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Nightmare knew his boys better than anybody. He knew everything about their behavior, every habit and worry, even little everyday details that were unique to each of them. How they move through the castle, how they behave in the kitchen and how they knock on his room door. He could see their emotions, but that wasn’t enough to immediately determine who was outside the door. But each of his boys had a unique, unmistakable knock.
He realized it most clearly when his eye socket was struck with his brother’s bright blue arrow.
His skull was burning with spreading positivity and his sudden disorientation wasn’t helping with dodging other arrows. Especially because his body looked more like a sieve. Running away was the only right decision in that situation. Nightmare, finding his boys with their emotions, took all of them back into the castle and fell down in that exact spot where he appeared.
Staying conscious was harder than ever before. His own feeling of balance was screaming about huge disruption, his body was almost on fire because of the big amount of positivity in the multiverse, and his wounds were healing extremely slowly, because of huge lack of negativity to heal him.
Someone knocked on the door. Slowly, heavily and deliberately.
“Come in, Horror,” Nightmare guessed the visitor with no mistake as always.
His skull didn’t move an inch. It didn't make any sense. His only eye was too badly injured to catch the light, so Nightmare had to only feel the surprise and confusion of the skeleton that had walked in.
“You slept for a really long time,” Horror gave him a brief update.
It seems all these days boys were knocking only out of habit, rather than expecting permission to enter. It’s understandable why Horror was surprised with the answer.
“I still haven't recovered, so most of the time I will be sleeping. Ask others to keep knocking too, so I’ll have some way of knowing you’re here.”
“Ok, I will tell them,” Horror nodded in answer even though Nightmare didn’t see him.
The skeleton walked closer and his arms touched Nightmare’s body. Bandages?
“Dust, Killer and I decided to take shifts looking after you. The rest of the time we are moving through universes with those devices you gave us before and trying to saturate universes with negativity,” maybe because he felt Nightmare’s confusion, out of hadit Horror reported.
“Tell them to bring me food. There’s not enough negativity in the multiverse to sustain me. I will need some regular food,” Nightmare ordered. “And don’t forget to take a rest. Sooner or later I’m gonna recover.
“I’ll tell them,” Horror nodded again.
While Horror was taking care of Nightmare’s wounds, even if it was almost useless because they were caused by positivity, Nightmare focused on the emotions filling the castle. In addition to Horror there was someone else. Nightmare didn’t know if it was Killer or Dust, but he was injured. After a long time living with these skeletons Nightmare learned to understand whether they’re injured or only upset.
“And don’t forget to take care of yourselves. You know, where medicines are and how you can reach Science in case of something. Though, I’d advise against going there openly for now, who knows what this scientist might come up with together with Dream or, Creators forbid, Ink. If there’s a choice between using the medicine on me or yourselves, use it yourselves. For me now, negativity and magic from food is a lot more important. Am I clear?” Nightmare was trying to keep up appearances in front of Horror even though it didn't make any sense.
“Got it, boss,” Horror received the order, nodded once again and went out of the room.
Horror would later return with food and place it on the bedside table. Nightmare would later feel weak relief from the second skeleton in the castle, who, as Nightmare could guess, was told about a living and functional boss. But after that moment, when the door shut, Nightmare fell into unconsciousness, as if his body was trying to conserve its resources as much as possible, only noticing the emotions of the monsters in the castle almost on autopilot.
When Nightmare regained consciousness again, no one was knocking on the door. Error never knocks on the door. His appearance was hard to miss. The room filled with the quiet but noticeable crackle of glitches, and the familiar irritation of someone in particular filled the room
“You’re looking pathetic,” commented Error, maybe, after seeing Nightmare’s attempts to move his head and see the visitor.
“Unfortunately, can’t say the same,” Nightmare chuckled. “You’d better tell me, did my boys manage to make you take care of me, while I’m in such a vulnerable position?”
“Dream more. I went here only to watch your former greatness burn to ashes,” Error answered with a displeased snort and added, more quietly. “And also it’s the only place left that’s still safe to stay…”
“If you want me to return with full force, all you need is to help my boys a bit. You’re good at ruining other people’s lives, if you ask me,” Nightmare tried to roll his eye, but only ended up shrugging his shoulders.
“Must be nice for you, lying on your bed and recovering, when in the multiverse Dream is mowing everyone down left and right,” Error said, feeling anger and at the same time something that Nightmare would have described as dejection.
“Since when did Dream become a problem for you? Don’t remember you ever caring about him before,” Nightmare asked, not without mockery, but genuinely curious.
“Dream and Ink have teamed up! They’re one hell of an explosive combination! Dream goes around setting anyone who even looks like an enemy on fire with his arrows, and then Ink finishes off the survivors! How the hell am I supposed to help? I want to survive at least myself!” Error grew indignant even more, as Nightmare guessed, threw up his hands.
“He’s acting like that only because the scales of emotions are heavily tipped toward positivity. If more negativity returns to the multiverse, I could give him a fair fight and bring everything back to normal,” Nightmare said more seriously.
There was an indistinct murmur in response and glitches’ noise got stronger, telling Nightmare that Error was debating with himself. And only after some time he got the final decision:
“Fine, I’ll help your idiots as much as I can. But don’t expect too much. I’m also not exactly in the best shape these days either. They keep ambushing me in my own antivoid, as they don’t want me to come back there and fully recover. I’ve had to keep stuffing myself with these stupid butterscotch candies.
“I would be grateful," Nightmare nodded and added after hearing the sound of the opening portal. “Take care of yourself too.”
Nightmare couldn’t see it, but he barely felt Error give a weak nod in response and then, after sensing all three of his boys were in the castle, fell asleep again.
The next knock was long and barely audible, as if it wasn’t supposed to be heard, but Dust knocked exactly like that.
“Come in, Dust,” Nightmare let the skeleton go inside, catching a faint trace of happiness from him, which felt painfully bright in his state.
“How are you?” Dust asked in his usual whisper coming closer and placing food on the table.
“I still need some time, a huge imbalance hasn’t corrected itself. My body is no longer destroying itself, but still hasn’t recovered enough,” Nightmare answered honestly and rose a bit to let Dust feed him. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Dust answered, but Nightmare felt like Dust tried to say it as calmly as possible.
Nightmare concentrated on emotions in the castle, but found only one skeleton sleeping downstairs. It seems, most of the time they are in other alternative universes. Nightmare definitely owed them all a proper thank-you once this was over.
“Don’t exhaust yourself,” Nightmare said after he ate with Dust’s help.
In response he got only a nearly noticeable nod and the fading sound of footsteps downstairs.
Killer’s knocks were hard to confuse with anything. Regardless of his mood, Killer knocked the same way every time, fast and loud, as if he were going to make a hole in the door. Nightmare sighed heavily and only then welcomed the skeleton.
“What about others?” Nightmare asked first even if he just woke up.
“They…” Killer hesitated with the answer, Nightmare felt a weak wave of something he might call hopelessness, from Killer, then he continued in his usual cheerful tone. “We’re doing everything we can, so very soon the four of us will be able to terrorize the multiverse as before.”
“Don’t worry about me, soon I will get all my strength again,” Nightmare interpreted Killer’s emotions in his own way.
“Of course, I didn’t have any other thoughts,” Killer answered and started feeding Nightmare, just like the others had.
Nightmare was concentrated more on the castle than on the food, so he tried to find anyone else, besides Killer and himself. But they were alone. All he could do was hope that the others were in other universes. He couldn’t sense anything that far away, especially in his condition.
“What about Error? Does he help you?” asked Nightmare after eating all of the food.
Some time ago he could feel Error’s presence from time to time, but at one point he just disappeared.
“Well, he’s doing his best,” Killer answered, almost calm enough, but Nightmare felt that his mood had just dropped even further.
“Got it. Wait a bit. As soon as I stand up, I’ll fix everything,” Nightmare said and Killer in response just nodded weakly and left the room.
The next knock was strange. Three slow and distinct knocks were almost like Horror does, but not hard enough for him, almost like he lost his usual heaviness.
“Horror?” Nightmare asked, just to make sure, when the door opened and someone walked inside. “Horror, is everything okay?”
But no one answered. The skeleton beside him was clearly feeling regret, but Nightmare couldn’t figure out why. The mysterious Horror placed food on the table and fed Nightmare as usual, and in complete silence. Nightmare could understand if Dust could be so quiet, but not Horror. His voice could be heard around the castle fairly often, even if not as often as Killer’s.
Nightmare tried to raise his arm off the bed. His hand slowly reached toward the skeleton, trembling with every centimetre it moved. But the skeleton recoiled in fear, Nightmare couldn’t understand if it was because he was trying to touch him or because his hand was shaking so badly.
After only a few seconds a mysterious Horror left his room. Nightmare focused on what he could sense throughout the castle, but he didn’t find anyone except them both.
It felt like even in his deep sleep he felt something wrong. Even though his boys spent most of their time in universes, at least two of them, or even all three, would usually cross paths in the castle. But now Nightmare could feel only one soul, constantly leaving and returning to the castle. That’s why at that moment, when Dust knocked surprisingly loud, Nightmare already felt that something was wrong.
“Come in, Dust,” Nightmare welcomed the skeleton inside, but after Horror’s visit, Nightmare got a lot of questions.
At that moment, when food was placed on the table, Nightmare moved toward the skeleton as subtly as he could. His only, pitifully thin tentacle slowly moved out of his body and coiled surprisingly tightly around one of his boys’ hands.
“Killer?”
Touching the other’s bones made it much easier to tell who was standing before him. Nightmare remembered clearly the sizes of his boys’ hands, remembered all the small scars covering Killer’s fingers and felt the subtle uniqueness in the way Killer’s unusual soul experienced emotions.
“Killer, where are the others?” Nightmare asked, squeezing Killer’s hand as firmly yet gently as Nightmare could in his condition.
“I… don’t know,” Killer tried, almost foolishly, to hide the truth from the Keeper of Negativity.
“Don’t lie to me at least now.”
Killer sighed in response, squeezed the tentacle in his hand a bit and weakly, hopelessly chuckled.
“Dead. Surprised, aren't you?” Killer said with a bitter chuckle, as if he were telling a bad joke, but Nightmare felt through the touch how Killer’s soul was shaking.
For a moment, Nightmare was at a loss of words. He froze trying to process what he had heard and put all the facts together to verify what Killer had said. But, more than anything he wanted to prove at least himself the opposite.
“One day, Horror didn’t return from one of the universes and Dust and I went to find him. We found only his coat that was lying on the snow and his axe covered in ink,” Killer chuckled again and squeezed the tentacle harder. “After some time I found Dust’s scarf on the snow. His coat was torn like he was riddled with arrows.”
“What about Error?” Nightmare asked, trying to find at least some hope and holding Killer’s hand.
“Honestly, I don’t know. He was helping us at first, but one moment he just disappeared like he died somewhere. But I didn’t find any clothes. As if he’d fallen into the void. Though maybe it’s better for him to be there than here.
The information left Nightmare speechless once again. He couldn’t find any words to answer. It felt like in this silence there were a lot more words than he could ever say. The situation was more grim than ever. Even after everything his boys had done for him, the balance wasn’t even close to the point where Nightmare could even begin to recover. Dream, using only his aura of pure positivity, was burning away all of the negativity everywhere he was. Nightmare felt like Dream was trying to uproot him from the multiverse. Slowly and painfully.
“Be careful,” the only thing that Nightmare could say, squeezing Killer’s hand one last time.
“I can’t promise anything,” Killer chuckled, more hopelessly than ever.
It was the last time Nightmare felt Killer in the castle.
The next time Nightmare awoke to an intense burning sensation. Someone had invaded his universe. A literal living Sun with legs just entered his castle and slowly, as if deliberately drawing out the moment, started to walk towards Nightmare. They both felt each other’s presence, so it was just a matter of time when Dream would find him. It wasn’t surprising that with power like that he could sense such a weak spot of negativity between thousands of other universes. The Sun stopped just in front of his room.
“You don’t have to knock, it’s hard not to notice you,” Nightmare said with a bitter, almost vicious chuckle, even by his own standards.
The door opened and the room became hotter than any sauna. This living Sun with legs walked up to Nightmare’s bed and stopped right beside the bed, as if his presence wasn’t burning all Nightmare’s negativity even more than before.
“Hi?..” Dream said unsteadily as if he weren’t responsible for all the chaos.
“Fuck off,” snapped Nightmare.
It was the only thing he could do now.
“Tell me what you did to Error before your presence completely dries out my throat.”
There wasn’t any hint of hope left in him. From Killer’s words Nightmare already understood that Error disappeared, so he only wanted to believe that whatever had happened to Error wasn’t worse than what had happened to him.
“I didn’t do anything to him,” answered Dream, and Nightmare already called him a liar, but Dream continued. “I only helped Ink, when he asked me for it. Neither of us wanted to kill Error, so I told him to do what he thought would be best. I don’t know where he took Error, but I haven’t seen either of them since.”
“Asshole…” the only thing that Nightmare could say through gritted teeth.
“Listen, I don’t want to kill you. You are still my brother. Yes, you harmed many universes and almost all of the multiverse… but now everything is ok, isn’t it? Ink and I can try to do something about your body and eye and-”
“The last thing I want right now is for you to open your shitty mouth and spout such rubbish in that exact place where all of my boys used to stand,” Nightmare only bared his teeth more fiercely, while his body was slowly dissolving under the warmth of positivity.
“Yeah, about that… I had to take some radical measures for the multiverse's safety. But now everything is alright. There are a lot of other universes, where you can find some other Sanses, I won’t get in your way,” Dream replied, sounding almost as though he were mocking Nightmare.
Nightmare opened his mouth and lifted his head to put all his remaining strength into his words… But then he just let his skull fall back onto the pillow and sighed heavily:
“Just kill me already, and get it over with. Just being in the same room as you is torture for my body and mind.”
“I will make it quick, brother,” said that damn hot Sun, and then Nightmare felt a searing grip reach toward his soul.
“Shut up, you piece of shit”