Nightmare POV:

I was sitting in the living room, watching TV with the children. It had been quite awhile since Dust joined our little...group? Family is probably the right word, but I don't exactly know if I should consider it that. 'Family' didn't exactly work for me before. I'm pretty sure it's been about six months? Another thing that happened is Dust has a ghost. I think it's his dead brother. Whatever it is, it freaks out the prince. Now he won't go near Dust, unless I'm there. Like now. The dead prince was watching TV with us. I guess he is still a kid, so it makes sense he likes kid's shows.

As I was having a calming moment for once, the opposite of what usually happens occurred. An extremely strong positive aura suddenly reappeared. I knew exactly who it was.

I looked at the prince. He looked a bit concerned. I knew he'd felt it to. He had to have. 'Why is he back though? How did he get out of stone?' I needed to check it out. 'But I can't leave these three here alone.' I thought.

"Can you guys handle being here alone for a few hours?" I asked. They looked at me.

"Where are you going?" Killer asked.

"I have family business." I replied. 'They need a way to contact me in case anything goes wrong.' I sighed. I needed to hire them a babysitter. Or ask Error to watch them. Maybe he could watch them in the anti-void. They couldn't hurt themselves there.

After a talk with Error, he agreed to watch them in the castle. To watch. His exact words were "I am not touching any of your...adopted demon spawns." I had laughed at that. I said goodbye to my children and left back to my old au.

I arrived right beside the destroyed tree, almost exactly where the prince had eaten the apple. Speaking of him, he appeared beside me, obviously wanting to see what was happening with his brother. I followed the positive prince's very noticeable aura, the prince floated ahead. He was down by the river. The one place that wasn't...entirely destroyed. I walked up behind him and heard voices. I quietly crept closer to hear the voices. The prince came back and tried to mime to me the other person. I had no idea. He facepalmed and drew something in the air. When that didn't work, he pretended to be painting. 'Painting?' I thought 'Oh! Ink. Great. Why is he here?' I crept closer to hear their conversation. Ink mostly seemed to be trying to cheer Dream up. Now that I heard his voice it was definitely him.

"Someone else is here." Dream eventually said, sounding quite sad.

"They are? Do you know who?" Ink asked

"It's me." I said, coming into view. Ink jumped up and summoned his brush, Dream following with his staff. "Now, now, Protector. Let me kill my brother, and you can go unscathed."

"What? Brother? No!" Ink shouted.

Me and Ink got into a fight, it came to halt when I grabbed Dream and held him up with a tentacle around his neck. Dream dropped his bow when I grabbed him. Ink stood glaring at me. I began tightening the tentacle around Dream's neck. The positive guardian started pleading. Ink looked a bit worried, but didn't move. This confused me. Why wasn't he moving? I returned his glare and continued choking Dream, who was getting frantic. No one moved.

Out of nowhere, I was hit from behind. I fell forward into my face, dropping Dream on the ground. I heard him gasp. I whipped around and saw Blue. Ink must've called him at some point while I was distracted. I tried to stand back up, but Ink hit me back down. Dream grabbed his bow and shot an positivity arrow into my shoulder quickly. I couldn't take all three of them at once. I cussed at them and teleported back.

Now I actually had someone to fight to keep my negativity. My shoulder began to throb as the adrenaline wore off. I heard the children's little feet running through the castle in my direction. They probably wanted to greet me. 'Shit.' I thought quickly 'If they see me like this it might traumatize them...more.' I teleported to my room, falling into the floor. I needed to get this arrow out of my shoulder. I hobbled to the bathroom.

Horror POV:

Killer and I dragged Dust along to greet Nightmare when he came back. When we got there, he was nowhere to be seen.

"Are we sure he came back?" Dust asked.

"I know I heard him!" I replied. "Maybe he went to his room." I led the way there as Killer led an unamused Dust there too.

I knocked on his door when we arrived. He opened it holding his shoulder and an arrow.

"What happened?" I asked, very concerned. I looked to Killer and Dust. Killer seemed a bit shocked and Dust was confused.

Nightmare sighed. "There's a story I need to tell you guys. The story of me and my brother. If he's back and we run into him, you need to know the story."

We were all confused. We sat on the bed and Nightmare took the chair from his desk and sat in front of us.

"Alright, so everything started with a tree, and that tree, was our mother..."

3rd person POV:

Nightmare then went on to tell the prince's and his story. They all spent the next hour or so talking about the au and asking/answering questions.

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