The war begins to loom alarmingly closer with each day, as the tunnels stretch out like snakes under the surface of L'manburg, as baskets fill with arrows and knives and swords. Our house becomes something of a half-way house, soldiers and Dream's men passing through, collecting their share, helping me with chores.
I start to learn the names of the people who will die for this, and that's the worst of it.
Dream tells me that the tunnels have almost reached the coast, but it's become a point of contention between the two of us. I say we should attack now, we have no use for fully constructed tunnels, but he wants to complete the project before launching anything.
There's no trust, just two angry people with the whole world at stake. It never ends well.
I think that he wants the tunnels finished so there's an escape hatch, a security measure, something for him to come back too when the dust settles and the bodies are buried, something for him to win back.
He just says it's because all of Schlatt's men will be gone, once the Badlands construction workers are officially cleared and back home.
Dream can sense the suspicion rolling off me in waves, and it's pissed him off so much he hasn't come home for two days. It's either that, or yelling, and the silence suits me much more. I know I should be trying harder, should be swallowing my pride and mending the bridge, but I'm so strung out in perpetual panic that I don't have the energy left to care.
Jacob, a kid, who's probably only a year or two younger than me, carries crates filled with dried goods into the storeroom. He reminds me of Tommy, and he makes me feel like a century old. I smile at him as he passes.
"That's the last one Miss." He comes back into the living room, brushing the mop of red hair off his forehead. His pale face is littered with freckles and acne scars.
"It's Rosie Jacob, I'm not fifty years old." I roll my eyes. "Thank you for that."
"No worries, anything I can do."
I want to ask him how he ended up working for Dream, a soldier in an army, a boy destined for war. I want to tell him to run. I want to tell him it will be okay. I want to ask him if he's as scared as I am, if he even knows enough to feel like that.
Instead, I blurt out another question. "Do you want to stay for dinner?"
Jacob blinks. "Oh no Miss, thank you for the offer but really I wouldn't want to trouble you."
"It's fine." I shake my head dismissively. "Dream won't be home tonight so I have an extra serving, it's the least I could do to thank you."
"It's my duty to help, you don't need to repay me."
Duty. I want to scoff. I want to tell him he doesn't owe anyone anything, especially not me and Dream, that his only responsibility should be leaving while he can.
"Indulge me."
We sit at the dining table, I'm at the head and he's in the second chair on my left. I push my food around on my plate, but Jacob seems to be keen on annihilating his dinner like it's liable to fly off his plate at any moment.
"Do you not get fed?" I laugh, watching him flick his spoon so aggressively it splatters sauce on his nose. He swallows, trying to force the food down so he can answer.
"Not like this. No wine either."
I broke into Dream's wine cellar a few days ago, a miraculous discovery. I tried to think about whether he'd actually be mad at me about it, and then I tried to think about whether or not I really cared.
That's the problem with war, really, because you go into it expecting not to make it through, a person condemned to die. Everything else falls away, and it becomes your constant, you live, breathe and sleep war, because if you don't, you will die, and yet you expect to anyway.
In that way, it kind of breaks you before it begins, there's something harrowing in the way you have to prepare for a war that isn't yet raging. It numbs you, it takes the things that mattered and makes them pale in comparison.
I down my glass of wine. It tastes like shit, but it dulls my nerves, trading knife edge for a softer buzz. It fogs my brain, and for a few blissful hours, I don't have to remember everything in that excruciating clarity, or listen to my mind scream. It's not quiet, like how I'm not truly numb, but it's just less. Just easier.
I empty the rest of the bottle into my glass, while Jacob gulps down his second. He notices me staring at him and pauses, mouth full of wine and food.
"Is everything okay?"
"Oh uh-" I pause. "I was just wondering how you ended up in Dream's army."
I see his fingers tighten around the stem of his wine glass. "It's a long story, but I just didn't have anywhere else to go."
I nod, finishing off my wine. My face starts to feel hot, head foggy, senses dull.
"I'm scared of what's going to happen next." He admits suddenly, looking down at his plate. "This war is so unpredictable."
"So am I. But, you can leave, you don't have to be involved in this, you know that? It isn't your fight." I blurt out.
He looks horrified. "You get shot for deserting."
"I'll talk to Dream, they won't touch you."
"I don't have anywhere else to go."
His words make me angry, angry at Schlatt, and at Dream, and Wilbur, and myself, at the people who use others as pawns in their own petty battles. At least L'manburg isn't just about me anymore, there's thousands of lives and homes, something larger than us. I look at Jacob and see the strings tied back to Dream's fingers, the adoption of an isolated boy with no other choice, the way he can mould the desperation into devotion, the way he doesn't need to try and people will die for him.
"Surely anywhere is better than here." I say, but the lines have been drawn, and we both see. There is no other way.
"I'm a soldier, this is what I'm supposed to do." Jacob straightens up in his chair, eyes blazing slightly. I want to grab him and slap him and scream about all the horrors of war, how he will never come back to the boy he is right now, how it will take everything he has and more, how it will leave him nothing but broken.
"Okay." I reply instead, with a sympathetic smile. "Where are you stationed?"
"North post, near the mines. Schlatt's got a few troops near the border, so we gotta cover them."
"You'll be with Eret then? That's good." Eret's not as callous as Dream, and sure, he will just do what Dream wants, but when he has to make his own decisions, it might not include the sacrifice of innocent lives for L'manburg.
"I've never been under his command, is he nice at least?"
No. No, he'll love you and then stab you in the back and you won't ever be able to escape the betrayal. You'll lean on him in your worst moments and then you'll never be able to unmerge his face with the pain he left you to. He'll never be the one to hurt you but he's never going to save you like you need him him too, and that'll hurt more.
"Yeah, yeah he's a good one."
"I was just lucky I didn't get Dream." He accompanies this with an involuntary shudder, which makes me laugh.
"God I couldn't even imagine, he's a big enough pain in the ass at home."
Jacob looks shocked at my casual dismissal of Dream, but I can see the mischievous smile underneath it all. "Sapnap told his unit that Dream has a permanent stick up his ass."
"Occasionally, Sapnap can be right." I roll my eyes. "Don't let him find out I said that, because I'd never hear the end of it. God, I love them both but they are fucking insufferable sometimes."
Jacob doesn't blink, doesn't realise, doesn't see my face go white because I want to vomit, doesn't clock that I said that I love them both, doesn't know.
I'm drowning, and the person who threw me into the water is my only way out and that messes with people. Knowing and living things are two very different realities, and I can only stand on the other side of the glass and scream. Don't fall for it, you don't love him.
I do and I don't and it's an age old question I'll spend the rest of my life answering.
Instead, Jacob grins at me. "I think I'd probably get thrown out if he heard me say this, but he's so much better when you came back. You put him in a good mood."
It's because he thinks he's won, not because we're adorably in love and make each other better. Oh no, we bring out the worst in both of us, drag each other further down in the mud, a quest to destroy the other so they're as fucked up as you are.
I laugh again. "I'm glad he's not as much of an asshole then, you finished?"
He nods, and I stack his plate on top of mine, dumping them both in the sink. I turn around as the front door opens, and I hear Dream call out my name.
"Rosie? I'm- Who the fuck are you?"
Jacob jerks up out of his seat, snapping into a salute. Dream's standing in our hallway, eyes narrowed. Jacob swallows nervously.
"Private Dalton in the 32nd division sir."
I hurry out of the kitchen. "He was having dinner with me, since I made him stay so late helping me with the boxes."
"They'll be expecting you back at the barracks." Dream doesn't even look over at him, just stares at me. It's the first time I've seen him since he cracked it and left the house after our argument, and I can't even read his face.
"Yes sir." Jacob gathers up his things hastily. "Thank you Miss, dinner was lovely."
"No worries Jacob." I mutter, watching him practically flee out the door, not that I don't really blame him.
Dream hasn't moved, and I take a few steps forward, barely containing a cackle of glee. "How jealous are you right now?"
"Are you drunk?"
I pinch my index finger and thumb together so they're touching, holding it up at him. "Just a lil' bit."
"You shouldn't be making friends with the Privates." He sighs, pointedly ignoring my answer.
"Scale of one to ten? Ten being the time you had Ixia executed because she kissed me." I'm being callous, but everything's running past my lips before I can catch it, spinning around in my foggy head.
"So you did this just to make me jealous?"
"Nope I wasn't even thinking about you when I invited Jacob for dinner."
"Oh so it's Jacob is it?"
"Yes Dream it's Jacob." I roll my eyes. "Funnily enough I do still know other people's names, even if I'm with you."
"You are so drunk." He shakes his head, but I can tell he's stifling a laugh.
"Hey! Last time you got drunk you killed a bunch of people and rocked up covered in blood. I'm being very reasonable."
This time he does let out a little chuckle. "No you're right, I can't talk."
He wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulling me into him.
I loop my own arms around his waist, resting my head against his chest. "I really didn't mean anything by it, I just felt bad that I probably made him miss dinner. I didn't think you were coming home tonight."
"I know, I'm being an asshole."
"That's a given- Dream!" I shriek when he swats me on the ass in response, and push him off me.
He laughs louder at my indignation, holding up his hands in surrender. "Sorry, I'm sorry, no don't hit me I'm sorry!"
He doesn't get out of the way fast enough to avoid me smacking him on the arm.
"Ow! God you hit hard, fucking hell." I can't contain my laughter, and he catches my wrist on my distracted second attempt, tackling me onto the couch. He lies on top of me, crushing the air from my lungs while I kick my feet uselessly over the arm of our lounge.
"I can't breathe!" I squawk, in between fits of giggles. The sudden upturning makes the room swim around my head, and everything is a little fuzzy.
"I talked to my commanders today about making the attack without finishing the tunnels." Dream tells me, and I turn my head to look up from the floor at him. "They think that the level of surveillance from Schlatt is too risky."
"I know." I say, and my hand flops fruitlessly from where I'm pinned at the wrist. "You know why I don't like it."
"Hey, I promise you, we will get L'manburg back and I will leave it alone okay? I promise."
"What about Wilbur and his plan to blow it up? What about when someone takes charge and you don't like them?"
"I'm not working with Wilbur anymore outside of our plan, and I'll treat L'manburg like any normal neighbour. " He replies gently, letting go of me. He lifts my legs up and sits down on the cushion they were lying on, letting them fall back into his lap. I lift my head and peer at him suspiciously.
"It's hard for me to be able to believe that."
He nods. "I know. All I can do is prove to you that I'll stick to my word."
"When the war starts- I want to be apart of it. I want to fight."
"No." The answer flies out of his mouth before I'm even finished the word.
I sit up, pulling my legs off his lap and crossing them underneath me. "Yes I am."
"No you're not."
"How are you going to stop me?"
"Rosie please, I don't want you to get hurt."
"It's my family, I have to fight."
"They wouldn't want you too, they'd want you to be safe."
I know there's no reasoning with him, so I try for the next best thing. "Fine, I'm running a camp for injured soldiers then. At least I can be useful."
"No-"
"I'll be away from the fighting, but at least I can help in some way Dream, I can't just sit here while people are dying."
"We have people for that."
"Okay I'll join them then."
"Rosie-"
"Dream." I parrot his exasperated tone back to him, widening my eyes pointedly.
"Alright, because I know you'll probably find a way to get involved anyway and at least I'll know where you are this way. Anything else on your agenda?"
I hate you. You should hate me. We hate each other. We will never work. I am waiting for this war to be over, and if I'm not dead I'll wish I was, because what will I do then?
The thoughts hit me like a sledgehammer, screaming through the drunken wall of fuzziness that the wine constructed, like cotton wool in my ears. I feel the wave of sickening guilt crash down on me, swirl in my stomach, forcing acid up my throat, guilt at the way I can forget, guilt in the way I can pretend.
"No, that's it for today." I force a little smile, closed lipped.
"I'll look forward to whatever you come up with tomorrow." He grins at me, leaning forward to peck me on the lips. "I'm going to have a shower and go to bed, I didn't get a good sleep last night."
I remember him when he was the drunk one, telling me about the nightmares that only I can vanquish. I curse them, the way they give him another reason, another way to justify the love he has for me.
I kiss him back and watch him with dead, unblinking eyes as he walks down the hallway to our bedroom. I sit like a corpse on the couch, drowning.
The cycle is sickening, really. Every day, war, death, dread, Dream coming home and a few brief moments of delirium, where I don't remember Punz, or my family, or everything that's ever happened to me, and then I do, and then I shut down. Again, and again.
God it's fucking blood-boiling, the way I can analyse it with such clarity, and then the way I have to watch myself get swept away, the way I know, but I let it happen anyways.
I'm like some kind of loose puppet when I stand up, walking on stiff jilted legs down the hallway. I turn into our doorway, and Dream stands there, shirt in hand, next to our bed.
"You okay?"
"I'm losing it Dream." I tell him, and the honesty makes me feel like I can breathe again. "We're not working."
"What?"
"This-" I gesture around, "us, everything. This isn't working."
"I-"
"That's what you wanted, right? You wanted this to be for real, all in? I promised you that, and I'm telling you, something needs to change."
"I thought we were going well, we talked-"
"We didn't fix anything Dream, we both know that."
"I don't understand."
I try not to vomit out the words, not while bile is rising up my throat, and I can't tell if it's because I'm lying, or if it's because I'm not. "I love you okay? You love me, we love each other, but that's not enough. We are going to be together for the rest of our lives, we need to learn how to live with each other, and everything that happened in the past. And you know what? We can't just rely all on each other, because let's face it, we're both too fucked up to handle our own shit, let alone the other baggage."
"What do we do?"
"We talk, we live, we don't wall ourselves up in here and pretend the future isn't coming. You have a family, I have a family, they should be apart of our lives."
"They don't want anything to do with me." He says stiffly, fist clenching.
"So try and fix it, because for me? If I never see my family, I am going to end up resenting you."
I do resent you. I resent you so much it's twisted everything into some gnarled, scarred place in my heart, that nothing can bring back. I think I love you. I have fought this war for so long that I think love is confusion and it's fucked me up for life.
I continue. "I told you, I want this to work just as much as you do, I swore to you. I wasn't lying, and that's why I'm saying this to you, because I want to do this right. I want us to succeed, I want to love you like I did when we first were together, and to do that, we need to fix all the shit that has been the problem with us since the beginning."
"I- I don't know how to do that." His voice is small. "I thought we were okay."
"We love each other, I love you, but that's not what makes relationships work. I am still struggling to move past everything that's happened, and I don't believe that you have. There is this constant simmering tension and distrust and anger and it's going to ruin anything we try and build."
The honesty is so relieving I want to collapse on the floor, like every weight has lifted and I'm floating, flying towards the ceiling. It makes me dizzy, and I don't know if it's the wine or the sheer relief.
A tear slips down his cheek, and I don't feel anything, and I think that's the closest I've come to properly loving him this entire time. "Okay." He wipes his face quickly. "Okay."
"Do you trust me now? That I was telling the truth when I made that deal with you, that I'm all in? Because I wouldn't be here if I wasn't, I wouldn't be trying."
He nods. "I trust you."
"I want us to move into the ravine, until the war is over. I want to help, and I want my family to be apart of my life with you."
He hesitates, and I see the fear written across his face. I lean against the door frame. "What's wrong Dream? Talk to me."
"They'll take you from me. You'll love them all over again and forget me."
"Dream." I mutter sadly. "My love isn't a finite resource, I'll love you as much as I always have, no matter what I feel for anyone else."
I had never realised he was this scared. He's become such a monster, built up in my mind, a being motivated by greed and jealously and evil, inspired by delusion. But here, he's a boy, driven by insecurity and fear, not the desire to own me, but the worry that I'll never love him enough.
Fuck.
He doesn't say anything, and I watch his chest rise and fall.
"You trust me?"
"Yes."
"Then believe me when I tell you, I will love you more with them in my life. I want to be normal, I don't want to be fighting this constant fucking battle that's been going on since we built L'manburg, I want to move on, I want to have a future with you that's more than this."
"You don't know, you can't promise that you won't change, that you won't see them and hate me-"
"You don't either Dream! You think you do, and that's the fucking problem! If you'd just asked me, if you'd just take to me, we'd have never gotten into half the shit we did and I wouldn't have to ask myself if I hate you or love you and if I'm a shitty person for feeling either! You just act like I'm not my own person with my own agency, like anyone can come in and change what I'm feeling."
I feel naked, in a way, bearing this anger to him. He sees my rage and my frustration, the words I scream at him, the violence I hurl at him, but he's never seen the truth. The real anger, the shit that builds up so heavily in my head I can feel it behind my fucking eyeballs. He never hears this, the way feel him, the way I see him. I'm betraying everything by sharing this.
But, I've seen him in a new way tonight. He's still human, despite everything, still scared and fucking insecure and as deeply damaged as I am, and there's a part of me that pities him. A part of me that cares enough to tell him the truth even though he doesn't deserve it. Not the whole truth, not the fact that I don't love him like I did, not the fact I'm scrambling for a way out, not the fact that this time, I'm not coming back, not like the other's.
Something broke the loop that night Punz kissed me, when I ran from Dream. It'll never go back. It can never go back.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
"You are fucked up, just like me, you know that? We're both fucked up. And I know, every time I've yelled at you and snapped at you and told you the truth you've explained it away because you know me better, right? You know and I'm some stupid pawn who doesn't know her own feelings, that's been stolen away by people who don't want the best for me like you do. I know what you think because I know you. And I am telling you, I am my own person, and you need to talk to me."
"You always choose them over me, even though you love me. I just want to protect you, I just want-"
"You want me. It's okay, I know. But if you want this to work, you can't act like this anymore. You can't just be fuelled by this insecurity and distrust you have, you need to learn who I am, who we are, and you can't do that if we don't talk."
"I just- I love you. I've hurt you and I feel so guilty and I feel like you'll just leave because they confuse you and you don't listen to yourself."
"I make my own decisions. I am my own person Dream."
"I'm so sorry."
"I know. I need you to listen, and both of us need to change."
"I want this to work, that's why I did everything I did."
Yes, like going after my family, installing a dictator that obliterated everything taking up room in my heart in one fell swoop. It's easy to forget, strangely enough.
"And it never worked, because you were wrong, you didn't understand. You still don't."
"I think you're wrong."
I cross the floor, grabbing both of his hands, our conjoined arms stretching out between us like a bridge, the last and final offering of love I think my heart can take. Another chance. "Then we live in the ravine, and I can show you. I can prove it to you."
"Okay."
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A/N damn this took awhile.
I know the last couple chapters have been really repetitive and all over the shop and that's actually intentional. As you know, we experience this story through Rosie's eyes, and currently she was stuck in a repetitive loop with this new chapter of her life with Dream, which is dictated by the looming war and a sense of final defeat. This leads to her becoming increasingly conflicted as shown by the rapid swings of emotions and feelings towards Dream in her inner monologue. Through the complete disjointed reality of her experiences, we understand the deterioration of her mental state and her sense of fight. She is exhausted, empty and has nothing left to give. Everything has finally taken it's toll. She's trying to make peace with what she has, and is so confused she doesn't even fully know if she's manipulating Dream or just trying to survive.
Next chapter we get some renunions, more fun interactions and the rapid advancement in the war effort! Things should be speeding up and we are close to reaching the end of this journey!
Thank you for your patience and support, and I hope you enjoyed,
Oopsies x