Chapter Text
The heels of Nightmare's black dress shoes clicked against the dark tiled floors, echoing off the empty hallway of his castle as he made his way towards his office, grumbling under his breath. Eventually, he made it to his study, the door shutting behind him with a soft click.
It had been a hectic few months.
Between prepping AUs for destruction and distracting the creator long enough for Error to destroy said AUs to maintain the Balance of the Multiverse– while admittedly both tedious and exhausting– it was worth the extra bit of breathing room they had to rest and brainstorm further plans. His boys had more than earned it, all of them fast asleep in their rooms, and if their dreams just happened to be dreamless for the next week– well, no one could exactly prove anything.
Nightmare could admit the occasional nap was nice, but he wasn't as much of a sleeper as it was. Sure, he often 'slept' to do his job in the plane of dreams, but that was more akin to meditation. Natural sleep, though, didn't come easily for him. Nonetheless, he managed to get in a 2-hour power nap, breaking a new record for him. The sludge-covered skeleton felt refreshed, so being tired wasn't why he was disgruntled.
Recently, a considerable influx of negativity has been going off at random somewhere within the multiverse. Being so busy at the time, Nightmare was annoyed with himself. He didn't have the opportunity to check the source of said influx.
That is, until now.
The extra negativity was making him jittery, like one too many cups of coffee; the scale was tipped a bit too far in his direction to his liking. Contrary to his brother's thoughts, he dropped the whole 'taking over the entire multiverse' thing when he unintentionally grew attached to his minions.
He sighed, running a hand over his skull. It couldn't be helped; he had it sitting on the back burner for long enough, longer than he would have initially liked. Plus, he felt it would be a short time before Dream was back in action. His twin always tended to bounce back like some kind of stubborn ball, which was both impressive and infuriating.
He supposed now was as good a time as any. There was no time like the present and all that nonsense.
Without further thought, he straightened up his usual business casual clothes with a calm gaze, disappearing in a blink of black sludge.