Of Soulmates and Bonds - Errorink

5. Family reunion

Even though the Omega Timeline was simply a white void, after Nightmare conquered it the place somehow became darker.
Instead of colorful shops and houses, now most of the buildings were destroyed.
Instead of happy chatter, now the only sounds were harsh conversations.
Instead of people mingling and hanging out, now the only inhabitants were Nightmare's cohorts, who mostly glared at each other and sometimes fought.

The main square, the heart of the Omega Timeline, was now the location of the center of the operations, Nightmare's "palace": in reality, it was just a big dark tent with a throne placed inside, but the Guardian had standards, and demanded to be treated as the ruler he was.

Currently, said ruler was checking the Multiverse through a code window, deeply displeased.

His plan had been a real genius one: following a hunch, he confirmed with Fell!Science!Sans that the Omega Timeline wasn't just a meeting point for AUs, but more of a multiversal interface. It could be used as a meeting point because code manipulation was way easier and accessible in there, even though it seemed no one had realized it; an expert in coding could have used this to their advantage and reshaped the Multiverse to their will, but Nightmare was not that good, so his plan had been much simpler: infiltrate the place, and then erase as much positive AUs without killing their denizens once he was inside.

The rush of negative emotions generated from his actions had been delicious and empowering: thousands and thousands of people had lost their homes in an instant and they didn't know why, leaving them full of fear, uncertainty, grief and hopelessness, and they would soon begin to feel angry, resentful and desperate. On top of that, the boost these feelings granted him had allowed him to destroy and conquer the only place where they could have found help, dooming them forever.
Truly a masterpiece.

And yet.

And yet, Nightmare had checked the code window a couple of days after his victory, trying to see if there was anything else he could do, and it was displaying something that made no sense, something that he tried to correct but kept appearing again and again.
This was all CORE's doing, no doubt.

The Guardian clenched his fists and his appendages curled, and started to once again work on the code, when he felt a well known presence in the air and smirked, closing the code window with a wave of his hand. One of his men called him from outside with a shout.

"Boss!" Underfell Sans entered, followed by the Snowdin Canine Unite of his AU. Even if he wasn't his brother, the Royal Guards still respected him and feared him, Nightmare could feel it.

"We found him home, tryin' to sneak around." he then moved to the side, to show a beat up Dream in the arms of Dogamy and Dogaressa. His clothes were tattered, his bones were scratched and his arms were tied behind his back. Smug satisfaction rolled off of the king in waves.

The positive Guardian looked up at his twin and glared. Nightmare could feel fury and, surprisingly enough, hate, coming from him, though they were faint compared to the ever present guilt Dream felt in his presence and the sickeningly positive aura of the Golden Apple.

Nightmare got up from his throne to slowly walk in front of his prisoner, enjoying every second of it. Dream rolled his eyes, feeling a twinge of exasperation at his brother's antics.
The negative Guardian frowned for a moment; his twin always thought he was better than him.

He soon regained his smirk when one of his appendages moved closer to Dream and lightly enveloped his neck, making the yellow clad Guardian feel one of Nightmare's favourite emotion: fear. The guards let him go and moved back, unwilling to be near Nightmare longer than strictly necessary.

"Hello brother" he purred "it's been a long time since we've last seen each other, hasn't it?"
"If only it had been longe-agh!" the appendage tightened its grip.
"Now now, that's no way to talk to your big brother. I was simply concerned for you, Dream." His twin sent him a deadpan look, and Nightmare was reluctantly impressed with him for defying him so openly.
"After all, you went into hiding after I conquered this place. All of my men were looking for you. Aren't you lucky to have such a caring twin? Who knows where you were, what you were doing, who you were with..." he emphasized his words with another squeeze of his brother's neck.