Aconitum

Real Real Bad

Killer still wasn't completely used to how normal everything was in his new home. He still sometimes found himself worried he'd wake up on the same day every reset started on, feeling just as weak and hopeless.

In the underground it was the same month every day, February. It was the same few weeks, it was the same everything that ended the same way. In the house it was December. The same month hadn't repeated and he was almost out of February for a year. No one had died, no one had even gotten hurt.

It had been Killers idea to make a big deal out of Christmas. Boss mentioning not really getting a Christmas in his own AU had been a great motivator for Dust and Horror. It had been a good one for Killer too, he felt in debt to Nightmare. If it hadn't been for him it would still be February and everyone would still be dying. Killer would still be the one taking their lives.

That was the other reason he wanted a big Christmas. He didn't lack the awareness to know the Boss didn't care for big events and holidays. It had become pretty clear that Nightmare would be comfortable sitting in his room knitting or whatever for the rest of his life.

But Killer? Killer wanted to celebrate that it wasn't February anymore.

The thing about being free from his own AU was that everything else seemed so boring. He was often torn between marveling at the mundanity of having to choose between what spatula his friend would like best and the existential horror of it all.

For a normal person it would probably be called a midlife crisis. A normal person didn't kill their loved ones hundreds of times over.

Once ya have done that everything else starts feeling low stakes.

Don't get him wrong, Killer was very grateful for his new life and it's simplicity. He would never go back to his own AU. It just meant sometimes he had to make his own entertainment.

Often that entertainment would be melodramatic TV shows, bullying Cross, fake fighting Dust, or pulling small pranks. Things that were small doses of the constant havock his live once was.

He had an eye for mischief and for bad omens. He wouldn't notice much else but he was really good at notice those two things.

"What's wrong Boss?" Nightmare had been glancing repeatedly at the door and towards the windows. Brows very slightly furrowed.

It couldn't be a good sign. That guy could watch a murder with a straight face. If he was showing the slightest bit of concern something was very very wrong.

"Nothing in particular." Lucky for Killer Nightmare was trapped on the living room floor by Horrors insistence to braid his hair.

"Ya sure Boss? I could go check outside for ya if somethings wrong," It couldn't be too bad right?

Killer sat directly in front of Nightmare. Making him sigh. He gave up much more easily than he used too. Killer hoped that was a sign of trust. (He was still somewhat bitter to be the last to find out that Nightmare wasn't always a freaky demon. That sometimes he was just... Some guy.)

"Most people's emotions feel somewhat like many streams being released from a dam. They will mix and I interprete them as, a tangled web if you will. There has been exceptions but they are rare. One person felt more similar to colored sheets of paper being held up,"

Listen. Killer couldn't always put two plus two together but there was only one guy with literal soul-crushing trauma. The type that fucked with emotions.

"Huh." Didn't he die? Though Nightmare never said who died it really was obvious when Ink stopped showing up to visit and Core got oddly quiet on the subject. Even Cross got weird about mentions of the guy.