Chapter Text
The throne room was empty except for the slow drip of water from the cracked rib vaults. Candles hissed in iron sconces. Above, the dark domes groaned as if the stone itself labored under the castle’s sorrow. Nightmare sat in the heart of it all, framed by twisting shadows, his throne hammered from the salvage of other universes—bits of scorched brass, a crown with broken blade-points, an armrest made of a snapped Gaster Blaster jaw. The throne fit him like a glove.
His jacket hung off his shoulders like a cape in a goop tumble, blacker than the vacuum between stars. It splayed on the cold flagstones, the ink shivered and melted away. He waited, taloned fingers splayed on his lap, luminous gaze trained on the abyss at the far end of the chamber where his subordinates would appear. A faint glimmer of amusement ghosted the line of his mouth. He liked to keep them waiting; it made the nervous ones sweat, and the overconfident ones get sloppy with their shows of bravado.
Tonight, as always, he hungered for distraction—a new fracture in the multiverse, an unexpected pulse of agony or desire. But most of all, he craved the games his "family" brought him, those misfit sons of violence and regret who filled the halls with petty squabbles and the tang of old pain.
He didn't have to wait long. The hall’s perimeter flickered, and three portals fissured open with a bone-deep crackle. Horror slouched through first, blood still wet on the corner of his mouth, the jagged curve of his axe scraping across the stone. His single eye socket gleamed with feral, hungry light. Dust followed, hands shoved in his hoodie pocket, a drag of gritty dusk trailing behind him like a bad habit. Killer stumbled in last, mouth split by a too-wide grin, corrupted determination weeping down the sides of his skull in rivers of black.
And, of course, Cross. The outlier. The wildcard. The only one who came by his own volition, as if he had something to prove or lose. Cross hovered at the threshold, eye-lights pinched and wary, fists jammed into the hem of his jacket. His bones looked sharper than usual, like he’d been clenching every magic muscle for days.
Nightmare snapped his fingers—a lazy, decadent gesture. The castle’s light responded, closing in and spotlighting the assembly. “Gentlemen,” he purred. “You’re looking positively dismal tonight. I’m proud.”
Horror spat something wet onto the floor. Dust grunted, gaze fixed on the ceiling. Killer bowed with a sarcasm so thick it could clot blood.
Cross said nothing. Just watched.
Nightmare allowed himself a slow, theatrical inhale. The air tasted of ozone and mildew, with an undertone of something coppery. “I trust you’ve all been keeping yourselves… entertained. Though I do wonder which one of you decided to redecorate our prisoner quarters with fresh structural damage.”
Killer’s laugh was a sharp, scraping thing. “Don’t look at me, boss. Last I checked, Dust had a bet going on how fast he could get the new intern to cry.”
Dust flicked his fingers, dismissive. “Weak link anyway. Didn’t even last through the initiation.”
Nightmare arched an eyebrow at Horror, who merely bared his teeth and shrugged. “Not hungry.”
The dynamic was familiar. Comforting, even, in the way a bruise could be comforting. He let them bicker, each jibe digging old scars a little deeper.
But as they sparred, Nightmare’s focus drifted. He watched Cross, who didn’t bite, didn’t smirk, didn’t even flinch when the others took shots at him. Cross only watched back—head slightly cocked, silent and knotted with tension. The darkness around him seemed repelled by some stubborn core, like he’d built a firewall of pure willpower against the smothering negativity that saturated every block of the castle.
Nightmare studied him, silent. Then, with a ripple of his shroud, he stood. The room immediately quieted, as if the very air remembered who it belonged to.
“I’ll make this brief,” he said, stepping down from the throne with calculated grace. His jacket billowed behind him, swallowing light. “Our positive-universe counterparts are getting bold. Dream’s little army has pushed three timelines into offensive posture. They’re up to something.”
He gestured, and a holographic map sizzled into being above the council table—a constellation of universes, some pulsing in sickly green, others pale gold. “We’ll strike at these three points, here, here, and here.” He tapped the coordinates, sending tendrils of shadow racing across the table. “Horror, you take the lead on Sector 7. Dust, you’re with Killer on 13.” He turned his gaze on Cross, letting it linger. “And Cross, you’re with me.”
The others looked at Cross, then back at Nightmare. In the space of a heartbeat, alliances shifted—resentment, confusion, and a bright spike of envy all sparking in the air.
“Any questions?” Nightmare asked, voice as smooth as cold oil.
Horror grunted, “Do we get to keep the survivors?”
“If they’re worth keeping,” Nightmare said. He barely registered the way Killer’s mouth twitched, or how Dust’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. His attention was all for Cross, who gave a single, silent nod.
“Dismissed,” he said, a finality in the word that left no room for rebuttal.
The subordinates melted away, leaving only Cross at the foot of the throne. He didn’t move until Nightmare returned to his seat, folding his frame into the throne’s embrace like a king into his shroud. Then, and only then, did Cross approach—each step measured, as if the floor might swallow him whole if he moved too quickly.
“Sit,” Nightmare said, gesturing to the battered bench at his right hand.
Cross sat. The distance between them shrank to nothing.
For a long, heavy minute, neither spoke. Nightmare studied him, as if by force of will he could x-ray Cross’s skull and read the code behind those wary eyes.
“Something on your mind?” Nightmare asked, finally.
Cross’s jaw flexed. “You picked me. Why?”
Nightmare considered the question. He weighed a dozen possible answers, each more manipulative than the last, before deciding on the one that tasted most honest.
“Because you’re the only one I can’t predict,” he said. “And that… intrigues me.”
Cross blinked, hard. For a second, some nameless emotion crossed his face. Then he masked it, retreating behind the stoic blankness that had always set him apart.
“You could have assigned me with anyone.”
“And yet.” Nightmare’s smile was razor-thin. “You’re with me. I want to see what you’ll do when the only person watching you is yourself.”
A muscle ticked in Cross’s jaw. “What if I disappoint you?”
Nightmare’s laugh was low, and not entirely cruel. “Impossible. The only thing that would disappoint me is predictability.”
Cross nodded. The silence between them grew a shell—hard and intimate, impossible to break without shattering something delicate. Nightmare relished it, felt it settle in his bones like a dark benediction.
He reached beneath his jacket clasped only at his neck, fingers closing around the apple-shaped pendant that nestled against the hollow of his collarbone. He didn’t take it out, just touched it, grounding himself in the memory it represented—a reminder of what he once was, and the rot that had replaced it.
He met Cross’s gaze, letting the moment hang.
“Anything else?” he asked, tone softer now, almost gentle.
Cross shook his head. “I’ll be ready.”
Nightmare believed him. He always did.
As Cross stood to go, Nightmare let his hand linger on the pendant a moment longer, then released it. The hall echoed with the sound of retreating footsteps and, for the first time that night, Nightmare let himself smile in the darkness—small, secret, and real.
He had no idea what the future would bring. But for the first time in a long time, he found himself looking forward to the next move.
The sound of bones breaking was, to Cross, a kind of comfort. Not literal bones—at least. The training dummies in the castle’s combat room had been refitted with splintered femurs and sawed-off spines, but at the core they were just wood and wire, targets for his endless, unslakable fury. Every strike thundered through the chamber, echoing off the damp, pockmarked walls. Sweat dripped from his brow, pooling in the hollow of his clavicles and running in slow, cold rivulets down his back.
He’d been at it for hours, hacking, battering, and gutting his way through half the room’s supply of dummies. His hands had started to shake. Still, he couldn't stop. If he did, the thoughts would catch up, and the thoughts were a war he always lost.
He hammered his axe into the next dummy with a guttural yell. The blade bit deep, snapping the torso clean in half. The dummy toppled over, scattering sawdust and powdery fragments. Cross stood there, chest heaving, vision swimming in and out of focus.
Horror leaned against the doorframe, his single eye gleaming with amusement. "Axe-hausting yourself before the big date?" he drawled, the hole in his skull whistling slightly as he spoke. "Boss must really have his eye socket on you if he's keeping you all to himself tomorrow. Bone-appetit, I guess."
Cross's eye sockets narrowed to slits. "What's it to you? Worried I'm stealing your spotlight?"
"Hardly," Horror replied, his permanent grin widening as he traced a finger along the edge of his skull's fracture. "Some of us have... other arrangements that keep us quite satisfied." His single eye darted briefly toward the far corner of the training room, where a fine layer of dust had settled in the shadows. Horror’s grin stretched wider, all sharp teeth and mockery as he sidled farther into the training room, arms folded, one foot propped on a battered dummy’s torso.
Dust walks out of the corner with the dust. “I mean, you could at least wipe the drool off your chin before the boss catches you simping,” he needled, his eyelights glinting with annoyance. “Or, you know, save some of that rage for the mission. Wouldn’t want you to run dry before we even get started.”
Cross didn’t dignify him with a reply. He snatched another dummy off the rack, spun it with a violence that left splinters raining to the floor, and heaved his sword through its neck. The head hit the flagstones with a hollow thunk and rolled to a stop against Horror’s heel.
Dust whistled. “Decapitation’s a classic. But you know, you never really go for the jugular.” Horror leaned down, nudged the wooden skull with a finger, and flicked it back at Cross’s boots. “Bet you’re just dying to prove yourself, huh? Maybe Nightmare will finally give you that gold star.” The words curled out like smoke, sweetly poisonous, and they landed exactly where Horror wanted them to.
Cross felt his features tighten. White-hot anger surged up his spine, the kind that wanted to burn everything down just to put out the fire inside his skull. But he’d had years in the castle to learn this: the only way to win against Horror was to refuse to play. So he straightened, wiped the sweat from his brow, and let the silence hang between them.
Horror cocked his head, making a show of waiting for a comeback. When none came, he shrugged. “Suit yourself, Crossy. Just don’t dust before tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to miss the fireworks.” Dust and Horror sauntered out, the door slamming shut behind him.
As soon as Horror was gone, Cross let himself sag, shoulders dropping into a cold, shivering slump. Rage fizzed in his bones, but there was nowhere for it to go. He stared at the dented floor, at the shrapnel of dummies he’d obliterated, and tried to breathe.
But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
He seized the closest weapon from the rack, fingers tight enough to grind bone to powder, and hurled it with all the force left in him. The blade whistled through the air and embedded itself in the heavy oak door, just as the echo of Horror’s laughter faded down the corridor. A microsecond later, Cross’s own roar chased it, long and raw, draining the last dregs of his strength.
He stood trembling, the silence in his skull somehow louder than the violence. He wanted to keep swinging, keep breaking things, but his hands were numb and his vision swam with the start of a headache. There was nothing left here to destroy except himself, and he’d made a silent promise to last at least until this next mission was over.
With a snarl, he wrenched the axe free, tossing it back into the weapon rack and stalked out of the training room. The endless hallways of the castle were empty at this hour, just echoing stone and the faint hum of distant, sleeping magic. Past the barracks where Dust and Killer sometimes played poker until dawn, past the main hall where the throne loomed in black silhouette.
He barely registered the way the shadows seemed to reach for him, or the subtle throb of Nightmare’s aura pulsing from beyond the locked doors. He didn’t even notice how, as he walked, the castle lights flickered and bent in his direction, as if the whole place was spine-tinglingly aware of his unrest.
All that mattered was getting away—from them, from the expectations, from the feeling of being a pawn in someone else’s game.
Up a spiral staircase, down a half-hidden corridor, Cross reached his quarters— with a battered mattress that still stank faintly of bleach. He threw his cot and moved straight for the footlocker bolted to the wall, where his true treasures lay.
He knelt, fingers fumbling at the combination lock. Numbers spun, clicked. The lid creaked open.
Inside, beneath a false bottom, was his secret.
Cross storms out and retreats to his private quarters, where he unlocks a hidden chest to reveal a sketchbook brimming with charcoal drawings of Nightmare and the others.
He drew it out with trembling hands, the pages smudged with coal and oil and the faint, unmistakable reek of blood. He opened to the latest entry. A rough, hastily scribbled profile of Nightmare, ink bleeding from every angle, the eyes rendered in a furious, vibrating black. The jaw was set, the mouth thin, but there was a softness in the arch of the brow that Cross hadn’t intended. He’d tried to erase it, to replace it with the malice he knew so well, but every attempt only made it worse—more true.
He paged through the older sketches. Nightmare at the council table, head bent over a tome of forbidden lore. Nightmare dueling Dream in a swirl of obsidian and gold. Nightmare, alone, staring out over the ruined parapets with a look that bordered on longing.
There were others, too. Horror, howling at the moon. Dust, asleep in a nest of old bones. Killer, caught mid-laugh, eyes shining with a madness that looked too much like pain.
Cross closed the book. His hands would not stop shaking.
He thought of the throne room, the way Nightmare had looked at him—like he was something to be solved, not just used. It made no sense. He wasn’t supposed to want the king’s approval. He wasn’t supposed to want anything, anymore.
But the feeling was there, sharp and hungry, gnawing a hole where his soul should have been.
He shoved the sketchbook back in the chest. He sat with his back to the wall, chin on his knees, staring at the farthest, deepest shadow until his eyes ached.
“I’ll be ready,” he whispered, though there was no one to hear it.
But even as he said it, Cross knew it was a lie. He would never be ready for whatever was happening to him. He’d never be ready for Nightmare.
Not in a hundred resets.
The banquet chamber was a tangle of shadows and glittering candlelight, a grand echo of the glory it must have had in some previous, better universe. Long tables sagged under the weight of meats and fruit. The walls, lined with half-melted candelabras, flickered with an uneven, feverish glow.
Nightmare arrived last, as was his custom. He swept to the head of the table and sat, indifferent to the rowdy din that filled the chamber. His gaze flicked over the ensemble: Horror gnawing on a roasted leg of something, Dust flicking crumbs at the wall, Killer pouring generous measures of burgundy into the largest goblet he could find.
And Cross, again at the periphery, hunched over a chipped mug, pretending to be invisible.
Nightmare was prepared to let them eat in peace—or in whatever passed for peace among his gang—when Killer stood, raised his goblet, and clanged a fork against its rim.
“Gather round, you degenerate,” Killer crowed, eyes leaking red with every syllable. “Tonight’s not just about feasting and punching each other under the table. It’s about tradition! Which is why,” he paused for effect, “I’m introducing a little game.”
Dust groaned. “If this is another drinking contest—”
“Better,” said Killer. He grinned. “Secret Santa.”
A hush fell, punctuated by Horror’s wet chewing.
“I don’t know what that is,” Horror mumbled.
“It’s when you get a random name,” Killer explained, “and you gotta give that person a present. In secret. Then we all open ‘em and act surprised, and maybe, just maybe, nobody gets stabbed. Festive, right?”
Dust snorted. “Nothing says festive like forced sentimentality and potential violence.”
“Or,” added Killer, “sinister surprises. C’mon, the positive AUs do it. Why let the good guys have all the fun?” He eyed the rest, daring them to object.
Cross looked up from his chipped mug, fingers tightening around the handle. His eye-light flickered once, twice, like a dying star. "I still have a box," he said, voice barely audible above Horror's wet chewing. "Under the floorboards. Red paper. Gold ribbon." He cleared his non-existent throat. "From before. From my brother. It was a good tradition."
Nightmare arched an eyebrow, more amused than annoyed. “You think we should mimic them? Next you’ll be telling me to hang wreaths in the execution chamber.”
Killer cackled. “I already did, boss.”
A reluctant ripple of laughter ran around the table.
Nightmare let it settle, didn’t say it out loud, but he cared for his boys. So he allowed it. He nodded, a tiny gesture that was all the permission Killer needed.
From under the table, Killer produced a velvet pouch, black as the void. “Names are in here. No peeking, no swapping. Ready?”
Each member of the Nightmare Gang took a turn, plunging a hand into the bag and retrieving a slip of paper. Horror held him in his teeth, refusing to read it until everyone else had drawn. Dust crumpled him immediately, probably planning to torch it later. Killer winked at his own paper, then tucked it into his sleeve with a theatrical flourish.
Nightmare waited until last, savoring the anticipation. The paper felt weightless between his claws, the name written in a sharp, impatient hand:
[cross.]
He almost smiled. Almost.
He set the slip aside, let his gaze drift to Cross, who had opened his own with the same caution he reserved for unexploded mines. For a moment, Cross looked lost, then angry, then—was that relief? He stuffed the paper into his pocket, not meeting Nightmare’s eyes.
The rest of the dinner passed in a haze of burnt sugar, crackling fire, and the low, persistent murmur of monsters who had run out of things to hate. Killer kept the mood alive with increasingly elaborate puns (“Deck the halls with boughs of folly!” “Let’s garland ourselves with mischief!”), and Horror countered with belches that set the candelabras trembling.
Nightmare observed it all from his seat, content to let the chaos unfold. He was good at that—watching, waiting, letting others show their hand. But he couldn’t stop himself from smirking at his gang's antics, then he glanced at Cross, measuring the distance between them, calculating all the ways it could collapse.
At last, when the meal wound down, Killer stood again, clapped his hands, and declared, “Gifts at midnight gyftmas! Meet here or be hunted down and force-fed tinsel.”
Dust rolled his eyes, but everyone nodded. Even Cross, who lingered in his seat long after the others had gone, staring at nothing.
When the room finally emptied, Nightmare stood, circled the table, and stopped behind Cross’s chair. He didn’t touch him, just let the silence fill up the space between them.
“Surprised?” he asked, voice pitched low.
Cross flinched, but recovered quickly. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”
Nightmare leaned in, close enough for his breath to stir the dust on Cross’s jacket. “Liar,” he said, not unkindly.
Cross didn’t answer.
For a moment, time held its breath. Then, with a soft, awkward motion, Cross got up and left, not looking back.
Nightmare stayed behind, alone in the candlelit dark, thinking of rituals, and secrets, and the gifts they gave each other whether they meant to or not.
The castle slept restlessly, its battlements whispering secrets to the wind. In the hour between dusk and dread, Cross made his move. He slipped out through a servants’ hatch near the oubliette—no guards, no eyes but the crawling ones in the mortar. The night was thick, starless, the sky stretched tight as a burial shroud.
He moved quickly, hugging the ruined outer walls until the forest swallowed him whole. These woods were dead, the trees charred to blackened spires. Here and there, blue magic flickered in hollows, but Cross kept to the shadows. He’d memorized this path, though he’d never dared take it before. Not until tonight.
At the forest’s edge, the world softened to mud and marsh. He opened a portal into AU. He stepped though. The ground steamed with some internal heat, and the air reeked of sulfur and old dust. In the distance, an unnatural city sprawled—UnderFell’s infamous shadow bazaar in Hotlands, where every conceivable vice and nightmare was for sale if you knew who to ask and were willing to pay the price.
Cross pulled up his hood, masking his skull in the gloom, and plunged into the bazaar's labyrinth. Shouts and curses rang from the alleys; brutes bartered bones, thugs haggled over jars of mystery powders. No one looked twice at Cross, but he could feel the surveillance—hungry, measuring.
He wove between tents and awnings until he reached a stall built of ribs and black glass. The sign, written in code, Fresh items of and on. Sitting behind the counter was a 90's monstrosity, the only entity Cross trusted to deal in the kind of goods he needed.
"YOOOO! Didn't expect you to come cruisin' through my radical zone," Fresh said, adjusting his neon shades. "Especially not flyin' solo, homes!"
"Don't have time for formalities," Cross replied. He leaned in, keeping his voice low. "I need a holder of some kind. For Nightmare. Something that absorbs darkness—feeds him, when he is low on energy, or bottle it when it gets too strong."
Fresh leaned back, snapback tilting. "Whoa whoa whoa, my skeledude! You're tryin' to bottle the king's bad vibes? That is TOTALLY ungnarly! Mad props for the ballsy move though!"
"Not bottle it. Balance it. Like a siphon. Something he'd actually want."
Fresh was silent for a moment, then reached under the counter with a "Cowabunga, I gotchu fam!" He produced a crystal—obsidian, but swirling with veins of sickly green. It pulsed in Cross's hand, familiar and wrong at the same time. Cross caught his breath. He knew what this was, or at least what it had done in other timelines.
"How much?"
"Ain't about the benjamins," Fresh said, grinning with a thousand-pointed smile. "You want this sweet gear, you owe the Fresh-meister. An answer or help. Maybe later. Maybe in a different world. That's how I roll, broseph."
"Deal," Cross said, and snatched the crystal before Fresh could change the rules again.
He left the bazaar with the crystal burning a hole in his pocket, made his way back through the woods before opening a portal, then up the crumbling battlements, and into the castle as the first hints of dawn blued the horizon. He locked himself in his room, set the crystal on his desk, and stared at it for a long, unbroken hour.
It was perfect.
Nightmare, meanwhile, had spent the evening alone in the library, feigning indifference but watching the minute hand crawl toward midnight. He’d long since dismissed the meeting as a farce, but something about the ritual lingered—a burr in the fabric of his mind.
He roamed the chamber, bored and restless, until an itch behind the bookshelves caught his attention. He had seen Cross in here, marking in a book. The skeleton had shoved the book somewhere before leaving. He reached into the shadows, fingers brushing over cracked leather, and felt a soft, unfamiliar edge. He pulled out the hidden sketchbook, and immediately recognized the handiwork.
He turned the pages, absorbing each fevered line. The likenesses were raw but precise, rendered in a hand that knew both hatred and tenderness. He lingered over the drawings of himself—sometimes monstrous, sometimes contemplative, always haunted by that hint of softness Cross could never quite erase.
It unsettled him. Reminded him of his old self and yet, he couldn’t look away.
He set the book aside and summoned a mirror from a pile of cursed artifacts. He studied his own reflection, searching for the truth in those sketches. Did he really look like that to Cross? Was there any of that gentleness left?
He let the question hang.
Later, he reached out to the only merchant he trusted—an itinerant from OuterTale who specialized in impossible requests. The message was brief: custom commission, urgent, no substitutions. The reply came instantly. Nightmare provided a sample of his own darker than dark ichor, swirling the ink with a single, deliberate cut to his palm. He watched as the merchant mixed it with silver-tipped quills and a vial of binding ink. Soon the ink and quills were ready.
The set was perfect, almost too beautiful to touch. Nightmare could imagine Cross running a finger along the feathered edge, pausing in awe before setting to work with the new supplies.
He wrapped the bundle himself, in black velvet and silk ribbon, sealing it with a drop of his own magic.