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He has been here for a long time. He believes so, anyway. He has been in this black nothingness with no end for a while. It is black, so dark it defies color, with the only reprieve the occasional facsimile of a sunrise or sunset in a red brighter than blood. He has existed here, in an area where nothing is real, where one must concentrate to have a body and one never goes anywhere despite walking for an eternity within a moment.
He has been here sometime around the LManberg War - the first one, the one that created the nation and upheld its values. The lines get blurry, because some days he was him and some days he was not. Some days he existed in all the ways that didn't matter as his body moved. Until he stopped existing at all.
If he concentrates hard enough, he can see through his eyes, stare at his hands as the move and hear his voice being spoken. He can see actions being taken and hear thoughts within his mind, but never for long.
If he holds it too long he loses himself.
He sees the election, he sees Pogtopia, he sees a broken boy and a man who has lost too much. He sees an old friend, he sees a child tangled far too much in the webs of political warfare, a child who dies for the crime of caring.
At some point, it was no longer just him. There was Schlatt, a dictator-turned-disgrace as he fell by his own hands. And for a moment, there was Wilbur. The man who cared too much until everything fell apart. Wilbur is there for only a moment, as he returns to do what Dream never could - he returns to interact with the world in a way Dream fears he never will again.
To have a ghost there must be a corpse. So how can he return, if his body is still inhabited?
Schlatt, while he could leave as well, decides to remain with Dream in the nonexistent plane. They talk, of anything and everything, of how things have gone wrong and how things have gone right. Schlatt is absent sometimes, and his mind drifts closer to his vice's, Quackity's, until he realizes the effects and retracts himself.
Wilbur visits occasionally, as himself and not the him that does not remember. It is only for a moment, as he leaves for reality and forgets what is not there.
Schlatt drifts, for a moment, partially in the overworld and partially here. The attempts to bring Wilbur permanently into reality have latched onto Schlatt, pulling him halfway until he is a voice that all can hear, until he is a ghost that tries to become Wilbur.
Dream watches as they try, and feels vague amounts of despair. For if a willing participant in necromancy with a body to inhabit cannot return, would he? He is nothing more than a spirit drifting until his body stops moving, his heart stops beating. Its inhabitant will not leave of any natural death, and does not require another vessel.
(He hopes that it never will. For if it were to leave his body, it would cause one of his friends to be stuck in his place. He would never wish this on anybody, this indifferent purgatory. He sees how it has started to latch onto a boy, too young for war and far too young for death, as it speaks with its lies that are far too real. He prays that the boy will not fall victim as he did.)
He sees through his eyes as everyone turns on him. As everyone clamors for his death, as he joins them.
It is a final battle, the end of a lifetime, when it happens. It is far too chaotic for him to see, viewing secondhand for a short amount of time, but his body is stabbed with a golden sword. He watches as the inhabitant loses control, as his body falls and slowly stops functioning. As what kept him in purgatory is cast out to wherever its home may be.
He asked Wilbur, once, how it felt to return.
"It feels like everything is brighter. Like you finally exist at full capacity, even if that's not true. It's amazing." He recalls the answer to be. As he focuses himself away from his current residence, he understands.
As he finally sees his homeland with just his eyes, with a body that is his, no matter how incorporeal. He sees his friends, his family. He sees those closest to him surrounding his corpse. It is a wonderful sight to see, for Dream, proof that it is gone and he is himself, as much of himself as a ghost can be.
"Hey Sapnap, hey George." They look up. They are confused; last they knew Dream had wished for their collective demise. And then they see. Green eyes the color of grass after rain. The inhabitant never removed the mask. Dream had cast it aside long ago.
He floats over to them, and isn't that strange? He has spent so long without space being a factor in his existence that he almost overshoots and goes straight through them. And yet he doesn't, and as he holds them as well as he can, with all of his energy, he knows.
He's come back home.