Chapter Text
Dream is reading in the library.
Or rather, Dream was reading in the library the last that Matthew had flown by that section of the stacks. The palace’s royal library has a mind of its own in a lot of ways and Matthew has yet to determine if that fluidity is an effect of it being part of the Dreaming – and therefore always subject specifically to whim of Morpheus himself – or if this section of the palace is, itself, now alive.
Morpheus had promised Lucienne, after all, that her library would stand even if Dream himself were to be taken again from the Dreaming. So he did something to reinforce its reality.
The thought crosses Matthew’s mind because every time he passes the nook of the library where Dream is seated, the details of the nook keep changing.
At first, Dream is sitting at a table, a book open in front of him, a stack of prospective books on the table besides him. It’s incredibly normal-looking and Matthew makes note of it because, in the human world, he’d take the Lord of Dreaming for a tired college student. He looks the part, lost in his study and looking like he subsists off a diet of coffee and vending machine snacks.
But Matthew flies on to tell Merv about a collapsed section of the kitchen.
On his way back, the table in Dream’s nook is gone and he’s sitting instead in one of two armchairs large enough to accommodate Dream pulling one knee up to brace his book against it. He’s turning a page, ignoring or unaware of his raven passing overhead. Again, incredibly normal looking except for the fact a clear window has opened up in the wall behind Dream’s chair where there was previously an intricate stained-glass scene.
But Matthew, again, flies on.
Merv needs Lucienne to know he’s fist fighting a pile of psychic rats in a subsection of basement that’s come back into existence and he needs one of the door dragons to come down and help.
On his third pass back, the nook has changed again.
The shelves themselves have crowded themselves in a little bit, some convenient stacks of paper and tomes now partially block the way in. The armchairs are gone now. Instead, a small alcove has formed at the foot of the window – which is larger now – and in that alcove has grown a kind of embedded chaise. A literal book nook. Dream is curled with his back against the wall that now serves as the windowsill, book still braced against one knee, still reading with a calm, unbothered demeanor.
He seems, if anything, slightly more relaxed though.
Matthew, again, flies away to check on Merv and the battle ongoing in the basement.
On Matthew’s last pass through the library, he stops mid air to flap there before alighting on a bookshelf and peering, curiously, down.
The nook has changed once more.
The window has developed heavy curtains that are partially drawn. The cushions of the chaise have crept up the wall like a cozy lichen. The view now looks, improbably, upon on the comforting roll of Fiddler’s Green and into the heart of the Dreaming itself. The shelves are curving now, and close, like the library is gently closing its hands around something and holding it with care.
Dream of the Endless appears to be asleep.
Matthew, feeling stupid, hadn’t really considered whether the god-like being who controlled dreams might, himself, need to sleep.
But Morpheus has his eyes closed, his shoulder braced against the wall behind him, one arm folded across his stomach with his fingers still caught inside the pages of the book he was reading, and it lays upside down at his side. The chaise itself seems a touch shorter, so Dream has one knee drawn up, the other bent but falling against a strategically positioned pillow. The bedhead is more prominent now than ever.
That’s cute, Matthew thinks for a moment, then becomes offended on Dream’s behalf despite himself.
Matthew resumes his flight to Lucienne.
“Any luck?” says the royal librarian, looking up from her registry book.
“Yeah.” Matthew lands on the back of a chair across from her. “Merv and Tony managed to stomp out the rats, but they ate a lot of the conceptual wheat that was down there. So gotta let the big boss know there’s gonna be a supply shortage in seeding ideas for next season.” A pause. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“I am an open book,” says Lucienne warmly. She seems in high spirits lately which brings up the mood of everyone on staff, Matthew included.
“Does Morpheus sleep?”
Lucienne pauses in the middle of putting a book down, long enough to be noticed, then finishes the movement. Her lovely dark face does not react to the information. She maintains the guise of distraction, her eyes down on the registry entries as though she cannot be bothered to stop and give this comment full attention. Matthew knows she’s pretending only because of the pause.
“Did you… see Lord Morpheus sleeping?” says Lucienne, voice entirely casual.
Matthew caws. “Yeah. He’s sleeping in the library right now.”
Lucienne looks up at that. “What?”
“He’s sleeping in the library,” Matthew repeats helpfully. He never has to repeat for Lucienne so this is an occasion. He jerks his beak vaguely in the direction. “Over there, in the stacks.” He lowers his voice in a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t tell him, but he looks like a fucking college student before exams. Let me tell you, I have been there and—”
Lucienne does not let him finish. She closes her book sharply and moves with some haste away from the desk and in the direction Matthew indicated. That, Lucienne doing a mild speed-walk, gives Matthew a sudden jolt of anxiety.
“Boss?”
“Show me,” says Lucienne, still so very casual, but so slightly too fast.
“Uh, okay.” Matthew takes off, sweeping down the walkway through the stacks ahead of her. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.”
Something is definitely wrong, but Matthew doesn’t press her on it because that little anxiety turns into a slightly larger one and his tiny raven chest can’t hold much more room for that, so he takes her directly to the section where he saw Morpheus. He is relieved to find that the nook seems to have settled in a little bit, relaxing into its new shape like a giant beast settling in for a nap itself.
“Here.”
He lands on a tall pile of books, speaking softly.
“What’s the problem? No naps allowed in the library?”
Lucienne peeks around the corner of a bookshelf. It’s the meekest, most nervous thing he’s ever seen her do in all his time in the Dreaming and Matthew fully just stares at her for a moment. Her sharp, dark eyes scan the tableau quickly. Dream is exactly where Matthew left him – slightly more curled into the corner of the window alcove, but other than that, still peacefully asleep.
Eventually, she steps back around the corner and Matthew joins her.
“Okay, now you’re just acting weird,” Matthew whispers loudly.
“I apologize. I was just taken a bit off guard,” says Lucienne, straightening her vest a little, smoothing it as if to soothe herself actually. “Lord Morpheus does not sleep except to recover from a great effort or—” she pauses here again, one of those little beats where a million thoughts flash through her eyes— “or injury,” she finishes.
Matthew flaps up onto a shorter shelf nearby to be on eye-level with Lucienne.
“You’re saying he’s hurt?”
“I’m saying he’s tired,” Lucienne amends, but she seems visibly worried now.
“I mean… it’s been a lot recently. Right? It’s good that he’s taking a break.”
“Yes.” But she says it like ‘no’.
“What? What’s that tone?”
Lucienne folds her arms, pressing her lips briefly together.
“It’s not my place to say.” There’s a pause before she immediately says, “I don’t think he is actually taking time to rest, Matthew. I think he’s unconsciously losing consciousness and the Dreaming is accommodating it.”
A beat.
“Are you saying he just literally passed out?”
Lucienne seems distressed at this phrasing. “It is recuperative nonetheless.”
“He’s passing out randomly around the castle!?”
Lucienne hushes him sharply.
Then they both peek around the corner of the bookshelf to where the monarch of the realm is still unmoving and still. Matthew would fucking swear Dream is just sleeping. Though now that’s he’s paying attention, the way his head is fallen against the sill and the way the book in his hand has fallen, leaving his pale fingers stuck a little awkwardly in the pages…
They retreat around the corner.
Lucienne looks both troubled and frustrated all at once. It’s not a common look for the Dream Realm’s Royal Librarian. She’s a little bit dressed down today, having doffed her formal suit jacket in favor of a white button down and dark vest. All perfectly pressed and tailored. Lucienne as a rule and a person is perfectly pressed and tailored generally, so seeing her distressed is something new.
“Okay, okay,” Matthew says, whispering again. “What do we do?”
“I am pondering exactly that,” says Lucienne, fitting a curled finger thoughtfully against the generous moue of her mouth. Her eyes flicker with internal calculations. “Addressing it directly will not work. Lord Morpheus hates to be perceived as out of control, even when it’s so. Telling him directly to rest? He will do the opposite out of obstinance.”
“He’s stubborn son of a bitch,” says Matthew.
Lucienne gives him a look.
Matthew, unfazed, says, “Tell me with a straight face that he’s not.”
“This problem may work itself out without our interference,” says Lucienne, breezing past Matthew’s challenge entirely. “If it’s a just a matter of physical exhaustion, then even these impromptu moments of recovery may be sufficient. My only worry is that recent events were… unusual, even for an Endless. Being imprisoned for a century plus was hardly a kindness.”
Matthew feels a niggle of worry in the back of his brain.
“Uh, is that a lot for an Endless? One-hundred years?” He clacks his beak. “Kind figured it was just an annoyance for him.”
Lucienne blinks at him, almost taken aback.
“No. Time moves no faster for the Endless than it does for the rest of us. I was—” She seems to catch herself. Regathers. “It is injury enough to trouble even him.”
Matthew feels nervous now.
“Uh, so, getting in a fist fight with Lucifer Morningstar and John Dee and then Rose Walker all in a row directly after being in a box for a century was… not great, I assume.”
Lucienne’s mouth tenses with some emotion held back.
“It is an… unusual pace of damage. Yes.” She sighs and gestures with one hand. “But he did recover his ruby and much of the damage to the components that constitute Lord Morpheus’ physical well-being have much improved after Rose Walker’s time as the vortex. In fact, he’s more powerful now than he’s been in many epochs.”
She indicates the shimmering and beautiful library around them.
“The condition of the Dreaming itself tells me something Lord Morpheus’ condition. They reflect one another. Given our recent successes in restoration – barring the recent erosion in the cellars – I had assumed he was very nearly done with recuperation. So, it surprises me that he is yet in recovery.”
“Well, maybe it’s not physical.” Matthew can’t really shrug anymore, but he flaps a bit for emphasis. “When humans get depressed or stressed out, that’s a big drain and sometimes nothing will fix it but a nap and sandwich.” He tilts his head. “Do you think it’s possible the guy is just kinda bummed?”
Lucienne shakes her head, an amusement in her tone.
“If that were explicitly the case, there would be much more gloom in the weather.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” She’s smiling fully now, fondly. “It rains when Morpheus is feeling dejected. It annoys him immeasurably, but not enough to stop it.”
“Incredible,” mutters Matthew. “Okay, so maybe he’s not sad. That’s the wrong thing. But there’s something lingering, right? Something not quite right, not right on top but, like you said. In the basement.” He shuffles a little from foot to foot. “I didn’t mention it before, but that fight with Lucifer got pretty nasty. Not the fight itself but after. It got… bad there at the end.”
“What do you mean?” Lucienne steps a little nearer, looking worried. “You and Lord Morpheus walked away with the helm. I understand the rules of the Oldest Game and the rumor mill in hell travels even to the pages of my library, but it did not seem to go badly from my reports.”
Matthew clicks his beak nervously.
“Matthew?”
“Yeah, I guess I was a bit sparse on the details in my first report. I wasn’t sure what I was, uh, supposed to say.” He pauses. “I dunno, maybe it’s not my place to talk about this. He’s still getting used to having a raven and it would suck if I told you something that was… fucked up. You know, before he was ready to tell anyone about it.”
Lucienne looks, if anything, more alarmed by his recalcitrance than by anything he might have blurted out.
“How nasty do you mean?” she says very softly.
“Well, without getting gross,” says Matthew slowly, nervous, “There was the fight, which you know about. And then, uh…” Matthew shuffles. “Then there was… some… torture.”
“What!”
“Shhh!” Matthew hops closer, looking around nervously. “I thought you knew.”
Lucienne is appalled. “How would I know such a thing?”
“Well, I just figured Morpheus would mention it to you!”
“Does that strike you as something Morpheus is prone to?” she demands, whispering now but fiercely. “Mentioning when things are not going terribly well?”
“He told you about the stuff with Burgess, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but only out of obligation after being gone for one-hundred years and needing to offer a very thorough explanation for his failure in duty and, might I add, while still under quite a lot of physical stress.” Lucienne looks visibly pained now. “It’s hardly his habit to tell me anything at all, recent changes in his attitudes notwithstanding. So, no, Matthew, he did not tell me he was tortured.”
Matthew is quiet for a while.
“I’m not gonna tell you what happened,” Matthew says, decided. “Not all of it. It was just… it was bad. It was kinda my fault and I felt shit about it and I was gonna come tell you right away, but afterward he just kind of shrugged it off like he shrugged off the big scary magic battle thing and I thought it was just no big deal to him because he was, like, fucking Endless and that’s what Endless do.”
There’s another quiet.
Matthew, much more softly, says, “Sounds like I was wrong.”
Lucienne softens a little.
“It’s something Lord Morpheus does.” She sighs. “And though you may feel responsible, I...”
She paused, then looks around the corner once more to check that Dream is still entirely preoccupied. The nook is quiet and dark now, the curtains drawn. The book in Dream’s hand has migrated to a small end table that’s scooted near for this purpose and on the same table, a very small music box is softly emitting the sound of laughter in a neighboring room. Snippets of song. Like a party one apartment over.
She seems to take heart from this and waves Matthew to follow her.
“It seems clear that Morpheus has taken more pains than he let on.”
“Yeah, the roughhousing has been a bit much,” Matthew says, taking flight after her.
“Indeed.” Lucienne seems tense now. “I was given a dream seed for safekeeping. It is entirely inert now, but it still contains the echoes of its past deeds and I felt—” her face tightens, her hands flexing slightly— “some recent violence. I felt it intimately and thinking back, it may be relevant.”
She moves to her left, down a row of books, and then directly into a picture of a well-appointed study. Matthew flies with her and suddenly is within that painted study. It still looks painted, acrylic and the smell of canvas, but now in 3D as Lucienne moves to a desk colored in deep walnut and takes a little painted key out from a locket around her neck. She unlocks the desk drawer and from inside it, produces a small, egg-sized skull.
Matthew warily lands beside it.
The skull, upon closer inspection, has rows of teeth in its eye sockets.
“Fuck.” Matthew flaps back, looking up at her. “Is that The Corinthian?”
“Yes,” says Lucienne softly. “Or at least, what’s left of him.”
Her expression is unfathomable, looking down at it and Matthew can’t hope to understand why she almost looks sad but at the same time furious at the nightmarish object.
“I did try to tell him,” she says eventually. “I thought he simply misunderstood Morpheus.” She picks up the little skull, holds it in her palm. “Now I wonder if he didn’t see something I couldn’t.”
She is quiet for a moment, then closes her hand around the horrible thing.
“I can look into his memories, if I choose.”
Matthew, almost afraid, asks, “Are you gonna do it?”
Lucienne lowers her hand, holding Corinthian’s core.
“Morpheus gave the dream seed to me for safekeeping.”
“Okay, but does he know you can look inside?”
So softly, she says, “Of course, he does.”
Matthew caws. “Sounds like a cry for help if I ever heard one.”
“Or a breach in trust after it was so reluctantly given,” says Lucienne sharply.
“Yeah, but you aren’t gonna tell anyone, right? You’re just making sure he’s okay and if he gave it to you and he told you about Burgess, maybe this is just him telling you about this. But, you know, in a weird, stupid, Morpheus way.”
Lucienne struggles with this.
“You know he’s not gonna talk about it,” Matthew says, stomping his little bird feet. “You know it. If it’s this bad, he’s not gonna let us talk about it. So, just knowing what it was so we can work around it? That’s, like, a duty of care.” He can hear it’s not Lucienne he’s trying to convince as he says, “Right?”
Lucienne stands there for a very, very long time.
Then, “I will not look. I do not want to see. I just want to know what the Corinthian was evoking. If it was something he was evoking from Lord Morpheus or just a passing pain. I would know that and nothing more.” She puts such emphasis on that last piece, looking at Matthew as if binding him as her witness. “Corinthian could feel what his victims felt. It was simply in his nature to crave it.”
“Isn’t that bad for you?”
Matthew can barely believe what he’s hearing.
“I just want to feel what he felt.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea. That sounds much worse. You should just fucking look. This is an intervention, boss-lady, and sometimes it gets messy and you gotta take the reins out of someone’s hands and do something you might not otherwise do because it’s an extreme situation. You gotta just nut up and do what it takes to make sure everyone gets through!”
Lucienne looks at him.
“Er, sorry. I mean, just…” He sighs. “Fuck it. If you’re going to do it, sit down. I’m right here. Okay?”
Lucienne nods and hastily takes a seat in the painted chair before the desk. She settles herself. Then with intention, she holds up the little nightmare skull, removing her spectacles. That done, she looks steadily at it and holds the dead thing’s gaze. It’s quiet. Almost meditative except for the tension in her brow.
After a moment, she exhales suddenly and her mouth pulls down like a person trying to swallow a sob. But it goes away. She keeps looking at the skull, her face a mask of pure focus. Almost enough to miss the smell, like blood and weird musk, that starts to emanate from the small bone carving. It grows stronger and stronger, until the air is strained. Like there is a scream in the room, but no one can hear it.
Then, all at once, Lucienne cries out and drops the skull.
It hits the desk with a single heavy thud, then lies there like an anvil.
Lucienne is gripping the arm of her chair in one hand, clutching the dress-shirt over her heart with the other. She tries to maintain herself for a moment but despite her efforts a single, sob escapes her. High and hurt. She covers her mouth.
Matthew, having flapped closer, shuffles along the edge of the desk anxiously.
“Are you okay?
She swallows, steadily herself.
“Yes.” She straightens up. Exhaling. “A… passing impression.”
“Yeah, no shit. You got the shape of it? Of what happened?”
“Yes,” says Lucienne, her eyes moving again to the skull on the desk. “Yes, I know the shape of it.”
“Good. So you think Morpheus is gonna walk this off or you think he needs some help? What’s the game plan?”
Lucienne gets up, sweeps The Corinthian’s core into the desk drawer and gets the key from around her neck.
“We will be intervening.” She locks the drawer. “But carefully.”
Dream of the Endless becomes aware in increments.
It’s a strange thing, returning from a comfortable oblivion and having your senses again assert reality. So casually mortals step from one place into the next, doing this thing that for Morpheus seems so unnatural. He opens his eyes and finds that someone has their hand on his shoulder. Someone waking him with such gentleness of touch they almost fail in their efforts.
Dream turns his head to look at them.
Lucienne. Her head tilted in question.
“My lord?”
Morpheus looks briefly around them, recalling the library and the passing memory of reading there in the familiar quiet. He does not recall taking up a seat at the window, nor laying his head down against the glass to take his ease. He wonders, slowly, how long he’s been lying here unaware of the Dreaming around him and how long his royal librarian has been watching him do it.
“Lucienne.” He makes no move to get up. He hasn’t a notion where he’d pretend to go if he did. “Did you need something?”
“Nothing pressing. But I had a question.”
“Go on.”
Lucienne takes a seat in an armchair across from him, folding her hands as she leans forward.
“Are you feeling alright?”
“I am well enough. I was lost in thought.”
She does not believe him. He can see it and, worse, it seems she expected him to say that.
“Thinking,” she repeats. “For the last two days?”
“What?”
He sits up, swinging his feet to the floor, his jacket sliding from the chaise where he’s reclined. It’s too late to mask his horror and having revealed it, he expects Lucienne ask questions, but she simply picks up a book from the end table nearby and offers it to him. Baffled at that, Dream takes the book and finds it’s the one he was reading before he fell out of consciousness.
“I’ve marked your place,” she says helpfully.
There is a purple bookmark slide into the pages.
At a loss for what else to say, he runs his thumb along the cover.
“Thank you, Lucienne.”
She lets that hang for a moment before opening her hands a little, a gentling motion.
“Sir, if I may?” She reaches into her pocket and produces a small colorful box. “Merv has been finding an assortment of nasty things in the cellars these last few days. Eating things. Various grotesqueries.” She sets the box on the end table near him with no explanation and sits back, still talking. “Nothing dragon fire doesn’t fix, but it raised some questions about the constitution of the realm.”
Very lost, Dream picks up the box and removes the lid.
Inside is a single, small, chocolate.
More confused now than he could have ever expected to be, he stares at Lucienne.
“That is for you,” she says, sailing past his confusion. “Sir, I must apologize, but I’m afraid you are going too fast for palace staff and we much beg your patience.”
“in what matter?”
“You are moving so quickly, and the restoration projects are so ambitious that we’ve been straining our personnel resources for some time now. For example, the regeneration of the palace catacombs is happening so rapidly that Merv and the rest cannot hope to clear each level as they come back into existence. We must ask that you slow the pace of reconstruction for their sake.”
Dream doesn’t mask his surprise at that.
“You say this has raised questions about the stability of the Dreaming?”
Lucienne pauses, visibly choosing her words.
“The decay… it frightened many. So, any trouble Merv and senior staff are having, it raises fresh fears for those newly returned.”
There’s a pang at that. Dream feels it like tension along his spine, but doesn’t interrupt.
“These things take time,” Lucienne is saying. “Repairs. Putting things back as they once were – it must be taken in increments. Put simply, there is damage, sir.” Her hands open and move briefly as if to hold something… but she closes them again around each other as she goes on. “I interrupted you to alert you to the issue and ask your conscious effort to slow the rebuilding. If that’s quite alright?”
“Of course,” Dream says quietly. “Tell the staff I’ve heard their concerns. I will slow the pace of regeneration.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Then, when Lucienne doesn’t offer an explanation, he holds up the box with the chocolate in it. “What… is this?”
“Oh. That.” She waves a hand and stands up. “The kitchen staff is getting back into the swing of things. They apologize on their tardiness in getting the dining areas restocked and beg your pardon. They know you’ve been waiting. So, they sent that to me to pass along.” Now she seems a little sheepish. “Something nice to start? I suppose?”
There is not a polite way to say that he wasn’t waiting and had entirely forgotten that the kitchen staff and various hunger-based daydreams would be starting their duties again. In fact, it just… hadn’t occurred to him to eat again at all since his return and until this very moment, it hadn’t existed in his mind as a return to form.
Lucienne tilts her head.
“Sir?”
Morpheus takes the chocolate out of the box, holding it like a marble. After inspecting it, he takes a small bite just big enough to split its shell. (He thinks he sees Lucienne relax a little, as if she’d been holding a breath, but dismisses it.)
“It has been a long time since I ate anything.”
He pauses, then puts the rest of the chocolate on his tongue, studying the bite of sweetness and a tang of something citrus. Almost painful, like tasting is an atrophied muscle attempting to flex. He hides a grimace for Lucienne’s benefit and looks at her. He sees her anxious hope – previously masked, he thinks – and feels something inside him give a little, a small calving as if under the insistent pressure of a thumb.
A relief he didn’t know he was aching for.
But what he says aloud is simply, “I think I told myself to forget it, so I wouldn’t be without.”
Lucienne’s hand comes up, like a reflex before she puts it down again at her side.
“You needn’t,” she says, “do without anymore, my lord.”
“I know.” He sets the empty box aside, breaking eye contact with his librarian. “It just, as you said, takes time.”
She nods.
“Very good, sir. I’ll let the rest of the staff know to keep it conservative for now, though, Matthew has been insistent on getting hold of fresh kettle corn as soon as physically possible.” She sounds only mildly exasperated at the notion. “As for the rest, we’re working on clearing levels one and two. Give us the day and after that, we’ll try level three?”
“Thank you, Lucienne.”
Lucienne nods and turns to go, picking up a few stray books as she leaves.
“This is killing my goddamn roses,” says Merv, audibly pained. “Look at ‘em, Matthew. They’re gonna strain themselves with this nonsense and then whose gonna have to retrain them to act like proper roses again? Me. That’s who. You know how hard it is to get Dreaming Roses to stop acting snooty and just be roses and do shit like sit there and look nice and not be plaid? Or polka dot?”
Merv shakes his giant pumpkin head, his hollow eyes animating with regret.
“This bullshit gives them notions.”
The ‘bullshit’ in question is the fact Morpheus is sleeping in the west garden and said garden has taken some pains to accommodate his presence.
What was once a giant and stately willow tree surrounded by a well-manicured lawn of clover and artful flowerbeds has now become a wild eruption of bramble. Inside that bramble: the ruler of the land of dreams is sitting with his back against the trunk of the willow tree, eyes closed, leaning against its wide base.
The tree itself has bowed its trunk slightly, so its master can lie back slightly more comfortably, and its roots have snaked to the surface of the clover and thickened to curve around the ground where he’s seated, coiling in as if in an arboreal hug from behind. The clover has grown up and generated wildflowers amongst themselves who face toward Dream like all plants turn toward the sun.
Creeping lavender has snuck into the lawn and bloomed purple, filling the air with a gentle sweetness, and Matthew notes the sections of it that have crept and curled gingerly around edges of Dream’s boots, like little fingers peeking over a table. The affectionate touch of growing things.
The roses, less adorably, have become a rather intimidating wall of thorns that ring the circumference of the willow tree. The wall of green is studded with fat black flower heads that slither and open red mouths, like little biting animals whenever Merv tries to get close. He’s got a rake and has been using it to great effect slapping the shit out of them whenever they try to grab his overalls in the bramble.
“Son of a fuck!” says Merv, slamming the rake down on a sneaky bit of rosebush.
“You okay?” Matthew has flown over the bramble patch entirely to land on a birdbath under the willow tree. “Oh shit. There’s one on your left. Smack it! Smack it!”
Merv lays about wildly with the rake until the roses have been wacked into submission. Then he stomps over to the birdbath, grumbling, “Rassemfrassum, no good, snooty little...”
“Sorry about that,” says Matthew.
“Why are you sorry? You’re not the one making the grounds act up.”
They glance together over at the foot of the willow tree.
Dream looks a little different than Matthew has seen him in the past. For one: he’s not wearing the big black jacket he usually swoops around in. (A staple of his appearance so persistent since Matthew’s arrival that he’d come to assume some variation of it was required.) Instead, he’s just down the fitted black T-shirt and jeans and something about the T-shirt specifically – how it makes Dream look so totally human – makes Matthew nervous.
He cannot explain why such a small thing would do that.
There is a sound of birdsong from out in the garden and the summer-y buzz of bumblebees. A breeze rustles the leaves of the willow tree to a gentle murmur and for a moment, it’s so nice Matthew feels himself get a little drowsy. Then Merv pokes him in the ribs, knocking him into the birdbath with a squawk.
“Ah! What the hell!”
“Don’t you get started,” says Merv, leaning on his rake. He sighs, the carved grin of his mouth downturned now. His voluminous head is turned toward Dream. “Shit. This is the third time this week. He’s not so good, huh?”
“I dunno.” Matthew gives a bird-shrug with his wings. “How’s the basement?”
“Still full of nasty nightmare stuff,” says Merv.
“You… ever seen this happen before?”
“A little.” Merv stares for a moment at Morpheus slumped against a tree, totally unreadable on account of having a literal goddamn pumpkin for a head. He looks, at best, grumpy. “Y’know, most of the shit I do – cleaning up, repairs, demolition projects – Dream can just do it all himself. He just waves his hand or thinks about it, and it’ll fuckin’ happen. I don’t need to do that stuff.”
Matthew tilts his head. “Uh, then why is there any palace staff at all?”
“Good question,” says Merv mysteriously, digging around in his pockets. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Uh, how exactly are you gonna—?”
“Don’t think about it too hard.” Merv gets a cigar out of his overall pockets. “If you do, it stops working.”
Matthew endeavors not to think too hard about it while Merv gets a matchbook out, strikes one, and lights up his cigar. He doesn’t seem to have any trouble puffing the coal to an encouraging plume of smoke. Then the talking raven and the animated pumpkin vine in overalls stand there and watch fronds of new plants unwind from the ground around their boss’ sleeping spot.
“Don’t tell Lucienne, but I’ve seen stuff in the basement before over the centuries.” Merv taps ash from his cigar. “Nothing quite as sticky as this though. This time feels like a fuckin’ build up. Bleaching and the scrubbing helps, yeah, but this time feels… bad.” His head swings around to look down at Matthew. “New kid, I’m not gonna tell you how to do your job, but you got a level of insolence available to you that the rest of us have used up over the years. Might want to use it.”
“Huh? For what?”
Merv takes a long drag from the cigar, his cartoonish mouth pressing shut except for a gap on the far right from which a jet of smoke whooshes up.
“Telling Morpheus to get a grip.”
“What?” Matthew hops in shock. “I can’t do that.”
“Someone’s gotta.” Merv shrugs. “Lucienne has to be the reliable one. You’ve gotta be the jerk.”
“Why do I have to be the jerk?”
“That’s what ravens are for. Watching the boss’s back and telling him what’s what.”
“I don’t know what’s what. I just got here.”
“Hey, I’m just telling it like I see it: Dream’s got something eating at him and its eating at the foundations underneath us. Literally.” He waves the cigar at Matthew. “So unless you want me fighting sentient bread mold or acid slugs or dread chewers in the pantry for the next hundred years, you better figure it out.”
“But—but—”
Merv looks at him. “It’s the job, kid.”
Matthew glances at where the new fans of dark purple ferns are opening up like the gentlest green blanket over the Endless curled beneath them.
“How serious do you think it is? No kidding around.”
Merv is quiet for a while before answering.
“When Dream didn’t come back after the first twenty years, people started to say he’d abandoned his post.” He taps some more ash from his cigar. “Some Endless have done it. Kicked it. Let someone else step in and take over. It’s not unheard of.”
Matthew’s head snaps up. “What?”
“Endless are forever, kid, but each aspect? That’s a totally different story. If Lucifer killed Dream in Hell, another Dream would take over his post and how smooth or terrible that transition is depends on how fucked up the timing is on the death. Don’t know the details, but it can get nasty.”
Merv puffs his cigar.
“This Dream is the first Dream,” he says, “the one that’s always been here.” The inside of Merv’s jack-o-lantern head glows with the light off the tobacco coal. “It’s reasonable that he’d be, you know, tired.”
“No.”
Matthew’s tone must surprise Merv because the pumpkin head swings toward him.
Matthew glares in so much as a raven can do so.
“No way. He’s not bailing on us. That’s not what’s happening.”
Merv looking down on him seems scarier, suddenly, than Matthew ever imagined the cartoony groundskeeper could be. Like the insides of his bulbous head are holding something nasty bound within and he thinks about the stories around Halloween and how little he knows about whether it was dream or nightmare that sparked whatever Merv Pumpkinhead might be.
“I hear what the vorpals say sometimes before I mop em.” His voice is quiet. “Echoes and the like.”
Matthew, afraid that Merv will repeat those echoes, says nothing.
Merv’s enormous mouth curves up, grinning.
“Don’t worry, kid, I’m not freaking out. I don’t think we’re days away from everything coming apart. I’m just saying billions of years is a long time to exist and with billions to go, we could be due for a change.” A shrug. “But what to do I know? I’m just the janitor.”
Then Merv puts his cigar out on his rake handle and pockets it.
“Welp, gonna go beat the shit out of these roses. Hopefully the boss wakes up before the whole damn garden is fighting me.”
Matthew hops around the bowl of the birdbath. “Should we—?”
“Nah. Let him sleep. He’s allowed.” Merv begins swatting mercilessly at the roses. “Make up your mind, kid. It’s a bit early to be sick of your job, donchathink?”
“Boss? Boss! Hey!”
Dream looks up.
Matthew is perched on the edge of a stone arch above him like a sparrow on a roof. He’s fluffed up, wings out, looking agitated and afraid. For a moment, the angle is puzzling to Morpheus, until realizes with a slow confusion that his back is against the wall and he’s starting to slide down said wall. Dream tries to shake the fatigue, grabbing it like a rotten apple bobbing up and pushing it back down. It takes more effort than he can explain and that wells a sudden dread like blood from a fresh cut.
He’s in his gallery.
Why is he in the gallery?
He’s not standing suddenly, he’s sitting on a bench that’s materialized as he slid back down the wall, unable to stay standing. For a moment, he allows himself to stay there and try to take stock of where he is and what he’s doing. The gallery is dark around him, two ornate gold frames are suspended before him and illuminated by no visible light source.
He is facing directly an empty frame.
Not the Prodigal. A frame empty because the sigil of its represented sibling has been taken from its place and it takes Dream far, far too long to realize there is something in his hand.
“Morpheus! Wake up! She’s in the room!”
“What?”
He can’t focus.
There’s a pain. He didn’t realize it until now. Dull like the newness of an agony has already faded into the dull, throbbing rhythm of a wound that’s become familiar. It radiates up his arm in slow, aching pulses, like a heartbeat.
He moves his head as if there’s an anchor pulling his spine down. It so slow and it takes every effort to do it. He looks down into his hand, resting face-up against his knee and open… but there is blood pooled in the center of his palm. Running bright and fresh from the pad of his thumb where it appears he’s driven the dull, barbed end of a hook (small enough to be on the end of a fishing line) through the meat of his finger.
Despair of the Endless takes his hand then.
“Hello big brother,” she says, and her voice sends the same dull ache through his body as the hook does. Seated next to him, his little sister curls her fingers between his and he does the same. Fitting their hands together. “It’s been a long time.
“Sister. Did I summon you?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes are watery and pale, face framed by lank wheat-colored hair. “You held my sigil, but you didn’t ask for me. But when I tried to come through, your Realm opened to me just the same.” She holds up their entwined hands, showing him the hook. “You’d done this already.”
“Aponoia.” Her name is bitter, like biting into the cyanide pit of a peach. “I didn’t mean to summon you.”
“Nobody does.” She sighs rather glumly rests her head on his shoulder. “But they summon me all the same. The ones who want it and the ones who don’t, they all ease themselves onto the hook until it has them.” She smiles. “Some take so long, it’s like they enjoy it.”
She squeezes his hand, and the pain lances up his arm and takes root in his chest so suddenly Morpheus closes his other hand over the notch in his breastbone, gasping. Despair watches him breath through it with a familiar and appraising stare before she raises her other hand and to touch his face. It hurts, but in a way that’s a relief, like dragging a knife across your wrist.
“Do you need me?” she asks.
The pain is building, terminating through his torso until he’s compelled to draw one knee up to curl around it, his fist pressed against his chest until the pressure seems to staunch the flow. He realizes he’s not dressed suddenly. He’s wearing a torn black T-shirt, ripped at the neck. No shoes. His pants are soft grey sweats, torn at the knee and ill-fit.
“You should go,” he says, but the words are catching.
“Do you need me?” Despair asks again. Her gaze is drowning.
“Is this yet another game, my sister? Are you trying to hurt me?”
“No. Desire wants that, like they always want it.” She tilts her head. “I’m here because you called.”
“I don’t need you, Despair.”
“You have me nonetheless,” she says. Then she lifts their joined hands and kisses the back of his knuckles and her touch is a cigarette burn ground on bare skin. He lets the pain blossom through him until the relief of its passing takes over and his little sister is looking up at him with that terrible, dissecting stare. “You seem different, Dream.”
He says nothing.
“You seem sad.”
He closes his eyes, feels a heat behind them.
“It’s nice,” Aponoia says. “It gives us a reason to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“I know. You want to do this.” She takes hand between both of hers and closes her palm over his thumb so the hook digs in deeper. She never looks away from him as she does it and blood runs down his bare forearm, dripping from his elbow. “It feels better, right?” She does it again and Dream tenses, exhaling slowly. His whole arm shaking “Better than making up lies about it. Or pretending.” She squeezes his palm, like you hold a mourner’s hand. “This is honest.”
“This isn’t useful,” Dream says.
“It is useful. It’s important. It’s beautiful and it makes me sad every time you pretend it’s not.” She pauses, waiting, but when he says nothing still, she says, “There’s no avoiding it, Dream. You always avoid me. Even when it makes no sense and you could share it with me—"
Dream opens his eyes.
“This is pointless.”
Despair stares at him, expression emptied now.
“Then Desire was right.” Despair lets go of his hand. “You’re one foot in my kingdom and telling me its of little consequence.” Her stare feels like mortician’s wire shoved through the atriums of the heart. “You haven’t changed.”
And then she’s gone.
Dream sets his shoulder against the stone wall, pulling his wrist to his body and gripping it for a moment. The hook is still caught in his thumb, the barbed end now entirely run though the digit and standing free from the back of his fingernail. The blood is pulsing liberally from the wound, covering his hands and his arms. He hates that it is such a relief.
“Dream!” Matthew flaps down onto the bench next to him. “Oh fuck, your hand! Who was that!?”
“My sister,” Dream says, not lifting his temple from the cool stone wall. “Despair of the Endless. It has been a long time since she stood in my gallery.” He shakes his head a little, still keeping the stone against skin. “Maybe I have kept her away too long. It is not her fault that her function is what it is.”
“SHE SHOVED A HOOK THROUGH YOUR FINGER!”
Dream doesn’t know why that makes him smile a little. “No. I did that. She just finished it. It’s what she does.”
“That looks really bad. Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Can you get it out?”
“With great pains, yes.”
“Got a pair of pliers?” Matthew asks anxiously, flapping closer, beady eyes darting fearfully over Dream’s blood-soaked hands. “You just flatten the barb and pull it back. Or snip off that loop at the end and push it the rest of the way through! Saw my uncle do that once when he stuck himself fly fishing.”
“This is my sister’s sigil,” says Dream tiredly. “I cannot change its shape or damage it in any way. It will do what it was intend to and take flesh with it.” Matthew looks so horrified, and Dream should do something to dismiss his fears, but he just says, “Why did you follow me to my gallery, Matthew?”
“I… was curious.”
“You’ve been following me,” Dream says, no energy to be accusatory or even angry. “Why?”
Matthew shuffles.
“Boss, you’ve been kinda… out of it since the vortex thing. We’ve been trying to get ya to take it easy, slow down with the rebuilding. Whatever, but it’s not about being tired. Right?” His raven looks up at him with such genuine distress. “Despair wouldn’t show up and say all that shit she said if you were just fucking tired.”
Dream looks down at his hands, the blood drying in the creases of his fingers.
“No. She wouldn’t.”
“Are you okay?
“I am fine, Matthew.”
“Bullshit!” Matthew flaps angrily. “That’s bullshit! Look at you! You have a hook in your hand. You’re passing out all over the castle. It’s making everyone nervous. They think you’re gonna—” here an ugly pause and Matthew struggles to say it— “gonna give up. For real this time. Even the ones who won’t say it or don’t want to think about it can fucking feel it. Like something rotting from the bottom up. Are you gonna look me in the face and say you’re fine?”
“I would never,” Dream says quietly, “abandon my subjects or my duty—”
“You already are,” Matthew blurts.
Silence then.
“Sorry. Fuck. That’s not…”
Dream watches Matthew’s regrets overtake him in real time.
“I didn’t mean that. I just mean—”
“No, Matthew, you are right,” Dream says, stopping his raven’s protests as they form. “While I am not failing in my duties to the dreamers, I have not yet proven to my subjects that their home is safe.” Dream exhales. “I will amend that.”
“Hey. I don’t give a shit about that right now, boss.” Matthew ruffles anxiously, his little feet shuffling back and forth. “Right now I just… I wanna help. Let me help, please. I can keep your secrets if you need me to. I swear, boss. I’ll never tell anyone. You can put a curse on me, so I’ll never open my big mouth about anything you say here ever, but—”
“Enough.” Dream says it gently. “Is that what would comfort you? For me to tell you want happened?”
“No. It… might comfort you though? If someone else knew. A relief?”
Dream looks again at his bleeding hand, the hook glinting there.
Eventually, Dream says, very quietly, “I’ve never been held captive like that. In a devil’s snare so primitive but so… immovable in its simplicity. I wasn’t just captive, I was reduced in a way I can’t reconcile in even now that I am more whole than I was at my capture.” Dream shivers, letting Matthew see this reflex openly. “I can recall it perfectly, how it felt: A cutting away of myself. Almost gentle amputation that rendered me small enough to be held.”
Dream flexes his bloody hand and fireflies manifest, hovering in a lazy cloud above his palm.
“Like lightning bugs,” he admits, though it is a deep wound to do it. “As inconsequential as that. And they treated me as such – a thing taken on a whim.”
Matthew shuffles nearer, hopping meekly onto Dream’s knee, half-drawn up on the bench.
“And then it was so long that way, part of me even now is still that creature that they made me in the circle. That flayed and silent thing.”
He carefully, anticipating the pain, closes his hand. Finds that relief again as the hook in his thumb slides deeper.
“Lucifer hurt me,” he says when the pain reaches a tiny zenith, spreading through him. “I did not think so at the time, but I could not stop thinking of it— what they said while I was held there. Captive, again and subject to their whim far more intimately than Roderick Burgess ever did.” He tightens his fist until the pain makes his eyes water and his breath catch. “And I wanted to give them their desire, let them win.”
Matthew says nothing, sitting still and listening.
“But did not. And instead of gratified by that victory, I felt hollow. Bound to my duty instead of glad of its recovery.” He blinks, feels heat running down his face. “I’ve never felt that way before, about the dreamers or my function. It frightened me.”
Matthew is so still he is barely breathing.
“Regaining my ruby healed me and if it had ended there, I might have borne it unflinching. Found my way again. I was ready.” He closes his eyes. “Then the vortex came. A trap my own sibling set into motion and aided by the Corinthian, my own creation. So many mistakes. All cumulative and resulting in a moment where Rose Walker tore the Dreaming out of me and the Corinthian—”
(“I’m not going to help you.” Breath, teeth against his throat. “I’m going to fuck you.”)
Morpheus stops there.
Matthew, seemingly driven by instinct, alights from his monarch’s knee and lands on Dream’s shoulder, something he’s never done until this moment, and near enough now, Dream feels him do a very raven-like thing and nibble anxiously at a section of his hair. This is surprising enough that Dream is momentarily distracted from the memory as Matthew presses a feathery flank against the place directly beneath his ear.
It’s very much like Jessamy came close to doing, but never dared.
“The Corinthian forced me to feel what it was like to be free of the Dreaming. And I… went mad and in so doing, I gave up, Matthew.” He tenses, feels blood pulsing from his fist and heat sliding from still closed eyes. “I did fail. If not for a reflex of self-preservation from The Corinthian all would have been lost and my fault. Entirely. Mine.”
Dream opens his hand, taking pressure at last off the hook.
“And that is what happened,” he says.
When Morpheus turns his head slightly, his raven tucks in closer to him, the soft raptorial shape of his head smoothing against his jaw.
“Are you satisfied, Matthew?”
Quiet.
Then, “You didn’t fucking fail.” He says it with such rage. “You’d be crazy to blame yourself for that.”
Matthew says all this, remaining determinedly crouched on his shoulder, so Dream cannot see his raven himself… but he can see through Matthew’s eyes.
“You said yourself it made you crazy,” Matthew snaps, “Okay. Fine. All I heard? It took ripping your sanity out to even make it an option. That’s how fucking stubborn you are, boss. Dream of the Endless would never abandon his post. Ever. The only guy who would? He wasn’t Dream. He was the crazy guy that existed for five seconds while Rose Walker was pulling the Dreaming to pieces in his head.”
Matthew is glaring down, Dream can see, at his hand. At the sigil lodged through his flesh.
“I don’t know what the other Endless are like, but I bet none of them come close to you. So… you know…” Matthew seems choked up now. “Can you cut yourself some fucking slack, boss?”
Dream doesn’t say anything.
Then with no preamble, he manifests a pair of pliers from the ether and with a calm brute force, he uses them to grip the hook and force it back thru his thumb, the barb tearing into the inside of his finger. Blood gushes from the wound as he works it through and Matthew caws in distress, swearing loudly. But Dream keeps going. Let’s the pain roll through and dominate every sense for a moment – “It feels better, right?” – and gasping in relief when the hook finally pulls free of his hand.
Despair’s sigil disappears and resumes its place on the gallery wall, clean, and untouched.
“Fucking hell,” says Matthew sputtering. “What the shit, boss?”
“Better,” Dream says a little breathlessly.
“You good?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
“Jesus. Can you please, bandage that?”
Dream blinks and the blood is gone, his finger knitting itself shut. He opens and closes his hand for a moment, massaging the thumb of his opposite hand into his palm as reassurance to Matthew who grumbles. Dream moves his healed hand up to his shoulder, to show Matthew the lack of mark or scar, but his raven must detect a hint of self-satisfaction because be bites the tip of Dream’s index finger with an insolent pinch.
“Are you satisfied, Matthew?”
He repeats the question.
“Yeah. For now.” Matthew shuffles. “But I’m still watching you, boss. It’s my job.”
“You do it admirably,” Dream says, moving into a more normal, seated position, facing the sigils of Despair and Delirium both. He exhales. “But you needn’t keep your vigil as my raven tonight. I’ll stay here just a little longer, then retire.”
“I’ll stay with you.”
His raven settles in on his shoulder.
“As long as you need.”
Dream closes his eyes then, and for the first time since stepping out of the circle in Fawny Rig, he feels released.