Author's notes: Written for the Winter Whumperland challenge.

Day One: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Nightmares/Shared Nightmare Realm | PTSD | Stalking | Comfort: Hope

This short fic took forever to write; it's basically a bunch of concepts or lines that I tried to stitch into one story, and each bit needed to be just right. Hopefully the result is meaningful or at least coherent.

"You can listen to it at my house! Yes!"

Sara smiled. Wirt felt a momentarily thrill, like his heart was soaring, before it suddenly sank back down to his stomach.

"Maybe we-maybe we should listen to some other tapes first, though, and sort of work our way to this one. Th-This one's a little bit, uh—y-you can listen to it—"

As Wirt stammered, Greg danced around the room with Jason Funderburker the frog (whose stomach was glowing, though Wirt didn't notice). Both acts were interrupted as the door suddenly opened. Everyone turned, but barely had time to take in the image of Wirt and Greg's mother before she rushed into the room and threw her arms around her younger son.

"Greg! Oh! Oh, Greg." She gripped him tightly, and her hands unconsciously moved up his body and to his hair, as though checking to make sure that everything was where it should be. "Are you alright?"

"Uh-huh!" he said, as if completely unaware of her frantic state. "Oh, hey! You need to meet Jason Funderburker."

"The other one," Jason Funderberker added.

"What? Who's—agh!"

Realizing that there was a frog squished between her and her son, she let out a cry and released him, falling into a sitting position on the floor. She took several deep breaths, clutching a hand to her chest. "Wirt? Where's Wirt?" she said finally, looking around.

"Uh—I'm here, Mom."

Sara, sitting on the edge of his bed, was partly blocking him from view, so she moved out of the way as Wirt raised his hand.

"Oh! Wirt!"

And rather suddenly, she had flown across the room and was hugging him, too.

"Are you alright? What happened?! Oh, Marvin and I were so—"

She broke off. Wirt's limbs had gone stiff in her arms, and his face burned. "Mom—I'm fine," he mumbled.

She didn't answer, but seemed close to crying into the shoulder of his pajamas. Wirt glanced fearfully toward Sara and the others, bracing himself for a round of laughter.

Sara—having risen from the bed to make room for Wirt's mother—was not laughing. Her smile was amused, but not mocking. The look in her eyes held something like fondness. Yeah, her expression said. Moms, right?

In a jolt, it occurred to Wirt that if it were Sara sitting in this hospital bed, Wirt wouldn't laugh when her mom ran into the room and hugged him. So why should he worry about anyone laughing at him?

His mom made a sobbing sound, and awkwardly, Wirt put his arms around her.

"It's okay, Mom. Greg and I are fine."

She clutched him almost painfully tight. He looked over her shoulder, and for the first time noticed that his stepfather was there, too. Marvin had picked Greg up and was carrying him like a very large baby. His face was gray as he laid his cheek against the top of Greg's hair. Wirt felt an odd pang at the sight.

He carried Greg over, kneeling down to set him beside their mom at the foot of Wirt's bed. "What about you, son?" He turned to Wirt, his voice oddly raspy. "You doing alright?"

Somehow, the pained look that he was giving Wirt made him feel even more uncomfortable. "Yeah I guess."

"Good. Glad to hear it."

He gave Wirt a limp slap on the arm and smiled weakly. Wirt couldn't help but cringe internally. Marvin smiled a lot—annoyingly often, Wirt would have said—but never had he given one that was so...weak and scared and helpless. His eyes were red and tired, but still had that cheery little twinkle that Greg had inherited.

"Thanks," Wirt said quietly, feeling his insides squirm.

Sara, Jason Funderberker and the others left not long after that, but only after the boys' parents had a chance to thank them over and over for helping them. (Their mother hugged Sara, which nearly caused Wirt to swallow his tongue.) Then the boys had to recount several times what had had happened, with Wirt and some well-timed doctor interruptions preventing Greg from going too far into the unbelievable or embarrassing parts of the story.

Wirt's mother wanted to stay with them overnight. "You don't have to," Wirt said uncomfortably.

She clasped his hand, but by this point she had also recovered enough to regain a touch of her usual sarcasm. "Don't have to? Last time I left you boys alone, you fell in a lake."

"It was a river," Wirt muttered.

Marvin—now looking a bit more like his old self—clasped his wife's shoulder. "Come on, Pam. The boys need their rest, and it's gonna be hard enough for them to fall asleep without us here like—"

He opened his eyes wide made circles around them with his fingers, staring at Greg like he was a birdwatcher with a pair of binoculars. Greg giggled. Wirt, who had been thinking exactly that thing, smiled in relief.

Reluctantly, their mom agreed, and kissed each of her sons ten or twelve times before they left. A nurse came in around the same time and turned off the lights. Greg tried to stay up talking, but he was already sounding tired, and it wasn't long before he drifted off to sleep, hugging Jason Funderburker like he was a stuffed animal.

Wirt watched them for a long moment, dead tired but unable to imagine sleeping.

He turned onto his other side, closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them with a soft, sudden gasp.

The Beast.

That's what he thought for about two seconds. Then his common sense took over, and he squinted into the darkness. There wasn't even a shadow. His mind had simply planted the image onto the blank hospital wall.

He exhaled, but kept staring at the spot. It was so easy to imagine the dark shape there, even though there was nothing.

"You weren't just in the Unknown, were you?" He swallowed. "I only met you one time, but...I think you've been stalking me all my life."

The not-Beast remained silent, obviously.

"I know I'm not—" he began, then faltered. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I've always been...shy, I guess? Nervous. Marvin calls me a 'Worry-Wirt.'" His brow wrinkled. "I always thought that was an insult, but...it's really just a bad joke. He wasn't trying to make me feel bad. I just feel that way because I know it's true.

"Anyway. That's what you are, isn't it? The...voice in the back of my head, always telling me that I'm not good enough. That everybody hates me. But that's not true, is it?" His voice grew louder, trembling with fear and excitement. "Sara doesn't hate me. Jason Funderberker—nobody at school hates me. Marvin doesn't hate me. The only one who hates me is—"

He meant to say "you." But somehow, that wasn't the word that escaped from his mouth.

"—me!"

He froze. When he remembered to breathe, it came in a sharp, painful little scoff. He realized that he was shaking under the hospital blanket.

"...Yeah," he admitted. "I guess I do. I guess I...always have." He took another deep breath. "But not anymore."

He glared at the wall. The Beast wasn't even there. He never had been. It was all just in Wirt's mind.

He turned onto his back, gazing up at the unfamiliar ceiling.

His mind wandered back to that encounter, the revelation, that feeling of disdain he had felt when he finally realized what the Beast was...

...and that strange moment right after, and those words he had said to the Woodsman.

My brother and I are going home.

They had just slipped out of his mouth, without thought, just like that terrible "me." It didn't even make sense, now that Wirt thought about it. How had they gotten home, and how had he known that they could?

Wirt had no answer. In that moment, he had just known.

"Maybe that was my problem. I spent the whole time wondering how to get home, looking for someone to show me the way. But...I just had to decide. We were going home. You couldn't keep us there...unless I let you. Or something."

He glanced over at Greg. He couldn't make out his face in the darkness, but he could see his chest rise and fall with each slow, steady breath.

Suddenly, Wirt felt like he might cry. He had almost lost Greg tonight. If he had become one of those terrible trees, all because Wirt got them lost, because he couldn't get over himself enough for the two of them to get home sooner...Greg would be gone, and it would have been all his—

He shook his head sharply.

"I'm doing it again, aren't I? Beating myself up, I mean." He looked away. "I did mess up. But I also found him and got us home. That's not nothing."

He glanced back at Greg. He thought about how he acted over there—how he always acted, really. The ray of sunshine trying to break through Wirt's dark clouds.

"I don't think I can be like him. Have that level of endless optimism. And I'm not sure I want to," he added, making a face. "But..."

Greg turned in his sleep and shivered. His blanket had slipped a bit, leaving his top half mostly uncovered. Wirt hesitated, then climbed to his feet, crossing the short distance between their beds and pulling the blanket up toward his chin. Then he crouched by the bed, staring at him closer.

"You know," he murmured, "that was a really stupid thing you did, going off with the Beast." Absentmindedly, Wirt flicked a strand of hair from his brother's face. "You've got too much hope for your own good. Which is the opposite of my problem."

Wirt mused on that for a moment, and then, without really thinking about it, bent down and kissed Greg on the forehead. The way their mom had earlier, and the way Wirt used to do back when Greg was a baby.

"Thanks," he whispered. "For saving me."

In the dim light, Wirt could have sworn that Greg smiled.

Wirt climbed back into bed and closed his eyes.

He still couldn't sleep; his mind was a tangled mess of thoughts. About Greg and his mom and Marvin. About Beatrice and Sara and Lorna. The Woodsman and Fred and the Beast. He didn't know what, exactly, had happened to them that night, and his future still stretched out in front of him, dark and mysterious and foreboding.

But somehow, Wirt felt okay.