Core the Apple

Dousing the fire

A/N: What do you mean I can't write two fics at once? Watch me.

Hello again, Dev here. I have resorted to writing as a way to deal with a lot of my own MDD and PTSD, so this is the culmination of me basically venting. It is going to be VERY different from ATM, where things are fix-it and happy. No no, not here.

Please mind the tags. This will be dealing with serious topics such as suicide, self-neglect, self-harm through means of depriving needs, and intrusive thoughts. Really all the bad things.

Rating is subjective to change depending on how in detail I become. M at the highest, of course. Nothing explicit.

Enjoy(?)

Nightmare couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment his vengeful hatred began to shift into something more self-destructive. The fire that had burned within him, that drove him to inflict suffering onto as many worlds as possible, eventually began to die down. He was left with a cold resentment, but it only led him to become more strategic with his advancements. With the calming of his rampage, the excess influx of negativity began to dwindle. It was from this that Nightmare realized this form, the culmination of all the apples he had consumed, was not self-sustainable without exogenous negativity to absorb. Much like a flower without any sunlight, he would inevitably die, demigod status be damned. He had then carefully targeted certain worlds that were already deep within their own misery, which served as a source of "food" for him to continue to live. Through these travels, inevitably, he stumbled upon outcasts and suffering souls. They all had the same vengeful hatred that he had once seen in himself, which inevitably guided them all under his care to show them how to properly hone it. This band of misfits became his subordinates and assisted with attacks and raids on worlds to boost negativity both locally and push back against the rampant positivity multiverse-wide.

The cold resentment eventually fizzled into something akin to apathy. Strategies became less intense and attacks were less brutal, well, compared to what Nightmare once subjected the worlds to. Attacks took longer to plan and were more elaborate to cause the least amount of death for the most amount of negativity. Dead things did not feel negative emotions, and while there may be those that grieve, the quantity was what Nightmare needed. No one dared question his shifting motives and all parties involved simply obeyed his command without hesitation. Nightmare had ceased taunting his brother within the heat of battle, not even bothering to grace him with a sneer or even a simple glare anymore. His only focus was avoiding as much damage as possible, face always furrowed in either concentration or pain depending on the circumstance.

Nightmare had discovered long ago, within some of the first encounters he had with his brother after the incident, that Dream had the ability to drain his reserves. Each arrow of positivity that impaled the darker spirit weakened him by drawing out the negativity from his body. Dream could ruin weeks of work to sustain Nightmare for one day with just a few arrows, which left the other weak and forced to feed off his own darker thoughts in a terrible self-sustaining system. Nightmare couldn't afford to make any slip-ups by engaging in any sort of banter or trying to put Dream down when he tried to appeal to his 'merciful' side, as he called it. Nightmare was pretty sure that died under the tree with him.

Apathy was fine, for a while. It was manageable, much like his corrupted form. The thing with apathy is there is nothing to feed into it to sustain it. What do you feed a state of nothing but more nothing? As a result, apathy had finally spiraled into full-blown loathing. This wasn't loathing like his original hatred for the world when he first became corrupted, however. This was a more personal, self-directed loathing. He thinks, perhaps, it started when Cross had turned his back on their group and sided with Dream after years of servitude.