#v: in all my dreams i drown (sandman verse)

[griefbringers]

"You didn't get unmade."

he knows what the corinthian is looking for, what questions it's really asking.

why me and not you? didn't you do horrible shit in the waking too? why was my predecessor punished and you weren't?

the gravedigger shrugs its massive shoulders.

"skill issue."

[griefbringers]

i swear i'm gonna fix everything. / for Johnny !!!

"I don't think you are," says the dream, very gently. "You didn't break anything to begin with. Not every burden is yours."

There's music in the air; a sweet, summer melody that comes from everywhere and nowhere, or maybe from deep within the chest of the warm-eyed creature at Micah's side. They know, without needing to ask, that this creature's name is Johnny. He feels like an old friend, perhaps; someone they might have known in another life.

Somehow, this place is familiar, but it's hard to tell what it really looks like. It's just warm, and the warmth is everywhere, over and around and inside xem, and they are outdoors and indoors all at once. Long grass, gold in the sunlight; laundry hanging on a line. A sense of peace. Xe could stay here forever, or just for as long as xe wanted.

"There's nothing to fix," the dream tells Micah again, hand on its shoulder. His voice--it is his music in the air. "Least of all you. I think some of the others would like to hear that more often, and I think it would sound better coming from you."

When the Starwake System wakes, the dream they've had fades as fast as any sunrise.

[griefbringers]

" what the fuck is wrong with you ? " / from roman to graves

it swings its huge head to look at him. there is nothing to read in its face, no emotion that can be expressed in the blank, still features of a bestial skull. all roman has are its eyes, which stare blinding through the dark and cast him in violet shadow.

"you don't remember me, do you. guess you wouldn't. you didn't know i was there."

it draws itself up, eight feet of skull and horn, cracked flesh and tattered leather. the smell of petrichor rolls off him like the tide. he shoves his shovel into the dirt, leaves it standing.

"i remember you, though."

starts to walk, heavy step by heavy step towards him. as he walks, he changes: cracks open, soil cascading off of him, dirt pouring out, bone cracking and splintering... and it's like he crumbles, a statue brought to ruins, and something else is left where he was standing as if hatched from an egg.

just a man: shorter even than roman, tousle-haired, artfully scruffy. brown leather jacket too big on him. guitar strapped to his back. something's wrong with the eyes though--he's familiar otherwise, but his eyes are the wrong colour and cold. and when he talks, the voice is all wrong - it's the same voice as the beast from before. it's grating. it hurts to hear.

"you gave me your wallet. told me to fuck off. anything to get me out of your face. fair enough - except you were a real fuckin' dick about it."

[griefbringers]

" maybe you're my guardian angel. " / from roman to meek..........

they laugh, and it's the first time roman's heard it: like birdsong and wind chimes on the air. their feathers ruffle; if roman happens to look up at them, he might see a single pale eye gazing out at him from behind the mess of wings that shields the entity's face and body.

"i'm not a very good one, then, am i? isn't the point of a guardian to protect you from being hurt in the first place - not to comfort you afterwards?"

they shouldn't speak so freely with him. he's mortal; she's here to do a job. but roman doesn't remember his dreams. what harm can she do, being kind to him?

[griefbringers]

" you have a fairly scary reputation. " / from del to graves!

"as i should," graves deadpans, sinking his shovel deep into the soil. he doesn't know why he does this. even when he's not working, he does it: digs up dream-graves, dream-bodies, like fucking sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill. it's not even that there's nothing else to do. it's the Dreaming, after all, containing all of imagination. he could be doing anything else. but then, cats have to scratch; dogs have to dig; rats need to chew. maybe this is just what he does.

up comes the shovel again, dirt flung over his shoulder, the gravedigger huffing with the strain of it. "folks know i shouldn't exist, probably. that's what does it."

[griefbringers]

Slap or kiss, Meek. :)

They scowl. They know this is not the same Corinthian that the Gravedigger once suspected (perhaps still suspects, in his most desperate moments, when he is stuck in time and shattering to pieces inside the caverns of their mind) to be Cassidy's murderer... but they know too that forgetting you have done something does not necessarily mean you didn't do it.

Even if you're different now.

Even if the old you is dead.

"I think you know the answer to that, master nightmare."

Would that I could demonstrate, she thinks, and shakes the thought off with a flutter of myriad wings, like swatting a fly.

[griefbringers]

SLAP OR KISS / del & graves

a bull-like snort, steam curling from the nostrils of the skull.

"like i'm stupid enough to slap one of the Endless. here." he presses two fingers to the mouth of his skull and makes a little mwah sound, then touches delirium's forehead with the same two fingers. "best i can do."

[griefbringers]

“Only love will guide you home.” Miranda @ johnny

Johnny's eyes are watering. If you asked him, he couldn't tell you why, though he could make guesses: something about the word love or where's home exactly or she's just so fucking nice to me I can't stand it. He looks upward to keep from crying, like he's seen some people do, and blinks at the hazy blue sky until the harsh prickling passes. For a body that isn't human, it feels human sometimes. He could pass for one, he thinks distantly, if not for what happens when he sings.

"I'd like to think so," he tells Miranda. "It'd be a comfort, to look at it like that."

Like all dreamers, even though he's never really touched her dreams--or anyone's--Johnny knows her in a way he cannot describe, has no frame of reference for. Grief surrounds her. It fills her home and heart. It treads pathways through her gardens; it rests in the work-worn palms of her hands. Johnny aches for her and with her, and not for the first time, wishes he were bold enough to rest a hand over hers. Whether it's her hurt or his he wants to lessen, he really doesn't know.

[griefbringers]

there’s something wrong with you. i see it in your eyes. / what about. kieren & graves

graves stares at him for a long, long moment. it's hard to read his expression: there's something about his face, scarred and worn and unhappy, that just doesn't look right. he looks ill at ease in his own skin. he looks like he's seen the whole world and been burnt out by it.

his clothes should make him look like an old biker, all leather and bad attitude, but somehow the first thought one has to look at him is: undertaker.

"there's something wrong with all of us, kid. that's a shitty thing to say to someone, even if it's true."

[griefbringers]

why have you come to me tonight? / dwight @ graves. he sounds tired, and is ashamed of himself for reacting to graves like that.

there it is: the first crack in the armour. like their creator, the griefbringers hurt the things they touch, the ones they love. they cannot help it. the gravedigger has often thought of what might have spurred lord morpheus to create the first griefbringer, and in moments like these, he thinks he has his answer.

"it's... what i am." christ, he sounds like the fucking corinthian. it's what i am. it's in my nature. i hurt you because i'm supposed to. he's better than that. he has reasons for doing what he does, reasons that go beyond his function, he just...

graves looks away, tense. the dreamscape around them swirls with fog and dusty soil.

"on another night i'd give you johnny. mykonos. someone who won't hurt you. but."

it swings its skull back to stare dwight down, the headlight glow of its eyes cold in the dark. dwight is on a long stretch of road, surrounded by deer. a buck lifts its antlered head by him and stares - not down the road, but into the woods...

...and someone's voice he'd long forgotten calls back from between the trees.

everyone has nightmares, the buck tells him. something is coming from the dirt, from the earth. the fog is thick and his heart is beating in his ears, pulsing, pounding... you're going to have to live with it.

[griefbringers]

‘💋’ [ for johnny, from destruction ]

send 💋 to kiss a griefbringer (or else)

they're Endless, Graves reminds him, for what has to be the hundredth time. johnny just can't help himself: orphean, icarian, loving too hard, flying too close. i'm not mortal, Johnny reminds him, but he knows already that it's not the prophesied doom of any mortal that loves one of the Seven that worries his fellow griefbringer. you don't have to be here for this.

but Graves doesn't go. Johnny wonders if it isn't--just a little--because this is as close as the Gravedigger gets to being touched the way it wants to be.

"Do you, um--" there's a touch of anxiety in his voice and he has to shake it out a little, laugh it off. he smiles between kisses, hands tangled in Destruction's hair, trusting wholeheartedly that no matter what happens in this room he and his collective are safe in Destruction's company. "Do you mind that Graves is kind of--around? He's just like, watching. In the back of my head."

he thinks you're going to get us hurt, even if it's not by your hand, he doesn't say.

[griefbringers]

if you need any help, just let me know. from lucienne

"mmmhm. might do."

it might seem like disinterest at first, the way the gravedigger barely ever says more than a handful of words at a time to her or anyone else, but it rarely takes anyone long to figure out that it's more that he can't say more than that. even a small exchange of pleasantries makes his voice start fracturing and rasping off to nothing.

for what feels like a long time, the gravedigger thumbs through book after book, its great horned head bowed, the headlight-bright eyes in its skull blazing with concentration. a long, tufted tail thwaps against the leg of his chair every so often in frustration. there's a growing layer of soil and dirt underneath where he's sitting, coming off of his rotting, tattered clothes like dandruff.

"i'm looking for..." he clears his throat just to make sure he has lucienne's attention. he remembers her, of course--he remembers everything, the only griefbringer to retain full recollection of a life that came before they were shattered to pieces in the waking--but he knows he's nothing like the griefbringer before him.

he's a nightmare, for one thing. he remembers clearly that the first had been a dream, just like johnny.

"...i'm looking for..." he waves a hand at the shelves around him, a surprisingly animated gesture for a being so broad and still. "...a mortal that knew us in the Waking." his throat hurts. not just from his fucked up voice, which he hasn't dared go to dream to ask if something can be done about it for fear that dream will decide something should be done about all of the damage they've endured. "name was cassidy. died in 1998. she went missing and we don't know what... they didn't find..."

his eyelights flicker off, then on, like a faltering torch. they match the damaged-sounding rasp of his voice.

"i want to know if she wrote anything. any stories. in her head."

[griefbringers]

As a nightmare, GRAVES' actual name is THE GRAVEDIGGER. Folks who know him--so, non-dreamers, basically--call him GRAVES for short.

[griefbringers]

“One day, we won’t feel this pain anymore.” / roman @ meek hrrrrhHHRRRRRRR

The being from his dreams looks very different up close--or rather, they look very different when they can be seen in a way a dreamer can understand, not only felt in sleeping hearts and minds. They are of medium height but frail to look at, fragile, bird-like. Parts of their skin look like the cracked shell of an egg, the fractures tiny but widespread, barely holding them together. At the same time, it is unclear if they have skin: tiny fish-scales or feathers come to mind, and the light bouncing off of them is sometimes far too many colours to name...

Many wings of varying sizes but symmetrical shapes surround them, shielding most of their body (is it a body? it seems a collection of limbs sometimes, a disguise) from view. The eyes--when the wings flutter hard enough to reveal them--are huge, wide, and frightened.

In those moments, bathroom mirrors and one's own face staring back at oneself come to mind.

One day, we won't feel this pain anymore.

"I said that to you, didn't I? That's so sweet of you," the being says miserably, putting their feathered head in their hands. "I did mean it. We--you won't feel it forever." An aura of abject failure surrounds them; their tears, when they fall, are an unnatural, artificial blue, crystalline and sparkling, like something from a storybook. "I just don't... I'm not very good at this, I'm supposed to be a nice dream for you and I'm usually okay at it but I... When I'm feeling everything I..."

They seem to steel themselves after a little while. When they raise their head, their face is unhidden: the unsettlingly wide eyes, the narrow face, the soft unsmiling mouth. They look considerably sharper than one might expect from such a creature, and once they stop crying, their voice takes on the clarity of glass.

Roman is starting to feel cold.

"Oh, it doesn't really matter," the being says, sighing. It stands, its long limbs extending. It looks taller, now. Its wings begin to stretch up, out, into forever. Around them, the comfortable room has started to fade, and the walls are vanishing. A city is building itself around them, brick by brick. Lights. Cameras. All eyes on him.

"You don't remember your dreams anyway."

[griefbringers]

@peacereflected (from here) 𝑳𝑶𝑶𝑲  𝑰𝑺  𝑼𝑵𝑨𝑴𝑼𝑺𝑬𝑫  𝑩𝑼𝑻  𝑺𝑶𝑭𝑻  𝑺𝑪𝑶𝑭𝑭                almost  like  a      chuckle      leaves  endless’   lips.                                      ❝    nothing       so         crude,            gravedigger.    ❞                                     eyes  are  dark,       reflecting  the  night  sky  and      focused  solely      on  the  nightmare  in  front  of  them.                                      ❝    we       seek          correction.    ❞                                    mind  is  made  on  how  to  do  so,        but      as  always       Dream  prefers  to  give  the  illusion  of  choice.                                  ❝    what      punishment         would      you     prefer,           nightmare     ?                you      know     we        cannot        simply     let     your      transgressions      go.     ❞

They are not the same dream they were when they left their home so many decades ago. The first Johnny-Come-Lately had shattered into two: Johnny-Come-Lately the second and his Gravedigger, dream and nightmare in a single essence. On and on and on they split into fragments over the years, but it's only the Gravedigger that remembers everything that came before him, and so it is the Gravedigger that bears the responsibility of their wrongs. He's Johnny as much as Johnny is; Johnny-but-not.

"I do know that," Graves agrees quietly, bent down on one knee, horned head slightly bowed. "I would not expect you to." Compared to most dreams, the Gravedigger is a simple-looking thing: a looming, vaguely monstrous humanoid wreathed in tattered fabrics, head obscured by one mask or another, great horns spearing backwards like a ram's. Compared to Dream, he feels small and fragile. Like the smallest speck of stardust too close to the sun, for all that Dream's physical form appears far less monstrous than his own.

The first Johnny had never been on the receiving end of a punishment before--they, like most dreams, were loyal and obedient until Morpheus' prolonged disappearance made them falter--but the Gravedigger remembers seeing others in Morpheus' hands. He remembers a swallowing dark and the way his fellow dreams had crawled out of it, among other things.

But it's the word Correction that scares him. The fear of being changed; the fear that it won't just be him but all of them, reverted back to their original form, or something else entirely.

Graves lifts its head, watching Dream with flickering violet eyes that glow too brightly behind the bone-white mask. Nobody asks for what he's about to ask for. Even he, loyal nightmare, allegiant beast, can recognise how cruel it is for a king to demand that their subjects choose their punishment.

But he is only a nightmare, and there are rules. Even so, when the Gravedigger speaks again, it can't help the bitterness in its voice. It had come back, after all. It had chosen to.

"If I have to choose, lord, I choose the Darkness. I remember how, uh... effective it was on other dreams, before. Never known that particular torment to fail at securing a dream's allegiance. You think I'm disloyal? Throw me there."

[griefbringers]

They say he’s the devil, but not to me.

Graves, wearing Johnny's body like an ill-fitting suit, sat beside Louis that cool summer evening in idle interest. This town had called to him from afar: bodies in the rivers, bodies in the dump, bodies burnt to ash; more than that, the collective grief of a town that had suffered more losses than any town should, their children and siblings and spouses and parents and friends picked off day by day by some unseen force for which there was no cure.

The Gravedigger had taken a body from the river once, brushing its fingertips over the ring of teeth marks on the throat, and felt how desperately loved that person still was by those that grieved them.

He knew who was responsible. Not just the man they called the devil, but the man beside Graves too: Louis, accomplice and hunter in his own right. This close, the nightmare could feel his grief over his brother, and the more metaphorical loss of his other family; subdued by time, but still there, as grief always was.

"What is he to you, then, your not-devil?" Graves smiled with Johnny's crooked mouth, Johnny's dark eyes. It was a small body, bird-boned and tired, and felt even less connected to the world around it than usual - but it was the one they'd been wearing when they came to this place, and changing it now would be a pain in the ass. "An angel?"