From Murder to Dust

32 - Brothers

I had been with Nightmare's gang for three years and eleven months now, and Dream had been a prisoner for almost a month. The only thing keeping us from releasing him was the fact that he knew the location of our house, which was a difficult situation to handle. Ink knew that we had him - it wasn't like there was anybody else that could have possibly been holding Dream captive - and was very outspoken about it; he didn't try to get Dream back in any way, but he certainly said a lot. Nightmare was getting really uncomfortable with having Dream in the house, since we had to be a lot more secretive than usual; before, we could walk around the house laughing about things completely carefree. Now, we had to do that quieter and on different floors; the emotion room was on the first floor, which meant we would often talk about silly things on the third floor or above. We really did want to let him go; Nightmare was working on something to accomplish that without our location being discovered, but he wouldn't let us know what it was yet. At the moment, I was guarding the Guardian (that sounds redundant) of Positivity while carving something for Killer's birthday, which was coming up soon.

Dream never saw much of Nightmare when he was here, partly because Nightmare was on the verge of breaking down when they were together, but Dream didn't know that. I was carving another knife for Killer - I had carved several in the past - that would match a new blade I had 'found' somewhere. The others seemed to like my woodworking, so I was going to carve some gifts for them too, in preparation for Christmas; carving gifts generally took time. Dream seemed to enjoy watching me do things, which was both weird and..actually, it was just weird; I didn't mind it, though.

"What are you doing?" Dream wondered.

"Something." I could talk while carving.

"But what is it?"

"It's something."

"Come on! What are you doing?"

"Something."

"You're no fun."

"I don't have to be fun."

"Please tell me what you're doing?"

"I'm carving something out of wood." 

"You mean you make things with wood? Like a carpenter?"

"Something like that."

"What are you making?"

"A secret."

"Is it for somebody?"

"Yes."

"Ooh! Who's it for?"

"Not your concern."

Dream sighed. "Have you..ever lost someone you loved?"

Memories of genocide routes flew through my mind faster than Killer's quickest sprint. "No."

"Would you tell me the truth for once?"

"..."

"Please?"

"..Perhaps."

"Is..is my brother happy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Does he ever laugh? Does he share jokes or have any friends? You must follow him for a reason, right? I don't think you would stay with him if he was mean...Is he happy?"

"I.." I didn't know what to say. I had ceased my carving.

"Are..you...happy?"

"H-happiness is relative."