Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Dream of the Endless is dozing.

He’d deny it, of course, if caught at it but it’s what he’s doing. Drifting off into some middle space between consciousness and the oblivion of unconsciousness. It’s never interested him before, the quiet stillness of a dreamless state, but he finds himself again waking from that quiet darkness to the less imposing reality of his bed chambers. He unhurriedly observes that he’d originally laid for a moment to clear his head and he should, perhaps, be more concerned about the loss of time.

“My lord?”

Dream becomes aware of a hand on his shoulder, withdrawing quickly now that his eyes are open.

He looks toward the owner of that hand and finds Lucienne stepping apologetically back from the side of his bed, looking incredibly nervous, clutching a set of books like a shield in front of her. Understandable, as Dream has emphasized strongly with all palace staff that none of them are allowed in his chambers without cause and the last person who’d done just that had ended up somewhere very unpleasant for about a year.

He suspects that, based on his history, he should be angrier with Lucienne.

But as it is, he sits up slowly, pulling his knees up to drape his arms over them and just stare at his librarian who visibly squirms under his gaze. That seems recrimination enough because Dream gets no satisfaction from it. So he leaves aside any words of reproach.

“Yes, Lucienne?”

“My lord, I beg your pardon for disturbing you here, but the door guardians are reporting an abnormality. It rose to the level of emergency in their estimation, and they insisted that I check on you.” Her expression is tense, anxious with the anticipation of explaining further. “The Griffin says he lost connection with you and began to panic. The Wyvern and Hippogriff had to restrain and reassure him all was well, but they all demanded I perform… a wellness check?”

Dream stares at her.

Lucienne stares back.

“I am in connection with the Griffin now. He should be reassured. It will not happen again.”

“Yes. Good. Thank you. I will… let the Guardians know it was just a…” She trails off, expectant.

“A lapse,” Dream says simply.

“A lapse?” Lucienne repeats.

“I was working to quiet some of the autonomous functions within the Dreaming,” says Dream, reaching up to rub his eyes. “In my focus, I must have masked myself from the Griffin as his connection with me is less innate than that of the Wyvern and the Hippogriff. Give him my apologies.”

“I… of course.” There’s a pause. “My lord, could I speak candidly?

“If you feel you must.”

Dream is surprised then, when a hand falls into place on his arm, warm fingers and a palm laid on the line of muscle that forms his bicep. He raises his head from his hand to look, a little startled, at his royal librarian who looks extremely nervous but determined in her decision. She does not pull her hand away and moves to sit – though awkwardly and extremely nervously with a gulf of space between them – on the edge of his bed.

“You—you are worrying me,” says Lucienne.

“You worry too much,” Dream murmurs, “as you are wont to do.”

“Perhaps.” She allows the rebuff gracefully. “But much has happened that has never happened before. So, I find myself in unfamiliar worries, my lord. The familiar ones I could set aside as I have practice with them, but not now.” Her face is creased with such concern that it stirs mirrored anxiety in him. “I’ve never seen you this distracted,” she says. “Not since before I was your Librarian, so I feel compelled to my worries. It was for so long my function.”

Dream feels her fingers squeeze very carefully on his arm and he thinks, unprompted, of waking in a daze upon on the shores of his realm, in the shifting zones beyond his gates where Lucienne grabbed his hand. How it was her touch – the first in one-hundred and five years, so familiar it brought a near panic of joy to have it again – that pulled him to his feet. He thinks about how tightly she gripped his fingers, his arm, as she pulled him up. How reluctantly she let him go and has not since dared again.

He doesn’t move to escape her hand on his arm. He does not let on how much of his focus strays to it – the place where her palm is not separated from his skin by the fabric of his sleeve. Where she is warm, skin on skin, and shockingly familiar.

“I am…” Dream starts to say, then trails away.

“Yes?”

“I am grateful for your dedication,” Dream decides after a moment, tiredly.

He watches her face fall a little. “You have that always, my lord.”

Dream looks away from her for a moment.

There is a silence, but still Lucienne does not move.

“You asked me, on your return, if your subject did not know you. I deferred at the time.” Her hand tenses a little on his arm. “I did so because I do feel that most of those who live in the Dreaming do not actually know you. Not truly. They know your history, your body of work. These things they know, but those things are not you.”

Dream looks at Lucienne then, curious where her line of thought is trending, ignoring the moderately painful admission that most of his subjects didn’t think his actions substantial enough to warrant loyalty. Lucienne does not seem to mean it as a critique, however, and her expression is gentle.

“I say so, because those that do know you better did not leave. They waited or they sought you out or, at the mildest of betrayals, took some time for themselves elsewhere for a while and returned at your return. There are few Endless that command or provide for any subjects at all within their realms. You do. Have done for eons. Mistakes are inevitable. What comes after is who you are, I would argue.”

“What am I then, Lucienne? The Dreaming is repaired but for some minor damages. The dreamers are safe in their travels to and from my realm. Some dreams and nightmares given leniency or reward for their actions in my absence. Matters are settled. I am still Dream of the Endless as I have always been.”

He means to leave it there.

But as he did with Death, he hears himself going onto say, “Despite that, I do not feel like myself. I feel—” he seeks a word— “distracted.”

“Perhaps it would be less distracting if you laid it on another mind. Discussed it?”

“I have shared it. Several times now.” Dream lifts a hand to press fingers a little tiredly along the bridge of his nose “It’s little relief to anyone. Not myself or those who hear it.”

“Would you tell me?”

Lucienne asks with such uncharacteristic shyness that Dream glances, surprised, at her. She’s looking at him with such a combination of hope and anxiety, he imagines if she were a raven she’d be fluffed up with emotions. The notion is an unexpected comfort. A familiarity and nostalgia so long in its creation that the sudden reminder of its existence is a curious balm. Dream turns his head, leaning his chin into the heel of his hand.

“What would you know from me, Lucienne?”

“Is there something specific that distracts you, my lord?”

Dream considers lying. Then he says, “The Corinthian. And my sibling, Desire.”

Lucienne, surprised to receive such a plain answer, seems to automatically become plain herself, saying, “Desire? Why, is that not settled?”

“It is,” Dream says, almost idle in his pronouncement. “Their hatred for me being so strong they spend centuries devising ways to kill me, however, does trouble me more than I previously estimated.”

“Surely… surely Desire didn’t truly mean to—”

“No?” Dream almost laughs. “Tell me what follow-through is lacking in their plan? A plan that came seconds from success if not for the intervention of yourself and Unity Kincaid?” Dream sighs. “I knew that they disliked me, hated me on occasion, but I… I estimated it was less serious than that.”

“If you believe they truly made an attempt on your life,” says Lucienne, “then why haven’t you retaliated?”

“Because,” Dream says, tone plain with melancholy, “they’ve helped me. Answered my call for aid and provided it even when I’ve refused their help. For all that we are at odds, they have come to my side most often when things were dire. Even when they knew it would end without so much as a story to mark their heroics.”

Lucienne, understandably, is a little confused at this.

“Liege Desire assisted you? Recently?”

“In the other universe, Lucienne. The one I lost when the stars went mad. I am the only one who remembers the events from that world and there, they gave everything to help me. Then, when I returned to his universe, they tried to trap me.” He lets his tone dry a bit. “Maybe it shouldn’t feel a betrayal. In looking back, it’s a consequence of my own devising. I’ve treated them poorly in this universe and taken for granted what help they have given me in the past.”

“Nothing you have done rises to the level of deciding to kill you in retaliation,” says Lucienne with heavy enunciation. “I feel very comfortable blaming that on Desire’s caprice and preoccupation with their present passions. Also, no offense to them, but they are young yet and I think unaware they do hold power enough to truly harm you. You’ve won so many contests between you after all…”

“Perhaps,” Dream says. “But my sibling and the Corinthian? Both? It is difficult not to consider if there’s merit to their grievances.”  He lowers his voice. “What in my constitution is so poisonous it warrants such response—”

Lucienne grabs his hand.

It’s so bold Dream forgets what he was saying as his royal librarian laces her fingers between his and pulls his arm toward her so she can close both hands around his palm, leaving her books aside to look him in the eye. Her grip on his hand is so tight it aches, deep to the bone, but welcome. Her forearm is presses along the inside of his own arm she draws their clasped hands against her breastbone.

As if assure him of the truth-steady pace of her heart.

“There is nothing so wrong that you deserved what they did,” says Lucienne softly, but with a razor-sharp conviction. “Corinthian and Desire… they misjudge you. They are too harsh. What flaws you may have, I know gods much more terrible in their nature than you, my lord. You are a not an easy master, but you are not fickle or unmoved by the plights of others. That, in the scale of what you do, is much to ask.”

Dream stares at her a moment. Then, “Lady Death said much the same.”

“Yes. But do you believe her?” She squeezes his hand. “Do you believe me?”

There is a moment of consideration.

“I suppose I must. My sister in her wisdom and you—” he squeezes her hand— “for being always with me, Lucienne.”

His librarian smiles and holds his hand more tightly. When she does, Dream feels some measure of pressure relieve, as though her touch has split open the fractures in a fine shell laid across his skin. Fractures she first began when she pulled him to his feet on the shores of night, and briefly took his weight on her shoulder before letting him pull away. Here, she continues to hold onto his hand. Waiting for his leave to let go.

He does not let go and Lucienne stays with him for a while longer. Eventually, he picks her books up from his bed and put them back in her arms.

“Thank you,” Dream says, genuinely.

“You’re most welcome, my lord.” A pause. “Do you need anything else?”

“No.” Dream moves, swinging his feet to the floor and standing up, a shift of darkness turning his casual attire to a dark coat. “I owe the Griffin an apology. I’ll accompany you if you wouldn’t mind the diversion.”

Lucienne smiles. “I wouldn’t mind at all, sir.”

Matthew still is not exactly sure who Hob Gadling is.

Lucienne gave him an address, furnished him with a description, and the quick summation that Gadling and Dream had a standing once-a-century meeting that got messed up by the Burgess thing. They were now hanging out more frequently, but mostly in the Dreaming. He’s mortal but doesn’t die. Immortal. Whatever. 

Armed, thus, Matthew flies directly from the palace, through the stain glass windows of the throne room until the glass and metal segments unravel into color, then motion, then the pressure of air-resistance and the smell of a city. Matthew flies into the Waking World. He dives to land with a flutter on the windowsill of a little townhouse tucked into the backend of a park, ivy covering the bricks of the brownstone.

Matthew hops around, checking for witnesses.

Then he flutters up to the porch of unit 34B, landing beside a pile of Amazon boxes so he can inspect—

The door opens.

A tall dude in sweats, a hoodie, and house slippers stares down at him. The man blinks, obviously startled to find a small animal on his porch.

“Uh,” he starts to say. 

Matthew, electing to throw caution out the door, flaps backward and lands on the furthest part of the handrail at the bottom of the steps. Then, with no preamble, he caws:

“Hey buddy, Rose Walker says you have some kind of fucking problem? Boss is busy. So, you get me.”

Hob blinks at him. Then bursts into laughter.

This goes on for… frankly, a lot longer than Matthew is pleased about.

“Sorry,” Hob wipes his eyes. “Sorry, I wasn’t braced for that, mate. Sorry. You’re Matthew, right?”

“No, I’m Mary fucking Poppins. Look, are you gonna waste my time or…?”

He starts to open his wings as if to fly away and Hob’s amusement drops off immediately. He raises two hands, a mild panic on his face.

“Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to laugh, sorry!”

Matthew folds his wings, but slowly.

“Did Morpheus send you?”

“No. I sent me on account of it being extremely goddamn weird that you hunted down Rose Walker to ask about my boss. She’s just a kid. You planning to give her any problems, because let me tell you—”

“No, wow, you’re really angry. I wasn’t expecting that. Uh, I’m not trying to cause anyone problems. I just… I couldn’t get hold of Dream and I… Christ, it all makes me sound like a lunatic.” He grimaces and says in a single breath, “I saw Rose Walker in a nightmare where Dream got murdered or something and it freaked me out, so I got hold of her so I could ask if she knew about it. She did, but not a lot, so I asked her to ask you so I could just—” he takes a breath— “ask Dream myself.”

Gadling makes a hapless gesture.

“I’m sorry if that was against protocol or whatever. No one told me the rules. Okay? I’m just guessing here, mate.”

Matthew, looming on his perch, feels a marginal pang of sympathy for the guy, but maintains his grump for Lucienne’s sake.

“What dream? When?”

“June first. I had a nightmare where Dream was getting, like… hurt. Bad. I promise, please, I am just trying to get hold of my friend. I saw something so…” He has a moment of visible distress. “I needed to know, mate. The last time he disappeared, I didn’t see him for a hundred years. Okay?”

Matthew processes this.

“June first?” he asks

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“You got crackers in there, man? I’d kill for a cracker.”

Ten minutes later, Matthew is pecking happily at the contents of a saltine packet and a few chunks of leftover salmon on a plate. Hob is frowning at his little visitor over a mug of tea. He’s not very old. Like… mid-thirties? Something. But he’s scanning Matthew with the disapproving brow knit of an older gentlemen displeased about the day’s newspaper.

“Okay,” says Matthew, happily stuffed. “You got questions?

“Yes. You said you sent yourself? So, I assume you didn’t tell Morpheus about my message?”

“Technically Lucienne sent me, but it was my idea. She just signs off on my ideas.”

Hob tilts his head, neutrally curious. “Who is Lucienne exactly?”

“My other boss. Morpheus is my boss-boss. Lucienne is my boss. You know?”

“Morpheus is the one in charge of the Dreaming, right?”

“I mean, in the sense that you’re in charge of your organs, yeah. Sure. He’s in charge of the Dreaming.” A beat. “But, also, in the sense that he’s literally in charge and makes all the rules and stuff. He’s also in charge in that way. It’s weird. Anyway, Lucienne is the second person in charge after Dream so when Dream is busy, I get my jobs from Lucienne and she agrees with me that there’s no way you should know about Rose Walker. So, fess up, how’d you figure out who she is?”

Hob’s face gets a little dark at that.

“Like I said, I had… a nightmare. Which sounds silly except it wasn’t like my nightmares. I know a normal nightmare and I know when I’m— I know when Dream is in the dream with me, you know? It felt like he was with me in that nightmare, and I saw Rose Walker in that same nightmare. It was… in her apartment, I think?”

Matthew very carefully does not react.

“I got her name and general location off some mail. The rest was sleuthing.”

Matthew, maintaining his neutrality, says, “What was the dream exactly? The one in Rose Walker’s room?”

Hob thinks.

“It was bizarre. I just, was standing in the kitchen and Dream was there and he was… dead. Or dead inside somehow. I couldn’t tell exactly what, but he wasn’t himself. Scared the piss outta me. Then he stopped coming to visit and I thought… I mean I thought something happened to him.” Hob looks deeply unhappy but also embarrassed. “Look, I talked to Rose, she explained the dream vortex so I get it if he’s busy but...” Hob’s face tenses. “I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure he was alright.”

Matthew sits there, mulling this over for a long moment.

“Was there anyone else in the room? Besides Rose?”

Hob’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

“No. Why?”

“You said he looked dead,” says Matthew, ignoring the question. “How?”

Gadling looks uncomfortable immediately.

“Why do you need to know that?”

“Cuz I’ve seen some bad dreams too, Gadling. So be more specific so I can compare them. Chop chop.”

A sigh.

“He was standing, staring at Rose’s bed, back to me. He didn’t even see me. But when I tried to touch him, he… shattered into a bunch of versions of him and all of them were—” he visibly fights down an emotion— “they were all in a lot of pain? And then he kept… saying things. Like he was in a trance, telling someone to ‘unmake’ him.” Gadling shifts his weight, restless just talking about it. “I don’t know. I was out of my tree. Then he turned into Rose for a minute, then he was… empty inside even though he was standing. I shook him a bit. He woke up. Then I woke up.”

There’s probably stuff he’s leaving out, but Matthew lets it go.

Hob’s face gets hard. “I know the vortex tried to take the Dreaming from him.”

“Yup.”

“Answer me this….” Hob gets canny, tilts his head. "Morpheus hasn’t explained it to me, you know how he is, but I thought he said he was the Dreaming?” Hob sits forward, very intent upon Matthew, very focused and suddenly it occurs to Matthew that Hob Gadling is not a small man exactly. Not huge, but not a slouch. He says, “You alluded to the Dreaming being something like an organ basically? So, if the Dreaming is like a heart or a selfhood, I imagine that would do some damage if extracted.”

Matthew hesitates because Hob really zeroed in immediately on the fucking problem.

“You’d be right.”

Hob’s face gets really neutral.

“Is Dream okay?”

Matthew pauses again.

“Look, I’m gonna get in so much fucking trouble.”

Matthew hops up on a banana hanger sitting on the counter so he can be eye-level with Hob, who is giving him all his attention. Like Matthew is the most important thing on the planet right now and, honestly, it’s a little intense. This guy is intense.

“You gotta promise me you’re gonna be cool about this and listen to me really close and not freak out, because I’m about to be really unprofessional and it might be the last amount of unprofessional I get for a while before Lucienne or Dream bounce me off a wall or something.” Matthew glares. “So, you promise to be cool?”

“I promise,” Hob says with such sincerity Matthew stalls out for a moment.

“Okay, look, he got hurt during the fight. Dunno exactly to what extent with him being, you know, the anthropomorphic manifestation of the entire unconscious of all humanity and other stuff.” Hob frowns at the phrase ‘other stuff’ but doesn’t stop him, so Matthew continues. “The point is, for the last month or whatever, he’s been really out of it.”

“Out of it?” Hob repeats.

“Yeah, like, tired all the fucking time. Nodding off. This from a guy who doesn’t need to sleep, get me? Like he’s doing all his responsibilities, all the important shit is still getting done but he’s not… he’s not good. You know what I mean, man?” Matthew readjusts his wings restlessly. “Look, if he was just a guy and not, like, a fixed mechanic of the universe, I’d say he was a little burnt out and needed a vacation. But because he’s Dream, I think it’s something worse.”

Hob takes all this in with surprising calm.

“You said he’s sleeping a lot?”

“It’s not sleeping,” Matthew emphasizes. “He’s like… you gotta understand, I’ve seen him get his entire face burnt off in a fight, then shrug it off and he was fine. Like, for eight months after getting back in the game, he’s been fucking cheerful, if anything. The guy keeps parts of reality ticking. He’s just on this totally different scale, you know, and then…”

Hob taps a thumb against the counter. “Then the vortex happened.”

“Yeah.”

Hob braces his elbow on the table, one hand moving thoughtfully to his mouth, rubbing his chin a little.

“Okay. I mean, Dream isn’t human so there’s some of it I’m never gonna ken, but that story makes sense.” He rocks his head back and forth, saying the words in a rhythm, “I’m hurt, I can’t get over it, I don’t wanna deal.” He nods. “I can do that.”

Matthew thinks it’s a strange turn of phrase, that it’s a story, but doesn’t comment.

Hob’s got wheels turning in his dark brown eyes, brow knitted in contemplation. Matthew glances around the kitchen for the first time properly. It’s… nice. Like real nice. Like gothic modern with that weird academia thing in the furniture and shelves. If he’d been guessing the person’s age for this place, he’d have hazarded older than the guy sitting here in his nice button down and jeans.

“So, you’re immortal?” Matthew says, breaking the silence.

Hob blinks.

“Uh, effectively? I don’t know. Dream still uses the word ‘mortal’ when he talks about me, so I think it’s just that I’m not allowed to die right now and that’s different than being immortal.” His face scrunches. “I haven’t figured out the criteria he uses for that, honestly. Maybe everyone who isn’t Endless or a god or whatever is mortal to him.” A shrug. “What about you? Are you a nightmare or a dream?”

“Huh? Neither. I’m—” Matthew hesitates— “well come to think of it. I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you.”

Hob shrugs.

“Fine with me. Answer me this though: You were pretty pissed off at me about ten minutes ago because I found Rose and asked her questions. Now you’re telling me details about what might be a personal matter of Dream’s. What changed?”

“Well…” Matthew shuffles. “That dream you described…I thought I saw a nightmare in the Dreaming recently where the boss was dead in Rose Walker’s room. Not like you saw it, but like—” he struggles with it a moment, the memory, Dream cut open, empty fucking eyes looking up at him and— “it was brutal. Bad. Rose mentioned that she thought she felt him get hurt. So, it’s like we’re all seeing different… versions of something bad that Morpheus only kind of admits to happening.”

“Okay. So, I saw something, and you saw something, and Rose felt something. All different but all… bad.”

“Yeah.” Matthew feels anger as a tension. “Dream is… he’s like a kaleidoscope when he’s in the Dreaming. I think we’re all getting an aspect of what happened. Dream logic, you know?” He angles his head. “If you ask me,  I think it has something to do with this one nightmare who went rogue. I can’t say exactly, but Lucienne thinks so.”

Hob’s eyes flicker, as if in recall.

“A nightmare like an entity. The sort Dream creates?”

“Yeah. This one was called The Corinthian. To keep it short: he tried to use Rose to hurt Dream. Maybe it worked cuz I know I saw him in that fucked up nightmare.”

Hob says nothing for a moment.

“What are you saying? You think this Corinthian nightmare attacked Dream?”

“No,” Matthew huffs. “He definitely attacked Dream. Like, literally stabbed him with a knife the night of June first, but I lost track of them when the walls between dreams came down and the two of them jumped into the Dreaming. So, I don’t know what happened then, but when they came back to the Waking World, Dream literally unmade the guy like it was whatever. So, I thought it was fine. He seemed fine.”

Hob must hear the distress in Matthew’s voice because his expression softens.

“So, why tell me all this Matthew? Just because I saw another angle of something awful?”

“I dunno. Morpheus hangs out with you. As far as I know, you’re the only one he does that with.”

Hob stares.

“Uh.” Matthew preens nervously. “You didn’t know that?”

“I… guess on some level I suspected as much, but it’s a little weird getting it confirmed by a talking raven.” Hob gets up to pace briefly, then turns around to face Matthew directly. “I’m just… me. Same as ever. You say he’s hurt. What good am I to him that you and Lucienne are not?”

“Because you’re—” Matthew hesitates on the possibility that he’s about to be insulting— “just a guy. You’re not one of his subjects or whatever. You’re literally just hanging out.”

Hob looks annoyed. “I’m doing a little more than that.”

“You know what I mean. You’re not… a responsibility. Or if you are, he doesn’t treat you like one. Hell, he stopped phoning you the second things got real at work, basically, so you’re outside of that Venn diagram. You know?” Matthew clicks his beak. “Look, I’m not telling you do anything. Hell, the boss might honestly be too burnt out for social calls and Lucienne is right but I just… I got this feeling.”

Hob tilts his head.

“Who are you to him, Matthew? Really.”

“Well,” Matthew says. “Morpheus told me that I’m his eyes in Waking. I’ve been told I’m supposed to be his voice of reason. I know his last raven was the raven who died protecting him and, while I don’t plan on it, I think that’s who I am too. The one who watches his back. I dunno.” Matthew readjusts his wings, straightening up a bit. “Dream of the Endless always has his raven. That’s who I am.”

Hob contemplates Matthew, then his kitchen island for a while.

“Are you sure?” he says slowly, looking up after a bit. “Dream is… private, to say the least. I didn’t know his bloody name until last year—”

“What?” Matthew blurts. “Sorry. Sorry. You were saying?”

“Just observing,” continues Hob, dryly, “that Morpheus stormed off in a huff when I mentioned we might be friends in 1889. He seems infinitely better now, but I’d hate to pry, and he takes off for another two-hundred years.”

“Honestly, man, I think he needs someone to pry.” Matthew flaps for emphasis. “Morpheus is a big picture guy, and he gets so caught up in it, he loses perspective. But I know it’s the small stuff that keeps you grounded. Trust me. My life was garbage, but a good cup of coffee? The check-out girl liking my hat? Fuck. That’s a good day. Reason to keep on going, y’know?”

Hob is straight up staring at Matthew.

“What?”

“So… you were human before you were a raven, huh?”

Matthew blinks then, “Goddammit! I just told you secrets. FUCK me. Shit!”

Hob starts laughing so hard he starts crying a little bit, using the back of a chair for leverage to keep upright. Eventually, he gets a hold of himself and sits back down at the kitchen counter while Matthew fumes on a pile of bills and unopened credit card applications.

“So did you get turned into a raven, or…?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Matthew grouses. “Guess it doesn’t matter, but if you die in your sleep, sometimes you get the option to go to the Dreaming and be a raven for Morpheus. I think it’s some handshake deal between Death and Dream. I dunno. Above my paygrade.”

Hob stares at Matthew, this time with some concern.

“What?”

“Sooo Death is an entity too?” Hob looks almost sorry about it. “Like Dream?”

“God! DAMMIT!”

It takes a while before Matthew calms down after that. Hob has to get a whole new packet of saltine crackers and some shredded chicken. It’s a full five minutes later that Matthew rationalizes something like, in for a penny, then in for a pound or whatever. And it was weird, anyway, the Morpheus hadn’t told his friend of seven-hundred years the bare minimum of his family life. Hob has a mug of tea for himself and is eyeballing Matthew with a combination of amusement and thoughtfulness.

“If you died,” muses Hob, “doesn’t that make ravens of the Dreaming a sort of gift from the goddess of Death?”

“Maybe.” Matthew is beyond caring at this point. “I think Death is older than Dream, you know, as a concept so I think she’s looking over his shoulder a bit.”

“Big sister Death.” Hob stares into the middle distance for a minute. “Do… do you think she picks?”

“What?”

“People. The people who get sent to Dream to be ravens.” Hob seems weirdly fixed on it. “Do you think she picks them out? Like, tries to figure out who’s gonna be best to balance Dream out and sends that person along?”

“Dude.” Matthew lets that a hang a moment, then, “I have no fucking idea. That’s a massive question and you are already deep into the secrets of the universe. Please stop asking me stuff that makes my head hurt. If Death actually picked me out for this job, that would be… I dunno, fucked? But kind of a compliment? I don’t fucking know.”

Hob seems to absorb this a moment, comes to a decision, and he nods.

“Okay. I’m in. I’ll try to sus out what’s up with Morpheus, even if he gets mad and blows me off for another century. It’s fine.”

“He really didn’t tell you his name until last year?”

Hob slurps his tea. “Nope.”

“Fuck. You’re real one, Hob Gadling.” 

“I do not precisely understand,” Dream says, speaking slowly to meter out his displeasure one syllable at a time. “How, again, did the psychic rats get into the residential wing of the palace?”

Mervyn Pumpkinhead looks as though his spindly body might collapse lopsidedly over with how far he’s bending to the left, rubbing the back of his vine-stalk neck with nervous jitters.

“Boss, you’re gonna laugh, but there was a typo on the demo brief. Yeah, like, a real doozy of a typo. So, I basically knocked a wall down that I shouldn’t have… and the wall was to Lady Lunarbell’s bathroom and, I didn’t know this, but the psychic rats were hiding and then they saw an escape route and, well…”

“The explains the screaming but raises some concerns about how grievous an error got so far along that you knocked out an erroneous wall before consulting anyone.”

“Hey, I’ve received weirder requests than knocking some broad’s wall in. You had me put a forest in the ballroom once.”

“I suppose,” Dream says, folding his arms on his desk.

It’s precisely this moment when there’s a flutter of wings and Matthew comes swooping through the open doors of his conservatory office.

“Whoa! It’s a party in here,” Matthew caws, flapping momentarily before landing on an atlas near Dream’s desk.

“Yes, rather despite all my desire for the contrary,” says Dream, eyeing his groundskeeper as his raven swaps places with him, Merv fleeing at the first opening. Dream shifts slightly, bracing his weight back in his seat to look across the desk at Matthew. “I’m told you have a message from Hob Gadling. I’m most curious to know how this can be.”

“Oh. Luce told you what’s up?”

“She did not detail anything. Only that it might inadvertently rise to the level of a formal summoning if he’s involved you.”

“Oi, it aint that serious. The guy just got freaked out.”

Dream tilts his head. “Elaborate.”

“You know that big dream Rose made when she went full vortex on us back in June?”

He masks a prickle of discomfort at the mention.

“Yes.”

“Well,” Matthew says, “apparently, Gadling also got pulled into that dream despite being all the way in London. He saw some scary shit and thought it had something to do with you, but you didn’t stop in to explain so I guess he thought you might be in some trouble?”

“Why on earth would he think that?”

Matthew clicks his beak nervously. “B-because you were literally imprisoned for over a hundred years really recently so, like, I think the guy is newly paranoid that’s a thing that can happen to you so he over-reacted?”

Dream is baffled by this logic but says, “I suppose that’s understandable? But does not explain how he managed to find an envoy of the Dreaming much less summon one like yourself for the purposes of conveying messages.”

“Apparently in the big dream, he saw Rose Walker in her apartment and got her location off some mail.”

“Rose Walker?” Dream sits forward. “He spoke to Rose?”

“Yeah, it was Rose who told me he visited.” Matthew hops forward a little, feathers fluffing then settling. “She wasn’t upset or nothing, just curious about the weird guy who is apparently friends with the King of Dreams but doesn’t have a way to dial him up.” Matthew can’t quite shrug as a bird but manages gamely. “Anyway, I checked in on the guy and I think he’s napping right now if you did wanna get hold of him, just a heads up. He seems, like, real worried about you.”

Dream doesn’t say anything at that, but he does reach back, like a reflex into the current of the Dreaming that runs always through him and from that wellspring, he draws out and through his mind the dreams of Robert Gadling. He closes his eyes and in quick succession, reviews them in reverse, one after another after another until he sees—

Nothing. Red static. An impression of breath and fingers on skin. Fear.  

Dream opens his eyes.

“Boss?”

Dream doesn’t answer.

He stands up and when his feet are flat upon the ground, they are booted in his usual attire for the Waking World, and he stands suddenly the current dreams of Hob Gadling. Easy as rolling his shoulders, he moves into the man’s unconscious. Hob appears to be in the middle of teaching a lecture to a room full of London 1600’s aristocracy. He’s still wearing modern clothes, his hair drawn up at the back of his head while he gestures at the white board behind him saying:

“And that’s why you should really reconsider taxing cats for their contributions to pest control.”

Then he spots Dream standing in the aisle between seats.

Morpheus can feel him recognize, realize, then become lucid. Instantly the various nobility in the seats around them freeze, then fade away under Gadling’s newly sensible eye. He’s not looking at the nobility though, he’s smiling up at Dream from the floor of classroom. He puts down the book he was gesturing with and moves to lean against his desk, arms folded.

“Hi,” says Hob.

“Hello.” Dream starts down the steps. “Matthew tells me you came looking for me.”

Hob just stares at him. “Yeah.”

Dream nods, reaching the bottom stair.

“How did you find Rose Walker?”

“Looking,” say Hob, never once breaking eye contact with him. Intent enough in his gaze that Morpheus thinks he’s trying to convey something without words, but it’s difficult to say what. “Dream, do you remember what I saw? The nightmare that scared me so much?”

A hesitation. “No. I was not myself last we shared a dream. I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize,” says Hob quietly. “Are you okay?”

Dream pauses again, suddenly uncertain about this meeting.

When he takes a moment too long, Hob says, with concern, “Dream. I thought you died.”

Surprise at that. Then dread, sudden and hot, latticed around the chambers of his heart. Dream briefly contemplates ending this meeting and sending Hob Gadling back to the Waking with no explanation, but the knowledge that he’s been laboring for months under the mistaken impression that Dream of the Endless might have died without explanation… makes it hard to abandon the man.

He studies Hob’s inflection for a moment, then says, “Why did you think that, Hob Gadling?”

“In the dream, I was in Rose Walker’s apartment with you. You wouldn’t answer me, but when I tried to help you or talk to you or touch you… you shattered. Like, a dozen terrifying versions of you all came tumbling out and they were all in agony. Then they disappeared. And it was just you again, but you said—” here Hob swallows down a reaction that twists his mouth down— “you said some awful things.”

“To you?”

“No, just… to someone. Like it was for someone else, I don’t know.”

“What did I say?”

“You asked to be ended. To be unmade.”

There’s a dead quiet. Then:

“I don’t understand.” Dream hears himself say it blankly. “How did you see that?”

“I don’t know. I thought you’d tell me. But you didn’t so I thought…” Hob gestures to the dream around them. “I panicked.”

“I was… hurt,” Dream says and it’s not sufficient at all, that word, but this story wasn’t for telling. “I said things I didn’t mean—”

“You said it like you weren’t afraid of it,” Hob interrupts immediately, his gaze so focused it’s arresting. “Not like you were in pain and needed an out, Dream, I know what that sounds like. You didn’t sound like that.”

Dream closes his eyes for a moment, just to escape Hob looking at him.

He does not know how to react. He is too focused on capturing his own burgeoning panic and holding it caged against his chest like a bird between laced fingers. Trying to fly out of him where he’ll never get it back under control, but in the same measure, Hob Gadling – of all people – has somehow wrapped his hand around the very heart of the thing and Dream doesn’t know what to do with the sudden exposure. Like being held in a glass cage once more, vulnerable to the gaze of others and—

“Dream, are you okay?”

Dream opens his eyes, forcing his demeanor to calm. “I am fine.”

Hob’s stare is penetrating and dark and completely unconvinced.

“You were pulled into a united dreamscape, Hob Gadling. What you saw was an aspect of a metaphysical altercation. Nothing more.” He crosses the floor to stand in front of the man, under the golden light from the high windows in the amphitheater. He maintains his even tone, saying, “I apologize if the dream was distressing, but its content was of no consequence, a passing discomfort. I am recovered now. You needn’t worry.”

Hob is looking at him with a terrible comprehension and Dream braces for another challenge, feeling it like a physical pressure in his chest. He waits. 

“Alright,” Hob says.

Dream blinks. “Alright?”

Hob shrugs, laughing a little. “Yeah, if you say you’re okay, then you’re okay. You just scared the hell out of me, you know?”

Some of the tension leaves Dream’s shoulders slowly.

“The damage from the alteration was severe enough it required all of my focus. The behavior of dream vortexes is erratic, I did not realize you’d been affected and given a partial impression of events.” Dream thinks a moment. “I suppose… you were the only mortal with a significant connection to the Dreaming since my return.”

“Huh.” Hob considers this. “Like, you visited me so much it made some kind of link between me and the Dreaming?”

Dream inclines his head. “Just so.”

“So, it was a fight, this vortex thing? Rose said she almost replaced you at the center of the Dreaming. She worried it had hurt you.”

“It did.”

“I’d hate to see what kind of battlefield you operate on,” says Hob quietly. After a moment, he adds, “I soldiered for a long time. You know that. Hell, half the time we see each other lately it’s because I can’t stop dreaming about the most recent ones.” He tilts his head. “I’ve never asked you, are you one for fighting?”

It’s such a particular question, Dream finds himself paused in consideration.

“I am no stranger to a battle,” he allows, “but it is not what I was made to do, and I don’t… like it, per say. What I consider a battle, you might not recognize it as such from the outside. I’ve only had to wage actual war a handful of times in my existence.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Bother me?”

“Like it bothers me. The remembering. Fighting, killing, getting hurt in a fight. All of that.”

“I have lived a long time,” Dream says simply.

Hob absorbs this for a moment, then says, “Can we go somewhere else to talk?”

Dream blinks at the change of subject.

“Of course?”

Dream walks past Hob, opening a door that has appeared suddenly behind the man’s lecture desk. He gestures at Hob to go first, enjoying for a moment the look of shock and delight on the man’s face as he peers beyond the frame into another part of the Dreaming.

“Brilliant,” Hob says, grabbing his coat from the desk and shrugging it on as he walks through.

Dream follows Hob to the campus in London, empty of all students, with the haze of twilight again over the school. They are standing beneath the founders tree, its massive branches spread over them in a dark canopy. Hob looks around, then all at once turns on his heel and drops into a sitting position, back against the foot of the tree and sighing.

“Perfect. Great spot for a chat,” he beams.

Dream wasn’t trying to find a spot for chat exactly, but he follows Hob’s lead and moves to take a seat on the grass, also leaning against the tree and folding his hands across his stomach as he does. The pitch of the trunk is such that from here, Dream is able to see the glow of the horizon over the city beyond the campus, purple sky above buildings and trees, but the starts visible here like they are not with the light pollution of London in the Waking.

Hob stretches, folding his hands at the back of his head.

“We’re friends, right?” Hob asks it with such idle tone.

Dream turns his head to frown at Hob.

“Yes?”

“Good, likewise. Just wanted to check before I ask you something.”

Dream doesn’t know what to say to that, so he waits.

“I’m kind of a bastard. I know this. And still, war and killing bothers me, despite my choosing it so many times for coin and career. I gave it up when the world got kinder in that regard.” He glances at Dream. “You know everyone, if you choose to, don’t you? Through their dreams, you know their lives.”

“Yes.”

“So, killing. That would be hard, wouldn’t it? If you know everyone and everything.”

Dream says nothing for a moment.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because,” Hob says, “I’m just some idiot who knows you. I don’t know gods or your citizens in the Dreaming or anything about your world really. So—” he’s obviously winding up to something— “if there’s something you want to talk about that you can’t say to the people in your world… just thought I’d offer my ear. Like I’d do for any of friends coming out of war and horror. I, uh, have some experience. That’s all.”

Dream says nothing.

Then, “Killing isn’t so hard if you know someone’s dreams and those dreams are terrible aspirations or they are actively acting against you.” Dream pauses, then says, “Killing is hard when it’s an innocent, undeserving.”

Hob is looking at him calmly. “Unity Kincaid.”

“Yes.” Dream draws one knee up a little, moving his hands into his pockets as he looks out toward the horizon. “A better life taken than Rose Walker, but an innocent either way.” He closes his eyes. “I still hold I wasn’t made for killing innocents. I am… poor at it.”

“I know it’s not comforting, but if Rose’s story is true, you did it as best you could.”

“You’re right.” Dream keeps his eyes closed, feeling a tension move into his hands, hidden in his coat. “That’s not comforting.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Dream.” Hob’s voice is soft. “That’s not fucking fair.”

“I agree. Unity did nothing wrong.” He shakes his head a little. “She should have been allowed her dream of a family in the Waking. With Rose and Jed as she desired and they desired. It’s unfair it was taken from them.”

“Yes. I meant it unfair to you too,” Hob murmurs. “No one should be forced to be an executioner, my friend. I’m sorry for it.”

Dream opens his eyes to look and Hob. The man is sitting up a little straighter, head turned to look at Dream directly, fully focused on him. The half-light from the sunset throws warmth and shadow across the familiar lines of his face. He’s clearly waiting for Dream to go on, not filling the silence between them as he usually does.

“I’ve made peace with it,” Dream says. “She asked me, in the end, to do it. So, I was spared at least the trappings of murdering her in my duty.”

Hob winces. “You ever done this before? Killed a vortex?”

“Yes, but it has not been a human being before now, at least, not in this universe.”

Hob tilts his head. “What’s that mean?”

Dream considers. “It’s too much to explain fully. But I exist across realities. I’ve killed vortexes like Rose in other realities, or failed to kill them, with terrible consequence.”

“What consequence? What happens if you don’t kill a vortex?”

“All the walls between realities comes down. Like the cell walls in a living thing, if you lose the structure, then a cell falling into another becomes a cancer.” Dream sits up a little, drawing both knees up now and folding his arms across them. “In much that same way, the Dreaming would become a fused horror of gestalt unconscious, spreading across the universe until all things are a single, screaming, entity. Insane and dreaming of death.”

Hob stares at him, eyes wide, face a little pale.

“That’s… horrible.”

“Yes,” says Dream. He drops his chin onto his forearms, gazing out across the campus green. “I’ve glimpsed that world and the consequence of my failure in it. Though I hate it, I would kill Rose Walker to prevent her torment and the torment of all living things in that fate.” He closes his eyes again, feels a burn of something near grief in his throat. “But I do not like it and I wish the function of the universe as such did not… force me to do something like this.”

Dream feels a hand on his shoulder then.

He looks at Hob, the man waiting to meet his gaze.

“If it means anything, Dream, I personally find it a comfort that it’s not easy. I don’t… maybe that’s awful of me, but the fact it hurts you so much makes it better somehow.” Hob smiles apologetically, moving his hand away to gesture. “Does that make sense?”

“No,” Dream whispers. “But I think I take your meaning.”

Hob looks out toward the horizon again for a moment and Dream does the same.

“You’re not alright,” Hob says after a while.

Dream thinks about it. Then, “I suppose not entirely.”

“Killing Unity?”

Dream shakes his head. “That troubles me but… it was not so harsh a death as I’d been braced for. It’s an injustice but it’s just one aspect of what weighs on me now.”

“Hey, thank you for telling me that.”

Dream glances at Hob, but Hob is sparing him the eye-contact this time, looking out still over the campus. The man moves his legs a little, pulling his knees up much like Dream is doing, though his fidgets his hands all the while he does it. Dream thinks he’s nervous about this conversation, for all his tone is gallantly calm and steady. He can feel Hob’s anxiety like a hum in this dream space, a vibration on Dream’s skin.

“Hob, I regret that I frightened you and left you without explanation.”

“You didn’t know,” Hob says.

“Nevertheless. I keep tormenting you.”

“Nah. You just keep things interesting, my friend.” Hob grins, but it falls away to worry. “Just… what happened?” Hob looks at Dream now, meeting his gaze to read his expression. “Can you even tell me or was it… I mean, you look human to me, but I know you’re a lot bigger than that, right? It is something too big for me to understand?”

Dream almost smiles. “Yes, but I think I could try to explain it.”

“If you want to. You don’t have to.”

Dream thinks. “But I owe you a story,” he says eventually. “And you’ve waited so long to hear it.”

One of the very few in creation who did wait, undoubting, for his return.

Hob leans a little nearer, says with emphasis, “You don’t owe me anything, Dream. We’re friends.”

“I know.” Dream can’t explain the sharp bloom of emotion that admission sends through him, so hot it’s not unlike the grief he felt thinking of Unity. “I am not a consistent friend to have, Hob Gadling. But I am a storyteller, so I can be that for you at least. Today.”

Hob seems to sense this is important because he doesn’t protest this time. He waits while Dream thinks a moment.

Quietly, Dream says, “In the year of 1916, I was a captured by mortals in the Waking. They wanted my older sister, the entity, Death of the Endless, and would have certainly failed in their efforts as their magic was nothing against her power but—” Dream extends a finger to take the beat— “they were lucky. I was, at that moment, near mortally wounded by my travels to a failed universe. The one where I didn’t kill the vortex.”

Hob says nothing, but he leans closer.

“I had left my realm to pursue a rogue nightmare and in so doing, made myself vulnerable to magics that would have otherwise never been able to touch me. So, in the darkness, their spell severed me from almost all of my power. Caged me in a circle beneath the ground and it… was… agonizing.” Dream shakes his head. “I can never explain it to you. But it hurt and they demanded gifts that were not mine to give. So, I refused to even speak with them. Not even to argue for reason.”

There’s a frisson in this dreamscape, a shiver of anger in Hob, but he keeps his calm exterior.

“They stripped me of everything I possessed,” Dream confesses, “and held me in cage for a century, and it was so cold and merciless I forget the touch or taste of anything that wasn’t glass and stale air. They killed my raven, Jessamy, whom I loved, and she died for nothing. For my pride I refused their terms, and it killed her. So, for her sake, I held my silence, but it hurt the entire time I was held there, and I think of it still. I dread it still.”

Dream closes his eyes.

“I didn’t mean to miss our meeting.”

“Dream—” Hob starts, but Dream holds up a hand, so he stops.

He goes on, “I didn’t realize the damage my absence was doing to the world, the Waking and the Dreaming both. If I had known… I might have at least spoken with the son—”

“The son?” says Hob, unable to stop himself.

“Yes. Two generations of a single family held me prisoner. An heirloom, passed down between them, as property under magical law—”

“Jesus,” Hob whispers. “In a cage? Literally, in a cage?”

Dream nods. “I’ve never had to be property before. It happens, sometimes, with the Laws. But not to me.” Dream looks at his own hands, examines them in detail. “I suppose I kept my silence because it was the only thing left to deny them. They had everything else from me.”

Hob seems to lose composure briefly, looking away, one hand over his mouth, but he gets it back under control and turns back to face Dream, expression neutral again.

“Okay, how’d you get away?”

“One of them let me go,” he says simply. “The son married a man whose fear held him in complicity for over a century. But, having had a century of stolen life from me with this beloved?” Dream almost laughs. “I suppose there was nothing to lose.”

“Fuck him,” Hob says, cold.

“I wasn’t grateful,” Dream assures him. “There was one thing left to take. So, I took that from him, and his long life will be a torment to him until I decide otherwise.” Dream sighs. “But he is mortal. So, how much can I hold him responsible for what he didn’t begin—?”

“Nah, fuck that guy.”

 Hob does not elaborate further, too enraged to have something philosophical to say.

Dream almost smiles. “I will defer to a human perspective then, on the matter.”

“So that’s why you couldn’t come to see me in the Waking World so much, because you were fixing your Realm after being gone over a hundred years.”

“Yes.”

“And then—” Hob pauses, eyes visibly moving with rapid thought— “Wait, you said it was a vortex in the alternate universe that wounded you. Then… Rose Walker happened in this universe. Another vortex.”

Dream shifts uncomfortably.

“Yes.”

“So that’s fucking twice you’ve had to do this and barely a breath between battles.”

“I… suppose.”

“Well, that’s what you just told me. Christ, we had, what? Eight months max between your meeting me in the inn and June? That’s nothing to someone like you, right?”

Dream shakes his head. “Time moves no faster for me than it does for you, Hob Gadling.”

Hob looks stricken by that.

“Then—” he swallows— “one-hundred-and-five years in that circle?”

Dream, again, shifts uncomfortably. “I had a breath between battles,” he says, ignoring the question.

Dream waits for Hob to press further or say anything. But for a moment, the man is just staring at him, expression such a strange combination of emotion – all of them so intense they are glowing from inside him – that Dream is uncertain how to read it. The uncharacteristic silence goes on long enough that Dream begins to wonder if he made a mistake or is being unclear in some way.

But then Hob gets up on one knee and moves forward, closing the space between them.

He murmurs, “Do you mind?”

And when Dream doesn’t move, Hob leans in and closes his arms around him.  It’s so sudden, such a movement of reflex and so without premeditation on Hob’s part, that Dream completely fails to read the intent until it’s too late to stop the man. He pulls Dream into an embrace.

Dream is too surprised to tense up as his mortal friend tightens his hold on him – one arm hooked up around his ribs, hand between his shoulder blades. The other arm around his shoulders, pulling him in tight against Hob’s chest so his chin is set just above Hob’s clavicle, the folds of his jacket collar brushing Dream’s face.

He means, immediately, to tell Hob to stop.

He means, ardently, to push Hob away from him.

He means a myriad of things.

But in actuality, Dream doesn’t move or breathe or affect the illusion of breathing for Hob’s sake as he sometimes does. He just sits there completely unable to move as Hob kneels there and holds him tight, so tight the weight of him around his ribcage, against his spine, and his neck is bleeding warmth though their clothes. The rise and fall of Hob’s breathing against Dream’s chest is a stabilizing rhythm. The dry, rough spread of his palm against the side of Dream’s neck is like sunlight warming a chill.

Dream, in a daze, wonders why Hob is doing this.

It seems such a peculiar liberty to take.

But even as he thinks it, Hob slides his hand up slightly, to grip the back of Dream’s neck near the base of the skull and the sudden, gentle friction sends a dull pulse of comfort through his body so intense Dream closes his eyes on reflex. It almost hurts. Like flexing a muscle long atrophied – like tasting that first, small chocolate with Lucienne – his body doesn’t know how to receive this, and the compound pain and relief is so complete it feels like pleasure.

Dream doesn’t know what’s happening.

With his sister, this felt obvious, a given intimacy she’d take with him. It was her nature. With Hob, Dream doesn’t know what to do. So, he doesn’t move at all.

“Hob,” Dream says, “what are you doing?”

Hob turns his face against the side of Dream’s head and says, “I’m hugging you.”

Dream feels stupid. “You don’t have to.”

“Should I stop?”

“I—don’t know?”

“Okay,” Hob murmurs.

Hob’s fingers tighten at the nape of Dream’s neck, pulling him in tighter against his shoulder. And when Dream draws an unconscious breath, audible to him, Hob curls his fingers slightly and the dull edge of his nails drag a little against skin and Dream feels a dull edge of panic and gratitude simultaneously and the confusion of that reaction freezes him even further in Hob’s hold.

Hob speaks again, finally, his words a murmur.

“Why did you ask to die?”

Dream tenses. A sting of grief and panic this time.

“I didn’t. You misunderstand—”

“Yes, you did,” Hob whispers. “Banish me for daring, but you asked to die so I have to ask. Like I’ve had to ask anyone, mate. So please, tell me, why did you say that?”

“I don’t know.” Dream hears himself say it, too shell-shocked to stop himself. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know, Hob. I was hurt beyond imagining. Severed from the Dreaming by Rose Walker and then… attacked by one of my creations.” Dream clenches his eyes shut. “He tortured me. I cannot explain it, but while I was cut from the Dreaming, the damage he did me was so much deeper. I can’t staunch it. Even now I feel it, his hands on me.”

Hob presses his cheek against the side of Dream’s head, against his hair.

“One of your creations?”

“The Corinthian. A nightmare created many centuries ago and one of my Major Arcana.” Dream feels a rage surge through him, burning, then leaving cold in its wake as fast as it rose. “When he attacked me, even as he held me down, I thought he’d turn back. I thought he would turn back every moment until he—” Dream tries to find the next word, but he can’t. “I didn’t mean to say it.”

Hob swallows some follow up, choosing consciously a different tac to take.  He carefully, loosens his embrace, enough to sit beside Dream, one hand on his back, but still close.

“What does it mean to be one of the Major Arcana?”

“It means to be a foundational concept in the collective unconscious,” says Dream, the explanation so much easier than the story. “Not primal like Ruin or Joy or Whimsy but something more complex. An entity I design to show dreamers something subtler. I can’t explain to someone not of the Dreaming, but The Arcana are closer to me, and Corinthian was—" Dream tenses his jaw, a pulse of heat burning through him— “he was someone I used to trust.”

“What was he like?”

“A hunter. A hunger. A conceptual mirror, reflecting back humanity’s darkest desires. I made him, specifically, as an archetype in service to humanity’s burgeoning power and cruelty. To frighten and cause self-reflection and… then acceptance and transition. A dark mirror to reflect and slake horror in the Dreaming and allow dreamers to carry their own horrors and move beyond them.”

“He was important then, to you?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Hob hesitates, then, “But he betrayed you.”

“Yes. He escaped the Dreaming to hunt and kill humanity in the Waking, something I expressly forbid. When I was captured during my pursuit of him, he told my captors my name and how to hold me. When the vortex emerged, he used Rose Walker to make me vulnerable and attacked me.” Dream lifts a hand to his face, pressing the heel of his palm against one closed eye. “I didn’t think he’d truly harm me. Not in a way that mattered.”

“But he did?”

Dream grits his teeth, feels the dream-space around them flex and bend until he get it back under control.

“You must understand, I built him strong enough to kill gods. To act as a sentinel in the Dreaming and under the right narrative conditions, he could hunt powers beyond him. I built him that way so he could defend the Dreaming and those in it should I ever be overpowered or absent. I built him to defend even myself.”

Hob’s eyes are dark and focused. He says, softly, “Okay. So, he was strong.”

“Yes. Very. And while I was… distracted by Rose, he was able to do it to me. To hunt me down, run me down. To catch and hold me.”

Hob is tense beside him.

“Even when he forced himself on me,” Dream says, words extracted like shrapnel, “he did it so exactly the way I had made him to do it, it was like I did it to myself.” Dream laughs, but just the sound. He pressed the palm of both hands against his eyes, the pressure sending color and heat through his skull. “So now I am not angry with Corinthian, I’m wondering why I designed something so perfected engineered to harm me. To kill me.”

“Dream…”

“I have responsibilities. I wouldn’t abandon them and those who rely on me.”

Dream lowers his hands, staring into them like he’ll find something there, but his eyes are blurred with heat and salt and a welling grief.

“Why did I do this?”

Hob doesn’t answer.

Hob moves back in then, shifting up on one knee again, closing his arms around Dream as he did before, gathering Dream’s head against his shoulder even as Dream asks again, helplessly, “Why did I do this?”

“It’s okay.” Hob’s voice is shaky. “That’s completely fine, Dream.”

He feels Hob press his mouth to side of his head, an inscrutable gesture, unidentifiable as clumsy application of pressure from immediate nearness or a kiss for comfort. Either way, Dream grips the back of Hob’s jacket on instinct, feels Hob respond to the permission and hold him tighter. 

“You didn’t do this,” Hob murmurs.

Dream says nothing, just listens and feels the words vibrate through Hob’s bones.

“You didn’t do this. You just didn’t. It’s not your fucking fault.”

Dream doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes and Hob holds onto him like Dream could dissolve in his arms, maybe even perfectly aware that it’s a possibility, that Dream’s human appearance is a façade in so many ways.

But despite all of that, Hob slides his hand from Dream’s neck to the back of his skull, fingers dragging against his scalp and Dream exhales, leaning into it. Something physical that isn’t a prelude to violence. A solace he didn’t realize he’d forgotten. Encouraged, Hob, closes his hand gently, then firmly so his fingers tangle tactile and with a slight tension in his hair. Dream allows it, lets the feeling spread from the point of pressure, like nerves re-awakening beneath his skin in waves.

“It’s not your fault,” Hob repeats softly. “It’s not your fault. You hear me?”

Hob is talking to him like he’s spoken with his long-dead comrades, scarred by horror and war. Dream feels their echo in Hob’s hand where it closes tight on the slope where is neck meets his shoulder, fingers closing with an almost painful pressure there beneath his clothes. Almost restraining him, like he could escape, and the idea frightens Hob enough to hold him.

“You didn’t deserve this.”

“I am older than you can comprehend,” Dream murmurs, words pressed partially into Hob’s jacket, “you have no concept of what I deserve.”

“Shut up,” Hob croaks, tightening his hold, turning his face against the side of Dream’s head. “Just shut up, okay? Let me think.”

There’s a quiet then, almost peaceful.

Dream is slack in Hob’s hold, letting the mortal man support his weight against his shoulder, hold his human form like it’s any protection at all. But… Hob Gadling is real within the weave of the Dreaming. He’s gripping Dream so tightly it would bruise in the Waking, his breathing shallow and urgent, his skin hot with a mixture of panic and rage and Dream doesn’t know why scaring his friend is comforting.

But it is, so Dream doesn’t let go of Hob Gadling, and waits to see what he says.

“You asked me,” Hob finds his words at last. “You asked me how I can bear to be alive so long under the weight of everything bad that’s happened to me, right? I didn’t have an answer. Not a good one. I said I just wanted to see how the story ends.”

Dream, leaning against Hob, hums, “I recall.”

“Well, shit, I don’t have some revelation for you. Seven-hundred years of trying to figure out why the hell anyone would want to keep living and the minute you really need a fucking answer, I don’t have one for you.” Hob sniffs. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking pointless, Dream. Useless to ya, really. I don’t know. I just love it. I love being here. I love seeing everything and getting to tell you about it.”

Hob laughs, but it’s a teary laugh.

“It matters when I tell it to you because you’re the storyteller, yeah? Even before I knew your name or who you were, I knew that telling you my story… you were appreciating it as much as I was. I could tell, even when you were being a prick about it.” Hob shakes his head. “You’re nothing like me, Dream, but you’re exactly like me in that way. So, I’m asking you if you can hold on to that? Remember that you love the story too. I love it, I know I do, its easy for me. But… does that sense?”

Dream says nothing for a moment.

“You make sense, Hob Gadling.” Dream feels the man exhale and adds, “It’s a welcome reminder.”

Hob pulls back a bit, finally, but he takes Dream’s shoulders in his hands to look him in the eyes.

“I can’t pretend I know what’s going on with you. But… if it helps, I’m always here and I love telling you my stupid stories and if, any time, you want to hear them, I’ll be there.”

Dream nods.

Then he moves to stand up and Hob, a little startled, gives him space to do it, moving likewise to stand up with him. He seems a bit self-conscious now. He’s a little red in the face, even here in the Dreaming, and he clears his throat, reaching up to tuck a loose section of dark hair behind his ear again. Dream watches him do this and the man gets a little more flustered for some reason and smiles.

“So, uh—”

“Next time you want to speak with me,” Dream says, “and it’s urgent, you should write my name on a piece of paper and burn it. At the very least, I can send Matthew with word.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh.” Hob clears his throat again and grins. “Now I’m official. Heh.”

Dream regards him. “Thank you, Hob, for answering the question I asked seven hundred years ago and continuing to answer it every day since. I do find it a comfort and thank you, again, for reminding me today of that fact.”

Hob’s eyes widen a little.

“Of course.”

Dream considers. “I feel better.”

Hob smiles then, the kind of smile Dream hasn’t seen before on the man’s face, and he chooses that moment to end the dream.

Elsewhere, in the Threshold of Desire, there’s a room that overlooks the shifting horizon of the Realm and in it is a very comfy dais that is made entirely of fluffy cushions and silk pillows and any kind of bed-related comfort that one could desire. And speaking of, Desire themselves is complaining enthusiastically about their older sister Death having shown up to ‘pitch a bitch fit’ at them over their involvement with Rose Walker and Unity Kincaid.

“Honestly,” they say, rolling for the drama across the cushions, grabbing a pillow to pout on along the way, “she acts as though Dream never does anything wrong and needs any kind of protecting. He doesn’t, the little shit. For all that he’s such an asshole, he really turns on the waterworks when big sister is involved.”

Desire rolls their golden eyes, beautiful in their disdain and obvious delight in it.

“So annoying, but don’t worry. I left your name out of it. As far as they’re concerned it was all me.” They preen, then tilt their head. “Despair? You’re spacing out. Whatever is the matter?”

Despair of the Endless, looking out toward the horizon, says idly, “Oh nothing, dear twin.”

She smiles.

“I think I’ve lost a game I’m happy to lose for now. That’s all.”

“Weird,” Desire declares, throwing a pillow at her. “Let’s go do something fun.”

And the twins disappear. Off to new games.