#moft asks

I love this, and I think my headcannons are kinda like this!

Dream loves and cares about his brother so much. Nightmare is the only piece of their home and their world that he has left... and it's detrimental that Nightmare is fighting so hard against just... stopping all this violence on the multiverse and just going back to how they were before. (He can'taccept that how they were before was only good for him). Dream wants his brother back the way he had him before. Whole. Unbroken. Unafraid... happy. He can't let go of the past. (He secretly blames himself for Nightmare being hurt beyond repair. He tortures himself over it, loses sleep... but he wants Nightmare to get better not because it would make NM happy, but because he feels guilty for not protecting him from the villagers and what they did. He denies Nightmare his right to feel his pain and process it, and therefore his right to heal from that pain. Because accepting that Nightmare is angry and hurt for a reason means accepting that his brother was being hurt, or worse, right under his nose, for fuck knows how long.)

You cannot tell me this man knows how socializing works.

He goes to a coffee shop for the first time and just stands in the corner for an hour, expecting someone to give him coffee. I mean, how the fuck is he supposed to know about literally any aspect of socializing? He is a feral tree child with no inclination to interact with others!

Dream has a desire to talk to people! He's weird as hell, but people tend to write it off because they put him on a pedestal. (He knows about no form of hygiene but river baths and chewing on sticks) Luckily he has people to learn from, so he eventually becomes sliiightly less weird. (Stars and other friendlies)

The castle would be incredibly confused if one of the boys disappeared. It would try and make Nightmare as comfortable and happy as possible, but it would do things like guiding one of the boys to the missing teammate's room, as if to ask "where are they?" Or remind the other to look for them. It'd also definitely bully Killer or Dust to alleviate some of the boredom and restlessness. (Playing mean pranks like tripping them or getting them lost)

I love the idea of NM sending Cross out to double agent with the stars maybe a year or two after he joins the team. Cross keeps the jig up for about a year, feeding NM and his teammates information that they can use against the stars later... the castle would definitely get grumpy about Cross being gone for so long. It can handle the boys being gone for a week or two, but more than that, and it gets restless. It starts keeping the boys from leaving, getting overprotective and frustrated. Any time the boys are out on the rare kind of mission that lasts a month or so, Nigntmare has to calm the castle and constantly remind it that their mortals will come back safe and sound.

The castle may or may not be slightly attached to its inhabitants.

《Mentions of character death below the cut》

First of all, I love you, anon. Secondly, YIPPEE!!! YIPPEE!!! I LOVE TALKING ABOUT THE LIVING CASTLE!!!

Okay, so let's cover the basics! So, Nightmare's castle is alive, and its halls and corridors move around as it pleases. Doors disappear, rooms shift around, all that jazz. Oh, oh, and the castle LOVES Nightmare. He's the castle's very favorite. It will do anything for him. He's spent more than a thousand years with the place, after all. It bends to his will by choice, not because he makes it. Whenever he walks somewhere? He always finds himself there unnaturally quick. He wants to be hidden away? The boys won't be able to find him unless the castle thinks they should.

The castle is very, very protective of him. Nightmare always warns the new boys to stick together in the first few weeks here. To never walk anywhere alone. It's for good reason. When he just got Killer? The castle would trap him in a loop for hours at a time, until Nightmare finally noticed and went to find him. Once, it trapped him somewhere for days, after threatening Nightmare. The castle wouldn't even let Nightmare reach him until It'd been nearly four days. Killer nor Nightmare were very happy about that.

For a while, Killer assumed the castle was doing Nightmare's bidding, and he was just lying about it having a mind of its own... well, until the castle began to trust him, that is. See, the castle is also very, very mischievous. It plays jokes. Tells secrets. Whispers, and coaxes. One day, Killer gives in and follows. He learns all sorts of things, mostly about Nightmare and mostly harmless things, but it's delightful and intriguing to taunt him with a piece of personal information that Nightmare has no clue how he learned.

The castle pulls mean jokes, Killer has seen a floorboard snap out of place to trip him up a little, only to snap obediently back into place when Nightmare turns around and starts scolding the walls. He swears to god the shadows hiss with a quiet, delighted laughter. These jokes in Nightmare are all loving, of course. The castle is sure not to truly harm him.

Killer, however, semi-frequently turns the corner to his room only to fall down the flight of stairs that is definitely supposed to be by the living room, nowhere near his own.

Dust wakes up in the middle of the night after a nightmare and finds that his door is ajar... Moreso, that Horror's door is right across from his own. Horror lives in the room several doors down beyond the corner.

Horror is hungry and walks out of his room and down the hall only to walk right into the kitchen. The kitchen is a five minute walk away and down a flight of stairs. He looks back and sees the typical view from the kitchen door.

Cross doesn't take Nightmare's warning about sticking with someone seriously, and he goes to take a shower by himself, only to find himself completely lost and utterly confused. He thinks the boys are playing some kind of trick on him because he keeps hearing laughter. Dust finds him and drags him to Nightmare so he can be reprimanded. Cross gets a light scolding and another warning, this time with the explanation that the castle, it's very lively... and it doesn't take well to new folks. It needs time to understand you mean us, and it, no harm.

Killer tells him that whenever he got lost, he'd talk to the castle, and that would help. (He started telling it all his intrusive thoughts and eventually it would get tired of his shit and let him go) Cross starts talking to the walls and telling jokes while he walks alone, and suddenly, he doesn't get lost at all. He hears whispering and mumbling while he's eating some dessert in his room, so he leaves some in the corner. It's gone when he blinks, and the next day? The training room is right around the corner from his own room. It's safe to say he makes a good impression.

living castle + killer w/ vision issues

Killer is blurry eyed at the best times and stark blind at the worst, so I think the castle will guide someone to him to help him get where he needs, or it'll light up the sconces on Killer's path brighter, so he can follow the lights. Regardless of how blurry things are or how bad the tunnel vision is, he can see the lights. Maybe as he's walking along the wall, his hand bumps into something, and he finds a railing. He's never seen railing anywhere but on the stairs, but he trusts the castle to get him where he needs to go when he's like this; He doesn't really have any other choice.