Chapter Text
Killer blamed Cross for this whole mess.
It was Cross who got Nightmare to notice that the plethora of issues that plagued his subordinates might be more than he could handle. After Cross had limped around the castle for a week, somehow not noticing a broken leg, Nightmare realized that Cross literally couldn’t feel pain, hunger, or fatigue.
Congenital insensitivity to pain, or CIP. They got it diagnosed, and then everyone was happy, the end.
Except no.
That little wake-up call made Nightmare realize that if he missed that, he might’ve missed other things wrong with his subordinates. So he decided to contact Sci and ask if he did checkups. He did.
Which then led Killer to a standardized eye exam.
It’s not like he was completely blind. But it didn’t take a lot for him to realize that he was maybe-probably severely legally blind. Which, he knew, was NOT the same as complete blindness.
He could still see shapes and shadows (as warped and blurry as they were) . He could still see colors (even if they were tinted darker from the constant flow of black tears) .
But even without perfect sight, he was still doing great. He could protect himself, fight for himself, he’d held off both Dream and Ink many times before without even a broken bone.
It’s not like he was crashing into walls. He didn’t need one of those stupid canes, or braille or… what else did blind people have? …Okay, the guide dogs seemed cute, but he could just adopt a regular dog if he wanted a dog so bad. …Which he kinda didn’t. Dogs barked too much, and also they liked bones, which wasn’t the best for a skeleton. He preferred cats, anyway.
The point was, sure, his sight was bad, he knew that, BUT as long as there was a decent amount of light, reasonably large letters, and chocolate, he was good.
He just didn’t want anyone thinking otherwise.
He’d heard stories from disabled people about how they were treated… nicely, but not normally. He’d seen badly-written disabled characters in TV shows whose only purposes was to give a lecture about how ‘we’re all equal!’ and then they evaporated or something, never to be seen again.
He’d heard the stories. And he didn’t want to have one of those stories.
So, in his mind, it made sense to keep this little weakness a secret. Not because he thought he was weak, or pathetic or whatever. He knew he could hold his own. He just didn’t want anything to change.
He wouldn’t call this ‘keeping a secret.’ It was more… maintaining the status quo.
Except all of that was about to be ruined, just because Nightmare decided that the gang should get a stupid yearly checkup “in just case.”
———
Because Sci was a nerd, he checked them all in alphabetical order:
Cross, Dust, Horror, then Killer.
He was sort-of glad he was last, but also not, because he spent the entire time hating that his turn was inching closer. Nightmare had told them what the checkup would entail. Killer barely remembered what most of it was, but he remembered thinking ‘oh, I can do that, easy.’ ..Until the eye exam part.
So the night before the thing, he stayed up for a little bit, trying to memorize the eye chat. These things were standardized, right? So the letters were probably in the same order. All he had to do was remember a decent amount of these, and he was good.
If he screwed up, he’d just blame it on Cross or Dust playing music at 3 AM, so he didn’t get a lot of sleep. It was a simple, good excuse that could easily be true.
He remembered tilting his head to the side slightly, so he could see the picture of the eye chart on his phone in his periphery. His periphery was better than straight-ahead, he didn’t know exactly why, but it was useful in battles, paying attention to that.
To his dismay, the eye chart was not standardized. Some of the pictures he’d seen, the letters were scrambled. Great. He’d selected the eye chart that looked the most likely: the one with E at the top, followed by F and P.
E, F, P, T, O, Z…
he paused. He had forgotten what came next. Killer read the chart again, trying to burn each letter in his mind as though he could memorize them through sheer mental screaming. He wanted to get a reasonable amount right on this. Stopping at the third row was NOT reasonable. He at least needed to get to… he frowned. He didn’t actually know how much he could do within his limits that wasn’t too much.
He looked at the stock photo eye chart again. The green line. Had to mean something, right? Looked like a reasonable part to stop at. Okay, he’d stop at the green line. That couldn’t be too hard, right?
6 rows, 21 letters, easy. He’d memorized the Alphabet and Al-abjadiyah. So that was 2 different languages, 58 letters total. So… How bad could 21 more be?
But now, here, in the stupid exam room with Sci pointed one of those hand-pointer things at that stupid chart, Killer’s brain had decided that the string of letters he’d studied were completely useless, and now he couldn’t remember.
With a little squint and a slight turn of his head, he could mostly see the giant E at the top of the chart. Two blurry, warped shapes that were probably… whatever letter came next, he couldn’t remember. And then…
“What’s this one?” Sci’s voice registered in his mind, but Killer didn’t want to answer. He saw the pointed yellow blur of Sci’s stupid pointer, aimed at a smeared blob of ink on the second row. “Can you see it?”
“Yeah,” Killer blurted out in a lie, before answering no in his head against his will. “..So what is it, then?” Sci asked.
Silence.
Come on, he had to remember this, right? The E at the top… and then… “…P?” Killer tried. “Close.” Goddamn it, wait, wasn’t the P the second one? Or was it- Killer grasped frantically for any scrap of memory.
Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it— “Listen, it’s fine if you don’t see it, I just need accurate results,” Sci said, interrupting Killer’s loop of various colorful swear words.
“N-no, no, I can see it, I just- um- I- I just didn’t sleep well- Dust and Cross, they were just, um, playing music pretty loudly, so- so I’m just tired.”
“Aren’t we all?” “..You’re only like 17, right?” Killer asked. “18,” Sci grumbled. “I get it, I’m young, but I’m frickin’ tired. Can we just finish this?” “..Right.” “So what’s this one?” Sci asked again, pointing to the little blur of black on the second row.
Killer didn’t answer.
———
“Okay, so,” Sci began, glancing at the clipboard before turning to Nightmare, “everyone’s fine. Mostly. Cross had a problem during the eye exam. Refused to say anything. I tried a few different charts, and he did well on the last one, so there’s nothing wrong with his actual eyes. Give me a week to try googling some stuff and then we’ll talk on.. Monday, if nothing’s scheduled then? There might be something that we need to check on with him.” Nightmare silently nodded. Killer felt a sudden stab of curiosity. Cross?
He, along with Dust and Horror, turned to the victim in question, who was absolutely purple in the face with embarrassment, staring at the floor mutely. Killer knew for a fact that Cross didn’t have an eye problem— he was probably the most observant out of all of them. Unless colors counted as a problem, but that was more of an AU thing, since Cross’s world was literally mostly black-and-white.
But Killer probably couldn’t talk, could he? Not when he undeniably failed the same test.
“Nothing too out of the ordinary, really. Small depth perception problem with Horror, but that’s to be expected when someone has one working eye, and he doesn’t seem to have much of a issue anyway. Dust and Cross did really well on the hearing test, nothing overly weird, just, uhh… scarily good, actually. Nothing’s wrong with anyone’s height or weight, I threw out the blood pressure and heart rate stuff for obvious reasons, so the tests were all short. There was also a problem with Killer on the eye exam. Got the first one right, but then he just... mind if we talk in the other room?” Sci asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to the door.
Killer always thought ‘burning stares’ were just a metaphor, an expression. Except he swore he actually felt it this time. He glanced away, staring fake-curiously at a blurry poster on the wall as if he were reading it. (As if he could read it from all the way across the room.
The poster was just a gaussian-blurred lavender blob— some kind of cartoon animal was his guess, judging by the long, curved points. Animal ears?— along with orangey-red soft-edged blocks that Killer guessed were meant to be words. Meaningless blurs, stained with dull darkness. That was all he could make out.
He didn’t care what it said, anyway.
”Killer?” Nightmare asked coolly, drawing his attention away from the smudge of a poster. Killer nodded, silent for once in his life, before following behind, too annoyed and anxious to force a bounce in his step. In the back of his mind, a little voice whispered that Nightmare obviously knows what you’re feeling, this isn’t good, think about something normal so you feel normal and he doesn't bother you, quick, go, act normal—
He heard the door close behind him with a heavy-sounding bang and click. Trapped. He suddenly felt a strong urge to rip the door off of its hinges.
Sci hummed absently, settling in his swivel chair, before turning to a concerned Nightmare and an annoyed Killer. “It’s my opinion that Killer’s legally blind. ..Like severely. I’d say about 6/200. So. Any questions?”
Silence. Nightmare didn’t even look at Killer.
“..Although, if I may ask,” Sci added, before hesitating. “Okay, being not-at-all professional, what the fuck ?”
Killer almost snorted. Almost. The question would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that this was probably one of his worst nightmares, aside from being completely paralyzed forever.
“..And what do you mean by ‘what the fuck’?” Nightmare asked, frowning. “That’s.. not exactly specific.” “Alright then, to rephrase— how did you miss this?” Sci asked. “I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just.. Killer’s been recruited with you for.. how long? Because it’s definitely more than 6 months if I remember right, right?” “2 years.” “Exactly. So how did you miss this? I’m not blaming you,” Sci added hastily.
“It’s just… you- you’d think this would be easy to spot.. or at least, I did.”
“I would‘ve thought so too,” Nightmare agreed, turning coldly to Killer.
“Why hide this? Because I’m fairly certain you know about this issue, and chose to hide it.” Damn it. “You knew there was a problem, I felt it when we came in. Enough anxiety to rival that cafe owner.”
“..Who, Ccino?” Killer muttered without thinking. “That’s not the point,” Nightmare sighed. “I’m confident you knew. So why not explain, let me know? Or if you didn’t want to talk about it, you could’ve at least asked about some things we could do to make it easier, some accommodations or something, you didn’t even have to explain why.”
Killer didn’t respond, opting for glaring at the floor instead. He would’ve glared at Nightmare, but he preferred not dying. What felt like a few minutes passed.
Sci, from his desk, spun his chair to face them, pitcher of coffee in hand. “Okay, you done? Because Lust and I scheduled a thing at Ccino’s, because we’re both tired as shit and wanna pass out. So I’d prefer if you leave now. I do understand that you may need a few moments to process this, since it’s probably a lot for you to think about—”
“No, it’s fuckin’ not,” Killer interrupted. “It’s not like I’m dying. It’s fine.”
Sci blinked. “…Okay, I kinda expected you to be more… sad. That’s kinda why I had the tissue box here—” Killer glanced around the room before noticing the mint-greenish blur that he was pretty sure was the tissue box. What was he gonna do, cry? That would be pointless. “—This is.. a bit more ‘meh’ than I thought you’d react. ..So. You’re done?”
“YyyyEP, we’re done,” Killer quickly answered, popping the ‘p’, ignoring Nightmare’s gaze. Concern? Pity? Whatever Nightmare was feeling, Killer didn’t know, couldn’t tell from this angle, didn’t care.
“Okie, thanks for exposing one of my greatest secrets and ruining my life, thanks, have fun getting alcohol poisoning, remember, reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, nothing has ever been real, buy gold, byee!” Killer slid over to the door, pushing open the metal exit device and darting out of the room—
and nearly running straight into Horror in the waiting room. “Oh, come on, what the fu—” “What happened,” Dust asked flatly, interrupting Killer. “..Uh. Nothing much.” Oh god, were they fucking eavesdropping? How much did they even hear? They’re not gonna ask anything else, right? I dunno what to say, the hell am I gonna do?
Nightmare pushed open the door, sighing in exasperation. “Come on, we’re going home.” Oh, thank the stars, saved by the boss.
Cross, Dust, Horror, and Killer himself filed through the portal that Nightmare opened with a flick of his tentacle. Killer stood still blinking, before rubbing his eyes as they slowly adjusted to the dim castle.
“Killer, we’re going to talk later—” Hell no— “But for now, there’s something else to address- Cross, may I speak with you alone?” Nightmare asked, glancing away from Killer for a second to focus on a panicking Cross. Killer took the opportunity to teleport up to his room, closing the door and sitting down, legs crossed.
I’m not running away, he assured himself. I’m just… not exposing myself.
It’s not like he thought about his vision a lot. Maybe a bit more than most people— damn it, I can’t see, the hell does that say?— but overall, it was just another normal thing to deal with. Except now that Nightmare knew about this little.. issue, Killer’s mind was laser-focused on what he could and couldn’t see now. As if this were some new big thing.
He experimentally raised his left hand to eye-level. About a hand’s-width away from his face, he could see it, of course. Just a little blurry, tainted grey-ish from the dark tears that leaked from his sockets constantly. An arm’s-length away, it got blurrier, reduced to a fuzzy dark shape with a smeared blue thing that only mildly looked like his hoodie sleeve.
Killer stretched his hand out, feeling for the light switch somewhere behind him. Click. Reasonably light, now, the dark smudges in the center of his vision became a lot more obvious to him. The light kind-of balanced it out, though, so things were clearer.
He wondered if Nightmare was going to tell the rest of the gang about the whole ‘Killer is blind as shit’ thing. He hoped not. At the very least, he wanted to be the one to do it, so he could scream ‘BUT HOLD THE PHONE, LET ME FINISH’ at them before they did anything.
…That is, assuming he wanted to tell them at all.
Which he didn’t.