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1.
The first time, Fundy jolts awake in the darkness of the small van, chest heaving and sweat coating his skin. The dream is rapidly fading from his mind, slipping through his fingers like sand; only white eyes gleaming in the darkness and the pain of a sword through him remain. He blinks away the memory of the desert, the blackness behind his eyelids indistinguishable from what he sees with his eyes open, and by the time his dad creaks open the door and pops his head into the door accompanied by a sliver of warm light from the other side, he has completely forgotten everything about his nightmare.
“Fundy? Is everything alright?” Wilbur is wearing his reading glasses, his hair disheveled and his eyes simultaneously tired and burning with passion, a look he often sports during these long nights during which the lights stay on long after sunset. His work is consuming a larger and larger portion of his life with every passing day.
“Y–yeah,” Fundy stutters. The dream has escaped him, but the feeling of dread and despair still looms over him like a threat. “Just – just a nightmare. I’m fine.”
He’s not, and all he really wants is for his father to hug him and comfort him and tell him it’s all going to be alright, but Wilbur rarely has time for such things these days.
“Okay.” Wilbur sounds hesitant, throwing a glance over his shoulder. "Listen, I can't stay with you right now, I was in the middle of a strategy meeting with Tommy. But come tell me if you need anything, okay? It's a big day tomorrow, with the declaration and all. We have a lot of preparations to make."
Fundy nods; a small movement, barely noticeable. It’s enough for Wilbur, though, as he gently pulls the door shut and leaves Fundy alone in the dark. His footsteps echo through the van, followed by the muffled sound of a chair scraping against the floor, then talking, laughter. Fundy stays up and listens, a pit in his stomach, and doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
2.
The second time, Fundy is woken up by a hand on his shoulder. He winces, disoriented, blinking his eyes as he feels the hard surface against his cheek. It takes him a few more seconds to realize that he’s fallen asleep on his desk, drooling all over his paperwork. It doesn’t click until he looks up and sees Schlatt’s face – then he remembers he was staying up late in the White House, helping the president in his increasingly chaotic attempt to rule the country. Sometimes it feels like out of everyone in Schlatt’s close circle, the man himself is putting in the least amount of work to keep things up and running. Quackity is doing most of the heavy lifting, but even he can’t carry everything on his own shoulders, and Fundy’s days are stretching longer and longer into the nights.
In all honesty, it doesn’t bother him that much. He hasn’t been sleeping very well lately, and work takes his mind off his unsettling dreams. He’s happy to make himself useful to the country.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, rubbing his neck, sore from napping in an awkward position. “I’ve got a bit of sleep debt.”
“No worries.” Schlatt sounds surprisingly sober, the words ever so slightly dragging behind, but not slurring together the way they usually do at this hour. “You looked like you needed the nap. But it’s getting really late, you should probably head home soon. Did you have sweet dreams?”
Fundy shivers. The lingering memory of two corpses on a desert, one clutching a bottle and the other with a sword through its chest, is growing fuzzier by the second, but the overwhelming feeling of sorrow still has a hold on him. “No,” he replies, very quietly. “I didn’t.”
He walks through the dark hallways and into the empty streets, makes his way all the way to his tower, but makes sure not to close his eyes long enough to fall asleep.
3.
The third time, his dream is cut short by the sound of Ranboo’s laughter filling the room. Fundy opens his eyes and then immediately closes them again, the bright lights of the ice cream shop drilling into them. His heart is pounding in his ears, his body not yet quite realizing that he’s awake and safe, napping on the couch in the corner of the shop, not in the desert of his nightmares.
“Oh, morning!” Ranboo greets him from the other side of the room. “Hope we didn't wake you up.” He’s chatting with Puffy at the counter, hunching over it under the low ceiling, smiling with only a hint of his ever–nervous look on his face. His carefree attire is a striking opposite of what Fundy just woke up from. He can’t bring back the details; the only thing he remembers are huge, towering obsidian walls, stretching upwards endlessly, splitting the desert in half. Odd feelings fight for his attention just under the surface, feelings that don’t feel like his own; anger, betrayal, fear. As if a window had briefly opened to let someone else’s mind replace his own, someone from another time and place.
“You didn’t,” he says as a reply to Ranboo, even though they did. The nightmare lingers in his mind, shadows whose faces he can’t quite make out, the shadows cast by the obsidian. Waking up was a relief.
“We can be quieter if you want to keep napping,” Ranboo offers, but Fundy just shakes his head. He gets up from the couch and makes himself a cup of black coffee.
4.
The fourth time, Fundy can barely feel Niki’s hands gripping his shoulders, trying to shake him awake as he thrashes and screams. Before he can fully understand where he is, a word leaves his mouth. “Technoblade.”
“Techno isn’t here,” Niki says, her stern voice penetrating through the layers of panic clouding Fundy’s vision, and finally his eyes can focus on her.
“He’s not?” But it all felt so real, the snow, the anvil, Quackity screaming at everyone with half of his face covered in blood, his one remaining eye wide with madness and fury. Fundy looks around, his head snapping from side to side, looking for threats, and he finds no one but Niki in the room with him. Her touch feels grounding, it helps pull Fundy away from the desert and remind him that dreams are just that. Dreams. He still can’t stop himself from shaking, and he has to force himself to face Niki just so he can breathe again.
“He’s not.” Despite Niki’s reassuring tone, Fundy can see that she’s worried about him. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. “You’re in Drywaters. We’re miles away from anyone else. It was just another nightmare.”
Fundy nods, closes his eyes, swallows, nods again. What Niki is saying makes logical sense and should calm him down, but it doesn’t. All of a sudden, with no apparent reason, Fundy knows that whatever he and Niki have managed to build here was never meant to last. The hands of fate are pulling him back to his home, back to the place he’ll always be chained to.
“I’m not tired anymore,” he mumbles, pushing Niki out of the way and stomping out through the door. He spends the rest of the night wandering around the desolate mesa, not trusting himself to remain in his bed. He can’t risk falling asleep again.
5.
The fifth time, Fundy wakes up to his own scream, followed by a loud thud and a sharp pain. He’s lying on something cold and hard, the back of his head is aching, and when he turns his head, he can see his own bed next to him. His limbs are still tangled into the sweaty blanket that he must have pulled down with him as he fell from his bed, and he’s struggling to free himself, sobs rocking his body, another cracked scream bubbling up–
“Hey! Hey, hey, hey.” The voice is Tubbo’s, Fundy recognizes it at once, but it takes him a little while longer to remember why Tubbo is in his house in the middle of the night. He asked if he could crash at Fundy’s place tonight, his hands full of presidential duties that the two of them had been working on together, and now… he’s seen this. Now he’s truly seen Fundy at his lowest.
“Don’t touch me,” Fundy squeals, and immediately cringes at the way his voice comes out as a whine, but there’s no judgment or pity on Tubbo’s face. His hands are gentle as he untangles the blanket and helps Fundy back onto his bed, mercifully paying no attention to his unsuccessful attempt to pull himself together and stop his chest from heaving and his hands from trembling and his heart from trying to hammer its way through his ribcage. He just sits there, next to him, probably sensing that Fundy doesn’t want to be left alone right now, not in this state of mind.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Tubbo asks after a couple of minutes, after Fundy has managed to calm down a little bit.
Fundy thinks about the hot sand of the desert, about the shadow of a grid blocking out the sun. He thinks about the roar of TNT and the way he could feel his own face twist into an ugly, broken smile, not understanding why.
“No," he says.
He stays awake.
This time, Quackity is there when Fundy wakes up with tear streaks on his cheeks and his throat hoarse from screaming in his sleep, already accustomed to Fundy’s nightmares. He doesn’t ask a single question, doesn’t make any demands, even though his position would very much allow him to do so, and even though Fundy suspects he has at least a vague understanding of the fact that Fundy’s nightmares are more than just dreams. He just sits there, next to Fundy, rubbing circles on his back and talking to him in a low, calming voice, telling him it’s going to be alright.
It’s not, Fundy knows it – but with him in the room, Fundy has the courage to close his eyes and hope that Quackity’s presence will ward away the desert, letting him sink into a deep, dreamless sleep and finally rest.