Day Breach into Night

Finalization

It took a very long time, infuriatingly long, to get through the trials the human had set for them. Things became stranger and stranger as time went on, mostly only for Nightmare. The human was pleased when he started “cooperating”, though he always made his displeasure known. He hated how small it made him feel, weak, pathetic, worthless and a toy to be abused. It brought back truly visceral memories that he thought he'd forgotten.

It seemed they could only really stay awake simultaneously whenever that “switch” was tested, though they managed to grow accustomed to the feeling and began to hide that they were still both up. That was also the only time they could really stay conscious after shutoff, though eventually they grew tired waiting like that. There seemed to be days between each test, and that was a long time to stay awake and do nothing.

They could only assume how long it had really been, and Dream just couldn't stand to be awake and unable to move. He seemed to constantly think back to being trapped in stone, desperately screaming inside his mind until Nightmare figured out how to force him asleep. Mostly by concentrating on darkness. It made him hopeful that his power might return some day.

But the day came eventually where they appeared to be considered ready to leave the endless purgatory of that single room, where nothing had met them face to face save for the occasional engineers that came in from the wall opening up.

It was Dream that was awake that day, someone tying ribbons with bells around his wrist before bringing out truly hideous pants. He was actually disgusted by it, but was so earnest just to wear clothes again that he put them on himself. No, he wasn't letting someone do it for him, he was perfectly capable of it himself, thank you.
The frilly collar felt demeaning, though.

He wasn't even given the chance to appreciate having a form of clothing again before getting shut off, waking up with his disc face feeling slightly heavier and his awareness spread to.. something on it. He ended up confirming with touch that they were triangles he could rotate and retract at will.
Okay, fine. Sure. The theme was a cartoon sun.
Why not.

They should've trained the AI with how to use them, because it was going slightly haywire in confusion of how to process their existence.
…It was probably his fault it was so weird and nonsensical. Oh well, it's a little late now. There was obviously a few oversights with how much Nightmare could get away with.
He was literally “killing” some of the mannequins out of spite and they just got replaced.
What would they do if he did that to people? Because Dream was pretty sure he would do it to someone at some point.

But eventually he was sort of just.. taken through a bunch of tunnels and just dropped in what looked like a giant jungle gym for kids. Play mats everywhere. Oh. Oh no that really was it. Okay. This is happening.

Dream was initially waving goodbye to the staff watching from the mildly unnerving wall of glass- that made him feel like an animal in a zoo- before giving up and taking in the surroundings, absently tugging on the ribbons.
The river ballpit was kind of cute, but he wasn't sure if it was exactly safe for small children- not at that depth. He ended up climbing in to check- yeah, this form was tall and he was completely buried even when standing all the way up.

Great. That's fine. Not like they only had small, sensitive, fragile, stupid human kids for him to watch.
Oh wait. That's exactly what they had. How fun.
Nightmare was definitely rubbing off on him in a bad way, he wasn't normally this bothered by these things.

Eventually the humans staring left, and he was able to hide in the play structure for a bit of solitude. Eventually he found a dark enough spot that he started feeling a little fuzzy, recognizing the sensation and using it to wake up his brother.