Maybe contemplate hell before absolving yourself from it

I'd like to thank my fans. And my mother for trying to kill me.

Dream is apart of the polycule group chat. At Dream's ask, Ink is as well.

In Nightmare's room, noon on a Saturday, Dream and Nightmare lay, flopped over each other like cats, both staring at the blue light of their phones like the internet addicted teenagers they are.

The light in the room is off, but the blackout curtains are pulled open, allowing natural sunlight inside.

The walls are painted black, the ceiling a deep teal color. On the ceiling, Nightmare still has the glow in the dark stars, comets, and crescent moons from when they were younger. Dream, in a fit of bad feelings at thirteen, had ripped each and every one of them off of his own ceiling. He's glad his brother kept them, because he actually thinks they're nice.

Blue sends the group chat updates on Blue and Dream's warrior cats fanfiction. The only one who ever responds to them is Ink. He sends one now, the link to the document they share appearing on the tops of each of their screens.

Nightmare sets his head down on the bed, phone falling from his hands carelessly.

Randomly, out of nowhere, Nightmare mutters to Dream, "You should write a fanfiction where you kill off Ivypool when she was a child."

Dream frowns. "Why?"

Nightmare's hand does a stupid waving thing, and Dream just wants his brother to be happy, and to speak his damn mind.

"Y'know. She's kinda dumb."

"She made mistakes," Dream acknowledges, correcting.

Nightmare grumbles unhappily. "She tried to kill her sister."

"She made mistakes," Dream repeats, acknowledging, "and she was forgiven for it. I'd feel kind of bad, killing off a child with emotions she doesn't understand, even if those emotions are negative ones."

Dream and Nightmare...

They've had a past. They're each seventeen now, but when they were younger-eleven, twelve, fourteen, whatever-things had happened between them, things that neither of them are particularly proud of now.

They were sixteen when they settled things between each other.

"And that would be blood on my hands," Dream continues, but he's not really talking about the warrior cats fanfiction Nightmare brought up anymore. "I wouldn't be able to shake that."

Nightmare is silent, sighing.

"You've never cared about killing off other cats. You never cared about the blood, then," Nightmare raises.

Dream smiles to himself, and he knows his brother can't see it. "Yeah, but this is blood I care about."

He can't really see Nightmare smile, either, but he can hear it in his brother's voice as replies, "yeah, okay. Okay, then."

Nightmare picks his phone up again.

Ink sends a drawing he drew and colored of Dream without clothing.

"Jesus fuck," Nightmare says, turning his phone off. "Get that motherfucker to delete that or I'm never using that chat again."

"Yeah that's fair," Dream answers, calmly, his fingers already typing out obscenities.

In the end, two extra variations of the group chat are made. One without Dream and one without Nightmare.

Dream, embarrassed and he'll never admit it, still tells Ink not to send that nonsense to the group chat.

Dream and Nightmare's mother, the mayor, is gone the whole weekend, and neither of them are surprised.