#nightmare!rem

Mild exasperation spills from his brother. “Enough,” he says, without real heat, but with enough bite that both Killer and Horror immediately try to restrain themselves. “Did I not emphasize the necessity for stealth?“

“You should’ve sent me and Dust on ahead,” Molt tells him. Looping lazily and low to the ground, one of his tendrils flick. 

“Aw, c’mon Chief! That’s not fair.” Killer whines. 

There’s a definite No, in Rem’s brief flash of irritation-not-irritation. Not directed at him, but circumstances. “Unfortunately,” he begins, voice desert dry. “I need the four of you here to pull off this heist.”

“Hey… what did… what did King Asgore call his sneakiest Knight?” Horror rasps. 

Rem bites back a groan. “What did Asgore call this Knight?”

Horror snickers, struggling to get his words in words in order between huffs of laughter. “… Sir… Valence.”

Twin barks of laughter. Amusement even trickles from Dust. And like with his brother, Molt does not need to see it to hear the eye-roll.

Killer hums. A sharp sound. Molt imagines him tapping the blade of his knife to his smile. “Poor blueberry. He’s missing out on a chance to test his mettle against the Royal Guard. He must be sooo disappointed.”

“… and Cross,” Molt adds, quietly. He feels the sting of disappointment himself.

“Cross is where he needs to be,” Rem says. There’s an undercurrent of defensiveness to him, responding to the subtle bite Molt hadn’t meant to let slip. He understands why his brother made this decision. They need someone on the outside in case something goes wrong. (and something almost always goes wrong.)

But Cross doesn’t see it that way. He thinks Rem is excluding him for a different reason. But he doesn’t say that. They’re too close to the Castle to get into an argument right now.

His brother makes a soft noise, a grunt, and the two are close enough that an image flashes across his mind’s eye: Killer throwing his arm over Rem’s shoulders. Annoyance sparks like pop rocks and embers from a bonfire. But his brother is not genuinely annoyed enough to throw Killer off, and tolerates him with limited, finite patience. 

Killer cackles. He says something Molt doesn’t quite catch, it’s spoken too softly but it prompts Rem to respond with a snort and a dry: “Try not to kill anyone. We were never here. Get the book, get out and we’re gone.”

“You got it, Boss.”

“It’s bad enough that this world is an interdimensional hotspot. Keep in mind we might see familiar faces. Don’t let that distract you.”

Dust, who’d been quiet until that point, made a non-commital noise. A chorus of chuckles sound at the twice layered inside joke. Then the group falls silent. Anticipation and eagerness thrums in their bones.

He guesses they must be able to see the Castle now.

Molt nodded and waited for his brother to take his hand, and then, they ran. Down a path that felt like hard and coarse clay, pebbles and leaves and the errant twig crunched under his boots. A fern lashed at his legs. Before he knew it, one drop of water became a dozen, then a downpour, and his clothes were soaked through and there was nothing more miserable than being drenched in corrupted magic AND cold water.

His brother took a sharp right. “Here! Duck your head a bit and crouch down. Low ceiling.”

At this, he brought two tendrils up, and felt along what felt like a long plank of wood that met another, like a fence. It was the edge of... a crate?

“It’s a wagon,” Rem told him, once he’d ducked underneath the overhang. Rem sat down. He brushed against his knees as he settled down next to him and leaned back against the spokes of a wheel.

“Is the sky dark?” he whispered.

“No,” his brother said, whispering back. Something about thunderstorms made you want to whisper. It was a game they played when they were younger, and Molt didn’t feel too old for it yet. The idea you could hide from thunder made him feel safer, so it only made sense to whisper too.

“You’re lying,” Molt said.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. You are using your ‘don’t be scared but really I’m scared myself’ voice.”

“I have no such voice!” but Rem wasn’t really upset. He was just embarrassed that he’d been caught.

Molt nodded. “We can be scared together.”

“I just told you, I’m not—“ he was cut off but a quaking boom, so loud and near Molt felt his teeth ache with it. They both jumped, but Rem was the only one who yelped. Molt was too polite to mention it.

A couple of deep growls answered the first thunderclap, the sound faded and the quick-step pulse of his soul slowly calmed.

“… what if someone moves the wagon?” Molt asked.

“No one is moving the wagon,” Rem told him firmly. It sounded like he was partially trying to reassure himself too. “And if some farmer is crazy enough to go anywhere in this weather we’ll just hitch a ride in the back.”

“…won’t we have to pay a fee?”

He practically heard Rem roll his eyelights. “Walking and shortcuting is free. Why would we pay to go anywhere? We go where we like.”

That kind of logic was really hard to argue against.

The sky rumbled threateningly.