Wilbur started to speak up, but Tommy interrupted him.
"Out," he said, his tone icy. There was no forgiveness, no tolerance.
And after all, why should there be? Nightmare had been nothing but evil to Tommy. Dream had been nothing but evil to Tommy in his last life. But these thoughts were not the thoughts that were going through Dream's head.
No, Dream was frozen.
His head and heart pounded. Ached. Longed.
If only.
Dream remembered a sharp sense of pain, like the tearing of his soul. It came just before the all-devouring heat.
And Tommy had been the center of it.
As much as Dream had claimed that he had no more attachments, he had been attached to TommyInnit.
So attached that they were one and the same.
But they hadn't realized it until the end.
All they wanted... Just a world... A world with friends...
To have fun.
Yet their furious rivalry removed any chance of that. Up until the end.
The end that he had caused.
Dream snapped back to focus as Tommy started to rant again.
Dream didn't listen to the words. He hardly noticed Wilbur trying to calm him down.
No, Dream focused on Tommy's eyes. Hatred, pain, reckless rage. What a way to live. Every step haunted by traitors, each foot weighed down by guilt and anger. To move so stiffly, to keep your thoughts locked behind your eyes, trapped in your chest.
Eventually, Wilbur calmed him down long enough to explain the situation.
Dream and Tommy locked eyes once more.
But they didn't, not really. Dream was still behind a mask. All Tommy would see was paint. No soul, no light of life, just the cold reality of black and white.
Black and white. Dream and TommyInnit.
Always the opposites, always pushing back against the other.
Dream reached up and fingered his mask.
What if he took it off? What if?
There were questions he would never know the answer to.
And why?
Because Dream still remembered that darkness, that fear, in TommyInnit's eyes. When the final spark had fled.
In the final control room, stabbed by Dream's blade.
During the war for independence.
In the prison, beaten to death.
Dream remembered each moment.
And the final death...
The truth was, Dream was scared. Not scared of Tommy's revenge. No, Dream was scared of himself. Of who he was, who he said he was.
In his last life, Dream had let the myth, the bloodlust, consume him. He didn't want that again.
But there was a reason. After all, what was he without it?
Dream was the mask. When you took it off?
Just a scared little boy. Scrambling to win, to survive, to keep up with the stories.
He hadn't looked at himself without it in years. The times when he had were blurry in his memory. He was afraid of what he would find.
Every mirror in his house was taken down, every window shut closed, never to be opened. No one else would see him either.
Dream drifted again.
He was lost in the current of memories. Memories from two lives, infused into his own.
Who was he?
Dream? No, Dream was a myth.
Clay? No, Clay was a child.
What was left to him?
Hide. Run and hide. Wear the mask, never take it off.
Run, run, run. Never fast enough. He could never catch up to...
Technoblade.
Dream looked up and saw the blocky frame, silhouetted in torchlight, blurred by Dream's own tears.
Tommy had turned and was shouting at him now, Wilbur was still focused on getting Tommy to be reasonable, Tubbo was watching them, nervous.
And Dream was left alone.
Alone again.
Alone forever.
To walk the path set out for him by one greater than he.
To strive for the same greatness that Technoblade held.
He was shameless, powerful, confident. He didn't care if people didn't like what he was doing.
What was Dream doing wrong?
It couldn't be anything less than everything.