Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Calliope is standing by the window when the police arrive.

It’s a place she finds herself often, especially when Madoc is away, offers a chance to steal a look at the world she’s kept locked away from. The day has already been strange—shouting from outside, the shattering of glass, crashing sounds of destruction—because within five minutes of standing there Calliope had seen a fire begin to blaze in the distance. It was swiftly joined by another, then another, and still more until the sky glowed with the heat of it. There’d been something in the air, something she’d recognised, a previously favoured scent now gone so very sour. Morpheus’s power had been on the wind, a twisted version of it, somehow corrupted as if brought low enough that it could be reached by greedy hands.

A star grappled to earth, lessened as it fell.

Whoever had done it obviously had no idea what they really had, possessed even less of the ability to wield it properly.

The air stunk of it, putrid with rot, twisted and wrong—

There was nothing Calliope could do about it.

Instead she’d been standing there for most of the day, gazing out at the darkening sky, hands clenched into fists at her sides as she’d tried not to breathe in the smell. Calliope knows she wouldn’t have been the only one to have recognised this misuse of her former husband’s power. It means something. The Fates had said he’d been trapped, grinned even as they’d given no further details, goading her to ask. They’d taunted Calliope with what she had already known, the Fates fully aware that she’d been bound to Erasmus Fry a full decade after her former husband had gone missing.

The details are what she doesn’t have, the why and the how.

The who.

Had this been part of it?

Had it been these slimy hands, grabbing and twisting at the edge of her senses? Calliope may not be human but she has a mind like any other, dreams like any other, and she knows that Morpheus can reach into a God and pluck out whatever he pleases. He doesn’t need to be gentle, of course, but he can, has the skill to slip in unnoticed and tease a secret out.

This falsehood—this defilement of power—had done nothing of the sort.

It tried to sneak in, to violate, but it was nowhere close to the strength of Morpheus, to the strength of her, and Calliope refused to let it desecrate what had so far been left untouched. So she waits the hours it takes before the spell breaks, until there is a sudden snap, an abrupt change settling in the air like a sigh of relief. Calliope sighs with it, takes a deep breath, inhaling fully for the first time in hours, already beginning to wonder what might have changed as the wail of sirens can be heard outside.

There is hope—of course there is hope, there is always hope—and she wonders if this means she might be able to contact her former husband after all.

Calliope wonders if—

A crashing sound from below her. The groan of splintering wood. Voices and footsteps.

There are humans in the house.

Surprise pulls her gaze away from the window, makes her frown, suddenly uncertain, because this is something she’s never even considered a possibility. Is it a break in? Did someone see her face in Madoc’s window? Calliope doesn’t know, but she can tell that there is more than one intruder. She hears them find their way to her door, to the locks barring entry, and she listens to the muffled conversation as they debate how to get in. After a few moments she hears a singular voice, louder now, speaking to her through the door.

“Ma’am?” The speaker is undoubtably a woman. “My name is Jane, I’m with the police. Please don’t be afraid, we aren’t here to harm you. May I check that you are safely away from the door?”

It’s the first new voice to speak to her in decades.

The first to address her with respect, with care, to ask a question rather than demand an answer.

It is also the first woman.

The Fates don’t count, are and aren’t women, and they had refused to be so kind even when she’d begged them for help. They had refused to pay her such care. Calliope doesn’t know how these humans found her here, how it’s possible that human law enforcement even know that she exists, but perhaps this is the chance she’s been waiting for.

“I’m over by the window.” Calliope replies.

“Alright ma’am.” Jane calls back, something so very gentle in her voice. “Please stay where you are.”

They break down the door and it falls open in a shower of wood. Calliope doesn’t flinch, remains still by the window, watching as a woman steps carefully into the room. Jane is tall, with long black hair braided down her back, dark hazel eyes and an encouraging smile. She approaches slowly, doesn’t hover, doesn’t crowd, and Calliope wonders how she knows to do that. This world is one she knew, of course, but details like this haven’t been lived in a very, very long time.

Jane asks her name.

Calliope doesn’t know what this person sees when she looks at her—standing alone in a thin nightdress, lacking shoes—because Madoc had also looked and not seen a goddess. He’d seen a resource, a way out, something to serve him.

It doesn’t matter what this person sees, she is still—

“Calliope.” She replies.

There is something of surprise in Jane’s expression—probably because the accent with which she speaks is unexpected—but it doesn’t give her pause for long.

“It’s nice to meet you Calliope.” Jane smiles; a warmth within her that seems so new, a novelty in how it has been so long since someone has looked at Calliope like this. “Would it be alright if I walked with you outside?”

She nods.

The officer’s expression tightens when she realises Calliope doesn’t have any shoes. Jane turns back to the door, calling to those still waiting outside—Lenore and Cindy, Calliope later learns—and after a bit of back and forth Calliope finds herself offered a pair of sturdy boots. She is baffled by the gift, stunned even as she sits down to lace them up.

They tell her Madoc confessed.

Calliope knows it has something to do with this strange day, with the theft of Morpheus’s power, just as she knows that confession isn’t enough. The spell is still active; the binding is slimy, cold, the bond to Madoc a cage around her gift, a dark oily thing. It’s still there when Jane offers her a blanket to wrap around her shoulders, still there when she gently escorts her to a car outside. Calliope had followed Madoc from a house once, a coat wrapped around her just like this.

She was as free then as she is now.

“Please I need her, you can’t—”

The police officers expression remains stony. “Richard Madoc you are under arrest.”

They take her to a hospital.

It’s chaos from the moment they step through the doors.

Calliope has seen similar in the streets as they’d driven here—a world in turmoil as it tears itself apart, ambulances racing by, sirens blazing a trail of light—and knows it’s further evidence of her husbands misused power. There is a difference here though, somehow, noticeable from the moment she walks in, but it still takes Calliope a while to identify exactly what it is.

The hospital is loud, of course, and busy, filled to the brim as the wards are inundated with an unending stream of new patients. It is more people than Calliope has seen in one place in a very, very long time. There is a man on the floor, hands held over his leg, blood gushing around his fingers. Nearby, a woman holds a bundled up wad of cloth to her forehead. It’s soaked a dark red. There are more, many more, these are only two examples, two stories in this place that overflows with them. Even as that man is lifted up onto a stretcher, even as that woman is attended to by a gentle nurse, there are more people rushing through the doors, yelling for help or for people to move out of the way. It’s chaos.

Yet somehow it seems ordered.

It’s almost as if these humans—all the ones who work here, and even some that don’t—are gripping tight to hold it all together, as if they are digging their heels in and holding back the tide. She knows that it’s a fight; even as the staff are calm, because Calliope is old, very very old, and she can see the cracks they hide from each other. She can see the tears when they turn away, the split second of breaking before they turn back with a smile, because despite it all they are steady and sure.

They are hands that don’t shake.

Calliope looks closer.

It's a bright place; well-lit despite being sterile and impersonal, but the warmth Calliope finds is not in those dull, featureless walls. This place is built to be versatile, to stand through shaking foundations, and the people are too but they have something else. They make it what it is, this place of healing, this place of desperate hope.

It calms the wildness of the night.

And it’s unbeatable in the face of whoever had tried to corrupt them.

The ruby is definitely back in her former husband’s hands, Calliope knows, understanding what she sees even if she’s missing the why, and that matters too. The insanity that had caught these humans like a vice is gone, pressure released, and they’re left to deal with the fallout. She sees the certainty of that all around, the effect of it, the way it’s purified, the truth of what they really are reflected back at them rather than warped by a defective mirror.

Calliope sees the confusion, sees a mother holding her child, face stricken because she can’t remember how their arm was broken. It is for the best; Dream is interceding, soothing as far as his power allows, because this world is theirs and he won’t fix it.

That’s up to them.

“Sorry about the noise.” Jane says as they move towards the lifts. “We’ll get you somewhere quieter.”

The apology puzzles her.

Calliope realises she hasn’t been paying attention to the women accompanying her— too distracted by the activity around her, fascinated by it—but now she recognises concern in their faces. They seem conscious of the crowd, have kept a careful distance of space around her, and now they guide her through a suddenly quiet corridor.

They’ve somehow found her a private room.

The room is bare, a hospital bed and not much else, but it’s what she’s expecting and it doesn’t feel cold. It doesn’t feel empty. Calliope sits on the edge of the bed, watches as Jane smiles that same encouraging smile. The two other police officers are standing outside, stationed either side of the door, the women who had accompanied her here with Jane.

One of them had given her shoes.

“It’s only temporary,” Jane says apologetically, hazel eyes soft as she keeps her careful distance. “I’m sorry it’s not much too look at.”

Calliope smiles. “It’s fine, thank you.”

They wait together for the doctor.

It doesn’t take long for her to arrive, a blond woman with a soft smile who introduces herself as Annette, and Calliope finds it easy to smile back even as she feels more than a little out of her depth. She has no medical records, no identification, and Calliope cannot answer any of their questions regarding her health. Vaccinations? Prior conditions? The questions makes her frown. Even then, even with tired eyes from what has obviously been a long night, Annette does not push.

Instead she asks if she can run some tests.

Jane remains with her.

“Is it alright if I check your blood pressure?” Annette asks gently, this woman with golden blond hair, her eyes a shade too dark for jade. “And have a listen to your lungs?”

Calliope nods, lets the blanket slide from her shoulders and offers her arm when asked.

The constriction of the cuff is a surprise; more a novelty than something truly alarming, too alien to remind her of anything resembling human hands. Next some strange device checks her temperature, beeps, shows a reading Calliope doesn’t know how to interpret. Annette seems pleased, nods and makes a note, then asks if she can listen to her lungs. She is careful when she checks Calliope’s breathing; the stethoscope must go behind her, must rest on the bare skin of her back, and somehow Annette does it without having to leave her line of sight.

Fingers don’t even touch her skin.

There is a small pause, a moment of reprieve while Annette fills out some forms, but then she asks about sexual activity and Calliope responds truthfully even as she knows what is coming next. Jane’s encouraging smile is suddenly sour, suddenly makes her skin crawl, because there is a word bubbling up in her throat like bile. Calliope is almost sick with the repetition of it, this taunting prophecy, this constant scar, and when Annette finally turns to ask her gentle question Calliope feels her fingers clench into fists.

“Is it alright if we examine you further?”

“No.”

There is no shame in what has happened, Calliope holds her head high, knows that Madoc has not broken this goddess. The cruelty of the spell is what it takes by force, the fight it doesn’t even allow her. It’s defeat without entering the field, without raising a sword, the laws that bind her ensuring a loss by default. And yet she’d still left marks on him in return, drawn first blood, and it might not have even given him pause but that victory had been hers.

It’d been a choice.

Just like this; her choice to refuse an examination, and Calliope can’t help but sit there with blazing eyes and a straightened back, regal as she stares Annette and Jane down.

A queen need not ask twice.

A goddess rarely has to ask once.

Madoc hadn’t cared for that; had been made brave by the trap that rendered her bound to him, tempted by the power, the same greedy selfishness so characteristic of the Greek Gods of old. She’d known he’d only change his mind if fear could find him. And yet it isn’t fear that gives these humans pause, isn’t pity either, and even as she sees the surprise—the truth of how intimidating they find her—Calliope knows she has not needed to use brute force.

Annette merely nods her head, backs off, easy as anything. As easy as if all she needed was to hear the word to listen to it.

It’s the first ‘no’ to be respected in decades.

It’s the first touch that isn’t forced.

“That fucking piece of shit Madoc.”

“Agreed.”

There are more firsts.

A nurse—short, dark haired, smiling and asking her to please, call me Holly—brings her a tray of food. She seems exhausted, dark circles bruising the skin under her eyes, proof of how much this day still harries her, but despite it all the smile is bright.

Undimmed.

Holly asks if Calliope knows her clothing size, smiles in reassurance when she stares more than a little blankly, expression turning thoughtful. She leaves to hunt down some clothes, somehow unwilling to have Calliope change into one of the hospital gowns, and when she returns Holly hands her a pair of pyjamas with a triumphant smile. They are long, soft, warm, and when Calliope puts them on they cover more than the slip of a dress ever had. There is a moment where she stands there—silken dress in hand, feeling swept up in a moment of transformation, of freefall turning to flight—and she understands why Holly had been so adamant.

It’s the first new thing she’s worn in years.

There is a vicious pleasure in tossing the dress aside, discarding it, a freedom in knowing she’ll never wear it again. Calliope is left to sleep and sleep she does, wrapped in those borrowed clothes, and she finds that for once she doesn’t wake in the night.

Calliope no longer needs to worry about someone coming through the door.

Holly brings her some more donated clothes in the morning, still second hand but obviously well loved. The choice of what to wear is like an old friend returned, a dignity so long out of alignment now slotted back into place. Perhaps it would have overwhelmed her if she were human, but Calliope is a goddess. It invigorates her, fills her with warmth. She picks light grey jeans, high waisted, skinny but with the slightest bit of give. Comfortable. The jumper she chooses doesn’t match the weather, too thick to compliment the summer warmth, but Calliope likes the way it falls over her fingers.

She ignores the tug of Madoc’s spell, the grope of it within her, a clawing defilement, because she is already considering what to do.

Calliope already knows what she can do.

Holly asks her what she likes, if there is anything they can bring for her.

“Books.” Calliope says.

The nurse brings her a bag full of them.

Calliope spreads them out on the bed, so very careful, unable to stop herself from smiling as she trails the tips of her fingers over the worn covers in gentle reverence. It’s easy to see that they are well loved; obvious from the wrinkled paper, the bend in the spine, because clearly they’ve been read more than once. Calliope breathes it in, something in her straining to reach out, to connect, and there is nothing strong enough to keep her from feeling the sheer amount of care that went into writing each one of them. She senses the imprint of the authors yearning soul, smiles at the echoes of hours spent swearing while typing, the years spent solely focused on getting it exactly right.

No, Madoc’s binding can’t keep her from this, from the words, from the living thing that began as a tentative idea, now blossomed into its own eternal spring. There is warmth here, there is light—

There is love in every page.

It can be felt still; in what has always been a partnership with the reader, a hand outstretched in invitation, a whispered ‘come journey with me’, wonder and excitement shared like a beacon in the dark. The echo is twofold. Calliope hears something for every time they’ve been read; the gasps at the twists and turns, the sighs at a well-chosen word, knows all the tears that have fallen onto these pages.

Calliope looks up. “Thank you.”

Holly beams at her, bright like a little sun, something achingly familiar shining within her, and Calliope wishes she could reach out to her too. There is a chain around her neck, a leash that pulls her up short, the trap of Madoc’s binding holding tight with all the possessive jealousy it can muster. Calliope won’t let it ruin this, settles with a deep breath when Holly leaves her to read, sits crossed legged on the bed. There is a moments indecision on what to pick, hands hovering, but as soon as she starts she’s absorbed entirely.

It feels good to read again.

“Enjoying the books?”

It’s Holly.

Calliope nods. “Very much.”

“Do you have any requests?” The nurse asks, fidgeting where she stands, as if embarrassed by her own question. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask before, but I can bring some more for you to read, my husband has a pretty extensive library.”

Mine did too, Calliope thinks.

“Do you have a favourite?”

The smile that blooms bright is becoming familiar. Still so genuine. “I’ll bring it in.”

Calliope is reminded of human kindness.

She knows, of course she does, but it’s been so long and Calliope had spent so many years secluded from the world even before Erasmus Fry had bound her. Now she can see it, live it again instead of having to chase its recollection, immerse herself in it instead of having to sneak glimpses from a window. Now it’s proven, a theorem rather than a guess, a scrawl of calculations across a blackboard proclaiming its undisputable truth.

Calliope no longer has to rely on trust to know that some people are good.

“Greek?” Confusion. “I’ll liaise with their law enforcement and see if we have any matches. This could be international.”

Jane returns just after Calliope has had lunch.

“Madoc is in custody, he’s being investigated, but the Detective in charge of the case will want to meet with you.” Jane smiles encouragingly as she pulls up a chair. “I’ve worked with him for a few years, he’s a decent bloke. Though you don’t have to speak to him if you don’t want to, I’m going to be making the initial report anyway.”

Calliope appreciates the gesture.

“Madoc won’t hurt you again,” Jane adds, promises, holds Calliope’s gaze boldly because she means it. “He’s going away for a very long time.”

“I am not yet free,” Calliope replies.

The words are out before she’s thought them through, bubbling up as a fact. Not a protest. A statement.

Jane’s face falls—

Calliope understands the confusion; Jane doesn’t know, has no reason to believe there is any danger, cannot feel the spell that still binds her so tightly. It’s power defiled, forced to serve another. This is creativity tarnished. It’s supposed to be a gift. She’s supposed to choose. It isn’t sustainable. There is only so much that can be taken, her power incompatible with being used like this, because like Erasmus before him Madoc’s well will dry up. Even if he finds her again, traps her back in that house, the books will start to lose their lustre, the ideas tarnishing, revealing the rot beneath. Madoc can’t steal true inspiration.

He can’t cheat to it.

Just as he can never take the body that is, and always has been, hers.

Jane thinks her words are a sign she’s giving up. Calliope doesn’t know how to tell her the truth of it, because she may be out of the house but she isn’t out of the trap, and she is determined to take this half measure over the line. Calliope isn’t scared, this isn’t the same position she’s been in for decades. This is hope on the edge of a knife. There have never been chains to hold her down, but there have never needed to be, because even the lock on her door had been for show.

Calliope remembers walking out of Erasmus Fry’s house with her new jailer and knowing she could not run.

They think she is free.

Calliope knows she isn’t.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

“Is it alright if I ask you some questions about what happened?”

Calliope nods. “Yes.”

Jane tells her they will stop at any point if she becomes uncomfortable, queries if she’d like someone else to be in the room with her, and Calliope asks if it would be alright for Holly to sit in.

They begin with Jane asking if Calliope knows how long ago she was taken, her full name, her age, and when she can’t answer there is no judgement. Jane simply moves on. Holly smiles encouragingly when they ask what Calliope can remember of arriving at Madoc’s house. There is surprise (disgust, the word is disgust) when they learn that Madoc isn’t the one who had first trapped her.

Do they think victim when they look at her?

Calliope doesn’t know, she doesn’t think the insult of the word quite fits the gentle way they treat her. It’s semantics, meaning, something so easily changed depending on whose mouth says the word. Perhaps they use victim to acknowledge what happened to her, perhaps they see the part of her that hurts, wrap it up in that one word rather than refuse to see it’s ache. They treat her with dignity, these humans.

They treat her with warmth.

It’s not the wrath of man, not that ugly thing, more the cleansing fire of a mothers love. It is hard and soft all at once. It reminds her of what she’d had for Orpheus.

It reminds her of the space her son has left behind.

Jane asks questions about who ‘sold’ her, frowns when she explains he was another author, and when Jane asks for details Calliope doesn’t see the point of holding back. Even if she can’t tell them the why, she can still explain the what. Calliope tells her what happened, what both men used to do, and the horror is both gratifying and uncomfortable in equal measure. There is anger too; Holly has stiffened beside her, Jane’s jaw has tightened, and oh how they are enraged on her behalf, a righteous fury blazing in their eyes. It’s somewhat muted with professionalism, of course, but empathy prevents them both from turning cold, and Calliope is glad for it.

They condemn with it, condemn what was done to her, because the Fates had said she was lawfully bound and if that’s true then she can’t be a victim.

If that is true then it wouldn’t be wrong.

But it is, they know it is.

The knowledge that someone finds what they’d done repulsive soothes something, makes her feel like she is joined by other voices, other hands reaching to hold her own, these women standing beside her to condemn what has always been unforgivable.

Madoc was monstrous.

Erasmus Fry had been far worse.

“How long do you think it’s been?” The person asks, trying to figure out what might narrow this down. “Could we track dental records?”

A nod. “We’ll wait till she’s ready to let us gather that information. For now focus on missing persons reports.”

Everyone has a story.

Dream may be the Prince of them, may have endless copies in his equally endless library, but they belong to her too. Calliope can inspire them; tug the glimmer of a what if into a glittering burst, set it free, and know that soon a new book will appear in her former husband’s realm. Calliope had used to find joy in that, in wondering whether he’d smile as he read, if he’d add his own delight to hers. If he’d laugh. It hadn’t quite soured; remained a reminder of where they crossed over, where Dream and Calliope would always meet, because no matter the space between them her gifts will always find their way to him.

Calliope wonders if Oneiros ever stopped reading them, if he locked them away, if somewhere within the Dreaming they sit gathering dust. She finds herself thinking of how it feels to him—the touch of her mind on his, carried through the medium of humanity, her fingers trailing ripples in the subconscious he holds within him.

It’s one of the things she never asked.

Calliope wonders at the answer now.

For a long time she’d stopped, entered a state of purposeful isolation, not wanting to let Oneiros get so much as an impression of her. There are other things like her, she knows, other beings that can effect a human mind, either to manipulate or inspire. He must feel them too, just as she can feel him; Dream’s own presence sang in mortals each time she gave them inspiration, blooming bright, that glimmer of him clinging—

That favoured scent enduring.

Calliope can’t find him now, can’t reach out to the humans around her, not with the chain of Madoc’s spell, had only felt the ruby’s power because of the deliberate abuse of it. Even if she was free it wouldn’t be so easy, to feel him again, because he’d have to reach for her—

She’d have to reach back.

“Is she comfortable? There was nothing of hers in that house.” A thoughtful pause. “Let me have an ask around.”

Calliope ventures out of her hospital room.

The first time it’s a quest for a shower. Holly shows her where it is; hands her towels and fresh clothes, shampoo and a sweet smelling soap, and then quickly dashes off to attend another patient. There is an apology in her eyes, a guilt without true cause, and Calliope almost doesn’t understand why this human thinks that she is doing something wrong.

“You are needed.” Calliope says gently, stood half in the bathroom, half out.

“I will be back.” Holly promises.

It’s another first, to stand under the spray of delightfully warm water, to let it run through her hair and down her back. Soon she’ll no longer have this definition, no longer be positioned by a then verses now, the novelty of it lost. There will be a freedom in that. The same freedom Calliope feels when she redresses, returning to those soft grey jeans, pulling on a different jumper this time. The repetition does it’s job, the choice no longer quite as special, and Calliope smiles at how mundane it will soon feel.

She doesn’t linger in her room.

Calliope is curious, eager to test this lack of confinement, the thrill of knowing that she won’t be kept locked within four walls. The ward is packed full, just as she suspected, and Calliope finds herself walking past the large bays of beds, trying not to be rude as she looks around. The noise feels nice, the rush of activity like a pulse, and even as she can see the hurt Calliope still marvels at this place of healing. Of respite. Refuge. There is something here that whispers sanctuary, that opens up its arms and says please, rest here.

She passes a woman leaning against the wall, trying to reach down to pick up a piece of paper laying on the ground.

“Let me help you.” Calliope says, turning back. She reaches down—

It’s a photograph.

The image beckons, smiling faces and bright eyes, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, a dozen or so people clustered together to mark some unknown occasion. Perhaps a birthday, a graduation, or maybe even some other milestone.

It’s a moment of obvious joy.

“Thank you dear.” The woman says; a bruise across her cheek, a cut bisecting her brow, pale and wan with deep circles under her eyes. The hand that takes the photograph shakes, wrinkled, the fingers are delicate, but the smile is like Holly’s.

Undimmed.

Calliope helps her back to her room; takes her hand gently to guide her, careful not to hurt her, the skin so very soft beneath her own. It’s almost paper thin. She draws back the covers of the bed, waits while she climbs in, then tucks them back around her with a smile.

“That’s better,” The woman says with a small sigh, looks up, pauses for a moment as if to take her in. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“It was no trouble,” Calliope replies. “I am Calliope.”

“Would you sit awhile?” Elizabeth says, her eyes still searching Calliope's face as if reading words, something within her reaching out. “My grandson brings me sweets, you see, and I find myself in the mood to share.”

Calliope smiles, sits.

Elizabeth offers some of them to her first, insistent, and Calliope stretches out her hand and indulges them both. Sugar coats her fingers as she eats. Elizabeth smiles, relaxes, explains that she’s not quite sure why she’s in the hospital at all. Calliope asks about the sweets, then listens as Elizabeth tells her about her grandson. There is worry here, worry and pain and love—joy too, an intent to make her laugh, victory brightening aged eyes the first time Calliope is persuaded to a chuckle—all of it unfolding the more she speaks. Calliope can hear it, see it, feel it; a child’s stumbling first steps, a moment of courtship gone wrong, a wild chase to catch a soon to be leaving train. Elizabeth might not even know why she is talking, sharing with a stranger, but Calliope isn’t just a goddess of inspiration. She’s a voice for all that’s untold, an amplifier—

A beacon.

“Oh I’m so sorry, listen to how I’ve been carrying on!” Elizabeth laughs, startled though unembarrassed, eyes bright even as she seems momentarily confused. “I don’t know why I told you that.”

Calliope does.

She smiles. “I’m thankful for your trust, I enjoyed our talk.”

“Would you like to speak again?”

Calliope looks at her, not quite a double take, something else that becomes a moment of careful examination. She finds those wrinkled hands first, the grey hair, the lines around the eyes that signify her age. There is a whole life within this woman. And yet she is so young. Calliope marvels at it; how young they all are, Jane and Holly and Annette, this Elizabeth, but it doesn’t mean naivety. They aren’t inexperienced, aren’t strangers to pain, they are simply fresh. New. They are the mayfly—delicate, gossamer winged, living for only one day—fleeting, a moment, so infinitely precious. It’s barely a second in comparison to her own lifespan, barely an instant, so easy to feel like nothing—

Calliope doesn’t think they are nothing.

“I believe that would be quite wonderful.”

“Then next time I shall be sure to have something new to share.” Elizabeth is earnest as she pats Calliope on the hand, catching her just as she moves to get up. “Go gently dear.”

“I will.” Calliope replies, touched by the warmth in those aged eyes.

She finds herself feeling lighter as she returns to her room, even as all that she has been told settles within her, because this is a story that grounds rather than chains. Calliope thinks maybe she understands it, the difference, the reason why these humans shine so bright, because as an immortal she is a monument withstanding the erosion of a moment.

These humans are the moments challenging time.

“Detective? You’ve got to see this.”

Someone shuffles closer. “Is that—”

“A Go Fund me? Yeah.” A click of keys. “My wife called about it. Started soon after the news broke that we were asking for donated clothes.”

Jane returns later that day.

Aside from the one detective she has yet to meet they are only sending women to speak to her. Calliope knows it’s deliberate, knows there are more working behind the scenes. This is a choice to comfort her. They want to bring in others—advocates, social workers, volunteers from the community—all of them people to help her readjust. There will be aid to help her get back on her feet, to help her rebuild her life, help for when Madoc is put on trial. There will be more questions then, they say, honest and frank, but only when she’s ready.

“Can you tell us anything about where you used to live?” Jane prompts with deliberate delicacy. “Your family?”

The Gods are mostly gone, dead or hidden, as are her sisters. Regardless, Calliope knows better than to try and explain, knows the best course of action is to pretend she doesn’t know.

“Ok, that’s alright,” Jane nods, gentle but not condescending. “We’ll help you track them down.”

“That’s very kind.” Calliope replies.

She mentions her husband.

“You—”

They seem shocked.

After a moment she realises they think she’s talking about Madoc.

“His name is Morpheus. We were married—before.” Calliope says, quick to correct the assumption even as she tells a small lie, knowing enough about humans to refrain from clarifying that they are no longer together. “I have not seen him in some time.”

They ask questions she can’t give the answers to.

Calliope has to lie.

She doesn’t know where he lives, where they lived, where he is now or even how old he is, knows only his name, and what he looks like. Even then Calliope wonders how to describe him, pauses a beat too long, doesn’t know how much of himself Morpheus will allow these mortals to see.

She plays it safe.

Tall, dark haired. Thin. Pale. Light blue eyes. Calliope sees suspicion on their faces, not threatening, not at her, but she realises too late that she’s given the impression that her husband is somehow in a similar situation to her. Their human minds have made assumptions, connected dots and extrapolated, and from the information they have they are right, but the information they don’t have makes them very, very wrong.

“We’ll find him.” They say.

Calliope knows it will be the other way around.

“Another victim?”

“Looks like.” There is resignation in the tone. Determination. “A male this time, currently still missing.”

She does not know his moods.

This could backfire, the Fates hadn’t cared to void the laws that trap her, hadn’t even wanted to find a way around it. Lawfully bound, they’d said, and Calliope had thought that they were right even as she’d been certain of the unfairness of it. Dream had been the only other hope. Is still the only other hope.

He may yet decide to leave her trapped.

Cruelty won’t be the motive for it. He was trapped too, left by his family to escape imprisonment alone, and it won’t have felt wrong because it’s the way of immortals like them. It is custom. As neutral an action as a handshake, a nod to a passerby on the street. Calliope has already done the same to him. The Sleeping Sickness had been more than a sign, had been a message clear as day, the rumours of the cause reaching her even as far removed from humanity as she’d been at the time. There’d been no hiding it, no obscuring it, an Endless disappearing made waves that reached even the farthest waters.

Morpheus had been missing. Calliope hadn’t been concerned.

It hadn’t occurred to her to be.

Even if it had Calliope genuinely doesn’t know whether she have thought to look. This would make the difference; calling him would change things, breach that neutral realm, and Calliope needs to decide what she’s going to say if he refuses to help her. There are things she can fall back on if he does, hits to his pride, reminders of the vows they made to one another.

Duty has always been so very important to him.

It’s easy to get a pen and paper.

Finding a candle is slightly harder.

The hospital won’t allow a fire hazard inside the rooms, has safety protocols in place to reduce the risk of fires, but Holly has another idea. She doesn’t even ask Calliope why she’s making the request. The nurse takes her to a balcony instead—this is a smoking zone, she explains, handing her a lighter—leaves Calliope alone with only the promise that she’ll be waiting for her inside.

For a moment Calliope stands there in the dark.

The offer to Madoc had been genuine.

She would have given him a book in exchange, more than one, in fact, would have inspired him if he’d only asked. Calliope had seen him weighing up the price—her freedom against the guarantee of fame and riches, mistaking the chain held in his hands for a lifeline—and had seen exactly how little he considered her worth. Madoc wasn’t willing to risk not getting what he wanted even if it meant doing the right thing. It was brutal, a betrayal, confirmation that Erasmus Fry wasn’t a fluke, because Calliope was forced to watch how he balanced the scales. She remembers Madoc coming to the room he’d locked her in, cold determination in his eyes, no moment of hesitation as he’d reached for her—

Calliope remembers watching Madoc decide that what he did was justified.

It doesn’t make it true, of course, but truth makes little difference when the decision isn’t in your hands.

Now, every decision very much is.

Calliope lights the candle, watches it flicker, then burns the piece of paper with her former husband’s name written upon it. She watches as the flames devour it, as it curls and blackens, the ash now carried by the wind. Her message gone.

And with it—her call.

Calliope looks out over the city, breathes it in —the flickering lights, the darkness smooth and deep, the fires long since put out—and wonders at the duality of it all. The damage is still visible, the aftermath of Dream’s ruby a wound that will be slow to heal, and yesterday she’d stood staring out of Madoc’s window as the whole world seemed to burn. Now she wonders how she’s here; how in the midst of such destruction she has only found gentle care, how in the aftermath of such pain these humans roll up their sleeves and get to work. Rebuilding.

Growing.

There is so much more to them than Madoc.

There is another hope, then, because in them she can still see so much of Dream, there from the very first moment she stepped into this hospital. In them she can see the link, knows he holds these kind minds just as close as he’s ever held the cruel ones. It’s familiar, something nice to be reminded of, because this is what Calliope remembers of him so fondly. Even in the dark, Calliope hopes she believes she knows what he is. She hopes she’s right—

She hopes that favoured scent still lingers.

Eventually Calliope exits the balcony, candle blown out, and greets the Holly with a soft smile. Together they walk back to her room.

Another nurse brings her dinner.

It’s someone she hasn’t met before.

“I’m Amy,” They blush, shuffle uncomfortably, a woman barely fully grown, eyes a soft caramel. “You might think it a little silly but I thought it could brighten up the room.”

Amy gives her a tiny toy.

It’s a small stuffed rabbit.

Calliope smiles as she reaches out to touch, feels the softness of its synthetic fur, this piece of comfort offered by someone she’s never met. There it is again; it’s the clothes, the books, the sweets she shared with Elizabeth. Calliope is reminded of abundant, cloying, luxury, the piles of extravagant gifts Madoc had given her.

Funny how these small things outdo them all.

The King of Dreams walks into a hospital.

He asks to see his wife.

There is a someone at her door, knocking gently.

Holly’s voice is hesitant. “Calliope?”

Jane is with her. She already knows what they’ve come here to say, who they’ve come here to introduce, because Calliope can feel Oneiros at the edge of her senses.

“Yes?” She replies, trying not to let her trepidation show.

“There is someone here to see you,” The nurse says slowly, tentative, and Calliope can tell she is unsure. “He says he’s your husband.”

Calliope allows herself a smile. “Morpheus.”

“Yes.” The nurse seems relieved.

“He matches the description you gave.” Jane says carefully, something unsure hiding in her eyes. “But we need to make sure. Is it alright if I bring him in?”

“Yes.”

It’s obvious why they are so suspicious; they haven’t called anyone, haven’t started to search, and Calliope is sure they haven’t had time to even announce that they are looking. They need to make sure this isn’t a trick, someone masquerading as the person she’d mentioned, and she can see they are still so very concerned by the fact that she has a husband at all. They don’t know what it means. Calliope finds that she might not know either, isn’t certain what he’ll be when he arrives, still doesn’t know which Morpheus will walk through this door.

It’s been a long time.

There is so much between them, between then and now.

Morpheus—Dream of the Endless, the King of Dreams and Nightmares—is accompanied into her room by the same officer who found her in the house. It’s obvious what she’s thinking, obvious from the stance, from the way Jane can’t help but hover. Suspicion has become certainty; she believes they’ve found another potential victim, someone who’s been hurt, now wishing to protect him just as they want to protect her.

Dream doesn’t even notice.

Those starry eyes seem only to have space for her.

What a rare thing that is, Calliope thinks with more than a little spite, more than a little wonder, to be the centre of the universe within those fathomless eyes. There is so much of it, after all, so much he must contain lest every one of those stars goes out.

It would not suit him, to collapse into a black hole.

“Calliope.” Dream says softly.

Ah, so this is what he is today.

Calliope finds herself relieved, insecurity slipping away, unable to help the smile that grows at the sight of him. It relaxes her; the soothing timbre of his low voice, the luxurious quality of it, the way he seems to savour every word before moving on to the next. This is different to how they parted, this is different to how she thought he might have greeted her.

The voice has surprised Jane, that Calliope knows without even having to look.

“Morpheus.” She replies gently. “Your ruby is gone.”

Oneiros smiles. “I no longer need it.”

There will always be a bitterness between them—something to accompany what used to be so very sweet—but it’s without tension. It’s a flavour not a soured taste. Wine that’s aged a certain way. There is a sharpness in them both, a compliment, a set of jagged pieces that line up just as well as when they were both smooth. Emotion can be such a stable thing when you are a god, even accounting for an immortals extremes, and Calliope’s own ire has long since turned to stone within her. In a human it would burn out, burn them, but in her and Dream it is merely a tickle, a flame to warm ones hands.

A dash of spice to add complexity to an existence that stretches past the lifespan of a star.

Calliope observes him.

He is playing at very nearly human. The kohl lined eyes, a rim of black, subtle but an obvious highlight. They are so very pale; that glimmer of light within them, that mere hint of cascading stars speaking to just how much he is holding himself in. The rest is dark, just like the eyeliner, the black of his clothes, the upturned collar of his coat a contrast to the inhumanly white skin of his neck, the wild locks of dark hair.

“Calliope.” Dream is solemn and serious as he repeats her name, quiet, a presence that doesn’t need to be boisterous to command. There is a sudden burning in his eyes, a sun contemplating going nova. “You called for me.”

She can tell he’s angry but it doesn’t scare her, Oneiros’s words are gentle.

His tone is soft.

You came, Calliope thinks, you—

Dream approaches at a pace so light he makes no sound—the anger somewhere else within him now—disturbing nothing of the air around him as he moves, the opposite of a threat even as this is still the being that rules every nightmare. It’s the other side of a coin; a predator has stalked prey by moving just like this, as stark as the contrast to the twisted version of his power, liquid sunlight instead of that putrid bog. Calliope’s former husband—the father of her, their, son—sits down beside her without even shifting the blanket draped across her knees.

Morpheus waits for permission, does not so much reach for her as make an offer of his hand, yields it to her fingers with such softness it’s like he’s the one being held in her grasp.

The police officer is staring with slightly wide eyes.

Jane isn’t at all sure of what to make of him.

No one ever really is.

Chapter Text

Jane ends up stepping carefully around him.

It’s partly because he’s so thin. Not frail, never frail, but Calliope can see the assessment Jane makes because it’s still inhumanly unnatural. They look at birdlike bones—at the elegance of him, the fine construction—and think delicate. The power moves them, Calliope can see that it does, but so much of him is still folded away so not to startle, tucked within so not to scare. Morpheus obscures; regularly walks unseen among mortals, but now by necessity there is enough peeking out to be noticed, a careful glimpse that still hints at far too much. They’d know what he is, she thinks, if he let them get a closer look.

If Dream unblurred his shape they’d recognise him in an instant.

They could know him even now, know him based on the space he leaves, the magnitude of displaced air, because even an invisible sun is still a cornerstone of gravity.

A heart still beats even if you can’t see it.

“Sir?”

Morpheus tilts his head to face her at last. “Yes Jane?”

His answer is more like a king hearing out a petition, magnanimous enough to grant his attention to a subject, and Calliope feels her lips twitch up into a smile.

Jane recovers faster than most. “Is it ok if I bring a doctor in to talk to you?”

Dream frowns, tilts his head.

“Why?”

He’s still holding Calliope’s hand.

It’s that same careful touch, that offer, that question, and Calliope tightens her grip—just a little, just enough—squeezes his slender fingers, feels the smoothness of skin she still knows so well. It’s the hand of an artist, a sculptor; slim fingered and strong, elegance and practicality combined because this delicacy has never been a display. This isn’t Madoc’s hand, isn’t Fry’s. It doesn’t grasp for her, grope at her, take her like she’s property, because Calliope knows she can let go, can withdraw…

Can choose.

After a moment Dream squeezes back, so very gentle, and this is the first they’ve touched in centuries but what is nostalgia to a goddess?

What can it be when all she has is time.

“Morpheus.” Calliope says.

It’s not a rebuke.

He turns back to her—those eyes, she thinks, surprised by how much of him is still a marvel—a dash of starlight hidden beneath the blue, a hint of all that’s disguised within this nearly human approximation. Dream looks, he sees; her un-braided hair, the foreign clothes with the overlong sleeves, and it doesn’t feel like exposure, this truth that can’t be hidden beneath her skin doesn’t read like shame. It’s a dare—a dare to read it all, a dare to look away, a dare to see what has been done and break.

Dream does not turn away.

He does not break.

“Very well,” Dream says after a moment.

He’s impatient to talk to her, but he’s not curt, not as terse as she was expecting he might be. Dream glances back at Jane; he’s seen the dark circles under her eyes, the night of horror still so fresh it bleeds and—

Oh.

Calliope had almost forgotten how much Morpheus loves his Dreamers.

“They found him?”

“Apparently he just walked into the hospital.”

Annette is as surprised by him as Jane was.

She’s confused by it, by her own deference, this careful respect that has something of a distance Annette’s trying to bridge because she wants to do it consciously. She wants to mean it with every soft breath, infuse comfort into every gentle smile. Calliope sees the resistance in trying; it’s bullied past, respect needing to be warm to be true, thawed so that it’s genuine rather than a reflex.

“May I take your blood pressure?”

Morpheus has to remove his coat to allow her to do it, needs both hands free and—

Calliope doesn’t want to let go.

And yet she does.

He remains sat next to her, ample space between them, a frown creasing Dream’s brow as he watches her with those kohl lined eyes. Without his coat it’s obvious how thin he really is, how pale, the thin shirt draping loose around lean muscle. He’s crafted like porcelain; the body Dream made for himself art, perfect from every angle, slim and lithe, a beauty that inspires wonder as well as fear.

Now inspiring concern.

A look is shared.

Then Jane turns to Calliope—checking in, making sure she is well—a warmth in her eyes alongside a question. It serves a dual purpose because she’s trying to gauge what she thinks, trying to figure out what’s normal for Dream.

Calliope smiles encouragingly.

Annette is careful, just as she was with her—deliberate movements when she puts the blood pressure cuff around Dream’s slender arm, slow enough to anticipate a startle—barely touching his skin. Dream’s body is angled towards Calliope, a compass pointing north, and it means she’s the only one who can see the bemusement, the expression that could so easily be mocking but is somewhat indulgent instead.

“I’ll need to check your breathing.” Annette hesitates, is asking a question before she says the words. “May I step behind you?”

Oneiros nods.

He doesn’t even turn his head.

But he does notice her pause.

“You may lift the back of my shirt.” Dream says quietly.

Annette warns him the stethoscope will be cold, voice soothing as she asks him to take a deep breath. Dream seems oblivious, doesn’t flinch; holds himself carefully anyway, eerily still as the doctor writes down the reading, not self-conscious but practised, obviously unused to touch. Only Calliope knows why, knows he’s unused to it because there are so few allowed it, unused to it because what is a body in the Dreaming? This isn’t fear, this is the careful stillness of a compressed spring—

This is power trying to be gentle.

Jane speaks once Annette is done. “Is it alright if I ask you some questions?”

“Will I have to leave this room?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

Dream considers this. “Then very well.”

He has not brought a raven.

Beyond the impracticalities of bringing one into a hospital Calliope is certain she knows why.

There is no way these humans can know that, but they know something, have seen it all so very easily, Calliope’s own story a way into his for all it shares the same sort of signs. Dream isn’t puzzled by it, responds like she does, like a parent indulging a child’s fear of the dark, agreeing to check under the bed to confirm there aren’t any monsters there. There is grief in that, the pain of a lost child can never be an echo.

Emotion stabilises, Calliope thinks, bitterness settles, anger cools, but grief? Oh grief—

It burns.

“What do you think? Sex ring?”

“Definitely human trafficking. They’re both uncommonly beautiful, as disturbing as that is to say, and they would have been deliberately picked for it. But it’s so strange.” A frown as they squint at the screen. “I definitely feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

“May I call you Morpheus?”

He tilts his head and grants what others dare not even ask. “You may.”

“How did you get here? Did someone bring you?”

Dream tilts his head. “No.”

Jane nods, takes it in stride. “Can you tell me where you were before you came here?”

This time Morpheus doesn’t answer.

Jane doesn’t react to his silence at the question, the hint of a crease at his brow, the suggestion of confusion in his pale face. She seems to have expected it, moves on as swiftly as she does when Calliope can’t answer.

“Ok, that’s alright,” Jane nods reassuringly. “Could you tell me who was with you?”

Again Dream stares.

It’s not incomprehension. He understands the question, could even answer it if he so wished, but the truth is too difficult to explain. Calliope considers asking when they are alone, wonders if he will answer her, wonders what she will tell him in return. For now she observes the weight of his stare, because there is a question brewing in him now, pale eyes narrowing, not quite the colour of the ocean but just as deep.

They can be just as dark.

“Why do you wish to know?”

Jane withstands it well, being questioned by an Endless.

She seems oddly used to the content of his query. Perhaps Jane has heard it before. Perhaps she’s heard it phrased another way, perhaps someone else has turned around and said ‘why do you care?’.

“I want to make sure you’re safe.”

Jane is so gentle with him.

This isn’t deference—isn’t the distant reverence Dream will be used to (what she was used to as well)—Calliope finds she likes it, finds something she never thought was missing. It’s a stark difference from the ways of ones like her. The coldness of a temple. The distance of a prayer. It isn’t the ruthlessness of gods and goddesses, demons and angels, the immortals separate and entirely content on keeping things that way.

This, this is human intimacy.

Calliope watches it; the way Dream’s offered what they’d offered her, the same respect and gentle care. Easy. So very easy. They offer just because they can, as if it costs nothing, they extend a hand merely because they see someone they think requires it. It’s knocking on a neighbours door with a cup of tea and tissues, offering comfort just because they’d heard them cry, because they can see they have been hurt. It’s more of that flipside, she thinks, more proof of what humanity can really be.

This is what they do to reach out, this is what they do to help. This is human kindness.

This is human love.

“When he arrived she said something about a ruby.”

“A code?

“Maybe.”

“I would speak with my husband alone.”

It may no longer be true but calling him husband feels right—her claim on him, his claim on her—because Calliope was right about still knowing what he is.

Jane nods.

She smiles comfortingly. “Of course, I’m sorry we took so long. There might be more questions later but please let me know if you need a longer break.”

The change comes the moment the door is closed.

Dream’s eyes glow in a cascade of stars.

How does he hide it? There should be horror in the cramming of him into something so small, this human looking vessel as much of him as a torn glob of flesh spat heavy and thick from a mouth. Yet it’s not—an iceberg glittering under the sun, the playful hint of all that is beneath—not torn away at all but waiting to be given back, waiting to be rediscovered.

Calliope finds him now.

Morpheus unfolds like a story retold.

She finds him again, she meets him here—no longer a hint, no longer a prologue, pages open, a series well-loved but not read in a long time. He’s one Calliope knows from long ago, one she once added to, one that once added to her. It’s the first edition, the rarest, one Morpheus cannot show while moving unseen through this world, one Calliope had once read at her leisure. She’d braced it carefully to prevent any bend in the spine, pages crisp beneath her fingers, a new marvel revealed with each careful turn.

Here are Calliope’s own tear soaked pages.

Here her own laughter echoes. Here is her own seething grief, her own bitter love, found once more in this favoured scent returned, the bloom of him as bright as she remembers.

Dream offers his hand back.

Calliope takes it.

The exchange is wordless, the yield of him silent, his hand in hers, her hand in his; curling fingers, the lean of two trees.

“The ruby.” She says.

“It was stolen.” Dream gives a different answer than when first he entered the hospital, then addresses the unspoken question. “I took it back.”

It always had its place about his throat, hanging on a slender gold chain, the links glinting in the light like fire. Now it’s gone, Dream’s neck is bare; wanting perhaps, or bold in nakedness because even the height of his collar does not hide the loss. The change is a statement Calliope never thought Morpheus would make, as much a blemish as a being like them can ever have—how does an immortal scar?—a wound to show off because something is gone.

And Dream has chosen not to put it back.

Calliope doesn’t ask.

She still wonders.

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.” A sigh. “I think they might have been renamed. Someone with a fetish for Ancient Greece.”

“Might help us track down whoever’s doing this.” Another sigh. “Madoc still won’t say anything.”

She explains what happened.

It isn’t all of it, can never be all of it, but it’s enough.

Dream listens silently, patiently, watches with a terrible fury, a supernova past the point of contemplation because the light in his eyes seems to spill out. There is no fear, he could burn the world with all he is and yet Calliope can’t find any fire in his grasp. Does she despise him? Perhaps she does. Calliope can still call it up—she can look at Oneiros with all that seethes within her, all that roils—but there’s more to it, there has always been more, the weight of what they share too vast for something as simple as hate.

As light.

Dream’s presence doesn’t erase it; adds highlight instead, makes the text bold, because despite all of the reasons he has to mock Morpheus is holding her hand instead.

Despite all that should keep him away he’s still here.

“I’m not free.” Calliope says. “He will not let me go.”

“We shall see about that.”

“Then you will help?”

Dream nods. “I will deal with Madoc.”

“Why?”

Calliope needs to know.

“He hurt you.” Dream says.

The tone is so soft her heart breaks, it reforms, the reason that wasn’t enough for the Fates reason enough for him. His voice slips past the ribcage, brushes up against a heart, finds what’s vulnerable and is careful with it.

Hurt, Dream says, but she sees the word he really means in his eyes.

How unlike him to be so imprecise, flattery in him stooping to it on her behalf, a fluttering in her chest because Calliope knows this is consideration for her. There is an ugly word he refuses say, that he steps neatly around, and it isn’t because the concept is too much for him. This is a refusal for brutality, an acknowledgment of this wound without cruelty, because for all there isn’t a scratch on her he still knows that she’s been hurt.

Calliope frowns. “Someone hurt you too.”

He stills.

Dream begins to frown as if trying to puzzle out what she could possibly mean, as if he hadn’t even known, offended on her behalf. Morpheus will not co-opt, will not suffer the assumption, isn’t too proud though that is so often what he is.

Too proud, Calliope thinks fondly, the taste of anger a bitter compliment that still tastes sweet, too old.

Too kind.

“Are we to compare?” She asks.

“No.” Morpheus says. “It was different—“

Was it?

Calliope doesn’t know what happened, only what she can see, and what she sees is that the ruby is gone. A raven is too, evidence of decades passing while trapped, power stifled, because Dream said they’d stolen from him. Calliope knows the fallout of that, this hospital filled with the wound of it; function crippled, power twisted and polluted for another’s ends, the same as what Madoc chained has within her. There are foreign hands there even now, intimate, a defilement made of every second Calliope breathes with Madoc’s fingers still inside.

“The violation is the same.” Calliope finishes.

He nods. “The violation is the same.”

It’s an insult.

Time is so ineffective as to be meaningless, but this isn’t about time, is about a passing, the years and decades not quite what matter. The moment of it registers; the mayfly nature rendering a wound, somehow not a butterfly at all but a bullet, an arrow striking true. The ticking of a clock is an eternity—doesn’t matter what the sound is, doesn’t matter if it stops—but action, well, that adds punctuation. It’s not how long, the decades a trifle to them, a blink, a flicker, but there is more to say because their son had been that too.

Orpheus had been a single blink of her eyes.

And Calliope can’t say he’s unimportant, can’t say his birth, his loss, didn’t change everything.

She won’t.

“He wouldn’t stop looking at her.” A murmur, fingers clenching. “How long do you think it’s been since they last saw each other?"

“I don’t know.”

No one will even know Dream left the hospital.

Calliope watches him stand; light catches on his cheekbone, the shadow it casts so like him, this play of it an exchange, impossible to have one without the other. She lets go of his hand once more, Dream creates with these hands, he destroys—

He holds.

Once again she wonders if he still enjoys her stories as much as the humans do, if he still allows himself the time for wonder, because even if it can be so very hard to see on his face she knows the joy, the love of creation that he has. It is perhaps the darkness in him she doesn’t share, the nightmarish aspect as much a part of him as the rest, the horror he is because that’s also what they are.

He is the balance of extremes.

Calliope’s own inspiration can be just as dark, the stories she can give to mortals just as terrible, but in Dream it’s different. A point of being rather than a power.

It’s who he is, not what.

It’s what he does, not what he tells.

Calliope finds herself speaking as he turns to leave.

“I did not know whether you would come.”

“You called for me.” Dream says, the same thing he said when he arrived, repeated now as if it’s easy.

As if it’s that simple.

Perhaps to him it is. Morpheus looks at her as if she’s still adorned in gold, has done so since he arrived, acknowledging the chains without allowing them take the image of her from his eyes. He holds it there; who she is, what she is, holds it ready to be reclaimed, not a refusal to see what’s happened but a refusal to view it as a taint. A refusal to let it be all he sees, to make it all she is, to lock a chain of his own around her neck and cast her in stone as this one thing, to trap her in it forever.

Calliope remembers the Fates.

She remembers calling for them, beseeching them, pleading with them, remembers—

“The Fates wouldn’t help.” Calliope says, bitter and refusing to hide it. “They knew what Madoc had done but they wouldn’t help.”

He pauses, waits.

“They didn’t come for me.” She says quietly.

“No one came for me either.” Dream replies.

Neither of them are surprised.

“How’s the Go Fund Me going?”

“Pretty good. Donations are still coming in.”

Calliope is restless.

There is an urgency in her bones, a clawing screeching thing that knows it’s so close to being free, she needs distraction, needs to let this fluttering in her chest out. Calliope steps out into the hall, finds the waiting room, sits by a low table stacked with books and magazines, waits a moment as she watches. There are furtive glances cast her way, not rude, an abundant curiously that blooms so soft. A child rifles through the books and frowns, this young girl restless in a way that calls to her.

“Are you looking for a story?”

A shy little nod.

“I’m good at telling stories,” Calliope confides, sly like it’s a secret and maybe it is, has been kept hidden for so long. “Would you like to hear one?”

The child stares up with wide eyes.

Then she turns, Calliope follows her gaze to a woman sat opposite, knows the questing glance is asking for permission.

She will ask too.

“Would that be alright?”

The woman nods.

The child sits down beside her, expectant, but Calliope realises that she may have a larger audience that she first thought. She looks around, some humans now looking away in embarrassment at being caught staring. It does not hide them, Calliope can still see—tired faces, the bruises and cuts, the pain lurking in their eyes—and yet despite it all there is curiosity. There is excitement, hope, and Calliope smiles because she can give it wings.

She will give this a nudge, a small push, guide it higher like a kite. It’s been centuries since Calliope told a story—

It’s only been a few weeks since Madoc stole one.

“A long time ago, in a place unlike this and yet so similar, there lived a raven in a large oak tree. Now this raven was black as night, the feathers glossy, the wings strong, and every evening the raven would leave its tree to fly around the forest.”

The crowd of people to listening remind Calliope of the humans she had known.

“As I said the raven was strong, but also quick, agile in the air. It flew and flew, up and up into the sky, then dove at angles so steep you’d have thought it would surely hit the ground—“

Calliope pauses, waits for the gasps, then smiles.

“The raven never did. And so on one night like any other—yet not like anything else at all—the raven left the oak tree the same as always. It spread its wings, took off into the deep, dark sky, and—“

A hush, anticipation thick.

“Bang!” Calliope says; the child next to her jumps, a few others startle. “A shot rang out, clear and cold in the night, a hunter with a rifle. And the raven with those glossy feathers, those strong wings, fell from the sky to lay wounded on the forest floor. The hunter had spied the raven, seen it flying around, and had grown jealous. Now I can see you wondering—how did the hunter see if it was so dark? Well, the moonlight of course. The stars.”

The child is transfixed, her lower lip trembling.

“But do not fear,” Calliope soothes, smiles gently. “For this is not the end of the story. The very next day a traveller comes walking through the forest. The raven hears the rustling, the thud thud of footsteps, trembles but cannot move with an injured wing. And so the traveller comes across it, laying on its side, bleeding on the forest floor.”

Someone interrupts, unable to keep silent. “Do they help?”

Calliope nods.

“They do. The traveller takes the raven with them, and though they themselves have not the skills to help they know exactly where to go. The wing is reset, the hole stitched closed, but the raven knows it will never fly again.”

“I needed the ideas, you’ve got to understand, she wouldn’t—”

“Be silent.”

For the first time in centuries Calliope tells a story.

For the first time in centuries she sends one to Dream.

The joy shared with him; Morpheus there in every audience, the shadow at the back of every theatre, the light on every stage. Will you know when this appears in your library? Calliope thinks.

Will you read it?

“The hunter brags about his kill, is chased from the town, and following them any further isn’t worth the waste it makes of words. They are never heard from again.” Calliope’s voice is cold before her tone begins to warm. “It was your kind that hurt me,” the raven said to the traveller. “Your kind that saved me.” And the traveller bows their head in great shame. “Yes, raven, it is my kind that have made sure you’ll never fly again.” “It cannot be undone,” the raven agreed. “But at least I am alive.”

The waiting room has gone silent.

“But the traveller was not content with that. They journeyed far and wide for tell of a remedy. They expected to be turned away more times than could be counted, but to their surprise each healer tried to fix the ravens wing, and when they couldn’t they offered the name of someone else they believed could—"

Here she is—still a beacon, still an amplifier, still Calliope—returned and rediscovered.

It reminds her of what used to be.

“One day they found themselves back in the forest as night began to fall, and as the sky glowed with light they saw the man in the moon coming down on a radiant chariot.”

“I have missed watching you fly free,” the man said. “I have seen all those who’ve tried to heal you with their kindness. I share some of the blame for your wing, for it is my light that allowed the hunter to see you. This is within my power.”

Calliope can inspire them, can coax this light out of bud, can watch it bloom again.

And she will.

“The man in the moon touched the ravens wing, a glimmer of light flickering under his hand. And the wing healed whole and hale and the raven could fly again.” Calliope speaks clear and true. “And now, every night, the traveller goes walking, and the raven goes flying, and the moon keeps on shining, and though the ravens wing still aches on cold winters evenings it is the memory of the traveller, of those kind souls who tried to heal them, that arises to accompany it.”

Physics has a law that states nothing can be added to the universe, no new matter able to form, elements only recycled.

But conservation of matter was science.

And this is a story.

It’s a new thing, tangible, provable, not a question of philosophy at all because stories used paper, used ink, used someone’s voice. They have an object, a subject, are creation despite what the laws governing matter might say. It’s the miracle so often looked for, found in a child’s bedtime story, a moment of make believe, no less a wonder for how often it’s missed.

No new atoms?

Oh a story moved between them, shook them, a vibration of air when one spoke.

It makes the universe sing.

Calliope still remembers what Erasmus Fry had said when he’d given her to Madoc. That foolish philosophy, that cruel trick, that naïve misunderstanding of his own craft.

“Writers are liars.”

No.

No they aren’t.

Chapter Text

Calliope feels it when her prison breaks.

She feels it because in that moment she becomes.

That which binds her to Madoc snaps; unravels, unpierced like a claw had been around her heart, a moment away from squeezing, a constant pain she’d become accustomed to now removed, a moment that puts breath back in her lungs. There are no borders to creation, no walls, no gate she doesn’t have the key to because now it’s swinging open. Calliope can breathe again, no stalking consciousness, no sickly rot, the poison that had felt so similar to what defiled her husband’s power now drawn out.

This is what it feels like to breathe without a hand around one's throat—

This is what it feels like to be whole.

Madoc had bought her, bartered, exchanged goods and shaken hands; all so very civilised, all so very legal, the ownership the Fates examined closely and deemed acceptable. Calliope wishes she could find the hand that wrote those laws.

She wishes she could cut it off.

Perhaps Calliope will—perhaps that can be one of the things freedom grants her—but for now she returns to her room. Calliope stops somewhere else on the way, peers inside Elizabeth’s room at the empty bed; made up, ready for another, waiting for another because that’s what this place is. This is not a machine, it isn’t a conveyor belt, could be called a wheel perhaps, or a door that will always be open. Calliope lingers for a moment, remembers the photograph, the stories of love and grief and joy, remembers the sweets Elizabeth had shared with her.

When Calliope returns to her room there’s a new book laying on her bed.

This is Holly’s favourite.

She knows it from the moment she picks it up, knows by how it feels under her fingers, how it sounds when Calliope listens close. If the others were echoes then this, this, is a beating heart cupped gently and so trustingly in her hands. Oh and it could have been ripped out—hadn’t Madoc tried to do that to her?—but that isn’t it at all, this is that invitation, this is collaboration, Calliope can hear that ‘come journey with me’ now spoken in Holly’s voice. And answering that call is like holding the hand of a child, the bounce of excitement tugging her along, the same yearning thing and now she can reach back.

I will walk this road with you, I will hear you speak, I will travel down this path.

I will journey with you.

Calliope opens it, finds the first page, begins to read this well-loved prose and knows she stands in a place where so many have been before. She knows it’s where so many will be again—simultaneously an echo of countless preceding her and countless in front, faces and voices from all over this world—because if Calliope connected them throughout time they’d find this commonality. It’s hands reaching forwards, reaching back, it’s voices calling out because they’ve all asked the same questions, they’ve dreamt the same dreams, they’ve gasped and cried and laughed.

A human from a century ago could sit here, could read this book. A mother mourned then, mourns now. Despite the differences, despite the years—

They’d know they are the same.

She looks up when Holly knocks on the door.

Oh.

This is sunlight shining, a seed cracking, shoots of green yearning to break the surface of soil. There is no leash bringing her up short now, Calliope can feel all that warmth within her, can coax it, can water this earth and watch a flower bloom.

“Are you ok?” Holly asks tentatively. “It must be a surprise to see him. Morpheus, I mean...”

“I am relieved.” Calliope replies.

It’s the truth. Not just for how he has freed her, Dream’s solemn demeanour is familiar, the quiet contemplation as recognisable as the lines tracing Calliope’s palm. It remains alongside all the bitterness, the flavour of anger, eternity ensuring nothing can really be called old. It’s never done, never buried, a given that it won’t end. Grief has not burned this out, her fondness for him remains, secure in her heart.

What does love mean to a muse? Calliope thinks.

What does love mean to a dream?

“The only things I’m getting through the usual channels are expressions of interest.”

“Flag the buyers anyway.”

Dream returns.

Holly looks up and freezes.

There is no fear in her eyes, she is surprised by him of course—a strange awareness, she has been told about him, advised not warned—because it seems that seeing is believing. It settles, dissipates, Holly greets him with a wide smile; warm despite how tired she is, still just as exhausted as when Calliope met her, expression bright despite the dark circles under her eyes, now open like shelter offered from the cold.

That’s what she is.

And this is Dream.

The power pulled back, hidden once more in barely a hint of starlight, a glow diffused to matte in the white marble of Dream’s skin. His true power found like this; it’s magnitude not the extent, depth not the measure of worth, omnipotence not the reason for the success of what he does. Morpheus will hold them all gently, these minds he carries within him. He will appear to them like this; a fold of limbs, thin and long, that solemn face and unsmiling mouth—somehow he will never look sad, will never appear aggrieved—the curve of his lips tilted upwards and not down.

Morpheus is quick to soothe one of his Dreamers.

“Do not be troubled, Holly Faye.” Dream pronounces with promise, so gentle even the blunt edge of truth softens in his mouth, brings relief like the dove that came to Noah and announced the ending of the flood. “The circumstances of last night will not come again.”

“I—” Holly frowns but confusion is the only thing creasing her brow, not pain, not discomfort, a tension has slipped from her shoulders. She takes a minute or so to decide what to say, is met only with patience, is allowed the time to find the words. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” Morpheus replies.

That said he ventures further in, steps delicately past the threshold, and there is a poetry in how he moves, Calliope knows, a sense of structure that nonetheless remains so free. Not mathematics though it’s something just as precise. Predestined, a lead in, perhaps these the steps of a dance only ever practised alone.

Holly smiles, soft as she watches him, clears her throat before she speaks. “I’ll leave you be for a while. Jane asked me to tell you that she’ll be coming to see you in an hour or so.”

“Thank you Holly.” Calliope says.

The nurse leaves just as Dream reaches the bed, just as he sits down and looks up.

There is a flicker of starlight in his eyes too.

It brightens to a glow amongst the blue, Calliope has seen them black; obsidian, the silence at the edges of the universe that isn’t silence at all, the dark space between stars so bright when looked at with another spectrum. Visible light only one medium, emptiness only emptiness when looked at with the wrong eyes. Calliope sees the humans that have died, a preservation because this is paying homage, this light could be a grave, could be the soft starlight of a dreamer a thousand years dead—

He doesn’t have to let them go.

Dream smiles.

Oh and it’s lovely—a sour twist, a tangle, how he can still shine so bright—Calliope has always thought it so, is reminded now, and yet as always she finds she is not surprised at all. As a nightmare Morpheus remains a mystery.

As a dream he’ll always be hers.

“Thank you.” Calliope says quietly.

She does not need to specify what she means.

“You do not owe me thanks.” Dream replies.

His hair is dark like the raven he’s never seen without, the one that’s missing now. Calliope once again considers the ruby missing from around his throat.

How does an immortal scar?

A foray into metaphor because neither of them can be wounded that way. Calliope knows nothing could last on her skin. The absence is what does it, immortals scarring in reverse—by watching things more delicate, by losing things more delicate—the observation of time on others a lesson of decay they can never live. It is moss covering a monument, the stone itself unchanging apart from what grows on it, and that inspires another question.

How then does an immortal know when they’ve healed?

“I had not considering coming to free you.” Calliope admits.

Dream smiles gently. “I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

It’s an impulse to say it; Calliope had not once considered caring like this, had known he’d been trapped and not questioned it, never been bothered by it. She had been just like all the rest because even the other Endless wouldn’t have come for him.

Even they hadn’t.

Dream seems surprised. “You do not owe me an apology either.”

It’s unusual, surprise so rare a thing to find on Dream, yet it’s undeniable, he looks at her with quiet eyes, the pierce of them not a claw but a glimmer. The lancing starlight doesn’t cut, slips through clouds, reaches deep without even the suggestion of a wound.

Perhaps he doesn’t know he’s allowed this. Calliope says it again.

“I’m sorry.”

“It is done.”

The response has changed, now a rebuttal that comes swift, speed the only sign of abruptness because otherwise Dream’s tone remains soft. He picks up one of the books on the bed, curious, flips it open to read. It would be easy to consider that as shutters coming down, walls going up, but Calliope knows it isn’t that at all. This isn’t a lie; yet she wonders if it’s true, if it is the whole truth, because she knows well the value in a story told.

They both do.

“These humans already know you were trapped. I think you should tell them who did it.”

A moment of silence.

“I do not have to be here when Jane returns.” Morpheus says without looking up.

“No.” Calliope agrees. “You do not.”

“Fuck Madoc confessed.”

Dream stays.

“We spoke about Detective Matthews coming in to see you,” Jane says when she arrives. “But we can postpone if—"

“No need for that,” Calliope says. “I will meet with him.”

Morpheus is silent for a moment.

Then he nods.

Jane remains with her, with Dream, introduces Detective Matthews with a careful sort of awareness. He is a short, well-built man, stocky, middle aged, hair thinning around the hairline, but his eyes are quick and clever. His smile is warm. He walks slowly, has made a technique out of appearing unthreatening, sits a fair distance away and lets Jane begin the conversation.

As before, the police officer addresses Morpheus first. “Holly has been collecting donations. We can get you some spare clothes, if you’d like.”

“What is wrong with my clothes?” He doesn’t snap; nonetheless commands, this offended pride so very regal, because while quiet Dream can never be mistaken for timid.

Janes eyes dart back to Calliope—dressed in her soft grey jeans, borrowed because she’d only owned one silken slip—then back to Dream. “Nothing, it’s just—"

“I found them.”

“You didn’t have any before?”

“No.”

Oneiros watches anger unfold with curiosity, in Jane and in this new Detective, indulgent for all he’d just provoked it. Perhaps Dream has realised how they’d react too late, or perhaps he just wanted to see it for himself.

Perhaps he knew exactly what his words would inspire.

The same righteous fury, the same condemnation of what another hadn’t considered a crime, the same horror, the same truth that despite whatever else they can be humans are still this. Calliope watches Dream find the proof of it; so careful, so curious, his eyes an exchange of light as he takes it all in. The shine giving back, a stars gift for what it learns. He can’t help it, Calliope knows, thinks of that balance of light and dark, the push and pull of it, how even in anger those eyes can still glow.

They look at Dream and think victim.

It’s the same thought as when they look at her; Calliope is right about it not being an insult, has found her own proof, confirmed it as respect now she’s seen it directed at another. It soothes her, reinforces, adds to her own belief because she looks at Morpheus and thinks the same, thinks victim in a voice that isn’t judgement, no pin of weakness driven deep and bloody through a palm. The same is given back, has always been given back, because since the moment he’d arrived here Dream has looked at her with eyes that say I see you.

These humans look at him and think the same.

It’s reclamation, identity preserved, that self-same golden image kept safe in another’s eyes. And so this time when they ask who he was with Dream has an answer.

“Alexander Burgess.” Dream says. “Though I believe he is currently indisposed.”

There is a menace in that.

It’s only an undercurrent, perhaps too subtle for these humans to catch, nonetheless they seem ruffled enough to stiffen if not flinch. Even with power folded inwards they can hear the promise of punishment, the resonance of Dream’s judgement the reason why goosebumps rise, a chill in the air seemingly without cause.

Detective Matthews still manages to keep his voice even. “He has a partner doesn’t he?”

“Yes, Paul Burgess.” Dream shrugs. “Merely a spectator.”

Calliope doesn’t need to look to know how these humans take that line.

“Burgess?”

“Look into him. I want everything.”

She’s angry too.

There’s fury in Calliope’s chest.

It’s next to her heart, it builds as Jane and Detective Matthews leave. The Fates had said it, Calliope had already known Morpheus had been captured by a mortal, but that was abstract. This is real. It’s real and she doesn’t know what happened, what magic it was that held him for what has been one hundred years. Calliope doesn’t know what—

She only knows who.

“What happened, Dream?”

He shrugs. “I was trapped by a spell.”

The laws had snared him too, these rules the same as they’ve always been, loopholes included, and Calliope had once believed she understood the reasoning in that. Dream had too, maybe even still does, because even as he is here now she knew well enough that not too long ago they’d both have let the other rot. If every immortal started interfering in each other’s business then domains would quickly overlap. Lines would be drawn, sides taken, wars fought—they did not need another Troy—and she’d thought it right.

Calliope had known about Nada.

“The laws must change.” She says firmly, a dare in many ways, her proposal what some of her kind might consider treason. “They must be rewritten to prevent this happening again.”

Dream inclines his head. “I shall see to it that the Dreaming never upholds such practises.”

“What spell was used to trap—”

“One from an old book.” Her former husband interrupts, abrupt but not sharp, then adds gently. “It would not have held forever.”

“But it held long enough.”

“Yes.”

Calliope does not know what he did to Madoc.

She doesn’t know what he did to the one who had kept him trapped, to Burgess, what punishment Dream of the Endless bestowed on his own captor in the end. Calliope doesn’t know if changing the old laws will help him, finds herself making a promise to herself, a vow, that if ever he is trapped again she will interfere.

She will find a way to help.

“Will you return to the Dreaming now?”

Morpheus nods.

“May I visit you sometime?” Calliope asks even as she knows what the answer will be, the knowing not the point of the doing, this still as real as reading a passage you’d read a thousand times. “To mourn our son?”

It ends as she expected.

Yet for all Dream pulls away they grant each other a moment more, a moment where Calliope stands, steps forward.

She leans her forehead against his cheekbone.

It’s closer than she’s been to him in thousands of years.

He’s cold, icy to her touch—soothing, a balm on stinging skin—closer now than when he sat next to her on the bed. It’s Calliope’s own choice, her ground to cover, her distance to shorten. The humans have been so careful, barely touched her, warmed her anyway with such careful love. Dream has held her hand like he was holding her heart, like she was holding his in return, and now she leans against him as if still breathing it all in. The subtlety of it, this small touch, the coolness of his skin against hers that still warms. It is not arms around her, isn’t a traditional embrace, but to trap care and love in such calculated parameters is to miss all else.

It is to cut it out.

Madoc had held her in his arms and all Calliope felt was pain.

She doesn’t need that overwritten, Dream’s way has always been different, his affection warm but subtle, a test of how closely one can listen. A test of how closely one is willing to listen. One must go careful, one must go quiet, this easily missed if one insists on waiting for him to give it in an expected way. If one insists on forcing him to.

A poem can be pages long, it can be a set of stanzas.

It can be a few lines.

And here he is—this being she still knows—so much folded within what could be mistaken for so little. Here, now, Morpheus leans into her touch by the barest of degrees; closes the margins of all the space between them, lingers there, the presence of him so warm. The golden sunlight of Greece, of home, the summer breeze at midday, the laughter of their son.

Dream leans against her and it is only a few degrees—

It is not small at all.

“He caught me by the coffee machine on his way in and I just—started talking.”

“About what?”

Mortification. “About anime.”

Calliope is not a creature of vengeance.

That doesn’t mean she is soft. Rage can be clean, she thinks.

She leaves the hospital, folds the borrowed clothes neatly on the bed, will return for them just as she will for the soft toy Amy gave her. Calliope will not bring these clothes to him, Madoc will not see her dressed in soft grey jeans, he will never again see her unbound hair; this man will not view her in casualness, he will find the goddess in the woman, not the woman in the goddess.

Calliope finds Richard Madoc in his cell.

Oh he’s afraid of her now, isn’t he, has gone pale—perhaps Calliope can see why Dream enjoys this—wide eyed as Madoc trembles, backing away until his legs hit the bed. He falls onto it, keeps shifting back, and seeing it does not satisfy her. This fear is as greedy as his cruelty, as selfish, because Madoc had only done what he did because there was nothing, no one, to stop him. He hurt her and yet he’s like this, so very afraid, and the insult of it is that he thinks she’s like him.

This man who’s such a detriment to his kind, a tainting thing poisoning the well, believes all else just as cruel, just as selfish. Just as hateful.

It isn’t true, humanity isn’t—

Calliope isn’t.

She doesn’t speak yet, sits on the chair in Madoc’s cell, tilts her head and watches him huddle on the bed, considers how her skin still crawls at the sight of him. The hands that tremble have tried to take so much. It doesn’t shame her that this is what he is, a pathetic weak shell, doesn’t make it her fault. The moment isn’t an aha, no reduction in this because it doesn’t make what happened any less awful, weakness doesn’t declaw him, doesn’t make him harmless—

Doesn’t make him any less a monster.

Any less a man.

In the beginning Madoc hadn’t even been a bad one, Calliope remembers that first meeting where she’d seen disgusted horror sink in as Erasmus Fry had sold her to him, when he’d looked at her and known that it’d been wrong. He’d known it as Dream knew it, as Jane and Holly did, as Annette and Detective Matthews, had known and been appalled. Calliope hadn’t seen it in so long, so used to Fry’s lack of morality, and it had surprised her to see someone so mundane, to meet a man like any other. It had made the twist worse, the red herring of his guilt, because this mundane man who had a million copies soon made Fry the rarer thing.

His crimes are the everyday, the statistic.

Madoc has become the shadow she can suddenly see in so many human eyes. He is the naivety of looking suspiciously at the extremes, of watching out for evil in the dark instead of the person who lives next door.

Madoc is just a man.

And somehow that makes it worse.

Dream has left his mark here; Calliope sees it in Madoc’s wild eyes, the fear Dream put in him marinating still, finds the twist of what her former husband has done so close to what she plans herself. The familiarity of his power left here like a gift, a reminder of how they’d so often met in a human mind, yet she has never had cause to find out what Dream’s vengeance looks like. Here the favoured scent remains; the pouring of a slightly bitter wine Calliope finds she's collected by the barrel, and it is so very Dream, a thing of beauty although so very terrible.

This is practised but not stale.

Something of it has been done a thousand times and this particular thing just once. Dream’s vengeance a precise tool, surgically exact, and, as always, wickedly effective.

She can admire for a moment.

She does.

Then Calliope speaks.

“You should have let me go.”

“I needed it,” Madoc insists and even now, even so afraid, he still can’t say he’s sorry.

He can’t admit he was wrong.

“You could have had it,” Calliope replies honestly. “You did not need to take it.”

He’d had choices.

Madoc had always had options. And even if he hadn’t there is no justification. His excuse is vile. What he’s done is ugly nonetheless; desperation doesn’t soften it, despair doesn’t rationalise, pain doesn’t make this forked road a straight path, doesn’t add ambiguity where there is none. The truth is simple.

He’d made a choice and he had chosen wrong.

You’d do it again if you could get away with it, Calliope thinks, my power doesn’t move you to remorse.

Just fear.

Perhaps Madoc will never be sorry. Calliope doesn’t need him to be. This isn’t a lesson for him, isn’t a learning curve before a shining middle, isn’t a character arc to give him growth before a cathartic end. This is not his moment, this is not his story, her pain does not serve him.

Not anymore.

“I will leave you one last gift of inspiration—“

Madoc’s eyes widen.

“Your confession.”

The cell rings in the silence like a bell.

“It will be the only thing ever left for you to write, the only story left for you to tell, and I promise that you will tell it beautifully.” Calliope continues, lets herself smile, lets a cruelty all her own loom out of her eyes. “You will tell it when they call you to trial, when they put you up on the stand, when they ask you questions in interviews, in conversations, you will tell it in any statements that you give. You will tell them what you’ve done, what you stole, you will tell it any time you pick up a pen or open your mouth, your guilt is the only story you have left.”

Madoc is shaking, both fear and anger now, his eyes wild with it. He speaks and it is desperate. “I don’t have to talk. Don’t have to say anything.”

“You don’t.” She agrees, smiles, stands—

“But you will.”

The Fates would never have done this, never have punished him, have judged it lawful and washed their hands of it as if that can make them clean. Calliope feels a knife in that, her resistance the crime, her reporting of it the issue; stay down, stay silent, stay trapped because we deem it right, we deem it right and all this ruckus is unseemly. There is a certainty that no victim has ever had a hand in writing these laws. Can abuse be legalised? Can laws that are written to strip her of freedom be deemed right? Who do they serve?

Who do they protect?

Mother, maiden, crone—they’ve all abandoned her, betrayed her thrice—an authority that’s wilted because it’s proven itself hollow.

Calliope finds she tires of the futility in petitioning their court.

This punishment is Madoc’s because it’s deserved, because it’s justice, because what he did was wrong. Maybe he’ll comfort himself with the lie that this was built for him, a dagger at his neck, the goddess he trapped something of his if only for the story he still believes they share. It does not matter. It does not change a single thing. The sky will still be blue no matter how often he cries it’s green. How like a man to do this.

How typical of a man’s arrogance to believe she’s made for him.

“He took credit for her work.” They’re shaking as they type, furious. “All those accolades and we were cheering on a rapist the whole time, letting him get rich from it.”

“He won’t get away with it.”

“No.” Eyes harden in determination. “He won’t.”

When the mysterious couple disappear the news story runs for weeks.

The police determinedly search the country for any sign of where they might have gone.

In the chaos of the destruction that reigned on that terrible day—the day Richard Madoc walked up to a police officer and confessed to a terrible crime—so many people have become displaced, so many people have been hurt. There is worry that Calliope and Morpheus may have been trafficked once more, that the criminal organisation responsible had somehow gotten to them once again. The news follows the search avidly. The Go Fund Me quickly triples in size. A publisher takes a stand against Madoc the moment the story breaks, reprints his books with Calliope replacing his name on the cover, a muse receiving full credit for the very first time.

It sells out.

Some people scoff.

They don’t believe it. They think it a foolish stunt. Others disagree, the mystery going viral. Some people are actually half convinced the couple were some sort of ethereal beings, others insist it to be a hoax, that they didn’t exist at all.

Some believe that the woman died in Madoc’s house.

The aftermath is undeniable though, a set of strange circumstances that can’t be ignored, because the people who helped them begin to receive gifts. A nurse named Holly finds sudden inspiration, the story she’s always wanted to write teased out of her heart, an imprint of it given life on the page. A police officer named Jane finds she no longer dreads a nightmare, a memory of someone she couldn’t save put to rest at last, sleeps and finds the suffering of a decade now never returns.

There are still more; a doctor named Annette, a police detective named Matthews, an old woman named Elizabeth who once shared sweets with a goddess.

Paul Burgess is arrested.

Richard Madoc is convicted.

They have more than enough evidence for it, because not only did Madoc confess.

He keeps confessing.

The details are circular, vague only in how they omit certain supernatural details, but the truth is never once held back. Dream’s parting gift has combined with Calliope’s own and it’s enough to put him away for a long, long time. In the end that’s what needed to happen. Human laws, human justice. They deserve to know what he is. Not being able to give a punishment to equal the crime doesn’t mean they should do nothing at all, because to do nothing is to not even condemn it. To do nothing is to not even say that it was wrong.

In the end it’s not about enough, not about matching it, because Calliope gets hold of copy of the new edition of Madoc’s (her) book.

She knows that Dream must have read it too.

Calliope knows that he will have a copy in his library, she knows he knows what she does, because on the first page there is a dedication they’ve both seen—

To Calliope, this work is and always will be yours.

We hope you are safe.

The Fates hadn’t cared what happened to her.

These humans did.

(These human do.)