To Kill A Killer

Chapter 8: Memories Before Breakfast

Cross never slept well after a mission.

Even after his injuries had healed, he found himself tossing. Turning. Waking. Drifting back into an uneasy doze. Waking again. Again. Again.

After a while, he gave up on sleep and just stared at the ceiling, barely able to see its cracked plaster in the glow from his eyelights.

Every mission, he got stronger. He got one step closer to bringing his world back. And yet, when he was lying sleeplessly in bed, attempting to ignore the newly increased power in his bones, he found himself wondering if it was worth it.

The feeling of LV wasn't unpleasant, exactly – in fact, his teammates, Dust and Killer in particular, had described it as enjoyable on more than one occasion – but it was accompanied by the knowledge of its origins, and that was what settled over him like a heavy sack stuffed full of all the blood and dust he'd ever washed out of the cracks between his phalanges.

He'd heard about Sanses who were the judges of their humans' actions, making them feel every sin crawling on their backs. In his case, his sins had moved well past his back and decided that their time was better employed weighing directly on his SOUL instead.

Who needed a human when he could simply judge himself?

"Are you going to get more than half an hours' sleep, or have you decided to be useless in the morning?"

Of course, that wasn't to say he didn't have a human. In fact, he'd had two, once upon a very different timeline.

That life had been OVERWRITTEN, though, along with too many others. Now, all he had was a vengeful voice in his head and half a SOUL full of crushing guilt.

"Eh, I'll survive," he answered Chara.

The other half of his SOUL wasn't his, and most of the guilt it contained had been dead and buried long before it entered his ribcage.

Gradually, the room around him lightened, his ceiling becoming fully visible in the grey dawn from outside. The sunlight was always grey in Nightmare's world, the sky as dull and gloomy as the overgrown landscape. Cross had only explored beyond the castle grounds once, and he wasn't eager to repeat the experience. He knew it wasn't dangerous, since the others always came back perfectly fine, but the forest was dark, twisted, dead undergrowth cracking beneath his feet, branches and thorns catching on his jacket, a pervasive chill sinking into his bones the further he walked, until he probably would have frozen if he had kept going. It was unpleasant, to say the least.

Chara's snort echoed in the back of his mind. "Yeah, it's cold out there. Bet even a smile from your precious people-pleaser boyfriend couldn't warm you up."

Cross propped himself up on his elbow, glaring at the ghostly human who was hovering beside him. "Can you not? Dream is kind, and smart, and funny, and yeah, sure, he has some stuff he needs to work on, but he's a better person than either you or I could ever hope to be. Why do you have to constantly talk about him like that?"

"He's a distraction." Chara's eyes narrowed into slits beneath the white strands of his fringe. "You should get rid of him. He does nothing to help get our home back." With a scowl, he added, "Besides, do you know how annoying you are about him? I already have to sit through all your stupid emotions, I don't need to feel you constantly pining over that stars-damned banana."

"And I don't need to hear your complaints all the time," Cross snapped back. "If you have a problem with Dream, you can keep it to yourself. This is my body, remember? I can do whatever I want."

"Your body, my power," Chara reminded him, crossing his arms. "And without my power, we can't rebuild our home."

"It's not even your power, you can only do that stuff because X-Ga –" Cross cut himself off with an irritated sigh, rubbing his forehead. "Never mind," he muttered. "Just... shut up about Dream."