Work Text:
Is this how it works? You fall in love with anyone who shows you a glimmer of kindness?
Coming from anyone else, it would have been a snide comment, but Night knew the Black Apple had asked a sincere question; it literally did not know the answer and wanted to find out. Still, Night didn’t respond. The Black Apple could interpret what it wanted of his emotional reaction.
It didn’t speak to him in sentences; the Black Apple’s interjections manifested in the form of intrusive thoughts - sudden urges and mental images, accompanied by dread, sharpening his knowledge of what he was capable of and vulnerable to. Like when holding a baby, and having the burst of awareness that it was completely within his power to drop it onto the cold floor below; or when helping his brother with the treehouse, and his abrupt realization that the serrated blade of the handsaw, pied with plaque-like rust between the teeth, could slice through his hand and splinter the metacarpals into bone shards; or the one with the special name - l’appel du vide - when standing near-enough to a cliffside to see into the depths, and the eruption of knowledge how easily he could step off the edge and have no way to stop himself from dashing his body to bits.
It became easier in some way, ascribing these intrusive thoughts to the nigh-literal Imp of the Perverse that brooded inside his head. Another entity with its own sense of self-preservation, and one he could reason with, so he didn’t need to worry he might find himself acting on impulses like these. Just the whispers of a little Imp born of a dark apple in his head, trying to find out the why? and why not?
Currently, Night was continuing his quest to read through Dr Gaster’s skeleton book cover to cover, and to not cave to his temptation to flip ahead to the chapters that covered, well… certain topics. Topics that also intrigued the Black Apple… Which was to say that Night figured he should work up to tackling skeleton puberty. Even reading about the topic embarrassed him in some way he didn’t fully understand, and the vague sensation of uneasiness that hitched itself to the Black Apple’s commentary like a louse wasn’t helping.
The Black Apple continued: That human… Dr Gaster…
These musings conveyed themselves to Night in brief fancies - the human leaning so very close to him, distracting him with a gift to steal a kiss on his cheekbone, and the warmth from their lips that lingered; the touch of Dr Gaster’s fingertips under his chin, as the doctor looked down at him with that small smile and an intense gaze brimming with pride and admiration just for Night.
Your brother…?
This musing from Black Apple carried a bit of uncertainty on its tail. Night was already close to Dream: hugs and attention from his brother weren’t unusual and didn’t bear that same sense of teetering on some terrifying precipice, so the mental impression intensified: Dream giving him gentle touches on his hips, leaning in for a deep kiss - Night almost physically jerked back as he revolted from the thought. This time, he didn’t attribute the accompanying disgust to the Apple.
Oh god, no! They’re my brother.
A ripple of confusion from the Black Apple as it rifled through the shades and distinctions of these feelings to get a sense of their delineation. This time, the Apple’s thoughts came to Night as the spectacle of him confessing - telling Dream everything: that he had eaten the dark apple from the Tree; the insults and mistreatment he endured, no matter how minor; the bitter moments when he envied how the villagers treated his brother, despite Dream confiding that it abraded and insulted in its own way; every petty urge to yell or hit or kill his tormentors that he never truly wanted to act on. It pushed Night to a certain strain of dread he didn’t want to consider - at what Dream would say, whether they would dismiss him like all the others, if it’d be enough to snap whatever ties remained between them, and allow Dream to be better off without Night holding them back like the villagers insinuated.
Or maybe that it might go in the other direction, which was something Night wanted to think about even less: that Dream would understand, and be willing to help, and even encourage him to live with this. All of which would suggest that there weren’t obvious answers, and that Night would have to decide for himself whether eating the magic apple was a bad thing or not, and what he would do next.
All of this blinked through Night in a flood, leaving him blindsided at the sudden knowledge of how vulnerable he was emotionally. It left him unguarded as the Apple concluded, And me…, carrying with it the impression of Night swaddled in a furl of tentacles as warm and dark as molasses - a picture constructed from what his books had hinted at about how the black apple might alter him - sturdy limbs that buttressed his ribcage and caressed his face. He felt a tingle of magic flush to his cheekbones at the thought.
Not the same disgust… came the intrigued comment from the Black Apple.
Do you mind not!? Night snapped back, not bothering to finish the sentence as he curled up and tented the book’s thick covers over his face. I’m trying to focus on something else here!
Are you planning to tell him you’re not really a skeleton?
The interjection pulled him from his book, and Night used it as a reminder to take a break from reading (or else he’d be stiff all day tomorrow). He stretched the cricks out of his spine, jostling the heavy tome laying open on his lap which jabbed into his thigh in the process, before he answered: What are you talking about? Of course I’m a skeleton.
Not in the way he means it. Not like how the book describes.
A little less than human, a little more than monster (or perhaps vice versa)… Night knew that. It was how he and his brother could serve as guardians of the Tree, given normal humans and monsters couldn’t even touch the apples with their bare skin without suffering various effects. Still, he was a skeleton, right? The majority of the book Dr Gaster had given him had rung true, and the parts that didn’t… it was an academic book, written densely and, frankly, a bit over the head of even someone as well-read as Night. He’d probably understand the knottier parts better as he grew older. He seems so happy to have another skeleton around. He told me he thought he was the only one. Night knew that he didn’t actually answer the Black Apple’s question, and deliberately ignored that.
…Is this what protection and altruism are? Hiding uncomfortable truths? Refusing to assert your own space for the sake of others?
Not all of it. He left it at that. He didn’t want to discuss the topic at the moment, though he knew by deflecting the issue in this way, he was more-or-less ceding to the Black Apple’s assertion. It was so nice to read through the skeleton book and see parts of himself - parts that had seemed inexplicable or odd - reflected and described in the pages. Someone else had noticed this. Someone else had experienced that, and faced it, bore it, celebrated it. Like he could feel the presence of other skeletons, ones like his brother Dream, reassuring him that they saw him - not the ersatz prince or superfluous guardian - and welcoming him home.
Dr Gaster had lived through the War. He had years upon decades of interacting with other real, living skeletons, and had experienced their destruction and loss thereafter firsthand. Still, Night felt himself mourning the loss of the skeleton race as well. It settled on him, carrying the melancholy yearning of having missed something monumental, or perhaps the destruction of one’s birthright.
Perhaps that’s what Dr Gaster felt - what all monsters trapped underground felt - at their imprisonment. Intellectually, Night knew the magnitude of it, but now he had a kind of empathy.
The Black Apple hadn’t interjected any commentary, so Night didn’t know what it thought about these new emotions, and he wasn’t in the mood to ask. Was the Apple feeding on it? It wasn’t quite a negative emotion, but Night couldn’t consider it positive either.
Or perhaps it was a negative emotion, just one that didn’t cloud his judgment or make him feel abandoned and hopeless, despite its gravity. It was a sense of connection, after all. Of…
That’s also empathy, Night said as he felt the Black Apple’s recognition.