why is this night different from all other nights?
since alex burgess dismantled his father’s order of ancient mysteries, it is rare that new faces come to gawk besides the guards, and dream ceased to care to remember them long ago. he noticed her, though. her face was almost familiar, like that of someone he knew hundreds of years ago. before the cage. before he had ever imagined there could be a cage. when he looked at her, he saw, for a single moment, her disgust.
but he had seen horror on the faces of others, through the glass, and no human ever acted on it; so he looked away.
the house falls asleep. everything has changed.
after a century of helpless nothingness, isolated behind glass, he felt her. it was her blood hitting the sigil that altered it. as if the knife cut through him, he shuddered silently with her. and at her parting words, her little threat, dream of the endless, naked and alone and bowed over until his head could almost touch her, met his savior’s eyes once more.
is he free? no… not completely.
freedom and escape are not always one and the same. for the first time, there’s a crack in the wall. for now, he will take escape.
for hours, he gathers his returning strength waits to be sure the guards have not noticed the change. but at the end of a long shift, the strength of even the most caffeine-fortified human body begins to wane. then he strikes.
the house stays asleep for a long time.
in the past, should he have needed to find a mortal, he would have done so in their sleep. that was when the waters of the dreaming obeyed him, instead of threatening to crash over and drown what little of his power remains. without his tools, it is little enough. but in testing his new limits, he discovers that he need not sift through dreams to find her.
it will require him to leave the dreaming again.
lucienne wants promises from him which he cannot give, any more than he could return burgess’ son from the dead. “you only just returned. if you go back — how can you know that you won’t — ”
“What? Be captured again?” he asks, and her mouth tightens with unhappiness. softer: “Lucienne, I am still bound.” he leaves the rest unspoken: That is why I must go.
so morpheus turns up his collar against the london rain, his face just as gaunt and ghostly as it was in the cage. he hates it, the binding, as it gouges and pulls like despair’s fishhook in his belly, and he lets it draw him closer to a magic user whose name he does not know. when he finds her, he feels the hook give a vicious little twist — or perhaps that’s his own bitter soul — of satisfaction.
he doesn’t touch her, doesn’t even approach. only waits for her to turn and see him once more.
“Tell me.” his eyes flare with stars. “Have I given you cause for regret?”
johanna constantine does not startle. surprise, sure. but for as long as she can remember, she’s never felt the rush of fear she’s supposedly supposed to have when something sneaks up on her. it’s a trick that’s help her fast on her feet, quick as a whip when she needs it most.
still, she doesn’t expect to see him. but it only gives her pause for a moment, a quick sweep of his form with her eyes before she carries on her job. she’s got a meeting.
“dunno,” she answers honestly as she passes him, ”s’pose not.” her tone indicates that her response is the end of the conversation.
she didn’t think she’d see him again. if she focuses, she could have mentally followed his progress from the waking to his realm and back, but she hasn’t been keeping close tabs on him. the bind lets her know if he should kill, and she’s been willing to forgive anything that happened in that fucking house.
“i’m working,” she informs him with the no-nonsense of her usual demeanor when on the job. especially when her contact calls with this much panic in her voice. “if you’re going to talk me out of the bond, it can wait a minutes, yeah?”
