Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lucienne was asleep, yet no dreams came to her.

It wasn’t just strange—it was unnatural. For the residents of the Dreaming, it seemed like providence itself had decreed that they would always see the most impossible dreams. Mervyn used to say it was “part of the benefits package.”

They dreamed even when the Dreaming was going through dark times. They dreamed when the waters boiled and churned, reflecting the grim ages of the Waking World. They never stopped dreaming—not even when their Lord was trapped by a mortal sorcerer, when the palace crumbled and sank into the sea of fantasy, and the wyvern, the griffin, and the hippogriff turned to stone.

In the end, even if dreams didn’t come, the familiar nightmares always did. The Corinthian, after his own birth, once chased Abel through the night, testing the full extent of his potential.

She could’ve sworn that Dream, too, sometimes dreamed.  
It wasn’t the narrow, perhaps intentionally uncomfortable sofa in his chambers, nor his embodiment of the unconscious, that stirred this thought.
No—it was the notion that if even he did not, from time to time, flee himself into the boundless embrace of sleep, the weight of reality would become unbearable.
And the burden borne by Dream of the Endless was a weight few could fathom.

In any case, dreams had always been a part of them—until tonight, when Lucienne, having drifted off at her desk in the Library, found nothing but darkness in her mind.  
A darkness unbroken, hungry, and void of feeling.

Already aware she needed to wake, she desperately tried to imagine two flickers of light where mortals—and not only them—sometimes recognized the eyes of the Dream Lord.  
But the darkness remained cold and deaf.

A sharp “cronk” right by her ear and the touch of wet feathers on her cheek finally pulled her back. Matthew paced nervously, pressing scattered papers and parchments underfoot. At the sight of his forlorn, unsettled expression, Lucienne’s breath caught in her throat.

“Something wicked this way comes,” the raven said suddenly, though he was usually one for simpler talk.

A glint of recognition sparked in her mind. It was a quote from a book kept on the shelf of those most devoted to the Dreaming. And wickedness had indeed come, just as she realized she couldn’t immediately name the author.

She—the keeper of all written things—had forgotten where it was written.

Struck by the thought, Lucienne peeled her cheek off the pages of the volume she had fallen asleep on and rushed to turn its pages. It remained unchanged, filled with fine print and faded lithographs. The last time Dream was imprisoned, the texts in the books vanished, and then the books themselves disappeared.

So the dream had been just a dream. And the real Dream would return. Just as soon as he finished his business in Hell.

It sounded like a paradox, an oxymoron.
You can’t just go to Hell and come back, having settled your affairs, not twice in a row. 

“Why would you say that exactly?”

Matthew shifted from foot to foot again.
“I don’t know. It just came to me. I mean, ravens are supposed to say prophetic stuff, right? I’m practicing. Anyway… just look out the window.”

Behind the tall, pointed arch, where the weather was usually broadcast to reflect their king’s mood, loomed the darkness from her strange premonition.
A veil of blackness had fallen over their realm all at once, as if the stars had been switched off, the moons and suns extinguished, the door slammed shut behind them, and a command given not to awaken until dawn.

“So tell me,” came another croaking voice from the end of the hallway, where the lanky figure of their janitor emerged, carrying a lantern on the end of a long pole.

“Was this the part where we were supposed to believe the Dreaming would survive even if he wouldn’t? 'Cause from where I’m standing, either our boss’s kicked the bucket, or we’re all dead, or Hell just moved into the Dreaming. One of the three."

Lucienne’s thoughts raced to outpace one another.

The first: He couldn’t be dead. The second, colder still: He’d left her in charge.
Everything that followed—would be on her.

"Maybe one of the four," Mervyn said, slamming the lantern down. "I might’ve forgotten to pay a bill or two. Forgot somethin’, I know that much."
He paused, then grinned grimly. "Can’t remember what, though. Not like it matters—we’re toast."

“It came to you too, first...?” Lucienne nodded toward the window. She tried not to dwell on the forgetting, small things, but piling up. A quiet erosion. Something was deeply wrong.
"Dark as pitch. Can’t remember it ever bein’ like this. Even when his mum—y’know, Night herself—dropped by that one time, we still had stars. And dreams. But this? This ain’t night. This is six feet under. I looked everywhere. Even the waters where mortal dreams flow... dry. Dead silent. And something else here..."

"...wicked." Lucienne finished for him.

As if to confirm her unease, three knocks echoed from far below.

Chapter Text

When the just sleep, they often find themselves at the threshold of my realm—beneath the twin gates of ivory and horn.

Entering the Dreaming, they leave behind the mist of the between.
And if their heart is light when they lie down to rest, the dream chooses them, and the nightmare yields.

It took me long enough to realize I was cast among the damned.
For I found myself at the gates of Hell. And here, the mist did not lift.

The cold and the dark replaced the swirl of sand at the hem of my cloak. Welcome to Hell, I told myself.
The nightmare passed through me and became my reality.

Welcome to Hell.

I am afraid of what comes next.

Should I abandon the quest?

No.

The very fact that I had come here to serve judgment on the forgotten was proof enough that I had changed.
An idea I had not dared to entertain—let alone dwell on—at the gates of Hell, where the mist beneath one’s feet can sense the weakness in every soul that passes.

Who offered it first? Death? No—
Before my sister’s surprise came another voice, one I held nearly as dear.

Lucienne told me, 'We are all change. Even you. Perhaps. One day.'
That was after I returned, one hundred and five years in a cage of glass behind me.

As Death later pointed out, over dinner:
Nada has been imprisoned behind Hell’s walls ten thousand times longer.

The quest must continue. The katabasis.
I will descend into Hell, and justice will be done.
Not upon Nada. Upon me.

And so I step inside.

I confess—there is something else that would not leave me in peace, something that pulled me here, something rising from the depths of the collective unconscious within me. A change again, but far more significant—for the Waking World, and all worlds collided.

Something was wrong. I sensed it on my last descent into Hell: the legions of demons roaring below, the duel where Lucifer could have prevailed, his barely veiled fury. Or was it apathy? The legions bellowed, but the heart of Hell remained cold.

Could Lucifer have changed, too? A dangerous thought.

I walk in darkness toward a light at the end of a tunnel, the vaults of Hell closing above. I came here for Nada. I came to forgive her pride. I came to admit my own fault. To accept repentance, and vengeance, and punishment. To take her place—

No. Thoughts I must not allow. Not mine. Or mine, if I look deeply enough.

Hell presses closer. Something is wrong. But what?

The legions scream in my mind, yet Morningstar, who loathes hope, remains absent.
Every change is hope. That means I defy him twice, with the same weapon.

The legions roar. But Hell is silent.

Hell is empty.
That is what is wrong. No one is home.
And yet, the lights are on.

I must follow that light. I, third child of Night, cling to it as I walk this endless road to nowhere.
That light means Lucifer. And I know I will find him at the end. The Ruler of Hell always knows when an uninvited guest is near.

It is so quiet here. My footsteps echo like war drums. Part of me wants to turn around—to see whether silent legions are marching behind me in step.

A shadow brushes my memory. A recognition.
Someone close to me once walked the road of the dead.
And turned to face the darkness.

This is the thought I silence above all.

But Hell clings to it, almost playfully. As if it had sifted through every doubt within me just to find the one that haunts me most.

Footsteps behind me fall into a rhythm I remember too well.
Voices in my head braid into a high, piercing note.
No, not a note. A song. The choirs of Hell, distorted. Because when he sang, it had been Heaven.

Three steps from the light, I turn. No one is there.

The dying scream of my son is silenced abruptly—and at last, I can think clearly, for the first time in what feels like hours. Or days?
Years..?
While I walked this narrow road, paved with good intentions.

“Oh, they are always good,” says a deep, familiar voice behind me. “No one goes to Hell admitting they are, in fact, the villain.”

I know that voice. Suddenly, everything inside me goes cold—matching the chill outside.

A second later, I see it—my face, twisted in contempt, caught in the farewell gleam of light before agony takes me.

And then, Hell shuts like a box.
A lid snapped closed by a careless child.
The toy, no longer amusing, tossed aside and forgotten.

Profound, all-consuming darkness enveloped me.

Leaving me alone. With the one enemy I cannot outrun.