This day, Tommy had a plan. For the past few days, he'd gotten practically no visitors, and it wasn't because of him; it was because it was really hard to get to him. So, he would build a path in the nether to make it easier.

Tommy felt rather smug of his ingenuity and set to work immediately. Unfortunately, halfway through he ran out of cobblestone, so he returned to the overworld and found Dream waiting there with a pleasant expression. Tommy froze, feeling rather that he was doing something wrong.

"Hello," Dream greeted.

"What are you doing here?" Tommy deadpanned.

Dream chuckled, "I'm visiting you."

Tommy arched an eyebrow, "last time you said that, you... you ruined me."

"How did I ruin you?" Dream laughed.

Tommy sighed. "Every time you've come to visit, you've done something destructive. I've got a right to be worried."

Dream didn't answer that question and instead said, "you should take your armor off."

Tommy saw what was coming and straightened up. "Why?"

"You should drop it in this hole," Dream said.

"No," Tommy said defiantly.

Dream arched a single eyebrow and landed a crit on Tommy, reducing him to only two hearts. Still, Tommy found, he wanted to live, so he panicked and dropped his armor into the hole.

"And your diamond sword." Dream said randomly.

Tommy looked at Dream. "Please can I keep it?" He pleaded. "I worked really hard for it. These are the few diamonds I have."

"You can keep your pickaxe. But drop the sword in the hole," Dream said as if he was being completely reasonable and Tommy was resisting for no good reason.

"Ah, fine." Tommy dropped his diamond sword and watched as Dream placed TNT, lit it, and covered up the hole quickly to ensure minimal damage taken.

"Seriously?" Tommy complained.

Dream was silent as the TNT went off, then straightened and acted as if nothing had happened. "So, what have you been up to?"

"What the fuck?" Tommy exclaimed.

"Did you know Tubbo visited while you were gone? He came here." Dream told Tommy, and Tommy felt whiplash at the sudden topic change.

"He what?"

"He came to visit you."

Tommy squinted at Dream for a few moments. "You're lying," he finally decided. "You're just trying to get inside my head. You're lying."

"No, I'm not!" Dream countered. "You can ask Ghostbur next time he comes. Ask him. Tubbo saw the mooshroom, the prime log, everything! He even got some primes while here."

Tommy's stomach tightened. So Tubbo had ditched him, come to visit him when Tommy wasn't there, and then harvested primes off of his prime log?

Tommy didn't want to think about what it meant.

"You know what I have been doing?" He began talking to stave off dark thoughts. "I think I've figured out the reason why no one comes and visits."

"Have you?" Dream said, sounding mildly interested, the way a busy parent might be when their infant child came up with an idea they found silly.

"Yeah. I think it's because there's no easy way to get here." Tommy answered slightly defiantly. "So today I'm building an easy way to get here."

"Okay," Dream said slowly. "I mean, when I boated here, it only took two minutes."

"No one wants to boat," Tommy shot back. "I'm going into the nether to build a short bridge. You can follow if you want."

Tommy stepped into the portal, with Dream close behind, and appeared in the nether dimension. He carefully picked his way down to the other end of the bridge, so it was easier to make the two ends meet.

"What are you building it with?" Dream asked as they jumped down a particularly steep stretch of cliff.

"Cobblestone." Tommy answered. "You know, it's sort of my... repertoire. It's my thing."

"It is." Dream said, as if confirming a fact he didn't have the energy to debate. "But don't you want to build it with obsidian? I have obsidian. It'd look much more badass, and that's what you're about, isn't it?"

Tommy considered it. "You know what? Maybe you're right."

"Yeah!" Dream said with a small smile, and Tommy was once again taken aback by how normal Dream looked. "Here, have some obsidian."

"Thanks," Tommy said grudgingly.

Tommy began bridging up, and Dream followed like a little child watching their parent do work. It took surprisingly little time to build it all the way up, and now Tommy's only job was to embellish it, to make it look pretty, to make it... more desirable to walk on.

"What do you think?" Tommy asked.

Dream hid a grimace. "It's... beautiful."

Tommy snorted. "You think?"

"Totally." Dream paused and thought. "You should make it wider, you know, so people aren't afraid to walk on it."

"Maybe." Tommy said thoughtfully. "Do you have more obsidian? We've still got a-ways to go."

"How far are you going?" Dream frowned. Tommy was once again taken aback by any facial expression that wasn't a smug smile or sneer. Tommy pointed to the community nether hub.

"That far?" Dream said disbelievingly. "That's so far."

"I know." Tommy replied.

"You can use cobblestone." Dream pointed out.

"Okay," Tommy answered, and began bridging once more. He made it to the community nether hub after a bit, punctuated with casual conversation.

"There," he said proudly. "That's it."

"It's still literally one block wide."

Tommy was silent, and then decided to ignore Dream the entire way back to his nether portal.

***

"Did you know Technoblade lives over there?" Dream pointed.

"What?"

"Yeah. It's actually not that far, just a thousand or so blocks straight that way," Dream pointed.

Tommy wasn't sure what to do with that information.

"Why would you put me in a place that's near Technoblade?" He asked.

Dream shrugged. "I didn't know. I had no idea."

"Why would you put me in a home near someone I hate?" Tommy asked. "The only person I hate as much as you is Techno," he said spitefully, but the statement didn't ring as true anymore. He swallowed, glaring at Dream, then turned away.

***

"Do you have any cobblestone?" Tommy asked with a neutral tone.

"No, but I have a pickaxe that can mine it quickly." Dream answered.

"Can you get cobblestone for me? We don't have enough time. I promised to have something ready in thirty minutes." Tommy requested.

"Okay," Dream said reasonably. "Where?"

"Come with me to my mine." Tommy took out his diamond pickaxe, and the two of them worked together to harvest a lot of cobblestone. After a couple of minutes, Dream dumped a couple of stacks of cobblestone onto the floor. Tommy looked up at Dream, trying to figure out what to make of Dream and his sudden bouts of kindness and cooperation.

"Let's go to the nether." Tommy finally settled on saying.

When they got there, Dream immediately got to work on building a larger platform next to the bridge, to widen the walking space. Tommy crafted some stairs, and they wordlessly began to work. Halfway across the bridge, they ran into Lazar, who looked absolutely petrified of the lava that glowed underneath him.

"You look terrified." Tommy observed. "How was the bridge? Was it easy to get here? Was it easy to use?"

"I am terrified." Lazar said, walking slowly on the narrow bridge. When he reached the wider part of the bridge, he calmed a little. "That feels better." He said with a sigh.

"See, I told you, Dream! The only reason no one was coming to visit us was because it was too hard to get here." Tommy said. Dream merely smiled and requested more cobblestone. Tommy felt a little disgruntled and miffed that Dream didn't say anything else.

"Yeah, he's right," Lazar added. "I did want to visit you earlier, but when I thought about it, I figured it was too hard."

Tommy smiled slightly. "Come see my home." He invited, stepping into the nether portal. Lazar followed suit.

"I've seen your home before, it's quite nice." Lazar praised offhandedly.

Tommy frowned. "You've seen my home before?"

"Yeah, everyone's seen your home already." Dream stepped out of the portal behind the two as the overworld came into focus.

"Really?"

"Yeah, while you were gone." Dream answered.

This made Tommy feel, at first, a piercing sense of his privacy being violated, as though he was being watched. And then, he felt hurt that none of them had stayed, or taken the effort to visit him while he was online. And then he thought about Tubbo, and Tommy shut his thoughts down.

"Sorry for blowing your tent up, by the way." Lazar scratched his head awkwardly. "But it was all in good fun, right?"

"Yeah." Tommy muttered.

"Anyways, I got you a gift." Lazar gave Tommy a potion, which Tommy identified to be a fire resistance potion.

"Also, I'm new to the server, but I've heard you like these," Lazar handed Tommy a disc with a green circle right around the hole, which Tommy recognized to be far.

Tommy's eyes widened as he took it and looked at it. "I don't have this one," he said, surprised. "Thank you." He rounded the tent to where his jukebox stood, and slid it into the slot.

The tune began to play, a dreamy, inquisitive sound as Lazar continued to speak.

"I just thought... ever since I joined the server, we've had a sort of rocky relationship, and I was... I don't know. We don't have to be enemies, Tommy." Lazar concluded, looking a little awkward but still looking Tommy in the eye.

Dream was standing slightly farther back, watching their exchange. Tommy tilted his chin up to Dream.

"If I've gotten a new disc, you wouldn't mind, would you?" Tommy asked.

"No," Dream shrugged, wearing a mask of cheery indifference.

"Well, come and listen. I trust you now." Tommy said, only realizing what he'd said after the words hovered around in the air, and more importantly, realizing that the words had a ring of truth to them.

Dream came over and listened, standing straight up with his heavy netherite armor still donned. Tommy looked at Lazar and grinned.

"Thank you," Tommy repeated. "You're a nice guy."

"Yeah." Lazar smiled awkwardly, his gaze darting to Dream before returning to Tommy. "We don't have to be enemies."

Dream considered Lazar briefly. "You do realize that since he's exiled, he can't really do anything to you?"

And with those words, it hit Tommy again that Dream was the whole reason everything had happened, and here he was, celebrating his new disc with him. Tommy frowned and stepped closer to the jukebox. Dream followed Tommy's movement with shrewd eyes, but said nothing.

"That is true." Lazar said.

"Here, have some TNT." Dream dropped some to Lazar, and Lazar took it eagerly.

"I will be saving that in case Tommy breaks our little truce." Lazar said, addressing it to Tommy. "If you mug me again..."

Dream grinned evilly. "Do you want to mug him back?"

Tommy took the disc out of the jukebox and put it in his enderchest, backing up against the tent. "What the fuck." He stated, startled by the turnaround of events.

"You can just tell him to drop his armor in the hole." Dream said slyly.

"What?" Tommy said, stepping back.

"Just tell him to put his armor in the hole." Dream egged Lazar on, who looked a little uncertain, but yielded.

"Put your armor in the hole." Lazar repeated.

Dream laughed, unlike any laugh that Tommy had heard from him recently, smug and full of itself. The last time Tommy had heard such a laugh was... when he'd defeated L'Manberg for the first time.

"Put your armor in the pit!" Dream snickered, and Tommy felt suddenly alienated and ganged up on.

"You just became my friend, and you do this to me?" Tommy almost shouted, angry. Taking a look at Lazar's armor-less body, he landed a few good crits and killed Lazar on the spot.

"Tommy!" Dream exclaimed, but he seemed rather entertained by it all. "Just put your armor in the pit.

"Yeah, I'll put my armor in the pit." Tommy said darkly, dropping his iron armor into the pit. When it had exploded, Tommy simply went back to where Lazar had died and took his diamond armor from the mess of items floating about on the ground.

"No, Tommy, you're going to need to give Lazar back his armor when he comes back." Dream said chastisingly, and Tommy felt a strange sensation of guilt for a brief moment.

"Well," Tommy said as a way to avoid answering the statement.

"Drop his armor, Tommy," Dream said in a condescending tone, as if he wasn't asking much from Tommy, as if it was completely reasonable and Tommy was being the unreasonable one. Tommy hated that tone at the same time as he recognized it to be the tone that Dream used almost daily.

"And his stuff." Dream added. Tommy felt rather disgruntled, and the guilt came back.

"Tell Lazar I'm sorry for killing him." Tommy exhaled with a slump of his shoulders, beginning to regret killing the one friend he'd made in exile.

"I'm sure he'd say it's fine." Dream reassured Tommy, and Tommy felt a little whiplash at the turn of events.

"At least we're even now." Tommy sighed.

***

Back in the nether, Tommy and Dream went back to work on the bridge.

"Maybe once we finish this, Tubbo'll come." Tommy said aloud, more to himself than anything else.

"I told you, Tubbo already came." Dream continued widening the bridge with obsidian. "He came when you weren't there."

Tommy frowned, his brows furrowing. "I don't believe you." He said, but there was a part of him that doubted whether or not that still held true.

"Well, you can ask Ghostbur." Dream told Tommy.

"Hey, Connor." Dream waved to someone he saw over Tommy's shoulder.

"Hey, Tommy." Connor grinned. "I went to your place, and then there was no one there, so I came back and I found you guys. I was going to deliver bread to you, but I couldn't find you, and I ate it all."

"Oh."

"He's probably going to just kill you now." Dream snorted to himself. "It's inevitable."

Connor's eyes widened.

"Who's going to kill Connor?" Tommy questioned. "Me?"

"He killed his last visitor, too." Dream told Connor.

"No, I'm not a killer!" Tommy protested, feeling slightly alienated by what Dream'd said. "Connor, I wouldn't kill you."

Connor looked at Tommy for a few moments, and chose not to say anything. Instead, he changed the topic.

"Well, I like your home, by the way. It's quite nice to live in."

Tommy looked at Connor. "Why are you living there now?"

Connor shrugged. "I mean, it was vacant, so... I moved in."

"No, you can't!" Tommy exclaimed. "That's my home! I'm going to need to move back in when I get unexiled."

Dream chuckled. "Tommy, you're not getting unexiled." He said as if speaking to a young child who simply couldn't understand that they weren't getting their toy back.

Tommy set his mouth into a line, disliking the way the entire world seemed to be forgetting about him already, erasing his presence from the world, making things that would've served as a reminder that he'd existed, that he was real, changing them into things that meant something else.

"I said only that you could maybe get a visitor's pass. You're not getting unexiled, though."

"But it's my home!" Tommy said, feeling like a little child protesting with an adult, trying to get the adult to understand that what he was talking about was so much more than a toy, but rather his entire being. Connor looked vaguely uncomfortable and shuffled his feet where he stood.

Dream merely smiled, and Tommy knew that it was the end of that conversation.