Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She didn’t know what about this place attracted her attention.

There was nothing but an unremarkable manor at a distance, blocked partly from sight by an unwelcoming hedge. From the outside, it looked just as grim and dreary as any other pretentious manor littering the English countryside, giving off the air of the rich and miserable. Those within usually found her realm all by themselves, and were such bores besides, thus she had never bothered visiting them in person.

Still. Something drew her here. 

Her mind tilted sideways, feeling for the ever elusive flow of her domain. The awareness of it slid in and out of focus like smoke, but with millennia of practice, she could still make out an oddity. Someone in that house was desperately tugging at the strands of her realm, not just quietly slipping into it as in most cases.

She knew this kind of behavior. Something terrible happened here. Possibly was still happening. Someone here felt guilty, and was drawing on her function to bury that guilt.

Without success. 

As she watched, the strands got cut off somewhere between her and the house, almost dissipating entirely. Some still made it through the invisible barrier, but only wisps of it, severely weakened.

She put a hand forward and took a few exploratory steps towards the house, wrapping her power around herself to go unnoticed, in case there was anyone about. After a few moments, her hand hit… something. She gave it a push, and said something rippled, outlining a dome enclosing the property, before again vanishing from view.

“Well, now,” she murmured, intrigued.

Wards, then. She pushed again, with the power of her realm behind her, and found them unyielding. Highly powerful wards, to be able to stop someone like her. Or, perhaps, highly specific ?

She dropped her hand, and, after a minute of consideration, shifted her mind a bit so that the - hopefully - inoffensive part of her was at the forefront, then walked straight onwards. There is nothing to see here. She thought at the wards. Just a regular, boring human. Nothing you are meant to notice.

As she reached the unseen border, she could feel magic washing over her as the wards examined her nature; she submerged her realm further beneath the skin so as not to spook them. After a few seconds, they subsided, and she was in. Stopping to take stock, she noted that her connections to the Desert had been significantly weakened; her cloak of imperceptibility had dissipated, but the trickles of her domain that made it through was enough that it could be redone.

She smiled, satisfied, then rewrapped her power around herself and strided toward the manor despite the dip in power. Whatever secret this place contained, it was proving to be the most interesting thing she had encountered this decade. 

She had been so bored lately.

The property was abuzz with activities when she reached it. There seemed to have been a small fire recently; servants were hurriedly moving about, bringing scorched furniture out to the courtyard and new, more expensive ones inside. From the way they seemed more annoyed than scared, she doubted anyone died, thus whatever horror that happened here hadn’t been that. They were also talking to themselves in hushed whispers, so she lingered - unnoticed - near the hub of activities by the stairs to eavesdrop. 

“Alex!” Someone whisper-shouted, drawing her attention, “I thought you buried that!”

“Sor-sorry,” stammered a teenaged boy - a servant? He didn’t dress right for that - in reply. In his hands was a… some kind of bird? Well, bird corpse. Whatever bird it had been, it was definitely dead. “I thought… well…”

“The Magus won’t be pleased if he saw you with that,” said the man whose voice she first heard,  somewhat gently. 

“But I want to keep her-” said the boy, gangly limbs moving awkwardly as he hastily added at the look of the man’s disbelief, “I mean- she was special to- uh- him . Uh- so-I thought we could keep her to-”

"Make the creature talk?” Finished the man, who might be the head-servant from how the others act towards him. He looked thoughtfully at the corpse, then told the boy, “You may have a point. I’ll talk to your father about it. But you still can't just keep it like that, it'll stink up the house. Here, give it to me, I’ll get it stuffed.” 

He then took the bird from the boy and left without a single glance back. As a result, he didn’t see the devastated look Alex aimed at his back, or the hand that reached out as if to stop him.

Then, she felt it. The draw on her function. As she watched, Alex shut his eyes, visibly steeling himself. The wisps of her nature settled over his shoulder like a cloak, and he opened his eyes, straightened his shoulders, turned, and walked away.

She wondered if he felt cold, with the thick layer of guilt icing over under that cloak.

It took her a few hours, after Alex and his dead bird, to make the next piece of progress in her investigation. To be fair, she wasted a couple of those camping outside Alex’s room wherein he had locked himself, presumably to brood - she had no interest in entering a teenage boy’s bedroom just to ascertain. Once she had given up waiting for him and ventured back downstairs, voices from a dark hallway drew her near. There, she found the head-servant - Mr. Sykes - with two other men in what looked like guard uniforms. Sykes handed the men something that with a closer look turned out to be pills, two for each man, which they didn’t seem too happy receiving. One promptly swallowed his dry with a grimace.

“Can’t we just… not?” the other tried to bargain, “I literally just woke up before coming here, it’s not like I’m going to fall asleep down there. This thing is just plain nasty. I still have a headache from last time, for Chirst’s sakes!”

“Sorry, gentlemen. The Magus insisted,” answered Sykes. “We can’t afford to take risks.”

The guard opened his mouth to argue further, but his fellow jabbed him with an elbow, so he shut it again. After he too took his pills with a scowl, Sykes asked them to open their mouths to make sure they had swallowed. He then opened a door, and stood aside for them to enter. Before he could close it again, she swiftly followed the two guards inside, and found that instead of a room like she had presumed, the door opened to a steep set of stairs leading downwards. It was dark, even compared to the rest of the house, lightened only by torches set every dozen steps apart. In any other circumstances, she would think that it led to some wine cellar, but given the conversation she just overheard, she doubted the truth would be so unoriginal.

Despite already high expectations, her eyebrows still rose at the iron gate that greeted them when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“All these troubles” muttered the guard who tried to skip out on his pills as his partner got out a set of keys for the gate, “over something that doesn’t even move .”

“I think I saw it shift its hand an inch the other day,” the other guard laughed while fumbling to open the lock in the low light. “You should be glad the job’s boring, most would have to risk their necks for any job that pays half as well. Burgess’s pretty much paying us for sitting in there reading newspapers.”

“Do you reckon that thing can even talk? I hadn’t heard it make a peep in all this time, if its eyes didn’t move I’d think old Burgess’s been yelling at a statue. One would think he’d give up after what? Ten years now?”

“The old geezer’s stubborn, I’ll give you that,” the guard shrugged as he finally got the gate opened. “Hope he doesn’t quit anytime soon, though. That’s the only entertainment we have down here.”

The other snickered, “Too true.”

Impatient, and with her curiosity raised higher than any other point in recent decades, she pushed past the guards through the gates to reach the chamber proper, and stopped dead-

-as her eyes were caught by those of Morpheus, Third of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares.

“Dream of the Endless,” she said, moving toward the sphere of glass and iron that encased the Endless before her. With him naked inside and somehow looking even more ethereal because of it, illuminated in a way that made his skin seem to glow, it reminded her of those snow globes that had been the rage around Europe recently. She thought vaguely of getting one of those the next time she saw one in the shops. “Somehow I didn’t expect this.”

And she should have. The wards outside made so much more sense now. She flexed her power testingly, and as the wards pushed it back down, she could now tell the taste of their nature. It was, honestly, a very impressive piece of work.

Dream’s lips moved, silently forming the syllables which were so familiar. 

“No one uses that word anymore,” she told him, appraising his glass prison. “I prefer the modern term now. Unless, of course, you’d rather be addressed as Oneiros?”

At his barely discernible grimace, she nodded. Too many unpleasant memories associated with that name, undoubtedly. One in particular, she was sure he would prefer to never be reminded of.

“This is quite a trap you found yourself in,” she mused, going around the sphere and the surrounding circle, ignoring the way his eyes discretely followed her without turning his head. Did this thing even have a latch? An opening, at all? “They siphon your power for the wards, you know, to keep out your siblings. Very ingenious; the power of an Endless to ward off other Endless. That’s why they haven’t been able to come to your rescue, I imagine; none of them can step a foot inside this property.”

She wasn’t actually watching for his reactions, yet something about Dream’s stone-faced silence made her double-take. She drew back, brows furrowing.

“You haven’t even tried calling for them, have you.”

He glowered at her in answer. Then how are you here? he mouthed.

“I’m not an Endless, am I?” she answered, debating pushing for his reasonings despite his deflection, but in the end decided not to. It might end up being pride that stopped him, in which case she just didn’t want to know. “I have some power in here, enough to keep the guards from noticing us. So you can drop the silent act, they won’t see you talking to yourself if that’s what bothers you.”

He sighed, heavily and with his whole body, and said something. She could see his lips move, yet couldn’t hear a thing.

Frowning, she leaned in to take a closer look at the glass without stepping into the binding circle. Her eyes widened when she saw its thickness.

“Is this thing soundproof?!”

He scowled, but nodded.

“How do they expect to bargain with you then?” she asked, incredulous. The corner of his lips twitched with something like an involuntary mocking smile, there and gone almost before she could see it.

She took a step back, head cocked, rewinding her interaction with the Lord of Dreams. His eyes had been darting toward the guards every few seconds in what now registered to her as an unconscious attempt to keep tracks of their movements. Because apparently he couldn’t hear them. Or her. That he could keep up with the conversation at all was likely thanks to the ability most gods and god-like beings had, something between omnitongue and mind-reading, that enabled them to understand everyone’s meaning regardless of the language being spoken. Her inability to do the same, however, was probably due to the restraints which the wards, charged with his power, were putting on hers. She suspected, if really pushed, he could make himself heard in her mind as well, but only with significant concentration and likely quite a bit of power, the latter of which he didn’t currently have in abundance.

That he still had any power at all, though, meant  he wasn’t nearly as helpless as it appeared. If any of the guards ever sleep within his range, he would be able to take control of their dreams. So that’s what the pills were for.

It was still not a fool-proof solution, however. Even daydreams could work in the Dream Lord’s favor, if he had enough of an opening to work with.

“Your captors are morons,” she concluded. Dream looked torn between agreeing and glaring at her. Understandable, since he was captured by said morons.

“Well,” she said, moving to stand right in front of him. He straightened up at her more formal posture. “As you probably know, I too dabble in ritual magic.” She could tell he wanted to scoff at that understatement, but was too dignified to. “I can get you out. For a price of, let’s say, a favor.”

He frowned, head tilted in question.

She glanced at the binding circle. The mismatched bits of sigils in at least five different languages and cultures confirmed her theory. “Your captors have some right ideas, but they are still morons and amateurs. I don’t expect this to take me more than a few minutes to unravel; then you can take care of the rest on your own. So yes, just one small favor. Nothing that interferes with your duties or goes against the rules of the Endless. Do we have a deal?”

He looked her straight in the eyes, considering. She could tell his pride was warring with his desire to put this whole indignity behind him. And yet, it was one thing to neglect asking for help from his siblings when he thought the option was still available. To reject it when it was offered directly and was in all likelihood his only option, was another thing entirely.

Finally, Dream inclined his head. So be it.

“So be it,” she agreed, and started to look more closely at the binding circle.

It took her, as expected, barely a minute to know what she was working with. Then she frowned, and inspected it again. To the Dream Lord’s increasing anxiety, she paced the circle once, twice, then a third time, before looking back at him, “I’m so glad,” she started by saying, “that I decided against involving myself in your family’s dramas early on.”

His confusion was apparent.

“This is the most amateurist circle I’ve ever come across. It’s an absolute mess. Whoever wrote these runes obviously had no idea what any of them mean, let alone how to write them properly. That it worked at all…”

She trailed off, tracing the sigils with rising affront. “Substitute precision with intent. Substitute power with intent. Substitute purpose with intent! This is… this is an invocation that thought it’s a circle, flung blindly into the dark to take a grab at whatever unfortunate being it ran across. The only direction it had, at all, was intent. ”

She locked eyes with him, “You know what that means.”

Given the pain in his expression, he did.

She gave Dream a few minutes to delve on this new information on his current circumstance, then exhaled.

“Well, there is good news, of course. This circle is even more pathetic than I first thought, it’ll be laughingly easy to break. No power required, even. Just interrupting the lines-”

“No.”

She froze, utterly bemused. It took her a few seconds to get what he meant. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am grateful for your offer, my not-sister,” Dream said in her mind, using power he didn’t have to spare for the first time this evening, “but I must refuse. This is now a matter between Endless.” He stared at her squarely, gaze firm. “Of whom, by your own admission, you are not one.”

She stared at him, speechless. By his grave words and graver expression, he truly meant his rejection. Enough so that he would fight her on it if she pushed. His words, which would sound like an insult and an attack to anyone but her, were meant to offend and drive away any feeling of helpfulness she had. Her brows furrowed as she tried to understand his sudden change of attitude.

“Very well,” finally, she said, relaxing her body language to make it clear she would not take this fight. “If you are sure.”

“I am sure.”

“Then I’ll take my leave. I’ll contact your sister to inform her that you didn’t leave your post by your own choice.” Then, she added to let him know that she understood his decision, “Would you like updates on your realm and subjects the next time I drop by?” Because there would be repercussions to yet another Endless going missing from their realms. That it was Dream… The only one worse to have out of commission would be Death.

Dream seemed to slump in relief, the fight gone from his postures, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It won’t be. I have plenty of time on my hand.” Then, because she couldn’t resist, “You know they won’t thank you for this.”

There was no need to clarify who they were.

“I know,” Dream’s voice was soft, almost inaudible. “This is still between me and them. Farewell, Apathy. And thank you.”

“Farewell, Dream.” And with that, Apathy let her physical form dissolve into the shadows.

Chapter Text

Apathy kept her words to the imprisoned Endless. After tracking down Death, which she did by staking out a hospital until the other arrived to do her job, she told her about Dream’s predicament. Death, as it turned out, had not even been aware of her favorite brother’s disappearance. Apathy found herself remarkably unsurprised by this; the Endless were billions of years old, ten years was surely not the longest stretch of time one of them had been out of contact. From what she had seen, even the closest among them could go decades without talking to one another, and Death in particular was tremendously busy.

“It figures,” Death sighed resignedly when told about Dream’s rejection of Apathy’s offer, “Dream has always been prideful. I’m sure he meant you no offense. He just… has this idea in his head that he’s supposed to do everything on his own.”

It wasn’t about pride, Apathy thought, but didn’t say. Matter between Endless, Dream had called it; why should she poke her nose where it wasn’t wanted?

“I told him, before I left,” instead she said, “that I’d look into how the Dreaming had been faring for him. Although, on second thought, I doubt he would like me strolling about in his realm and coming into contact with his creations. It didn’t end well last time I did.”

Death evidently thought she was trying to go back on her words, because the other’s eyes widened.  She hurriedly said, “Oh you don’t have to! I have a standing invitation to the Dreaming, it’ll be much easier for me to drop a word to Lucienne. She’s Dream’s most trusted retainer, she’ll contact you in your dream- you still dream, right? And, Apathy… I know we’ve already imposed on you enough, but, if you could do me the favor of bringing my words to Dream, sometimes? It won’t be too often, I promise. I’ll own you one.”

Somehow - Apathy thought with wry humor - even with the more informal words and tones, Death was consistently better than Dream in keeping a professional distance. For all that he tried to impersonate a statue at times, Dream had always been an open book to Apathy. Their respective functions required them to interact much more often than he might be comfortable acknowledging; not to mention, they also saw each other for personal reasons as well. The Third of the Endless had this habit of unintentionally visiting and burying his feelings beneath the sand of her realm much more frequently than what was good for him. As a result, she had taken to periodically washing his things up the shores of the Dreaming along with all the function-related materials as pointed reminders to stop ignoring his emotions. She also kept notes of how said reminders were received by the ratio of dreams and nightmares she got following days.

And then there were his melodramatic tendencies. Dream said things with just his body louder than most people managed with actual words. She couldn’t help but find it endearing. No wonder they called him Sweet Dream.

Meanwhile, Death would make for a good politician, Apathy reflected. So friendly and understanding, yet at the same time so distant and diplomatic.

“No favor needed,” she answered, “It’s really no trouble. Here,” she reached into the ever-present layer of her realm, invisible to anyone but her, withdrew a crystal piece shaped vaguely like a heart, and gave it to Death, “whenever you have something to tell Dream, you can contact me with this.”

Death hesitated, but reluctantly took it, turning the piece in her hands, “Is this your sigil?”

She could understand that hesitation. Despite the chips and cracks, as well as the steel gray color, the crystal still somewhat resembled a smaller version of Desire’s sigil. 

“No,” Apathy said, rather not be associated with that particular Endless if she could at all help it, “I have no sigil. It’s just something buried long ago in the Desert. It’s connected to me enough that I will notice.”

Now that she knew about the Lord of Sleep’s imprisonment, a lot of signs started to crop up. She had heard, before the visit to Fawney Rig, of what was called the “sleeping sickness”, but had thought nothing of it. While waiting for news on the Dreaming, she looked into the matter more closely. There had been, all told, more than one million people affected, scattered all around the world but still somewhat centered in Europe. She suspected that was the wards’ doing, siphoning away the Dream Lord’s power not just from him but also from the surrounding area. If they were left as is, soon the number of casualties would increase exponentially as the Dreamscape gave out, until the affected area eventually exploded to encompass the whole universe.

“I’ve altered the wards,” she told Dream during her visit, “to curb it from drawing directly from the Dreaming. Unfortunately, they are tied to the circle down here, so I can’t cut off the main draw from you . Unless, of course, you’ve suddenly decided to take me up on my offer.” She raised a pointed eyebrow at him, and got a glare in response. “That’s what I thought. It won’t fix the damage already done, and the deterioration of the Dreaming has only slowed, not stopped completely. If you stay cut off from it and your power for too long, like, say, a couple hundred years, it will resume. Don’t let it reach that point.”

During another visit, she had the honor - not - of seeing the interaction between the self-styled Magus, one Roderick Burgess, and his Endless captive. The entire thing consisted of Burgess listing a bunch of demands at Dream, who barely spared him a glance, getting increasingly frustrated at the answering silence, then finally storming off. It seemed the guards from her first visit hadn’t been the only ones who considered this daily debacle entertainment; the ones on duty that day looked like they dearly wanted some snacks to go with this show. Given the way Dream discretely sighed in relief after Burgess’s departure, he didn’t share their sentiments.

“Are those always his demands?” she asked Dream. “Riches, youth, and immortality? He does know you are the Lord of Dreams , right?”

He’s a moron, Dream’s long-suffering expression seemed to say.

“You know, the more I see of him, the more I’m convinced the wards outside aren’t actually his doing.”

Dream looked up at her and gave a tiny gesture, Go on.

"This… circle," she gestured at said insult, which she couldn't even bring herself to look at, "is obviously his work. As well as that cage which is in no way conducive to striking a bargain. He clearly had no idea what he was doing. Those wards, however, are a masterpiece. They hook up on your power to charge themselves, and have a blood element that channels the excess to protect Burgess’s bloodline from outside attacks. Unless he and his son kill one another, both will die at ripe old age, far exceeding any human's natural lifespan. I suspect they even do some other things, but unfortunately warding is not my expertise. The point is, whoever set up those wards knew what they were doing. "

She studied Dream’s expressions, but just like all the other times she implicated a possible third-party involvement in his capture, he had emotionally shut down.

"Look," she sighed, "as far as I know none of your family ever bothered to study warding. You lot tend to just brute-force your way to everything, which I can somewhat understand, considering the power level you have. So this, this might yet be the work of someone else."

Just like Burgess, she got no answer but silence. 

The next time she came, some months later, there had been some drastic changes to the Burgess’s household. 

“Did Alex Burgess finally have enough and do away with his sire?” She asked Dream. The official words were that Roderick Burgess fell and hit his head, but she knew better. Blood magic would have saved him from those kinds of things.

Accidentally, Dream mouthed with a subtle yet no less vicious smirk. He had undoubtedly wanted to deal with the elder Burgess with his own hands, but that ironic end at the hands of the man’s own blood still brought him some satisfaction. 

“Well, I see that the son had not corrected his father’s mistake." And the smirk disappeared. 

Alexander Burgess, from what she had seen, was an apple that fell so far from the tree, he ended up right under it again. Where the late Magus had been short-sighted and greedy, his son was short-sighted and scared. She doubted Roderick Burgess had ever stopped to consider what would have happened afterwards, had Dream agreed to his bargains. The King of Nightmares was the vengeful sort, and even bound to his words, he could have made the man rich, young, immortal, and stuck in his worst nightmares for the rest of eternity. The son, however, clearly had considered those consequences. Instead of demanding rewards, he pleaded solely for impunity from Dream’s wrath. Yet, the way he’d gone about it was exactly like his father’s, by bargaining. And thus he’d locked himself, and Dream, in a stalemate that Roderick had been too blind to see, but one that young Alex seemed to recognize oh-so-clearly: Dream couldn’t take the bargain due to pride, and Alex couldn’t let him out unless a deal was struck.

To be fair, Apathy mused as she wandered the halls of Fawney Rig - now but a ghost of its former self, with most of the servants gone and no party to chase away the oppressing silence - Alex had good reasons for being extra-cautious with his unwilling guest. Centuries from now, the actions of Roderick would be nothing but a bruise on the Dream Lord’s pride. Being caught and detained for a decade by an amateur occultist was embarrassing, but nothing truly traumatic to an Endless - their minds were much sturdier than that, built to withstand eons of experiences. However, what Alexander Burgess had done…

She stopped in front of the stuffed remains of Dream’s Raven. Jessamy, she was called, according to Dream’s retainer the first time they spoke.

“Jessamy was loyal to my Lord,” Lucienne had said, anguish apparent on her features. “She had been his companion and close confidant for centuries, being not just his messenger but also his eyes and ears. When I didn’t hear from her, after his disappearance, I feared the worst. That she had been alive all this time, trying to get to him, just to be murdered right before his eyes…”

Yes, thought Apathy, Alex was wise to be wary. The Dream Lord was used to losses, having made, then later unmade the majority of his subjects as the Waking World outgrew the need for them. He had also had romantic attachments, all of which were rumored to have ended in flames in one way or another. She had no doubt at least some among those numbers were as close to him, if not more so, as Jessamy was. The difference with her was that the late Raven died violently, in a desperate attempt to free her Lord who had, at the time, considered his imprisonment nothing but a temporary inconvenience. Worse, she died right in front of him, almost within reach, where he should have been able to protect her. Apathy imagined that the helplessness of his situation hadn’t hit Dream at all until that moment. The sliver of power he still had had been no help to Jessamy, not even enough to warn him of his captors’ approach. No wonder he kept such close tracks of the guards these days. The sudden grief, compounded by that helplessness, would ensure that the Dream Lord’s rage toward the perpetrator didn’t wane anytime soon. Possibly never; Dream wasn’t exactly known for easily letting go of his grudges.

To Alex’s credits, however, it appeared that Dream did not know of the fate that befell his beloved Raven after her death. To Apathy’s knowledge, no one had ever shown him her corpse like she overheard that first time, not even Roderick before his demise. She’d tell Death, Apathy decided, to retrieve the Raven for him after his escape, whenever or however that would happen. He deserved some closure, and Jessamy, sweet Jessamy, deserved to be put to rest properly, within the Dreaming, under the eternal protection of the Lord she had served faithfully until the end.

The next few decades crawled by almost imperceptibly to the inhabitants of Fawney Rig. While the world outside picked up pace with radical changes in almost every facet of life, the house and those trapped within seemed to grow stale in time instead of moving along with it. Alexander Burgess and his husband-in-all-but-name aged slowly, just like Apathy predicted - and wasn’t that a marvel, that the wards recognized Paul McGuire as Alex’s spouse even when neither of them had ever called the other such - and Dream was still stuck in the basement, seemingly having no plan to escape beyond waiting for his cage and jailors to give out under the power of time. Sometimes, when she stopped to take in his increasingly gaunt figures, Apathy wondered how much of him would still remain when that happened. 

“I tried tracking down your tools,” she told Dream in one visit, two decades after she first learnt of his detainment, “but your power in them resisted my scrying. The woman who stole them was either very careful or very paranoid; she changed her name at least half a dozen times within the first two years alone, and after that I think she fled the country, maybe even left the continent altogether. Roderick’s men kept track of her somewhat, but that trail dried up well before his death, and Alex never resumed the search. I think it’s still possible to find her the mortal way, by following the paper trails. Unfortunately I don’t have the means or the knowhow to do so, and some of my mystic acquaintances ended up dead trying to hunt her down, so now that avenue is closed to me as well.”

She didn’t say that the whole thing had taken only three years before she had given up. Then, she had stayed away for another ten, in the hope that something would change here in her absence. The last time she was at Fawney Rig, Paul had been trying to talk Alex into letting Dream go in the spirit of good faith. It wasn’t entirely because he was a bleeding heart, even though he was a compassionate man; his love for Alex held true, enough so that Paul feared for both of their lives if Dream turned out to be less than forgiving. Yet he likewise could see that as much as Dream was trapped in their basement, Alex was also being held captive here by his fear and Dream’s continued presence. For all that his life was extended, Alex hadn’t truly lived a single day of those years. Paul considered, not incorrectly, letting the sword of Damocles over their heads fall the lesser of two evils, when the other option was to make Alex live his whole life in fear, seeing Dream’s shadow behind every corner.

And so, after seeing Paul’s efforts, and that his regards for Alex was returned, Apathy stayed away. Although greatly diminished by the wards, her presence there might still hold some sway over Alex’s decision. Paul might have a greater chance of shaking loose the layers of fear and self-taught apathy covering Alex’s guilt and compassion without her there to potentially reinforce them, however unintentionally. After a decade with no news of the Dream Lord’s escape, however, she returned to find that the ice over Alex’s heart remained the same; meanwhile, Paul had grown tired and numb to both his sense of justice and his husband’s suffering, pleading his case almost by rote to Alex every evening just to be ignored.

So Apathy told Dream about none of this. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to tell.

Chapter Text

Even more time passed.

While the sleeping sickness had mostly become a thing of the past with barely any new victims, still the more subtle and understated consequences of the Dream Lord's absence gradually came to light. It was an often forgotten fact, but as Third of the Endless, his domain wasn’t just dreams ; he was also responsible for looking after the universe’s collective unconsciousness, only ceding parts of it into the care of his younger siblings for more specialized management. Now, with him missing, said collective unconsciousness started running amok. 

In the more distant parts of the universe, the situation might not be so severe; but here, on Earth, where the deterioration of the Dreaming was centered, humanity found itself plagued with nigh uncontrollable bouts of anxiety and rage that manifested into countless wars and pockets of aggression. Mental illnesses started cropping up like mushrooms after the rain and with just as much variety. To Apathy’s confusion, parts of the Desert started merging with the Gray Realm to make a unique place for those with depression; she and Despair eyed each other strangely for weeks after that. There was a rumor that the other’s realm also brushed with Delirium’s always-changing domain in what psychologists named the manic-depressive disorder. As blaise as Apathy usually was regarding the state of her realm, these drastic changes still managed to unsettle her greatly.

Then humanity found that they could somewhat manage their own subconscious using mind altering substances, and she abruptly found herself beyond caring.

“Your truancy,” Apathy told Dream flatly, “is swarming me with work. ”

One of the Dream Lord’s eyebrows rose.

“I know you hated it when they discovered caffeine.” She continued and started to pace the chamber, Dream’s eyes following her movements with increasing fascination. “And that Despair and Delirium had been dealing with alcohol and mushrooms and whatnot for centuries now. So imagine how I felt when they discovered ways to manufacture psychoactive drugs! At least it started out as just a way to manage mental disorders, which I was all for, good for them to be so proactive in dealing with problems that were supposed to be your job to deal with, but then they didn’t just use those as medical treatments, did they? No, those things are so widespread, they use them recreationally now! Do you know what antidepressants, anxiolytics, neuroleptics and stimulants have in common? They mess with the way the brain processes emotions. The side effects were bad enough even on those who truly need them. And now that others, originally mentally balanced individuals also take them for fun, guess who’s the first in line to deal with the fallout? ME!”

A glance at Dream saw his eyes comically widened, staring at her in uncharacteristic shock, so Apathy stopped, closed her eyes, pulled on the frayed ends of her hair, and made herself breathe. She refused to get herself caught up in the mania. She saw Delirium enough these days for work, she was not visiting the other’s realm for personal reasons as well.

In her mindeye, the sand of her realm surged up at her bidding, burying the unrestrained emotions six feet under. She exhaled, mind again cleared.

“I used to be worshiped as the Goddess of Laziness,” when Apathy resumed talking, it was with an eerie calmness. Did she care that it was probably freaking Dream out? Well, why would she? She was calm. “Granted, that didn’t last long, but then later I also did a stint as the Princess of Sloth before the Morningstar kicked me out of Hell. This much work is just not for me.”

“So they want to bury their uncomfortable feelings with drugs instead of working through them? Fine, I’m digging them a sandpit just for that, they can fill it with whatever substance they like. And when those feelings finally rear up again after the drugs are cleared out of their systems, sharpened and more unbearable than when they first came in? Then I’m throwing them into Despair’s realm, or Delirium’s. Or even Destruction’s or Desire’s, just to make sure they don’t feel left out.”

“Apathy-”

“Do I know that that will only exacerbate the problem?” She cut him off, “Yes, I do. Do I care? No, I don’t. Because you know what? I've long used up my allotment of care for this century, and it’s not even halfway through yet. So if you do care? Then get the hell out of there and deal with it yourself.”

“ApY! SistEr!”

Apathy reared back at the unexpected noise. She was in her apartment in Venice, nearly dozing off while watching the annual Carnival parade under the fading sun beneath her window. The return of the city’s traditional festival had been received with much enthusiasm by people from all around the world. Even now, ten years after its reinstallment, aristocrats from many different countries still come to attend, the chilly evening and occasional snow not enough to cool down their excitement.

None of that deserved any attention from Apathy when she had this particular guest in her apartment.

“Delirium,” she said, her heart slowly slowing down from being startled. “What are you doing here?”

Please, let it not be because I dumped all the junkies on her back in the forties. It hasn’t even been half a century yet; I’m not ready to give up my vacation. 

“FeStivIty, siSteR!” Delirium giggled and danced in place, her mismatched eyes switching colors at random, lopsided hair flashing indiscriminately like a disco ball. A couple of glowing fish swam in the air around her, seemingly in tune with the music from below. “So Nice, sO niCe, peoPle Come tO be fOolish! TheY danCe and dAnce inTo my rEalm, aNd in The morNing tHey lEave! AnD soNgs and lOve thEy leAve BehiNd, suCh nIce pResEnts! DecOratIon for mY ReaLm!”

“That sounds nice,” Apathy said. It was nice because Delirium hadn’t seemed to come to drag her back, but also because she understood almost everything the youngest Endless was saying. Usually it was much more challenging to decipher Delirium’s words, even when they held the most insight in that whole family. The gentle, temporary, voluntary relief of senses and reasons that the party-goers went through must have been a solace to the girl; her usual guests tended to be much less happy and much more destructive.

Delirium had gone cross-eyed, staring down the fish hovering at her nose without stepping back; it kept up with her swaying with its own sideway movements. Apathy took the risk and gently shove that fish aside. Luckily, it didn’t turn to take a bite at her hand, just swam a few feet in its new direction, then dissolved into a shower of glitter. Even more luckily, Delirium’s attention followed it, then returned to Apathy after the fish was gone, even as another one popped up to replace it.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying the carnival, Del, but what I meant was, why did you seek me out?”

Instead of tilting just her head aside like normal people, Delirium leaned her whole upper body in consideration. She would have fallen over had she not been the anthropomorphic representation of a concept. Apathy just barely stopped herself from pushing the other back upright.

“DatE, ” finally, Delirium decisively said; it clarified absolutely nothing. “BrotHer hAs a Date. GoinG tO miSs it.”

Apathy squinted. “One of your brothers is going to miss a date?”

“YES!” Delirium shouted and swung her hands up violently like she was a cheerleader. “DateS! 13-89- nO NoT thAt oNe, 16-89, CoNstAnTiNe, 14-89, bAd-BaD 18-89, 89, 89, 89-”

Delirium was getting increasingly manic. The fish's glow began to rapidly brighten with colors not found on Earth, projecting nonsensical shapes and figures onto the walls and furniture. Alarmed, Apathy lunged forward and caught one of the girl’s shoulders in a vice-like grip. “Del, Del, Delirium, breathe! ”

For a tense moment, all emotions fled Delirium’s features. The fish disappeared with a pop! , dunking the small apartment back into the darkness. The festivity below casted indistinct shadows on the wall opposite the window, and the music drifting up only accentuated the room’s sudden stillness.

“Del?” Apathy chanced a question when the silence stretched out and the other didn’t try to get out of her hold.

“Brother should tell his date,” whispered Delirium, sounding about as sane as she was ever going to get, “It’s impolite to keep one's friend waiting.”

“Okay,” Apathy said with all the equanimity she could muster. Which, being who she was, was a lot. “I’ll pass your message along to Dream.” Delirium had three brothers, as well as a sibling who sometimes counted as a fourth. Somehow, she could tell that this was about the middle one.

“Dream, Sweet Dream,” Delirium hummed, swaying in Apathy’s grip, confirming her thought, “shouldn’t keep his date waiting.” 

So much for her vacation.

Here was a lesson that the Endless, even after billions of years together, had never truly learned, but one that Apathy, who once spent two decades working as a handmaiden for one Lady Kassandra, made sure to never forget: one simply did not ignore words from Delirium. It was not an easy maxim to follow; oftentimes it was hard just to understand exactly what the youngest Endless was saying, with the twisty ways her mind seemed to work. Yet, if one kept track, like Apathy did, even her most random and scattered remarks made a startling amount of sense long after they were spoken . To this day, Apathy still sometimes thanked the flipside of her nature for stopping her from dismissing Lady Mania’s words as nonsense way back then, before she even knew who she was.

In this case, however, following Delirium’s advice proved to be more challenging than interpreting her. 

Dream was an intensely private being, and tolerated no one poking around what he considered his business. The more personal the matter, the more he reacted like a startled cat at any sign of outside involvement. She still remembered how he had looked the first time she caught him sneaking into the Howling Desert to retrieve his discarded feelings. Even caught red-handed by a Lady in her own domain, doing what he was not supposed to do, she had been quite sure he seriously considered waging war on her for witnessing his moment of embarrassment, and only gave up on that idea because it would require telling his subjects why he wanted to wage war on her in the first place. She didn’t know how personal this “date” was - with Delirium, its precision could range anywhere from an unfortunate word choice to a Fates-given prophecy - but Apathy seriously doubted she would get any answer from him beyond a glower if she dared to ask him about it.

So she went to other sources first.

“My Lord’s personal businesses are his own,” said Lucienne when Apathy asked her in a dream about any appointment Dream was supposed to attend. Appointment, because she was not saying “date” and risked spooking the retainer the way it would have certainly spook her Lord. 

By the look of carefully maintained blankness the Royal Librarian had suddenly adopted, that decision was well-considered, if somewhat wasted, because she was spooked either way. Apathy’s attention sharpened, narrowing in on that reaction not unlike a shark when it smelled blood. Not just an unfortunate word choice then.

She meticulously kept all those thoughts from her face, and tried for a soft, understanding tone. “It’s not my intention to pry into Dream’s personal business,” she lied through her teeth. “But the way Delirium said it… It sounded important. And I promised her that I’d pass her words to your Lord, but I also don’t want to offend him by saying it the wrong way. So… is there any advice you can give me?”

The Librarian peered at Apathy like she was trying to pick apart her expressions for any sign of deception. Apathy gamely beared with it. She had had millenia to work on her straight face, someone who had spent most of her existence among dreams and nightmares wasn’t going to catch her out.

Finally, Lucienne seemed to decide to take Apathy's words at face value. “I’m afraid there is no way he wouldn’t feel offended, Lady Apathy," she said. “My Lord is admittedly… touchy, about these subjects. However, I believe you have him as something of a captive audience at the moment,” - Apathy’s eyebrow rose at the sheer audacity of that pun - “so I suggest you just deliver it to him straight. There is still time; he will have to think about it, and he’s not completely unreasonable,” - the other brow joined the first - “I believe he will thank you for it in the end.”

Apathy couldn’t help it; she bursted out laughing, “My, Lucienne, conspiring against and bad-mouthing your Lord? What would Dream say? ”

Demurely, eyes downcasted, the Librarian gave her a secret smile, “I don’t know what you’re saying, my Lady. I only ever have my Lord’s best interests in mind.”

“So I’ve heard you have a date!”

Apathy was sure that when Lucienne had said “give it to him straight” , she hadn’t quite meant “without a single ounce of tact” . But then Apathy had only ever had tact when she felt like it.

Dream, who looked like he was about to say something when she first appeared, snapped his mouth shut and frowned, I don’t know what you mean.

She studied him. He didn't seem defensive, just confused. She decided to elaborate.

“Something about 1389? Delirium didn’t make much sense there at the end, but…”

And now he was defensive. 

“Delirium shouldn't know anything about that,” his frown had deepened, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to shut down this line of conversation. The fact that he was speaking to her, not just miming, however, implied the exact opposite, so she deemed it safe to push.

“Far be it from me to say what Delirium is or isn’t supposed to know,” because if after all this time he still didn’t get the ways of his sister’s mind, then maybe it was for a reason . “But she also said that if you’re going to miss your date, then the other party should at least be informed of that. It’s not nice to be stood up, if you know what I’m saying.”

Dream opened his mouth to speak, stopped, and bit his lips. After a while, he asked, “What year is it?”

“It’s 1989,” Apathy said helpfully. He was being much less difficult than she anticipated.

“And the dates?”

“February the 22nd.” 

Dream breathed out in obvious relief. Apathy knew it was early. Likely several months early. Delirium wouldn’t have hurt her brother that way, and furthermore, Luciennce had said Dream would have time to think about it. 

She considered leaving him to it. Then again, he had been downright open today. Leaving right now might just make him close himself back up. 

Therefore, after it became clear that he wasn’t going to pursue this topic further, she switched to complaining at him about the catch-up work she had had to do as the result of her decades-long vacation. She told him about how humanity had been coping with his absence, how the various governments had been trying out several different policies to manage the problem of drug abuse. She told him of the rising awareness on the importance of mental health, of how there were now softer terms like therapy and counseling to destigmatize the need for its care, instead of the dreaded “asylums” or “psychic wards”. They were still not all the way there yet, she said, but they were trying.

Dream listened. His thoughts seemed far away.

Apathy made a point, after that visit, to come back every other week, under the guise of updating Dream on the state of the world. He didn’t ask her why she didn’t do that sooner. Neither did he speak, so she talked to fill the silence. Sometimes, Dream even mimed at her, requesting more details. At least he was grateful enough to pretend interest, so she kept at it.

Months past.

One day, Dream greeted her appearance with, “Is it June?”

“June 3rd, yes.”

“I am supposed to meet with Hob” , he said without looking at her, “at the White Horse Inn, on the thirteenth of June, in the evening.”

“Hob?” she prompted. She could work with just a first name, but would rather have the whole thing.

“Robert ‘Hob’ Gadling,” Dream supplied. “He’s a human, but he’s my friend. I suppose it would be impolite to, as you said, ‘stand him up’.”

Apathy felt her eyebrows trying to climb up. “A human? Whom you somehow manage to arrange a meeting with during the last seventy plus years locked up inside that cage?”

“He’s immortal. Older than he looks,” the words seemed to come easier the more Dream let himself talk. “A boon from my sister. We are supposed to meet every one hundred years to see if he still agrees to that arrangement. He hasn’t stopped surprising me yet.” There was a soft smile at the corner of his mouth. He was clearly fond of this man.

“And what do you want me to do when I see him? Explain to him your detainment?”

“No,” he said, “just tell him that I’m sorry I can’t make it this time, and that I will come to see him later.” And, as if he could sense her incredulousness, Dream added, “ Please, Apathy. There is no need to involve him in this. He has no power, and no obligation to get me out of a situation in which I have gotten myself.”

“Right,” Apathy said, keeping her tone clipped to not leak out any of the thoughts running through her head. “Ok. I’ll see to that.”

A human.

An immortal human, given a boon by Death. A human, whom Dream of the Endless admitted to consider a friend. Delirium’s words and intention made perfect sense now.

There were still ten days left. More than enough for Apathy to do her own research into the man and either confirm or disprove her assumptions. Still, from what little Dream had said, she had a feeling that Hob Gadling would not disappoint.

You said he hadn’t stopped surprising you yet. She thought. I have no doubt he will continue to do so this time as well.

Chapter Text

Hob Gadling, nowadays going by Robin Addeman, was not having the best day.

No, - he corrected while downing his fifth drink of the night, the hands of his wristwatch informing him that it was approaching the small hours in the morning, - he hadn’t had the best week. The jitter had creeped up on him while he was busy holding his breath, watching the calendar count down the days, and he hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything for several days now. His work had definitely suffered for it. The last four times, he thought wryly, had seen something of the same, but never to this extent. 

Even 1489 hadn’t been this bad; back then he had been on the fence about whether or not he would actually see the Stranger, leaning on disbelief, because while the odds for a man who wouldn’t die was low, imagine the odds for two. By 1589, he had known better; he would have sooner trusted that the sun wouldn’t come up the next morning than that the Stranger wouldn’t show. The Stranger had always given the impression of a constant: unchanging - for all that his outfits changed to fit the times - in his demeanor and his oddly formal etiquette, completely out of place in this inn where the common folks frequented and yet utterly oblivious to that discrepancy. The tides of time hadn’t at all moved him; more like it bypassed him altogether in its relentless march forward, leaving this Stranger as a rock that Hob had been all too ready to blindly cling onto.

Maybe that was what he did wrong, Hob sighed. Maybe he shouldn’t have assigned so much value to an illusion. Just because the Stranger was Hob’s rock didn’t mean that Hob was anything to him beside a passing whim. Sure, six hundred years seemed a bit long for a whim, but then who knew how old the Stranger actually was? Maybe it was just a blink in his eyes.

Well. Whatever this… thing between them was to his Stranger, it obviously had come to an end. Hob had been proven wrong on his assumption of it being friendship. He looked at his wristwatch again, sighed, and made to stand up.

“He didn’t stand you up, Hob Gadling.”

There was a girl sitting opposite him. For a moment, Hob froze, his mind not knowing what to freak out about first: the use of his true name, the fact that someone has been sitting there right in front of him despite him not being able to recall when she had sat down, or that invisible glow that he had learned to see sometime within the last six hundreds years that indicated she wasn’t what she seemed. Or, more precisely, was more than what she seemed.

“I’m sorry,” he laughed, scratching his head with just the right amount of polite embarrassment, “I’m afraid my mind was far away. I didn’t even see you there. Uhm, what did you say?”

The girl put her elbows on the table, fingers weaved together to lay her chin on, “You heard me the first time,” she said with a sweet smile that was just shy from mocking. “It’s not a smart thing to do, lying to someone like me. Some of us could do worse than calling you out on it.”

“Right,” Hob said with a swallow, “good to know.”

His soldier instincts made him look her over, as if he could access her threat level, as if it would help if he had to fight for his- well, not life. Maybe his freedom, or sanity. She looked young, a woman-child, somewhere from midteens to early twenties. She was wearing a dress, one of those knee-lenght things that highschool girls these days wear to proms, but simpler and considerably more elegant, with no frilly or bunch of fabric twisted into flower-shape. The dress’s purple color was strangely mute despite the glimmering glitter at her neckline and sleeves. Her hair was dark, short and curly, slightly voluminous yet nowhere near the lion mane that had been so popular among youngsters lately, and she wore no accessory that he could see. Somehow, Hob knew that even if she had walked into the pub during its busiest hours, no one would have given her more than a passing glance. Despite her foreign beauty and intriguingly regal bearings, something about this girl just discouraged attention. Even Hob, who knew better, found his eyes trying to slide over her instead of staying.

Nothing to see here, insisted his mind.

Dangerous! hissed six hundred years of experiences.

“My, my,” she said as he shook his head violently as if to dislodge something stuck in his ears, “you really are quite special, aren’t you.” Her smile had lost its sweet pretense and was just blandly amused now. “I do need you to focus, though. Let’s see if we can tone it down a bit.”

She didn't move, didn't do anything that Hob could see, and yet moments later he could see her… coming into focus? It was weird, this release of the feeling that he was looking at something he wasn't supposed to. Hob blinked, his eyes no longer trying to rebel against him, and looked at her.

"Let’s try this again," she said. "Hello, Hob Gadling. Sorry for the delay; there were far too many people in here for my liking. Your date this evening sent me."

"He’s not my date," Hob protested automatically, because the Stranger had stormed away at just the suggestion of friendship; just imagine what he would do if he heard that word.

The girl wiggled her fingers at him dismissively, "If you like."

"Right, uhm,” Hob’s brain hadn’t finished rebooting yet, so he blurted out the first thing in mind, “I’m sorry, it seems you have me at a disadvantage. You already know my name. What do I call you?”

At that totally normal question, she tipped her head aside, eyes wandering as if to buy time to think. Because that wasn’t a warning sign on its own.

“I can tell you my title,” she said slowly, almost reluctantly, “but it’s not really conducive to this conversation we’re having. There are… connotations to it which tend to shut down the line of communication. So I guess I’ll keep you at a disadvantage and continue to stay nameless this evening.”

“You can just make one up, you know,” Hob protested, because he couldn’t keep thinking of her as ‘the girl’ in his head, especially when he was quite sure she was older than she looked, “I’ve already thought of one of you as ‘Stranger’, I’m not calling you ‘Stranger 2’.”

Stranger two, she mouthed dubiously. Then, moments later, it turned into disbelief, “You mean you don’t know his name either. After six hundred years? ”

Hob didn’t nod, refused to let his mortification at that absurdity show on his face. Yet clearly he still showed something , because the girl abruptly slammed her face onto the table, muttering to herself. He caught some phrases, most notably “emotional range of a tea-spoon” and “not a match-maker”, decided it was only to his detriment to understand any of that, and temporarily turned his attention elsewhere.

“Amara,” finally, the girl raised her head, looking remarkably collected for what she had been doing literally seconds before. “Some call me Amara. Use that if you must.”

“Good to see you, Amara,” he replied reflectively. There was much less otherness surrounding her now. Hob wondered whether it was the recede of her ignore-me magical field or the head-desking that did it. “You said the Stranger sent you?”

Amara looked like she dearly wanted to comment on his use of “Stranger” , but pursed her lips to stop herself. “He asked me to tell you that he was sorry he couldn’t make it this time,” she recited instead. “Also, he’ll see you later to make up for this appointment.”

Hob almost sagged with relief. “Well, that’s, uh, that’s good. I mean, not that it’s good that he couldn’t make it, just… I really thought he was no longer interested in continuing these meetings. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

Amara looked at him consideringly, “You can put that fear to rest, then. He sounded truly sorry for missing this thing, whatever it is, with you. Anyway, Dr-, your Stranger , is more for the dramatics than that kind of passive aggressiveness. If he was truly mad at you, I assure you he could and would do much worse than standing you up.”

Hob laughed, “You sound like you know him well.”

She nodded, “We have been, let's say, co-workers, for a long time. We’re not very close, mind you, but more than enough for me to know what kind of person he is.”

This being, Amara , seemed much more open to explaining herself than the last mysterious being Hob acquainted himself with. For a moment, he entertained the thought of asking her the Stranger’s name. But no. Six hundred years had raised his anticipation, he wouldn’t be satisfied getting it from anywhere except his Stranger’s own mouth.

“Well, it’s good to know that he’s just busy and not still mad at me. Thanks for that. So, uhm, do you by any chance know when he’ll be free? So that I can arrange for free time. I do most of my work out of London these days.”

Something flashed in Amara’s dark eyes at that question, too fast for Hob to be certain it hadn’t been a hallucination.

“I’d like to know that too, actually,” she said, head tilted in feigned laxation. Her eyes betrayed that posture by watching Hob like a hawk. He took the bait anyway.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she drew out the words as if chewing on them, “he’s not exactly busy. More like, inconveniently indisposed. Has been for quite a while.”

“You can be hurt. Or captured.”

The memory struck Hob like lightning. He almost lunged forward; almost, because as soon as his muscles tensed up his instincts screeched and jerked him back, slamming him onto his chair with a deafening clatter. None of the few patrons still in the pub looked at them.

Amara had barely moved, eyes almost glowing as she looked at Hob with a dark intensity.

“Where is he?” Hob demanded, fists tight, “What happened?!” Be careful , whispered his prey instinct. He ignored it.

“Now that,” Amara didn’t even blink at his impotent aggressiveness, “that, I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Can’t. He pleaded until I agreed not to. Literally, said ‘please’ and everything.”

Some of the winds went out from Hob’s anger, leaving only bewilderment, “My Stranger? Said ‘Please’?” His imagination groaned,  burped out smoke, then gave up the ghost trying to produce that image.

Amara nodded empathetically, “I know, right? I was really shocked. ‘ There is no need to involve him in this. He has no power, and no obligation to get me out of a situation in which I have gotten myself. ’ His exact words.”

Somehow Hob could hear those words in his oldest friend’s tone, grave and with absolutely no understanding of Hob’s obvious regards for him. “Obligation,” he repeated, “he really has no idea how friendship works, has he.”

“Not a single clue,” said Amara. For a moment, they exchanged a look of commiseration.

So, Hob thought once his brain had cleared up the blinding rage that had suddenly come upon him, - enough for him to think, at least - recaps. What do we know?

His friend was ‘indisposed’. Had been for a long time, according to Amara, which pointed toward ‘captured’ rather than ‘hurt’, but possibly both. He had no idea what ‘quite a while’ meant to someone like Amara; worst case scenario, his Stranger had been captured shortly after their last meeting, which meant anywhere from a few months to just short of a century. Amara could talk to him, so if he was hurt it was not crippling, or at least no longer was - here, Hob’s mind shied away from the dozens of times he had suffered crippling injuries, the agony and fear and helplessness he had gone through until they healed. She just couldn’t get him out, for whatever reason-

“Wait,” Hob questioned aloud, “you want to set him free, right?” He hadn’t been talking to his friend’s captor, right?

Amara huffed, somehow both tired and amused, “I told you, we are co-workers. With him indisposed, a whole bunk of his job fell on me . So yes, I would very much like him to get out of there, preferably soon. Seventy-three years is already too long a time to play truant.”

Seventy-three years. Jesus.

Hob tried to focus on what was important, “Is he alright? Beside being trapped, I mean.”

Amara looked thoughtful, “He’s as well as the circumstances allow, I guess. The containment magic cut him off from his authority, his- source of power, you may say. That’s bound to have some detrimental effects. How much, I have no idea. I haven’t been around very long in the eyes of those like us, I have no such experience to draw on.”

Containment magic. “Manmade? I mean, the magic. Is it intentional?”

Amara’s lips curved with a smirk, “Now that, I can’t answer.”

Which implied ‘yes’. Hob huffed, putting a hand over his eyes to keep from getting irritated at her. She gave her words to the Stranger, he reminded himself, and had apparently found some sort of arbitrary loophole to give him even this much. Then again, she had also been exceedingly forthcoming in answering his questions…

He looked at her through his fingers, “Can I get him out?” Was this her intention by humoring him?

“I see no reason why you can’t,” Amara answered, which, yeah, was really promising, “provided you can find him, at least.”

“Can you help me find him?” because what would it hurt to try?

“No,” this time she said decisively, “that would be breaking my words to your friend.” Then, when Hob’s face fell, she added, “I’ve already told you enough, Hob Gadling. What you do from now on is your own choice.”

“This conversation is over.”

In the end, Hob had to admit that Amara was right: she had told him enough.

It took him a week. Granted, it was a week during which he barely slept, barely ate, but still. Just a week.

He started by looking through his stash of information on cults and other occult personnel. It was one of the things he started taking notes of on and off after 1689, once he had somewhat recovered from the traumas of losing his family, being tried as a witch and the following extended starvation. Later on, once he had regained some means and started to be accepted into parties of the upper class again, he began keeping more detailed notes of those kinds of rumors, if only to know what and whom to avoid. Looking back, Hob wryly thought, he should have started even earlier, as soon as he realized that magic and unearthly power were really a thing. But then back then he had been delirious with his supposed invulnerability, too enamored with all the possibilities that opened up when one was no longer being constrained by time or death. He had learned that lesson the hard way from then.

Well. None of that mattered now. Amara had given him a very specific timeframe to look into: seventy-three years ago, 1916.

The notes were limited to whatever rumors reached his ears, which was very limited indeed, since he didn’t dare to ask questions and risk drawing attention to himself. Moreover, they were also mostly about England since he kept returning to this country, and then even within England, he had mostly been concerned with London and the surrounding area, since this was the one place he was always going to come back to.

He could only rely on the fact that Amara hadn’t felt the need to mention a location, and prayed that this severe limitation wouldn’t stop him from finding his friend.

He reached Roderich Burgess and his Order about halfway through.

To be honest, the so-called Magus hadn’t been high on Hob’s list of suspects; that was why it took so long. He wasn’t even on the first page. There was no concrete evidence that he or anyone from his Order of Ancient Mysteries had been capable of any true feat of magic: no miraculous health recovery, no enemy mysteriously dropped dead, no member suddenly turned up with a fortune coming out of nowhere. Compared to the Constantines, who had long since been known among the elites as reliable - if cut-throat - exorcists and magic practitioners even if no one ever mentioned them in polite conversations, or Mad Hettie who Hob had personally knew for three hundred years, this Magus read more like a fraud swindling gullible people out of their money than an occultist with any real power. 

But then there was that rumor. The one that said Burgess had somehow trapped a demon in his basement, and that was how he got such good luck and gained his fortune. Plain poppycock, - the true practitioners sniffed - the Denizens of Hell didn’t work that way; those were much more likely to just slaughter Burgess and everyone around him instead, and the most he could have gotten out of them - if he was very smart as well as very lucky - was a single bargain. Except, Burgess began to attain significant means and got his name mentioned in those circles in 1916. And sure, it might just be plain old luck, since he then proceeded to lose all of it just ten years later, but still. The fact that his name became prominent enough to be mentioned as a rival of the Aleister Crowley suggested that he might have actually caught something.

Just to be safe, Hob decided to investigate that rumor more closely. With money gained from lifetimes of investments, he sent out feelers to the old Burgess house. He had been doing the same for a dozen of other noteworthy figures by now. This kind of aggressive investigation would have serious repercussions, Hob knew; he might have to make ‘Robin Adderman’ disappear early, but this was worth it. His Stranger was worth a million times this.

He came home, exhausted after meeting with a contact, and there was Amara in the middle of his sitting room, looking through his notes.

“You work fast,” she greeted, still reading through the reports. He got in, took a look over her shoulder. It was the one on Roderick Burgess.

Jackpot.

Chapter Text

“Wait. Wait a minute. Are you telling me that all I have to do is to break the circle?”

“No. I’m telling you that you’ll have to avoid the couple since they are magically protected, get pass an iron gate with a padlock, subdue the guards inside without causing too much of a racket, break the circle - preferably with blood since there’s a blood magic element in it, and put at least a crack in the one-inch-thick glass since I suspect it works as a second binding circle. But yes, the most important thing is breaking the circle. Once you get there, he can manage the rest.”

Hob stared. Him finding the right track seemed to have freed Amara from her vow of silence, and she had been enthusiastically answering every one of his questions about his friend’s circumstances ever since. In disturbing details. She apparently knew everything, from the floorplan of the house, where the couple slept, where they put the keys, to the guards’ shift schedule and their security protocols. The more she talked, the more his confusion grew. Finally, it blurted out of him: “Then what stopped you? ”

What he meant to say was, “Why haven’t you gotten him out?” Because the gate and the guards might be obstacles to Hob, but he seriously doubted they meant anything to Amara, who went unnoticed as a default state and who got into his house easily without the need for keys. He would have thought it was the magic preventing her, but then she had just spent half an hour ranting at him about what an affront to magic Burgess’s circle was.

Instead of getting confused by his out of context question, Amara merely sighed, “I offered. He said no.”

Hob couldn’t be hearing that right, “I’m sorry, what?”

She glared. “I learnt about your Stranger ’s detainment sixty-three years ago. The magical containment was abysmal, so I offered to let him out. And he , prideful and stubborn as he was, said no. ”

“He-”, Hob was speechless, “ why? ”

Amara shrugged, “You will have to ask him that.”

Hob didn’t know what to think. “Then why didn’t you just-?” he gestured wildly.

“ Because ,” the girl stressed the words like she’d like nothing more than grounding them to mush between her teeth, “he’s just pigheaded enough to actually wage war on me if I give him help when it’s already been rejected. Literally, as in with an army. Yes, he has one of those. So yes, I stood there watching him be a stubborn fool for more than sixty years . And I’m sick of it.”

Hob chewed on that. Then he thought back to 1889, to how the Stranger had reacted to a simple, totally innocent suggestion of friendship. He thought about the implicit assumption that ‘one such as’ the Stranger did not need friends. 

At last, he said, “As his friend, I feel like I should defend him, but. Yeah, that sounds just like him. My condolences.”

He patted Amara on the back. It was telling that she allowed him to.

“So how is this not breaking your words, exactly?” Hob finally asked while staking out Fawney Rig, doing last-minute reconnaissance before moving in.

“His request was for me to not get you involved,” answered Amara from… somewhere. She had dialed up her invisibility so that even his friend wouldn’t be able to notice her presence, to keep him from, in her words, ‘flipping out’. “You got yourself involved. This is just me keeping an eye out so that you won’t die doing it.”

“Can I?” Hob hesitated, “You know, die in there?” Could the magic of this place cancel out his immortality somehow? It wouldn’t stop him from going in, of course - his friend was worth at least a few death risks, - but he would have to reconsider the plan to “storm in and wing it” if he no longer had that little miracle going on for him.

“Good question,” came Amara’s disembodied voice. “The short answer is, you still can’t. Death is a gift given to every living being at the beginning of our lives, but you rejected yours, so it was taken back. You won’t get that back until you ask for it. However, the gift of fast recovery when you receive a mortal wound was given by your friend. The wards around this place siphon away his power, so if you get seriously hurt, you’ll be a sitting duck. I suggest you avoid that.”

“Good idea,” Hob shuddered. He understood maybe half of what she said, but yeah. Being caught out as an immortal in a cult’s headquarters was not his idea of a good time.

“Don’t worry,” she consoled him. “I’ll protect you as much as I can. Broken words or not, he will wage war on me either way if you get hurt in this ordeal.”

Hob clearly had been around Amara too much. That shouldn’t have sounded so comforting.

The break-in, when it came, was laughably easy. Hob smoothly picked the lock on the servant's entrance - he had had centuries to work on those skills - while Amara acted as lookout. Once inside, she didn’t even need to shield him with magic; the manor was so empty that the couple of times someone was nearby he could clearly hear them coming. He saw neither hide nor hair of Alexander Burgess or his husband before reaching the door that led to the cellar, and decided that that was a good thing. As much as he wanted to pay them back for his friend’s imprisonment, in this particular instance, the less complication the better. 

As expected, the guards were changing shifts right in front of the door. According to Amara, they didn’t used to be so lax with security; more than sixty years without a single incident had made even the most professional of them careless. Keeping to the shadows, Hob watched the old shift throw a set of keys to the new ones. The new pair didn’t even lock the door once they’d entered - overconfident , the part of Hob’s mind that used to be a mercenary hissed - so it was insultingly easy to sneak in after them. He waited until they were nearly at the bottom of the stairs before reaching out and snapped the closer one’s neck.

The guard at the front turned at the noise, but Hob was close enough to stab him hard in the guts with an elbow, and that one buckled with a grunt. The collapsing body of the first guard hindered Hob from following that immediately with his knife, so they scuffled for a few moments in front of the iron gate. The surviving guard obviously came from a military background; he caught Hob with a few hits hard enough to make him winded, but Hob was also seasoned and had righteous anger on his side, while the guard was both off-guard and out of shape. In the end, Hob managed to knock his opponent’s head hard onto the gate; he crumbled and stayed down, blood pooling on the ground where his head ended up.

Breathing hard, Hob straightened, and went looking for the knife that he lost in the scramble. He then used it to slit both men’s throats. While someone else could have settled on just knocking the guards out, Amara had warned him about the pills that might keep them going past the point of normal unconsciousness, and even without that, his plentiful experiences of fighting in wars had taught him to ensure that the enemies were not coming back up. In any case, as much as Hob tried to be a good person nowadays, killing these men had only brought him grim satisfaction: they had imprisoned his friend, sitting here day in and day out watching him be held against his will. This was the least of what they deserved.

“The keys,” whispered Amara in Hob’s ears, a little redundant since he was already reaching for them. It took him a couple of fumbling minutes to pick out the correct key and open the gate. It screeched as it was pulled on, the sound deafening on the background of absolute silence, yet Hob could barely spare that noise any thought. Not with the sight that had just reached his eyes.

Amara had told him about it. Both about the cage - “a fish bowl”, she called it - and the fact that they had taken everything from his friend before they locked him in there. It wasn’t enough to prepare him for the actual thing. His Stranger sat naked, looking even gaunter than his normal skinniness. His already-fair skin was even more pastel white under the overhead light. It was a heart-breaking sight. And yet…

And yet…

Hob put a hand on his chest, telling his heart to calm down. His eyes were stuck on the fae-like beauty of his friend, unobstructed by his normal garments. His legs moved a few steps forward without consulting him, until he was face-to-face…

… with pitch-black eyes, which had just snapped open.

He was never telling Apathy any of this, but for the last two decades or so, Dream had stopped waiting for a miracle.

In the beginning, he had thought his imprisonment could last no longer than a few months. Even before being informed of his captors’ incompetence at magic, he had believed unquestionably in his ability to find a way out unaided. Admittedly, a major part of that belief stemmed from the fact that he was billions of years older than these humans, as well as one of the most powerful beings this universe had ever known; the thought that he could be both out-smarted and out-powered by these creatures, whose combined experiences and knowledge barely made a blip compared to his own, was laughable. Arrogant, just as he had been accused of being by many, including his siblings who knew him best. He had never considered that they might be right.

After years of failing to find a way out, however, he had turned his expectation on the humans. Humans made mistakes. That was an indisputable fact which Dream, as someone who were even more familiar with human natures than humanity itself, knew only too well. The design of his prison was truly as ingenious as Apathy said, much as he would like to object to her choice of wording: the sphere, the circle, the guards doped up on pills and the wards all combined to constrain him on every level that he could think of. What little power he still retained were only enough to keep his physical form from failing - either Burgess was very confident that he needed neither food, water nor air to live or that was just yet another evidence of the man's ineptitude - as well as snatch at bits of conversations from his wardens, and only as long as he paid attention. However, anything with a human element in it could be subjected to human failings. The guards might forget to take their pills. Roderick Burgess might accidentally scuff away the binding circle in one of his visits. Alexander Burgess might discover he had a spine. One single blunder, that was all he needed. 

Instead of one of the humans making a lapse, Dream found himself failing to pay attention at a crucial time. Jessamy paid with her life for his folly.

Apathy’s visit had shed some light over the true nature of his predicament. Of course, of course there would be another party involved. And of course, said other party would be his own sibling. It made far too much sense, the second she alluded to it, he knew. The trap did not truly hurt him; nothing beyond temporarily cutting him off from the seat of his power, which was required to even detain him in the first place. To his least favorite sibling, this counted as nothing worse than a prank. He wondered, then, if Desire meant to have him beg. He would have tried eventually, they might have thought, once calling for Death yielded no response. He wouldn't have, Dream admitted to himself. Even if he hadn’t known about the part they played in this ploy, pride would have stopped him from calling at all, let alone for them. Once was more than enough. He would never have considered letting himself be humiliated like that again; not after Alianora. For all that he still loved her, that relationship failed in the first place thanks in no small part to his inability to forget the way she came into his life. Dream held grudges. Another of his follies.

There had been moments, during the following decades, in which he seriously contemplated taking Apathy up on her offer, if only because the way she offered it didn't chafe at his pride. But no. This was between him and Desire. As angry as Dream was about the damage this prank must have done to his realm, Desire was still his sibling; he would have restrained himself in his payback. There was no such consideration on the part of Apathy. If Desire found out about her involvement and made a move against her in offense, she would definitely retaliate in kind, and then things could escalate faster than anyone could step in to stop it. Dream didn’t know how such a strife would play out, what scale the damages could reach. He had no interest in ever finding out.

So he waited. Until his sibling noticed the damage they had already done. Until they gave up the game. He waited for a long time.

At some point, he stopped waiting.

He had been daydreaming.

Without anything to do, time in his prison sometimes stretched out into small eternities. Dream’s mind had not been built for idleness, filled from the moment he came into existence with countless other consciousnesses, which he had been tasked with looking after. Without them, his mind tried to tear itself apart to escape the silence. And so, whenever Apathy was not there - sometimes she went years, even decades between visits - and there were no guards in the chamber to eavesdrop on, he filled it with daydreams. Sometimes, they were memories - of the Dreaming, hanging out with Death, the rare happy moments where he and his siblings got along. Sometimes, they were fantasies - of the glass breaking, doling out his just revenge, returning to the realm which he yearned for like a missing limb. Sometimes, they were both - of breaking away from the force of the summon, Jessamy succeeding in her quest, Hob-

Hob.

These past weeks, past months really, he had been daydreaming of Hob. Their first meeting. His incomprehensible love for life. Hob defending him against Constantine. His warmth, his laugh. His offer of friendship.

Dream dreamt of accepting that offer. Instead of reeling back in offense, he saw himself agreeing with Hob, sharing his laugh, listening to his stories. And when the inn closed for the night, Hob stood and held out a hand, an invitation in his eyes. Dream dared to take it, and spent the night in Hob’s arms, in his home, in freely extended companionship. And when he was captured, someone went looking for him, someone-

Dream opened his eyes, and for a moment daydream and reality blended, and he truly thought he had finally fallen into Delirium’s realm…

For there was Hob, as imposing as a dream, as majestic as a vengeful angel.

“Hob?”

He must still be still dreaming. How else could Hob be here?

“Hold on,” this specter of Hob said, shaking himself. Dream was briefly reminded of the way the stone wyvern on top of his palace used to shake off dust after long periods of immobility. “I’m getting you out.”

My mind must have finally given out on me, he thought, but couldn’t help from straightening up, watching Hob scuff at the binding circle with his shoe, muttering curses when the paint failed to become smeared. He was much more alarmed when Hob changed tactics and cut a line into his own forearm with a long knife. The action did not make much sense to Dream, but this time when Hob smudged the line with his blood, something was different.

Dream gasped, mind bewildered but still eagerly reaching for the trickles of his power, which were becoming stronger and stronger the more of Hob’s blood was spilled. It was as if he could finally breathe - he still couldn’t, the stale air of the cage burning his lungs with every unnecessary inhale, but this was much greater a reprieve - and the Dreaming was still out of his grasp, but he could feel it now, would be able to drag himself back into it with a little more power. 

A dull ‘thud’ made him flinch, abnormally loud after decades with nothing but silence.

“Sorry,” the Hob specter told him, - or was it not a specter afterall? Dare he hope? - evidently having just struck at the glass with the handle of his knife. “Fuck, how can this thing be so fucking thick! Ok, ok, let’s see what else we’ve got.”

Hob looked around the chamber, eyes sweeping over before dismissing the plastic chairs meant for the guards - where were they? Had Hob incapitated them somehow? Or were they charging in at any moment now, guns waving? - He gave the metal desk a testing shake but found it unmoving, bolted down onto the floor. Hob then strided out of the chamber, and for a moment Dream panicked, thinking himself given up on, but then he returned with a gun in hand. He weighed it, then looked at Dream, eyes determined.

“Ok, this can get really loud. Cover your ears; here we go.”

Dream didn’t cover his ears. The gunshots were loud when Hob emptied the entire magazine at the glass, and Dream still cringed, but he found he couldn’t take his eyes off Hob. The glass had fractured under the onslaught, so once the bullets ran out, Dream said, “Allow me,” then put his hands on the cracked surface.

The glass gave out under his power, turning back into the sand it once came from. Dream dropped down onto the stone floor, and would have prostrated himself onto the ground had Hob not quickly grab onto him. The sudden movement left Dream unexpectedly winded; it appeared that the return of his power and restored connection to the Dreaming had not been enough to undo seventy years of damage. At least, not in so little a time.

Something settled over Dream’s shivering form. Cloak, his eyes informed him. Dreamstuff, his other sense whispered. At a thought, the material shifted form to cover him more completely. It’s presence soothed something in Dream that he hadn’t realized had been rattled.

“There, there, dove,” murmured Hob in his ear, “take it easy.”

In the back of his mind, Dream took notes of that endearment, but he had more urgent questions. “Hob,” he said, “how are you here? ”

“You missed our meeting,” answered Hob easily, his voice intentionally lightened with humor, “figured I should find you to make up for it.”

Dream might be riding the high of his rescue, but he was not stupid. Hob brought his cloak ; he was clearly more informed about Dream’s circumstance than he should be, “Did she tell you to come?”

“Oi, I decided to look for you on my own. Beside, Amara refused to tell me where you were.”

That meant she told him about everything else. Dream was unfortunately familiar with how Apathy worked. He knew she gave in to his request too easily.

He sighed, resigned, “She is here, isn’t she.”

“Ehm…” answered Hob, eyes looking anywhere but Dream.

“Apathy,” Dream declared, “I know you’re here. Show yourself, almost-sister.”

He didn’t look, but still knew when she appeared. The shift of her power felt like the most subtle caress of sand on his skin when he paid attention.

“Before you ask,” her voice came from ten feet away, a healthy distance in case he was angry and decided to lash out, “he did decide to go looking by himself. No encouragement from me needed.”

He should be angry at her deception. Whether or not she had technically broken her words, he kept Hob from getting involved for a reason. Kept her from getting involved for a reason. He might be having trouble recalling those reasons at the moment, but he had them.

“You don’t seem as irritated as I imagined,” Apathy had ventured closer, peering at him quizzically. She might have figured out that he didn’t have enough power right now to lash out at her.

“I find myself too relieved at the moment to be irritated,” Dream confessed. Also, his limbs were threatening to give out on him after so many years without any significant movement. His vision was beginning to swim.

“Right.” Hob, seeming to have noticed his weakened state, announced. He shuffled Dream a bit to give better support. “We should get out of here first, before plying each other with questions. And mind you, I have so many of those. For the both of you. For example, Apathy? ”

“I told you it had some uncomfortable connotations,” came Apathy’s reply. Dream had stopped listening. The rush of emotions in the last few minutes had exhausted him; he wanted nothing more than to nod off right now, right here, safe in Hob’s hold.

Then came a deafening noise of a gun going off. Somebody shouted:

“Oi! What are you doing?!”

Chapter Text

There were things Dream should be doing.

Such as moving to shield Hob, since he had his power back now and thus was actually the more durable one between the two of them. Such as using his sand, which he still had clutched in a tight fist. Such as calling out a warning, because there was a gun and he might not be moving fast enough.

Instead, he froze.

His companions did not make the same mistake. Before he could regain his wits, Hob had tightened his grip on Dream and shifted to put himself between him and the newcomer. It blocked Dream’s sight, so he couldn’t see what Apathy was doing, but he still heard her:

“Paul McGuire.” She intoned, her voice laced with enough power to make even him sudder. That voice had been known to stop even an Endless short.

“Relax,” Hob whispered into Dream’s ear, hands rubbing at his stiff back, “Amara’s got this.”

The grounding touch successfully pulled Dream’s mind out of the memory of Jessamy’s blood, but the fact that it had been necessary was a blow against his pride. He came close to shrugging Hob’s arms off, twisting to look at Apathy to forget his moment of weakness. To his friend’s credit, Hob easily accommodated his movements, leaving just a hand on Dream’s shoulder, an anchor point which Dream appreciated more than he would readily admit. Comforted despite himself, Dream settled in to watch Apathy deal with the interloper.

“Paul McGuire,” Apathy said, stalking toward the man, the full might of the Howling Desert in her voice and behind her eyes to freeze him where he stood. The gun he held, presumably taken from the dead guards outside, was still pointed up to the ceiling after his warning shot, but there was no reason to take that risk. At her call, the sand of the Desert pressed closer to the physical plane, appearing as an unnatural fog to anyone with a spiritual sense. This was a much more blatant use of her power than Apathy usually prefered, but she was done with subtlety for this evening. She had waited for this for decades; she was not going to drag it out any longer.

Behind her, she could hear Hob Gadling shifting uneasily. Understandable. The Desert was something every thinking, feeling mind trained itself at a young age to avoid looking at too closely, including those of the Endless. The mind invariably felt uncomfortable at seeing the apathy of others and actively avoided seeing its own; being forced to confront all which they had buried directly like this always unnerved people, some to the point of breakdown. At the same time, they couldn’t bear to look away from her either. Eyes glowing conspicuously with power, Apathy was a threat no sane man could simply dismiss. By experience, she knew that the conflicting instincts could be deeply unsettling, enough to drive the more fragile minds into Delirium’s realm.

The same was true to Paul McGuire. He seemed rooted to the spot, eyes widened with terror, but couldn’t look away from Apathy. His legs shook, hands trembling, barely holding onto the gun. As she approached, it fell from quivering fingers with a ‘clang!’, which no one took heed of.

“I had such high hopes for you, Paul,” Apathy said, voice still tinted with enough power to arrest attention even though she never raised it. “Sixty-three years. I truly thought that would be enough.”

“Who… who are you?!” he stammered, trying to recoil from her but collapsed thanks to his uncooperative legs, “I don’t know you!”

“And yet you have been giving me tributes for sixty-three years,” Apathy answered. “Look at me, Paul McGuire. Do you truly not know who I am?”

Compelled by her voice, he gazed into her eyes and got his first full view of the Desert. Ruthlessly, she laid out all of those tributes for him to see:

… coming down to the basement and shuddering, knowing that this was wrong wrong wrong …

… looking at the being’s naked form, wondering if he felt cold…

… listening to the guards’ senseless chatter, wanting to shake them and scream why don’t you see… ??? ...

… staring at the newly repainted circle, thinking If only I just …

“No!” Paul yanked himself back, shouting, trying to cover his eyes, “I can’t- He won’t promise to leave us alone! He’d kill us! He’d kill us both!”

But he was fully aware of the Desert now. Apathy’s gift was now behind his eyelids, impossible to ignore:

… looking at his love each morning, knowing how he suffered so…

… thinking of the being’s revenge, is living like this any better? …

… envisioning death with his love in his hands, at least then we’ll be free …

“Please… please, stop… ” Paul had broken down sobbing, mind fracturing beneath the onslaught of all that which he tried to bury. “I’m sorry… Please, I’m so sorry …”

Apathy felt no sympathy for him. It wasn’t her place. And even if the Dream Lord were inclined towards benevolence, sixty-three years was already too long to show regrets. Too long to beg for forgiveness.

At the thought of Dream, however, she hesitated. He would want to enact his own revenge, she knew. Paul McGuire was included in his list of enemies. And yet, the man was already hers. For all that she was returning his tributes to him one by one, they were still her tributes . Not to mention, he had seen the Desert in its entirety…

Dream had been remarkably non-confrontational this evening. She decided to risk it.

“Do you see now?” she whispered, “All you have given me? Sixty-three years of such precious gifts. Your compassion. Your love. Your hopes and dreams of a better life. Such dedication should be rewarded.”

“No…” Paul shook his head weakly, still retaining enough of a mind to understand the true intentions behind her praising words, “please, no…”

She ignored his feeble protests. “Sixty-three years you have stood by, watching a great injustice take place. Sixty-three more, you will do the same. From now on, until you both die, you will know your love. You will know when he suffers. You will watch his pains, feel his anguishes, learn his torments. You will be his only hope, the only one who knows the way to set him free.”

“You will watch him beg for death, and you will do nothing. ”

Her sentence delivered, Apathy pulled back, watching as the light in Paul’s eyes began to dim as her power sunk in.

“Let the punishment fit the crime.”

“That was discourteous,” Dream told her idly. “He was my prey.”

Apathy eyed the way he was practically cozying up in Hob Gadling’s lap. If he was offended at her prey-snatching, she couldn’t see it at the moment. Even with the wards broken and the full scope of her authority returned, the Desert afforded her no insight into the Dream Lord’s mind. He could be feeling uncharastically generous. Or he could just be too tired presently to contest her, and would demand retribution for this slight later.

Oh well. What’s done is done. She wouldn’t take it back anyway.

“You still have Alex Burgess and his cronies,” she told the Endless appeasingly. “Although I suggest you conserve your strength for now. The damaged connections will take time to recover; straining yourself so soon for a few humans is ill-advised.”

“Then what would you have me do instead?” said Dream, still unusually amiable. “If I don’t pull them into the Dreaming right away, they’ll scatter into the four winds by morning. I have better things to do than hunting them down.”

Was this a roundabout way of asking for help? Or was he giving her a chance to make up for McGuire? “I could make sure they stay put?” she offered uncertainly.

“Please,” he said simply.

Ok, then.

With the Desert still overlapping the physical plane, it was the work of just a moment to spread out its influence to encompass the house, dimming the sense of urgency in the inhabitants - Alexander Burgess especially. Until she returned to undo this layer of indifference, the most motivation they could work up would be to meet their basic needs. Running wouldn’t even cross their minds.

“Done,” she told him.

Dream was looking at her, his gaze indiscernible. “All of this, for one man?”

Ah. “Paul McGuire was mine. When I said he had been offering me tributes for sixty years, I meant it. In the old days, he would have been adorned as my priest.”

His eyebrows furrowed, “But not Alex Burgess?”

How could she even begin to explain the extent with which Paul had given himself to the Desert over the years? In the end, she simply said, “They were different.”

Dream seemed to understand enough not to press further. “You promised him sixty-three years,” he switched tracts, “along with Burgess junior. Am I to presume you meant for me to extend their lives as well?”

This time, Apathy scoffed. “As if you don’t already intend to do that,” she said. “With the wards supporting him gone, Alex has ten more years in him at most. Less, if the nightmares you will sic on him compromise his health. Are you telling me that you deem ten years enough time to settle your grievances?”

Dream tilted his head, then nodded with a sigh of acquiescence, “Truth be told, I have not considered that far. However, I can see your point. If Alexander Burgess were to perish so soon, my revenge would be incomplete. To give him and his lover more years to suffer their sentence is… agreeable. Poetic justice, given the bounty his father demanded from me. Very well. I accept your terms.”

She was not aware she had been negotiating. Pretentious bastard.

“Great!” inserted Hob Gadling, obnoxiously cheerful. It appeared he had had enough of being ignored. “Glad to see you two coming to an agreement, whatever the hell that was about. Now, since someone no longer seems to be dead on their feet anymore,” he received a glare from the Endless he was still manhandling for this, but gamely ignored it, “how about we blow this joint? I could really use a pint, after such an exciting day. And in the meantime, you can start answering my questions!”

Apathy was really starting to like this man. Especially with the way Dream was clearly vexed by his rough manner, but at the same time also charmed. This was clearly a match made in Hell; she would know, she had been there.

It would be interesting to see how it played out.