From Murder to Dust

33 - Story

Nightmare walked out of the room and motioned for us to follow him, meaning it was probably important. We went into the next room: the classroom. When we got there, Nightmare sat against one of the walls and began to weep.

"I can't do this.." Nightmare whimpered.

"Don't worry, Dad! We'll get ya through this!" Killer smiled.

"Yeah, no need to cry, Dad." I joined.

"Y-you know i-if you start cr-crying, we will t-too.." Cross lightened the mood slightly.

"It's a'ight, Dad." Horror fingered his skull, close to the hole.

"Do you want a hug?" Error wasn't the best at verbal comfort.

"Yeah.." Nightmare was still crying.

At this, we all gathered around him for an awkward family hug that would have looked ridiculous to anybody watching, but we didn't care; our dad needed cheering up, and it was our job to do it. 

"You're the best boys anybody could ever wish for." Nightmare stated after a minute, although he was still crying. "I love you."

"We love you too, Dad!" We all returned - Error left out the 'Dad' part, though.

"Hey, Dad?" Killer solicited.

"You can ruin the moment now, Killer." Nightmare allowed, wiping his tears.

"Thanks! So when're we gonna start using the classroom again?"

"We'll start using it when Dream has been released and can't..." Nightmare froze.

The same thought came to each of our minds simultaneously; we had just revealed our true natures in the one room of the house Dream could hear. That was bad planning on our part, and now it was a solid possibility that Dream had just overheard the entire thing.

"What do we do?" Error whispered.

"I could break down again." Nightmare softly replied. "Or at least that's what I feel like doing."

"We should probably go back and hope he didn't hear that?" Killer hoped.

"You're right..come on."

We got up off the floor and hoped Dream didn't hear a word of what just occurred. If he had, there would be a lot of explaining, and probably crying, which wouldn't have been the best thing in the world; we had spent the entire time he was here trying to avoid that exact thing, and now that it was a very real possibility, we were a little bit unnerved by it. We didn't know how he would react to such information, since we didn't know him well, but Nightmare was obviously concerned about it. I guess secrets were like that: you kept them for as long as you could, but they'd eventually come out into the open, and consequences would arise. There wasn't any way to stop it, in most cases, since you had probably kept it secret for a reason. I guess I should have been more careful with my secrets; I wouldn't have wanted anyone worrying about my nightmares or my period of isolation. It was easy when they trusted in the fact that you would tell them when you were ready, but it got harder when you knew you were never going to be ready. When we opened the door to the emotion room, our souls sank; Dream didn't look very positive at the moment.

"Nightmare?" Dream asked. "Are you keeping something from me?"

Nightmare looked like he was about to start crying again.

"So you are. Was it really so important that you had to find a way to get me to leave you?" Dream tried to understand.

"Yes." Nightmare replied, using every ounce of self-control he had to not break down.