Chapter Text
He hits the roof wrong, gravel slipping out from under his soles as he slams down on one knee and tears his jeans right open. Blood beads up, leaves barely visible smears behind as he scrambles to his feet, and then he’s off again before anyone can spot him on his hands and knees. If the heroes on his tail see him looking weak, it’s over.
The memory of blood on Ranboo’s hands, spilling out of his chest, down his lips as he whispers, “Dream?”
It’s already over.
He didn’t wake up that morning expecting to run for his life. Kind of the opposite, actually; Dream’s been sitting pretty at spot number one for almost six years now. It hasn’t always been easy, and there are days where he wonders if it’s worth it, but today isn’t one of those days. Today, he wakes up shortly before dawn and breathes in the misty spring air, watching fog banks roll through the outer districts near the lake on Esempi’s east side.
It’s a good morning, and he leans against his cracked window to watch golden ribbons chase through the fog as the sun rises. This high up, it’s a hell of a view.
Dream eventually swings himself out of bed, late for training by his own impossible standards, though the sun’s barely up. Since he’s already late, it’s fine if he takes a little bit longer to cook breakfast too, standing over the stove with his tail swaying behind him. With no sign of Sapnap or George yet, he’s not the only one getting a slow start. He considers that, then adds more bacon to the pan.
The door to his apartments in the Tower slams open, but Sapnap is self-aware enough to wait for it to swing closed again before he shouts, “Dream! Wake the fuck up, we got big shit to do today!”
“No, we literally do not,” Dream calls from the kitchen, not looking up from his pan. There’s the slap of sneakers on his floors, then Sapnap comes skidding to a halt just beside him, George following at a much more sedate pace a few seconds later. “You want pancakes or waffles?”
“Pancakes, obviously,” George says, before Sapnap can give an opinion.
“Obviously,” Dream parrots back, trying to mimic George’s accent. It earns him a slap across the back of his head as Sapnap raises his voice to complain, and he laughs as he turns on the burners beneath the griddle.
They’re a matching set, the three of them. George is human but Sapnap’s got small black horns buried under his bangs, too sharp teeth and over-warm skin, the only hints of his heritage as a demon hybrid there are. He’s one of the true hybrids too, his father fully demon-blooded and old as dirt, but it’s not like it ever has a chance to go to his head. Not with Dream and George around to bully him, just like he’ll bully them in turn.
Dream’s own horns are white, not quite as stubby as Sapnap’s, and he’s got the tail and pointed ears of an ender hybrid, just pale. Unnaturally pale, even, paper white and glowing like snow in sunlight, but it’s just become part of his brand. Like the vibrant green eyes and the delicate domino mask that does nothing to hide who he really is—when Schlatt had pulled him to the side all those years ago and proposed a future where heroes went maskless, he’d… hesitated. But he had to believe that the cause was righteous, and he had to believe that Schlatt had a plan, so when he’d debuted, it had been with his power nullifier disabled and his hybrid features on full display.
He’d never expected Sapnap and George to follow him, but they had. His team, all three of them, with their matching white body armor and bright color accents, unstoppable and every single one of them in the top ten hero rankings.
Now he’s here, Sapnap and George setting their masks to the side and using civilian names even in the Tower, his own mask absent for the moment. They’ll be professional as soon as they head back out, because allowing his physical form to be put on display has only made Dream more paranoid with everything else about himself, but in the apartment it’s safe enough.
“Did you hear they’re officially confirming Icarus as part of Team Sigma today?” Sapnap asks, legs kicked up over one of Dream’s chairs as he leans back in the one he’s currently occupying. “It’s only been like, two months, but I guess he meshes with them pretty well, so…”
“Weird. It took a year for them to put you on our team,” George says, but he doesn’t sound bothered by it. There’s not a whole hell of a lot that George is bothered by, and the baby heroes don’t even make the list.
“He was regularly teamed with them during tryouts.” Dream isn’t bothered either, but he’s probably worked closer with Team Sigma than either of them—Icarus is technically Sapnap’s protege, just like Daedalus was meant to be the Warden’s, but in practice all of them came under Dream’s care. He’s the one down in the training rooms the most often, the one trusted, along with the Captain and President Schlatt, to make confirmations of new heroes, and the one who saw potential in Icarus where a lot of people saw only chaos.
What he doesn’t say is that they need him, desperately, on a team. The Hero Federation is spread too thin as it is, with Team Sigma the only ones making it through the tryouts with high enough scores to recruit. Schlatt had pushed for them to take on a few more, some of the ones who fell just short, but with the Captain and Dream both refusing, he didn’t have the votes.
(“We aren’t training cannon fodder, Schlatt,” the Captain says, her downy-white hair puffed out with anger. Dream’s own hair is a little more ruffled than it should be, but he bites his tongue and keeps his temper in check.
“Oh, come on.” Schlatt is drunk, again, and angry, again. He hates to lose almost as much as he hates being seen as anything less than perfectly in control.
“Our decision is final.” The Captain shoves one folder across the desk, Icarus’s folder, Tommy’s folder, and none of the others. “He’s the only one who passed, and he’s the only one we know for a fact will survive being a hero. You get him and no one else.”
“We’re selecting for quality,” Dream adds, hands shoved in the pocket of his black hoodie, useless domino mask resting on his nose. “You don’t need ten heroes if you have one good one. We can rework the patrol schedules again if we need to.”
“Fuckin’—whatever.” With a sneer, Schlatt signs the front of the folder and then storms out of the meeting room. Across the table, Dream meets the Captain’s hidden eyes and sighs.)
“Yeah but come on. I had to fly solo for a year!” There’s the sound of a smack, skin on skin, and Sapnap hisses softly in pain. “Well, not entirely solo I guess, I was with you guys, but no one knew it.”
“Maybe we should have never let you join us,” George says with a smile that’s desperately trying to be a sneer, unable to even pretend like he’s truly angry. “You’re so stupid, and Dream’s already stupid enough for both of us.”
He huffs and flips the pancakes, moving the bacon onto a plate and cracking a few eggs into the grease. “Can I just—can I just point out that I am literally carrying this team? I’m the number one hero. What are you again, George?”
“Yeah, George, what rank are you again?”
George huffs. “Those rankings are rigged and you know it. All I see is bacon, Dream, where are our pancakes?”
“You’re spoiled. You’re both spoiled. What would you do without me?” He plates a couple pancakes and drops them on the table, following it with the bacon a second later. Despite the pretend outrage in his voice, he’s smiling. “You don’t get eggs because you’re whiny and needy and I hate you. I hate you.”
“Not as much as I hate you,” George says with a grin as Sapnap stands to find the syrup.
After breakfast, he pulls on his under armor and ditches his civvie clothes, mask settled on his nose last before they all head out. Like George and Sapnap, he’s not fully armored—it’s good practice to walk around in uniform once they’re in the Tower proper, but it’s not a rule, and technically they’re not on patrol today. He’s supposed to be doing paperwork, but it’s easy to follow his friends down to the training rooms instead, where Team Sigma is going through their paces.
Or, more accurately, Icarus is running circles around Daedalus and trying not to get blown up for his efforts.
“How long have they been at this?” he asks Lethe, who wrings his hands at the edge of the invisible wall of power nullifiers that separate the main sparring ring from the rest of the training room. It’s a stopgap measure, to keep stray power usage from crossing over, but Daedalus is controlled and precise with his explosions so it’s not necessary in this case.
“Um.” Lethe’s long-fingered hands wring harder, tail flicking a few times. He, like the rest of Team Sigma, like most of the new heroes, runs around with his hybrid features out while in costume. But unlike Dream, he does use his disguise when he’s not on the job, and there’s only three people who know that disguise’s face: the two boys under Lethe’s command, his best friends in the world, and his mentor, Dream.
Maybe he could have been offended by that, having Lethe put under his guiding hand just because they’re both ender hybrids, but he isn’t. For one, Ranboo is something else, something that takes the black skin of his ender heritage and bleaches it, that takes the teleportation they both share and magnifies it. For another, Dream would have picked him anyways, hybrid or not. He’s smart, he’s calculating, and his scores are some of the best that Dream has ever seen in the hero track.
Five years he’s known Ranboo, one with him as his official hero designation, four as one of the dozens of young hopefuls that show up to train in the hopes of being accepted once they turn sixteen. They’ve been good years.
“Maybe an hour?” Lethe’s voice ticks up uncertainly, ears flicking, tail whipping once before stilling again. Dream’s own tail sways lazily, ears up, eyes forward, no hint of stress in his own posture.
“Huh. Icarus’s stamina is better than it was a few months ago.” Sapnap’s alternating between cheering and groaning as Icarus backflips over an explosion, bounds away in a parody of Dream’s own fluid movements, then slides under another explosion to try and jab at Daedalus’s unprotected stomach. “You’re not on patrol until next week, right?”
“Mhm, yeah. The Captain wanted us to work out the uh, work out the kinks in our fighting coordination, on account of…” Lethe untangles his fingers long enough to gesture at the sparring ring, where Daedalus has launched Icarus clear across the ring, nearly across the room.
At the last second, vibrant gold wings snap out, opening up and slowing Icarus’s fall to something more manageable. A small, approving hum vibrates through Dream’s throat, and he smiles. “You’ll make it work. The three of you were inseparable during the tryouts, this isn’t any different—once he figures out that a year in the field means yes you do have more experience.”
“Is that ever going to happen?” There’s a hint of exasperation in Lethe’s voice, which, yeah. This is Tommy they’re talking about. It’s a fair question.
“Believe me,” Dream says, gaze locked on a laughing, whooping Sapnap, “Vulcan was the exact same way. A mission or two in, he’ll realize that you know some stuff he still needs to learn, and he’ll settle in a bit. Daedalus is usually support, not frontline, so Icarus is going to have to listen to you more in the field.”
“I really hope so. I really, really hope so.” Lethe sighs, but his tail is swaying only a fraction faster than Dream’s now, and he isn’t twisting his fingers together quite so viciously anymore.
It only takes a few more minutes before Icarus manages to land a hit on Daedalus that knocks the other boy to the ground. He stands there and celebrates, wings flared and arms thrown to the sky, while Daedalus groans and rolls to his feet, shaking himself off before trudging to the edge of the ring. That’s their cue to step in, and Dream meets Sapnap’s eyes through his mask as he grins, as they both move towards the center and settle into sparring poses.
“Ready to meet your maker, Vulcan?” Dream asks, letting the world fall away as he eases into that mental space where he’s ready to fight.
“Stop trying to fuck my dad, Hermes,” Sapnap snaps back with a grin, flames curling through his teeth on the exhale.
And then the alarm on his watch goes off, and it all goes to shit.
He can teleport across rooftops. Vulcan and Somnus can’t. As a compromise, between Dream’s swiftness and the necessity of the team to remain together, they freerun instead, boots slamming across fire escapes, hands grasping at flagpoles as they use momentum to swing over large gaps.
They make a hell of a sight, flashes of blue and orange as his teammates jump and their capes flutter, his own distinctive lime green bright under the burning sun. He knows that there’s at least one news helicopter pacing them, probably more; trying to take their own helicopter would have just set them up to crash. Fucking vultures.
“We’re two blocks out now,” Somnus says, glancing down at his Tower-issued watch just long enough to check the GPS. “Erebus should fall back as soon as we arrive on scene.”
“Vulcan, try and block them from escaping, put some holes in Zephyrus’s wings if you have to. Somnus, you’re managing Orpheus. Leave direct combat to me.” His voice is hard, clipped, different now that they’re out in the field. Part of that is because of the watch, which alters the sound of his voice the same way it alters the sound of every hero’s voice.
Part of that is him. The Syndicate never moves during the daylight, and Dream doesn’t like that they’re doing it now.
There’s the clash of metal on metal as they draw closer to the bank supposedly being robbed; Dream has his doubts about the true motives behind the attack here, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that right now. Erebus is outmatched, three to one, and even if Orpheus isn’t in the fight—a glance down at the street shows him bent over hostages, crooning commands in their ears—it’s still an unfair matchup.
“Change of plans,” Dream calls over comms, knowing that Erebus will be able to hear them now that they’re close, “Somnus, your focus is hostage rescue. Erebus, join him.”
“Hermes and I can take Blood God and the Angel of Death,” Vulcan says a second later, fire at his heels as he launches himself over the broad chasm of the street and lands on the roof. Dream teleports beside him, already drawing a sword, and knows that Somnus is on his way down to street level as they speak.
Erebus doesn’t say anything, just nods and breaks off, their blackened glasses hiding the glow of their eyes. Before the Syndicate can follow, Dream is there, his own sword lifted to ward off the blow, the sound of Vulcan’s revolver cracking a second later.
As a rule, heroes don’t get guns. Guns are something villains might use, guns are something police might use, but they have powers and they have civilians to consider. A stray bullet in the heat of battle can have devastating consequences, but something has to go drastically wrong for a naked blade to do the same. Vulcan is the exception; his powers, like Daedalus’s, are devastating when they aren’t tempered, and he’s a brilliant shot. More importantly, Team Epsilon, Dream’s team, the Dream Team, is on call for any and all Syndicate attacks, which means they need ranged weapons.
There’s a gust of air as the Angel of Death leaps into the sky, Vulcan’s pistol cracking again. Dream can’t focus on that because he’s too busy focused on Protesilaus. On the Blood God.
In the history of the Federation, there have only been two heroes able to go toe to toe with the Blood God and walk back out alive. One is Erebus, a wither hybrid that was lucky enough to come into the world without the touch of death lingering on their palms.
The other is Dream.
“I was having a good day before this,” he complains, flicking his wrist to deflect the slash that scrapes down the edge of his blade. “You just had to go and be off schedule.”
“Yeah,” Protesilaus growls, the unseeing pits of his skull mask boring into Dream’s eyes, “can’t imagine why we’d do that.”
Dream bites back the banter that wants to slip free, leaving comms clear as Erebus and Somnus work to take out Orpheus and get the hostages to safety. He needs his focus on the fight anyways; Protesilaus is a monster, too fast for how large he is and striking with blows that vibrate up Dream’s arm and into his teeth. His blood-red cape whips around them both, the furred collar high around his neck but not high enough to hide the way skin peels back and reveals black bones and purple soulfire underneath.
Erebus is a wither hybrid, with white eyes and blackened fingers. Protesilaus is a wither hybrid, with a blaze of magenta soulfire spilling out from under the blackened skull fastened to his head, a form that is more skeleton than human, held together only by the soulfire that turns into destruction whenever he touches something. They share a kingly aesthetic sense, and Dream’s always wondered if that was intentional—before he’d proven himself, Protesilaus had seemed dedicated to making the founding hero’s life a misery.
Now he’s got Dream to do that with. Dream who teleports a few feet behind him before driving his blade forward in a strike, Dream who dips and weaves and dodges but knows he’ll survive the brush of skin against his own. ‘Skin’, when Protesilaus has very little of that left.
The rooftop cracks and crumbles under their feet as they clash, the withering effect aging the stone and concrete until it’s dangerous terrain. Zephyrus hasn’t come in to strike yet, which means Vulcan’s doing his job, the haze of heat and gunsmoke filling the air as he fires again and again and again. His mind is whirling, circling the implications of what Protesilaus had said, half an ear listening to the chatter as hostages are rescued and it’s too easy.
It’s too easy.
Erebus shouldn’t have lasted as long as he had.
They want him on the roof for some reason.
It’s too easy.
“Vulcan, get down on the street and help them evacuate, now,” Dream snaps, seeing the way Protesilaus’s mouth stretches into a sharp-toothed grin under his mask.
“But—”
“Now, Vulcan.”
Searing heat to his left as Vulcan sends a wall of fire past him, high into the sky to force Zephyrus to veer off course, and then the clatter of feet on a fire escape. He’s heading down, leaving them to Dream, who teleports to the other side of the roof and tries to catch his breath, but he doesn’t get more than a second before Zephyrus is diving down on him with knives drawn, Protesilaus thrusting his sword forward and angled at his neck.
Both of them are grinning at him from under black feathers and black bones, and he’s figured out the trap too late, too late. The soft hiss of explosives igniting is the only warning he gets before the cracked roof stops sagging in and blows out instead. His footing slips, Protesilaus’s sword slicing clean down his arm as one of Zephyrus’s knives catches just under his mask and opens his cheek up. Then he’s twenty feet away, on a different building, and ten more, fifteen feet the third jump, bouncing rooftop to rooftop as they give chase.
Moving away from the explosion that’s overtaken the bank building in flames, away from the hostages that he can only hope are far enough to be safe, away from his team. Shit. He’s playing right into their hands.
“What’s the matter, Hermes?” Protesilaus’s voice carries over the sound of helicopter blades, the press circling the rising smoke like carrion birds. “You can’t do what Erebus can?”
“Waiting for you to catch up,” Dream says, changing direction all at once to go on the attack. His voice sounds off, wrong, and a glance at his bloodied arm shows why: his Federation watch was built to take a lot of damage, but even it can’t hold up to a netherite blade with withering effects in play.
He shuts up.
No way to contact his team, no way to keep an ear out for news chatter and police radio, and no GPS to track him. Also, he can’t tell the time now. So that sucks. His sudden change in strategy works though, catching Protesilaus off guard enough that Dream lands a blow, slicing off some of the flaming fingers on his left hand. They turn to coal dust as soon as they fall, but they’re far enough away from the bank that Protesilaus can’t use the collective injuries—because Dream knows there are injuries—to heal himself.
“Rude of you,” Protesilaus says, scowling now, as Zephyrus circles above them. His answering strike jars up Dream’s bad arm, making him grit his teeth as he dodges away, shifting his grip. He can’t rely on his dominant hand right now, which is a problem, but as long as he keeps Protesilaus on the defensive, it’s fine.
The sun is slowly being blocked out by the clouds of smoke, turning the air around them a hazy yellow. Dream might be immune to most powers, but he’s not immune to pollution, and it gets harder and harder to breathe as time goes on. Right now, he needs to keep Protesilaus and Zephyrus busy, because the longer his team can work without fighting, the better. He wheezes, catches another blow that reverberates through his bones like a bell, and teleports to try and strike at Protesilaus’s back.
He doesn’t get the chance. Like they were waiting for him to do that, Zephyrus drops like a stone, slamming into his back and sending him sprawling. A second later, he’s across the roof again, climbing to his feet, but they aren’t waiting. With a thunderous clap of his wings, Zephyrus launches off the roof again, arms wrapped tight around Protesilaus’s chest as he carts him off into the sky as well.
The smoke hides them from view before long. Dream struggles to catch his breath, white armor and white skin stained with red, his arm still bleeding sluggishly even if his cheek has scabbed over with ash and clotted blood. He can hear the thud-thud-thud of the news copters, the wail of sirens approaching the fire, and nothing else.
His watch was on the rooftop. He’s going to be out of the loop until he can get another one.
“Fuck,” Dream whispers, staggering upright as he sheathes his sword. He needs to rejoin his team and do what damage control he can; whatever the Syndicate wanted with this strike, there’s no way for him to find out now.
His arm is wrapped, clear liquid bandage smeared over the slice on his cheek, and an inhaler in his pocket for the rattle in his lungs. He’s better off than poor George, who’s been hacking up black for the last few hours and is on bedrest for the next three days. Sapnap and Erebus are fine; nether hybrids handle smoke and heat far easier than plain old humans like George. Like the hostages.
“Fifteen fucking casualties,” Schlatt snarls, slamming his hand on his desk. Dream does not flinch, but the muscle in his jaw ticks. “Fifteen fucking casualties, and at least two hundred people in the hospital right now complaining about smoke inhalation. You wanna fucking explain that one to me, Hermes?”
“We responded as swiftly as we could,” Dream says, like he’s been saying for the last twenty minutes. Two hours spent on the ground helping emergency crews, three more hours in the infirmary, the barest couple minutes to change into jeans and a hoodie leaving only his mask and sword on, and now it’s mid-afternoon, the sun blinding through Schlatt’s west-facing windows, and Dream is tired.
He’s tired. He hurts. He’s furious that they couldn’t stop it and furious with himself for not catching onto the trap soon enough. The last thing he wants is to stand here in Schlatt’s office and get browbeaten over something that he couldn’t help, but here he is.
“‘We responded—’ Listen to yourself. Listen to yourself. We responded bull fucking shit you responded, you didn’t even figure out why they were there! They didn’t rob shit, they barely took any hostages, and you responded, oh, yeah. Great response, Hermes. Great fucking response.”
The muscle in his jaw ticks again. “Erebus wasn’t able to give us much of a briefing before we were on the ground, and we prioritized the civilians over—”
“Over what, figuring out what the Syndicate was planning?” The sneer on Schlatt’s face makes him ugly. It takes every ounce of willpower for Dream to keep from sneering back, knowing that his own teeth are much sharper.
“Yes, actually.” He smiles instead, which shows off his fangs just as nicely. “Whatever they’re planning, civilians come first. You’d remember that, if you hadn’t drowned your hero years in alcohol, Schlatt.”
There’s a long, dreadful silence, broken only by a timid knock at the door.
“Come in,” Dream says, locking eyes with Schlatt despite how dangerous it is for both of them. The door creaks open a second later, the timid shuffling steps enough to tell him who it is without looking.
“Um.” Lethe makes a low, throaty warble, one that Dream wants to respond to on instinct, then coughs. “Um. The Captain—The Captain needs you, President. She said it was urgent?”
With a scowl, Schlatt shoves away from his desk, storming past Dream on his way to the door. He pauses in the doorway, blazing with sunlight, Dream’s shadow at his feet, and says, “This isn’t over. You stay right fucking there until I get back.”
The door slams behind him. Dream glares at it, wondering if he’s feeling bold enough to disobey a direct order from one of the two people who can give them to him, then shakes his head and looks back at the desk. It’s a mess, scattered with paperwork and proposals, an overflowing ashtray and mostly empty bottle of whiskey sitting damningly on the corner of the desk. He knows that if he opened the cabinets on the left wall, there would be more bottles, both full and empty, a safe hidden behind one of the largest (and cheapest) vintages.
“Slob,” he mutters, reaching over to push a nearly collapsed stack of papers back into order. That nearly dislodges a different stack, and he teleports to the other side of the desk to grab that one, pushing it back into place, sending a notebook falling to the ground.
With an aggrieved sigh, he bends down to pick it up—and freezes.
need the other book to take the powers permanently, is scrawled in Schlatt’s drunken handwriting next to a diagram of a room in Pandora’s Vault. A room Dream recognizes because he’d tested its efficacy on passive powers like his own; Sapnap’s burn had lingered for weeks, proving that outside influence could be used while a prisoner’s powers were still suppressed. Dream still has the scar.
He flips back to the beginning of the notebook, breath catching in his soot-smothered lungs.
cant revive without fire
lava effective
more intact the body the better
spawnproofing?
five minutes maximum
Notes, and notes, and more notes. Diagrams with some of them, copies of the prison’s floorplans, names and ages and powers. A list of powers, with times written next to them. A list of names, with the words timing was wrong, send condolences to relatives written in the same lazy, careless hand.
Dream stares at the names of prisoners, villains, hybrids and people with power he’d arrested.
“Fuck me, you just cannot listen to instructions, can you?”
His head snaps up. Schlatt is standing there, flooded with light, eyes half-lidded and a look of disappointment on his face. The inhaler sits uselessly in his hoodie and he can’t breathe, thinking of the real reason Schlatt wants the Syndicate so badly. The real reason he’s so furious about Dream’s inability to do anything against them but drive them off.
“What book?” he asks, voice rasping.
“You just had to stick your nose in it, didn’t you?” Schlatt walks around the desk and Dream doesn’t move, curling his fingers tighter around the notebook. When Schlatt’s hand lands on his arm, it’s too hot, bruising tight and burning against Dream’s skin. “Couldn’t just leave it alone. And now you’re going to tell me that you can’t just forget about it, aren’t you?”
His mouth tastes like blood and ash. Dream swallows past the feeling of glass shards in his throat, and repeats, “What book?”
“Has anyone ever told you your power is the most annoying thing on the planet?” Schlatt asks conversationally, a smile on his face. It’s a bad smile. It’s the kind of smile that gets Dream’s hackles up and makes him want to start swinging.
The door clicks, and both of them look over. Lethe stands there, looking worried. “Um, I hope I’m not interrupting but—”
“Lethe! My man!” The jovial voice makes Lethe flinch, makes Dream tense up and his eyes widen. “Come over here, Hermes and I were just discussing you.”
“What are you doing, Schlatt.” He hisses the words out as Lethe walks over, long legs carrying him across the room. The delicate masquerade mask resting on his nose does nothing to hide the confusion in his dual-colored eyes, and Lethe twists his fingers more viciously as Schlatt turns to him with a smile.
The hand on his arm releases, but Dream is too slow to realize why. Too slow to stop him as Schlatt, once the number three hero before he’d retired, draws his sword. Too slow to do anything as the sword, his sword, Hermes’s sword drives through Lethe’s chest just past his heart, buried to the hilt.
Schlatt’s other hand curls around Lethe’s wrist. Lethe's lips part, blood trickling down his chin as he whispers, “Dream?”
And then he’s gone, out of Schlatt’s grasp, away from the tower with the eerie sound of teleportation. Dream’s sword goes with him. And finally, finally, his limbs move, the notebook forgotten at his feet as Dream grabs Schlatt by the jacket and slams him into the window.
“What the fuck Schlatt?” he shouts, slamming him again when the man just laughs in his face. “Why would you fucking do that? What is wrong with you? Are you—Do you have no—”
Hands grab him, try to yank him off. He lets out a high, rattling hiss, his eyes locked with Schlatt’s golden ones, the sun blazing around him until Dream has to squint, but he doesn’t look away. Even as the Captain finally yanks him off, even as she gets between them, even as Schlatt rests a hand on her shoulder.
Then she says, “Hermes, why would you kill Lethe?” with genuine horror, and he snaps his eyes away, staring at her.
She looks distraught. Her hand covers her mouth, tears beading in her eyes, and Schlatt’s hand rests on her shoulder comfortingly. Controllingly. The same way he’d gripped Lethe—Ranboo—just before he died. The same way he’d grabbed Dream’s arm before making a snide remark about his immunity to others’ powers.
And suddenly, he realizes what the game is: Dream goes to prison for the murder of his protege. It doesn’t matter if the truth would come out eventually, because the Captain’s testimony and Schlatt’s word would be enough to put him in there. Once he’s in Pandora’s Vault, he’s not getting back out, and whatever Schlatt is doing with the prison, with his books, no one can stop him. If he stays, if he tries to defend himself, if he yanks Schlatt’s hand off the Captain’s shoulder and begs her to believe him, he’s going to prison… and Ranboo dies for nothing.
He can’t let that happen. So he does the only thing he can do, with the Captain staring at him in horror and Schlatt’s expression falling into the calculated look of shock and dismay.
Dream runs.