Redemption

18 - Truth

Third person limited because it's Dream time, baby! (I'm going to switch this over to third person limited fully after an important plot point happens :3)

~~~~~

...

The longer he sat in that dark cell, the more it all made sense.

His brother wasn't the monster; he was the victim..and he had been manipulated into thinking it was a good thing. 

"I'm stuck with him, and I've accepted it. I'm okay with this. Please understand."

How long had it taken him to finally accept it? Dream had been trapped in a stone prison for five hundred years; that was more than enough time to condition someone to accept anything. Of course his brother was okay with it; it was all he had known for several centuries. He had probably forgottten what it was like to be his own person, having been a voice in a monster's head for so long.

"Because we are the same person, in a sense. He feels all the pain I do. Your arrows pierce him as much as they do me. Your aura suffocates him, and your constant assertions that you will rescue him from the darkness only remind him that he's stuck with me."

How many times had that monster stabbed his own bones or taken hits in battle intentionally to teach Dream's poor brother a lesson? His brother had always been frail and fearful; it had probably only taken a few months, or years at the most, for him to give up on trying to change the new Nightmare..

He had even given up his name to the devil. He had been forced to choose a new one.

Passive was a nice name..it fit his brother well. Better than "Nightmare."

His brother wasn't a nightmare - he was a pacifist. 

Dream wondered how much he had sacrificed to have even that.

"..He's my friend. I'd be dead without him. You don't know what it was like before you came back. People hated us for what we were, and I would have been killed if I were alone. He protected me."

His brother must have known the monster was only saving himself..but he could see Nightmare giving Passive kind words of comfort, to make him think that there was real care. Dream could see that very well. Nightmare had tricked Dream like that before, early on, offering reassurances and offers of friendship..

Before stabbing Dream in the back with a sharpened tentacle and berating him for falling for such a simple trick.

The only difference was that Nightmare wanted Passive to be quiet - he just left out the stabbing part and stopped at the kind words. He couldn't get rid of Passive; making Dream's brother believe that Nightmare really cared about him was one way to pacify him.

"I love you, Dream..but there's no saving me. I'm sorry. I'm going to arrange for your friends to rescue you tomorrow; you won't be here long. I love you."

..There had to be a way. 

Maybe Passive really was friends with Nightmare. Maybe the two had formed a bond. Maybe his brother had tried to reform Nightmare, and maybe he was even making progress (Dream doubted that, but he wouldn't have put it past his brother to try). But..that changed nothing. Passive deserved his own life. Nightmare deserved to be locked away. It didn't matter what either of them thought; the way things were right now..

They just couldn't go on this way.

If nothing else, Nightmare had conditioned Dream's brother to think that this life was normal, and that was horrible; Dream had to do something, and he would..he just needed to get a little help.