursts of sleep, the incessant dripping of the crying obsidian plays the role of a backing symphony, and the ache of his body never leaves him for a moment. He’s never sure how long the sleep lasts—the last clock he burnt still hasn’t been replaced—but with how tired he feels, he can’t imagine it’s that long. 

Before, he used to shift around between his moments of slumber. He’d walk up and wander around the cell, settling down in a different corner as if searching for a more comfortable spot. Now, though, his vision swims as rushes of vertigo overcome him whenever he tries to sit up, let alone walk around. He definitely got a head injury of some sorts a few visits ago, and not even healing potions provide an instant fix to those. But, even before he became afflicted with light-headedness, the prospect of moving lost all appeal, considering how his entire body flares with pain at any sort of motion. So, he stays still, even as the jagged obsidian digs into his back, aggravating the wounds there. 

Sometimes, rarely, he’s granted true sleep, and he dreams. The dreams are never pleasant—it’s as though his mind only wishes to cycle through a few dreams, including recounts of sir’s visits, that day in the attachment vault, George and Sapnap, and more. Most of the time, he’s unaware that he’s dreaming, but this time he finds himself in the one dream he’s always lucid for. 

He’s sitting beside a small, unremarkable grave, unable to move, as though he were tethered to it. It’s always silent. Not even the creatures of the world venture close, and it makes something perhaps akin to bitterness coil in his heart, that even the animals of his world that had been his steady companions don’t bother to visit him in death. 

But, all things considered, it’s not the worst dream. Sure, the laughter of his friends the server members that echo from outside his vision grate on him, and their obvious joy in the world post-his demise is unsurprising but stings nonetheless, but it’s not painful. It’s not limbo nor Pandora, and sure he can’t feel the sun, and he’s not entirely sure his mind is conjuring the apparitions of the sky and trees correctly, but it’s still peaceful, in a way. He thinks if death were like this, maybe solving its mysteries wouldn’t be such a necessity. 

And when he awakes to the sound of pistons, he thinks that maybe spending eternity in a silent grave wouldn’t be so bad.

threw this together dudududu @sixteenth-day-event

for the slipping sanity prompt ;p

CW/TW: blood

@sixteenth-day-event - Words like ice

Thinking that this is around the time Dream kind of gave up on trying to prove his intentions and gave in to the role as the villain the server viewed him as :(

I kind of maybe forgot abt sixteenth and then made this in lile 2 hours???... i dont even know how... anyway im gonna go sleep now. Aorry id the text doesnt make sense im tireddd this was not planneddd

Version without text cause i like that one too:

Also unless he's said something new recently...discduo ending was tommy's handiwork? He wrote that ending. He's given no indication that Dream "made" him write it that way ('cause trust me, after the falling out, he would've vagued it if nothing else)

Not to mention the very end of the stream literally still follows the premise of the world reset, like they didn't say the whole server was going to fight XD. From Eret's word it was only c!Eret and c!Foolish

c!discduo ending writes itself perfectly into what bad said. besides these people think as that ending would suddenly mean that what? c!dream becomes unredeemable? i laugh. if anything reset gives c!dream another chance to be better to make better choice to love and be loved again. dxd reset mean ALSO HIM. dxd reset makes c!dream even more tragic. it confirms that for dxd the server is just a doll house. it makes c!dream their plaything just like every other character. that ending is not an own some people act it is. it goes perfectly with our narrative actually. it has been 2-3 years since pandemic i know schools are open again ITS TIME TO USE THAT