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He wishes. He wishes the dreams were real.
Demons never sleep. Yet one night, on one of the earlier days as a servant of the Egg, he closed his eyes and opened them to find himself in a world free of the chaos of war and despair—with just Skeppy by his side.
His Skeppy, the little diamond encrusted muffinhead who, since the moment they met, never stopped giving him countless headaches, yet despite everything, somehow still ended up being someone he'd love forever.
They were on an island building a house, bickering just like the good old days. They went mining and watched in utter shock as a dolphin died to a few of its own kind.
They argued over every single little thing, but he knew they were all insignificant, so he wasn’t scared. He begrudgingly went with the names Skeppy came up for the island and their new dog, but he knew, deep down, that he never really cared.
No matter how foolish or annoying Skeppy's antics were, no matter how much his dumb jokes and jabs would try to get under his skin, he never did care. He never did, because as long as he heard the melodic sound of Skeppy's voice laced with little giggles that’d evolve into full on laughter, he was happy. And he closed his eyes to hear only him, and to take it all in.
He closed his eyes, which was one of the biggest mistakes he had ever made.
He closed his eyes, opened them, and was reminded that a horrible world—a world full of conflict, hate, and everything ugly—is the world he truly lives in. He was reminded that the world he has to wake up to every single day was a world where the only Skeppy he could see was a blood red shell void of any life, and he cried.
Demons never slept. They never needed to, yet he'd feel drowsy as the moon’s rays would come over to touch him. And so, he'd sleep and find himself in that world again, happy with Skeppy, and hours later he'd wake up with tears gushing from his milky white eyes. It repeats and repeats and repeats.
Now, weeks later, since the Egg watches over him even as he sleeps, he just numbly stares ahead instead of crying, while trying to hide the bitterness swirling in his heart from thinking about what could’ve been.
And as he lay, he'd hear the Egg’s whispers fluttering around his mind and he'd go on to fulfill whatever it wanted him to do. Then, as the twinkling of the stars would grow more visible and the moon would steadily rise over the horizon, he'd sleep.
Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
With the Egg, he feels some sort of deja vu. He remembers the times when he still a child living in the nether, when the bigger, aggressive demons teased him. They dangled his belongings just out of his reach. They taunted him, jeered at how he'll always be the puny little demon who was too good-natured, whose heart was way too big to be like a heart of their own kind. With the Egg, he feels just as weak and as helpless as he did then.
But he also remembers what he did once his father allowed him to. He stood up for himself, beat them up, and they never bothered him again. He got his things back.
He wants to do the same now. He wants to give back all the hurt it has done to him so much that it’ll be dead.
He’ll kill it, because it kills him too. Then it'll never come back.
Though, from the way his eyes aren’t heavy in the night whenever it’s assigned him something to do, from the way that, when he’s been dismissed, his eyelids instantly fall, he knows that it’s the Egg giving him these dreams.
So he can't kill it. He knows he can’t. Because if he ever attempts to do so, if he ever tries to break free, he knows it will torture him even more.
This was hell; this was torturous, cruel. And yet, it was all so laughably so.
He doesn’t have a choice but to simply comply, and he finds this so laughably ironic because he did have a choice before. He had the chance to stop this all from going down, yet he didn't take it. He chose wrong. And one by one, the dominoes fell, leading up to the point of no return.
And like all bad choices, they'd have to paid for—no matter what.
So, he bears with it. He buries his resentment for the Egg deep in the dark depths of his heart, and Resentment watches helplessly as its host faithfully abides with everything the Egg says, knowing it’ll never see the light of day ever again. But nonetheless, it grows.
It grows, because with every single order from the Egg he follows, he feels bad things. And he’d love to cry all those bad things away to sleep, but the Egg has been extra watchful over him these days, and so he buries them all with Resentment. And Resentment eats them up and grows and grows until it can barely fit anymore. Resentment grows until it’s big enough to break free.
But even if it’s waiting to burst, even when he feels like exploding and unleashing the monstrosity of Resentment he’s harbored onto the Egg, he takes a deep breath and endures. He smiles at the Egg and listens.
He must stand and endure if he wants Skeppy back. Because he was the sole reason he’s doing all this.
He doesn't want to hold power over the whole SMP. He doesn't want to swim in mountains of riches. He doesn't want to be revered, to have people worship the ground he walked on. He doesn't want any of those at all. All he wants is his soulmate, his other half, his partner in crime. He just wants Skeppy. He's more than enough for him. He's all he needs in his life.
No matter how poor, how detested, and how powerless he'd be, as long as he had Skeppy with him, as long as they were happy and satisfied together, he'd be the happiest being in the world.
He knows it will all be worth it one day. All this pain and guilt he feels and buries within will be worth it as long as he follows the Egg.
He knows that one day, once the Egg finally reunites him with Skeppy once again, all the pain will go away and he'll be happy again.
There's a tiny part of him that knows it’s impossible. A tiny part of him that knows the Egg will never let him go. But he hopes nonetheless. He hopes and he hopes and he hopes until that moment—the moment they can run away from everything and live in the world he sees in his dreams.
He will never stop hoping, wishing and dreaming.
Demons never needed sleep to live. However, it was for Skeppy that he lives, and so he sleeps. He sleeps and he dreams once again of a world he can only wish to be in, but will wish for nonetheless—a world that only ever has happiness, bliss, and Skeppy.