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theundertalenebulartheory · 1 year ago

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Dream Catcher, Nightmare Snatcher (A Symbiote Nightmare!Sans Fic)

((I’ve had this idea rattling around in the back of my brain for a while, inspired originally by @zwagyzonk and their little comic of Nightmare as a sleep paralysis demon that gets captured by a dreamcatcher. https://zwagyzonk.tumblr.com/tagged/sleep%20paralysis

But @mothiepixie and the Nightmare Revival she’s inspired with her Symbiote Nightmare https://www.tumblr.com/mothiepixie/tagged/symbiote%20nightmare

gave me the kick in the pants I needed to finally put something a little more coherent together.))

DREAM CATCHER, NIGHTMARE SNATCHER CH1

You’re cursed.

Utterly and completely, hopelessly cursed.

It was the only explanation. You’d been having night terrors for weeks on end. Spooky voices following you through the woods. A cyan eye. Falling. Running. Your pants missing at your commencement ceremony. Teeth falling out. A cheshire smile. You’re late to the most important event of your life. It’s your birthday and nobody shows up. Even the kind where everything seems normal but it’s just wrong in ways you can’t actually articulate nor even strictly identify, but in ways that become oppressively more intense until you’re screaming and crying as you come-to from something so horrendous as the ice cream man asking you what flavor you wanted. Ink-black oil-slicked tentacles lashing out from the shadows and dragging you into the dark.

Needless to say, you’re also desperate.

Utterly and completely, hopelessly desperate.

You’ve tried everything. Melatonin. Warm milk. No TV before bed. A break from social media. Researching dream meanings online. Avoiding fast food. A warm bath before bed. Staying up for a full night and not sleeping until the next night to try to exhaust yourself past the point of being even capable of experiencing nightmares. Alcohol. Reading silly stories. Buying different laundry detergent. Changing the thermostat. Checking for carbon monoxide.

More nightmares.

You dragged, quite literally if the scraping sound of the scuff of your shoes is anything to go by, yourself through a Farmer’s Market you’d had on your calendar for days. You were excited to be here. You’d wanted to come. There were colors and people and sounds and smells. But you were so, so tired you could barely focus on anything happening around you. Even the strongest espresso you could buy was barely keeping you vertical. You were clutching it like a life preserver and trying to look at the art and you reached for a little sample of cheese. Your mouth told them (someone) it’s amazing even though you couldn’t actually remember if it made it past your teeth. You’re exhausted, incoherent, and in danger of falling on someone or something if you keep going even though you’re barely halfway through. It was warm and sunny and not even the brightest summer sunshine could keep you upright so you reached for another sample of something. The nice lady behind the stall asked if you could only please take two and you don’t even remember taking the first one. So, you admitted defeat and turned around. You just had to get back to your car. You have to drive home without getting into an accident. You have to...

You sat. It was shady. And still shiny. Colorful. Someone asked you a question and you answered. Then kept talking. Until there were tears. Something was pressed into your hand and you reached into your wallet, grabbing what was in there and trading everything you had for whatever was in your hand before fleeing.

You’d forgotten your espresso somewhere before arriving home, clutching your new prize as if it could save you. As if it had answers to questions you couldn’t even ask. You flopped into bed on your back, your prize resting over your heart (your soul) as you passed from consciousness.

It’s the dark and spooky woods again. You’re breathing quickly, great gulps of air giving you barely any reprieve as you dodge trees and stumble over their roots. Roots that reach for you, oil-slick and glistening eerily as they grab for your legs and ankles. You don’t even know what you’re running from, only that It’s Coming. And if you stop, you’ll be caught. Dragged away. So, you run. Your blood is pounding in your ears and tears are streaming down your cheeks, or maybe it’s the blood from catching a branch across your face. All at once the roots grab at you and you hit the ground hard enough to bounce, knocking the wind completely out of your lungs. You lay there gaping, suffocating, drowning, and over your shoulder there’s that cyan eye and the cheshire smile. The roots have you trapped, winding tighter around you like a boa constrictor. They wrap around your neck, your face, holding you completely immobile as that menacing smile grows closer and the cold chill of terror seeps into your very bones.

A black, skeletal hand reaches for you and catches your face.

There’s something in your hand.

You wrench free of just one tentacle and shove it at him. He easily catches your hand, prying your prize from your desperate clutches. It’s a... net. And you aren’t letting go. But then again... neither is he. The smile falters as the skeletal hand draws back, caught fast by the fingertips in the delicate weave of the net, and then by the wrist. The entity jerks back fully, the tentacles around you instantly dissolving and you choke out a wheezing gasp as they struggle against the threads that seem to be materializing out of the shimmering beads embedded in the net that’s still held fast in your hand. It’s arm is fully caught, and then it’s ribcage. He shouts in distress and disbelief as he’s fully entangled, and not even all the tentacle roots surrounding you can wiggle free.

Something in the dreamscape shifts and changes and suddenly you’re... yourself. It’s you. Awake and lucid and staring wide-eyed at this... being. Creature. Monster.

He’s trapped.

The threads grow thicker and stronger until they’re chains holding HIM immobile and he’s shouting a loud string of archaic curses as he thrashes in his bonds. Bonds that stretch across the small clearing and lead right back to your hand.

He, too, follows the lines and discovers YOU to be his captor. He snarls, bares his fangs and strains will the full might of his power. Roars with a multi-layered voice that growls deeply enough you think you feel your bones rattle, “What Have You Done!?”

“ME?” You ask incredulously, still reeling from this turn of events. You blink at him, utterly flabbergasted and honestly a little offended. “You were the one chasing me! Are YOU the reason I’ve been having nightmares for weeks? What the hell, man!?”

The skeleton snaps his teeth at you, thrashing regardless of how useless it seems to be. “Silence! I’ll not be spoken to in such a manner! I am a demigod! Nightmare, Guardian of Negativity. You are a mere human. Kneel when you speak to me, peasant!”

You raise a single eyebrow at him. “Kneel. To you. Uhhh... no thanks. You’ve been terrorizing me for weeks, I don’t have to do jack shit. If anything, YOU should be the one who’s kneeling! I’ve fallen asleep at work like 10 times this month. I’m probably one more infraction away from getting fired. I could have died, dude. If I’m driving to work and I fall asleep at the wheel, I could kill other people AND myself! YOU kneel! YOU say sorry!”

Nightmare actually verbally sputters at that, glaring at you with hatred, disgust, and vitriol. “I do not kneel to anyone. The insolence. Your unmitigated gall is reason enough for me to end your pathetic life this instant. No ties can truly bind a being such as myself. I do not know what tricks you have devised to hold me this long, but you stand there and speak to me in this manner no longer. Perhaps if you beg, I may take pity enough on you to end you quickly and painlessly.”

You blink at him, your expression deeply unimpressed. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Ok. Well. That’s nice. You seem pretty stuck there, though.”

It’s now Nightmare’s turn to give you a flat, unimpressed look. The root tentacles begin to undulate and thrash in earnest now, his teeth gritting as he strains against his bonds. He growls with the effort, attempting to pull them back underground, slip between the cracks, even flex against the chains to try to break them. But they hold fast, almost as if they’re somewhat elastic and sticky. He thrashes harder, growl raising to a snarl and finally to a howl of frustration when it becomes clear that he’s absolutely stuck fast and cannot break his confinement.

“Blast these chains! How have you done this!? What is that in your hand!? What device have you crafted that has fastened me so!?”

You drop your gaze down to the thing in your hands and you’re surprised to see it’s a dreamcatcher. You’d call it ordinary since you’re pretty sure most people where you’re from are at least familiar with what it is and how it’s made but it’s actually far from ordinary. It’s stunning. You can feel the care and attention to detail put into it, and what little bit of silver light filters through the trees catches beautifully in the moonstone beads carefully woven into the design. Its small size is more than made up for by its intricacy, and you’re half wondering if it’s some kind of lace inside of the hoop. It isn’t, of course, but such delicate and intricate weaving is certainly reminiscent of lace.

“Huh. You know... I don’t actually know how I got this. I think maybe I bought it? Or someone gave it to me? I don’t really remember, it’s all a bit fuzzy.”

“You don’t...” Nightmare shakes with fury and the chains rattle ominously. “You aren’t even aware of how you came to possess it? What kind of dullard are you? You half-wit! Blundering Trollop!”

You couldn’t help but snort at him a little. “Wow. Go back to the 1400’s, my man. They want their speech patterns back.” You shake your head as he shrieks about your insult, and you go back to inspecting your super cool prize.

“Alright, here’s how this is going to work. This thing caught you because you’ve been giving me nightmares. I’m going to wake up, and then I’m going to look online to see how you like... cleanse it or purify it or whatever. That should banish you back to wherever it is you came from. And then I’m going to keep this thing with me for a very long time. If you like being all tied up, feel free to come back and try again, but I’m going to give you the suggestion that maybe if you would prefer not to get stuck like this again... don‘t come back. Alright? I don‘t care who you are, I don’t care what your deal is, I don’t care about any of that. I want my sleep back, and that’s it. I don’t have any beef with you, I don’t want to fight you, I don’t want to be mortal enemies or anything. I’m not going to hunt you down or whatever. No grudges or anything. I just want to sleep. And this thing seems to be capable of helping me not wake up in the middle of the night screaming. So... begone with you or whatever.”

You waved your hands at him in a ‘shooing’ manner, and he continued to tremble with rage. “To think you even could fathom to hunt me,” he spat, “is laughable at best. Hear me now, human. Your little ‘device’ may have saved you from my wrath in the realm of dreams. But should you ever cross my path again, I’ll not hesitate to destroy you. There will be no preamble. There will be no mercy. There will be no begging for your life. You will cease to exist.”

“But why,” you whined. “I didn’t even do anything! YOU showed up and bullied me in my sleep for weeks for no reason. I found a solution that isn’t even hurting you, told you that I’d set you free by banishing you back to wherever it is you come from once I wake up... and your reaction is to threaten me with imminent death!? What if I just... don’t ever free you, then? Hmm? Wouldn’t that be smarter of me? If the reward I get for finding the most peaceful resolution to all this is imminent death, then why bother with trying to find a way to release you!? Or... banish you. Cleanse the... the thing. What if I just go bury it somewhere instead? Wouldn’t that be better AND easier for me than trying to research how to release you?”

Nightmare seethes in his bonds, glaring at you with his one piercing cyan eye light, but you can see the wheels in his head turning. You only stumbled there in the end because if this guy is a real thing, you probably shouldn’t be telling him about what a dreamcatcher is. That seems to be your one deus ex machina at the moment and you definitely don’t want to give him information he can use against you later. The less he knows, the better. And if that means you look like an idiot that’s stumbled on something they don’t really know how to use, all the better. Because that might give the impression that maybe this is the minimum power this “device” might have, and if you knew more about it you could use it even MORE effectively. That’s not actually how it works, but you like giving the impression of that being a possibility.

“Fine,” he spits eventually.

“Fine?” You fold your arms over your chest. “Fine what?”

He growls lowly, a dangerous rumble that shakes your very soul. “Release me, and I shall trouble you no longer. I shall reward your... mercy... in kind, and depart peaceably.”

“You promise?”

His upper lip curls as if he’s smelled something particularly foul. “You have my word.”

You squint at him. He seems like the kind of being that trades in deals and favors often, but this Nightmare (literally) hasn’t exactly given you a lot of reasons to trust him at his word. “And what happens if I believe you and then you double cross me and come back for revenge later or something?”

He sputters again, indignant, and shakes in his chains. “I gave you my word! Do you have any idea of how rare a thing it is? How many beings across the multiverse have begged on their hands and knees for such an assurance?”

Even kneading at the space between your eyes isn’t doing much for expressing just how deeply conflicted you feel. “Alright. Alright. I’ll wake up. Find a way to purify this thing. Banish you back to where you belong and never see you again. But if I catch you in this thing again because you came back for revenge, I’m just going to bury it somewhere. You’ll be stuck in it until someone else comes along and stumbles on it, however long that might be. Got it?”

“I agree to your terms.”

The light filtering through the trees is taking on a more golden tone than silver and you shift to try to find its source. “Guess maybe it’s morning now?”

Nightmare doesn’t deign to respond to your rhetorical question, but you feel a little weird about just leaving without saying something. “Well, uh... I guess it was pretty cool to meet you in person after everything. Maybe stop doing that, though. The whole ‘terrorizing people’s dreams’ thing. Or at least just like... pick a different victim each night. Share the misery or something. Anyways. Uh... take care of yourself, ok?”

He rolls his eyes and groans in exasperation. “Just take your leave, for stars’ sake. Listening to your aimless prattling while trapped as I am is more punishment than I deserve.”

“Tch. Fine. Bye.”

You blinked awake, staring at your ceiling for a long moment while the memories of your dream clung to your consciousness. It was strange, actually. Usually you didn’t remember much about your dreams. Little snippets of moments here and there. But this one was actually sticking. And the fact that you could remember most of it had you looking down at your hand, where it was resting over your heart.

Huh. There really was something in your hand. You lifted it up and inspected it, half surprised but more intrigued that the very same dreamcatcher you’d dreamed about was held tightly in your palm. Well... it was mostly the same as it had been in your dream. Black ooze was tangled in the threads of the delicate weaving. THAT certainly hadn’t been there before. But it did look eerily like the iridescent slime that the Nightmare creature had been covered in. You touched a bit of it, and it moved, which made you jump. You tried again, and the goop flinched away.

“No way.”

You pinched and pulled a bit of it off of the fibers, and you jumped when it sounded like the slime made some teeny little sound of protest. “Oh hush,” you admonished, “I’m trying to get you out of there. I’m trying this first.”

It was wild to think that the Nightmare creature was so tiny. The amount of goop stuck in your dreamcatcher probably wouldn’t have even filled a thimble all the way, if you had one nearby to stick it in. He’d seemed so huge and powerful in your dreams. But, then again, this was the waking world and perhaps you couldn’t really expect everything to be exactly how it was when you were sleeping.

It took some effort, but after a few minutes you’d managed to remove most of the goop from the dreamcatcher. It trembled a little in your hand before stretching experimentally and wrapping around two of your fingers. It slipped, almost snake-like, in and around the gaps, like it was blindly trying to get a feel for the world around it. “Well, hello to you too.”

It was kindof cute, if you were being honest. And a little bit puzzling. You’d said you would purify the dreamcatcher (you vaguely remembered something from when you were a kid about putting them in direct sunlight) but you’d sort-of expected that all that would happen is you’d leave it in your window sill, and whatever banishing or purification was going to happen would happen in the dream world. You hadn’t expected the Nightmare creature to join you in the waking world. But then again, maybe it was better this way. Maybe this would give you some kind of visual cue as to when the banishing/purification had finished. Maybe the little blob creature would slowly vanish through the day or maybe it would suddenly disappear.

You picked up the dreamcatcher and moved to put it in the window, but startled a little bit to see more ooze seeping out of the threads. Ah. So... perhaps the rest of him was still in there, then. You plucked the new goobers of ooze out of the threads and they easily joined with the small mass in your hand. “Alright. Well. Clearly that’s not going to be enough to get you free, then. Let me do a quick internet search to make sure I’m doing this right and then we’ll get you out of there.”

The mass shifted a little, moving to your wrist where it wrapped around it like a bracelet before settling against your skin. You turned your hand a little to look at it from both sides, but it seemed like the goop was content to rest on your wrist, so you left it alone. A quick internet search revealed that you��d at least remembered somewhat correctly, though the few websites you’d found all talked about how the bad dreams or bad thoughts that had been captured in the dreamcatcher would be “destroyed with the light of the morning sun,” which seemed a little bit... harsher than you really wanted to be. But maybe that was just the phrasing some older website had used and everyone was just citing the same source (or each other.)

“Alright, little guy. Let’s see if this works.”

You took your dreamcatcher to your east-facing window and pulled up the blinds. The reaction was horrifically instantaneous. The goop bracelet constricted painfully tight and squealed, and the little beads of goop that had managed to leak out of the threads in the dreamcatcher during your internet started shriveling up with a soft hiss. Cursing, you yanked the hoop out of the sunlight and clutched it to your chest. Guilt and anxiety clawed their way up your throat and you whispered while furiously petting the slime still squeezing your wrist.

“Sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know! I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. We won’t do that. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, honest. I’m just doing what the research said, but if it’s hurting you then I’ll find something different to try. I’m sorry. Are you ok? Uhhhhh... Here!”

You rushed to your bathroom and turned your sink on cold, trickling it carefully over the bracelet and the beads of goop that had been affected by the sunlight as you continued to murmur your apologies. Slowly the goop on your wrist relaxed, and the knot of guilt in your chest eased a little.

Well... this was maybe going to take a little longer than you’d expected it would.

Nightmare was NOT going to be happy about that.

[[ You can read the rest of the fic on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/48671317 ]]

((Tagging @velvetwyrme because I was telling them about this fic idea the other day. If anyone who follows MothiePixie ends up reading this fic, I’ve been trying to be a little more active with other UTDR / UTMV blogs by commenting on posts and sending asks and stuff but uhhh, you’ve probably been seeing me around under the main blog name accioturtur - Hi! It’s me. Lol. This is the sideblog I’m using for UT stuff. AO3 is down for maintenance today but maybe at some point I’ll get this over there.))

Disclaimer: For anyone unfamiliar with Native American Dreamcatchers, there are actually several different versions of the beliefs surrounding them corresponding with the different tribes that use them. Some tribes believe that the webbed netting of the dreamcatcher actually captures GOOD dreams, to keep them close to you. Some tribes believe the net captures bad thoughts and dreams to keep them from troubling your mind. The different parts of the dreamcatcher are symbolic and very important to the cultures that use them. For the opening chapter of this idea, I only reference a couple of parts AND I will be the first to admit I’m taking a few artistic liberties for how the interaction in the Dream World might go down. This fic is just for Fandom Funsies - please only ever purchase dreamcatchers from actual Native American sources.

THAT SAID - the basic premise therefore could be used for either a Nightmare Gets Caught fic OR for a Dream Gets Caught fic, both of which have fun and silly implications. Since I’m blending the Dreamcatcher and Symbiote ideas, mine will be using Nightmare. Anyone is welcome to playing around with the idea, though!

THIS fic takes place about 50-100 years after The Tree and Dream is still trapped in stone. Nightmare is still trying to learn about his powers and his place in the multiverse and because he’s still a bit less experienced and on his own, he gets caught somewhere he really doesn’t *technically* have any business being in the first place.

#undertale fic #Dream Catcher Nightmare Snatcher #mothiepixie #symbiote nightmare

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