Shattered's feelings towards Nightmare cause inner conflict 'cause he loves him but he hates him but he can't let go of him but he's been hurt by him too many times, but that's still his brother but he wants nothing to do with him but he could never stop loving him. Dream's feelings towards Nightmare cause conflict because he can't love his brother even though he does because Nightmare is a villain and hurts pain but he can't just not love him, even if everyone tells him he can't he does.
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.)
Now, Shattered, in my mind, accepted that Nightmare was angry for a reason... but the wrong reason. He blames it on the corruption, and he wants to fix it so bad, wants to take responsibility, take accountability for turning a blind eye SO BAD, that he takes the corruption. (He doesn't understand that the corruption is the only way Nightmare has managed to reclaim the power the mortals of their village took from him. He can't, until he sees Nightmare as he was before, broken, weaker than he'd been in so long, and so so so afraid of that.)













