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The library books were not his: the villagers made it quite clear. Though accompanied by Dream; their admired, their favourite, their chosen twin; though they were of the same kin as their positive counterpart, they did not trust him.
Loans were short; often he was unable to check out the same book twice in a row: a silly rule some no-faced adult had made once he had expressed his interest a bit too loudly to Dream of the various tomes and scriptures housed in the Village; A day or two at most he could keep and treasure them as close as could be considered his own before he had to, once again, make the trip to return the pristine bound pages.
He was lucky if he read fast enough to finish any of them.
Still he didn’t argue.
All of the books held within the Large wood and stone building were well kept by a rather stern Librarian: a frail looking old man who, even though he looked like he could be knocked over by a particularly mild breeze, people didn’t cross because they highly respected him: over time despite the man not caring one iota for him, Nightmare grew to respect him too.
This was the man who, despite his distrust, allowed him to learn the joys of reading: who had directed him in the correct care of the literature he handled with his childish hands: Who had eventually allowed him to sit and quietly watch as he restored Old books; as worn and frail as he; back into something readable again. He remade a new what had broken down: under careful hands and keen eyes: stories and words of long gone by eras and people.
He was not a nice man. Not even to the people who Nightmare had seen, learned over time, he lived with and grew up with: all sharp edges and biting words but sometimes he would soften. The hands of that harsh man became a soft embrace as he carefully re-sewed reams of paper into place and delicately glued spines back to perfection. Their newly re-Illuminated titles shined like Kintsugi upon their leather casings.
The man never liked him… and yet… it was from him he received his first gift that was not from Dream. Twas Not a shiny rock sporting interesting shapes or pattern; nor a delicately pressed flower with colours bright; neither a song shared between his Brothers and the other Villages who danced and twirled and played in the sunlight: no.
It was a Book.
Flicking through its pages revealed that It held no words, no pictures, no title but it was a book: of that, Nightmare was certain. He had held many, a long rotating list of books: some he had finished, some he had never seen again. Always containing something new and interesting within their pages.
But this… was empty…
He had held it delicately, he remembered: confused.
The man had given it reverently, he remembered: almost resigned. And…
“This building holds many stories.” The old man had said: voice cold like the rain outside and yet his gaze held warmth as it wandered across his small kingdom. “One day we too shall be gone and too will join its many legends. That is, if they are chronicled well enough by a determined hand.”
He remembered a long pause as the man shelved a long worn, well-loved book: handwritten, its title long faded and the spine cracked and abused from being opened so many times: it was out of place amongst the library's pristine pages. The man’s eyes found his.
“I know not the story of you but someday, somebody will. It's up to you to make sure that what people read is the proper one. Not the lies told from unworthy mouths and held by judging ears.” The old man felt almost sorrowful as his cold eyes looked down at him. But that couldn’t be… no one felt sorrow for him here.
He hadn’t understood at the time.
He was never sure what had become of the old man, just that he disappeared from the village shortly after imparting his cryptic wisdom…
Nightmare was always pristine with his books.
His personal library quickly gained tome after tome as he wandered the Multiverse: slowly becoming an intricate maze of diction and genres. Each handled just as carefully as the last.
And the old man’s gift: the journal…
Their pages never wrinkled. Never flawed. Kept clean and neat despite his corruption covered hands. Initial Words laid out precise and with purpose within the dark leather: exact and specifically chosen as his fountain pen dragged across their pearly skins.
Until, he wasn’t.
Killer was unpredictable.
Like a slash of the Knife he wielded. A lot more clever than he ever let on: absorbing information like a sponge and never letting a drop of it go until it was required.
His Soul and Personality bright despite his flaws: and Nightmare had picked him for his flaws. His irritating, irritating yet oh so interesting flaws.
He was a never ending well spring of chatter, an unexpected drips of wisdom in a dark moment, or the irritating need to point out the incredibly obvious. He was words personified.
Or perhaps they were not Truly flaws at all: Nightmare was no longer sure. He just knew that Whatever had irritated him so much in the beginning slowly grew on him.
What he chose to call attention to was fascinating to the Negative Guardian and slowly, over time, he did something he never would have ever considered: he began to annotate.
What had once flowed from his pen precise and neat was now a jumble, an intricate tangle of thoughts and emotions that he struggled to articulate in a way which he hadn’t felt since he was a child taking in the words of long dead people and years-gone by-Stories within those precious old tomes he had been graciously allowed to peruse.
The margins filled with cut off half sentences where he had second guessed himself and then, rambling running thoughts that caught and twisted as they attempted to escape the confines of his mind: accompanied only rarely by a sketch of something he found interesting.
The additions to the pages were garish and permanent and occasionally bled through onto the other side: a wound that could be seen even when not looking directly at it just like Killers eternally dripping Sockets and Visible distorted soul.
A strike through of words taken back: An underline of something of note: A vibrant Highlighter trailing across a page: bleeding onto its planes colour which had previously been denied and bringing to light the overlooked.
Killer was unpredictable.
In turn, He made Nightmare unpredictable.
Dust was quiet.
Like a Gentle breeze carrying his Name sake. A quiet pause to listen: a tired ‘that’ll do for now’: and yet, vividly present.
Dust had flaws just as Killer did though his were presented differently.
Unlike Killer who preferred words ,Dust utilised silence. A constant phantom presence in the Castle like a ghost haunting its halls: he listened. He barely spoke up to Nightmares irritation: voice a whisper if he needed to. He stewed in the information he acquired: let it sit for a while before acting like killer but made less noise about it. It was dangerous: dust was dangerous. His red scarf: a constant warning flag that fluttered in his wake: marking his existence in the twisting Castle halls. Nightmare couldn’t help but be intrigued.
Intrigued about what exactly they had heard and what was on their mind as they went about their day: over time he became eager to hear the quiet skeletons thoughts.
Dust was like a bookmark.
His scarf: red, bright, obvious: showed him off when he wished to be noticed as if proclaiming ‘Look at me! I have something important to share!’
And yet, Dust was like a dog-eared page.
Quiet in its presence, until you came across its ruined edges. Patient and waiting for you to notice his broken parts: a fold on what would otherwise be a perfect page. The pages of the book that was Dust held many tears and folds where he had paused to reconsider something or pointedly tried to tear out parts he did not like. His hand, poised: patiently waiting above the story he had been given. Listening to the words that they spoke: present without having to say a single thing and he tore out the ending with his own hands.
The words he chose to speak: the additions he made warped the Grain of the pages with the weight of what they contained. Trinkets and keepsakes: like Old pressed flowers and shiny rocks used as paperweights: tucked delicately between pages, imprinting on them a ghost of what once was and what could’ve been but was no longer.
A bookmark that decided where its story should end. Something that could not be uncreased, un-warped or glued back to perfection without a lot of time and work.
Without unmaking what it had endured: to become: A physical bookmark making themselves quietly known in any situation.
Absent minded Nightmare twisted a corner of his Book: folding it over on itself: forever marking it. A quiet new flaw in his collection.
Pages weathered now by years of handling: both gentle and harsh. Edges yellowed: worn and battered and no longer showing their perfect self to its only viewer. A quiet addition to the many years it had endured.
Dust was quiet.
And Dust was thoughtful: made Nightmare Thoughtful.
Horror was exactly as he appeared.
There wasn’t a single delicate bone in his body discounting the huge skull fracture on display for the world to see: even so Nightmare would not call him fragile.
Horror got up and kept getting up no matter how many times he got hit, battered, bruised or beat down. Injured but never defeated.
He was a visible injury. A visible weakness: Nightmare knew that this was true. Horror was a hunger. Horror was a thirst. A grasping desperate clawed hand reaching for hope within pages that had once, a very long time ago for even just a moment, offered comfort. Maybe he could still find it.
Horror was a cracked Spine: an open wound: a warning. The visible injury created from the reading And rereading, obsessively, of the same pages: of doing the same thing day after day. Of the hunger for knowledge: of the thirst for something unknown: of the desire to belong even for just a long gone memories moment within a space that had denied him a real place. A longing for something once had: now long gone.
Horror was a Cracked leather cover: doing its best to be what it needed. A target placed in front of an enemy's eyes: proclaiming ‘it’s me you want, right? I have nothing interesting within. Everything I am is in Full view. I will endure.’
Nightmare knew this was a lie. Horror had layers like any good spine and Cover keeping them going as long as possible before they needed to be reinforced.
Horror was a survivor. Hanging on by a thread and the last traces of Glue: the last traces of hope he felt in his world, his family: he was a cover and a Heavy Duty Spine sent to block the contents of his little family from harm.
Nightmare, once a careful handler of his tomes: pulling delicately open their story holding folds: didn’t hesitate to crack open the spine. The Glue holding in place the reams of well used papers crackled loudly as he allowed himself to not be delicate with the Old leather covering. If it had been printed with a title, eventually, it would fade away from the way his hands absently explored the wounds he inflicted upon its surface as he perused its contents.
A shield: well used: Damaged from its many long years but never Beyond repair. Loved by many despite all their nicks and flaws. Appreciated more than could ever be put into words: saving something soft within from being hurt once more.
Horror was exactly what he appeared…Nightmare knew he was: while also being so much more than what first glance showed.
Horror helped make Nightmare more than His cover showed.
Error was a mystery.
An unexpected balm to many things. A fixer of many things yet also a destroyer of many others. A tangled mess of contradictions wrapped up in a neat little blue bow.
Error’s strings could be used to repair things just as swiftly as they could tear them apart.
Everything eventually fell apart: it was the will of time. Unraveling and letting the pages drop where they may. Wearing down crucial threads that were once relied upon by many: yet despite their best efforts: snapped under the stress. Error was the unraveling of everything. An End. A distant memory in the minds of the few he lived as long as. An after thought.
Error was a destroyer. Yet, he was also a fixer.
Fixing something was an after thought.
After something is broken: you fix it.
Strings placed precisely and exactly: pulled tight to create a strong weave. Something that would last a long time until they would eventually wear out in need of replacing again. A rebooting of a physical object to help it back to a previous state.
Error’s reboots made him a little forgetful: memory issues were common: sometimes he would come out changed in little ways. He attempted to pull himself together after a crash: his own body failing him spectacularly when he needed it the most: his strings used to tear others down became a way to pull himself up when he was the most unsure. Fixing what he could with what little he had.
He was the new binding holding all the old pages close and adding in new pages as he went in hopes that he would be able to add more one day: to not lose what made him, him. It was… not always a success. Some things were long lost to time. A mystery that no one had the answers to as they pixelated out into nothingness like a well worn brittle page would no longer have the integrity to hold on to the desperate strings that bound and rebound them in an attempt to keep them all safe.
All Nightmare could do was hope as he carefully added more reams into what was once a simple thing. It now held so very, very much and he never wanted to lose any of it but time had not been kind. Years old words had long been smudged into obscurity: maybe his own tears stained the pages and weakened the bonds between the fibres: maybe he had been too rough. He would never know. Every page had been through something different: a story within a story that he was not privy to despite him being there for it all.
Error was a Mystery.
And everyday, Nightmare Loved to find out more.
Error made Nightmare Excited for new things to come.
Cross was change.
The careful and considerate rewriting of everything.
Cross had been written and rewritten.
Reset at his very foundation over and over.
Repeatedly, he had been something new.
A new binding. Shiny and new. Still pristine white pages and untouched by the hands of time. Perfection.
A new spine. He would bend, bend, bend. But never be given the chance to break because the cause didn’t want him broken. It wanted him Perfect.
A new bookmark. What had been here before… well, it had the chance to be something new now. Something better.
A new annotation. The old ones long since covered over… and yet a feint imprint of something left behind in the recycled paper was unmistakable.
He held tight to those…Those little left over things that allowed him to change.
It wasn’t until later his that his bindings were truly broken: maybe by his own hand. His once pristine pages becoming soaked in something he may never be able to remove.
His spine replaced to many times: unused to the weight of its now full pages: cracked beyond repair as he bent, bent, bent under the pressure and broke.
The bookmark: his relationships… the grasp on his world: fell out from between pages they had been so carefully tucked.
The long annotated history of people long gone: no longer existing as the Pages of His world’s story were changed: it was Blank once again but now nothing showed through.
Nothing physically remained of Cross's world except himself: but rewriting was in his soul.
The little book had been dutifully copied out, word for word. Neater than Nightmare had seen his own musings in a long time.
The original had been carefully handled between gloved hands, delicate in its turning of pages that had been battered around by the unrelenting hands of time: Change didn’t mean getting rid of everything that once was, after all. He could not save his world but he could attempt to save this so that even when the original crumbled to dust and joined back with the void: beautiful recreations, illuminated illustrations, of the things lovingly tucked between their pages became their own page so that they could no longer fall: someone would still be able to read this story.
Cross was a loving inscription within the cover pages to a loved one that rang out like the Chime of an old music box still dutifully singing its songs despite its broken tines and misaligned drum. Well meaning but sometimes missed.
A thoughtful gesture in the grand scheme of things: Nightmare shelved the rewrite with careful hands: More careful than he’d used in a long while. Fingers delicately tracing the spine as he pushed the pristine tome into place amongst its fellows.
Truly a perfect addition to his perfect Library.
Cross was change along with the sadness of looking back on things you can’t have. Nightmare preferred to look forward.
And yet, looking over his journal… an over annotated, dog-eared, spine cracked and Visibly mended sad mockery of a book that taunted him visually with its every mistake and Flaw: full to nearly bursting with everything he’d done… Nightmare found he wouldn’t change a thing.
Cross made Nightmare…well, thankful for all he had endured to reach this point.
Each of his flawed little weirdos: collected across the Multiverse just like the books Shelved in his library: they were Nightmares. And Nightmare… equally as Flawed: he was theirs.
They, despite their rocky starts, meant a lot to him. He had trouble saying it out loud but any one of them could read him as easily as he could read their emotions so he knew they knew: as easily as they could read any book from these shelves.
Still, he wondered what he was to each of them…
Nightmare despite his past… was not a pretty writer. The values a long gone old Librarian had enforced upon him no longer held him down. The ones he can’t put down, the books he called his own, they were well loved.
Every flaw. Every misprint and mistake. They were all his own: Never Out of place despite not being where he initially intended. They were exactly where they were meant to be.
He silently re-shelved the book.