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It started raining around one in the morning. 

It's cold, everything soaked in icy water that seemed to seep under my skin, bringing it's uncomfortable, unbearable dampness right down to my bones. The leaves squelch underfoot, waterlogged mud tracks and drips off branches, eerie black darkness that warps the twisting trees into monsters that shift unnaturally in the very corner of my eye.

I don't know where I can go. 

I don't know where Tommy, Niki and Wilbur are. I don't know if Tubbo will turn me in the moment he lays eyes on me, or Quackity, or George. Eret could be at his house at the border, but I know for certain he'd hand me straight back to Dream. 

Dream. 

Who doesn't know I'm gone yet. Dream, who's lying there with the last moments of our warmth, still thinking I'm wrapped up in his arms. 

I want to be. I want to be back, tucked into bed with him, let him curl around me, let myself believe that he'll protect me, and he'll be better, and that everything will be okay again. And I fell, so stupidly and so hard, the moment the glimmer of our old love shone through, where his hands felt right on my skin, where I could forget again. And I could pretend. 

And I know, leaving was the right choice, but it doesn't make it hurt any less. 

I wrap my sodden arms around myself, jaw clenched shut to block out the chill, and to stop my teeth knocking together when they chatter uncontrollably. I'm shaking so much my knees almost buckle, feet slipping around the flooded path. 

I vaguely propel myself in the direction of L'manburg, because I know if I stop moving, I'm going to fall, and if I fall, I'm probably not going to get back up. I just have to find somewhere to make it until morning

The morning will bring with it its own challenges. Dream will know, and he'll be searching every inch of land within his reach to find me, and so will Schlatt. I'll need food, and new clothes, and supplies. I'll need a place to stay, and some way of trying to find the others. But, right now, I couldn't care less about all of that. 

I just need to make it through the night, and then I can find my family tomorrow. 

I don't realise I've stumbled way too far North, not until yellow lantern-light flickers dimly through shadowy leaves, and a cough makes my heart leap into my throat. 

I think I almost pass out, with the surge of pure, liquid terror that unleashed itself in my veins,  nearly stopping my heart beating on the spot. I'm in L'manburg, far sooner than I intended to be, an in the wrong fucking place. 

Fuck.

And there's a guard.

Oh fuck.

I press myself up against a tree, letting freezing rain lash against my face like it was solid ice, stinging on pale skin, sharp pain and harsh cold. The guard does not move, the tiniest bit of lantern light flickering over the same trees, the same leaves, the same bit of the path. 

I am not going to stay out here all fucking night, because of some stupid fucking guard, in the goddamn freezing rain and wind. I peer around, craning my neck painfully, trying to spot where they're camping. 

I don't notice how much of a mistake that is, until my shivering leg buckles under my weight, and I collapse down onto the sodden earth, splattered in mud and very, very fucked.

Like really, that was a big mistake. 

"Who's there?" The guard, a man, immediately shouts, and I can hear the painful sounds of metal armour on metal, even through the downpour. 

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