Nightmare And The Babybone Sanses

Important

Ever since the incident with Nightmare's crown happened, Cross has been watching him very closely. The older skeleton can tell that he's trying to find an opportunity to ask him questions without his brothers around, probably because he doesn't want the others to hear them arguing. Because of this, Nightmare has been actively avoiding the monochrome skeleton unless the others are there. He doesn't want to hear his questions or try to come up with some kind of answer for them. It's bad enough that the others ask him a lot of questions about his body – he doesn't need questions that might relate to his brother on top of that. To be fair, the questions about his body could slightly relate to his brother, since it ended up this way back when he was still around, and the apples relate to him as well, but Cross isn't the one asking those questions. If he were, he would try to get more out of him than a vague answer that seems to satisfy the others.

The dark skeleton was hoping that by avoiding Cross, then he would eventually forget about the incident or let it go like most kids his age. However, he has been relentless in his endeavors, and he's starting to become bolder – even attempting to follow him all the way to his room some days. Nightmare has often had to pick up his pace when he would sense the small skeleton tailing him down hallways. Thus far, ever attempt to catch the larger skeleton alone has failed as he has either made it to his room and locked the door before Cross could catch him, or he would get to one of the brothers. Why must he be so persistent? It was just a stupid crown – there is not need for all of this.

Now Nightmare is heading to his room after putting the boys to bed. Killer hasn't asked for "goodnight kisses," since he said no to it. At least one of the boys knows when to quit. As he walked down the hall, he could sense the door to the boys' bedroom opening and the little footsteps of boney feet after it. There was not doubt that it was Cross, trying to catch up to him again. It was too late in the night for this, so Nightmare picked up his pace as usual without even bothering to keep track of the boy – he would just try to chase directly after him as always. Just like every other time the boy would try to catch him as he headed to his room, the older skeleton made it there before the young skeleton could catch him, and he swiftly locked the door behind him so no one could enter.

The evil skeleton sighed with relief as he turned away from the door – another successful escape. But he suddenly froze when he looked into the room. There standing in the center of his room was none other than Cross himself. How? How did he get in here? Nightmare knew that he beat him to his room, so there's no way that he got here before him. As he contemplated this, he glanced passed the boy and saw that the grate to the ventilation system was removed and the screws that held it in place were missing. He actually crawled through the vents to get to him? But how did he remove the screws if they're on the outside? The larger skeleton narrowed his eyes at the boy as he realized that he must've been in his room while he was away and removed the screws beforehand. He planed this.

"What do you think you're doing, Cross. Get out." There was a low growl to Nightmare's voice as he glared at the boy.

"Not until you answer my questions." Cross had his hand in one of his pockets as he stood his ground.

"You think I can't throw you out?" As he said this, Nightmare extended a tentacle towards the little skeleton, ready to grab him and toss him out of the room. Before he could even touch Cross, the boy quickly pulled a large kitchen knife from his pocket and sliced the tip off of the boneless appendage.

Nightmare quickly jerked his tentacle back. "YOU LITTLE SHIT! YOU DARE ATTACK ME?!" The knife was clearly one of the ones from the kitchen. He'd been so focused on keeping Killer away from them that he didn't even think to keep Cross away as well. The boy didn't seem like the type to care about knives like Killer.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily." Cross had his knife ready for another attack if the larger skeleton attempted to grab him again.

His rage and the damage dealt to his tentacle caused Nightmare's other appendages to summon and writhe behind him, ready to attack if he commanded it. However, he couldn't attack the boy. If he did, he might kill him. Cross must be aware of this if he was confident enough to actually attack him. He's using the fact that Nightmare wants them alive against him. He could easily just take the knife away from him, but that would risk losing the tip of another tentacle, and the older skeleton doesn't want to deal with this right now.

Nightmare turned to leave the room – he would rather sleep in one of the extra bedrooms than deal with this. Cross wasn't going to let him go that easily as he followed close behind him.

"Why can't you just answer my questions?" Cross spoke as he followed the dark skeleton down the hall.

"If it's nothing important, then why are you avoiding it so much? You yelled at Killer for wearing a crown that was just tossed into a closet like junk. It wasn't even in YOU'RE closet! Anytime we try to ask you simple questions, you get mad and tell us to stop asking, or you just give us a vague answer. You even yelled at us over a stupid vase that you didn't even care about!"

Nightmare continued to ignore the boy's questioning as he looked for a bedroom to sleep in. He would make sure to keep Cross from following him inside, and he doubted that he removed the screws on all the vents, so he shouldn't be able to get in that way.

Cross glared at Nightmare's back when he refused to answer him. "You act like taking care of us is such a burden to you. You wouldn't even feed us the first day we were here and then got mad when we tried to feed ourselves. You even act like teaching us how to read isn't worth your time."

Still, Nightmare wouldn't answer. In a fit of rage, Cross yelled something that would risk him and his brothers losing this shelter and access to food. "Why do you even keep us around if we're such a bother to you?!"

His last words caused Nightmare to finally turn and answer him with an enraged expression of his own. "BECAUSE YOU'RE IMORTANT TO ME! CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?!" This made Cross freeze in place with wide eyes as he stared in shock. This was the last thing he expected from the evil skeleton. Sure, he expected him to end up yelling at him, but he didn't expect him to admit to caring about them. He couldn't really care about them, could he?

"You're more important than some dumb vase, or stupid crown, or burnt food! All of those things can easily be replaced, but you can't! I can't just go out and get another group of kids and expect them to be the same. All the kids in the world couldn't even amount to how valuable you are!" This was mostly true. Nightmare could easily go and kidnap another group of kids, but the difference would be that they would try to run away and go back to their families or homes. This group actually seems to want to stay here, as if they have nowhere left to go. There's also the fact that he used up a once in a lifetime deal to get these kids, and he's not going to let it go to waist.

Cross seemed to be stunned to silence as he only stared at Nightmare. The larger skeleton didn't seem to want to wait for him to respond anyway as he entered one of the extra bedrooms. "Just go back to bed."

With that, Nightmare closed and locked the door, preventing the monochrome boy from following him or asking anymore questions. Cross stared at the door for a moment before he slowly walked back to his and his brothers' room. He was quiet as he entered and closed the door behind him – the others were asleep, so he didn't want to wake them. Crawling into bed and pulling the covers over himself, he just stared at the bottom of the bunk above him for a long time, thinking about the things that Nightmare said.

He couldn't really care about them, right? He had to have meant it in a different way, like their just objects to him, right? Maybe he could talk to Dust about this at some point. While Dust wasn't the best at giving advice, since his solutions to most things is to either kill the problem or sleep, he was still one of the smarter ones in the group. He may even be smarter than Cross, but he's just too lazy to actually use his intelligence in a productive way. He'd probably rather use it to find new ways to kill things.

For now, Cross would just assume that Nightmare was just referring to them as objects.