Confession Time

Regrets and Wishes

warnings: cursing, mention of murder, threats

As the days turned into months and then into years, Nightmare found himself visiting his other half less and less over time. At first he couldn't go more than an hour or two without teleporting back to where Dream's... Statue? Stood. Checking to make sure that no one had tried to do anything to him, or tried to steal him away and hide the other from him. Hoping that Dream would shake off the stasis spell that Nightmare had unintentionally cast on the other. Still... Even as his visits became less frequent... The negative guardian couldn't help but keep up his practice of playing Confession Time with Dream at Sunset whenever he visited. Even if he was the only one playing, and all he could do to cuddle afterwards was to wrap his tentacles around the other's stone-bound form and lean against the other, occasionally whispering apologies for trapping the other in such a way...

Once the anger and fear had died down in his mind, Nightmare knew that Dream would have never gone against him - even as the whispering, seething voice of maddened corruption urged him to ensure that the stasis spell would never break. His newly granted powers will be able to weaken you. Keep him trapped forevermore, so that you can rule this world and the pathetic mortals who tormented and mocked you without contest. But Dream wouldn't fight him, they loved one another too much to do so. As long as he didn't immediately attack the other once he broke free of the spell... Which Nightmare had no idea how he'd cast it, much less how to reverse it. From what he had read from the spell books that he came across that weren't completely destroyed by panicked mortals fleeing from him, such spells needed to wear off on their own time - as early reversal could have unintended and potentially devastating consequences. The very last thing that Nightmare wanted was to further harm the love of his life.

He walked through the barren, lifeless landscape, first through the long-abandoned and broken-down hovels that the villagers had once lived in, their dust and even the human's bones having long been blown away and turned into nothingness. Nightmare hasn't killed all of the mortals who live in his timeline (and not just because it was one of the last things that Dream had begged him to do, before being turned to stone), because if they were all dead, who would he rule? He made his way over to where Dream stood, the frozen expression of fear and hurt confusion on his other half's face not causing him to flinch or pause the way it had at first. The castle that he was having his terrified subjects build for him was well under way, and he was paying them for their time and effort, as Nightmare figured that they would be more motivated to work quickly that way.

One of his hands came up to rest on one of Dream's shoulders, and Nightmare murmured quietly, "Confession time... I killed another three mortals today. They were trying to start a rebellion amongst the other mortals. I dragged them, kicking and screaming from their little plotting room into the center of the town square. I ordered the Dark Papyri to round all of the mortals up and bring them to the town square. I informed them of the crimes that the three fools had committed and I executed them quickly. The rabbit monster first - straight through the soul, quick and clean. The wolf-monster bit me so I... I indulged in a little bit of petty vengeance by strangling him to death. The human was struggling and pleading at that point, but I shattered their yellow soul. I almost didn't kill them, as it was such a pretty color. The hue reminded me of your magic and eye lights... But that human would have continued to cause trouble. Yellow-souled humans are almost more trouble than the ones with Red souls now."

Nightmare paused for a moment, shivering a little. He was grateful that Dream couldn't hear him. He could almost imagine the horror and sorrow that his lighter, better half would have reacted if he'd heard he had done such a thing. But, he could also imagine that moments later, the other's sweet voice would speak up and say something along the lines of: "I... I wish that you wouldn't have to kill so much.. B-But I'm glad that you didn't make their deaths painful... Do you... Do you want to talk about why you did that so publicly?"