#since y’all loved my c!prime piece have just. c!Dream’s very fucked up view on morality using exile and prison as an example

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

dream thinks he understands tommy. just a little.

it’s worse for him, of course. for one, tommy deserved what he got. he needed to learn, he needed to listen. it was for his greater good. dream… he was just trying to help. really, he was. he wasn’t sure why people didn’t believe him there. he was not a honest man- of course he wasn’t, he wasn’t fucking naive- but neither would he classify himself a liar. if someone were to ask him, he’d say he mostly tells truths, and he’d be genuine when saying that. you don’t have to lie to make a truth mean whatever you want.

he did want to help. deeply and truly, he does want to help- even sam and quackity will have that grace extended to them, a seat at the dinner table offered all the same. dream isn’t like tommy in that sense- oh, he holds grudges, but he doesn’t let that get in the way of helping, unlike the way tommy spits and swears and screams and struggles. he wants a big happy family. that’s all he wanted. a big happy family, for eternity, as the beloved patriarch.

that was another way this differed- dream did everything out of love, the pure love of family. a parent to a child, an older sibling to a younger, a teacher to their student, a ruler to their heir. tommy was a prototype, really- a test on how to convince those who wouldn’t listen that his way was just, really. any extreme was justified for that end- an eternally loving, eternally supportive family. coercion and force and fear would fade away into smiles and laughter and joy. spare the rod, spoil the child.

dream has grown to fear and hate the cold disdain on sam’s face, the burning fury on quackity’s. that was where they went wrong- they did not bring pain out of love. that was the secret- any action done out of love for others, however bad in isolation, was really for the greater good. if sam and quackity caused their suffering out of a true and just desire to help, dream would hold no hate in his heart for them.

but he could understand the variables that had confused him at the time- how quickly tommy had given in, played along. at the time, it seemed out of character, but it made sense now. with the bite of an axe in your flesh, you’d say and do anything for the sweet release from the growing agonies. if your brain was being picked apart at the seams, torn by cruel words, you’d do whatever to avoid that. if you were alone, you’d do anything to make someone stay.

well. he knew the last one, obviously. that was why he exiled tommy, after all.

perhaps he had been to harsh. not in his actions- as far as dream was concerned, actions did not matter however bad if they achieved an ultimate good. a happy family was a truly noble goal no one could disagree with- and if they did, dream had learned a few tricks on convincing them of the obvious gospel truth. he’d martyr himself for that cause without a second thought, and everyone else’s unwillingness to do so spoke of a troubling moral deficiency that must be the only reason the server was divided. but he hadn’t understood tommy, and that was why he left.

it figures, he supposes, in a server so self centred and heretical, even the friend he moulded to be unable to leave him, unable to even make a decision without his command, an angel awaiting the orders of its diety, would run from him. even tommy, ever so close, always slips from his grasp, leaving the loneliness he detested to gnaw at his heart like tendrils of sin.

and in a world abandoned by gods and primes, it’s  a moral imperative to become it’s god. and in a world without selflessness, who could be that god but dream? it was a kindness, one that everyone would understand once convinced.

and each step of understanding brought him closer to the divinity he deserved.