Another night and again the same scene was repeated in his dreams.
He's fighting Nightmare, chaos around them, the day where the Destroyer was meant to die.
"Brother! Please stop this madness, whatever that monster has told you, they're nothing but lies, please try to remember who you really are!" Trying to reason with his brother was normal for him, it seemed so obvious at that moment that his brother's mind had been altered by Error if he really believed that murderer was his brother. "I'm your brother, not Error, you are better than this, please let me heal you brother!".
And his brother, his baby brother, was looking at him in conflict, for a second had gone back to being the little boy he had sworn to protect after his birth.
But then...
"You really don't understand, do you? You stopped being my brother in the moment you called me a liar when I told you about the villagers". The conflict had disappeared from his brother's eyes, now there was only a cold determination. "Error didn't need to tell me anything to being with him, when are you going to learn, I DISOWNED YOU, WE AREN'T RELATED, YOU'RE NOT BROTHER OF MINE! NOT BEFORE AND DEFINITELY NOT NOW! ". And with that last cry Nightmare launched himself to attack him.
...The worst mistake of his life came back to destroy his last chance to get that child back, and the cruel reality finally caught up with him after years of running from it...
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Dream and Nightmare were twins, they were born from the same tree before being 'freed' to protect it and its apples, everyone knew that, that's what they would tell whoever bothered to ask them about it.
What they didn't know is that despite having been created at the same time, Dream was the one who woke up first; someone had attacked the Tree of Feelings, and his mother's side of Negativity had been damaged, which prevented his twin from being able to leave his side of the tree, at least not without suffering serious damage.
For months after, he took care of his little brother, slowly healing the tree's wound, he talked and talked so that Nightmare wouldn't feel alone, so that he knew that there was someone outside waiting for him.
The day his brother was 'born' was the happiest of his life.
And the day he returned home and found neither his little brother nor his mother was the worst of all.
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In retrospect, it was obvious that the villagers didn't like Nightmare, or rather, what he represented.
But the first few years of their lives hadn't been easy, food and shelter were something their Mother couldn't easily provide them, so when the villages around them found them, Dream had been more than a little excited at the thought of finally having access to resources to give his little brother the life he deserved.
And the price for it seemed so easy; heal a couple of people here, make a few others happy there, help in the villages on other stuff. They were small things and he got a lot of food, toys, and materials that allowed him and Nightmare to build a little house around their Mother.
But he was so caught up in his happiness that he had begun to ignore Nightmare's unhappiness.
His little brother, who had been even more excited at the idea of meeting new people, had made friends with several children in the different villages and was more than willing to help them with whatever they asked.
How was it so easy for him to ignore how little by little that happy and energetic child became more and more quiet and withdrawn every day? How did he not see anything wrong when his friends started hanging out with him more than Nightmare?
Saying he was just a kid and didn't know any better was no excuse when he could literally feel his brother's feelings getting darker by the day, but instead of comforting him as he should, he had convinced himself that it was his brother. The increasing amount of time apart is what made him so sad, that they couldn't play together like before.
So, he spent more time with him, either together at home or convincing him to accompany him to do his chores instead of them doing their own thing.
And it worked for a couple of years, Nightmare seemed happier and had even gotten back together more with his old friends!
And one day everything started to go downhill.
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After Nightmare's death, Dream had returned home.
The image of his baby brother throwing himself into his death, following the Destroyer till the very end was consuming him, he just wanted to return to a familiar place even if the good and bad memories would hurt him even more.
The AU was as empty as the last time he came, the few survivors had been evacuated years ago and anyway, none of them had dared to approach the hill where his Mother once stood after the massacre that took place in there, they believed the place cursed.
For Dream, it was only the peak of his failures as Guardian and brother.
The remains of their house were still there, untouched, awaiting the return of someone who would never repair it again, but none of that stopped Dream from entering for the first time since the day he returned to find it in ruins.
Everything was buried under layers of dust and weeds, the entire kitchen area was destroyed, letting sunlight in, their rooms didn't seem to have been damaged and that's where he went.
He barely spared a glance at his old room and went straight to his brother's. It was like going back in time, everything was as he remembered it, the little runes full of magic that they had installed for mere fun were still taking effect even after so many years keeping everything safe from the passage of time.
He couldn't stop his tears as he finally felt the magic in them begin to fade, irrefutable proof that Nightmare was dying somewhere in the void along with the rest of his group.
He sat up in bed trying to calm himself when his hand came into contact with something hard. Through his clouded eyes he recognized it as a book; he didn't recognize it from his brother's collection, but took it as a distraction from his pain.
(He was really good at ignoring his own pain for the sake of someone else's.)
But what he found when he opened it was not a novel or encyclopedia, he found the writing of Nightmare.
This was a diary. One he never knew his brother had.
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The days they were apart had become few, and the villagers had become concerned about how "codependent" they seemed to have become and had convinced Dream to leave Nightmare alone just for that day.
To prepare a surprise for his birthday they said.
Oh, how obvious it was what they intended to do now that he looked back at all those memories.
They never liked Nightmare, they tolerated him just to keep Dream happy and willing to work for them for such vital things as food.
But at that moment he had seen nothing wrong with the request and had happily left Nightmare to take care of his Mother, believing that afterward, he would go off on his own to play or help the villagers.
But when he returned home that night, it was to find his baby brother wounded and terrified surrounded by villagers bandaging his wounds, his emotions at their lowest point, and nothing Dream did or said seemed to be able to calm him down.
"An animal attacked him while he was playing with the children in the forest." It was what they said and he just believed it, not even asking his little brother when he finally calmed down after the villagers left.
Shouldn't that have been the first warning sign that something very bad was happening right under his nose? Yes, he tried to look for the supposed animal everywhere to end it, but shouldn't he have investigated further what had happened?
After that Nightmare refused to return to the village without Dream by his side and had fits when the villagers even suggested that Dream leave him for just a moment to help them with something.
And what did he do? Instead of finding out where this behavior was coming from, he apologized to the villagers and even agreed with them when they said that his little brother had become too clingy, leaving him more and more every day to concentrate on the villages.
The bruises and cuts grew, and more "animals" attacked Nightmare every time he left the Tree without Dream with him.
The villagers "suggested" that there was no animal and Nightmare was just getting hurt to get attention. And instead of giving him that attention Dream moved further and further away, believing that he would stop with time when a few years ago he would've dropped everything on the stop at the mere idea of his brother being so lonely that he would hurt himself to get his attention...
...Would he have believed him if he had confessed to him at that time about the abuse? Could he have prevented Nightmare's corruption if he had only paid more attention? If he had only stopped to listen the first time it happened?
He wasn't sure, and maybe that was the worst thing, the image he had of the villagers was of good people who did everything to give them a good life and who they had to help in exchange}.
For Nightmare, they were his biggest abusers.
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The hardcover of the diary in Dream's hands creaked from how hard he held it the more he read what was written in it.
Is this what it felt like to have your entire worldview destroyed?
Yes, over the years he had come to understand that the villagers didn't like Nightmare as much as Dream, but he never believed that he had been this bad!
But the evidence was in front of him, the handwriting of a scared, confused child who did not understand why the people of the villages did not want him around, why his friends no longer wanted to play with him.
Why his older brother didn't believe him or do anything to stop them?
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The months leading up to the fall of everything were confusing, Nightmare still didn't want to go to town, it didn't even matter if Dream accompanied him or not, nothing he did convinced him to leave his Mother's side.
And he seemed happier with it, the villagers seemed happy with it, the "animal attacks" almost disappeared and in the end, Dream couldn't deny that he had been happy with it too, so he left things as they were.
(The diary in that part begins to fill with little stories about how Mother had begun to talk to Nightmare, comforting him and giving him all the love that Dream had neglected to give him the most he spent in the villages, how the temptation of eating the Apples grew day by day...).
The day everything fell apart was the day Nightmare finally had reunited the courage to confess his abuse at the hands of the villagers.
And Dream didn't believe him.
Screams and tears filled their home that day because Dream couldn't even imagine the "kind" people of the villages being the monsters that his little brother described, it just didn't make sense, the two images didn't add up.
Someone had to be lying to him.
And Dream, the little idiot that he was, decided that it was his baby brother who was lying.
The tension was rising, Nightmare was basically begging to be believed, description after description of the harm done to him, accusations of not loving him, how Mother had been telling him... something.
Dream couldn't remember.
His mind had been filled with so, so much rage by that time.
He had been so close to hitting the person who should be the most important in his life...
But luckily, he just pushed him aside and left the house, he didn't even go to any of the villages, he just entered the forest to vent his anger on something other than his little brother, how close he had come to hurting him made him wonder. consumed, left him crying when he should have been comforting him.
Where had all the promises to protect him he made since before he opened his little eyes gone?
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What Dream had believed was a couple of hours of him being gone, a day at most, the diary revealed to have been almost 2 weeks, Nightmare's writing became confusing and almost delirious, just as the villagers had become aggressive after 3 days without Dream visiting anyone, they accused him of having done something to him, and the blood-stained pages made reading difficult, but it wasn't pretty what they did to him.
And on the last page...
"Mother said that Dream was not coming back, that the only way to protect me from those monsters was to eat the Apples."
"But if he didn't go to them, maybe he believed me and needed time to process it, right?"
"I won't let them keep Mom, when I get strong with the Apples, I will take her tree and together we will look for Dream!"
There was more on the page, but the blood and what he assumed were at some point tears made the rest unreadable, but the important thing was there, rubbing his failures in his face.
So many years since that day when he returned, convinced that everything was a misunderstanding, that any problem between Nightmare and the villagers could be resolved with some dialogue, but above all, he was willing to apologize to Nightmare because even if he didn't believe him, he should never have neglected him so much, much less reach the point of almost raising his hand to hurt him.
But instead, he returned to an image, of blood, dust, and his Mother and brother nowhere to be found.
The surviving villagers told him that Nightmare had gone crazy, that he began to devour the Apples and attack them (But they had no justification as to why almost all the adults in the villages were there to see him eat them and be killed shortly after).
When Ink found him, he told him about a black skeleton that went around destroying entire Universes, killing millions without the slightest remorse along with other of his creations that he had stolen and corrupted.
When he told Blue about what happened between Nightmare and him, he also believed that his brother had lied but scolded him for not leaving his "duties" to be with him anyway, "I think your brother just didn't know how to express how much he missed you; maybe he felt like just asking you wouldn't make you stay, and what's that 'duty' thing anyway, weren't you like 10 years old back then?"
When Dream met him again years later, it had been easy to deny that his little brother had eaten those Apples of his own free will, that he was siding with the Destroyer because he wanted to, all the stories about Error and his "corruption" of Ink's creations pointed him out as guilty.
Because it was easier to blame everything bad that had happened to Nightmare on Error than to acknowledge that he had failed to recognize the signs for what they were.
And now, months after he had first found it, the diary in his hands still showed that his baby brother had never lied, and there was no way to escape from this, just as there was no way to escape from the reality of living in a world without his brother.
That child he swore to protect and whom he ended up murdering because of his inaction and bad decisions.
The Nightmare that had jumped to his death that day left it clear, that he wasn't his brother, Dream disowned himself the moment he chose to not believe him.
(And like the kind heart he was, his still brother still hesitated before saying that, as if Dream was deserving of it).
Maybe that's why their own Mother chose to speak to Nightmare instead of him, why she was so sure he wasn't coming back. Error had nothing to do with it, it was just his actions that led to that day and the loss of his family.
Error was just there to pick up the broken pieces that Dream left behind.
He would give everything to be able to go back, to protect his brother as he should have and prevent his corruption, or to have just one more minute with Nightmare before losing him forever, he would have knelt and apologized for all the harm he had caused him in his ignorance, no matter if he was forgiven or not; he just wanted Nightmare not to die believing that Dream saw him as a liar!
But no, he had wasted all his opportunities, his little brother would never return and there was nothing he could do to correct that.
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Yes, I made Nightmare the younger twin, sue me, I wanted this to hurt more.
No, it wasn't the Tree speaking to Nightmare, somebody remembers the Void Apples?
Officially the redemption of Dream starts, this is gonna be funny.