"What was that noise?" The woman asks, bordering on distraught.
"They sent bombs after us, hit the entrance of the ravine. We've mobilised all troops, scared them off. They didn't do any damage." Dream recites these facts like a robot, fastening something to his belt. He turns to me, gripping me tightly by the arm and hauling me to my feet. "We're going."
"Are you serious? I'm not leaving Sam, and people are injured here Dream-"
"Rosie please just listen to me, we have to go."
It's clear he's not letting go of my arm, so I use it to drag him over the side, sheltered behind a rock outcrop. I reach up to his swollen face, and he flinches at the lightest touch.
"Fuck Dream your face!" His grip slackens, finally, as he softens at my concern.
"I'm okay, don't worry, we just got swarmed with guards. One of them got me in that face. They knew Rosie, they knew."
"We're not in immediate danger?" I remember what he said to the woman earlier.
"Schlatt doesn't appear to be intent on extending his attack right now. It's more of a warning."
"Even with the element of surprise?"
"Whoever tipped him didn't let him in on the full extent of our plan. They didn't realise how large our forces are."
"Okay- fuck- okay what are we doing now?"
"I notified Sapnap and Danny, and he initiated the invasion the moment we didn't return to our rendezvous at the right time. We still caught them off guard."
"So it's started? We're sticking to the plan?"
"Yes, Schlatt only knew that I'd flipped, where Tommy and the others were hiding. He had no idea about anything else."
"Jesus fucking christ, um, okay, I need to help, there's people injured. Start organising groups to move out to the mining posts, carrying those who can't walk. Send scouts to alert the medical wing, they'll need warning." I reel off the list of things, trying to focus, trying not to collapse in a puddle on the floor and sob. "And get someone to see your face, it looks broken."
"No, we're leaving right now."
"You go then." I hiss, finally wrenching my arm free, storming off and back into the ravine. Now that the soldiers have cleared out to the surface, and the dust has surfaced, I can see that Dream was right. The attack was minor, and the injured mainly fell and knocked themselves out, some nasty gashes, but nothing life threatening. Sam's awake, sipping water that the woman holds to his lips.
Wilbur still stands amongst the ruin. I march past him, into the throng of people, so determined to reach the far end, those who are most at risk of injury, that I don't see Punz until I collide with him.
"Whoa Rosie, Rosie." His hands come up to my shoulders to steady me and I realise it's him.
"You're okay?" I scan his face fervently, but he looks unscathed. He does the same to me, breathing out a sigh of relief.
"I'm fine, are you?"
I nod. "I have to go see if anyone was hurt up there-"
"They're fine, the other medics have got it under control, you need to get-"
I cut him off. "I'm not going anywhere until we've gotten everyone out of this ravine and out of Schlatt's range, don't start that shit Punz, I've had enough from Dream."
"Maybe he's right this time."
"Sam got hurt, you need to help move him. I explained everything to Dream, go and talk to him."
"What if he attacks again?" Punz's fingers tighten around me, brows furrowing. "I can't- what if-"
"Dream says he's not going to, please Punz, please just go help Sam, find Tommy and Tubbo, and I'll be safe here, there's people need help."
His fingers spasm against the beginning slopes of my neck, once, twice, before he nods. "Okay, okay, I love you, I'll see you at the mines."
I throw caution to the wind, despite the whole of my world rushing around me, hands flying up to his cheeks to pull him in for a quick, desperate kiss. "I love you too, go." I finish with a shove, rushing past him. I can't look back. I won't.
Because I'll see him looking back at me and I'll die.
I spot Niki up a bit further, running to reach her.
Niki turns her head, her face immediately lighting up. "Rosie?"
"I'm alright, so is Wil. We haven't seen Tommy and Tubbo."
"I sent them down to Wil." We trade information, the safety of our loved ones, so both of us can breathe. "They're shaken up but unscathed."
"We're all okay." I nod, trying to reassure myself more than her. She squeezes my arm, understanding. "We're all okay."
"We've stretchered out everyone who can't walk up here." She explains. "Everyone else has moved further underground."
"Good. I left Dream and Punz there, they should be coordinating evacuation groups to the mines." A few people a left behind, the dust slowly settling. I glance up at the cavern, but there doesn't seem to be any structural damage to the ravine, no danger of collapse.
The thought makes my fucking skin crawl, the ceilings collapsing, giving way, buried in an eternal stone tomb. I can feel everything racing, the breath squeezed from my lungs.
"Fuck, I need to- Are you sure everyone's out?"
"We got everyone out." Niki affirms. "There was barely anyone here anyway, they've all been set out on assignment."
"Okay, okay." My head is swimming, the rational side a jumbled list of every task I need to do, the irrational side screaming, flailing, the primal instinct to flee, the fear that I am going to be buried. "Niki- Niki-"
"Rosie." Her voice is sharp, and she turns her attention from the cavern to me, holding my steady. "Are you okay?"
"I- I-" I glance around, heart rate rising, skin prickling. "I need to- I can't-"
"Rosie you need to get out, go with the first evacuation group."
I shake my head frantically. "No- No- we were just attacked, I can't- I need to help-"
"We are okay, everyone is being evacuated, we're clearing out the supplies, you need to go."
She walks me around in a half circle, and gently guides me forward. I'm frozen stiff, like any little movement I dare make will bring the entire thing down around us. She propels me with a little shoved, and I clench my jaw as tightly as possible, marching back downhill, past the people collecting the supplies we have left, the one's stretchering people out, back to the bottom, where a crowd of people are, some sitting, some standing.
I think my brain switches off eventually, because I don't remember getting out. I don't remember meeting Dream again at the bottom, or getting led out with the first evacuation group. I don't remember walking the trail back to the camp at the mines.
I don't remember how I ended up in some kind of meeting room, shakily holding a spoon and staring into what I think is oatmeal. The steadying weight of Dream's hand rests on my back, thumb rubbing little circles over my shirt. He's warm and secure, stable enough to lean into, so I let him.
Sam's conscious again, and even though he's on bedrest orders, he's braced up against the table set in the centre of the room. Only a few people are here, Danny and Ebony some of their people, Sam, Punz and Dream.
I blink again, narrowing my eyes, trying to piece together what feels off.
"Where's Wilbur?" I remember passing him when the bombs first went off, leaving him behind me. Didn't he get out with the evacuation?
"No idea." Danny throws his hands up in exasperation, which I can barely criticise, seeing as I have also met Wilbur, and therefore completely understand.
"Off with the fairies." Sam snorts, shaking his head, refusing to make any kind of eye contact with me because he knows I'm not happy about him being out of bed with the monster of a concussion he now has.
"So." I set down my bowl and spoon, stretching up to standing. Dream rises with me, keeping his arm securely around me. It's nice, the reassurance, the constant, since everything else has upended me. "Can anyone explain what just happened?"
Sam takes in a deep breath. "We had that meeting with Schlatt, the one that was supposed to be a routine update on tunnel construction, but then right at the end- he just started fucking ranting about how you can't trust anyone, how he knows where our allegiances truly lie, that we've made a mistake- just the craziest shit."
"Then maybe twelve guards burst into the room, and they just attacked." Dream continues to explain. "Sap was scouting, he saw everything and made the call to launch, he'd thought we'd been made. We found out Schlatt didn't even know about that but it was only a matter of time, so I think it was the right call."
"So you fought off the guards and headed back to the ravine?" Ebony asks.
Dream nods. "He mentioned Tommy and Wilbur too, so knew he'd be going after the ravine, he's just too trigger happy. Whoever tipped them off didn't tell him about the war, the armies, anything, just that we were helping Tommy and Wilbur."
"Do we know who it was?" Punz asks, face grim.
"No idea." Sam shakes his head again, looking at the table. Everyone is silent. "And I don't understand why they would just tip him off about that? It worked in our favour."
"It kicked the war off, maybe the person wanted it to happen now? They were sick of waiting?" Ebony suggests.
"Seems like the only thing that makes sense." I shrug. "Where are we now?"
"Well, we're in war." Sam straightens up grimly. "Every single squad stationed in the tunnels has attacked, Sapnap and Eret are down there leading it. We don't know how we're going, scouting groups left an hour ago from the ravine. Troops at the mines have split, one group to reinforce the undercover squads, one staying here under Punz and myself for labour."
The world spins a little. "What support do we have down there for them? Medical, anything?"
"Supply routes are almost complete, they should be up tomorrow or the day after."
"That's too long, you know that's too long."
"We were supposed to be ready, we thought we had more time." Danny responds.
"So they have nothing there? We don't even know if they're being slaughtered?"
"We have the numbers and the advantage, Schlatt will take a day to pull his men off the borders to even be able to respond. Conservatively we'll take a third of the city before he can organise a full-scale counter attack."
"This isn't going to be a long war, we've known that." Dream tries to explain to me.
"It's going to be a blood bath." I say, horrified. "They don't even have any medics!"
"No."
"Absolutely not."
Punz and Dream both immediately answer loudly, voices short. Dream continues. "You're not going anywhere near L'manburg, Schlatt wants your head more than anyone here."
"I'm not just leaving them there to die."
"We're sending people down, we just had to regroup after the evacuation."
Ebony pipes up with a question. "Are injured being brought back here until then?"
I don't have the heart to tell her that if soldiers manage to survive the trek back here, then they weren't injured enough to leave the frontlines in the first place.
"It's too far away." I settle on. "We need stations closer, we need medics there."
Danny nods. "No, you're right Rosie, Ebony and I will start organising groups. They can bridge the supply lines, until you guys can get them established."
"Medical and supply lines are the priority." Sam announces to the group. "Punz and I will take care of the latter, Rosie, you're in charge of the medical wing here, you assign who leaves and stays, what you need. Everyone knows their roles."
He nods to Dream, who gives him a curt nod back. I grab onto his arm.
He glances down at me, but doesn't elaborate. The rest file out of the room, even Punz, who shoots me a worried look over his shoulder, leaving the two of us in empty space. Now Dream won't even look at me.
"Dream?" I start, voice laced with warning. "What are you doing?"
"I'm leaving." He answers flatly. "I'm in charge of strategy, I need to be closer."
"How close?"
"Just before the end of the supply line that runs through the border closest to old L'manburg. There's a base camp already set up there."
"Dream, that's in L'manburg territory." I realise as I say it out loud. "That's like five fucking kilometres from the frontlines!"
"I know."
"I can't fucking believe this." I snarl, letting go of him and taking a step back. "First, you keeping this from me! I should know about this Dream! And second, I'm not allowed anywhere near a hint of the frontlines, but you can waltz right into L'manburg because you're so important-"
"It's not like that-"
"Not like that? How could you not tell me this!"
"I didn't want to make you upset- I didn't want to worry you."
"But you were going to leave anyway! I needed to know!"
"I have to go."
"I'm going too, I'm not staying here when I'm needed at the front."
"You're staying here." Dream's looming over me now, inches away from my face. I glare right back at him.
"How exactly are you going to stop me? You'll be at the front in a couples days, you can't do anything."
"No one's going to let you go." He snaps, and I know I'm getting to him, because a vein bulges in his forehead. "Not Sam, or Sapnap, or Punz, you know they're going to send your ass right back here, and they won't let you leave with anyone."
"Danny's organising the medical support, and he doesn't give a shit about protecting me, he'll actually make the right decision."
"I'll fucking kill him if he lets you go, how about that? You slip by him and he'll pay for it."
I roll my eyes. "Don't be fucking stupid, we need him, you're not going to kill him."
"Watch me." Dream snarls, face full of barely constrained rage.
"Watch me." I hiss right back, leaning in. "I'll go to the front if they need me at the front."
I expected anger, the kind wrapped in his typical self-assurance, everything that makes me feel small, flexing the reach of his power over me, over everyone. I don't expect him to seize my face in his hands, a surge of sheer desperation.
"Rosie please." Dream pleads, and I just stand stunned, arms hanging limply by my sides. "I can't- I can't lose you, I can't risk it, just please stay here."
The pang in my heart feels like an arrow. The surprise makes it hurt worse, the fact that Dream cares this much, and the fact I never expected that fact to hit me this hard. Like a double gut-punch, pushing the air from my lungs, the breath from my cheeks.
It hurts. There's dregs of old love in the cracks of who we are, and no matter how many times I try and flush it out, it sticks, underneath the grief and the blame and the anger. I don't understand it.
I can't understand.
I know it's love, and I've known for a while.
I used to think I'd been tricked, given something pretend, and then I fell in love. Fell in love with Punz, learned to love everyday, every minute, live with it in every moment, and I knew then, that what I had with Dream, there was something there.
It doesn't make it okay, but that's not the point. It was there.
I see it in his eyes sometimes, hear it in the breaks of his voice. I can feel it in the palms of his hands now, flush against my cheeks. He does love me.
He's still an awful, selfish, cruel man, he's still done horrible things, but he's just that; a man. They're never in black and white, no matter how hard you try, there's blurry edges, little grey areas that sneak around the sides.
He's pretty much evil. He does love me.
I gently place my hands over the top of his, like I can hold him together like this. This is bigger than my placement on the front, bigger than this argument.
Like everything always has been, it's the age old question. Who do I choose? Dream, or my family? Do I stay behind, stay alive, or do I throw myself down for L'manburg, for them?
The thing is, it's never that simple anymore, it hasn't been for a long time, not since the first war, since before Fundy, before everything. Now, there's Punz, and the warping of L'manburg, and there's me. There's my feelings, and my life, and the fragile sense of self I have clawed out of the clutches of every man who's tried to mould me.
"I want to stay." I murmur, an admittance. There's a thousand reasons behind it, but it's the truth.
The inevitable, frustrating, everlasting problem with Dream is that he'll never hear them. He'll carve out the little meaning that suits him, and throw everything else away, but nothing I've said has ever been that straight forward.
I've always thrown the world into my words, and no one sees it quite the same. It's not their fault, really, but I dance and dance and dance around the awfulness of the truth, of what I see this world as, and I tell them everything, all at once.
I want to stay with Punz, I want to show him that I'm here, for us, even if it is selfish. I want to stay because I'm tired, I've seen enough, I've given everything. I want to stay because I'm scared, scared of becoming a monster again, scared of losing people, scared of the fact it's my fault. I want to stay because in this moment, I want the pressure on my heart to lessen.
"But I can't, you know I can't. You know me."
Dream knows me and I know him, and I think that's the part I hate. It's that deeply intimate look at a person, the kind you can only get through time. We'll never un-know each other either, and no matter how far I run, that's always going to be there.
It could have been so easy, in the end. I would've loved him for our lives, even though I know who he is, and that should be enough. He could've had it all, I'd have let him take it.
After all, even through everything, I'm still here, standing against him with my hands on his, while we both plead for my life.
That's not a stranger.
We'll never be strangers, and that's what I want. I can hate him, curse him, love him, but it doesn't matter, because there's those feelings, strong, constant, reminders. I don't want to know, I don't want to feel.
I've told Punz this, one night. I might've been trying to scare him off, show him why someone like Dream could love me. I told him that Dream's always gonna be apart of me, that I don't know how I feel, that I can't stop. That there's moments where it's me and him and no one else and I can't breathe.
He didn't care, he said, he'd love the parts of me that are mine.
Later, he said I'd get them back. It's one of the only times I've never believed him.
"God you fucking kill me." He rests his forehead against mine, face ripe with agony. I've never seen him hurt this openly, this freely. "I love you so much, I can't watch you get hurt out there. Please don't make me watch that."
"Close your eyes." I say soothingly, wiping his tears with the pad of my thumb. I'm not being mean, not anymore. "You don't have to watch."
His voice is raspy, choked up, "I can never stop watching you."
"It's time." My voice can barely rise above a whisper. "You can look away now, I'm okay."
I spend my life wishing I never loved you.
I want to tell him, I don't. I don't tell him that I love him either, because neither of us are playing house, playing pretend. We're not lying to each other anymore, not even muddled, confused, half-truths.
"I can't."
I know.
"You have to."
You have to learn. I'm not stopping. I'm not going back.
I died. I died again. You've buried me so many times it's a miracle you still recognise my face as anything other than agony. I'm not the person or the person before that. You know me like a ghost in a familiar body. You're clinging on to something I shed.
I love Punz and I love you and I love Tommy, and Niki, and Tubbo. I love Sam, and Sapnap, and maybe even Eret.
But it's not just about love anymore, is it?
I mean something to myself again. It's not just everyone else. Now there's me, too. There's everyone I love and there's myself, and my future, and my destiny. You lived in a part of my life that I couldn't see that.
I want you out so bad that I hate you, hate it, hate the strength of feelings and pain. Hatred seeps into the pores of my life. It'll be there for a long time.
I get it confused with love; maybe they are the same. Both ways you care deeply, so deep it punctures your being, stays with you always. There's similarities, at their core.
I love you Dream. There is no place for you in my life.
"I'm leaving tomorrow." Dream says shakily, I nod against him. "I don't want to leave you."
"It's war." I manage a weak scoff, a shitty attempt at a laugh. "We don't get that much of a choice."
He straightens up, and pulls me into his arms, caging me against his chest. I lean my head against his collarbone, feel the thump of his heart.
It always surprised me. I remember the first night, where I crept into his bed because I couldn't sleep on the floor, waking up to him cocooned around me. For some reason I was a little surprised he had one, like he was some robot, something other-than-human.
"I sent the kids back." He says, after a little while. My head snaps up.
"What?"
"Tommy, Tubbo, they wanted to be down where I was supposed to be stationed, snuck off with a scouting party during the evacuation. I put in a special order to have them pulled from the secondary troops. They're coming back now."
"I thought you'd have been happy to let them stay there."
"It'd have broken your heart, and that would've killed me." He sighs, resting his chin on the top of my head.
"Have you loved anything?" The question falls out of my mouth, before I realise. "Before me."
"No." I can feel his arms tighten around me, like constricting boas.
"If you opened your heart." I poke him, hard, in the centre of his chest. "You'd see love isn't finite. You'd know how easy it is. Loving someone, going through that, that's hard, but being able to love, that's the easy part."
"That's how you fell in love with me?" He lowers his chin a little, so I can see his eyes.
"That's how I fell in love with you." I repeat. "Even though I loved them too, even though that love hurt me."
"You love so much, and that's what hurts you. I see- I just see you in so much pain because of it."
"It's worth it." I answer simply. "Is the pain worth loving me?"
"Yes."
"There you go."
There's a desperate urge to tell him about Punz, while he's listening, while he's open. I can't, because it'd be too easy if he understood. I'd never have left him in the first place. I feel the guilt now, that I never used to feel before in times like these, the quiet, whispered confessions, the drunken ramblings of love-sick fools, the conversations in one another's arms.
The guilt isn't about betraying Punz. He knows. He's seen them before, and I've told him countless times. Tried to show him why he couldn't love me, why I'm not someone you can love. He never cared, only understood, only offered me his hand when the sobs choked me up so much I could barely breathe, told me he loved me anyways.
The guilt is that this isn't all I have anymore. Dream and me, we used to be alone in the sea, adrift, afloat, clinging onto each other. I'm on land, I'm building up on stable, steady ground. He's still drifting.
Dream kisses me softly, and it burns, his lips against mine. It's not familiar anymore, but the feelings are the same. I can lie and say I need to keep up the charade, even though I do, keep pretending so he doesn't forfeit the effort and slaughter half the resistance instead. I can tell the truth and say I kissed him back because I did, because I can't explain.
Punz tells me that he thinks it's the trauma, the way everything shuts down, becomes placid, neutral, a hard-wired survival mechanism re-wrote over my very own nature through experience. In times like these I'm inclined to believe he's right.
Maybe not completely, but somewhere in the middle.
"I have to get ready." He says against my lips. I open my eyes.
"Goodbye."
------------
A/N FINALLY SOME CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT THAT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE THIS STORY IS GOING IN A COHESIVE DIRECTION.
I've been meaning to set up the 'beginning of the end' if you will for Rosie and Dream. Initially it was going to be Punz, but I decided against it. I think someone else, another man coming in and just swaying her doesn't fix anything. I wanted Rosie to come to terms with her own feelings, rather than just forgetting about them and being swept up with Punz, and in the end, she's the one that has to look at herself and her life, and decide how she feels, and what she wants her future to look like.
She's admitted she's still in love with Dream over the course of the book, but often is laced with an explanation, denial, anger, many distractions from the truth because she was never in a position to accept it. I think now, she has come to terms with it, because she can finally understand it. Once she was able to do that, she can look forward, and know who she wants to be, and what her life is going to be like. To some, it may feel like she's cheating on Punz, but Punz came into her life seeing this dynamic. He knows how confused she is, despite what she might say sometimes. He wants her to work through the ties she has to Dream so when she does finally let go, there's nothing pulling her back. He doesn't want anything except to see her happy and content.
I hope you enjoyed!
Oopsies x