#it's nothing like fawney rig

[inennui]

~Stuck in a (glass) Elevator~ Dreamling Week 2023 hosted by @mr-sadman

[theaceace]

When Burgess summoned Dream, instead of Dream being completely cut off from the Dreaming, instead the magic pulled all of Fawney Rig into the soft places at the edge of the Dreaming, so like Dream still can't get out of the circle and his subjects can't get in but the Dreaming suffers much less and crucially, he still has access to some tiny fraction of his power

So now the whole house and everyone in it is sort of tied to the Dreaming and there's just oodles of magic coming off it, and the house in the Waking and the house in the Dreaming exist sort of superimposed over each other. Like you can be in one and sort of be aware of the other but you can't really flip between the two

And I want the whole thing to operate on a sort of combo between Aladdin in the cave of wonders/Orpheus leaving with Eurydice rules where it's said that if you enter the house in the Dreaming side and manage to find the Dream king, he'll grant you the thing you've been dreaming of, but the catch is you have to believe you have it. You have to leave the house without checking. So Burgess asks for Randall, but he turns to look almost before they're out of the basement because if he were Dream then he would pull a trick (TBF it wasn't actually Randall, just a dream of him, but Burgess couldn't tell the difference anyway because he was a terrible father and you can't change my mind). After that, he never managed to find the basement again. Never even manages to find the dream house again, only the waking one, although he goes mad looking for it

But like. Someone else asks for riches and the Dream king says they can be found the guy's pocket or whatever, but he can't feel anything? There's no weight there, no shape, his pocket seems empty (it isn't when he checks, but as soon as he gets out of the house, yelling about his triumph, it's gone and the house is mundane again)

Alex, who doesn't ask for anything until after the death of his father (and after he murdered Jessamy) asks for peace. For safety. The Dream king says nothing, and Alex lives the rest of his life in the Dreaming version of the house, too scared to step outside in case whatever peace he's found in his personal prison vanishes

Ethel never makes it to the house in the Dreaming . She takes what she wants from the waking, and when she leaves she doesn't look back once

Time passes, and more and more people find their way to Fawney Rig, but as Dream himself said, the great stories always return to their original forms, so no one succeeds because that's how it goes

And then. And then Hob. Hob who finds his way to the house just looking for an answer. Looking for something he can do to make sure his Stranger is there in 2089, because otherwise he might lose his mind with the what-ifs. So he finds the house, and he meets Alex, who hasn't set foot outside the front door in over 80 years except it's a little hard to feel sorry for him when Hob realises why. He meets Paul, who lives solidly in the waking, and hasn't been able to convince Alex that it would be worth it to leave with him. He finds his way down to the basement, finally, and there he finds his Stranger

And at first he thinks? It's a trick? Because isn't that sort of what this place does, it tricks you? But he speaks to Dream, and he gets the rest of the story from him, and the only thing Hob wants to take from this place is Dream. And he's like I want to get you out of here, but I can't because you're trapped in that circle (which for reasons unknown to the author right now but probably has something to do with the nature of dreams and stories can't just be broken like a regular spell circle) and I can't do anything about it and Dream is all you know the story, Hob Gadling. It is a more powerful magic than the binding. Leave, and don't look back, and trust that I am following

(Dream knows the story. He's sure he knows how it ends. But he also knows that it has to be played out, that he has to give Hob this chance - he finds himself, as he follows, weeping silently for his son and Eurydice)

So then there would be the agonising climb and return through the maze of the house where Hob almost looks back a bunch of times, and eventually he makes it to the door and steps out into the bright sun of the waking, and -

End title

[five-and-dimes]

Brick by Brick

Dream is not accustomed to being treated with patience.

Those who claim to love him are not shy in only loving the parts they cannot see, the parts they assume. He is cold and aloof and guarded and they do not want those parts of him but that’s okay because surely there is more underneath, surely he is hiding something better. They do not love the locked chest, they love the treasure they assume must be held within it, and they want him to give it to them right now. They fight him for it.

Don’t be so guarded, they say, and they come at him with a pickax.

Open up, they say, crowbar already jammed in a crevice.

And it is terrifying, in a way he would never admit to anyone, can barely admit to himself. He is armor and walls and closed doors and no one loves that part of him, and Dream wonders if there even is anything else, maybe that is all he is, all the way down, an empty chest, walls around a barren field, hollow armor, and it is terrifying to think of the ones he loves (love wholly, loves every part of) ripping him apart just to discover that there is nothing lovable among the rubble.

So Dream closes himself tighter, because he does not think there is a treasure inside him, and so when will they stop? They scrape and break and tear at the shell of him, and he thinks that if they do not find what they want they will just keep going- shatter the armor and then the person underneath without slowing down.

They are determined to break through his walls, even if that means breaking him in the process.

Open up, they say, and they do not knock.

Well. Hob knocks.

But Dream can’t recognize it, just hears a thud against his protections and flinches. Hob says “I think you’re lonely” but all Dream hears is “I will love you with my fists. If you loved me back you’d let me hit something soft”.

So he hits back. Lets the gates slam shut and runs and runs and runs, Hob pounding on the door behind him.

When he is trapped in Fawney Rig, it only seems to prove him right. Cut off from his power, from his home, his purpose, himself, he feels hollow. Scraped out and empty, and he holds fast against Burgess, makes his walls impenetrable even as he realizes there is nothing there to protect. He escapes and finds his home, himself, decayed and rotting and wonders if it has been like this from the beginning. He hunts down the missing pieces of himself, the fragments that feel next to nothing now, thinks that he is next to nothing, just crumbling walls and battered doors and locks damaged from all the people who would rather break them than ask for a key.

Dream sits before Hob, and feels himself settle somewhere between peace and resignation.

Still guarded. Still locked. Still hollow. Worn down and weak, one hit to his defenses and he will crumple, and no one ever hits just once.

Hob smiles at him. Hob offers him food and drink. Hob tells him of all that he has missed in the past century, laughs and gestures enthusiastically, and never once demands, never once pushes or pulls or pries and it is enough for Dream to want to weep with gratitude.

And then, to his confusion and surprise and utter awe, Hob begins to help him rebuild.

They see each other more often, their centennial pattern broken and their friendship declared. Sometimes Dream feels cracked and raw and Hob catches glimpses of his vulnerability, but instead of taking advantage of the openings, he shields them. Dream’s voice cracks when he tries to explain where he’s been, and Hob jumps to make him tea, bustling in the kitchen and chattering about nothing, still there with him but looking away while Dream pulls himself together. Dream’s eyes well with tears the first time Hob tells him he loves him, and Hob smiles and kisses his forehead, says “it’s getting late, shall we talk more tomorrow?” and lets him leave without running away. Dream’s hands shake when he tries to take his clothes off for him, and Hob kisses his fingers and wraps him in blankets until only his face is showing, laughing lightly and talking about the coldest places he’s traveled.

Dream rebuilds his walls and Hob hands him the mortar. Dream barricades the door to his heart and Hob happily sits and calls out his love from the other side.

Hob makes him feel strong. Hob loves Dream, and he loves his walls, his doors, his locks, his armor, too.

And that is precisely the reason Dream invites him in.

[kydrogendragon]

Dec 21 - The Best Present

(Ao3 Link) (Masterpost Link)

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Murder, and Blood.

When Hob awoke that next morning, nothing had seemed different. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary Monday morning that he wouldn’t have blinked twice at. You know, if it wasn’t for a mysterious woman sitting on his kitchen counter, slowly picking away at one of the apples in his fruit basket.

He jumps, reaching for the closest object he could use as a weapon - the table side lamp in this case - and brandishes it with a confidence that only someone who had fought for most of his five hundred years of life could. The woman doesn’t even blink. She wears all black, a simple black tee, black jeans, and a pair of high-heeled black boots. It reminds him a bit of the getups the goths he’d take home with him would wear. Most interesting of all, she wears a pendant of a large silver ankh around her neck.

She looks at him with kind brown eyes and smiles. “Hello Hob.” And if everything else hadn’t gotten his attention, that statement did. He lifts the lamp higher, angling his legs for better stability and glances around the room, trying to spot how the hell she managed to sneak in.

“Haven’t heard that name in a while,” he says, eyes narrowing. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The woman shakes her head, amused, as she slides off the counter. She sets down the half eaten apple and wipes her hands on her pants. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“A favor?”

She hums. “Yes. And it wasn’t until last night that I could ask it.”

Hob shakes his head. “The hell are you talking about?”

The woman steps forward and Hob’s grip on the lamp tightens. “One more step and you’ll regret it.” She smiles and takes a single step forward. As she does, Hob goes to lunge but stops as he meets her gaze.

Ice rushes through his veins as the very core of him recognizes her for what she is. She is the face he has seen in battlefields and hospitals. She is the voice that has called to him while he rests in the in-between of life and death. She is the sound of wings when one is near the end.

She is Death.

His knees give out and he falls to the floor, the lamp drops from his grip and the bulb inside shatters. “No. No no no no no, please no, please!” He pleads. “I’m not ready yet. I don’t want to die. I won’t, I won’t!”

Death kneels beside him and stretches out a hand. He flinches, eyeing it carefully. “I’m not here to take you, Hob. Not unless you want me to.”

“Never,” he replies, staring into her gaze. She nods.

“Good. I think my brother would hate me if I did.”

At that, Hob blinks. “Brother?”

Death hums and lets her hand fall. She crosses them, resting them atop her bent knees as she talks. “Yes. That’s why I’m here. I need you to help free him.”

Hob shifts, pulling himself into a cross legged position. “Why me?”

She looks up and sighs. “Because I can’t. Where he is is somewhere that I can’t go. Not completely. But you can.” She looks back at him and grins. “Besides, technically he asked for you.”

A sinking feeling fills Hob’s gut. Flickers of memories of a dream echo in his mind. The pale face of his Stranger. His tears, his silent pleas. His throat is tight when he asks, “Your brother, who is he?”

“Your stranger.”

The snow falls on the ground outside of Fawney Rig. It’s Christmas Eve in 1991 and Hob stands in front of the car’s boot as he goes over his tools of trade. A crowbar rests on one side, sandwiched by rope, an axe, a shotgun and two different handguns along with enough ammo to light the place up if needed. He’s got a variety of clothes and food and water in case his Stranger needed it along with a well supplied first aid kit. When Death had told him where to find her brother, she hadn’t exactly told him what to expect. He’s honestly unsure if she knew, other than he was trapped.

Christ, wasn’t that a thought? His Stranger, trapped. Held prisoner by a total jackass that, most annoyingly, he’d met before. Just once when he was a lad. His father had been leagues worse, but had at least hosted a party for his departed son. Hob had fought with Randal in the war. After digging into the Burgess's more, he’d found that the old man had bragged about capturing Death. Clearly that hadn’t worked, but it seems like he had caught something. And when the old man finally passed, it seemed like his son wasn’t any better. Pity. The boy seemed like he could have had a good heart in him. Nature versus Nurture, he supposed.

Hob pulls the mask down his face and zips up his jacket. He sticks the two handguns with freshly loaded mags into his holsters. He slots the extra mags into his belt and then swings the shotgun across his back. Not the most efficient weapon for this job, but might come in handy. The rest, he figures he can always come out and grab later if needed. There wouldn’t be anyone left alive in here after he was done anyways.

Closing the lid, he climbs back into the driver’s seat and revs up the engine. The metal gates in front looked thicker than they actually were. He’d checked ahead of time. They were made to look nice but not necessarily be effective at keeping someone out. For instance, ramming through them with a car would be pretty easy. Which is what he planned to do.

Back the car up a good distance on the curly driveway, he holds the gas and brake down, letting his wheels spin before he releases the brake. The car lunges forward, gaining speed rapidly. With a crash, the gates are flung open by the sturdy metal body of the vehicle. Hob powers up the remaining driveway to the front of the house. He skids to a stop right at the front of the manor and bounces out of the car.

A guard is posted outside and jolts awake from his chair. He reaches for his gun but is too slow. Hob quickly draws his right side handgun and pops the man twice. The silencer muffles the sound of the shot as the bullets hit him straight in the chest. Blood pools through the dark uniform. He falls to the ground.

Hob dashes up the stairs and pats the man down. He was hoping for keys or a radio perhaps of which he finds both. There aren’t many keys on the ring, but he takes them anyways. One most likely opens the front door after all. He slots the radio onto his belt and proceeds to go through the keys until one clicks the door open.

The house is quiet. It is late at night after all and all the house staff should be gone at this hour. Hob wasn’t a complete monster. He doubts that the maids and cooks were onto any of the occult proceedings here and if they were, well. Hob has ways of tracking people down if he needs to.

He creeps forward, gun poised and ready as he rounds the corners. The main floor is relatively empty. There was a single guard that had been wandering the halls. Hob takes him out from behind and guides his body to the ground as to not make a sound. There’s a different key on this guard’s key ring. It’s thick and sturdy. More importantly, it looks old. He takes it.

Hob finds a sturdy metal door down the next hallway - probably where the guard had come from in the first place - and tests the handle. Locked, unsurprisingly. He holds up the newly acquired key and smiles. Yes, that’ll work. As tempted as he is to barge down there and free his friend immediately, he knows he needs to eliminate anyone else first so they can escape without worry. Pocketing the key once more, he continues his search through the house.

The second floor provides even less interest. No guards and no Alexander or Paul either. The third floor, however, that’s a different tale.

Hob pops the guard stationed outside of the bedroom. The man had been sleeping in the chair just outside. For all the wealth that Burgess had, it seems like it was wasted on paying these men.

He nudges the bedroom door open and is met with the sleeping figures of the elderly men who had kept his friend captive all these years. Rage burns within him as it has for the past six months since Death first dropped by. He’d gone off of the limited information she had and slowly pieced together a harrowing puzzle of his friend’s absence. 1916 brought with it the sleepy sickness. 1916 brought Burgess into fame and fortune as his claims of the Devil in his Basement were spread, mostly with doubt. In 1916 his friend was forcibly ripped from whatever reality he resides in and has been kept in this dusty old manor ever since. And it was all because of the men here and his father before him.

Hob feels no guilt nor sadness when he draws his other gun, a revolver he’s favored for many years, and presses the cool barrel against Alexander’s forehead. The man stirs and Hob pulls back the lever with a click. His eyes open wide and he shakes as he takes in Hob’s looming figure. Alexander opens his mouth to speak but Hob just shakes his head. The other man’s jaw clamps shut.

“There is no bargaining. There is no begging. You’re going to die tonight and I’m going to tell you why. Then, I’m going to kill your husband in his sleep because while he wasn’t directly related to all of this, he was complacent, so I’ll give him the same courtesy I did the guards. Once that’s done, I’m dragging you out of your bed and into the damn basement that you’re holding my friend captive. You will scream and cry and plead like the pathetic excuse for a man I know you are while I slit your throat in front of him and the last thing you’ll see will be the greatest mistake of your miserable little life.”

Unsurprisingly, Alexander screams. The figure beside his shifts and Hob lifts the barrel of his gun up and fires it straight into the other man’s skull. The movement stills.

Hob holsters his gun and pulls the frail man from his bed by his hair as he continues to scream. He drags his body across the floor and out of the room. He drags him through the growing pool of blood from the guard stationed outside of their room and chucks him down the stairs just for the fun of it. Hob clambers down the stairs as Alexander cries and tries in vain to pull himself across the floor away from his own personal reaper. Reaching down, he grabs a fistful of the man’s nightgown and continues their trek to the basement.

The key fits like a glove and Hob pulls open the ancient heavy door. Alexander pleads with him, begging Hob to stop this, that he doesn’t know what he’s doing or what he’s freeing. He’s wrong, of course. Hob knows exactly who he’s freeing. He’s freeing his friend, even if the other man didn’t want to admit it.

The basement is cold. Much colder than the rest of the house and upon entering the windowless room, he’s pretty sure a part of that has to do with the bloody pools of water that surround...

Jesus wept... Hob wishes he could revive everyone just so he could kill them again. His Stranger sits in a damn ball of glass, suspended over the floor and worst of all, they’ve striped him down bare. There are metal spikes inside the fucking thing too so the poor sod can’t even lie down if he wanted. A flood of rage hits him again like a hammer. He barely processes his actions as he shoots the two guards to their right dead. He barely hears Alexanders screams and cries. Adrenaline courses through him as he approaches his friend.

His Stranger stands, hunched over because of course the damn thing is too short for him to even stand fully. His hands are pressed against the glass and his eyes are open wide. He mouths his name as a single tear falls down his face.

Hob jerks Alexander’s body forward, pushing him into a kneeling position, holding the man’s weak body up by his hair. He reaches down and pulls out the blade in his boot and presses it against the man’s neck, all the while, staring up at his friend.

“You made a mistake, Burgess. Your father made a grave one many years ago but he’s dead and unfortunately, I can’t kill a dead guy, much as I’d like to. But you didn’t do a damn thing. So now, I get to kill you.” Hob says, pressing the blade a bit harder. The skin underneath begins to break. Not enough to kill the man. It’s closer to that of a shaving cut, but it makes the man beneath him struggle against his hold.

“Please! Please, I beg of you, don’t do this! I didn’t want this!” Alexander pleads. “Please, I wanted to let him go, I did! I just wanted to be sure he wouldn’t come after me and Paul. Oh God, oh Paul.”

His Stranger’s eyes burn into him, those bright blue eyes seem to be lit from within as he watches intensely.

“But you didn’t let him go, did you? You didn’t do anything. You just left him here to rot. And you would have continued to do so until you died, wouldn’t you?” Hob’s voice is cold as steel as he tugs on the man’s hair.

“Oh God, no, please. I swear I never wanted any of this! This is all my father!”

“No. No these past few decades have all been you. You can’t blame your sins on a dead man. Not anymore. So now you’ll pay the price for trapping my friend down here like a goddamn curiosity display.”

“Please no! Plea-” The man’s cries are drowned out by the gurgling of blood as Hob swiftly slices through the man’s neck.

“A gift,” he says, staring up at his friend. “For you.” Hob tosses the man’s body off to the side. Blood pools up, spilling over his chest from the wound and out of his mouth. His eyes are wide with fear as he falls down to the side. His hands press against the slash, but it’s hopeless. It doesn’t take long for his movement to still.

Hob watches it. As Alexander Burgess dies on the cold concrete, the rage in Hob’s body fades with it, replaced with sadness and exhaustion. He turns to his friend who watches him, his mouth parted, almost in awe. He steps forward and examines the cage. There are some sort of runes painted into the floor that he assumes are important. He scratches his heel against them, testing their resilience only to be met with the easy smearing of golden paint.

Pathetic, Hob thinks to himself. They couldn’t even get high quality paint. He doesn’t have much time to think much else as he’s suddenly tossed backwards by a force stronger than anything he’d ever felt before. It was as if a bomb had gone off inside the cage and, looking up, he wonders if it did. The glass is party shattered and a whirlwind of… something, Hob’s honestly not sure what. Magical clouds? Sure, magical clouds. They swirl around his friend as he steps out of the cage, flowing black robes forming around his body as he sets foot on the ground. He steps forward and the clouds fade until it is just him, his friend, and the carnage around them.

Hob stumbles up to his feet and smiles as he walks over to his Stranger. He goes to ask if he needs anything, but he’s beaten to it.

“Hob Gadling,” His friend says with an easier smile than he’s ever seen on the man’s face. “You came. I did not think...”

“I’d always come for you. Especially if you need me.”

His friend’s eyes are red with the threat of tears. “How did you find me? I could not speak in your dream.”

“Your sister helped.” His friend’s eyes widened.

“My sister.”

“Yeah,” he says, adjusting his jacket from where it had gotten blown out of sorts from the magic blast. “Apparently something with that dream I had the other night let her ask me for help? She didn’t really explain, or give me all that much information, honestly, but she had given me the name Burgess. Took a bit to figure out where you were and get what I needed, but I wasn’t about to let you sit down here another day longer if I could help it.”

A tear falls down his friend’s cheek. “I owe you a great debt, Hob Gadling.”

“No debt owed. It’s what friends do after all,” he says, looking down at his blood stained boots.

A hand tugs him close and suddenly he is nearly nose to nose with his friend. There is an expression on his face, one that Hob can’t quite parse. “You would still name me friend after all you had said to me?”

“Wha-”

“You promised to woo me, after all. Was this not simply the start of it? Rescuing me like a blushing maiden in a fairy tale? Spilling blood in my name like a loyal knight to his king?” His friend purred. His eyes were hooded as he stared down into Hob’s eyes. He can see a dart of his pink tongue in his peripheral and Hob can feel the quickly growing erection pressing against the thick denim of his jeans. He’s glad his friend is holding onto him because he’s pretty sure if he hears his friend say another word with that voice, his knees are going to give out on him.

“Would you like that?” He asks, his breath growing short as his friend looks at him like he’d like to devour him. Hob swallows. “I would, you know. I did. I’d kill more for you, if you’d like. Whatever you want. It’s yours. I’m yours.”

“Such a wonderful gift, but a dangerous thing to promise. Are you certain?”

“Always,” he pants. His friend’s eyes flash, the blue swirling into blackness as he leans forward.

Lips capture his own and they are just as soft as he remembers from his dream. Oh God, yeah, his knees are giving out. Between the adrenaline of this whole evening and the magical bomb blast thing, this, right here, this is what’s going to have him killed.

He moans into his friend’s mouth and shakily grips into the silky robes he wears as he feels a smooth tongue curl inside of him. He’s not sure how long they stay there, but it’s long enough that Hob’s vision is turning black from the lack of air. Wouldn’t be the worst way to go, honestly. And he’s tempted to let it when his friend pulls back, but not far. Just far enough that Hob can take in a gasp of air.

“Fuck,” he wheezes as he struggles to maintain balance.

“That can be arranged,” his friend hums. Maybe Hob had died and this was actually heaven.

He hears his friend sigh, the air caressing his face. “I must return to my realm. It has been absent far too long.” His friend releases his hold on Hob and he mentally pats himself on the back for only stumbling, not collapsing. The upward curl of his friend’s lips sends Hob’s heart soaring again.

“Right,” he says as his brain comes back online. “Uh. Do you… need a lift anywhere? Not sure I can drive to another realm, but I can get you out of this town at least.”

His friend shakes his head and tilts his head upward. His eyes dart around as if he’s searching for something unseen. “No,” he says, smiling a moment later. “No, I have found a means to return. But I will come back to you soon, Hob Gadling. This, I swear.”

His friend’s eyes are pitch black when they meet Hob’s gaze once more. It sends a chill down his spine and does nothing to help his aching prick. “Wait!” He calls out as his friend raises his hand. His Stranger arches his brow, but pauses his movement. “Before you leave, can I know your name, at least?”

His Stranger blinks. “My sister did not tell you it?”

Hob shakes his head. “Said it was your secret to tell, not hers.”

His Stranger huffs affectionately and raises his hand upward. With a smile, he says, “You may call me Dream.”

“Dream,” Hob whispers as he watches the figure of his friend fade away, not unlike the memory of a dream. He stands there, letting the mixed cocktail of emotions flow through him. Eventually, he moves, going through the motions of disposing of a crime scene (at least any evidence that would tie himself to it). Once all the damning bits are properly disposed of or at least brought with him to dispose of later, he makes his way back up the stairs, into his car, and heads back home, eagerly awaiting when his Stran- no - when Dream would visit him again.

[cuckoo-on-a-string]

Persephone's Devotee (Hello, Mr. Monster AU, I)

Master List

Summary: In the age of Spiritualists and magicians, wyrds winds in different ways to link Dream of the Endless and Aisling Hunt. AU of Hello, Mr. Monster beginning in the 1920s. (Alternatively titled 'We All Hate Roderick Burgess')

Warnings: Implied child abuse/neglect, child left to travel solo, manipulating children for profit (non-sexual trafficking)

A/N: Your bird just got diagnosed with a life changing chronic condition (in addition to being put back on depression meds). We'll see how this post does. Have four chapters planned. The last scene is based on personal experiences with heat exhaustion/borderline heat stroke.

Dream’s tools brought many things to Fawney Rig. Wealth and prestige. Admiration, gifts, and influence. Nearly everything the magus wanted and only a fraction of what he thought he deserved. Roderick’s dreams of power and riches drew another tool to his hand, or perhaps Destiny drew the magus to her. The girl who saw strange things in the dark and found answers to strange riddles in her cards. But her wyrd would always draw her to old house and its shrouded dungeon, in any world or time. All because of what the Burgesses kept there.

In the eight years since the fateful evening he summoned and caught one of the Endless, Roderick had become a man much desired. He found himself with an invitation to Lord and Lady Werthrope’s party, a guest of honor at a soiree at their country estate. They promised a night of occult mysteries and foreign prizes. Bits of people and places from across the empire and beyond. Mummies from Egypt and fragments of Greek antiquities to gasp and shriek over with glasses of champagne and brandy.

Roderick carried himself as Lord Werthrope’s equal, and at least for that night, surrounded by ancient mysteries of all kinds, he was seen as such. He was an expert, a guide, someone to hold in reverence rather than an oddity to gawk over. He told them with his bearing, his dignity, and the ruby he wore on a golden chain around his neck. His wishes became dreams and so became real. He stood like a stronger god beside the broken figure of Apollo and scoffed at the mistranslations of texts he’d only ever read secondhand.

Beside the wonders kept under guard at home, what were these paltry things? He could have any of them he desired, and he’d already claimed better.

His sense of superiority carried him through the party’s early hours, moving from acrobats in elaborate costumes, to fire eaters, to ghost stories and flights of fancy spun by swindlers far below his consideration. He had an answer or alternative for everything. And then he met the girl.

She sat at a bare table with no long cloth to hide rolling ankles, clever fishing lines, or knocking accomplices. Only a candle and a deck of cards separated her from the guests, and she’d drawn quite a queue. Her feet didn’t even reach the floor, swinging idly between the legs of the chair as she read the cards of a distraught-looking dandy.

Taking his arm, Lady Werthrope said, “This one you really must see, Magus. She’s made quite the splash in New York and London.”

The Magus offered a tolerant smile. “And what is the trick? Does she blow out the candle? Bend spoons?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” The lady practically vibrated, eager to impress as she led them to the table, scattering the line. “She sees things, and she reads fortunes like no one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve had more than a few pet psychics in my time. This one’s a bit of a sad story.”

The magus clenched his jaw until the muscle in his cheek twitched. He could make whatever sob story the girl shilled much worse. Of all the frauds and liars who feigned knowledge of the occult, Roderick Burgess hated mediums and ghost whisperers the most. The tantalizing promise of connection with Randal – always waved in his face, always ultimately denied – it clawed open the rotting wound in his heart, and he let the poison drip back on any fools who tried his patience.

Let this one try to pull the wool over his eyes, and he’d unmask her in front of this glittering audience. She’d be a penniless sad story when he was through.

“Those people,” the lady said, nodding to a couple flanking the child, “are just the adoptive parents. Saw her family murdered, poor thing. They say that’s what cracked her open to the other world.”

“Do they indeed.” He kept his smile, showing his teeth as his grip flexed over the cane in his free hand. “Then I look forward to her performance.”

The Magus and the lady sat across from the faux family, and the girl looked at them. The people who weren’t her parents did not manage her well, Burgess couldn’t help noting. They’d painted her up with rogue and kohl that made her look even more like a child playing grownup games, and the feather in her headband hung limp and lifeless. She barely managed to grimace through a smile, and she spoke with all the enthusiasm of a student reporting on Ovid to the class.

“What are you asking?” A child’s voice really shouldn’t be so dull. Now that he was nearer, the Magus couldn’t help wondering if she was even younger than he’d first assumed. Not even ten, he thought, and already so exhausted.

It wasn’t what he’d expected. He kept his guard, but curiosity stirred beneath. She was no great performer.

Lady Werthrope leaned forward, eager to take the first reading as the girl shuffled her cards. They were nearly too big for her to manage, but in this at least she clearly had much practice. Her handling of the tarot was the most natural element of her demeanor he’d yet to see.

The lady talked about her dog Moxy, a cocker spaniel much loved and terribly spoiled. It was getting on in years, and, well, ought she prepare for anything dreadful? Only, her friend had just lost her terrier, and she couldn’t chase it from her thoughts…

The cards appeared on the table. One by one. The Six of Cups. The Two of Swords. And, lastly, the Nine of Swords reversed.

“Moxy is well-loved.” The child pointed to the first card. “That’s the foundation. But she’s getting older, and she may go blind eventually. She’s accepted it, though, and you will, too.” She smiled a little, hesitantly, like a pet used to getting kicked when she barked at company. The Magus noted how her gaze flicked to her pseudo-father.

Lady Werthrope clucked and reached over to squeeze the child’s hand. “You’re very honest. And very sweet. Now, won’t you show the Magus what you can do?”

Obediently, she gathered the cards and folded the deck, shuffling them with the fresh energy of her next customer. “What do you want to know?”

Roderick considered. It was a little below him to ask anything specific of a child spiritualist, and he still meant to test her. Hate stirred the old thorn in his heart, and although she didn’t speak with ghosts to earn her bread, he didn’t need to justify himself.

“I’ll leave the question to you.” He squinted in a way that may seem affectionate, but it was only sharp, a predator focusing on little fawn to see how quickly it might run. “What do you see?”

She flinched, lifting her eyes from the cards to meet his in a fleeting, startled glance. Like he’d come near to guessing something she didn’t say out loud. But then she bent over the deck, back to her work as the woman behind her set a hand on her shoulder.

“Be good, Aisling,” the adoptive mother said. “Show the Magus your skills. Don’t embarrass us.”

The child rolled her lip between her teeth, sorting the task quickly. One card. Two cards. Three cards. Tap, tap, tap on the bare table. The Magician’s face glowed in the candle light, and Roderick blinked. A good tarot reader must have good luck in order to draw the appropriate cards – or a marked deck. But he’d watched those little hands like a hawk, and he’d seen nothing. It wasn’t definitive proof by any means, but Roderick Burgess knew himself to be cleverer than a child.

Pointing to the first card, the Magician, the girl said, “You’re the Magus. The Magician is your creation of yourself.” The second card was the Nine of Cups. “Your cups all overflow, and you enjoy the plenty you already have.” And then there was the Ace of Pentacles. Roderick wondered for a moment if she’d laid the cards out of the intended order, but she simply said, “There is new wealth coming. You’ve just found something that will bring you more good fortune. The benefits will grow in the months and years to come.”

“You’re very sure of yourself.” He looked for cracks, and there were many. Fatigue clouded her eyes and weighted the end of every sentence. Not a sign of a lie, though. She couldn’t even pretend to be happy for the audience.

He turned the interaction over in his mind through the rest of the night, wearing away the questions and presumptions like the rough edges of a stone, and by the later hours, he thought he might hold a jewel.

The adoptive parents made themselves easy to find. They hadn’t left the table. Neither had the girl. The lord and lady hired them to entertain, and they stayed at their posts. They’d gathered refreshments, but no cup or plate sat on the table, and he wondered if they had any idea children needed things like water after a long night of speaking with strangers.

Really. The scheme was too transparent. The only lies hid in any manner of affection the parents pretended for the child they claimed.

The Magus marched up to the table, rapping the top with his cane to seize the drowsy girl’s attention. She blinked, started licking her dry lips, caught herself, and pinched her mouth closed with her teeth.

“Aisling, wasn’t it?” He nodded to her, encouraging her to echo the motion. “I would like a word with you. No cards. No reading. Just a conversation. Alone.”

The father stepped forward, ready to defend his meal ticket. “Sir, I’m afraid we can’t just –”

“The girl and I will sit here, at this table,” he tapped it again to make his point, “and you will both stand over there.” The cane swung to point towards the bar, which was well within sight but well out of earshot.

When the man moved to protest again, Roderick pulled out his wallet, and the father’s mouth snapped shut. A few pounds bought the adults’ willing compliance, and they went off in search of drinks with barely a backwards glance. Roderick settled into the seat he claimed earlier, watching the girl squirm. Her hands fluttered restlessly between her lap and the table, clearly used to the cards, uneasy without the form and ritual of a reading to guide the conversation.

That was well enough. Roderick had his own plans.

He signaled one of the roving staff, and as the waiter approached, he ordered, “A lemonade for the young lady.”

With a bow, the server hurried off, and the Magus smiled, lips closed, tilting his head as his legs crossed under the table. He was not a client. He was an adult who noticed, who might be moved to care, and in the few hours of their acquaintance, he was already offering more than anyone else.

“So, you see things?”

Her eyes snapped from him to the people who managed her. Then back again, and down to her lap.

“I’m not supposed to upset people.” She picked at the fringe on the garish frock she wore – entirely unsuited to her age and clearly uncomfortable. “It upsets Mr. and Mrs. Foster when I see things. Or when I talk about them.”

The Magus nodded, unsurprised. He wondered if the people who adopted her even realized her talents were genuine when they snatched her up. They had too many connections and too much showmanship to be anything other than experienced con artists. This little Aisling must be very sensitive, and the truly sensitive didn’t see strictly good, kind, or encouraging things. How she must terrify the fools.

The server returned with a cut crystal glass rattling with ice. The girl thanked the server, then thanked her benefactor, and wrapped her hands around the condensation-slicked sides. She sipped carefully, and Roderick could see the tension ease from her posture as she drank. Desperate as she was, she didn’t gulp, and with clear regret, she set the drink on the table still two-thirds full. But she kept her hands on the glass, lest some waiter assume she was finished and spirit it away.

“I won’t be upset, and I’d like to believe you.” Angling his head down to peer at her meaningfully, employing a look he’d once used when his son misbehaved, he asked, “What have you seen tonight that would upset people?”

The girl looked around, shifting so her chair creaked. This time, it wasn’t her adoptive parents she feared. Any ears may be a threat. When she leaned in, the Magus copied her, silently assuring her the secret would be safe with him.

“There’s a guest who’s not a guest, and he isn’t a man, either.”

The Magus hummed. “Say I believe you. Could you prove it?”

Seduced into the invitation of an adult confidant, and revived by the lemonade, she rushed to answer. She wanted to prove herself. She wanted to be believed and heard. The Magus was listening, and he was beginning to believe as well.

“The man paid the footman with holly leaves,” she hissed in a loud whisper. “The footman folded them like bank notes, and the spines stabbed his palms, but he didn’t notice. Look for the one with blood on his gloves.”

“And the man who isn’t a man?”

Shrinking back, the girl shook her head until the headband went crooked. Her hand pressed over her heart, rubbing hard circles as her face creased.

“He’d know I saw him,” she said. “I don’t let them know I see them anymore.”

Now there was a tale and no mistake. A child with enough power to annoy things beyond the veil – one that survived an encounter – was rare indeed.

“What happened?” He lent his tone a shade of concern. Facts, he found, traveled swiftest to a sympathetic ear, and he needed to know everything. Curiosity was growing into practical fervor as the first dreams of a plan grew into place. “Are you ill?”

She crumbled just a little bit more, folding into herself to protect the place she rubbed from some invisible threat. “Sometimes I see things that don’t want to be seen. One of them – hurt me. There’s no scar, but it hurt me, and now it aches.”

The Magus donned a solemn expression, though he felt a thrill at the prospect sitting before him. The little girl had unusual skills, and though she wasn’t handled well by the adults governing her, they must still turn a pretty penny showing her in salons and private homes. He’d confirm what she’d said, of course, validate her little proof, but she was either a better liar than he’d ever met or she was childishly honest. He knew where he’d put his money.

Where he might very well invest it, actually.

He didn’t say goodbye, only nodding as he rose and went in search of the servant with bloody gloves.

Of course, he found him. When he demanded to see what the footman had in his pockets, the boy paled, stammering excuses, only to pull out a handful of forest detritus. As the young man fell into a whirl of confusion and disappointment, the Magus truly smiled. The first real smile since Lady Werthrope brought him to the child’s table.

He must have a proper conversation with the girl’s current guardians.

Aisling clung to her bag, drowning in the heat as the train pulled away from the Wych Cross platform. Men and women fanned themselves with hats and newspapers, desperate for a breeze in the dead summer stillness. Ladies shed their gloves. Men loosened their ties. Propriety mattered less when the air was trying to suffocate them, a crushing, inescapable oven scalding the usually damp countryside.

A miserable day to travel.

Sweat dripped down her back, soaking the neck of her dress, gluing her hair to her skin. But she didn’t have a free hand to stir a breeze. Her bag was too heavy, full of everything she would need in her new home, or at least everything the Fosters thought they couldn’t sell for a profit. Mrs. Foster took her to the train station and dropped her at the door.

“Here’s your ticket. You’re heading to Wych Cross, and then to Fawney Rig. Don’t forget, and don’t miss your train,” she’d said. Then she climbed back into the cab beside Mr. Foster and disappeared into the flow of London traffic.

They’d sold her on to someone else, and now they were free of her.

She peered around the station, but it was really just a platform. In London, there were helpful adults in uniforms and suits who pointed out the right train and the right stairs to reach it. Nothing here told her how to find Fawney Rig, though, and the only adult in a uniform seemed to be the man in the ticket booth.

She’d find her way. She wasn’t a baby after all. She was eight. And she could read very well, and no one was coming to help her, so she better figure it out.

She stood in line for the ticket man’s attention. Surely, he could give her directions. The Magus was rich, and a little famous, she thought, so his neighbors must know where he lived. If the man in the booth didn’t know, she’d keep asking until she found someone who did. While she waited her turn, she set down her suitcase and sat on it, taking deep breaths that tasted like salt. It could be worse. What if it rained instead? Well. Actually. Rain sounded very nice.

Soon enough, she took her place in front of the booth, and the man frowned under his mustache like she’d arrived with a bill or a letter from someone nasty. She smiled prettily, the way the Fosters told her to, and tried to make herself look like less of a problem as she clutched her case again.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but do you know the way to Fawney Rig?”

He physically recoiled, and his frown hooked deeper with glowering doubt as he scanned her. “Fawney Rig? That devil worshiper’s house? Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve been sent to live there, sir. I’m expected, but I don’t think they’ve sent anyone for me.” Manners made things easier with adults. Good manners and clear words – the fewer the better.

But the man wasn’t swayed. He looked thunderous. Like she’d broken something valuable and ought to pay for it with a lashing.

“Do you have money for a cab?”

The Fosters didn’t own her anymore, and they’d given her nothing but cards, and costumes, and a hairbrush. All the cash stayed warm and safe in their pockets.

“No, sir.”

“Then walk down the main road. Go east from the village, and keep going until there are no more houses you can see from the street. There’ll be a path on the left with a big iron gate. Follow that and you’ll find your devil worshipers.” He waved her off like he’d slap her if not for the glass. “Next!”

Manners got her what she needed, at least. “Thank you.”

The other adults all moved aside as she trundled through with her case. It made it easier to avoid clipping ankles and shins with her luggage, but she wondered if they hated her the way the ticket man hated her – because of Fawney Rig – or if she simply smelled after the long, stuffy ride in third class. Not that adults needed an excuse to dislike her. The nice ones called her uncanny and gifted. The mean ones called her a witch, and a bastard devil-spawn, and other names a mother should wash out of their mouths with soap.

She wasn’t sure which ones were telling the truth.

She knew the way forward, though. To Fawney Rig. That was good, even if the other adults didn’t think so. The Magus may not be a nice person, she hadn’t known him long enough for the usual adult lies to wear thin enough to see through, but he was smarter than the Fosters, and he’d given her a lemonade, so maybe she wouldn’t be as hungry or thirsty under his guardianship. She’d still have to work. Adults only wanted her if they thought she could give them something. But everything was more bearable with a good dinner and cold drinks.

She hoped he’d give her another cold drink, even water with some ice, when she reached his home. The train ride left her terribly thirsty.

Leaving the shaded platform, she bowed away from the sun’s violent touch and started on her journey. The village only kept a cobbled road in the center of town. It led up to the train station, linking it to a clutch of shops and offices. A parish church sat a little way back from the road, separated from the secular world by a field of tidy tombstones in heat-bleached grass. People noticed her. They looked. They whispered to each other. But no one waved or offered a hand. Gossip didn’t move fast enough to beat her here from the train, and she wondered how people could tell she was odd. Society had so many rules beyond manners, but no one would tell her what they were, and she never guessed right.

By the time the cobblestones ended, she was struggling to hold onto her suitcase. The handle kept trying to slip from her fingers, even when she held it with both hands, and she had to work harder and harder to keep it out of the dirt. If she knew anything about the world, it was that good children didn’t drag their luggage, and bad things happened to those that did. She’d travelled enough to learn, and she wanted to make a good impression on her new keeper and his household.

The road outside of town went a very, very long way. The ticket seller’s instructions made each step sound the same length: go through town, pass the houses, go down the long drive past the gates. Her imagination had lied to her, though. Every time she thought she’d passed the last house, there came another. Each handed her down the chain of cottage gardens and small homes full of families who pretended not to see. They all knew she’d done something, like she had a brand on her forehead, and she wasn’t allowed to stop. She didn’t try to.

Everything looked sickly yellow in the midday glare. Dust hung in the air, stirred by passing cars, lingering without a breath of wind to dispel the choking clouds. Everything looked flat and dead, so much so she almost missed the gate. Another leg of her trek done. Still too far to go, and the private road leading to the Magus’ home was longer than it had any right to be.

She didn’t feel well. The trees gave her a little protection, but her stomach and lungs felt hard, strained, the way her arms ached with carrying her suitcase. Only they were parts that shouldn’t feel that way, and she thought maybe she should sit down.

But she was almost there.

Even if she walked slowly, and her feet didn’t land quite where she told them to.

She just wouldn’t think about those things. Complaining was just making excuses, and she was expected.

The house appeared out of nowhere, or she was too dizzy to see it through the leaves before the last turn in the drive. It loomed, a very final-looking destination, and her suitcase escaped her grasp. The case was slippery, and her fingers didn’t curl the way they should. She bent to pick it up, and when she straightened, the whole world spun.

She stood very still until it stopped, and she found herself shivering as she approached the front door. Very strange. Was she afraid? No. That didn’t sound right. She felt terrible, too terrible to worry, and none of it made sense.

But she’d nearly made it. She had made it. Almost.

Knocking summoned a young man, and the door creaked open as he glanced down with a quizzical expression. “Hello? Can I help you?”

She tried holding her suitcase with just one hand, but it slipped away again, barely missing her foot. Maybe a handshake was a bad idea. The stranger hadn’t held his hand out for a shake, after all. She was just confused. He might not want to touch her. And she must look a picture after her walk.

She should’ve done something differently. If she were smarter, or taller, or…

“I’m Aisling Hunt, sir. The Magus sent for me.”

“Oh.” The young man’s eyes popped wider, and she wondered if he was younger than she thought at first. Stepping back, he pulled open the door to usher her inside. “I’m sorry. I’d heard someone was coming, but I’d thought you’d be… well, older. And I’m just Alex.”

“Nice to meet you, Alex. I’m Aisling.”

He nodded and plucked her bag from where she’d dropped it. “Yes. You said. Are you feeling alright?”

She didn’t know. And grownups didn’t really like it when she was unwell anyway. Before she could come up with a suitable lie that would get her what she needed without stepping on any toes, a familiar face appeared at the end of the hall.

“Ah! You made it.” Out of formal dress, the Magus still brimmed with authority. Aisling had met many adults who wore costumes and pretended to be something they weren’t, but the Magus seemed like he’d somehow stitched his chosen persona into his skin. “Welcome to Fawney Rig.”

She wobbled. “Thank you, sir.”

“Magus,” he corrected.

“Thank you, Magus, sir.”

At last, what he was seeing overshadowed his enthusiasm, and the old man frowned. “Did you walk here? From the station?”

“Yes, Magus.”

“The Fosters didn’t even give you money for a fucking cab?”

“Just the train ticket, sir. Magus.”

She blinked, and the whole room turned blue, like peering at the world through stained glass. It looked so pretty she didn’t realize the Magus was asking her another question until his hand settled on her shoulder.

His voice came from far away. “Can you hear me?”

Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, Magus, I walked, and I found Fawney Rig all on my own, and I’m not useless, please don’t throw me away yet.

But everything looked cool, and blue, and lovely. She was floating in it. Floating and so awfully heavy at the same time. The color slipped in with her breath, eroding her control until it slipped from her grasp like the suitcase had.

The world went dark, and she didn’t see, hear, or say anything more.

And deep below, in the belly of the house, Dream of the Endless waited in his cage, as senseless to the world above as she.

[moorishflower]

Fawney Rig Estate Sale

Fawney Rig Estate Sale, the flyer says, and Hob doesn't know who placed it, or why they chose the Inn as its final housing, but when Dream sees it, the grainy jpeg of some massive gothic monstrosity of a manse bracketed by the words FURNITURE - BOOKS - COLLECTIBLES, his expression becomes distant, and his hand spasms on the bartop. He's gotten fairly good at reading Dream's moods over the past few months, and this one, he thinks, is a doozy. This one is almost like fear.

There's two things that Dream fears, at least that he's seen fit to tell Hob: one, in the darkling hours of the morning, the both of them twined together, Hob pulling the duvet over Dream's thin shoulders and gathering him close, Dream whispering, do not go far from me, Hob Gadling, and that's its own sort of fear, one that Hob understands. He feels it, too.

The other, more insidious, he's seen only rarely. When light catches on a curve of glass just so; when someone speaks in a very specific register and tone; when the night is too quiet, and too slow, and Dream's fingers begin to scratch lines into the tabletops for want of something to occupy him. Dream has told him, in fits and starts, of a hundred years trapped within a glass sphere. He's never mentioned names, but now, in the way that he looks at this flyer, which Hob wants to rip from the wall and shred into a hundred pieces, he doesn't need to.

"How much of it was left?" he asks that night, and Dream tucks his head against Hob's chest, and says nothing. Hob touches his hair, his shoulders, the dear, thin line of his back, thumbing down the rungs of his spine in slow and gentle strokes. "Right. I've got a sledgehammer somewhere. Matty has a forge he made himself, I'm sure he's got something that can cut metal. Everything else we can have shipped out and we'll dump it into the sea."

I do not know if I can accompany you, Dream tells him, and Hob says, That's fine, love. Whatever you need to do. But there's not a chance in Hell that he's letting this opportunity slip by. It's become as much about his own peace of mind as Dream's -- he wants to see the thing that trapped his lover for a more than a century. Wants to see the glass and the iron, the struts and bolts, rendered down into molten slag. All these years and he's thought his great nemesis was his own selfishness, his own attempt to grasp the uncatchable, and yet Dream has said I would have come to you, if I were able, and Hob now realizes the truth: a few tons of scrap iron and lightning-struck sand were the only things that stood between him and Dream, for a hundred and thirty-three years. And he had never known.

It hurts. It hurts in a way that beggars the soul, and out of the centuries of his past he drags up a brigand's easy violence as he dumps petrol into the car. As he drives to Fawney Rig.

It's every bit as tasteless and huge as the picture implied it to be, and the man who opens the door to Hob is older, bent-backed, something soft and yielding about the shape of his shoulders. He takes in the sight of Hob on his doorstep, dirt-grimed burlap sack over one shoulder, the sledgehammer leaning like a loyal dog against the wall.

"Can I help you?"

"Hope so." He drops the bag. It makes a satisfying clanking noise. "Are you Paul McGuire? Put up a load of flyers for an estate sale?"

"I...yes. That's me. The sale isn't for another two weeks. I'm afraid you're rather early." There's something conciliatory about the way he talks. Some sharp and cavernous thing in him senses it, the way that owls can sense the shape of mice in tall grass. He longs for the feel of a good dagger in his hand. It's been a long time since he killed anyone, but he wants, and he recognizes that this is not good, he wants this gutless old man to put up a fight.

This man has never been bloodied nor bled another creature in his life. He'd make a fine target for a bandit, but for Hob's purposes, he's unsatisfying. He kicks the bag, instead.

"I'm not the mercenary I used to be," he says. "Better for you. There's about. Hm. A bit more than a kilo of gold bullion in that bag. It's old, but any jeweler will tell you it's pure. It's yours if you leave. Now."

"I don't. I don't understand."

"No," Hob says, unkindly. "You don't. Which is why I'm giving you this chance to leave. He said you were the one who let him out. Eventually. After a hundred and thirty-three years."

The man's face goes pale as clotted cream. He looks at the sledgehammer with new fear. He remembers this feeling, the intimacy of a knife held to the throat of one who deserves it. It's not one he anticipated dredging up, not once highway robbery went out of style, but it comes back to him as easy as riding a bicycle. Perhaps he should be worried about that.

He'll worry later. Paul McGuire is nodding slowly, looking ill, looking lost. "Is he here?" he asks, and Hob snorts.

"If he was," he says, "I wouldn't tell you."

And that, as they say, is that. Hob is left standing in the entry hall of Fawney Rig, the fading splendor of it, all its gothic twists and its vaguely occult symbolism wended through with high-quality electric lights and a security system to make the Queen weep. Paul hasn't left him a key. By the end of the night, he doesn't intend to need one anymore.

It makes as much sense to start from the ground up as anything else, and finding the stairs to the basement is easy. The hammer is a comfortable heft over his shoulder, and it's as he starts down into that long and sightless tunnel that he feels the shape take just behind him.

"Hello, love," he says, and Dream reaches out. Hob takes his hand, as easy as breathing. "You doing all right?"

"It looks different. From this direction."

"I imagine it would. You aren't alone this time, though." He squeezes the hand in his. It's like trying to squeeze a stone, cold and implacable. "And we're leaving here together."

"Hm." But the hand relaxes, in minute increments. He can feel Dream behind him, can feel the outline of his shoulders, can see the vague eyeshine cast upon the wall, but he doesn't look back. Hob's read that story before. He'll look back when the job is finished. When they leave Hell together.

"Let's finish what you started," he says, as they reach the bottom of the stairs. The ruin of the glass sphere sits in awful majesty in the center of a narrow moat; even from here, he can see the lines of yellow paint, the runes that bound Dream into an airless, feelingless void. The iron struts are lined with spikes; Hob wishes, abruptly, hotly, that he had only given Paul McGuire to the count of ten to leave. He hasn't any horse to ride him down, but he wouldn't have needed one anyways. An old man, and he with rage giving him winged feet.

"Right," he says, and let's go of Dream's hand, only long enough to heft the hammer properly. "Let's get started, darling. I'd like to be home in time to make you dinner."

He doesn't look back (he'll look back, he thinks, when he has reduced this poxy sphere to dust, when he has ground the iron into filings, when there is nothing left of this cursed mausoleum but concrete dust and burnt pages), but he feels the shape of Dream behind him. Can hear his smile.

It sounds like breaking glass. There's no music sweeter, Hob thinks, and lets the hammer fly.

[mollymagician]

Helllooo so, reading certain fun posts over at @gabessquishytum ‘s place got me thinking of one of my fave movies and like—

Dream spent years trapped by social expectations in an unhappy and unwanted marraige with Alex Burgess, ignored and withdrawn into his own little world. He has his greenhouse and his bizarre prize-winning hybrid roses, his unpublished forever-not-quite-finished manuscripts, and that’s enough, he thinks.

Until Alex kicks the proverbial bucket and Dream learns that the Burgess family fortune has been so badly mismanaged, he’s inherited nothing from his late husband but a drafty old mansion sitting on a pile of debt.

The creditors are closing in and Dream…hates the house. He always hated it. But dammit, spite is a hell of a drug. He hates his family as much as he ever hated Alex and Fawney Rig, and he refuses to be kicked out of his own home. He needs a source of income, asap.

Luckily his gardener Matthew has pot plants growing in the hedges and more optimism than sense. Win win!

Pretty soon there’s A Lot More than prizewinning roses growing in Dream’s greenhouse. A lot more. Dream must have some sort of eldrich gardening powers, because this stuff is insanely potent and is also growing out of control. They need to find some way to unload this crop, and fast. Dream needs money. The authorities are getting suspicious. Matthew doesn’t want to go to prison. The whole town knows. So off they head towards the big city to try to find a buyer.

And find a buyer they do!

Hob Gadling isn’t…exactly a crime lord. He’d never describe himself that way. He’s just a creatively savvy businessman. And he’s never been more entertained by ANYONE more than he is by this gorgeous and charmingly awkward lunatic who’s somehow wandered into his little seedy underworld with a gardener and the weirdest story that he’s ever heard. He’s head over heels, instantly. And he’s determined to keep Dream out of trouble, if not just because Dream’s wildly delicious, than at least because Hob firmly believes that no one should go to jail for objectively funny crimes.

…I’m just trying to decide who it is in this version of the story that ends up on the floor, stoned out of their mind, eating cereal out of the box and wearing googly-eye glasses. Please watch this movie, for that scene ALONE.

…The gardener in the film’s actually named Matthew and I tend to envision my Sandman-verse human!Matthew based on the Matthew from this flick. Though Grace’s gardener!Matthew was actually Scottish. (The trying-pot-for-the-first-time scene works just as well with Dream looking at Matthew, blurting out “…you’re American!” and then laughing like a lunatic.)

…After the Whole Incident At The End That No One In Town Can Remember, Dream and Hob rename Fawney Rig to Fiddler’s Green, Dream publishes his novels, and of course they rebuild the greenhouse. Bigger this time. And everyone lives happily ever after.

[goldflinches]

AUgust no. 1 - Canon Divergence

Fishbowl rescue or at least an attempt at one (pre-dreamling)

———

It’s the witching hour. The light bulb above the sink keeps flickering and Hob Gadling is making a deal with another stranger.

She can help him find his stranger (my brother, she says with a pinched expression Hob can’t even begin to parse out) but she can’t do more than that (the rules, she mentions in passing, face as placid as a rip current). If Hob is willing to help, she can make a deal. (Another deal, she says with a wistful smile) (Hob shivers. Curiosity and cats, he thinks)

Hob takes the deal.

Even if he’s so painfully human that there’s little to offer her. When he offers his immortality, she laughs like it is joke they had shared many times before. (she tells him, I’m not of the habit of taking back gifts, Hob Gadling) (Hob shivers again)

So she bargains with Hob—the memory of the once-a-century meetings for the possibility of future ones (I can’t promise it for certain, she says, historically he's been very stubborn) (she is not wrong).

Hob tries to reason around it: How can he rescue someone he won’t remember? Can’t she leave something to guide Hob to him? (he doesn't try to reason out its cruelty, he's had a hand at it and this is just another round of weathering it) (it will be worth it. It has to be worth it)

He tries this: What about his voice? Leave that one part of him about him behind. I would know his voice anywhere, in my waking hours. in my dreams. She agrees (with a curious look, with a softness that Hob refuses to tread upon).

How do we do this? Hob asks.

I forgot to introduce myself, she says with a warm smile, I’m Death of the Endless, the end of all things—tiny, cosmic, and everything in between. The death of mice, Hob stands frozen as she reaches out to him, of the light bulb over your sink, of every star spinning in the universe. And of course, memory.

And she taps Hob’s temple and the memory of his stranger flickers out like the light above them.

———

Once Hob gets his bearings (Wych Cross. Fawney Rig. In the basement, for years. Decades), he races to his stranger’s rescue and finds…nothing.

Not nothing really. But just Fawney Rig is in ashes and not a single soul to ask, What the fuck happened?

———

One week ago, Alex Burgess uses a scroll that will free him of Dream of the Endless. It doesn’t work (not in the way he had intended) (but all roads lead to Rome, burning).

One week ago, Dream of the Endless gets a glimpse of realm, wreaked and barren, before he’s hurled back into his glass cage. (knowing makes it worse. knowing makes him turn his back from his guards and bite his thumb so hard that he bleeds) (knowing makes him draw a sigil on the glass and speak his first words in half a century)

One week ago, Dream of the Endless makes a deal. (Mother, is the last thing he says before she draws a bloody line across his throat) (hush darling, is the last he hears before it goes dark, before the glass breaks, before he finds himself free at last)

[gabessquishytum]

You know what I love? Feral Hob. Hob who’s bloodlust goes insane when he finds out that his stranger has been imprisoned. Who doesn’t use guns because he can’t stand them after his time in the world wars, but instead uses blades. The sword and knife are still his go to after 600 years, and any bullet wound he receives he shakes off in his anger. As he sneaks through Fawney Rig his sword splits open guard after guard with blood staining every inch and his hands dripping red. Hob feels no sympathy as they are all complacent in his strangers capture and he will stop at nothing to free him. By the time Hob gets into the basement and Dream sees Hob split open the two guards from stem to stern in a quiet anger, his brain short circuits because 1) finally freedom stands within reach and 2) well mark him down as scarred /and/ horny. Where Dream would normally have stars in his eyes, there are instead hearts as he can all but taste the passion, the devotion, the worship that Hob has brought him in his bloodshed. Once Hob bashes the glass around him, Dream thrusts a hand into Hob’s hair and yanks his head back to mark his throat and let all know that Hob is /his/. That this worshiper belongs to Dream. Hob is still hard from this when Dream is dealing with Alex, a malicious smile splitting his face as he sees Dream take his vengeance. As they start ascending the stairs to begin their hunt for Dreams tools, Hob begins to feel his long dormant bloodlust sated once more, though unknown to him, it will only be a short time before it rises again when there is another immortal to rescue from imprisonment. And when the time comes, Dream is all too happy to watch the bloodlust consume Hob once more.

- 🦊 anon

I'm uh. I'm really into this.

I love Hob with swords and knives, and Hob who strangles and garots and pulls his victims to bits by hand. Hob spilling blood for Dream like a sacrifice, so his body floods with power and he has no need for the ruby - Hob has given him more than enough to rejuvenate himself. Hob touching himself as he watches Dream dealing with Alex, unable to hold back his appetite any longer. Hob staining the Manor house red with blood and grimly digging bullets out of his own flesh like some kind of terrifying spectre.

Hob who isn't allowed to go to hell because he'd get himself into trouble. Hob who develops this utter hatred for John Dee and can't be restrained, even by Dream. After the ruby is destroyed its Hob who deals with the miserable excuse for a human, who punishes him for all those innocent lives taken.

It's the same all over again with Calliope, and once Dream gives him permission to wreak havoc, Hob once again allows himself to be consumed by rage. Afterwards Dream can't help himself - he fucks Hob desperately in the nearest alley until they are both properly sated, and they figure out the best way to help Calliope in her recovery.

It's fair to say that Hob develops a bit of a reputation.

[inorganicone2230]

This Waking Nightmare (Part 2) Yandere!Morpheus x Fem!Reader

Part 1 and Part 3

Summary: Even before his capture, Dream of The Endless had always longed for a loving partner to share his eternity with, and when he finds that an unexpected turn of events may be the first step towards gaining what it is he has been yearning for for so very long, he’ll do anything to make it a reality.

So when Alex Burgess unexpectedly flees after the death of his father, leaving Fawney Rig to crumble into disrepair, Dream had no idea that his salvation would come, not in the form of any of his siblings, nor by any feat of cunning on his part, but simply by the unprecedented arrival of a single mortal girl who would go on to forever reshape and change the very fabric of the Dreamlord’s endless existence.

Warnings: There are no warnings for now, these first few chapters will be fairly tame.

Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller and I own nothing related to The Sandman in any of its forms and/or adaptations.

It wasn’t too hard to find the entrance to the basement, not when someone had graffitied two of the most famous book quotes of all time right across the door and walls in big black letters.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here & As above, so below

Whoever did it had probably thought that they were being very clever, but in actuality, they really just came off as being very pretentious and lame. If this were a horror movie, it would be beyond the realm of B-rated cheesiness.

You opened it without much hesitation or fanfare and the door swung inward on rusted and squeaking hinges. Shining your flashlight in, you could see that it wasn’t anything special, just a rickety old staircase that led down into what you naturally assumed was just an ordinary and equally as old basement.

You debated turning around and leaving since you would still have to make the trek back up the incredibly long driveway to make it back to the main road and blessed cell service, but you’d already come this far, you silently told yourself, it’s not like a few more minutes of exploring is gonna do you any harm. After all, if Kalvin had been telling the truth during the drive over, then there wasn’t going to be much to see down there anyway. You’d likely be in and out in less time than it was taking you to actually debate this inconsequential task.

With your mind made up, you slowly began making your way down the stairs, being extra careful to watch your step on the way down so as not to fall and hurt yourself. However, when you finally reached the bottom, you were surprised to see that the opening to the space was blocked off by yet another barrier, this one a barred metal gate that reminded you of an old prison cell door. Luckily for you and your now thoroughly peaked curiosity, it wasn’t actually barring the way anymore since it appeared someone had long since taken it right off its hinges and just left it lying on the floor where it fell.

Carefully making your way around the darn thing so you wouldn’t trip over it and possibly twist your ankle, you finally got a look inside the place, and needless to say, it was pretty damn impressive.

“Holy shit…” You exclaimed.

This sure as hell wasn’t what you had been expecting. You had obviously never seen the basement of a mansion before, but you had imagined that it wouldn’t be that much different from any other basement. However, the dinghy space you had been anticipating entering wasn’t at all what you currently found yourself standing inside of.

Instead of a low ceiling full of cobwebs and support beams and a compact dirt or concrete floor, in its place you found a space the size of a small parking lot, complete with a high ceiling to add more openness to the underground space and solid stone flooring that left echoes in the wake of your footsteps. But it was what you saw in the center of the room that made you truly take notice.

There was a section of the floor in the shape of a large square, smack dab in the middle of the room, that appeared to be separated from the rest of it by means of what you could only interpret as a mini trench of some kind surrounding it in an equally shaped outer square. After moving closer to shine your flashlight down into it, you could just barely make out the telltale signs of dried up sludge coating the bottom, indicating that it must have been filled with water at some point.

“So it was a miniature moat or something?” You questioned the empty room as you continued to look around. If you had to hazard a guess, this probably had less to do with interesting architecture and more to do with the cult that had once called this place home back in the day. There was a small pathway that cut through the mini-moat and gave access to the strange spot, and since you were still curious to get a closer look at it you moved towards it.

*scrap scrap*

The faint sound came from behind you and in a whorl of spiked panic, you spun around, and aimed the flashlight in the direction of the scratching noise and prayed to God that it wasn’t the aforementioned axe murderer you had briefly imagined earlier.

At first, you didn’t see anything at all, but upon closer inspection, you noticed the faint outline of a large rodent near one of the alcoves in the wall and relaxed ever so slightly, but as soon as the light touched it, it shrunk back and suddenly skittered down into the ground through an opening of some kind.

You might have been content to simply forget about that and continue on with your snooping now that you knew there was no danger, except for the fact that you remembered that this whole floor was seemingly made out of stone; and there should have been nowhere for that rat to go underneath it all. You weren’t entirely too sure, but you didn’t think that common household rats were known for burrowing in the ground, much less burrowing through solid stone.

Now thoroughly intrigued, you made your way over to inspect the area and realized that this one random section of the floor was made of wooden planks that extended out from the wall by 4ft or so, in fact, this odd wood trimming seemed to run around the entire length of the room. It was like the people who originally lived here were trying to cover the stone with the wood flooring, but stopped midway through the project for some reason.

Angling your light over the spot the rat had disappeared into, you saw that there was a hole in the wood about the size of a baseball and without much more thought, proceeded to get down on your hands and knees to shine the flashlight inside.

You knew this was an incredibly strange and silly thing to be doing, you weren’t going to find anything of real substance or value in a rat nest, but some unseen force (probably the tequila and your damned curiosity) was pushing you to follow through and at least check it out, if only for the sheer madness of it.

But it wasn’t a rat in a small hole that you saw…

Not even close… It was the broken top step of an old wooden ladder.

“The fuck?” You took a second look to see if it was some kind of trick of the light or even just the broken off piece of wood that would have originally filled in the hole, but sure enough, it was a fucking ladder of all things.

Using the sleeve of your jacket to brush away the thick layers of previously undisturbed dust and dirt coating the wood, you soon found what you were looking for in the form of a rectangular seam that didn’t match up with the rest of the wooden floor boards lining. A quick knock on the top even confirmed your suspicions when the sound rang back hollowly.

This was definitely a hatch door, but it had no handles to lift it with or even hinges at the back to help it angle it upward. If you wanted to get it open, you were going to have to take the whole thing off. But that begged the question of whether or not you even wanted to bother with it. It was probably nothing more than a dank and dirty old root-cellar, but still, you couldn’t help but wonder about it, and you knew that you’d keep thinking about it over and over again if you left without even trying.

Mind made up, you set down the flashlight and positioned it to shine where you needed it before pulling out a sturdy switchblade from your pocket that you had been carrying around for years in case of an emergency or accident. This wasn’t the kind of situation you ever thought you’d find yourself to be using it in, but better this than a potential kidnapping.

Over the course of the next half hour, you worked to use the knife as a makeshift crowbar and pry up the hatch. It wasn’t easy since the damn thing was nailed down in a few spots, but with a little bit of time and elbow grease, it eventually became loose enough to lift and toss aside. The smell of stale air wafted up from the opening and you coughed as the scent settled into your lungs, but it didn’t smell like something rotten or anything horrible, so at the very least, if there were any dead bodies down there, they likely weren’t fresh. As you peered down into the hole, you could see that the drop was about 6ft to 7ft down and the floor was concrete, you just hoped the old ladder was strong enough to handle you going down and back up it at least once. The last thing you wanted was to get stuck down there and end up starving to death, because you highly doubted that Gabby and the others were going to come back looking for you.

So, keeping the knife in your hand, just in case, and the flashlight in the other, you slowly and carefully began making your way down.

The wood groaned and creaked under your weight, but not enough to make you believe it was going to give out or break. You still felt incredibly relieved when your feet finally touched the ground though and you turned around to get your first look at the secret space.

However…

…

…

…

That relief was incredibly short lived upon discovering what exactly it was that this odd chamber had truly been hiding.

—————

Morpheus froze in stunned awe as he watched the young woman deceased down the ladder and into the dank darkness of his prison chamber, the flashlight she carried in her hand shining like a beacon from the Silver City itself as it cast eerie shadows all around the space.

If he were mortal and not the true universal embodiment of dreams and the unconscious mind, he might have pinched himself to see if he was dreaming this all up, but such a thing couldn’t be possible, the entrapment circle crafted around his cage had prevented him from dreaming since the moment of his capture.

Which could really only mean one thing…

That this was real.

It was difficult to make out her features from the dim light cast by her flashlight, but right now, he couldn’t care less what she looked like, not when she held the power to help free him just by simply being here. She was the first true living thing he had laid eyes on in… well… he didn’t accurately know how long, but it was long enough that the mere sight of her was enough to make him want to weep.

But as she raised the light to look around, her reaction to seeing him made it clear that he was not at all what she had been expecting to find down here. 

She screamed in surprise and stumbled back onto her rear, gaping at him in shock and disbelief. She stayed still like that for so long that, were it not for the erratic rise and fall of her chest to indicate otherwise, Dream feared she may have passed out or even died of fright right there on the spot.

She eventually seemed to get her bearings about her and he heard her mumbling some rather choice words before coming to a decision and he watched with bated breath as she closed up the knife he just now noticed she carried in her other hand and put it away in her pocket. She began scrambling around the chamber, looking for something, though he knew not what for.

That question was soon answered however when he saw her bend down to pick up a large rock with a jagged end, to which she must have deemed acceptable, because she was suddenly making her way over to him. He nearly smiled in gleeful triumph when he saw her shoes scuff a line through the entrapment circle, weakening its enchantment on the glass and his power.

She set the flashlight down on the ground before turning to face him through the glass, a determined look set upon her rather beautiful face, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he heard another's voice ringing in his ears. He didn’t know if she truly had the voice of an angel, for that’s exactly what it sounded like, or if he was just that desperate for the sound, but he didn’t care. He wanted to beg her to keep talking, to fill his ears with the sweet melody and never stop, but he found his own voice was caught in his throat as the shock that he was finally free settled over him. The long awaited relief washed over him in delightful waves and he slumped against the glass, unable and unwilling to take his eyes off of the beguiling creature standing on the other side of his cage, the rock in her hand raised high and poised to strike.

“Just hang on, I’m going to try and get you out!”

And then she moved.

—————

Finding a naked young man trapped in some kind of creepy glass cage down here was so far down the list of things you hadn’t expected to come across, that it wasn’t ever even an option. But that’s exactly what it was, and you just figured that you could worry about the ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ of this incredibly odd turn of events after you had gotten him out of this thing.

For a brief moment, you had thought that the best thing you could do would be to leave and get far enough away to call the police and let them handle this. But you knew they’d likely just think this whole thing was a prank call by some bored teenagers and ignore you, or they’d show up and you’d get arrested for trespassing before losing your scholarship and getting deported. There was also this man’s safety to consider, you admitted to yourself as you thought of what could go wrong if you left him here for even a few hours. You doubted he was down here by choice; what if whoever put him there came back to kill him, or what if he ran out of air or something while you were gone?

He didn’t look hurt or anything as far as you could tell, so he couldn’t have been trapped for very long, you thought, even as your subconscious mind took notice of how there were no human footprints of any kind trailing through the dirt and dust that blanketed the floor, or how there seemed to be no other entrances/exits besides the one you just came through, and that one clearly hadn’t been used in decades.

All of these thoughts piled up in your head faster than you could comprehend or keep track of them, but in the end, it was none of them that made you decide to help him. It was the look on his face, the look that told you something fundamental would shatter inside of him if you turned your back and left him here alone, even if it was only for a short amount of time.

Now here you were, banging on the seemingly indestructible glass with a rock to try and break through, and in your panic, it never even occurred to you to try and see if the damn thing had a door with an outside lock to try and open for him or something.

At first, all it did was scratch the surface and you fears you may actually have to go back up in search of a better tool, like a hammer or something, but after a few more hard strikes in the same spot, spiderwebs and hairline fractures began to splinter outward from the area and you could see that a small hole had been formed. Once the structure was weakened enough, breaking through the rest of it was comparably easy to chip away at, and soon, you had made a hole big enough that he could squeeze through. There were metal pieces wound through the glass and you dragged the rock against both, trying to get rid of as many jagged chunks as you so he wouldn’t seriously hurt himself when climbing out.

“Just… umm, let me brush away some of these shards and pieces before you get out.” You said awkwardly, not entirely too sure how to speak or what to say in a situation like this as you took off your coat and used it to clear away the glass that had fallen inside the cage and then did the same to the floor so he, hopefully, wouldn’t end up slicing the bottoms of his feet to ribbons.

“Give me your hand and I’ll help you out.” You said, trying to remain as calm as you could. He hadn’t said a single word yet as he just kept staring at you with wide eyes and a gobsmacked expression.

You hadn’t bothered to get a really good look at him, not just because of how strange and disturbing this situation was, but also because the man was butt-ass-naked. But now that you were so near to him, you couldn’t not take notice of him and his rather… appealing physique.

Pale skin so white it almost seemed to glow in the dim illumination cast by your flashlight and a messy shock of pitch black hair set over an angular face that you could only describe as being utterly beautiful. With high cheekbones and full pursed lips that were making you think of very sinful and inappropriate things, it really was a miracle you weren’t drooling right now, and that was just what he looked like above the neck.

He didn’t take your outstretched hand though, and instead grabbed the metal portion of the structure and swung himself out with all the ease and grace of a practiced gymnast. His feet touched the ground without a sound and he didn’t even seem bothered by the potential injuries and infection he could sustain from the broken glass and filth ridden floor. He just stood there, stark naked and silently watching you.

As he stood to his full height, you could now see that he was quite a bit taller than you, by at least a couple of inches, if not a whole foot, and you couldn’t help but wonder if you had hit the nail on the head when you thought his movements were as fluid as a gymnast’s, because he certainly had the body of one. He was lean, but even in the crappy light cast by the flashlight, you see that he was sculpted with ropes of solid muscle. He reminded you of those famous statues from Greece, the ones carved from marble to look like the ancient heroes from the epics, like Hercules and Achilles.

But as you looked up to make eye contact with him, you found yourself completely hypnotized by what you found there.

His eyes were the color of raw silver, like dancing silver flames, or the glinting of two bright stars in the deepest and darkest night sky. They were captivating and you found that you were so enraptured with them that you didn’t even realize you had taken a step forward until you heard glass crunching underneath your booted foot and you snapped out of it, jerking back with frightened shock over the momentary loss of your inhibitions.

You really were trying your best not to ogle him, but that was rather hard to accomplish when he was making no move at all to cover himself and you refused to turn your back on him. You might have helped him out of a really bazaar situation, but that didn’t mean you trusted him enough to let your guard down completely with him, he was still a perfect stranger after all.

“Listen,” You started off, trying to find something to say that would help to ease the tension of this incredibly awkward silence. “Now that we got you out of whatever that thing is,” You made a hand motion towards the now destroyed cage. “We should really look at getting out of here before whoever it was that put you in there decides to come back.” You took a step back, opting to put some distance between you and the stranger, but for the first time since you laid eyes on one another, he spoke, and you weren’t entirely certain if it was his words or the haunting raspy sound of his voice that made you freeze, but you did and it cost you.

“They won’t be returning.”

You opened your mouth to ask what the fuck he meant by that, but faster then you could process what was happening, the man’s hand shot out and snagged your wrist. He gave a gentle tug and you went falling into his arms, but before you could even begin to struggle or open your mouth to scream, he opened his other hand and blew something into your face and everything suddenly went dark.

—————

Morpheus caught you in his arms as you went limp against him, the last thing he wanted was to see you get needlessly hurt, especially since he now owed you quite the generous life debt for unknowingly freeing him from what he was beginning to think would be an eternity of confinement.

Looking down at your peaceful expression, he used some of what reminded of his limited power to look into your dreams, trying to find out any information he could in regards to you and the state of the world he was about to re-enter.

Quite often, he was able to glean a lot about a person’s waking life, not just from their dreams, but from the multitude of thoughts that tended to run rampant through their mind in those hazy moments right before sleep truly claimed them. Those moments were often similar to that of waking dreams and he used to use them rather frequently to gather information when it was necessary.

And you were no exception to this trait.

In a matter of moments he knew quite a lot more than he did a few hours ago.

For example, he now knew that he had been imprisoned for well over a century, 106 years to be exact. He also now knew that your name was (Y/N) (L/N), you were 21 years old and attending university here in England despite not being British, he had even learned that you had been fortunate enough to get a single dorm room on campus and that you had been abandoned here after a rather interesting altercation between you and some of your fellow classmates.

With this knowledge in hand, he scooped you up into his arms as gently as he could and found himself marveling at just how soft you felt in his arms. You fidgeted a bit in response to the movement and grumbled something unintelligible before going quiet again, which showed just how weak he truly was, if he was at full power and in possession of his tools, you would have entered into a sleep so deep that only a select few things would have been enough to wake you. That thought was enough to spur him into action once again, and using the knowledge he’d gained from you, he called upon another morsel of his nearly depleted power and brought the both of you to an entirely new location.

Your dorm room was about what anyone could expect of such accommodations and Morpheus was quick to pull back the soft blankets and lay you down on the mediocre bed. 

However, despite knowing he should be leaving right this moment to return to The Dreaming and begin the hunt for his tools of power, he found himself increasingly reluctant to fully release his hold on you. He hadn’t felt skin to skin contact in so long, even before his imprisonment it had been quite a while; but it was one thing to shun such a thing by choice, it was another thing entirely to have the option of it totally stripped away from you by force. Now he was feeling it again with you, and to his touch starved skin, it felt like the most exquisite thing in the world, both waking and dreaming.

Without realizing it, he found himself sitting beside you on the bed and stroking the tips of his fingers down your cheek, you sighed in your sleep and leaned into his touch, as if soothed by it. The simple and unconscious reaction left him with goosebumps prickling his skin and his heart stuttering in his chest as he continued to watch you sleep. He thought about entering your dreams and seeing what such a brave little mortal would conjure up in his realm, but for some inexplicable reason, he found himself unwilling to look away from the peacefulness of your sleeping face here in the waking world.

Eventually though, he knew he had to depart. It was time for him to finally return home, to go back to The Dreaming and assess the damage wrought by his absence over the last century, as well as to begin the search for his tools.

Cupping your face in his hands, he leaned over your sleeping form and pressed his forehead against your own and whispered your name softly to the otherwise silent room.

“You are my savior, my light in the darkness. I don’t believe there is anything I can do that will ever truly be enough to repay you for what you have done for me tonight.” Being this close to you, he couldn’t help but notice your enticing scent and how it made his mouth water, not with the typical hunger one would expect after so long in confinement, but with something that left his cock twitching against his bare leg. However, he ignored that feeling as best he could and continued on. “But this I promise you, my little savior, once I have my tools in my possession again, I will see to it that you spend the rest of your life with nothing but the sweetest and happiest of dreams whenever you enter my realm, even if I have to enter your dreams every evening and craft them by hand myself. I vow that no nightmare will ever intrude and interrupt your sleep ever again.”

There was so much more he wanted to say to you, so much more he wanted to do, but time was of the essence and he needed to leave, before he did something very foolish, something that would surely bring the wrath of the universe down upon his immortal head.

And so, with nothing more than a quick kiss to your brow and another heartfelt exclamation of gratitude, he was gone in a whisp of shadows, as if he had never been there to begin with.

Please enjoy and let me know what you think of this second chapter! I’m dying to know what you all think is going to go down.

Please forgive any minor potholes or inconsistencies, I tried my best to make the detail changes make sense for the story I wanted to tell while still keeping in line with the original source material. This is mostly based off of the Netflix series, but there are some details about the comics and audio books thrown in for flavor.

And as always, I want to give a very BIG thank you to my amazing friend @talpup for all the brainstorming and encouragement on these stories! I’m  sure I would have given up on this blog a while ago if it wasn’t for  all of   their help. I highly encourage anyone who takes the time to  read this to go over to their page or their AO3 account under the same  name and check out their works, especially Chaos and Lost Song. They  are two of my favorite BNHA fics of ALL TIME! And who has also started  their own Yandere!Overhaul fic called Crossroads and is set in a  1920′s prohibition style era, it’s amazing and you really need to check  it out!  

[im-not-corrupted]

So hard to choose just one but I'm dying to know more about the next part of "like atonement for a bygone sin" 👀

🤘five-and-dimes

Oh yes! Chapter five is roughly 4k words so far (and hopefully shouldn’t be much more than that), and features a: yet more misunderstandings from Dream (he’s really bad at this friendship thing) and b: Hob being Deeply Concerned while Dream brushes away his problems. Here’s a lil snippet <3

———

A hand found itself on his shoulder, a sudden pressure that made him jolt in his seat. They didn’t touch him down in Fawney Rig—the cage was always in the way. For one hundred and six years, he was deprived of something as small as touch. He never realised how much he could miss something so simple, something he didn’t let himself have even before that.

You aren’t there, he told himself again, tearing his eyes from the man who knocked over the glass, landing them on Hob. Hob stood before him, leaning over the bar so he could place that hand on his shoulder. His eyes were concerned, brow drawn together in a frown. Distantly, Dream had the urge to reach out and smooth that frown away with the pad of his thumb. It didn’t belong on the fact of one so joyful as he.

”Dream?” he murmured softly, low enough so the word was only heard by the two of them. “Are you alright? You seemed a little…distant there for a moment.”

He blinked. Hob’s face was nothing but earnest, and Dream…didn’t know how to reply to that. He could still hear the shattering of glass. His hands slipped beneath the bar, his nails digging into his palms. He let it sting faintly, a small anchor grounding him where he was. In The New Inn, at one of Hob’s workplaces. Not in Fawney Rig, where he hadn’t been for months now. He got out. He got out.

“I am fine,” he managed. It sounded like a lie even to his own ears—a little too strangled, a little too faint.

Hob’s frown deepened a little. “Are you sure, love? You can go upstairs if you need to? I have some more time here, but I’ll join you as soon as I can, unless you just want to leave entirely?”

In truth, he was not sure at all. He was even less sure that he wished to remain in the Waking—it was too loud, all of a sudden. If anything, he wished to return to the Dreaming, wished to find comfort in his own realm, no longer torn from him. But he could not. He had only been here for a couple minutes at best—not even a full hour. He could not leave now, when he had yet to offer enough of his time, and he didn’t trust himself to remain upstairs if he were to make himself comfortable in Hob’s apartment for a while.

He clenched his jaw for a moment, staring resolutely at Hob. He had a debt to repay, and he would do it. He could cope a little longer in the Waking for the sake of that debt and his friendship with Hob, even if the realm seemed to grate on him suddenly, even if a part of him could still hear Alexander’s voice inside his head and the shattering of glass to accompany it.

He was not there. He got out. That was enough. It had to be. “I am fine,” he repeated firmly.

[whisperprime]

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The good news was that Burgess did not summon Death.

The equally good news was that he also did not summon Dream.

The not so great news was that he did summon something.

What Burgess has brought down on himself this time is demon, and not just any demon, but an Archdemon. A Prince of Hell, loyal only to Lucifer Morningstar himself. Burgess seems to have figured out he's really done it now, but let no one say he isn't an arrogant asshole. He tries to bargain with the demon, who just laughs in his face and asks what Burgess could possibly have that an Archdemon could possibly want.

Burgess flounders for something to say when the Archdemon spots Hob

"You've captured Robert Gadling?"

Burgess looks between Hob and the archdemon. "Who?"

The archdemon did something between sneering and laughing that was mostly just baring his teeth. "You've kidnapped a human who's learned the secrets to never dying and yet you demand immortality from demons."

Hob would like to point out that he hadn’t learned how to do anything and his immortality had been sheer dumb luck, but he doubted that would be helpful at the moment.

Burgess looks at Hob like he’s reassessing his value. Hob could care less about him. He's more worried about the look the archdemon is giving him. It makes him feel naked in a way that has nothing to do with his literal nakedness.

"Allow me out of this circle so I may learn about the seal hiding him from Death and no one residing under this roof shall age another day."

Burgess narrows his eyes as if looking for a loop hole on the deal. He looks at his other "guest" to see if he can find any seal. He doesn't find one. Still, anything that can hide someone from death sounds interesting "Teach me the seal as well and you have a deal."

The Archdemon smiled in a way that sent a shiver down the spines of anyone who saw it.

"Deal."

The circle holding the demon is broken and Hob tries to keep his cool as he's left to the mercy of an archdemon. He's equally worried over the idea that anyone else could recreate the seal The Other Man had placed on him, only imaging what others might do if they couldn't be seen by the Endless.

The archdemon sets upon Hob in an instant, curious to get closer to this seal. Hob does not hold it against himself that he shamelessly attempts to scramble away from the archdemon, animal instinct driving him even when he barely has any energy at all. The archdemon, who introduces himself as Mammon when Burgess gets around to asking for a name, is content in the beginning to leave Hob’s binding circle intact, mostly because it amuses him when the immortal human attempts to escape him and runs right into it. Hob doesn’t have much energy to begin with, so he tires easily and frequently, adrenaline only able to take him so far.

The seal, however, does not give up it’s secrets easily. Mammon is furious when he realizes that this will not be as easy a task as he hoped. This will take time.

But time is what everyone in Fawney Rig suddenly has and a new routine is established.

Over the years that follow, the humans above all begin to notice that anyone who spends significant time within the manor doesn’t age. They also just as quickly realize the trick is that they have to be in the manor to enjoy. Burgess is furious when he discovers this, but the archdemon is unmoved. He has kept his word, how it is his fault Burgess wasn’t listening?

Ten years in, Alex petitions his father to allow him to go to an expensive college in another part of the country. Burgess thinks his son wants to escape his shadow. Hob thinks it’s really because the kid has realized that he’s going to start looking significantly younger than the man he loves. He doesn’t fault the kid for wanting to get away before the gap in their age gets too large.

Hob himself passes the time in between Mammon’s experiments and a new kind of boredom that comes from never knowing when he’s going to come under attack by attempting to learn lucid dreaming as a means to escape the Waking World for a while. It takes a while, but he manages to get the hang of it. Most of the time.

His success also means that he’s able to learn the full extent of what it means to not be able to be perceived by the Endless. The first time he successfully lucid dreams, he tries to interact with one of the Dreams nearby and utterly fails. He has no voice to speak with the creature. He cannot been seen by the creature. Worst of all, he cannot even touch any of the denizens of the Dreaming.

He remembers that the Dreaming is an extension of Dream of the Endless and it appears that although he can enter the Dreaming (and has been all this time), nothing within the Dreaming can see, hear, or touch him.

”Such a pale face, Robert Gadling. Did a nightmare visit you in your sleep?” Mammon asks him when he wakes next.

Hob doesn’t say that it was worse than any nightmare. So much terribly worse.

He sticks with his attempts anyway, once the horror of it wears off. He would rather be invisible, but in the Dreaming, than awake and under the archdemon’s tender mercy.

(Hob tries once to find Dream with this new skill. Follows the pathways that lead him back to the castle and to the heart he left behind all those years ago. He makes it as far as the doors to the throne room, before his courage runs out. He tells himself it isn’t right to spy on his old-friend-who-isn’t-his-old-friend, but the truth is that he can’t handle the idea of seeing Dream but Dream not seeing him.)

The years drag on. Mammon continues to not figure out the seal. Some days his wrath threatens to bring the walls of Fawny Rig down around them. He takes it out on Hob in ways that Hob knows is going to haunt him when he can experience nightmares again. Burgess checks in on occasion, but it’s mostly to see if the archdemon is still in the basement. He seems content to wait, as long as he gets more time.

Time within the basement seems to merge together in a seemingly endless muddle of hunger, thirst, and pain, only broken up by the occasion escape in lucid dreams. Hob doesn’t even know what day it is until Mammon, chortling to himself, tells him that it looks like he missed his meeting with Dream. “Oh, how sad for the Dream Lord to be dinning alone tonight,” the archdemon had said.

Hob merely stared at him, something he refused to name growing in his chest. Despite telling himself he wouldn’t think about it, Hob wondered if Dream had gone to the meeting.

Had he held to his pride and not gone? Dream had said he would have if he could, but how much of that had been because of the humbling his imprisonment had forced upon him? Was it truly better if he had gone, only to find that Hob was not? Would he worry? What were the rules of interfering, even if Dream discovered something was wrong? He would not find Hob if he looked, was it not better if he did not look at all? 

A selfish part of Hob wanted him to have gone. To worry, even if he could not look, because it would have meant that Dream wanted them to be friends of his own violation. It was a part he held close, even as he smothered it. 

Hob had made his deal. He’d given up that timeline, with all it’s unique hurts. Let this one play out as it will. It was far too late to go back now.

Part 4

[whumpdoyoumean]

Whumptober #31

xxx a light at the end of the tunnel

Hope is a funny thing. 

Having lived for well over half a millennium, Hob Gadling has lost hope more times than he cares to admit. But he’s also seen that hope rewarded, often in the most unexpected of ways, sometimes decades or even centuries after it had been seemingly lost. 

It’s hope that keeps him from turning tail and running when he arrives at Fawney Rig, home of Alex Burgess. It’s a grand old estate, the type that requires a good deal of staff to keep up. Staff who are currently lying dead in the foyer, on the steps, in the upstairs hallway. Four of them that he can count, and he’s barely got one foot in the door.

Six hundred years, and the brutality of which man is capable still manages to surprise him. He does his best to avoid such barbarism, when he can. It does nothing for his mental well-being and, having not gotten used to it despite his overabundance of experience (maybe because of it). It eats away at him.

And yet here, in the middle of such darkness…still there exists that bright sliver of hope. That maybe something he thought he’d lost for good isn’t lost after all.

This is what he clings to as he enters the mansion. His footsteps echo on the tile, and it occurs to him just how quiet it is. No sounds of weeping or begging, no quiet pleas for help. His heart sinks, and he knows in his gut that there are no survivors. Whoever is responsible for this carnage will have seen to that.

Hob’s step quickens. He’d managed to find the public records on the house--architectural drawings, blueprints and floor plans, surveys. A long night’s study had led him to the conclusion that the paperwork was carefully curated, and that the strange American was right: Something is afoot at the Burgess estate.

A shudder runs through Hob as he thinks back on the man who’d come into the inn a few nights before, asking odd questions of the people there. It had seemed at first that he was just another tourist, curious about the old homes that are older, almost, than his country. But as the questions had grown more pointed, the man more insistent, it became clear that he was looking for something. There was a lot of talk of dreams. It was his mention of the Devil and the Wandering Jew that finally prompted Hob to speak. 

“A fascinating little story isn’t it?”

He’ll never forget the flash of malice that had crossed the man’s face. It had only been there for a second before it was replaced by a forced smile that was no less discomfiting. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and laced with venom.

“Who says it’s just a story?”

There are more bodies as Hob continues through the halls. The American had seemed quietly unbalanced, like there was something desperate and dangerous and wild just below the surface, but this…

Could one man really have done all of this? 

It’s with that thought that he begins to run. 

He’s surprised at how quickly he finds the hidden basement door--due, largely, to the fact that it sits wide open. The air coming from the doorway is cold and musty-smelling and sends a shiver down his spine. His fingers land on the handle of the small knife at his hip, and then he’s moving down the stone steps, as quietly as he can. He can hear snippets of sound as he gets closer. The only thing he really makes out is Morpheus.

He doesn’t know why but the name, though he doesn’t recognize it, sends a warm jolt of familiarity through his heart. He’s so busy trying to piece together what the feeling might mean that he forgets his attempt at stealth as he steps through the open iron gates and down the two small steps into a dark, candlelit chamber. He certainly doesn’t notice the man lying in wait for him, until he feels a gun pressed to the back of his head. 

“Turn around,” the American says, and Hob does so, though not before he catches a glimpse of a naked figure on a bed of broken glass, pale and bloodied and striking the same golden chord that the name Morpheus had. “Professor? I have to admit, this is unexpected.”

He launches into some long-winded monologue, but Hob doesn’t hear a word of it. Because he was right. He knows who it is lying there, unmoving, on the ground beneath the round metal frame. And he knows who it is that made him bleed. 

He doesn’t enjoy killing people. He’s done it, of course. Not just out of necessity, either. He’s killed for reasons far more selfish and debauched than that. Never has he taken pleasure in the act. 

This, though. This is maybe as close as he gets.

He moves with lightning speed, with reflexes refined by centuries of honing. It’s not a fight. The American doesn’t even have time for his finger to twitch before the blade is buried in his carotid. He stares at Hob with wide-eyed shock. Hob stares back for one hate-filled moment before he pulls the knife out, turning on his heel as red arcs out and the American falls to the ground.

The hatred is forgotten immediately as Hob runs to the naked man’s side, replaced by something gentler and more precarious. 

“It’s you.”

Even beaten and bloodied, he knows this face. Of course he knows this face, how could he not? He quickly takes off his coat, draping it over the huddled and trembling and bleeding figure whose eyes remain shut.

“Alright, old friend,” Hob says softly. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going to move you now.” 

He moves as quickly as he dares, mindful of the larger pieces of glass in the slight man’s body as he carefully lifts the man into his arms. He’s surprised at how easy it is, barely taking more effort than lifting a child, and the man stirs slightly, a groan slipping from lips that are pale white beneath the blood.

“Easy, now,” Hob murmurs. His eyes land on a sigil on the ground, and disgust rises in him as he scuffs the markings with one foot before continuing. 

The man groans again and he starts to squirm in Hob’s arms. He’s skin and bones, and has just had the shit beat out of him, and it would be easy to subdue him if Hob weren’t so worried about doing further harm. 

“Okay--alright! Let me at least get you away from all the glass and the damned binding circle.” 

He walks hurriedly, moving to a subchamber that’s free of glass and blood, and eases the man onto the floor, covering him carefully with his coat. The man’s not fully conscious, eyes moving beneath slightly parted lids. Hob doesn’t want to leave him here alone for even a second, but the stone floors of the basement are frigid, and he can practically see the heat being leached from the man’s body. 

“I’ll be back,” he says, brushing his fingers against the man’s icy knuckles. “I won’t be a minute. Don’t move.”

He runs up the stairs and then up another flight, barely noticing the bodies now as he ducks into the first room he sees. He’s got more pressing things on his mind. He loads his arms with blankets, a pillow, and a flannel nightshirt, and makes the journey back to that awful basement, twice nearly tripping in his haste. He grabs a bottle of water as he passes the desk where the guards lay dead, then hurries into the subchamber. The relief he feels when he sees that the man hasn’t vanished is quickly undercut by the fact he’s gone completely still. 

“No.” He dumps everything from the bedroom onto the floor and kneels next to the man, his immortal heart beating so frantically it feels as if it might give out. His fingers shake lightly as he takes the man’s wrist in his hand. He’s spent a hundred and twenty-seven years waiting for this reunion. This can’t be the way it ends. 

He almost cries when he finds the pulse, surprisingly strong given the state of the man.

“You scared me,” he says. He wipes the blood from his knife and cuts one of the blankets, ripping it the rest of the way with his hands and repeating the process until he’s got a small pile of cloth strips. He talks quietly the whole time. He’s not sure if the man can hear him, but he’d much rather speak and have his words fall on empty ears, than not speak and have the man be offered no comfort. 

There are things Hob wants to tell him, of course. Things he’d planned on telling him when they were last supposed to meet, things he’s thought about telling him since. He doesn’t say them, though. He’ll save those for when the two of them can have a proper conversation. 

For now, he talks about the weather, describing the color of the sky and the leaves, the feel of the breeze and the lovely scent that it carries, the birdsong. He talks as he winds a long strip of cloth around the large piece of glass in the man’s thigh, careful not to jostle it but also making the make-shift bandage tight enough to slow the bleeding, and to keep the glass in place until he’s in a better position to deal with it. By the time he finishes and moves to the man’s arm to repeat the process, he’s run out of ways to talk about the weather, so he talks about his recent holiday to the Isle of Wight. He doesn’t notice the silent tears that slip down the stranger’s face.

Once he’s satisfied with his work, he drapes a blanket (one that he hasn’t torn up to use as bandages) over the man and turns his attention to his face. He can’t help but grimace as he does. An ugly bruise is already forming over the man’s left eye and there’s a nasty gash over his cheekbone, and a small knot is forming above his right temple. His lip is split, too, and his nose looks like it might be broken. Perhaps most alarming is the man’s lower jaw, which juts sharply to the right. Definitely dislocated.  

A fresh dose of hatred courses through his veins. 

He won’t be losing much sleep over the American, he decides. 

He pours water over one of the strips of fabric and starts the work of cleaning the blood away. Only when he starts to gingerly dab at the cut on his head does the stranger flinch and begin to stir. 

“Sorry!” Hob says, pausing as the man turns away from his touch. “Are you with me?”

The man’s eyes fly open and for a fraction of a second, Hob could swear that he sees the stars reflected in them. And then he’s staring into those familiar pools of blue, wide and panicked at first, but quickly softening with recognition. His lips begin to move, and Hob speaks quickly before the man has a chance to. 

“Careful. Don’t--don’t try to speak. Your jaw’s been dislocated. I think I can move it back into place--I’ve learned a great many things in my lifetimes--but it’s going to be unpleasant. Painful…” His mind goes back to what he’d heard when he first came down the steps. “I heard the man say Morpheus. Is that your name?”

The man stares at him for a moment before bobbing his head up and down.

Morpheus.

“Alright, Morpheus. Do you trust me?”

Morpheus nods once, without hesitation. There’s not a hint of trepidation in his eyes. 

“Good. I’ll be as quick and as gentle as I can.”

It’s an uncomfortable procedure. Hob is impressed by how quiet and still Morpheus is as he puts his thumbs against his lower molars, wrapping his fingers under the man’s chin.

“I need you to relax for me, now, while I move it back into place. Ready? Relax relax relax…” He applies pressure, pushing the man’s jaw down and then back until he feels it click back into place. The man lets out a sharp gasp, and then sighs, his shoulders sagging a little as he leans his head back against the wall. 

“Thank you,” he breathes. His whole body is trembling, even under the blanket. “Thank you. Thank you, Hob.”

“You’re welcome, Morpheus.”

The ghost of a smile crosses the man’s lips--lips which, Hob notes gladly, have begun to gain a bit of color back--and he reaches his uninjured arm out from under the blanket, resting his hand on Hob’s shoulder. 

“You may call me Dream. That is what my friends call me.”

Hob can’t help the laugh that bubbles up in his chest and escapes out his mouth at the word friends, and the chill of this place seems to fade a bit. 

“We should get you out of this place, Dream,” he says after a long moment. He picks up the nightshirt and sets to work ripping off the right sleeve, pausing when he sees Dream’s stare which he interprets as being inquisitive, despite it looking very much like his usual staring. “The glass in your arm,” he explains. 

Dream winces a little, as if he hadn’t noticed it until just now. The small surge of energy he’d had is clearly beginning to fade.

“Here, put this on. It isn’t quite to your taste, but it will cover you well enough until we can find something more suited to you.” 

Dream scowls slightly at the red and black plaid, but takes it anyway, pushing the blanket down and pulling the nightshirt over his head.

“Can you stand?” Hob asks.

“Yes.” 

He doesn’t look as sure as he sounds, though, and doesn’t turn down Hob’s proffered hand. The nightshirt falls down around him as he rises to his feet, and it’s clear that it was intended for a larger man. It makes for quite a sight: Dream, practically drowning in the bright fabric, save for his one care arm. Would’ve been quite funny, if not for the cuts and bruises, and the hiss he lets out as he tries to put weight on his injured leg. 

“Easy, there. Are you alright? Can you walk?”

“I can walk.” There’s not so much confidence now, and Hob loops an arm around his bony waist. 

“I’ve got you.”

It’s slow-going, and Hob finds himself cursing the spiral staircase more than once as they make their way up. Dream is gasping by the time they get to the ground floor, and shaking, a dazed, exhausted look on his face. He doesn’t react to the bloody scene in the foyer, and Hob’s not entirely convinced that the poor man even sees it. They make it the last few steps out the front door and onto the porch before it occurs to Hob that Dream is barefoot. He looks at the gravel drive and then at Dream’s bloodied feet and shakes his head. 

“That’s it, I’m carrying you the rest of the way.”

Dream barely protests as Hob lifts him off of his feet, and it’s clear he’s given in when he loops his good arm around Hob’s neck and leans into him. 

He’s unconscious again by the time they reach the car, and Hob has to wrangle him into the passenger side, careful not to jostle the glass. He’s just done the seatbelt when he looks up at that godforsaken house, and the hatred and rage for the people who imprisoned Dream come roaring up, all at once. 

“Just one more thing I’ve got to do,” he says. 

He’s never been more grateful for the extra petrol he keeps in the car just in case. The place is full of unattended candles and dry old books, anyway. 

An accident was bound to happen.

xxx 

The first thoughts that enter Dream’s mind upon regaining consciousness are soft and warm--both of which are things that he hasn’t been in a very, very long time. The next word is safe. And the word after that, a name: 

Hob.

He opens his eyes to find himself in a bed that’s infinitely softer than any he’s been in in this realm. A quick examination reveals that the glass is gone from his arm, replaced with clean bandages, and when he brushes his fingers against his leg, the same is true there. There’s a bandage on his cheek, as well. Strangely, he can hardly feel his injuries. Instead, his whole body feels tingly, almost warm. And his head feels…sodd. Like it’s been filled with helium and would take flight if not for his neck keeping it attached to his body.

“Hob?” he asks. He’s about to repeat the name when a door opens to his left and Hob appears, his hair and body dripping, gripping a towel that’s wrapped around his waist.

“Are you alright?” he asks, eyes wide. 

Dream nods, and the world starts to spin. He squeezes his eyes shut to try and stop the movement. “I feel strange.”

“Ah, yes. That would be the medication. I had to give you something before I removed the glass. The piece in your leg was dangerously close to your femoral artery. Even the slightest movement could’ve caused you to bleed out.”

Dream forces his eyes open and stares at Hob, who’s opened his closet and is pulling out a bathrobe. 

“You needn’t have worried,” he says, the words feeling strange on his tongue. His lids start to droop and he forces them open. “I can’t die, remember?”

He has just enough awareness to see a flicker of something in Hob’s expression. Something like guilt. 

“Aye,” Hob says quietly. “But you can be hurt or captured.” He shakes his head, almost as if, Dream thinks, to shake the sadness from his face. And then he smiles, a warm expression crossing his handsome features. “Please, Dream. Don’t stay awake on my account; we’ll have plenty of time to talk later. You can rest now.”

And for the first time in a century, Dream does.

xxx end

[ambercoloredfox]

Crown of Curses II

Summary: It's like a bad horror movie, but is Fawney Rig really haunted? Or have her troubles only just begun?

Pairing: Morpheus x f!Reader/OC

Rating: Teen. Maybe Mature for cursing (ha).

Notes: Content warning for mentions of child abuse. Nothing descriptive. Mentions of comic spoilers (Overture). Morpheus has no mouth and he must scream.

Previous | Masterlist | Next

There was a creak directly above his head. He could feel her enter the confines of the binding circle, though far above. Just as quickly her presence vanished.

Dream watched the ceiling with absent eyes.

He listened to her footsteps. Tried to deny that they came closer. Then there was silence.

A question arose in him. Why was the woman here?

She certainly walked around like she owned this place, making enough noise after so long of silence that it could surely wake the dead--

BANG.

The noise echoed through his confines like a gunshot. His eyes watched where he knew the iron door to be.

There was a pause. Then, footsteps on stone. She was coming down the stairs.

"You mean Fawney Rig?" The driver turned in his seat to look me in the eye.

Surprise. Distrust. The acrid taste of fear.

"If you're going there just ta have a laugh I ain't takin' you." He sneered.

I kept my face neutral and gripped the handle on my bag tighter. The chatter of the crowd was silenced as I shut the cab door with a defiant click.

"Do people come fly all the way to the UK to 'have a laugh' at Fawney Rig?"

His eyes finally slid from my face as he glanced back at the airport. The weight of the ruby hung like a noose under my clothes.

"'Suppose not." He muttered, starting up the car.

I stared out the window as we made our way to Wych Cross, thankful for the silence. My mind whirled with possibilities, each more unpleasant than the last. After finding this accursed jewel and living with it for nearly half a year, I wasn't sure if I wanted answers anymore.

I mean, I certainly wanted the curse lifted.

But I had lost hope that it was even a possibility at this point. Everything had only gotten worse since I started digging.

Now I wasn't just unlucky. Now I had a damn manifestation of the curse chained around my neck.

One that made emotions that weren't my own rise up inside me each time I looked someone in the eye. Like some useless knock-off psychic.

I rested my temple against the cool glass and sighed. I had stopped looking for answers only to have this now fall into my damn lap. My curse was the world's shittiest rollercoaster.

"So." The cabby said curtly, snapping me from my thoughts. "What had you comin' all the way here just to get to a place like Fawney Rig?"

He spat the name out like it left a bad taste in his mouth. It piqued my interest.

"Long story." One I wasn't about to share. "Why? Is the place famous or something?"

His eyes met mine through the rearview mirror.

Concern.

"You mean ya don't know?"

All I knew was some long lost uncle had paid the best private investigator a lot of money to find me-- only to leave me Fawney Rig in his will. On the condition I never sold it.

And made sure no one entered the property.

So, naturally, I booked the first flight over to see it for myself.

"Nope." I popped the 'p' sound with an air of nonchalance I didn't feel.

"That place is haunted. Like properly, bloody haunted."

I raised an eyebrow and met him with a deadpan stare. The taste of deception was absent, but that didn't mean I trusted him.

"My brother used to work there," The cabby continued, licking his lips. "As a security guard. Wouldn't talk about it. Said they made him sign a bunch of shi- stuff. So he couldn't talk about it."

"So? That doesn't mean it's haunted."

"Maybe not, maybe not." He nodded. "But then there's the rumors."

"Rumors?"

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "They say there used to be a cult that met there. In the 1920s. Led by a bloke named Roderick Burgess."

Burgess? That name sounded familiar. My foot tapped against my pack which had the copy of the will and the deed to Fawney Rig. I'd have to check it later.

"The Burgess fella was rumored to be some knock off Crowley. Ya know, like Alistair Crowley? Right crazies, the lot of them."

I nodded along, hoping my silence would encourage him to continue.

"Well, this cult-- Order of Ancient Mysteries, they called 'em-- they did some real magic. Like they was some fu- messed up occult devil worshippers."

I tried not to roll my eyes. One thing I knew for sure, being raised in a Catholic orphanage, was all that religious crap was complete bullshit. Just another tool the powerful used to oppress the powerless.

The disbelief must have shown on my face.

"It's true, miss! They say the cult summoned the devil and locked 'im away in the basement there!"

I couldn't help but scoff. "Sounds like a bad ghost story. If the literal devil was locked up in some random basement, wouldn't that mean there'd be no more sin, no more temptation?"

The cabby looked a bit like a dry drowning goldfish as his 'O' shaped mouth flapped, before he finally recovered and shook his head.

"Look, all's I know is that my brother never slept right after he took that job. Always looked over his shoulder like he was expecting ta find somethin'."

He twisted in his seat to meet my eye again, an act to emphasize his seriousness.

The stomach rotting curl of sharp anxiety.

"If I was you, I'd stay far away from that place, miss. Better off a crumblin' ruin, I say."

A crumbling ruin that, for some god awful reason, I now own, I thought to myself.

It wasn't as much of a crumbled ruin as I had expected. Or maybe my reoccurring dreams about that ghostly palace had changed my expectations on what 'ruin' meant.

Fawney Rig did look like a stereo typical haunted mansion, though. Even in broad daylight.

I readjusted the strap of my pack and took a deep breath. I let the teeth of the key bite into the palm of my hand in an attempt to ground myself.

Even if I didn't believe the rumor about a devil being locked in the basement, I knew most lies were coated in a sprinkle of truth. Maybe there had been some cult here. Maybe there had been some magic.

Maybe this building held the answers to why I was cursed.

Only one way to find out.

The lock opened with a poignant click and I let the door swing open without removing the key. The squeaking of the hinges were so stereotypical of a bad horror movie I might've laughed.

Instead I just really really didn't want to go inside.

I blinked until my eyes adjusted to the dim light. It looked like the place had truly been abandoned. Like pictures of those ghost towns where dinner was still left out on the table. Nothing had been touched.

Floor boards creaked beneath my feet. It wasn't as dusty as I had expected it to be. Then again my uncle hadn't died all that long ago.

I turned down the east hall to find it was lined with glass display shelves holding an array of antiques and taxidermied animals. So much so that the displays crowded into the walk way, demanding attention and giving me a sense of acute claustrophobia.

Whoever designed this place was obnoxious. Like modern rich assholes who decided everything they owned had to be completely white or plated in gold.

I guess the rich never fucking change.

My eyes stopped their wandering when they found a grey stone bust behind a glass case, set directly in the middle of the hall.

Roderick Burgess, the gold plaque read.

"You even look like a prick." I muttered to myself, flicking the glass.

I dropped my pack on the floor with a careless thump. Time to figure out why that name seemed familiar. I sat cross legged and pulled out all the paperwork I had for Fawney Rig.

"You're shitting me."

The name of my long lost uncle, my father's brother, was Alex Burgess.

I glanced back up at the bust. "Please tell me it's only through marriage. I will lose my shit if I'm related by blood--"

The blood running through your veins was spilled in an ancient rite, upsetting the balance of the universe.

Air caught in my chest like a stab wound at the memory.

"Fuck." I muttered, blinking away tears. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

I pressed the heel of my palms into my eyes, trying to get a grip on myself. Panicking wasn't going to help. Leaning my head against the bottom of the case, I sucked in long even breaths.

When my heart finally slowed to an acceptable speed, I raised my head and looked up into cold stone eyes.

"What the fuck did you do?"

Like most old mansions, it wasn't as big as you expected it to be. Of course, it was big for a victorian era home, especially one in Europe. But thanks to my particular path in life, I had been in much bigger mansions.

I passed the door in the east wing with a keypad lock for what must have been the hundredth time. A room with a secret important enough to be guarded. I kept my eyes forward.

Just like a coward.

Behind door number 12 or so, was a fairly bare and small guest bedroom. Or maybe it had been a servants bedroom. A four poster bed, a dresser, and two chairs next to a small fireplace, were the only things inside.

It felt much more like my shitty little Brooklyn studio apartment than any of the other bedrooms. Plus it had the bonus of being on the first floor. Easier to hear a break in that way.

I tossed my pack onto the bed and sat down after it. Absent mindedly, my fingers traced where the ruby sat under my shirt. It seemed like answers were going to find me, whether I wanted them or not. I sighed and placed my head in my hands.

No use delaying the inevitable.

Taking a screwdriver and wire cutters from my pack, I pocketed them and left my cowardice in the bedroom.

The keypad came off the wall with little effort. It was an older model, likely not updated since the 90s.

Why did the rich always skimp out on the most important stuff?

I cut the wires to the lock and heard the magnets disengage with a quiet whir. The door was so old that the physical lock on the handle could be jammed open with the screwdriver.

It swung open and hit the wall with an echoing bang. I stared at the stone steps that led down to into the darkness.

If there was the devil down there, he was sure to be awake now.

The lights flickered when I turned them on. Cautiously, I decended. My feet touched the bottom step. I turned, heart racing in my chest.

I didn't know what I expected. But it certainly hadn't been this.

It had been far, far too long, Dream decided. Since his captor's death and the absence of his daily pleadings, time seemed to blur together ceaselessly. He was left in complete darkness without even the mindless chatter of the guards to distract him.

Everything felt so... empty.

Yet it had not been long enough. How many more years would he have to suffer this oppressive silence, the numbing cold, the black that had seemed to manifest itself in his very being?

How long before the building gave way and he could finally return home?

Dream had long since given up the hope that someone would free him.

That hope had died with his raven.

Even his siblings had not been bothered by his absence. Dream would not lower himself to beg for their help. He had done so before, eons ago.

It had not ended well.

Dream was not a being that forgot. Nor did he make the same mistake twice.

A noise cut through the quiet. The creaking of wood.

He dismissed it as noises of an old house adjusting to its own weight. Yet some deep dark part of him wished it to be the beginning of something.

The beginning of collapse.

Before long he heard it again.

Creak.

Dream focused intently on the sound, expecting nothing, but still feeling the start of some long lost emotion stoke to life within him. He tried to smoother the seething embers.

There was nothing here but dust. His imagination was getting carried away.

Or perhaps he was falling apart. Changing, irreversibly, like his sister had.

Creak. Creak. Creak.

Was that it? Was he going mad?

Or were those truly footsteps he was hearing?

A woman's voice drifted to him, so quietly that he could not make out the words. No, that was impossible. He must be going mad.

Thump.

Dream's head snapped up. The noise echoed off the stone walls, making a hallucination seem improbable. Then came a woman's voice again.

The same woman.

Hope roared to life inside him like a wildfire. Dream desperately tried to douse the flames.

Though he may not be alone, it did not mean he was going to be freed. After all, how many had seen him trapped and had done nothing?

Humanity had proven their cruelty knew no bounds.

He did not know how long he listened to the woman walk around above him, her quiet voice occasionally finding it's way to him. It mattered not.

She was not here to free him.

Perhaps it would be better if she did not find him at all. He much prefered the absence of their petty demands.

Even if it meant a hundred more years in this empty darkness.

There was a creak directly above his head. He could feel her enter the confines of the binding circle, though far above. Just as quickly her presence vanished.

Dream watched the ceiling with absent eyes.

He listened to her footsteps. Tried to deny that they came closer. Then there was silence.

A question arose in him. Why was the woman here?

She certainly walked around like she owned this place, making enough noise after so long of silence that it could surely wake the dead--

BANG.

The noise echoed through his confines like a gunshot. His eyes watched where he knew the iron door to be.

There was a pause. Then, footsteps on stone. She was coming down the stairs.

Dream felt his body tense, as if his limbs were vipers preparing to strike. The wildfire had become a supernova, consuming him from the inside and drawing all the breath from his lungs.

And yet.

And yet...

He heard the woman let out a huff.

"This is what I get, listening to goddamn ghost stories. A cellar full of--" There was the clinking of glass. "--pickled eggs? Gross."

All at once, the light within him was snuffed out. The darkness had never felt more suffocating. Dream let his head fall back down.

How could she be expected to know that he lay just beyond the brick wall? One that had been built to hide his prison?

You're never getting out of there...

Perhaps Roderick Burgess had been right.

"This is hopeless." Her voice could have been his echo. "What am I even fucking doing here?"

Dream felt the woman's sigh somewhere deep in his soul. As she grew quiet, he felt the silence companionable, like the ghost of an old friend. They sat together in the same darkness, separated only by the illusion of a wall.

Too quickly, her footsteps proceeded back up the stairs. Once again, he was alone. It shouldn't matter, and yet he felt the truth of it like a weight upon his shoulders.

I think you're lonely.

Some strange part of him even missed his reflection in the cold glass cage. He did not know whether it was because it simply reminded him he existed, or if his mind had decided to pretend his reflection had been company. Someone to share in his suffering.

Proof that his suffering existed. That he was not the nothing they had made him to feel.

Another creak above his head. The woman's presence entered his awareness, inside the binding circle once more. Dream felt completely powerless. And yet.

If he stretched his mind far enough...

The act was akin to holding a heavy weight on an outstretched arm.

She was so far away and he was nearly completely depleted; drained of his power after the assault of time, the absence of his tools, and the great act that had made him susceptible to such a spell in the first place. Still, he continued onward, stretching the bounds of his power.

The woman felt so tired. Some journey had left her weary. Dream nursed that feeling, beckoning her mind to enter his realm.

It would not be enough to free him, not in his state. He may not even be able to manifest himself properly in her dream. None the less, it was some small scrap of power, of control, that he would not soon give up.

Invisible hands forced her under the warm blanket of sleep, fingers digging into her brain. As he slipped into her dream, he discovered why she was there.

And who she was.

His heart sank. The Fates were surely mocking him.

It felt like being back in that storage room, surrounded by too much junk and not knowing where to start. Answers were right at my fingertips, yet hidden like a needle in a pile of needles. I sighed and collapsed back on the bed, letting my uncle's will fall to the floor.

God, I was just so tired of it all. Forever getting no where. What was the point of it all? My unfocused gaze stared at the ceiling.

A yawn caused my eyes to tear up. Then another.

Maybe a nap would reset my brain. Give me some idea on what to do. When was the last time I had had a decent night's sleep, anyway?

I felt myself begin to drift... then I startled back awake with force.

Sitting up, I blinked at the darkness of the room. When had the sun set? I must've been asleep for a while.

Shadows danced across the wallpaper from the lit fireplace. Surprised, I turned towards it.

Gleaming eyes met my own.

I yelped and shot to my feet, backing into the dresser but not daring to take my eyes off what I saw.

A dark silhouette of a figure, flames flickering behind him to cast him in shadow. No, he seemed to be made of shadow, save for two pinpricks of bright light that glowed like a predator in the night. The edges of him wavered and twisted, made of smoke. His eyes watched me and emotions rose like bile up my throat.

Fury. Disgust. Contempt.

Whatever this thing was, it hated me with such ashy depth that I felt I might choke on it. My hands shook. There was no where to run. I tried to swallow everything back down, including my own fear.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

The shadow man said nothing, but his eyes continued to burn into my own.

Despair. Anguish. Longing.

It ached like a fish hook in my throat, the bone deep sense of longing ringing in my ears. He needed something, to the point of desperation and the exclusion of all else.

"What, what do you want?" Tears stung my eyes as I stuttered.

He didn't move. Smudged blackness twisted around him. Pain throbbed in my mouth as I looked into his eyes. He looked like some dark ghost.

"Look, I can't..." I tapped into some strange well of courage I didn't know I had. "I can't help you if you won't even talk to me!"

The shadow's rage pushed into me, a physical force shoving my backwards in it's intensity. I gasped and struggled to breathe, falling to my knees as his anger knocked the wind out of me. He glided towards me, lower part of him moving like a poor mimic of normal walking. The darkness of his form ate up my vision.

My tears finally broke the confines of my lashes. "Just, just tell me. Please, I don't know what you want." I choked. "Just tell me wh-what to do."

We watched each other for a moment, both of us equally uncertain. Then he raised his arm and I flinched, a learned child-like instinct preparing me for the blow I knew would come.

Nothing happened.

I peaked over my raised, shaking arms.

His hand was stretched out towards me, palm up as if waiting for something. Glimmering lights were frozen on me.

Surprise. Curiosity. Pity.

His emotions went down like a bitter pill I had to swallow. I could no longer look the shadow man in the eye, feeling strangely exposed, despite being the one who read his emotions.

A hand still reached towards me. It was held out like he expected me to give him something. His fingers curled slowly, beckoning me with a new found gentleness.

I still didn't understand what he wanted. So I did the only thing I could think to do. Slowly, I placed my hand in his.

Cold shadows curled around my hand, not quite fingers, only the poor approximation of them. It felt like the memory of touch, long since faded. I hesitated. He did not. The shadow man pulled me to my feet, my legs wobbling like a newborn deer's as they took my weight again.

He dropped my hand and I avoided his gaze. Pity was a taste I couldn't seem to get out of my mouth. Without a second glance, he turned and glided towards the door.

"H-hey!" I called as he disappeared out to the hallway. "Wait! Where are you..."

I bit the inside of my cheek as if that would somehow calm my nerves. A smarter person would've left well enough alone and been glad to see the entity leave.

So of course I followed the shadow man.

Just as I entered a room, he would slip into the next, trailing me along with his starlit eyes. The taste of encouragement and anticipation mixed on my tongue like melting spun sugar. It clashed harshly with my own growing anxiety, the sweetness making me feel sick as I began to suspect where he was leading me.

I froze when my worst fears were realized. His dark figure watched me from the door to the basement. My hesitation didn't bother him. As soon as he was sure I had seen him, he disappeared inside.

Memories of the rumors roared in my ears. Was this the devil? Or a ghost? Both seemed equally unlikely.

In the end, I decided it didn't matter. I couldn't get any more cursed.

Right?

Numb stiff legs carried me to the doorway. He looked up at me from the bottom of the stairs, his eyes the only things visible in the dark. When I flicked on the light switch he was gone.

I took a deep breath, remembering the oppressive sorrow I had felt coming from within the shadow man. For something akin to an eldritch entity, he seemed to have downright human emotions. Maybe he was a ghost.

As I took my first step down the stairs, I prayed this was more of a Lovely Bones situation than an episode of Supernatural. When I reached the landing, he was no where to be found. The same musty cellar as before met me. Even the shelf of dusty wine bottles was exactly as it had been the first time.

Confused, I stepped deeper inside, turning my back on the shelf of wine and the red brick wall. Further in the cellar were more shelves with forgotten jars and crates of junk. My eyes caught sight of a particularly colorful jar and an idea struck me.

Weren't djinn beings made of smoke? Maybe he was neither a devil nor a ghost.

Maybe he was a genie, trapped in a bottle.

My hand pressed the skin warmed ruby into my chest, still hidden under my clothes. I could wish for the curse to be lifted, couldn't I? Would that really work?

It was worth a shot.

But as my hands reached for the colorful jar, I felt his gaze return. His eyes were a physical presence, sucking the oxygen out of the room like a fire to burn a blistering hole in the back of my head. I spun around, lungs aching, forgetting how to breathe.

Our eyes met.

Urgency.

His unspoken demand evaporated all the moisture from my mouth. It seared into me like a white hot brand. A black mirage of a head nodded imperceptibly.

Then he stepped back and vanished into the brick wall behind him.

"Wait!" I started after him. "I don't under--"

I woke with a start, forcefully, pushed into consciousness. Dusty air settled into my lungs and cemented the fear in my gut. My eyes blinked at the darkness. I was no longer in the room I had fallen asleep in.

Sleepwalking. I had been sleepwalking. I had never done that before.

What was far worse was where I had ended up. The only light came from the open door at the top of the stairs. But it was enough for me to recognize.

I was in the fucking basement.

[eternally-hypothermic]

Fandom: The Sandman (TV)

Title: Screaming your name / across the astral plane. Possible Multichapter

Hob Gadling & Dream of the Endless

Summary: Alexander Burgess does not intend to carry on the legacy of his father, but he also knows he can't set Dream free after what he did to Jessamy. He does not stay at the house, instead, he locks it and leaves Dream in the basement.

The house does not sit abandoned for a long time.

A certain Hob Gadling has been just dying to explore Fawney Rig. He did not expect to find his stranger in the basement. A stranger who can't hear him because there is no air in that glass, and who has all but given up before he came. And what is that about his weird dreams lately?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/48107866

@badthingshappenbingo

Full story under the cut!

“We are leaving” Alexander Burgess says, hand in hand with his lover, “If you can not promise to not come after us, and if you can not even talk to us, I can’t let you out if it means you’ll haunt us” he swallows, “Kill us. My father imprisoned you here” he looks down and Dream has difficulty reading his words like that, misses a part, before he looks up again, avoiding his eyes.

“I can only hope that time erodes the circle and when we are both dead, once we have had a chance at a life, you will be free” No sound penetrates through glass and absence of air, no word and no tone, and Dream reads the words and hate boils up in his throat. How dare he? Demand words and talk when he does not even grant him the basic dignity of air? Imprisoning his physical form, cutting him off from the magic that is all of his being and rendering him powerless, weak, and still making demands?

The air in his dungeon has long since been used up, he could not speak if he wanted to, sound requires air and there is none. Does he not know? Or does he simply not want to know?

Not long after, the house is empty, no guards, door locked, the rooms deserted. No sounds from a party, no sounds from construction or cleaning were there anyways, but sometimes, he felt the vibration of the dancers, the way his cage shook ever so slightly, the way the water would be disturbed when they tore down a wall. And even if he did not, the guards talked, mistaking his looking at them for malice, but in truth, reading their words is all he has.

Now, they hammer the windows shut. As if to prove his point, as if to do anything else than weaken it, he holds up a hope, a strange, twisted version of it, comes down day after day and tells Dream about how they packed, about the nailed shut windows, about the servants they let go. As if it is all Dream’s fault.

Despite himself, he watches, listens, imagines the words in the voice of the man who shot Jessamy, the man who promised to let him out, his promises as weak as his will.

But for once, he stays true to his claim.

He leaves.

He comes down again, and repeats his plan to leave and then he comes down no more.

Dream closes his eyes, tries to focus on any presence, anyone who could dream, but keeps getting stuck in his cage, in the silence and the pain in his chest. Pain doesn’t matter. Yet, with no sounds, no words, nothing to focus on, it does. His physical form feels pain and he used to be able to ignore it - he used to be able to pass it off as a simple annoyance, but with nothing to focus on, not a single distraction in sight, it is all he has, and it is all he can think about, the physical form that is so weak, that is so fragile and yet not fragile enough, because if it was, he could fall apart, he could slip through cracks too microscopic to see, if he was-

Maybe that is also his pride.

Maybe that is why he loses his mind.

It’s an interesting feeling, losing one’s mind. The saying of course suggests just that you merely misplace it - like a hat, or a universe if you are not careful.

He loses more than just his mind. Without the guards, he also loses track of time. Has his father now also deserted him? There are no newspapers for him to glance at anymore, no news on the sleeping sickness that no doubt ravages the dreamers still. He is alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

He tries talking. Nobody is there to hear him, and isn’t there a question as old as time, if a tree falling in a place without anyone to witness, makes a sound?

He can’t hear himself except for in his head. Is he even speaking? Or just thinking?

He screams.

There is not a single sound, but the rough sensation of it in his throat, the dryness upon his lips, it’s a sensation, it’s something to do, and despair has him in her grip now, she must have, because he screams. He is Dream of the Endless, captured, stripped of his dignity and pride so long ago he shatters, or, he feels himself shatter remaining entirely intact.

In a way, that is worse.

The basement is dark, he imagines dreams and nightmares in those shadows, but he ran out 0f plans and work to think about many years ago.

Blood runs down his throat, and he slams his hands against the glass, presses against his cold cage, as if he could just slip through it.

Maybe his sister will come. He hopes she will. Nobody is here to trap her anymore, is there? And if Despair has him, then Death can’t be far away.

Even the Endless can die. It is easy, even. Giving up is a choice, not an accident. And he has given up. His throat hurts. He curls up as much as he can, makes himself small and invisible and thinks, hopes, begs.

Hopes?

Is it hope? Or is it all that keeps him alive? Or is it both?

A vibration rattles the sphere.

When he opens his eyes, it is not his sister in front of the glass. Instead, he blinks bleary eyes open to see Robert Gadling. His mouth is moving, he is talking, shouting even, but the sound does not penetrate through the glass anymore . He wants to tell him, opens his mouth to do so, but no sound carries even to his own ears, not in his head, not even his thoughts. He gestures, puts both hands on the glass when their gazes meet, and Dream reaches out, puts his own against it. Is it a real warmth he can feel through it? He wants to press against it, his whole body if he could, but Robert Gadling - eyes so wide, face so pale and with this look of sheer and utter horror, backs away.

Dream falters. He falls, sinks back, tears burn in his eyes and he feels them hot on his cheeks.

Is he even real? Has he truly lost - misplaced - destroyed - his mind? Dreaming now himself?

The chamber appears empty and he blinks and Hob is back, now with a crowbar. He barely has time to think or realise what Hob is saying, too focused on the situation to read lips, and just backs away on instinct. It’s the right thing to do when Hob flings the crowbar, hits the glass once, twice, until a spider web of cracks appears, then a hole in the middle of it, and then it…

Combusts.

He realises it in a split second, the very same one when air rushes into his cage, the glass explodes in a supernova of deadly shards and-

Air rushes into the lungs of his body, so fast that it could also be water, the pressure is so high he tries to get rid of it, he claws at his throat, maybe if he opens his chest it can get out, maybe it can stop, but even so his ribcage is being crushed, his back hurts, his legs, straightened out for the first time in so long cramp and all around him is glass, shards dig into his skin with little, sharp pinpricks, so subtle he barely feels them and feels them all at once despite, unbearable but barely noticeable at once. His ribs are iron chains wrapping around, tighter and tighter, and the air is too much, it’s too much-

Is he on the ground? Floating? Both?

He chokes, and arms, warm, stars the warmth, he forgot the warmth, how could he? They wrap around him, pull him up, more warmth and upright, his chest loosens a little and he gasps for air, it does not slow or maybe his physical form just doesn’t. Fuzzy static dances on the edges of his vision and in his head, thick and heavy and floating still, his body is numb and shaking and the pressure in his throat lets him gag, cough and then gag more. It’s too many sensations at once, he needs it to stop, all of it, now, please, please! The broken sob escaping him makes him gag once more, cough and sob and gasp, until this is all he ever did, until he wonders in a distinct way if this is his whole existence, if it ever ends, if it ever started, if this is just his being now. The tears don’t stop, even when he draws in ragged and painful breaths that finally - finally, after an eternity and the end of the universe - do not have him choke on them anymore. He falls, or so he thinks, but in a way he knows he is not. Because Hob Gadling is here. He is warm. And he is talking, though his voice registers only slowly, getting louder the more present Dream feels.

“...known! I- Fuck, I thought-” His hand is running through Dream’s hair, the other is rubbing his back and it works because is all but in Hob’s lap to begin with.

“There were these rumours about him having the devil locked up in his basement. And then the strangest thing happens - he dies and his son disappears and the house stands deserted. Everyone says it's haunted. So I thought, Hob, why don’t you check that out?” he grins, a manic grin, all teeth and not reaching his eyes, “I would have come sooner. I would have- Fuck” Fabric is wrapped around his body, a jacket, a coat? “If I had known… Fuck-” He can’t see his face, the sensations are so many at once and he doesn’t care because he drinks them in without even caring what they are, the smell of stale water, rusting metal, moss and algae, of light breaking off the shards of glass like a mockery of stars.

He looks at these shattered pieces and laughter bubbles up in his throat. Shattered. Like his mind. Like his thoughts, shattered into pieces, apart, a thousand bits-

It hurts, it’s a wretched sound like rusted nails, but he can’t stop it. He laughs until tears run down his face, until the air in his lungs is gone and then he laughs a little more, desperate sobbed laughter. Hob Gadling does not move away. Dream is distinctly aware that he is speaking, but he just knows, does not listen. He wants to reach out to touch the shards, the glass that kept him, feel the sharp edges only to know they are there and this is real, and suddenly, so sudden that it washes over him, makes him shiver, he screams.

He hears himself do it, and before he knows it, he can’t stop. With every scream, every sound he makes, every little string of desperate cries from his lips, the relief that is so cold on his back showers him with more, he can’t stop now, he just can’t stop. His voice, broken and pained, echoes in the basement, bounces from the walls back at him.

Fabric fills his face, and a hand is on his hair, and he screams, muffled now, into Hob Gadling's shoulder, crying, screaming, sobbing, wailing, it’s all the same and yet it is not.

“Shhh… I got you. I got you, I have you, I’m here. Let it all out, you can just let it all out, okay?”

He stays there for a long time. Hob does not let him go, does not stop rocking them both and Dream is too tired, too exhausted beyond comprehension even, to think about the implications. They are there - they are somewhere there but they could even come to mind and we would not spare them a second thought.

“Are you still with me? Because if you passed out and I’ll take you to my place I don’t- I need to know you’re okay with that” Oh Hob Gadling.

He surfaces from the embrace of wool to pose a question, maybe to form an answer, only to break into another coughing fit. Hob rubs his back, and he is halfway aware that he is in the other man’s lap, being held upright, and did he notice that before? He does not have the energy to even think about this.

He tries again, not a question, just the name, and his throat closes up. The sound he makes is a scratching whimper, not even close to a name, a word, it only flares up the pain in his throat again, and he has to touch it to feel if it is not torn open.

“Easy” Hob Gadling says, “Does your throat hurt?” He swallows in an attempt to pull breath for an answer, but the pressing agony returns. “That’s a yes then. Don’t worry” warm lips press to his forehead and Dream- Oh, maybe Dream is dreaming, because he reaches out and clings.

“There was… There was no air in there. I heard it when the glass shattered and how- You couldn’t hear a thing I said, could you?” He pauses, maybe realising what he is saying or maybe realising that him talking is all Dream needs. The sound, the feeling, everything is too much at once but yet, but yet he cherishes it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you couldn't hear me. I just- I had to step back to get the crowbar, I didn’t mean to- Jesus-” He holds him tighter and Dream melts, tries to crawl into him, the warmth, the heartbeat, sound and touch and-

Smells. He smells of Whiskey and coffee and paper. He smells like paper , and it brings the tears back to his eyes, but swallowing down the lump in his throat hurts. He tastes metal on his tongue, but swallowing the blood down is not a real option either, and his dignity is already so far out at sea he does not even care when it dribbles down his cheek.

“I saw your face earlier and- I would never leave you. Never. No matter… No matter what. I’d never leave you anywhere, of course- I should have come earlier” He wants to make a sound, give in any way a sign he heard, but all he is able to do is push his face deeper into the woollen shirt of one Hob Gadling. Smells. He smells of paper, and of sweat, he has substance and- Paper. Like stories and books and he bought a printing press and-

“We should go. This is not a good place to stay”

His hands are weak and numb but despite the effort, he tries to cling to Hob, his heart, such a weak and physical thing, why can he not get rid of it? hammers in his chest and the pitiful sound comes again.

“Hey, easy there” Hob stops moving, he is still in his range, still close. “No need to work yourself up about it… I’m right here. Not going anywhere, duck, alright?” He adjusts, but only in wrapping the jacket tighter around him, “You can’t walk, can you love? That’s alright. I can carry you - Can I?” He does not care as long as he can stay where he is, and his absence of an answer seems answer enough, because he is hoisted up into Hob’s arms. It changes his position - he can bury his nose into the crook of his neck now, skin, cologne he does not know, and he opens his eyes only to watch the chamber, the basement as they go up the stairs, become smaller. They walk towards a light, yellow and soft, and he tugs on Hob’s shirt to get his attention. Trying his words, he nearly chokes, and Hob actually has to set them both down on a carpet when Dream coughs up thick blood in painful heaves. He wants to claw at his throat, dig out the painful organ that makes this happen, rip it out so he can be free of this, but his hands are occupied being held by Hob Gadling, who touches him, who holds him so he can’t fall into the blood on the carpet. His tools, he wants to say, his things, but even as weak as he is, he knows he’d feel if they were close.

“We’ll get to the car. There is some stuff in the back, but my driver won’t say a word. He was part of my … gang. Now, don’t worry, we weren’t mobsters or anything, we just… some idiot really kept the pictures of my children and wouldn’t sell them, so… Anyways, he won’t spill. We can just go to my place, and when you’re better I’ll take you to yours… Or anywhere you need or want to go. Is that a deal?”

Dream finds himself not caring a lot about what is being said. The last coughing fit exhausted him too much to even try speaking again, and he is pretty sure Hob says more because it rumbles in his chest. The way he is being held is warm against his body that feels so cold. Hob must make the decision himself, because next he knows they are in the back of some form of carriage, and there is another voice. He presses his face into the wool and ignores it all.

[missfangirll]

My Brother's Keeper

Fandom: The Sandman Rating: General Relationship: Dream of the Endless / Hob Gadling Tags: fluff, getting together, Hob rescues Dream Words: 5783 Summary: Despair visits her brother during his imprisonment and sends Hob his way.

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- - - - -

What can you give me, his captor demands, yells, and Dream wants to scream. What I can give you is not the question, he thinks, mind raging against the glass walls of his prison, you should fear what I want to give you. 

But nothing of this makes it past his thoughts, not a muscle moving in the face of Roderick Burgess’ snide leer. It is pointless, he knows, to bargain with the human, for he will settle for nothing less than his son returning from his sister’s Sunless Lands. It is something Dream could relate to, if it weren’t for his imprisonment. The loss of a child, he thinks, and can’t continue. Nothing compares.

Dream doesn’t meet his captor’s eyes, doesn’t move, just stares, unseeing, into the darkness. He has time, he thinks, Roderick Burgess does not.

The human, it turns out, does, too. It might be Dream’s tools or the proximity to the Lord of Dreams himself, but Roderick Burgess seems to be largely left alone by time, only his son showing signs of growing up a marker for the years passed. Days turn to weeks turn to years, nothing halting the paralysing turn of time. 

Only once is it interrupted, a gunshot, a shattered hope, the blood on his prison walls a reminder to not even think of rescue. Nothing that now connects him with the outside world, with the Waking, and so he sinks deeper into himself with every day that passes.

- - - - -

Despair likes walking among humans. Sometimes she takes a stroll with her twin, arm in arm as they enjoy the sun or the bitter cold or the pouring rain. Humans are endlessly fascinating, ceaselessly struggling for one boon or another, one more desire fulfilled, only to have it turned into darkest despair. She loves it, can watch it day after day and never get bored. Desire is different, she knows, always moving, constantly needing a new toy, a new plan, a new game to play, but Despair is constant. She is unwavering in her focus, doesn’t move away that easily from the humans under her care.

What draws her to Fawney Rig, at last, is not some lonely human’s sorrow, but the grief that hangs over the mansion like a heavy rain cloud, dulling everything with its ominous presence. She vaguely feels something else as well as she approaches, a seething anger, paired with misery so bottomless she has to suppress a satisfied shudder. Whatever fate has befallen the house, it is darker than even she could invent.

Doors, even locked, are no obstacle for an Endless, and so she enters the mansion unhindered and unnoticed, and makes her way towards the cellar, following the pulse of hopelessness like an enticing scent. There are humans behind the next door, which is also locked, and bolted, from the inside, but she just wills the metal to fade and steps inside the dark space. The guards, for they are obviously armed, only react to her presence as all humans do, subconsciously, with a droop in their posture, a shiver, a heavy sigh.

She pays them no mind, instead taking in her surroundings. In the middle of the cellar, illuminated from above, sits a large orb, presumably made from glass, and inside it... She takes a step closer in astonishment, then freezes as the man inside lifts his gaze, recognition lighting up his features. It lasts a human heartbeat, two, then his face shutters close again and he averts his eyes. The guards haven’t noticed anything, immersed as they are in their card game.

Despair inhales, then crosses the distance to the glass orb. A few steps before she reaches it, however, her foot is halted, and she looks down to see a binding circle, drawn crudely with yellow chalk, but nonetheless effective, it seems. She rounds the sphere, carefully avoiding the circle, then lowers herself to the dank floor, sitting cross-legged. 

“Hello, big brother.”

Dream doesn’t answer, but she sees his reaction as clearly as she feels it, a slight twitch of his brow, a faint sliver of hope in the midst of his infinite sorrow.

She wants to say something else, but words don’t come as easily to her as they do to her sibling. So she sighs, settling in a bit more comfortably against the cold and damp ground, intending to watch what unfolds. She has time, after all.

Dream, she learns after half a day, has been captured by a man named Roderick Burgess, for the sole purpose of bringing back his son from the Sunless Lands. She shakes her head in disbelief upon hearing the demands. Doesn’t the human know that no one returns from there? And even if they did, how would Dream, not Death, accomplish that? 

It is not without irony, she thinks, that the one who was not able to save his own son is asked to save another’s.

Roderick Burgess is adamant in his demands, but Dream, being Endless and timeless, matches his perseverance. He doesn’t move, even as the human rages, throwing threats and curses at his prisoner.

One sentence, however, makes Despair sit up straighter.

It’s been a decade, the man says with a sneer, I wonder why no one came to your aid. I bet they forgot about you.

With that he leaves, slamming the heavy iron door shut behind him, and Despair moves a bit closer to her brother’s cage again. “You know,” she says slowly, carefully gauging his reaction, “we did notice your absence in the past years.” Dream doesn’t move, so she continues. “Perhaps. Perhaps I could find a way to free you, break the glass and –”

“No.”

She startles at the word, almost inaudible, Dream’s voice hoarse and rough from disuse and yet still so commanding. 

“No?”

“No. You will not interfere.”

Despair raises an eyebrow, opens her mouth to ask, then shuts it immediately as she understands. Dream wants to be free, of that she is certain, but he doesn’t want to be freed by her. He doesn’t want to be indebted to her, and by extension, Desire. She sighs deeply.

“Really, Dream? You would suffer through all of this because of the chance Desire might ask a favour later?”

Dream doesn’t reply, his gaze still fixed at the opposite wall. Despair hesitates for a moment, then shrugs. “If you don’t want my help,” she concedes, “you will not refuse my company, will you.” 

Dream still doesn’t reply, but she sees a sharp inhale, a trembling of his lips, and smiles to herself.

Over the following time – a month, a year, a century? Despair wouldn’t know, as Endless are above human timekeeping – she keeps her promise, visiting her brother as much as she can. The guards never notice her presence, ascribing the sudden unease they feel to Dream, being even more cautious around him. 

She talks to him as often as she doesn’t, sometimes sitting in silence, sometimes telling him about the world, the Waking, as he is wont to call it. She tells him about the mortals, about new inventions and appliances, new technology and machines. She is familiar with all of them, inventors and artisans know her well, despair being their sole companion through many a night, many having wavered under her attention. She tells him about new books, new paintings, new art forms, rich with the pain and misery of two wars. She tells him about the mortals, who never seem to change, every decade another cruelty envisioned, thousands of misfortunes, millions of shattered dreams.

She tells him all of it, of grief and anguish, but also of hope and the promise of a better tomorrow, and Dream listens. He listens, but he never replies, only sometimes words escape him, so soft Despair has to strain her ears to hear them through the glass. But even though she eventually understands the words, the sense eludes her.

Death is a mug’s game.

There’s so much to live for.

I think you’re lonely.

One day, in the midst of musing over yet another poet she visited recently, Despair is startled into silence, because she keenly feels that something in the room’s atmosphere has changed. Something in her brother’s gloom has shifted, feels airier and brighter, and with a slight awe Despair recognises it. There is hope in her brother, something she hasn’t felt in a while in his proximity, and to say she is curious as to why would be an understatement. She has been talking about the humans, about decades of hopelessness and war, and suddenly Dream is glowing. 

“Brother? What is it?”, she asks, but receives no reply, Dream only closing his eyes for a moment.

It happens again. Not very soon after, but Despair hasn’t forgotten, and so she is paying attention when Dream suddenly sits up straighter, turning his head a fraction towards her. She has been talking about literature, that the mortals seem to have reverted back to the tragedies, dead kings and dying kingdoms, when Dream turns and – smiles at her. Not a broad smile, more an upturn of his mouth, but it’s there, and she has managed to evoke it. Dream doesn’t react to her question this time any more than he did to the last, but his smile doesn’t fade either. 

It happens a few more times after that, and now curious, Despair resolves to find an answer. Maybe it’s the connection to her twin, Despair and Desire always go together, that she so strongly wants to unravel this mystery. She desires, more than she has in a long time, to find the solution to this puzzle, to find the reason Dream keeps smiling despite his despair.

(The answer, as expected, is found in the Dreaming, in Dream’s throne room of all places. The librarian didn’t look too pleased when she entered through the Horn Gate, but didn’t hinder her Lord’s sister. She very obviously wanted to ask a question, but recoiled after she stepped too close to Despair. Not many people – or entities – are able to stand her company for long.

Robert Gadling, she learns at last, the book of his life not a book but a compendium, the last volume opened, left on a table in the Dreaming’s vast halls as if someone just read it, a black ribbon like a bookmark wedged between the pages and Despair suddenly understands.)

- - - - -

Hob Gadling is sitting in his living room, or rather, he is lounging, draped over his worn sofa, a book in his lap, a glass of whiskey on the side table next to him, and is currently contemplating the benefits of never moving again. He has had A Week, and even if it’s only Wednesday, the comforts of a warm blanket and strong alcohol were much needed tonight.

The problem is, he thinks as he mindlessly pages through the book – a volume of historical photographs he normally would appreciate more – the lack of sleep. He feels as if he hasn't had a good night’s rest in ages, at least a few decades, and even with the comparably easy tasks improved by this century’s inventions, work is tiring. After two wars, countless relocations, new identities and new lifes, he is tired. He still wants to live, if anyone is asking – and he is very much not thinking about the one normally asking that question – but he wouldn’t complain about a vacation. With a sigh he closes the book. It’s a lost cause anyway, maybe he should just try to catch some sleep. 

(Later, much later, it will occur to him that he not only has slept poorly, but hasn’t dreamt either, his nights only infrequently visited by nightmares. He dreams about horrors past, about being drowned, being burned, about Eleanor’s still form small and pale between bloodied sheets, about Robyn’s cold body, almost unrecognisable in the dim light of the hearth fire. Sometimes he dreams about his Stranger, about the last time he saw him, and in his memory every time the words become harsher, the Stranger’s face harder, his steps swifter. Much later he will realise this, and understand.)

His eyes have almost fallen shut when the lights in his apartment flicker, and Hob bolts upright. Despite the light summer breeze fluttering through the open window the air around him grows colder by the second, a feeling like suffocating spreading through his chest, like gasping for air submerged in a freezing lake, and between one blink and the next, there is someone standing in front of his sofa. Having weathered centuries of unexpected events Hob doesn’t scream, but it is a close thing.

The visitor is a woman in rather shabby clothes, a pale grey jumper that looks at least a few decades old, equally faded grey slacks, worn shoes the colour of wet asphalt. Her hair falls in greasy strands into her eyes, the jumper sleeves pulled over her hands, arms crossed in front of her. Everything about her looks pale, colourless, all life and happiness drained out by a rainy day. She looks quite miserable, and Hob can feel a wave of unhappiness coming from her, a nameless sorrow that attaches itself to his very core. He shivers, then tries to shake himself out of it and smiles at her. People – beings – that are able to appear inside a locked apartment without so much as a sound are not to be messed with, he decides, and bows his head a fraction. 

“Good evening, uh, madam”

The visitor seems to startle slightly, then raises an eyebrow. “Hello, Robert Gadling.”

The austere tone of the greeting sounds so much like someone else used to say his name that Hob has to swallow hard, then plasters on a wider smile. “I see you know my name, ma’am, but I am at a disadvantage for I don’t know yours.”

She smiles back, but it looks equally forced if Hob is honest, then replies in a softer tone, ignoring his question: “Are you the one who meets my brother every century?”

Hob blinks at her. He does meet someone every hundred years – met, his brain supplies, you drove him away last time and you certainly won’t see him again – but he didn’t know that this someone had a sister. “Err,” he replies eloquently.

The woman – woman? – sighs. “I don’t know what he told you,” she says and Hob almost laughs at that, “but he won’t be coming to your next meeting.”

It is not entirely unexpected, he thinks as his stomach twists in a painful knot, but it hurts nonetheless, to be told by someone else, but before he can reply, the woman waves a hand. “I can feel what you’re thinking, and it’s not that.” 

Hob very much does not think about what exactly that means. The woman continues. “He is retained, you see, by someone seeking fortunes, but I cannot help him.” She sighs again. “He won’t ask for my help, and I understand why, but that doesn’t mean he won’t accept yours.”

Hob still doesn’t understand much, but a thought is beginning to form in his mind. He raises a hand. “Wait, please. You are saying my Stranger is your brother, and he is held captive somewhere and you know where, but you can’t help him because...” 

“It would be against the rules. And against his wishes,” she says ominously. 

Hob exhales sharply. “Alright then, so you came to me to tell me so I can free him, but...” He pauses, swallowing hard. “But what am I to do about it? I mean, I would do it in a heartbeat, but I am a mere human, whereas you are...” He gestures uncertainly at the woman. She snorts inelegantly. 

“We are Endless,” she says, and no, that really doesn’t explain anything, but then she adds, “He is bound by a rune circle which I cannot cross, nor can I approach his captors. I am bound by rules, you see, but you are not. And you might be,” she looks at him for a moment, “a mere human, but so are his captors. Besides, I know my sister withheld her gift from you, so it will be possible for you to do what we cannot.” 

More family, Hob thinks wearily, as the meaning of her explanation sinks in. Humans. His Stranger is held captive by humans.

I’m perfectly safe, I can’t die, remember?Aye, but you can be hurt, or captured. You must be cautious.

Hob nods slowly. The woman gives him a calculating look, then smiles faintly at him. “I am beginning to understand what my siblings saw in you,” she says cryptically, then adds, “my brother is retained in a place called Fawney Rig, by a man named Alexander Burgess. He is not the one who captured him, but he won’t free him either, so whatever you do to them is your decision.” She pauses. “My brother has been in this cage for the better part of a century, and not once has Alexander Burgess felt true compassion for him.” And with another unreadable look at Hob, she’s gone.

Hob sinks back into his sofa, feeling immensely confused by the events of the last ten minutes. After a quick debate with himself he discards the idea that he has merely been dreaming the whole thing and starts to sort through the conversation in earnest.

One - His Stranger is definitely not human. Hob has had his doubts since the fourteenth century, has been certain since the eighteenth, but the woman appearing like a fairy in his living room, claiming to be the Stranger’s sister, has made it painfully obvious.

Two - His Stranger is being held somewhere, but for whatever reason doesn’t want his sister to help him, so she came to Hob to ask him instead.

Three - Hob has a pretty good idea what he has to do, and it starts with calling in sick for work for the rest of the week.

(Getting into the manor at Wych Cross is laughably easy, so easy Hob expects a trap as soon as he soundlessly closes the kitchen door behind him. There are no guards patrolling the premises, no alarm system, not even a real fence to jump, just a rusty lock on an unassuming back door. He crosses the empty kitchen without a sound, then turns towards the sitting room of the mansion when something stops him in his tracks. Next to the kitchen entrance is a wall with wooden panels, one of which looks misplaced, opening a large gap between them. Hob, in his six odd centuries of existence, has seen his fair share of oddities, and recognises a secret door when he sees one. Without hesitating he opens the panel and slips through the opening.)

- - - - -

Dream is not in the habit of keeping track of time, never has been, not in the way humans seem to do, at least. Time in the Dreaming is a fickle thing, never behaving like one expects, so he always has had troubles with it in the Waking. It is not helping either that the only thing changing in his prison are the guards’ shifts, he knows that every pair of them has to stay for eight hours, to be replaced by the next. It is this knowledge that has him alert to footsteps on the stairs, too soft for human ears. It is too early for the replacement to arrive, so he listens attentively. One person, he thinks, walking slowly down the stairs. Alex Burgess, he assumes, or Paul McGuire, both old men by now, at last forced to a slower pace by age. 

The door opens hesitantly, and in steps – not Alex, not Paul, but another man, younger than both his captors, as is visible in his stance, his face obscured by the dim lights in the basement. The newcomer hesitates for a second as the guards approach him, then, without a sound, steps in front of the one closer to him, a man in his forties, and delivers one powerful blow to his head. Before his companion has time to react, the attacker steps over the body on the ground, wrapping his hands around the woman’s neck. It takes a long moment, but at last her body begins to tremble and she goes limp in the man’s grip. He eases her to the floor, depositing her next to her colleague, then straightens, looking searchingly over the scene. 

Dream has risen to his feet during the last moments, but now he feels his knees give out, slowly sinking back to the floor as he now sees the man’s face clearly. 

Hob.

His Hob, who he has driven away the last time they met, who saw right through him and offered friendship and kindness and Dream responded with anger and....

Dream wants to yell, to sob, to scream, but no sound escapes his chapped lips. All he can do is watch silently as Hob walks closer. Paying no mind to the binding circle on the ground he comes to a halt in front of the glass sphere, pressing a hand against the smooth surface. 

“Hello, Stranger,” he says, his voice hoarse, almost cracking, his eyes not leaving Dream. Dream feels himself drawn towards that gaze, can’t look away either as he feels his eyes and throat burn with all the emotions he couldn’t permit himself to feel in the last decades. 

Hob smiles then, soft and inviting and almost blindingly bright, and takes a step back.

“Alright,” he says, “let’s get you out of this.”

In the end, all it takes to shatter the prison that contained the Lord of Nightmares for almost a century are a few well-aimed hits with a metal pipe; the yellow chalk wiped away and Dream is free. Just like that the air returns to him, and he draws his first breath in almost a hundred years.

Hob smiles at him as Dream carefully steps out of the glass orb, avoiding the fallen shards on the ground, then hastily scrambles out of his coat to hand it to Dream. He hesitates for a moment, then takes the offered clothing, gingerly putting it on. It is large on him, Hob being taller and bulkier than him, but it will do for the time being, so he nods his appreciation at the other. Hob’s smile widens.

“I didn’t think I’d really find you,” he says, and Dream raises an eyebrow, but Hob just shakes his head. “Let’s get out of here first, I’ll tell you everything later.” Dream nods again, and turns towards the door. 

He manages two steps before his knees give out and everything turns black.

- - - - -

It takes an embarrassingly long time to get his Stranger from the car to his apartment, not because he is that heavy – he weighs alarmingly little, not much more than a wet cat – but because he has meddlesome neighbours and can really do without Mrs. Lawrence’s inquisitive commentary tonight, thank you very much. In the end he carries the still unconscious man upstairs in his arms, wrapped in a blanket, hoping the old lady won’t be able to see much in the dark. 

After he deposited the Stranger on the sofa, tucked the blanket closer around him and fetched a cup of tea in case it was needed later, he finds himself at a loss what to do next. Carefully lowering himself next to the man’s still form on the sofa, he contemplates how to proceed. He has no idea how he could reach out to the Stranger’s sister, nor does he know if the man needs anything else besides a good rest and maybe a cup of tea. So he just sits there, watching his Stranger sleep.

He looks younger, if that is even possible for someone whose looks essentially haven’t changed over the last six hundred odd years, but he is even paler than usual, his hair more unruly, his features vaguely sick. But even with the dark circles under his eyes and the general air of weariness he is still the most beautiful thing Hob ever laid eyes on, and he has to avert his gaze for a moment and swallow around the lump in his throat. He has been carrying that particular torch for a few centuries now, and apparently neither absence nor the way their last meeting ended could change that. He sighs softly, a faint smile on his lips. It might be a blessing that the other is still unconscious, he thinks wryly, or else he would have a hard time to not outright stare at the man’s face. He wouldn’t appreciate that, Hob is sure, and so, for the moment, he is content to look his fill.

It takes his Stranger a few hours to stir, and ten more minutes to finally open his eyes. His gaze is unfocused at first, but rapidly gaining clarity, and Hob smiles when it turns onto him. The Stranger seems to freeze for a heartbeat, then tries to sit up, only to fall back with a pained exhale. Hob keeps a careful distance, but tentatively places a hand on the other’s knee over the blanket.

“Easy,” he says soothingly, as he would to a spooked cat, and the tension in the other’s form releases a fraction. “I got you,” he adds, “you are in my home. I found the mansion, and I got you out of that bloody basement, and then brought you here. I really hope that old hag didn’t see me when I –”

“Hob.”

The voice isn’t particularly loud, but intense all the same, and it effectively interrupts Hob’s rambling. He closes his mouth with a smack. 

The Stranger looks intently at him, seemingly contemplating his situation, then asks quietly, “What happened?”

Well. “Fuck if I know,” Hob says, inhaling as the other stirs. “I talked to your sister,” he adds, but that seems to make his Stranger even more agitated.

“You spoke with Death?,” he asks incredulously, and now it is Hob’s turn to look bewildered. 

“Eh?,” he replies eloquently, then shakes his head. “No, actually, but interesting to know that Death is your sister.” He swallows. “To be honest, I have no idea who I talked to, she just appeared in my living room a few days ago and said I had to rescue you because you wouldn’t ask for her help and she couldn’t do anything.” 

He shrugs, and the other’s rigid posture deflates a fraction.

“Despair,” he says quietly. 

Hob shuffles a bit closer. “Hey,” he says, “I know you endured unimaginable things there, but it’s over now and –”

“No,” the other interrupts him, “that is her name. Despair is my sister.”

“Oh. Err. That’s...” He swallows again. “That is not a nice thing to call someone if you ask me, but who am I to tell you –”

“Hob.”

“Hm?”

“It is not merely a name, it is what we are. We are Endless, and that is our purpose. Despair, Desire, Death – we all have our function, and we are named by it.”

Hob stares at him, eyes wide. “Oh. Um. What, what is your name, then, your function? If you don’t mind me asking,” he adds hastily, remembering the last time he tried to get closer to this.... being? He definitely isn’t human, not that there was any doubt about it, but having all doubts dispelled is something else entirely.

The other smiles faintly. “I have many names. Humans have called me Kai'ckul and Morpheus and Oneiros, you may have heard of me as the Sandman.” He pauses, then fixes his pale blue stare directly at Hob. “But you may call me Dream. It might be the truest of my names.”

“Dream...” Hob tries the syllable, and finds he likes the feel of it on his tongue. 

His smile not fully vanished, his Stranger – no, Dream, his name is Dream – tries to sit up, then winces, sinking back against the cushions once more. 

Alarmed by the other’s weakened state, Hob moves a bit closer, his hand still on a bony knee. “What’s wrong,” he asks softly, concern in his voice. Dream grimaces. 

“I am... drained, I fear,” he says finally, a pained expression on his face. “The rune circle around my prison was meant to keep me there by diminishing my powers, and it seems destroying it has only managed to free me. My powers have to be restored slowly, I would assume.” He blinks, looking at Hob with an unreadable expression. “Might I impose on your hospitality for another day?”

“You aren’t,” Hob hastens to assure him, “imposing, I mean. You can stay here as long as you want. Or need. I can make you fresh tea and something to eat as well, if that’s what you...” He trails off, suddenly unsure. “Do you eat? I mean, do you need to eat? Can you? You never –”

This time, Dream interrupts his rambling by reaching for him, placing a large cool hand on Hob’s thigh and every thought evaporates immediately.

“I do eat,” Dream says with a hint of amusement in his voice, “in fact, I haven’t eaten in a century and I feel it would help with regaining my strength if I did.”

Hob swallows and nods, then raises to his feet to stumble to the kitchen. 

In the end, his cupboards only allow for a few sandwiches, but Dream doesn’t seem to mind as he digs in like someone – well, someone who hasn’t had sustenance for a few decades, Hob thinks as he subtly watches him. 

After their plates have been cleared and put in the sink, Hob settles on the far end of the sofa, two cups and a steaming tea pot on the low coffee table. He had offered Dream a shirt and some worn sweatpants, and left the living room as the other changed into the borrowed clothes and slipped back under the blankets.

Dream has a thoughtful expression as he states, “You still haven’t told me how you managed to free me.”

Hob shrugs. “It wasn’t that complicated, to be honest. Your sister came to me, said some humans were holding you captive at Fawney Rig and that I could rescue you while she couldn’t, because of some rules. So I drove there to have a look, found they didn’t even bother with security cameras, went in and found you in the basement.” He pauses, looking at Dream. “Is that true? Did she offer to help and you declined?”

Dream averts his eyes, shifting slightly as he answers, “I did. Endless are bound by rules, and if I allowed her to intervene, it would have had consequences beyond your imagination.” He pauses, then adds more quietly, “Also I suspected her twin to be the reason for my imprisonment, and so didn’t want to join their game.”

Hob raises an eyebrow at that. “Isn’t her twin your sibling too? Why would they have you captured?”

Dream winces almost imperceptibly. “It is complicated,” he allows eventually, and Hob snorts. 

“Yeah, I realise that.”

Dream still has that faint smile on his face when he says seriously, “However, I am grateful to you, Robert Gadling, for coming to my aid.”

Hob gestures dismissively. “You’re welcome, but honestly, it’s just what fr–,” he interrupts himself, his mouth snapping shut. The last time he assumed they were anything other than passing acquaintances, Dream had reacted more than poorly, so he stops himself from making that same mistake again, biting his lip while staring at his lap.

To his surprise a large hand comes to rest on his, enfolding clenched fingers in a cool, gentle grasp. Looking up with a start, he finds Dream’s fathomless gaze trained on him. 

“It seems I not only owe you thanks,” he says softly, “but an apology.” Before Hob can protest he continues, his other hand joining the first, adding to Hob’s astonishment. “We are friends, Hob Gadling, we have been for centuries, I’d assume, and I apologise for walking away just because you voiced a truth I wasn’t ready to admit.” His grip tightens slightly. “I enjoyed your companionship, and I think I really was lonely, then.” He smiles wryly. “I most certainly was in the cage.”

“You don’t have to be,” Hob blurts out, “not when I’m around.” He clears his throat. “I mean, if you want it, I offer you my companionship. For as long as you want it. In...” Inhaling deeply, he adds, “in whatever form you want it.”

Dream raises an elegant eyebrow. Hob suddenly very much wants to curse himself for running his mouth like that, but the other doesn’t react beyond watching him with a certain curiosity.

“What does your companionship entail, exactly?,” he asks eventually, as Hob fails to come up with a response.

Hob swallows around the lump in his throat. Now or never. Hoarsely, he replies, “Everything. Everything you want. I would give you everything, I –”

“You would?”

Hob nods jerkily. 

“Why?”

Oh. Why indeed, Hob thinks almost hysterically. Because I was gone for you the moment you smiled like that, because you told me I had to be careful, because you are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and you not being human doesn’t change anything and because I’ve been quietly in love with you for a few centuries.

But he can’t voice any of this, can he, and so he starts with a non-answer, when Dream’s hands suddenly shift, entwining their fingers, and every excuse dies in his dry throat.

“Because,” he rasps, “because you are precious to me. You are important, Dream, and I want you around, if... If that is what you want too.”

“A hundred years then?,” Dream asks, and Hob stares at him incredulously, until he sees the tiny grin blossoming on the other’s face, pretty as a sunrise, and Hob can’t help but huff a laugh despite himself. 

“If that’s what you want,” he says, feigning nonchalance, and Dream actually laughs at that. 

“It is not,” he says, eyes twinkling. “It is not. I would spend more time with you, if you’re amenable, in the Waking or in the Dreaming, the choice is yours.” 

And before Hob can respond to that in any way, Dream tentatively tugs at their still linked hands, pulling him in. Hob goes willingly, not quite sure what to expect, when Dream lifts one arm to wrap around his shoulder, his hand coming up to Hob’s cheek, gently directing his head to rest on Dream’s shoulder. He feels a soft exhale, then a kiss is pressed to his hair. Smiling, he closes his eyes, snuggling even closer, breathing the other’s ozone scent and feeling home.