I didn't sign up for that shit

Another One Bites the Dust

Balance. Omnipresent and yet overlooked by so many. Even those in charge of maintaining balance in the multiverse didn't seem to notice. Nightmare could only scoff at it. His brother and his oh-so-great friends may claim to protect the Multiverse, but they are just driving it to an end. Ink created too many AUs and, far more often, copies than Error could manage to destroy. Dream, his own brother, tried to drive the negativity out of every AU and sprayed his disgusting positivity in return. But neither Ink nor Dream had noticed how much they harm the multiverse instead.

Destruction could not offset creation.

Positivity masked negativity.

And Life ... she still seemed to be gone. At least Death was doing his job the way he should.

Nightmare and Error often sat together for hours and thought of methods of at least postponing the end. They didn't care about the multiverse, but neither wanted to give up the few monsters they owned without a fight. So they fought. There was a convulsive attempt to rebalance the scales, but it seemed pointless. For every AU destroyed, two new ones appeared. Nightmare won the negativity of one au’s only to lose another shortly afterwards. It was frustrating. More than once the thought came up to just stop and watch everything fall apart.

But they couldn't. Whenever they were close to giving up, there was a new reason to keep going. It was just mundane things like Killer working on a new wooden figure. Horror who wanted to grow a new plant in their garden. Cross, who lived his new love for portraits and put hours of time and effort into his paintings. Or Dust, who lived out his passion for baking. Neither Error nor Nightmare wanted to lose these precious things.

And that brought Nightmare to his current position.

He had gone alone to collect negativity in one of the many Underfell copies. After all, Fell universes had always been more susceptible to negativity, which made them suitable crops to strengthen Nightmare. However, these universes attract Dream faster than others, since the Guardian of Positivity knows the tendencies of Nightmare too well. So it was no surprise for Nightmare to find his brother there. Their entries were always the same. Dream appealed in vain to a version of Nightmare that would never open his eyes again.

So they fought. Nightmare attacked, Dream dodged. Dream kept trying to bring the past back, Nightmare just got angrier. An eternal back and forth from which no one emerges as a winner. They had danced this dance for centuries, ever since Nightmare was forced to indulge in the black apples. So it was a surprise when Dream actually managed to get Nightmares HP down to a dangerous level.

"Give up brother! This is your last chance. Please I... I don't want to hurt you. I just… want you to be like you used to be…" Dream pleaded with his brother, desperately hoping it would get through to Night while he drew his bow again, the arrow ready to be fired. Nightmare saw Dream desperately trying to keep the tears from escaping from the corner of his eye socket. He can only wonder how he looks to his brother. He could feel Dream's arrows digging into his corruption and bones.

“You are such a naive idiot… Do you have any idea how much I hate you… I will never give up.!!! You're a stupid, hypnotic piece of shit!" Nightmare saw something in Dream break at his words. But Nightmare felt nothing but joy. Seeing his brother suffer made it worth the pain. If only it could relieve a bit of his pain, thanks to Dream all these years ago, he would take any arrow for it.

"In that case... I'm terribly sorry, brother..." The tears in Dream's eye sockets began to fall, and with joy Nightmare soaked up all the negative emotions his brother was so generous in spilling. But they also distract him from the fact that Dream had let go of the string of his bow. Too late, Nightmare noticed the approaching arrow. His eye widened as he realized something.