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annaraebananawriter · 2 years ago

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Because I Wanted That Brother

Yellow there everyone! It’s your favorite Dreamtale angst author back at it again with another oneshot centered around Dream Sans and his conflicted feelings over Nightmare being happier with his gang that he was with his own brother.

This is inspired partly by Dreemurr-Skelememer’s Dreamtale tweets/posts and inspired partly by that one TikTok of Ink and Dream with that one Good Place audio that’s like “Why can’t you accept that [Nightmare’s] living a good life? That he’s changed?” “Because I wanted that Brother!”. You know that TikTok? I’m going to assume your do. If you don’t, I think you still get the idea.

I wrote this all in one sitting, so if there’s any spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes, that’ll be why. But I do genuinely like it and I hope you do as well! Be sure to let me know!

Happy reading!!

Fandom: Undertale/UTMV

Characters: Dream, Nightmare (Who belong to Joku), Ink (Who belongs to Comyet), and mentioned Bad Sanses and mentioned Blue (Who belongs to P0pcornPr1nce)

Warnings: Anxiety, light self-hate, implied abuse from villagers, and I think that’s it. Let me know!

Summary: “While hanging out with Ink, Dream notices Nightmare and his gang hanging out one time outside of battle. He watches them for a bit and has a few realizations during a talk with Ink. (UTMV, Dream Sans Centric)”

Word Count: 3159

~oOo~

Ink had wanted to go to an AU and sketch some things. Blue was busy doing things in his AU, so Dream is the one Ink dragged along on this adventure. He isn’t complaining that much, it was rather relaxing. He was just also tired from working for hours yesterday and had originally planned to use this one rare free nothing-to-do-at-all day he had to sleep. But Ink convinced him to come, and he was glad for it.

They spend a couple of hours roaming around the forest for a couple of specific spots Ink had found a few days ago. Of course, because Ink already forgot how to find them, they get lost a few times, but they do manage to find them after some scouring. Dream dozes off a bit at the first location, and almost does at the second one, mostly wavering between zoning out and sleeping. After the third one, though, they got hungry and they teleport to a different AU for some food, a break before they went to the other AU Ink wanted to sketch in.

Once they get their food, Ink stares at Dream for a bit before silently taking out his sketchbook. He tries to ask what he was drawing, but Ink stays tight-lipped about it. It became apparent what he was drawing after the crown was finished, though, and Dream blushes a bit as he realizes Ink was drawing him.

Ink glances up and smirks at him, shooting him a wink. He rolls his eyes and chuckles. Dream sips at his drink and glances up, immediately making eye contact with Nightmare.

He freezes.

Nightmare freezes as well, eye socket widening slightly. He’s on the other side of the street, with a couple members of his gang. He assumes the other two have gone off somewhere. Maybe to get some food? Like what Ink and he did. The other two members of his gang haven’t noticed them. They stay locked in the staring contest for a minute.

He slowly sets his drink down. He fidgets a bit, warring with himself. A big part of him wants to jump up and run across the street, say hi, and start talking. This is a rare moment where they’re not fighting each other, and clearly not planning to any time soon. He wants to take advantage of it and try and talk to Nighty civically, but what would he even say? It’s been years since they’ve had an entire conversation. What does Nighty even like anymore? Does he still like reading? Can he even start a conversation with a question about reading? Or should he be more generic and talk about the weather first?

He doesn’t know.

But he does know this staring contest is getting awkward fast. Should he go over and say something? It really feels like he should. But he can’t bring himself to. What if Nightmare doesn’t want him to come over? What if he gets mad at him for talking to him like they aren’t enemies? He doesn’t want to be the reason Nighty had a bad day. Maybe he should just look away and pretend he didn’t notice him. But what if that makes him upset? What if he thinks he was annoyed to see him and came over here to confront him about it? He really didn’t want to confront anyone right now.

What to do, what to do…

Before he can make a concrete decision, Nightmare seems to break free of whatever he was thinking and his stare sharpens into a harsh glare. His tentacles flick angrily behind him. Dream flinches and finds his mouth open on its own—what it wants to say he has no clue—and he forces it closed, teeth clicking together. His brother rolls his eyes in annoyance and turns his back on him, tuning in on the conversation Dust and Killer were having.

Dream continues his staring, a guilty taste in his mouth, even though he isn’t exactly sure what he did wrong. A bitter voice in his head tells him he did nothing wrong, that this was purely on Nightmare and his childish feelings. He decides to neither agree nor disagree with it.

Dust mentions something that makes Killer laugh. He smirks and nudges Nightmare in pride. He seems to ask a question. Nightmare rolls his eyes again and sighs, answering. Whatever he said makes the two laugh, hard. They lean against each other as they laugh, and his brother watches them with fondness, shaking his head. His tentacles are the most relaxed he’s ever seen them. He finds himself leaning forward, as if trying to soak in everything he’s seeing. It’s the first time he’s ever seen his brother like this outside of battle. It’s…nice.

It's bittersweet.

There’s that feeling again, the one that says he’s intruding on something, even if he was in the AU first and isn’t with his brother’s group. He wishes he was, though. He wishes the gang didn’t exist and it was just him and Nightmare and Nighty actually liked him. He wishes they were the ones hanging out together, laughing and talking and being brothers and…just, all of that. It’s something he wishes about a lot, and he always feels bad, because he likes the gang and the way they’re his brother’s friends, and clearly he trusts them a lot more than he trusts Dream, and it’s good that he trusts someone. He glad. He is.

He’s just also…not.

He pulls his legs onto the chair, hugging his knees. He can’t seem to look away. There’s a knot in his chest that only worsens when he thinks about it, and so he makes himself keep looking. He must stay like that for a long time.

“They look happy.”

Dream jumps a bit, looking over his shoulder. Ink looks away from Nightmare and his gang and faintly smiles at him, lowering his sketchpad. It looks almost complete. How long had he been staring at his brother, thinking about things he couldn’t change?

He swallows, looking away. “They do.” His gaze is drawn back to them as if hypnotized.

Cross and Killer have returned with nice creams, one for everyone that wanted one. Killer gets a bit too excited and one of them drops to the floor. Cross, who had dropped it because of him, stares at it on the floor in despair. It must’ve been Dust’s because now he’s glaring at Killer and lunges for him before he finishes apologizing. The shriek is heard from where they’re sitting. Before Dust can do anything major, though, Nightmare grabs him around the waist with a tentacle and separates the two.

He seems to be scolding them, handing some money to Horror for a replacement nice cream, but a faint spark of amusement wavers in the air around him. It’s so faint that, with all the other positive emotions around, Dream wouldn’t have usually noticed it. But because he’s watching closely, he picks up on it instantly, and the frown on his face twists into a grimace.

Ink shifts beside him. “You don’t look happy.”

It’s a gentle observation.

It feels like a reprimand.

Dream inhales. He lowers his legs off of the chair and sets his hands in his lap, interlocking his fingers and holding them tightly. “I’m glad that Nighty’s happy. I am. I’m really glad about that,” he says, the words carefully picked and formed.

Ink’s quiet.

They both watch as Horror returns with the fresh nice cream and Dust takes it, hunching over it as if to shield it from Killer, who rolls his eyes and says something that makes Dust glare at him. Killer continues and Dust starts ignoring him, talking with Cross, who seems to be fighting down his laughter. He’s not succeeding very well. Nightmare has taken out his phone and is occupied with that while Horror finally starts enjoying his own nice cream with a content smile.

Ink turns to Dream, tilting his head. “…But?”

Dream looks at him for a moment and looks back to his hands. There’re hundreds of small scars and scratches covering the bone. A far cry from how smooth they used to be when he was a little kid. “…But, I…” he starts, and pauses, sighing. He scrubs his face. “Stars, I hate myself for it, but I-I’m…resentful of the fact that he’s happy without me.” It’s a relief to get the words out. There’s a beat of silence before he continues. “It just…hurts. And I know I can’t change that, and I should really just be happy for him, that’s it, nothing else to it, but I can’t. I just can’t.”

There’s some laughter coming from Nightmare’s table. He wants to look but wills himself not to, which is made harder when he hears the low chuckle of his brother joining in, almost drowned out by the others. His hands twitch, loosening for a moment. He tightens his hold and steadies himself with a breath.

This conversation was steadily veering off into a topic he preferred not to think about too much. It made him feel too many complex emotions that he didn’t want to untangle, even though he’d have to eventually.

And Ink knows this. Dream has explained it briefly before and that was the end of it. They haven’t talked about it since. It was just the combination of being so close to Nightmare, neither of them looking for a fight for once, and just existing in the same universe together and having Ink, his friend that seems to know his emotions better than himself—and that was especially ironic, considering he was one of the two guardians of emotions—with him. This combination seemed to be the perfect reason to start untangling that knot and he tried to keep his hands out of the mess, but it was getting futile.

“How come?” Ink asks, looking back at the table. He seems to have abandoned his sketchpad for now, leaving it lying open on the table, Dream’s portrait staring blankly up at nothing. “He looks really happy over there. He’s even laughing at something one of his boys said. He’s smiling. He seems to have some good friends and is one himself. Heck, he might even be a good parent to them. You’ve seen how they act together during fights. He clearly loves them and they love him.”

With each fact Ink lists, the tighter his grip becomes until his fingers start going numb. He forces himself to let go and rubs his hands on his pants, getting the tingling sensation out.

Ink looks back at him, a knowing look in his eyes. “Why can’t you accept that?”

And there it was, the golden question.

Dream inhales again, sharply, and there’s a croak of something that wants to resemble words. He clears his throat and tries again. “Because—” he bites down on the word quickly, realizing it came out too loud. A few people around them glance over in question and he waits until they lose interest to continue, lowering his voice. He forces it to remain steady; at least, he tries to. “Because I wanted that! I-I wanted this version of my brother that freely expresses himself. The version that loves and smiles and laughs and is happy. But he wasn’t like that with me. He used to, but then those smiles and laughs grew rarer and I didn’t even notice until it was too late.”

The truth seems to come out fast now that his wall has cracked. He closes his eyes, shaking his head. His chest is tight. Something in him is reeling from the words coming out of him, as if they were being said by a stranger and revealing something it didn’t want to ever be true and knows is true.

He wants to stop talking and yet he doesn’t. It’s shameful, but it’s relieving to say all of this. And Ink, the bastard he is, seems to know this, as he keeps quiet and listens without judgement. What has Dream ever done to deserve a friend like this? It’s so unfair.

He takes a breath. “And then, hundreds of years later, I can’t go anywhere near my brother without him glaring at me and insulting me and-and it—” He scowls to himself, reworking things. He wants to say all of this before anything else breaks or builds and he finds himself feeling things he shouldn’t be feeling so close to his brother, who would no doubt sense it. “I wanted the brother that cares for me, the one that I care for. And because I never got that, seeing him act this way with pretty much strangers, it just feels…it feels like I was never worth changing for. I was never worth healing for and growing for. I was never…”

Something blurs his vision and he blinks, words dying off. He hastily wipes at his eyes and there’s a screech of a chair being moved roughly, arms wrapping around him without a word. In gratitude, he buries his head in Ink’s shoulder and takes a moment to steady his thoughts, regaining his grip on his soul and any unnecessary feelings.

Dream’s mind seems adamant on taking him back to the first few years out of his stone prison, when he was constantly being overwhelmed by the changes in environment and people and, well, really just everything. He was far more unstable then, confused and frustrated over not understanding anything and having to actively fight his brother without holding back, pressure from everyone around him to adapt fast and learn and just accept things already. It had taken years until he was taught by Ink to not let them see him break down, to hide when he didn’t get something, whether that be the latest piece of technology or meme or whatever, and to go along with everything, regardless of how he felt. He had taken the advice with a grain of salt, knowing it was easier for Ink than it would be for him, but he still found it to be the best advice he’d received because it actually helped.

He was looking back and cringing on a few of his moments of cluelessness, but he was mostly focused on how he observed his brother in battle, the way he grew to learn about how his brother changed while defending himself from tentacles aimed for his soul. It had started with an offhanded comment from Dust, something said in the middle of the casual conversation he usually had with Killer and Horror, and Nightmare immediately honed in and scolded him for it, and the words were almost exactly the same as a moment from their past, except that one had Dream on the receiving end of the scolding, not an observer. Watching that happen, seeing how Dust snorted and waved him off with another remark, something so similar to what he used to do, made him feel like an intruder.

And wasn’t that an odd feeling, to feel like an intruder while watching your brother act like he used to with someone that wasn’t you? It happened more and more and every time he felt like he was being replaced, slowly being written out of Nighty’s memories and turned into a stranger who was nothing but an enemy. He could do nothing about it, either, just hold his bow tighter and shove down the feeling.

In the numerous fights since then, the feeling has only gotten worse. The gang is notorious for joking and conversing while fighting. So many of the conversations and their dynamics with Nighty get too familiar. And it’s even worse when you remember that he can feel how fond his brother is of their antics; the hint of nostalgia mixed in there feels like a slap on the face.

Ink starts to pull away and he lets him, exhaling slowly. He makes the mistake of glancing away and meets Nightmare’s gaze, whose eyelight was fixed on their table, a frown on his face, though Dream knew he was more confused than worried. He quickly looked back at Ink, choosing to ignore it.

He continues.

“If Nightmare had already begun to heal from the villagers in our AU while I was trapped in stone, and if he never thought about me once during that whole time, and if he is in a good place now…it means that I made mistakes that I can never be forgiven for. It means that the mistakes I berate myself for, that everything I shame myself for is true. I’m not a good brother and I need to be more aware of my friends, and catch when something is wrong before they even realize it. Because if I don’t, and if the past repeats itself, then something is fundamentally wrong with me and I can’t change that.”

And if Nightmare is better off with his gang, if that’s truly what was always meant to happen, Dream can’t help but be angry at that. Because why? What has the gang done to deserve his brother? Why do they get to have the loving, content version of Nightmare while he, his own brother, the one he grew up with and survived the village with, gets nothing but hostility? What has he done to condemn himself to this loneliness while they get to frolic and be happy together?

It's not fair. It just wasn’t.

Dream isn’t claiming to be a good person. He’s made mistakes, bad ones, ones he’ll always regret. But doesn’t he deserve to try and make things right with his brother? Doesn’t he deserve the chance to say sorry and not have Nightmare scoff in his face and tell him he’s lying? It wasn’t like Nightmare never hurt him. They’ve both hurt each other. They deserve the chance to heal and grow and continue being brothers, this time with a better understanding of one another.

He misses Nightmare so much that it hurts. He’s only been out of stone for a small fraction of the time that his brother has had to get used to being without him. He understands that Nighty won’t feel this way to the extent that it feels like he’s missing a limb, but Dream does. It’s a shade lighter from how it started, but it’s still obvious in the way he acts and the way he thinks. It’ll probably stay that way for a long, long time, and during then, his brother will only drift further away from him, living his best life without him.

Without Dream.

“If Nightmare has truly changed, that means he was always capable of change. And that means I was just never worth changing for.” Dream swallows, meeting Ink’s gaze. His friend looks sympathetic. He appreciates it, even if it’s for something Ink will never truly understand. “And that hurts, Ink. It just hurts.”

#my writing #my fanfiction #fanfiction #oneshot #undertale #utmv #dreamtale #dream sans #nightmare sans #ink sans #mentioned blue sans #mentioned bad sanses #or i guess background bad sanses #because they're definitly there and active #just not prominet characters #tw anxiety #and i think that's it

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