Chapter Text
Dream loves his brother. Dream loves his brother more than he has ever loved anything. He would fight off the three gods if he had to, just to protect Nightmare.
If only Nightmare would let him.
The villagers turning on them ("Turning on me, Dream. Never you. They loved you.") had been a shock to Dream. His brother had become a monster and the villagers, Dream's friends, had sought not to drive Nightmare out, but to kill him. It was treacherous. It was deplorable. It was disgusting. Was there some way he could have prevented this? Dream found himself wondering if he could have done something, anything, to change the scheme of fate.
He didn't even know if Nim, his mother, was alive.
"Dream." Nightmare cut off Dream's chant of reassurances that insisted that everything was going to be okay. His voice was raw and jagged, in a way that Dream had never heard until today.
Teal blood mixed into black goop, and Dream uselessly dabbed at it, tears spilling into the liquid mass and most definitely not helping, though the bleeding was slowing. "I'm sorry. It's going to be okay. I'm going to fix this."
"Dream. I'm fine. I feel fine." The coating that encased Dream's brother from head to toe fluttered, and the faint evening light that peeked into the small cave they were hiding in rippled across it's surface, purple flecks dancing across him.
"You were stabbed!" Dream tried to shriek, but it came out as more of a horrified whisper-squeak. "And you have tentacles! And slime! And your magic color changed and- and-" He voice took a reproachful and incredulous tone. "You ate the apple! The magical one, the one you're not supposed to eat!" He shoved Nightmare, not hard enough to hurt him.
Nightmare winced and gathered enough energy to sit up, already making use of his four new appendages to support his body against the wall of the cave. Dream pulled back the cloth, which he had been using to dab uselessly at the now sealed wound.
"I'm fine now." Nightmare insisted, glancing away with his one eyelight, the other one obscured by the awful sludge that seemed to be keeping Nightmare alive. "Nothing hurts. Except, I'm a little hungry."
Dream fell back, letting his arms fall to his sides and giving Nightmare space. "We don't need to eat, though."
"Well, I'm certain the feeling is hunger." Nightmare sulked and folded his arms with some struggle, wincing as he did.
Dream leaned closer to him, trying to sense past the bad-wrong coating and feel his brother's emotions. Yes, he was hungry. A little more than that, actually. He was positively ravenous. "I could get some plants from outside, and you could try to eat them?"
Nightmare shifted, as if to stand. "I could come?"
"No, no. You stay here, okay?" Dream stood, backing up towards the mouth of the cave. Only when Nightmare deflated with a quiet "okay, be safe." Dream turned away and exited the cave to find nourishment.
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The forest, Dream was certain, was filled with nutrients. He simply wasn't sure what was edible. He wandered a ways off from the cave, keeping an eye out for any signs of humans or monsters. He couldn't afford to be seen. He couldn't afford to be caught.
Dream broke a branch covered in berries off of a tree, remembering that the villagers often baked berries into pies. Cradling the prickly branch in his arms, Dream continued his trek into the forest. He wondered if maybe he should bring these back for his brother before looking for more food.
When he found some leafy trees, he snapped off a leafy branch just in case Nightmare wanted to eat it. Dream then made his way back to the cave. He only tripped once or twice, but managed to not fall.
He reached the cave when it was dark, only the dappled light of the moon through the trees and the golden glow of his eyelights to guide him. Dream peered through the mouth of the cave, entering it slowly. "Nightmare?"
There was only a stain of darkness where his brother once was, and for one hysterical moment Dream was certain that the corruption had consumed him, disolving his bones and devouring him. Then he caught sight of a trail that he was standing on, a trail of still-wet black goo that trailed from the patch all the way out of the cave.
Dream followed the trail, pretending to himself that he was less nervous than he felt. No signs of a struggle, unless he had been too weak to struggle. The trail went a long way, growing thicker and wider. The trees grew denser, and Dream found himself stepping over the jagged slime covered edges of trees torn asunder, ripped to pieces by long appendages.
A cheery voice broke through the trees, sending all of Dream's alarm bells whirring. "Hey, you're an angry little thing, aintcha?"
Dream stumbled to turn back, crunching several branches with panic fluttering in his ribcage, only to freeze when he heard the answering warble of his brother's voice. His escape attempt quickly became a panicked or enraged clumsy run. The branches were abandoned on the floor in favor of his advance. "Get away from him!"
The first thing, the one of most concern to Dream, was his brother. Nightmare was slumped so far onto the ground that he appeared to sink into it, the dirt swallowing up sections of his goopy form. He seemed formless, aside from his tentacles, which stuck up awkwardly from the pile, twitching faintly. The second thing Dream acknowledged was the threat.
The threat, as Dream had decided to dub them, was short, thin and ghostly pale. In fact, they were a skeleton just like him. They were small, yet spindly, with limbs too long for their body and a long, impractical scarf. They loomed over Nightmare, long pearl phalanges cupping his face. The scariest part was that Nightmare didn't resist.
The stranger's head turned with a snap in a single sharp motion, wide eye sockets locking onto Dream. Their face bore a long and windy smile that didn't reach their eyes, and was splattered with black.
Dream jerked to a stop, caught a few feet away from them. "Don't hurt him." His voice came out weak and quivery, shuddering. "Please don't hurt him anymore."
His brother was a swirling storm of emotions, none prominent enough for Dream to seperate and understand the situation from.
And the stranger was a shell. Hollow, in a way. There was a certain layer of emotions that hung about them in a way, like a filter or a thin curtain, also none of them prominent. Their mouth spread wider, smile showing off darkness in their mouth and down their throat. Colors swirled in their sockets. "Oh! Don't worry, I'm not hurting him!" In spite of that statement, they did not release his brother.
Dream forced himself to stand straight and tall, meeting the stranger's gaze. "Get away from him."
Their mouth dipped into a little 'o' and an orange question mark twisted itself into shape in their socket. "Okay, okay." Their hands unlatched from Nightmare head, which slumped to the ground, and their hands shot up to beside their head, hanging in the air palms out on each side of their skull. "See, not touching him!"
Dream glanced about, and drew forward cautiously, settling on the ground beside Nightmare. He tucked his knees under Nightmare's chin, lifting his head with his hands to rest it gently on his lap. His mouth was stained with red and orange, and his eye was bleary and half shut. "What did you do to him?" A harsh and accusing whisper, Dream's hand absentmindedly petting Nightmare's head in hope of granting him some sort of comfort.
"Pshhft!" The stranger said, hands still next to their head as if they had forgotten them there. "Your buddy is fiiine. He just ate my sash, that's all!"
Dream's fingers paused and lowered to swipe some of the red-orange paste off of his brother's teeth. He sniffed it curiously. It smelled like rust or salt. "Your sash?" He said slowly. He longed to do something other than sit there uselessly. Something to help his brother, who -at least based on his emotions- didn't seem to be dying, yet.
"My sash!" The stranger agreed. "It had aaall of my paints on it, and he ate all of them! He sure must've been hungry, ran up to me like some sort of animal and chomped my sash clean off! How am I supposed to feel things now?"
Nightmare's emotions started to stabalize, a sense of satisfaction settling over him. Recognition flickered in his eyelight, but he made no move to pull away. Dream wasn't sure he could. Reassured now that his brother seemed to be recovering, Dream managed to focus on the conversation. "Feel things, with your sash?"
"Yes! I drink the paints on my sash, and then I can feel aaall of the emotions!" The stranger suddenly seemed distracted and lost. They made a grab for their scarf and examined it for an extended period of time, expression growing more and more puzzled. They shoved their hand into their pocket and procured a brightly colored stick. The popped the top off of the stick and stuck it to the other side. "Do I know you?" The stranger finally asked, earnestly.
Dream pulled his brother closer, ignoring the responding 'hrrrmph'. "No."
"Okay! I'm Ink! What's your name, and what is that ball of slime?"
"I'm Dream." Dream asserted, unable to keep the edge out of his voice as the stranger hhmm-hhmmed at his answer, scribbling the stick on his scarf. "And this 'ball of slime' is my brother. His name is Nightmare."
The stranger, Ink, finished scribbling and put away their colorful stick. They stared at Dream vacantly before snapping their hands onto their hips and throwing their head back, laughing uproariously. Of their curtain of emotions, amusement became brightest, almost cancelling out all of the others.
Dream found himself unspeakably angry for a reason he couldn't discern. "What."
That slowed the laughed, turning it to giggles. Ink leaned foreward and wiped away an imaginary tear. "Pffft-haha! It's just really obvious who the favorite child was, haha!"
Dream huffed. "If you aren't going to help with what your 'paints' did to my brother, and are just going to laugh at us, maybe you should leave." Dream felt immediately bad after saying this, the feeling disappearing when he was simply met with more laughter.
The laughter lasted a while, stunting any attempts at continuing the conversation. When Ink finally stopped, it was sudden and abrupt, stopping immediately rather than trailing off. They gave the pair a look that was unlike the odd fake smiles, a blank stare. They cheered up almost immediately, however. "I've always wondered how the paints affected people! And besides, you look like you need a helping hand!"
With that declared, Ink whipped out a massive paintbrush from behind their back and slapping it onto the dirt, leaving a purple splat on the ground. Dream startled, unsure of how he hadn't noticed the paintbrush strapped to Ink's back before.
Ink gestured feverently at the blob of paint. "Alright! Everybody in!"