Chapter Text
The boy couldn’t be older than ten years old.
Dream stared at the boy that Sapnap and George had brought to him. The young general looked down at the boy they had supposedly ‘saved’ from enemy territory. It was their secret mission, kidnapping the boy. Dream only knew a few details as to why. He wasn’t a top general but still ended up with the job of caring for the boy.
He had no idea how this boy, this small malnourished boy, was supposed to be a human superweapon.
The boy sat on the floor picking at his thin nightclothes. The long shirt hung on his body, coming down to his knees. Under that he wore a pair of thin shorts. Both were white and made his skin look ghostly pale in deep contrast with his dark brown hair. Dream got down on one knee to sit before the young boy, George and Sapnap watching from a couple feet away.
Bright blue eyes looked up into his mask. Usually people would look at him with fear in his eyes, wondering what the teenager had to do to climb the ranks of a foreign army so quickly. Instead, the boy was emotionless.
“What’s your name?” Dream asked the boy. The boy was quiet for a moment before he rolled up his sleeve, showing Dream a row of numbers tattooed on his forearm.
“Zero zero seven, sir,” he responded. “They called me Seven.” Dream stared at the boy’s arm, glad that his mask could hide the surprise that was in his eyes.
“A list of numbers isn’t a name,” he said. The boy blinked.
“But that’s what the generals would call me,” he said.
“We’ll help you pick a name later,” Dream said. “You’re free now.”
The boy tilted his head, as if he didn’t understand what being ‘free’ meant. Dream honestly wouldn’t be surprised. According to the spare background information he was supplied the boy was taken from his home at a very very young age and forced to become a super soldier. Potions and other serums had tainted the boy’s body, making it stronger and more resilient. He had gone through things no child should have gone through at his age.
“Are there any others like you?” Dream asked. He still had more questions for the kid. As much as he wanted to tuck the boy and himself into bed for the night this information was important. He had information to provide to his commanders after all. He hated to think about how the kid was just another assignment, when he was clearly a human child, brainwashed and forced into a war.
“No,” the boy said with a shake of his head. “The others died. There were only ten of us. Me and Nine were the only ones that lived through training. But Nine died on the battlefield a month ago.”
Dream couldn't stop himself from shaking with fury. He clenched his fist and felt George and Sapnap stare at him, shocked at the kid’s response. Dream breathed in and out, trying to calm himself.
“How old are you?” Dream asked. After this question, he was done for the night. One more bad answer and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from punching his fist through the wall of their makeshift base.
The boy shrugged. “I think twelve,” he said. “I dunno.”
In a flash Dream was up on his feet and storming out of the room. The boy watched him leave, his eyelids droopy with sleepiness. George and Sapnap exchanged a look before George ran from the room, leaving Sapnap to watch over the boy.
Dream did end up punching the wall. But George managed to stop him before he actually put a hole through it or hurt himself. None of them got a lot of sleep that night.
˙.・⭑˙ • ⋅ ⭑ ⋅ • ˙⭑・.˙
Dream spent a solid couple of weeks just trying to get the boy to trust him. The kid was very good at following orders. He had been trained that way and honestly Dream wanted him to just shout at him and defy him sometimes. The robotic way the kid talked, the way he called him ‘sir’, and the way he carried out his orders, even if they were just suggestions, made Dream shiver.
He let himself become attached to the boy. He knew he was just an assignment, getting the kid to trust them so they could get him to work for them, but he couldn’t stop himself pitying the kid and wishing for a better life for him. What he thought was going to be a babysitting job turned into him becoming genuinely attached to the kid.
The two sat silently together in Dream’s room and office, in their makeshift base near the battlefield. The boy was reading a book that Sapnap had found for him while Dream wrote reports on the boy’s behavior. Out of the corner of his eye he would watch the kid, waiting for him to do something, but he was silent. He sat in the middle of the floor, wearing a uniform that was two sizes too big on him even when they tried to quickly tailor it to his size. His eyes flicked across the pages of the storybook, invested in whatever it was about.
Dream leaned back in his chair before he stood up, stretching his arms. The kid looked at him for a moment before returning to his book. Dream walked over to him before deciding to sit on the floor beside him. He leaned over the boy’s shoulder to look at what he was reading.
“I read this book when I was a child,” Dream said, mostly to himself. The boy stiffened and closed the book.
“Sorry sir,” he said. Dream straightened and gave the boy a confused look, even though the boy’s eyes were focused on the floor.
“For what?”
“Reading childish stories sir,” he said. “I’m supposed to be a soldier. Soldiers don’t read fairy tales.”
“I don’t care what you read,” Dream said. “I still read fairy tales myself.”
The boy looked at him curiously and cautiously reopened the book that was in his lap. Dream smiled.
“What’s your favorite story in the book so far?” Dream asked. The boy flipped through the pages before he handed the book to Dream. He took it with careful hands, staring at the illustration and title of the story that the boy had flipped the pages too. He was unfamiliar with it.
“What’s it about?” he asked, carefully flipping the page over. The boy grinned.
“It’s about a farmer boy,” he said, speaking quicker and more excited than Dream had ever heard before. “He decides he wants to travel the world. So he sails away on his ship, joins the army, and goes on adventures with his friends. He battles pirates and dragons and he even knows how to make music.”
Dream ran a finger over the words of a sentence. The protagonist the boy was talking about was named ‘Tobias’ and he found himself smiling as the boy continued to ramble about the story.
“You like the main character then, don’t you?” Dream asked, looking into the boy’s shining blue eyes. The boy nodded, his dark hair falling into his eyes. “Why don’t we name you after him?”
The boy tilted his head in confusion. “Like what?”
“What about Toby? It suits you.”
The boy was quiet for a minute. Dream could practically see the gears turning in his brain as he thought hard about it. For as long as he remembered, the boy had been called Seven, or Number Seven. Dream had never called him that once, wanting to find a suitable name for him. One fit for a kid, and not a child soldier and lab rat.
Eventually the boy nodded, shyly accepting his new name. Dream called him Toby from that day forth. Sapnap gave him the nickname ‘Tubbo’ which stuck more than his other new name did. Tubbo liked both very much, Toby because Dream had named him that and Tubbo because so many other nicknames came from it.
Dream was also happy that Tubbo had a codename of sorts. They all had special nicknames, excluding George cause he hated them, and he wanted to make sure Tubbo felt included. And while they ended up calling him Tubbo more often than they called him Toby, Dream still occasionally called him that, happy that it always put a smile on Tubbo’s face when he heard his original name.
˙.・⭑˙ • ⋅ ⭑ ⋅ • ˙⭑・.˙
Dream watched Tubbo in action for the first time four weeks after they had brought him into the camp, two weeks after they had given him his new name. The Grand General of the King’s army ordered Dream to throw Tubbo into some training up against some higher ranking officers, experienced higher ranking officers. Dream wanted to protest, not wanted to throw Tubbo into something that could be possibly traumatic. Not after they had just saved him from the cruelty of the enemy camp. But Dream couldn’t defy orders that came from the Grand General himself, especially when he was going to be there to witness Tubbo in action.
Dream brought Tubbo to the training field a few days after he received his orders. He put a nervous hand on Tubbo’s shoulder as they stood on one side of the field. Across from them stood a high ranking officer known to be one of the best fighters in the army. Naturally, Dream was worried for the boy he was starting to dote on and become attached too. Tubbo, on the other hand, did not seem to be phased in the slightest. This worried Dream even more, but for other reasons.
Standing on the sidelines with his closest friends and the Grand General he watched Tubbo weigh the weapon in his hand. The fight was a test to see how well he could disarm his opponent, not who could draw blood first or who could deal a mock killing blow first. Apparently those would come later.
Tubbo spun the small dagger he had chosen between his fingers. He studied his opponent, a tall man that was at least twice his size. He was bulkier than Dream was, but not super muscular. He would be no trouble for him.
The man lurched forward, swinging his sword. Tubbo quickly stepped out of the way and ducked when the sword came for his head. He bounced on his feet, jumping around his opponent and studying his movements. He was heavy, and each swing of his sword had a bunch of brute force behind it. It took Tubbo no time at all to jump the man, roughly knee him in the gut and kick his sword from his hands and hold the dagger to his throat.
The man fell over to the ground and Tubbo looked back to Dream looking for his approval. He seemed to be in shock as he looked at the man lying on the ground in pain. George and Sapnap looked the same. But the other older man Tubbo didn’t recognize looked pleased. Tubbo smiled softly, he had done well.
Tubbo had multiple other fights that day, taking around five minutes to take down each of his opponents. Sometimes he had a weapon and other times he did not. He did win each fight, against men taller and stronger than him. But that’s what he was trained to do. Either you won, or you died.
Dream watched with a blank expression on his face. His heart ached every time he watched Tubbo bring down his opponent. The malnourished and small child could kill within a matter of seconds if ordered to. His hands could snap wrists and necks. His agility and smaller frame gained him an upper hand so he could quickly stab his opponents in the back. His strength allowed him to quickly pull back a bow and shoot with full force without even sparing too much time. His speed allowed him to quickly load a crossbow or flick a dart into someone’s gut.
Dream didn’t like to imagine the trauma the poor kid must have gone through to gain all these skills that should be impossible for a twelve year old to have.
˙.・⭑˙ • ⋅ ⭑ ⋅ • ˙⭑・.˙
They won the war.
Dream hated to think about how Tubbo was one of the reasons they won. The enemy lost their secret weapon only for it to turn up and fight back. He hated to think about how they forced a child to become a soldier and fight in a war he should have never been involved with. He hated to think about all the times in the past weeks that Tubbo had carefully approached him with tear stained cheeks, rambling about the terrors that kept him awake at night. In reality, they were no better than the enemy they had stolen Tubbo from.
So when the battle was won and the dust had settled and the soldier began to pack up and go home, Dream went to the Grand General, handing in his letter of resignation. He was going back to his home country, George and Sapnap following along with him.
With him, he took Tubbo. There would be no more wars. No more battles to the death. No more fighting and training for countless hours that turned the boy into a weapon. He was going to raise Tubbo as his brother and let him be a child.
The poor kid deserved it more than anyone else in the world.