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Dream frowned as he watched Nightmare wrap up his arm again, fussing with his hands, wishing he could do more to help. He knew if he tried to grasp the roll of bandages, his hands would fall through and he'd just feel more miserable, so he didn't try. "Brother," he quietly spoke. Nightmare only inclined his head, slowly tending to each of his wounds for today. "Maybe we... should move. Travel far away."
That caught his brother's attention, and Nightmare looked up to him fully. The pale surface of his face had so many smooth dips and curves that the light spilled into and pooled under, most of them accentuated as he aged. Dream wished that he could say the same about his own visage - perpetually stuck as the same little boy he used to be, all round shapes and soft looking eyes. Some days it frustrated him without end, other days...
Dream knew that the sunlight must filter through him in some parts of his body, and he always felt slightly sad with the way that his brother's gaze would flicker from his face to something behind him. Through him. To the trees, the sink, the window.
"That's unnecessary." Nightmare told Dream. They both knew that they couldn't leave this place. Not when Dream was bound to the tree, not even when Nightmare was free. "I'm... not fine where I am now, but once I am, everything will be alright." He finished wrapping his arm, testing the bend and stretch of it by moving it back and forth. "I'll be fine here. We'll be fine here." He quietly said, one narrowed, deep blue eye fixed on his open palm.
His brother, trailing wisps of starlight, noiselessly slipped off of the kitchen counter and walked over to him, always slightly aglow. Dream was fidgeting with his hands again. He always did that when he had something he wanted to do, but nothing he could do about it.
"Why don't you ever fight them back?" Dream whispered. They locked gazes, that pale yellow color and Nightmare's sharp blue gaze. The silence of their house oppressively weighed upon Nightmare's shoulders. "I know you're angry. You shouldn't guilt yourself into harm's way."
They were both quiet again, Nightmare focused on replaying the events of today once more. Fists catching onto his arms. Boots making harsh contact with his ribs. Crashing, crashing. Like a tidal wave on rocks to the seashore. Everything starry and daylight and painful, and the bright, bright sun, staring him back as he laid in the grass - bloody, cracked into pieces, and torn apart by wolves. (Just as he deserved. And let the sun watch with that single golden eye, because it was what he deserved.)
"It's not what you would have done," Nightmare eventually replied. Dream stared at him, his large yellow eyes saddened by whatever it was that they saw in him.
(Guilt, probably. It always knew when he was guilty. Dream did - this apparition was a perfect replication of him. It always knew when he was guilty. And he wanted it to dig those pale fingers into his bleeding wounds until he was torn apart, again, and again, and again. He deserved that.
Dream deserved to kill him.
But it never did.
It just looked at him like that.)
The breeze rustled the leaves of the trees outside, and their shadows rippled the light pouring through Dream's slightly transparent visage.
"Don't apologize for being a pacifist. I'm never going to hurt someone ever again." He promised. "I'll never hurt anyone. I'll never hurt anyone again."