so theres a content warning i need to add, but adding it would be a spoiler for the chapter. a giant spoiler for the chapter. if you want to read the content warning before reading the rest of this chapter, skip to the bottom of the chapter and its listed there.

Dream had begun these two dizzy weeks with what he knew best: working. He wasn't in a place yet where he could upload spontaneously without the YouTube algorithm fucking him up; it was only right to his fans that he have something scheduled to upload during the trip. So he had spent a couple days recording with Sapnap, then shut himself in his room editing. (Of course, George had forced him out a couple of times, but his mind had always wandered back to where he needed to cut, where he needed music, where a scene needed to end.)

He only recognized his mistake after he finished saving both videos to his computer. He had gone from isolating himself in his room to spending every second of his day with George: playing games with him, pretending to have fallen asleep cuddled up to his side, making meals to share. George had melted under the affection, even taking the time to change into his human form for Dream.

But with each day that passed...

Dream hit the print button on his plane tickets, the grateful look George sent him only making him feel worse.

George couldn't muster up the energy to morph between forms anymore. They couldn't board the plane together like they had planned, yet Dream found himself buying two tickets anyway. The thought of George not being by his side even spiritually while they flew was enough to make his stomach turn.

"Are you really okay with this, Dream?" George asked quietly. "I know it's a bit unfair of me to ask you to do something like this. I can always go alone—"

Dream shook his head. "No. You've always been there for me, so I'll be there for you. What kind of..."

Boyfriend? Lover? Partner? All those terms hung in the air, the pause afterwards almost like a question mark.

But not all questions needed to be answered. Some things weren't meant to be defined.

George relaxes with his back against the bedframe and a closed book against his lap. His wings spread out enough to cover the width of the bed, and Dream was instantly reminded of how impossibly soft they were. "Thank you."

Dream nodded. He wanted to make a quip about having already dropped off Patches at his mother's place, but it didn't feel right.

His throat felt dry as he glanced over at the whirring printer beside him.

The rest went unsaid.

*

"Enough clothes for two weeks?"

"Check. And I can always buy more if I need to."

"Money?"

"Yup."

"All your hygiene things?"

"Yeah, but not like you would know."

Dream laughed as George pouted and tossed a tiny bottle of shampoo at him.

Packing everything had been some of the most fun Dream had had over this past week. They had started off with some checklist they had taken off a travel website, then George had insisted he carry a couple extra things in his suitcase. Dream had countered by throwing random shit in his suitcase, and here they were now after everything had calmed down.

"I was plenty clean enough when I lived, and I'm plenty clean enough now," George grumbled. "Are you done with packing or not?"

Dream rolled his eyes as he zipped up the suitcase. "Jeez, okay, Mom. I'm done."

"Really? I've been with you for more than a year now and this is the first time you've ever thought to call me Mum?"

"You want me to call you that?"

"Absolutely not."

"Okay, Mom."

The glare George directed at him only made him laugh harder, and for a moment, Dream let himself forget about everything and revel in this moment.

*

The trip to the airport and through all the security systems and check-ins was a blur. It was as if Dream had removed his consciousness from his head, floated through the system like a ghost, only for his mind to return to him after it's past the point of no return.

The chatter of families, business partners, friends was drowned out by the static in his head. It felt like he had been dunked underwater, the sound bouncing off the water's reflection with only the faintest echoes making its way back to him. But no matter how much he scrambled for air, something pushed his head back down.

When he anchored himself back to reality, he found himself staring out the window aimlessly and George giving him a concerned look. Dream only laughed.

Was this how George felt all those years he spent roaming the planet? Disconnected from everything, isolated from the world, so utterly, pathetically alone? It shouldn't have taken him this long to realize it. What kind of person was he?

The feelings bubbled in Dream's gut as George quietly asked him if he was feeling alright.

Dream waved him off but held his hand out on the armrest separating them.

George took his hand and squeezed it reassuringly.

He felt safe. George felt safe.

Dream shut his eyes.

He was making the right decision; he was sure of it. So why did he feel so empty?

*

Their plane landed without a hitch, Dream was thankful for that much. But maybe he should've done his research on the London train system before finding himself standing along the walls of a train station like an idiot. He knew he'd look even more like an idiot talking to himself, but he couldn't bring himself to care about strangers' opinions. Not now.

"So," Dream said to George's growing smirk, "I kind of thought I'd be relying on you a lot more."

George burst out laughing.

"Hey! Is that an unreasonable assumption to make?"

"Yeah, considering I haven't been here for years. Did you not think the train would change in all that time?"

Dream shoved George to the side, rolling his eyes. He could ignore the grin tugging at his lips. "You're such an idiot."

"You're the one who went running headfirst into the train station. I'd say you're the idiot here."

"Well—" Dream had to admit he had no defense against that. He settled for huffing and turning away from him. "It couldn't have changed that much. Are you gonna help me or not?"

"Nope."

"What?"

"We've still got plenty of time before the day ends," George said. "I'm kinda curious how long it takes you to get around the city."

Dream opened his mouth to retort, but George gave him a strange smile. It wasn't sad, it wasn't happy; it was a smile as full of mysteries as when they had first met. Only now, Dream had enough information to interpret it.

It was a smile asking for more time. More time feeling human or more time with Dream, he didn't know, but Dream would be more than willing to provide it.

So Dream sighed and turned back towards the card station. "We'd better get going if we wanna make it before night falls then."

George nodded, and the two disappeared into the crowd.

*

"George, I'm going to kill you."

"I'm already dead, what can you do?"

Dream grumbled underneath his breath as he pulled the suitcase handle back up. He narrowed his eyes at the hand approaching the—

And George pushed it back down again. Somehow, he was reminded of a cat.

Dream pulled it up.

George pushed it down.

Dream pulled it up.

George pushed it down again.

Dream pulled the handle up, waited, then grabbed George's hand when it approached.

George stopped. Before Dream could apologize and pull his hand away, he laced their fingers together and gazed at him with an affectionate smile Dream almost melted under.

"If you wanted to hold hands, you could've just told me," Dream said, squeezing their connected hands tighter.

George shrugged and held on as they waited for the train.

Dream waited, ignoring the gazes burning into his back.

All they saw was a man with two suitcases talking to himself and holding the air, but Dream saw the person he loved most. The world could stare all it wanted.

After all, everyone standing at this station at them would forget about Dream in one day, one week, one month. Dream would remember George forever.

*

Dream squinted at a map, but moving his face closer towards the glass screen didn't do much to help clarify any of the stupid squiggly lines on it.

"Having some trouble there?" George laughed.

"Shut up."

*

"Sorry, George, you have to be this tall to board the train."

George huffed and pushed him aside, stepping forward before Dream could keep bullying him.

*

Finally, finally, the last train stopped at their destination. Dream dragged his suitcases out of the train and walked forward with George beside him.

The fresh air outside was a relief compared to the dusty, stale air of the underground. They were in a suburban area of the city now, tucked away from the scrutiny of others and the almost claustrophobic buildings in the city. And even if the suitcases occasionally bumped into a pebble on the sidewalk or fell into a crevice, Dream would say this was his favorite part of what little he had seen of London so far.

"I used to come here a lot," George said among the peaceful silence. It was nearing night now, the sun just barely maintaining its hold over nighttime. If he looked closely, he could see golden streaks in George's brown hair.

"Oh, yeah?" Dream prompted.

"Yeah. The city's not really a great place for a kid to grow up, you know? Whenever we wanted to get some fresh air, Mum would take me and my friends here to play for a couple hours." He paused. "Not sure how she felt about me never going outside when I became a teenager, but that's on her."

And it was only then Dream realized George had met (well, had one-sided meetings anyway) every member of his family, but George had never talked about his family much, if at all. With a falling heart, he asked, "Do you miss your family?"

George answered with a shrug. "Sure. But I think it's mostly normalcy I missed, and you were the one to give me that normalcy." He stopped to take a turn. Now, it seemed he was leading Dream more than Dream was leading him. "I think my father died, though. Just a couple years after I did."

"How do you know?"

"I don't. But I feel it. I'm not sure it's something I could know while I'm still down here anyway."

"Oh." Dream wanted to slap himself for that poor excuse of a reaction, but he didn't know how he was supposed to respond anyway. "Does that mean you'll see him again."

George smiled. "As a matter of fact, I will. When I go back up today, I think I'll go say hi. And tell him how much of a simp you are. Though if he's up there, he'll probably already know."

Dream coughed at that, stifling his laughter. "You're the worst."

George had no such sense to cover up his laughter and cackled. "Any truers?"

"None."

"Trueeee—oh, we're here."

Dream looked up.

Indeed, they were. Beyond the archway above them, gravestones were littered all across the field. The trees planted in rows were barren with only the slightest hint of growth tracing their branches. Yet despite the barrenness of the landscape, bright, beautiful bouquets were set in front of a couple tidy gravestones. Others were covered up by the tall grass, its marks faded long ago and its owners no longer in this realm for perhaps even longer.

Fuck. They were here.

"Which one's yours?" Dream asked, as if they weren't talking about death.

George's eyes flittered over row after row of gravestones before walking towards the curved marble structure in the ground. "This one."

They sat in front of the structure, taking a closer look.

The grass around the gravestone wasn't quite tidy but not abandoned either. A couple blades of grass poked out above the rest of the sea, as if vying for whoever could reach the sun the fastest. The words on the gravestone were on the cleaner end of things with just a couple dirt spots near the bottom of the stone.

"Hey, look at that," George chuckled. "They didn't forget me after all."

And they hadn't. The gravestone had been cared for through all these years, just not meticulously so.

"And they remembered I only wanted my name there. Not any of that sentimental shit. I wonder who arranged it all in the end."

Dream stared at the gravestone, then it hit him.

George was dead. George was leaving, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. No more shared meals, no more lingering touches, no more cuddles on the couch, no more fawning over Patches together, no more late night talks, no more teasing jokes. No more George.

Fuck.

"You're gone," Dream said. "You've always been gone."

The smile on George's face slipped off. "Dream—"

Dream's throat tightened as he flipped through memory after memory. "This never should have happened. This never—I..."

He had been so foolishly optimistic. So, so foolish.

But George met him with a challenging gaze. "But it did anyway. And when you think about it, is anything meant to happen? Were you meant to meet Sapnap? Were you meant to start a career on YouTube? Was I meant to die all those years ago on that bus?" George picked up Dream's hand with such gentleness he could've cried. "I don't know. None of us know. But even if they weren't meant to happen, they still happened. And there's a kind of beauty in it all, looking back."

"Dude, what the fuck does that mean?"

George rolled his eyes and flicked him on the forehead, but his smile was just as comforting as ever. "It means even if we weren't meant to be together forever, I'm happy this happened. I'm so happy I got the chance to meet you and see how amazing you are and fall deeper in love with you every day. Not everyone gets that privilege, you know."

"You're the amazing one, you stupid—" Dream cut himself off to steady his voice. He took a deep breath. He couldn't talk in this state. "You literally gave me my life. I was so sick of working in that stupid company, having too much time to myself, being alone, then you just show up in my life and fix all of that for me."

"You fixed it yourself. All I did was present an alternative."

Looking back, neither of them were quite correct in that. Dream had been the one to put in the work to make his dreams come true, but George had been the one to push him towards that dream, help him realize it was a tangible goal he could actually achieve. He might've gotten there in the end without George, but how long would that have taken? How much more misery could he have tolerated?

"And I know it sounds kind of stupid since I'm dead anyway," George said, "but you're the one who gave me my life back. The most human I felt wasn't in the middle of the city with all the other humans; it was by your side. Sometimes I would even forget I was dead, and when I remembered..." He trailed off at that with a frown. "Well, it was never nice remembering. But making me feel so alive I forgot I was dead—that's just awesome.

"And it's only through you that I could get to this point in the first place. I told you about how I spent my afterlife looking for a reason to never move on, blaming myself for everything that happened. I don't know how long it would've taken me to figure it out without you. I'm not sure I would've ever figured it out."

Dream swallowed at that. That was bleak. Thinking about George roaming the world, unsure of his purpose and wrapped up in self-hatred...

He didn't want to think about that. Anything but that.

More light radiated around them now. When Dream looked up, he swore the clouds had moved from their previous position.

Dream's throat tightened as he said, "But you're still dead. And you're leaving and dying again." The dread knotted in his stomach in larger and larger clumps until all he could feel was the dread pushing against his chest. There was a familiar wetness building behind his eyes, but before Dream could preemptively wipe them away, George reached out to cup his cheek.

God, this was the weakest he had ever felt in his life. He could feel himself shaking even as he leaned into George's touch.

"You know, there's this thing Bad always told us when we lost someone," George said, his voice dropped to almost a whisper. "He told us that nobody ever truly dies. As long as we remember, a part of that person stays alive in this world, even if our physical remains disappear. What do you think about that?"

Dream pursed his lips as his thoughts wandered back to the world George's friends had created.

He had to admit some part of it was true. George's friends had already been keeping his memory alive through that world, storing every picture, description, memory in it. Even long after Minecraft's most popular era, after every one of their friends moved on, the world would undoubtedly be stored in a flash drive somewhere, carrying just a tiny piece of George. And that was what Dream had been doing with his videos, wasn't it? The thanks to George at the end of all of his video descriptions was imbued with the spirit of one George and one George only. George was still very much alive in the mortal realm, keeping watch over his most loved ones and the world shaping around his presence.

But it was all George could leave of him: a piece, fragments scattered all over the world. Dream had grown so used to having all of George with him. Was he selfish for wanting to keep it?

Dream's gaze darted from the thin skin underneath George's eyes to the brightening sky. George waited for his answer, his shoulders seemingly burdened by the experiences that came from such a compressed life.

He was selfish. He was so selfish.

He couldn't keep George down here when there was peace waiting for him. And no matter how much he wanted to think otherwise, George would never find peace with him. There was no doubt he had made the right decision, but it hurt so much.

The heat behind his eyes was pushing more and more. Before he knew it, the tears were out and he was sobbing. Every inch of him shook, and all the longing, the love he had stored in his heart for George came pouring out.

"Dream," George called, setting his hands on Dream's shoulders like an anchor. He sniffed, and when Dream looked up, tears were running down George's face like comets. "Listen to me. I'm not leaving you. When I gave you my love, I gave you all of me there was to give. And my love is staying with you forever."

Dream wiped his eyes, but the tears continued streaming stubbornly. "I know! I know what you mean, and I agree. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It hurts so much. You had years to prepare for this. I had a couple months."

"I know. I'm sorry, but..." He paused to wrap Dream in an embrace, his wings enveloping them in their own universe. "There'll be a day when it hurts less, and there'll be another day when it hurts even less than that. You'll move on, and you'll be able to live without me. It took me years to come to terms with my own death, Dream. You can't expect yourself to not be hurt about it."

"I know. It just... It hurts a lot."

George stopped. "Do you regret it?"

"What?"

"Do you regret any of this? All of it, even?"

"No." The answer came immediately, and it came from Dream's heart. "How could—you're such an idiot, George. I could never regret loving you."

"Then I don't regret it either." George paused to hug him tighter, and Dream noted with a sickening feeling in his chest that George had no heartbeat. "You know, I know it was resolution I was seeking all this time. But wouldn't it be funny if what I was really meant to get was your love?"

Dream had to chuckle at that. "You're so stupid."

"It's just a thought. But either way, I have it, and that's all I need to face whatever's happening next to me. And you have my love. As long as you're alive, I'm alive with you. I'm so happy to love you," George said. He pulled away and tucked a strand of hair behind Dream's ear, his smile just as angelic as ever.

The clouds above them had moved to make room for the sunlight. Streaks of light glowed over the gravestone. Heaven was reaching down to reclaim one of its angels, and Dream wouldn't interfere.

"I love you," Dream croaked as the two stood up, their hands connected. "I love you, I love you, I love you. I'll always love you."

A beautiful blush fell over George's face at that. "I love you, too, Dream. More than I ever thought I could love." He turned. "Oh, my father's coming down the steps for me."

Dream swore he could make out the outline of a man with wings slowly floating towards them. "He is?"

"Yeah. I'll introduce you two one day."

"Promise?"

"Promise." Then George shuffled his feet and chuckled nervously. "Can I kiss you before I go?"

Dream's face flushed despite himself. His heart fluttered as if he were back in grade school about to ask his crush out. "Of course."

George hesitated, looked away, then pressed a soft, shy kiss against Dream's lips before pulling away.

Dream reached up to touch his lips with his other hand.

That was love. It wasn't long, it wasn't passionate, but it was filled with as much love as George could convey with one action, and that was enough for Dream. It only registered then that that had been their first and last kiss.

George glanced back at the skies before giving Dream one last adoring smile. "Thank you for everything, Dream. I'll see you later."

Right. It wasn't the end.

Dream nodded and gulped as George's fingers slipped from his hand. He missed them already. "Yeah. I'll see you later."

Then George turned, blending more and more into the skies with each step. Dream didn't think he had ever seen a more serene expression on his face as he floated closer and closer to the light, nor had he seen more beautiful of a man. Step by step, his figure disappeared more into the heavens. By the time he reached the top, Dream could only barely make out an outline of him.

Finally, George was at peace. Dream got the feeling things were back in their rightful place.

And just like that, the clouds swallowed up the light, and the air stilled.

The sun was gone.

The warmth was gone.

George was gone, and Dream was alone.

Dream's gaze fell on the gravestone.

Don't cry, Dream, Dream told himself, biting his trembling lip. Don't cry. He's not gone. You'll see him again.

But it was too much. It was all too much too soon.

Dream collapsed on the ground, his body wracked with sobs. He brought his knees up to his chest and tucked his face as close to himself as he could, but the warmth wouldn't ever come close to what George had given him. If he listened closely, he could hear his cries piercing through what had otherwise been peaceful air. His heart bled as reality sunk in with its unyielding teeth.

Only this time, there were no wings to block out the judgement of the world.

cw: character death

it's not over yet.