#morpheus x reader fluff

[thevampyrecorvid]

Headcanons for Dream of the Endless

Morpheus x Reader

A/N: I may do more of these at some point

Hear me out: Morpheus is a yearner

He doesn't want to risk losing you because relationships between the Endless and humans are forbidden

He's either going to be very distant because of this, or very sweet (Explanation at the end)

Morpheus doesn't need sleep, but if you ask him to lay with you he will stay there all night resting

You would be immune to nightmares once the two of you get together

Morpheus would secretly love having you play with his hair

He loves physical touch, but will never admit it

Will very slightly lean against you if you're sitting next to him

He is a possessive man, but respects your autonomy

He will step in the second he thinks it's getting out of hand

If you are planning to get drunk, he's either going to have Matthew watch over you or he will be there himself

Morpheus will not put you to sleep with his sand unless you ask, or it's completely necessary

He will pop up out of nowhere to see you when he's gotten enough of his work done

If you are non-binary, genderfluid, trans, etc. he will use whatever pronouns you prefer, just make sure to tell him when they change

Explanation: He would be distant because he's trying to push you away. However, he would hate every second of it and depending on where he is in life, he may stop being distant. I think around the end of season one and after would be where he stops being distant. At which point he'd probably start being the softie he is around the people he cares for.

[dream-little-writer]

The Shaper Of Forms - Chapter 5 : Daydreaming

Summary: Dream did not fall to the hands of the Fates. Instead, they cursed him, binding him within his cat form. Seeking refuge from a world no longer his, he found shelter at Hob’s inn. You were staying there too… unaware that the quiet creature watching you by the fire was once the Lord of Dreams himself.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or ideas for future stories. Your words mean a lot !

Chapter 5 : Daydreaming.

Warning: Smut.

The sun had already set by the time you returned to the inn. The pub was alive with noises, voices overlapping in warm laughter, the clinking of glasses, the low hum of conversations woven together like a familiar song. Behind the counter, Hob was pouring a beer for an old regular, chatting easily as always. When he spotted you, he lifted a hand in greeting and gestured toward the booth by the fireplace, your usual place. A small reserved sign waited on the table.

You slipped through the crowd and settled into the booth. Here, the noise softened, dimmed by the wooden partitions, and the fire Hob had lit to chase away the day’s persistent damp made the whole corner glow with warmth.

You nudged Dream’s shopping bag under the table just as Hob approached.

“I see you found clothes to your liking, my friend,” he said, smiling at Dream.

“Indeed,” Dream replied, calm and composed as ever.

Hob turned to you then, eyes glinting with mischief. “Are his tastes as expensive in clothes as they were in wine?”

You snorted softly. “He has fine taste... for a cat,” you said, half teasing, half fond as your eyes flicked toward Dream.

“That makes sense,” Hob laughed. “You just made me realize, I never once saw him eat the food I left out for him. Maybe if I’d tried caviar or smoked salmon, I would’ve had more luck. Very regal sort of palate, I imagine.”

You both laughed while Dream sat between you, dignified and entirely unimpressed.

Dream’s gaze slid toward the two of you, expression perfectly composed despite the teasing.

“I simply chose garments of adequate quality,” he said, as though stating a plain fact.

Hob huffed a laugh. “Adequate, he says. Just hand-stitched coats from a tailor who charges by the breath.”

Dream blinked once, slow and regal. “Is that… significant?” he asked genuinely.

You pressed a hand to your mouth, a soft laugh escaping. “You could say that…”

He looked between you both, still unruffled. “I see. In the Dreaming, when I required attire, I simply imagined it. It seems humans have made the process… unnecessarily complicated.”

Hob snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

Dream tilted his head, not defensive, simply confused. Then his gaze returned to you, quieter, softened by something almost tender.

“You allowed me to choose freely,” he said. “And you did not question my decisions. This expense for me was… not necessary. Yet you permitted it.”

You smiled, warming at the sincerity in his voice. “It made you happy,” you murmured, leaning closer. “And it made you look like a god…”

Your lips curved, voice dropping to a playful whisper meant only for him.

“A very sexy one.”

A shadow of a smile touched his mouth, and his face colored faintly, an exquisite mix of embarrassment and quiet happiness.

Hob chuckled at his friend’s flustered reaction. To spare him further, he clapped his hands. “I’ll bring you both something warm. Weather’s miserable out there.”

He walked away, leaving the booth quiet again except for the low crackle of the fire.

You nudged Dream’s knee beneath the table. “You know… the way you say things, it’s very hard not to tease you.”

Dream blinked slowly, considering. “I do not mind,” he said finally. “I simply do not always understand what is humorous.”

“That’s alright,” you murmured, leaning closer with a soft smile. “We’ll teach you.”

Something subtle shifted in him then, warmth flickering beneath centuries of stillness. The firelight caught in his eyes, and under the table, his knee pressed gently back against yours.

After a bit, Hob returned with glasses of wine and a shepherd’s pie to share. You dug right in, your small lunch and the coldness of the day had left you hungry, while Dream watched, not touching anything.

“Is it not to your liking?” you asked.

“I do not feel hungry,” he replied, calm and measured. “It seems that even in this form, I do not require food.”

“Maybe not require... but try, yes,” you said, spearing a small piece of pie and holding it out to him.

He regarded you for a moment, then leaned forward to take it from your fork. His eyes never left yours, silently conveying that he indulged only for you. “It is… heavy on the tongue…” he murmured.

“You do not like it?” you said with a laugh; perhaps he did indeed have a soft palate.

He straightened slightly, gaze sharp. “Perhaps not.”

“Do not say that to Hob, he made it himself. It’s a family recipe, I recall,” you teased, still half laughing.

He continued watching you as you ate, the warmth in his gaze softening the usual sternness of his face. Gradually, his attention lingered on the small motions you made, how your lips brushed the fork, the faint movement of your tongue afterwards. The memory of your lips on his pressed lightly in his mind, not sharp or urgent, but soft and insistent. In the quiet corner of the inn, with the fire crackling beside you, he found his thoughts drifting, imagining his fingers in place of the fork, his lips tasting yours, the quiet warmth of you near him, closer than before. Beneath the table, his knee brushed yours again, a quiet mirror of the closeness he imagined.

✨️✨️✨️.................................✨️✨️✨️

Your plate was now empty, as was your glass. Dream had taken only a few sips of his wine, leaving it still half full. You had spoken a little, about nothing and everything, while he answered only in small, deliberate words, but his gaze never left you.

The pub had quieted as people trickled out, leaving room for softer moments.

You shifted slightly in the booth, realizing you didn’t know how to return to your usual evening routine. Normally, after dinner, you would retreat to a book or the guitar, letting the quiet of the inn wrap around you. But now, with Dream there, human, present, watching, you weren’t sure where to start.

He seemed content with whatever you chose, eyes calm and patient, following you with that steady, unreadable gaze. The faint light of the fire glinted off his hair, and you decided, almost on impulse, to reach for a book from your bag. You opened it, letting the familiar weight settle in your hands, while Dream simply watched, still, observing every small gesture.

As your eyes moved over the words, his thoughts drifted again. He remembered evenings when he had been a cat, curled across your lap, feeling the warmth of your hands as they stroked his fur, the gentle hum of your presence grounding him. He missed that closeness now, the simplicity of it, and yet the longing had shifted. Now, he could imagine more, longer touches, softer presses of your fingers against his skin, the brush of your lips over his in the quiet dark of the inn.

His gaze never left you, though he did not speak, letting his daydreams fill the space between you. He watched the faint motion of your lips as you read, the tilt of your head, the way your fingers lingered on the page. Each small detail, innocent to you, became vivid images in his mind.

✨️✨️✨️.................................✨️✨️✨️

In that quiet alcove, with only the crackle of the fire and the rain tapping against the windows, Dream sat with a patient, almost reverent stillness, but his thoughts of you spiraled into a daydream of closeness, intimacy, and desire.

He imagined himself rising from his chair and settling beside you, close enough for your shoulders to touch, for the warmth of you to seep through his skin. In his mind, his hand found yours where it held the book, fingertips brushing your knuckles with a feather-light curiosity. He pictured the way your breath might catch as he traced the delicate line of your inner wrist, the way you might shiver at the gentle contact.

His daydream wandered further: the slow glide of his hand to your arm, the lean of his forehead toward the soft hollow of your neck, breathing you in as though your scent were something he had been missing for centuries. He imagined the faint tremor of your gasp when his lips brushed the curve of your neck,

And then the image of his hand rising, cupping your jaw with infinite care, guiding your face toward his. A kiss, soft at first, then deeper.

In his fantasy, you reached for him, one hand slipping from your book as if drawn to his skin by instinct alone. But he caught your wrist with a light touch, his lips ghosting over yours as he whispered, barely audible, “Keep reading.”

The thought alone nearly unraveled him.

He imagined himself pulling back to lower his mouth to your neck once more. His lips would follow the line of it slowly, reverently, then drift downward to your collarbone. He pictured the way you might shiver when he grazed that delicate place with the faintest scrape of his teeth, a soft sound escaping you before you could stop it.

His lips trailed down again, pushing away your shirt and then brushing the side of your breast before lightly licking your nipple. When the sensation grew warm and insistent, he moved to the other one, licking and gently nibbling at it. His hand drifted lower, sliding to grasp your hips as he tended to your other breast.

Then, he dipped lower, lips tracing your belly through the thin fabric of your shirt, sending shivers up your spine. Needing better access, he gently turned you toward him, his body close, warm, and insistent. One of his hands slid from your hips to rest on your chest, guiding you backward until you were sprawled before him, head sinking into the corner of the pub booth. Every touch was deliberate, every movement teasing, his presence pressing against you in a way that made your heart race.

His fingers slid beneath your shirt, tracing and teasing your skin, while his lips lingered on your lower belly, warm and insistent. Every touch was deliberate, exploring just enough to make you shiver without overwhelming. Your breath hitched with each graze, every subtle movement pulling you closer into him. Slowly, his mouth drifted lower, kissing and nibbling at your thighs through your pants, teasing with soft, lingering nips. He lingered there, alternating between your thighs, savoring each moment, while his hands roamed your breasts, caressing and memorizing every curve, leaving you burning with anticipation.

This teeth grazed your most private part, pants still in the way, and he teased it with light nibbles until his frustration with the fabric grew. With a careful, deliberate movement, he loosened your pants and lowered your panties just enough to reach what he craved. You shivered under his gaze, your pussy glistening before him, and he licked his lips, savoring the sight.

Leaning in, he finally took you into his mouth, tasting it slowly, deliberately. The warmth of him against your pussy made you arch, a soft moan escaping as his tongue traced your lips gently at first, then teased your entrance. Encouraged by your moans, he explored with more intent, flicking and circling with precision, savoring every small response from you.

All the while, his hands roamed over your breasts, caressing and pressing gently, tracing the curves, and sometimes pinching your nipples. Each subtle touch from his lips and hands sent shivers through your body, your thighs pressing involuntarily. When his teeth grazed your clit you exploded in a load moan.

✨️✨️✨️.................................✨️✨️✨️

You turned another page, the soft sound startling Dream back into himself.

For a moment he simply blinked, the remnants of his daydream clinging to him like the warmth of a fading touch. His posture shifted almost imperceptibly: shoulders drawing in, breath catching, fingers curling against his knee as if he needed to anchor himself in the present.

You glanced up.

“Dream?”

His eyes flicked to yours, too sharply, too quickly.

“Yes,” he answered, but his voice was low, unsteady in a way it almost never was.

You tilted your head, studying him. “You look… far away.”

“I—” His breath faltered. For centuries he had spoken truths without hesitation, yet this one tangled on his tongue. “I was thinking.”

“About what?”

He should have looked away. He didn’t.

His gaze held yours, dark and intent, something warmer flickering deep within it despite his attempt at composure.

“You,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Your book stilled in your hands.

“Me?”

He swallowed, an entirely human gesture, a clear sign of his unease. “I was… remembering the evenings... when I layed in your lap.”

You softened. “You miss that?”

“Yes.”

The word came out bare, honest, stripped of the regal distance he so often carried.

But then, after a heartbeat too long, he added quietly, almost involuntarily:

“And imagining… more.”

Your breath caught.

Dream’s own eyes widened by a fraction the closest thing to panic he ever showed. He looked as though he had just stepped over a line he hadn’t meant to reveal existed.

He straightened, trying to gather himself. “Forgive me. I did not intend to say that aloud.”

Your hand closed your book gently, heartbeat quickening as you watched him struggle with emotions he had never learned to hide.

“Dream,” you said softly, “look at me.”

He did. And everything unspoken flickered between you: the longing he didn’t yet know how to voice and the way his composure trembled now, not from fear but from wanting.

“I do want you, you know,” you said, your hand rising to caress his face. He purred at that, his eyes darkening.

“You are my own sexy Dream King,” you teased softly, a half-crooked smile playing on your lips.

He bent his head and kissed the fingers that had traced his face. “And you… are my queen,” he replied.

Your fingers brushed lightly against his hand, lingering as they traced along his knuckles. His gaze followed, steady and patient, as if silently asking for permission. You leaned closer, letting your lips graze the side of his jaw, your touch gentle but confident.

“Dream,” you whispered softly, your hand cupping his face, thumb brushing over the sharp line of his jaw.

He blinked at you, startled by the desire in your tone. You pressed your forehead against his briefly, feeling the warmth of him, then shifted to sit beside him. Leaning into him, your lips found the hollow of his neck. Your fingers trailed down from his face to rest on his shoulders, then slid around to hold him gently at the waist. His breath caught, low and unsteady.

Guided by your hands, Dream shifted slightly. You traced your lips along his collarbone, soft and teasing, and he shivered beneath your touch. His hands, hesitant at first, found yours on his chest, resting there.

“Awfully cozy in here, are we not?” Hob’s voice startled you both.

For a moment, you forgot where you were, and from the grin on Hob’s face, it was clear he was both proud and amused to find you like this.

“I’ve closed. You can both stay here if you like, but I’m heading upstairs. I’m knackered,” he said, a knowing smile still on his lips. Before leaving, he called over his shoulder, “Don’t do anything on my tables!”

You both flushed crimson. Then you laughed at the sight of Dream, red-faced, lips slightly swollen, hair tousled, looking utterly adorable and completely unguarded.

“We should probably go upstairs too,” he offered.

“No,” you breathed, leaning closer into him. “I’m indeed cozy here.”

“There’s no one else but us here,” you murmured against the skin of his neck.

The words, and the warmth of you pressed beside him, made him shiver. Every brush of your lips sent a thrill through him, soft, unexpected, and wholly consuming.

Your hands moved to his chest again, caressing him softly through his shirt. Wanting to be closer, you shifted between his legs, the table pressing lightly behind you. He purred, a low vibration coursing through his entire being, and you could feel it beneath your hands.

He threw his head back in pleasure, and you took the opportunity to explore more of his neck with your lips. Then you drifted lower, unbuttoning his shirt one button at a time, revealing skin that seemed to beg for your greedy attention and your needy lips. Throughout the process, he shivered, a small whine escaping him when your lips neared the waistband of his pants. Your hands moved back up, savoring the feel of his toned chest, tracing the bones along either side, and delighting in the way goosebumps rose beneath your touch.

His breath hitched as your fingers lingered over his nipples, tracing them. He shifted slightly, leaning into your touch, eyes half-lidded in quiet surrender.

You let your lips follow the path of your hands, brushing over his nipples, tasting the warmth of them, hard and needing attention. His hands, tentative at first, found yours, as if he needed to anchor himself to the reality of your closeness.

His purr grew even louder, and moans were escaping him now, and it sent a shiver through your fingertips. You let your lips trace lower, brushing along him, feeling the tension and desire coil in every line of his body. When you reached his waistband, your eyes met his, and you found the silent consent and understanding in his gaze, the unspoken permission lingering between you. You then reached for his fly and loosened his pants letting his cock out.

It sprang free, hard, its red tip leaking precum. Your hands rested on his hips, holding him steady, grounding him as your closeness deepened. You locked eyes with him and licked his shaft from base to top. The sight and feel of you had him whimpering.

You took him in your mouth and let him rest between your lips, slowly tracing it with your tongue, savouring his sweet, sticky warmth as it teased your senses. Each deliberate, lingering drag of your tongue made the sweetness of him bloom on it. Every tremor, every shiver, every soft sound from him drew you in further.

He watched you with a quiet, hungry intensity, fingers brushing along your hands on his hips, as if testing your reaction. The heat of his gaze sent shivers down your spine, making your lips part slightly, inviting his attention without a word. Every slow movement of yours became a dance, each taste and drag drawing him deeper into your mouth, the air between you thick with tension.

When his hand finally found your hair, gentle but insistent, he pressed you even closer, grounding you against him. You felt his warmth, the deliberate brush of his tip against the back of your mouth, and it made your heart race.

His purring grew louder and louder, vibrating against you, and one of your hands moved to cup his balls, cradling them gently. He threw his head back, letting out a soft, breathy moan.

His whole body trembled with pleasure, each shiver running through him. His hips pressed and buckled against you, pushing himself more into you, your lips kissing the base of his cock each time he bottomed out, your throat fluttering around him. Your free hand found his, and he gripped it tightly, fingers intertwining to ground himself.

You kept bobbing your head on him and stroked what you couldn’t fit, twisting your wrist and then going lower again to play with his balls. You felt him leaking more profusely and twitching in need. You traced the sick vein on the underside of his cock with your tongue and heard him growl, a sound deep, raw and helpless.

"You feel so good...like you were made for me," he hissed while looking down, wrecked with half-lidded eyes, watching his shaft disappear past your lips over and over. You moaned around him and his whole body jerks.

"Starling," he whimpered "I won't last."

He couldn't stop rolling his hips forward, pushing himself deeper inside you, over and over again, making your eyes water. He was starting to lose his mind, like he was having a fever dream. He was lost in you. He then choked on your name, and you moaned again.

It sent him over the edge. He came with a whimper, his head thrown back, his hand keeping your head pressed against him. Hot ropes spilt on your tongue, thick and salty, and went down your throat as you swallowed greedily around him. He was panting above you, his body trembling, his purr louder than ever.

He looked down again, utterly undone, spent, dishevelled, completely unmade. His gaze lingered, wide and unguarded, full of quiet wonder and adoration, as if seeing you for the first time.

"You unmade me," he rasped.

You smiled around him, releasing him slowly. Your lips tightened around his tip before placing a soft kiss on it, your eyes locked on his.

“Did it surpass your daydream?” you asked, voice soft, teasing.

He shuddered, a slow, quiet tremor of satisfaction running through him. “Beyond expectations,” he murmured, eyes still fixed on you, full of awe and something tenderly possessive.

[nooneormaybysomeone]

The Cost of Being Seen. Chapter II

Note: A new Dark Sandman Mini-Series — for readers who want something darker: an obsessive, possessive, jealous, dominant Morpheus and a mortal woman in the real world, built on psychological tension, imbalance, and intensity. The story will be about five chapters long, completely separate from Bound in Eternity and with a very different tone. This is full dark romance, and it will not have a happy ending. Warning: 18+ | Minors DNI (Do Not Interact), NO HAE Pairing: Morpheus x female mortal reader Read the previous Chapter I

The coffee shop is small enough to feel temporary.

Fogged windows. Wet footprints near the door. A chalkboard menu written in a hand that tries too hard to look careless. Outside, the rain has softened into a thin grey mist that makes the city look unfinished, as if someone began painting it and then changed their mind halfway through.

You almost do not come.

You stood in the office bathroom for two full minutes before lunch ended, staring at your own face in the mirror and thinking of all the ways to cancel without sounding strange. A headache. A deadline. Exhaustion. The honest option, if honesty were socially survivable: I am becoming afraid of rooms I have already stood in and reflections that lag by half a second.

Instead, when the workday finally releases you, you say yes.

Now you sit across from him by the window, palms wrapped around a paper cup that has already begun to soften with heat.

He is kind in the unremarkable way that matters more than people realize. Not charming enough to feel strategic. Not polished enough to feel dangerous. He asks easy questions and waits for the answers instead of leaping in to fill the silence himself. He does not look at you with hunger or pity. Just concern. Human, careful concern.

It should be a relief.

In some small, tired corner of you, it is.

“You don’t have to stay long,” he says, when your gaze drifts toward the glass. “I meant it. No pressure.”

“I know.”

Your voice sounds mostly normal. A little thin, perhaps, but not ruined.

He nods, and his expression softens in a way that might, on another day, have made you lower your guard by half an inch.

“I just thought,” he says, then pauses as if revising the shape of his own sincerity before offering it to you, “it might be good not to go straight home.”

Home.

The word lands with a faint, immediate resistance in your chest.

You do not know when your apartment began to feel less like shelter and more like a place where silence waits for you to return. It is still your furniture. Your dishes. Your coat on the hook near the door. But something about it has altered in the last two nights, as though an invisible draft has found a way in and settled somewhere behind the walls.

You stir your coffee though there is nothing in it to dissolve.

“That’s probably true,” you say.

He smiles a little, relieved by the small concession.

Outside, people move past in blurred shapes, umbrellas low, collars turned up against the damp. The city continues its indifferent rhythm. Crosswalk lights change. A bus exhales at the curb. Somewhere farther down the street, a siren rises briefly and then disappears.

Ordinary life. Ordinary weather. Ordinary kindness across a small table.

And still, beneath all of it, your skin will not settle.

It begins as a familiar pressure at the back of your neck.

Then your attention drifts, almost involuntarily, to the window beside you.

The rain on the glass has thinned into scattered droplets, enough to turn the street into a fractured reflection. You see yourself there in broken pieces: cheek, shoulder, the dark line of your coat folded over the chair. His outline opposite yours. Light from the hanging bulbs above you, stretched pale and warped.

And behind your reflection, in the glass, something taller.

Not a face. Not even a clear body. Just the unmistakable suggestion of height and stillness where there should be only the café’s warm interior and the washed-out street beyond.

Your pulse kicks once, hard.

You look over your shoulder so quickly that the chair gives a small scrape against the floor.

No one.

A woman at the counter waits for her order. A barista wipes steam from the metal wand of the espresso machine. Two students near the door are bent over a laptop, laughing over something on the screen. The room is complete in its normality.

When you look back at the window, the dark shape is gone.

“You okay?” he asks.

You realize you are gripping the cup too hard. The lid has buckled slightly beneath your thumb.

“Yeah.” You loosen your hand with effort. “Sorry. Thought I saw someone I knew.”

It is a harmless lie. Thin enough to pass.

He glances toward the door, then back to you. “Do you want to leave?”

“No.”

The answer comes too quickly, surprising even you.

Because leaving would mean the street. The walk. The stairs. The apartment. And because for the last fifteen minutes, while he has been talking about nothing in particular and the coffee has gone lukewarm between your hands, the sensation has lessened just enough to let you breathe without measuring it.

You make yourself look at him. “No. I’m okay.”

He studies you for a moment, gentle enough not to press.

“Okay.”

You ask him something about a project. He answers. He tells a minor story about a meeting that went sideways because three different people brought three different versions of the same file. You even laugh once, quietly, because the story is not extraordinary but the absurdity of work continues to function whether or not the rest of a person does.

For a few fragile minutes, the world thins back into something manageable.

Then he says your name.

Not loudly. Not intimately. Just in the ordinary cadence of someone making sure you are still with him in the conversation.

But when he says it, something in the air around you seems to tighten.

The overhead light flickers once.

Just once.

He glances up. “Huh.”

The bulb steadies.

You do not.

“You really look tired,” he says, the words leaving him before he can sand them down into something less direct. “Sorry. That sounded—”

“No. It’s fine.”

You drag your attention back to his face because if you keep staring at the light you are going to start believing the room is reactive. That the world is listening. That you are no longer moving through it alone.

“I am tired.”

He hesitates, then reaches across the table in a gesture so modest it almost undoes you. His fingers do not close over yours. He only brushes the back of your hand once, warm and brief, the smallest possible human reassurance.

The bulb above you clicks out.

Not the whole café. Only the one over your table.

The sudden absence of light is so precise that your throat closes around a breath.

The hanging fixture above the counter still glows amber. The display case still hums softly with its own internal light. The laptop near the door throws pale blue across two bowed heads.

Only your table darkens.

He pulls his hand back immediately, startled more than anything else. “Wow. Okay. That’s creepy timing.”

A barista swears under his breath and leans over the counter to check the switch on the wall. “Sorry,” he calls. “It’s been doing that all week.”

You nod as if this is enough to satisfy you.

It is enough to satisfy him.

But your skin knows the difference between inconvenience and attention.

The rest of the coffee passes in a blur you cannot quite reconstruct afterward. You answer when spoken to. You say thank you when he offers to walk you to the station and no thank you when the thought of being accompanied all the way home feels suddenly unbearable. He accepts your refusal without offense. He is, infuriatingly, decently made.

At the door, with the bell above it giving a small tired jolt as someone leaves behind you, he pauses.

“If you want to do this again,” he says, “we can. Or not. No expectations.”

There is that carefulness again. That mortal delicacy with which people offer each other opportunities to be known.

You think, absurdly, of a hand on your chest in the dark. Of a voice that sounded less like speech than pronouncement.

No expectations.

The phrase feels almost foreign.

“Maybe,” you say.

He smiles. “Maybe’s fine.”

Then he is gone into the rain, shoulders hunched, one hand lifting to adjust his collar against the damp.

You stand under the café awning for a moment longer than necessary, watching the crowd absorb him.

Only when he disappears fully do you step into the street.

The city receives you with its usual indifference.

Traffic crawls. Water beads on your lashes. Somewhere nearby a delivery truck backs into an alley with a repetitive mechanical beeping that makes your jaw tighten. A woman in a red coat lifts her phone over her head to shield it from the rain while she runs across the intersection. The air tastes faintly metallic, as if all weather in this city eventually becomes a variation of iron.

You reach into your pocket for your phone and check the time.

22:41.

You walk half a block, passing a pharmacy already dark behind its grate, a convenience store glowing sterile and overbright at the corner, a shuttered florist whose flowers are now only pale ghosts behind glass.

You check again.

22:41.

A small knot forms low in your stomach.

You stop walking.

The rain settles lightly on your hair. A cyclist glides past behind you. Someone farther up the pavement laughs too loudly, then coughs.

You stare at the screen until it dims in your hand. Press the side button. The display blooms back to life.

22:41.

Your breath catches so quietly that no one around you notices.

You tell yourself the phone has frozen.

This happens. Screens lag. Apps crash. Batteries die for no reason and then recover. There are explanations for almost everything if a person is willing to work hard enough at being reasonable.

You lift your eyes to the street clock bolted outside the bank across from you.

Its red digital numbers read 22:42.

When you look back at your phone, it changes.

22:42.

The relief that hits is so immediate it almost makes you angry.

You let out a breath through your nose, then another, longer one, half-laughing at yourself in a way that does not feel amused.

Stress, you think. Grief. Sleep deprivation. The body can be a talented liar when it wants to protect itself from things it does not understand.

You tuck the phone away and keep walking.

You do not notice the shadow on the glass of the florist’s window until you are already passing it.

Tall. Motionless. Impossible to place in the layered reflections of street and light.

This time you do not stop.

You keep going, steps quickening with an instinctive refusal to give whatever it is the dignity of being acknowledged.

By the time you reach your building, your heartbeat is loud enough to feel embarrassing.

The stairwell smells like wet concrete and old radiator heat.

You take the steps too fast. Keys in hand before you reach the landing. Door unlocked, opened, shut again behind you in one efficient sequence of movement that has the shape of panic while still pretending to be practicality.

Inside, the apartment is dark in the ordinary way.

No movement. No sound but the refrigerator’s low hum and the rain whispering at the window.

You lean back against the door and close your eyes for one second.

Two.

Three.

The silence feels arranged.

You hate yourself a little for that thought.

You flick on the kitchen light and the room brightens into the plain facts of your life. Counter. Sink. Mug by the drying rack. A loaf of bread in its paper bag, folded at the top. Keys in the shallow dish near the wall. Nothing mystical. Nothing threatening. Just objects with one function each.

You put your bag down and wash your hands, though you do not remember deciding to.

Water rushes over your fingers. Soap. Heat. The habitual mechanics of being a person in a body. You focus on each detail until your breathing evens out.

When you finally look up, your own reflection in the dark window above the sink startles you.

For a split second, you are certain there are two silhouettes in the glass.

By the time your brain catches up to what your eyes are doing, there is only you and the kitchen behind you.

You turn anyway.

Empty.

You dry your hands carefully, fold the towel back over the oven handle as if neatness might reassert some law you have lost, and eat standing up because sitting feels too much like waiting for something.

Bread. Cheese. One apple. Food reduced to components.

You glance toward the hallway twice. Then a third time, angry enough by then to make yourself stop.

At 23:28, you take your phone to bed because the thought of lying in the dark without a light source feels suddenly unreasonable.

At 23:31, you put it face down on the bedside table because the screen’s glow makes the room look thinner than it should.

At 23:36, you are still awake.

At 23:36, you are still awake.

At 23:36, the numbers on the digital clock beside your bed remain unchanged long enough for your skin to go cold.

You sit up.

The room is as you left it. Curtains half-drawn. Coat over the chair. A book on the floor where you dropped it three nights ago and never picked it up again. The red digits on the clock hold steady for one long impossible beat.

Then shift.

23:37.

You are so tired that a laugh almost escapes you, brittle and humorless.

“Enough,” you say to the empty room.

The word hangs there, pathetic in its smallness.

Nothing answers.

Eventually, exhaustion does what comfort cannot. It drags you under by degrees.

Sleep takes you hard.

—

You are in a corridor lined with doors.

Not a hallway in any human sense, though at first your mind tries to make it one. The proportions are wrong. Too long, yet never narrowing with distance. The floor beneath you is dark stone veined with something that catches light like old silver. The walls rise higher than they should, vanishing into a dimness that feels architectural rather than natural, as if the place was built to impress on the scale of a thought too large for a body to survive.

There is no visible ceiling.

Only shadow.

Rows of doors stretch in either direction.

Some are wood darkened almost black with age, fitted with brass handles polished by invisible hands. Some are painted in colours so faded they look remembered rather than seen. One is mirrored. One is carved with a pattern of sleeping faces that shift when you look directly at them, settling back into stillness the moment you blink. One stands slightly ajar, and from the thin crack of darkness beyond it comes the sound of distant office laughter and the click of a keyboard.

You know, with dream-certainty, that each one leads somewhere you have already been.

Or somewhere you will be.

Or somewhere a part of you never managed to leave.

Your own breathing sounds too loud.

You turn slowly.

The corridor behind you is just as endless.

At the farthest visible point, where the light falls away and the architecture becomes almost abstract, a figure stands.

Tall.

Still.

Not emerging this time. Not assembling himself out of shadow and your own fear. He is simply there from the start, as though the dream understood it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

His coat is darkness in the shape of fabric. His hair is black enough to erase the edges of his face until he shifts, and then pale cheekbone, the line of a mouth, the starless weight of his eyes resolve one measured piece at a time.

He does not come closer.

Yet the corridor belongs to him so completely that distance feels decorative.

You know, before he speaks, that if you run every door in the place will still open back into him.

Your mouth is dry.

“Who are you?”

The question leaves you steadier than you feel.

He regards you in silence for a moment that stretches just slightly too long, as if he is deciding whether the answer is something you can survive hearing.

Then, in a voice deep enough to seem older than sound itself, he says, “You ask as though names protect mortals from consequence.”

The words move through the corridor without echo. They simply remain, settled into the air.

You hate that your first response is not outrage.

It is recognition.

Not of him, exactly. Of the sensation of him. The weight you felt above black water. The pressure in glass and fluorescent office light. The impossible certainty in your apartment’s silence.

“You’ve been following me.”

His expression does not alter.

“I have been observing.”

The distinction should be absurd. Instead it lands with the quiet force of a correction given by someone who has never in his existence considered that he might be wrong.

Your heart knocks once against your ribs.

You glance at the nearest door. Through the narrow frame around it, you can see a section of subway carriage. The metal pole. The smeared reflection of overhead lights. Your own hand wrapped around the pole, knuckles pale.

You look away quickly.

“What is this place?”

At that, something almost like amusement touches his face. Not warmth. Not pleasure. Merely the brief acknowledgement of an ignorant question that interests him despite itself.

“This,” he says, “is where your mind comes when it can no longer bear the small rooms you give it.”

His gaze passes briefly over the rows of doors.

“You persist in choosing the narrowest thresholds.”

You stare at him.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means,” he says, and now there is something quieter in his tone, something more dangerous for being restrained, “that you have mistaken confinement for safety.”

The nearest door to your right trembles on its hinges.

Not violently. Just a soft shiver, as if something behind it has leaned nearer to listen.

You step away from it immediately.

“I want to wake up.”

He says nothing.

The mirrored door on your left catches your reflection. Only it is not quite your reflection. The angle is wrong. You are standing straight in the corridor, but the figure in the glass looks like you sitting on the edge of your bed, shoulders rigid, staring at a digital clock in a dark room.

When you look directly at it, the image shifts back into you.

A cold current moves under your skin.

“I said I want to wake up.”

This time he moves.

Only one step.

It should not matter across that distance. It does.

The corridor seems to draw in around the sound of it.

“You speak,” he says, “as though waking is an escape.”

You feel anger then, sudden and sharp enough to cut through the fear.

“Fine. Then what do you want?”

At that, the dark patience in him deepens into something more attentive.

Something predatory.

It is the look of a thing that does not need to chase because it has already judged the terrain and knows where you will eventually falter.

“You have been looked at by mortals your entire life,” he says. “Measured for usefulness. For beauty. For composure. For what may be taken from you with the least resistance.”

His voice does not rise. It has no need to. The corridor itself seems to lean toward it.

“And still you do not know what it is to be seen.”

The words land harder than they should.

Because part of you understands them.

Because part of you hates that.

You fold your arms around yourself, then stop when you realize the gesture makes you feel more exposed instead of less.

“You don’t know me.”

“No?”

He takes another step.

The mirrored door flickers. In it, for one heartbeat, you see yourself at the funeral, rain on your lashes, mouth set too still above a grave you did not know how to stand beside.

Then the image is gone.

He has not raised a hand.

He does not need to.

“You think yourself held together by discipline,” he says. “You call your fear practicality. You call your loneliness independence. You call your exhaustion strength because the alternative would require you to admit how near to collapse you have come.”

Your throat tightens.

The corridor has become very quiet.

Not empty. Quiet in the way a forest can go quiet when something larger than the birds has entered it.

“You know nothing about me,” you say, but the words are weaker now, their certainty frayed at the edges by the simple horror of being accurately named by a stranger who should not exist.

His eyes remain on you.

“No,” he says. “I know exactly enough.”

The door carved with sleeping faces opens of its own accord.

Inside is your apartment hallway.

Not perfectly. Dream-versions of things are never perfect. The proportions are fractionally wrong. The light too dim. The silence too complete. But it is yours. Your umbrella stand. The small crack in the skirting board. The framed print you keep meaning to straighten and never do.

A hand closes around your wrist.

You gasp and wrench backward before your mind understands there is no one touching you.

It is only the sensation.

The memory of being caught imposed on empty air.

He notices.

Of course he notices.

“You fear intrusion,” he says.

You say nothing.

“Yet you continue to leave every door within you unlocked.”

Something in the corridor groans, low and distant, like a structure settling under its own age.

You back away from the open door to your apartment and your heel strikes something.

Another threshold.

You turn and find yourself before a door unlike the others.

Black wood.

No handle.

No visible hinges.

Only a keyhole at eye level, cut into the surface with obscene precision, as if the door was designed for the sole purpose of making absence visible.

You do not remember it being there a moment ago.

You can feel him behind you without hearing him move.

“You will not enter that one,” he says.

The statement is calm.

Not suggestion. Not warning.

Law.

Some instinct in you, stupid and human and unable to bear directives from impossible men in impossible places, rises at once in resistance.

“Why?”

His silence is immediate and terrible.

Then: “Because you are not prepared to understand what waits there.”

You stare at the keyhole.

Darkness fills it. Dense. Total. Not the harmless dark of an unlit room. Something deeper. Intentional.

You lean closer before you can stop yourself.

Behind you, his voice lowers. “Do not.”

You look through it.

The world on the other side opens at once.

Not a room.

A sky full of stars that are too near.

A landscape made of bone-white stone and black surf. Towers impossible in scale. A palace built from shadow and moonlight and the architecture of things humans only survive by calling symbols. Wind moves through that place like language. And at the center of it all, vast enough to render your own existence laughably temporary, sits a throne.

Empty.

No— not empty.

Waiting.

The force of it slams through you so violently that you stumble back with a choked sound.

The corridor tilts.

For one impossible second you think you hear wings. Libraries. Storms crossing dead kingdoms. A thousand thousand sleepers turning in their beds beneath a sky you cannot see.

Then his hand is suddenly against the black door beside your head.

Not touching you.

Blocking the keyhole.

The sound cuts off.

The corridor steadies.

He is near enough now that the dark around him has texture. Silk. Smoke. Night made formal.

His face is unreadable in the dimness except for the eyes.

“You do not look where you are forbidden,” he says.

The fear in you flares instantly into something almost equal parts anger.

“You don’t get to forbid me anything.”

His gaze sharpens with interest.

It is not the response of a man offended by disobedience.

It is the response of something ancient recognizing resistance and marking it as potentially worthy of further study.

“And yet,” he says softly, “I already have.”

The words strike so close to the shape of violation that your breath catches.

You step back, then another.

The corridor shifts with you.

Doors begin opening in slow sequence all down its length. A funeral. A subway window. The break room in the office. Your bed in the dark. The café window with the blurred street beyond it. Each threshold exposing some recent piece of your life as if the dream has decided privacy is merely another mortal superstition.

You turn in a circle, pulse rioting, and find him watching the panic rise in you with a focus so still it becomes monstrous.

“Stop this.”

He does not.

“Stop looking at me.”

At that, something changes.

Not in the corridor.

In him.

A minute stillness. Deeper than the one before.

“No,” he says.

The single syllable lands with the weight of a door closing somewhere very far away.

The sound of all those open rooms begins to blend. Rain. Train brakes. Office air conditioning. Your own breathing in sleep. The layered noise thickens until you cannot tell which one is real and which one is dream and whether there is a difference anymore.

You clamp your hands over your ears.

It does not help.

He takes one final step.

The corridor falls silent at once.

Not quieter.

Silent.

Absolute.

Your breath shakes.

His gaze drops briefly to the movement of your hands, then returns to your face.

“You asked to be left in peace,” he says. “But what you call peace is merely emptiness with the lights turned low.”

His voice has become very near without becoming intimate. That is the worst part. There is nothing coaxing in it. No effort to soothe. Only the cruel clarity of observation sharpened into something more deliberate.

“You have hidden yourself in narrow rooms and disciplined habits and the approval of lesser minds. You have mistaken being unattended for being safe.”

You lower your hands slowly.

The silence around you feels engineered.

He looks at you as one might look at a wound beneath clean bandages— not with pity, but with the exact knowledge of what lies underneath.

“And now,” he says, “you have drawn my attention.”

Your mouth goes dry.

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“No.”

The answer is immediate.

“You did not.”

For the first time, there is something like honesty without ornament between you. Terrible for how clean it is.

Then the corridor begins to darken from the edges inward.

The doors close one by one.

The mirrored one last.

Before it seals, you catch one final glimpse of yourself in bed, eyes closed, face turned toward some point beside the mattress as if listening even in sleep.

The click of the latch sounds almost gentle.

You wake with your own pulse lodged in your throat.

The room is dark.

No corridor. No impossible doors. No stars beyond a keyhole.

Only your bedroom. Your curtains. The weak city glow filtering around their edges.

And the certainty— immediate, full-bodied, absolute— that you are not alone.

You sit up too quickly and pain shoots through the back of your neck.

The mattress dips.

A visible depression at the edge of the bed, shallow but undeniable, as if weight had rested there a second ago and only just been removed.

Your lungs stop working for one suspended heartbeat.

You stare at it.

The fabric slowly rises.

Not springing back. Not instantly. Gradually. The slow correction of pressure leaving matter behind.

Every hair on your body lifts.

You fling on the bedside lamp so violently your hand knocks the shade askew.

Warm light floods the room.

Nothing.

No figure. No shadow. No sign of intrusion beyond your own ragged breathing and the sheet twisted around your legs.

You press your palm flat to the place where the mattress dipped.

It is warm.

You pull your hand back as if burned.

No sleep comes after that.

—

In the Dreaming, Lucienne waits until the silence between one turning page and the next becomes deliberate.

The library is vast enough to hum with its own weather.

Shelves rise in dark, impossible tiers. Ladders lean where no mortal hand last placed them. Dust does not gather there unless it is wanted. Somewhere deeper in the stacks, a raven mutters once in his sleep and then settles again. The place is not asleep— this realm does not sleep in any human way— but it is quieter than usual, as though the books themselves have sensed a shift in their sovereign and chosen discretion.

Lucienne closes the volume before her with careful hands.

“My lord.”

Dream stands at the far end of the aisle, half-shadowed by the architecture of his own domain. One hand rests lightly against the spine of a book that contains three wars, five plagues, the collapse of a dynasty, and a child’s recurring nightmare about teeth falling loose in church. He has not removed it from the shelf. He is simply touching it while thinking of something else.

“Yes.”

His tone is neutral. Which, in him, is often more revealing than anger.

Lucienne studies him over the polished edge of her glasses.

“You are absent in an unusual direction.”

His gaze lifts to her.

The faintest pause.

Then: “I am here.”

“In body,” she says.

The correction lands without insolence. She has served too long to waste words on fear.

His hand leaves the book.

The aisle seems to darken by a shade. Not from temper. From focus.

“You disapprove.”

“I am concerned.”

He says nothing.

Lucienne rises from her chair and sets the book aside. Its title shifts twice as it settles, choosing which possible future it would most like to belong to.

“There is a mortal woman whose dreams have become… louder,” she says. “The routes into her sleep alter when you turn your attention toward them. Entire shelves have begun reorganising themselves around her. Threads that were simple have become barbed. This is not occurring by accident.”

Dream’s expression remains still.

“No.”

“So I gathered.”

Lucienne steps around the reading table.

“Should I ask whether this interference serves the balance of the realm?”

“You may ask.”

There is no permission in it. Only formality.

She folds her hands before her. “Does it?”

His gaze shifts, not away from her, but through the library itself, as though he is momentarily looking across levels of reality she is unwilling to name in front of the books.

“She has become visible.”

Lucienne is silent.

Then, very carefully: “To you.”

“Yes.”

The answer is plain enough to make something in her posture tighten.

“My lord,” she says, “mortals become visible to us every day.”

“Not in this manner.”

He moves then, passing slowly down the aisle. The library alters subtly around him. Shadows incline. Pages quiet. Somewhere high above, an unread story seals itself shut.

Lucienne turns to follow him with her eyes.

“What manner, then?”

Dream stops beside a narrow window that looks not out onto landscape, but into a drifting accumulation of collective dream-stuff: lost staircases, childhood bedrooms, mouths full of seawater, the red blur of a fox seen once in winter and never forgotten.

“When the mind of a mortal begins to resist its own shape,” he says, “it creates openings.”

Lucienne’s gaze sharpens.

“Openings can become wounds.”

“They can.”

“And you have chosen to look through one.”

He does not answer at once, which is answer enough.

Lucienne knows better than most beings alive what that stillness means in him. Not indecision. Commitment prior to declaration.

“She is grieving,” Lucienne says. “Exhausted. Alone.”

His eyes return to her.

“Yes.”

The word is not sympathetic.

It is acquisitive.

Lucienne feels it with the cold clarity of long experience.

“She is vulnerable.”

At that, something in Dream’s expression changes by so little another being might miss it. A darkening at the edge of the gaze. An attention becoming territorial.

“I am aware.”

The library grows very quiet.

Lucienne steps closer.

“My lord.”

He waits.

“If she is only a curiosity, leave her be.”

The silence that follows is vast.

Then Dream says, “She is not.”

The words settle between them like stone.

Lucienne inhales slowly.

“This will not remain confined to one mortal mind,” she says. “If you continue to shape the boundaries of her sleep, the Dreaming itself will answer. It is already answering. It bends toward where your will is fixed. Such things spread.”

“She will endure.”

“That is not what concerns me.”

At last his face turns fully toward her, and in it she sees what she had hoped not to see so early: not passing fascination, not aesthetic interest in a fracture well-observed, but the first settled architecture of possession.

“You imply risk,” he says.

“I state it.”

Lucienne’s voice is measured, but there is steel in it now.

“Mortals do not survive the concentrated notice of Endless without cost.”

For the first time, something like shadowed satisfaction touches his mouth.

“Precisely.”

Lucienne goes still.

The library does not breathe, but if it did it would be holding that breath now.

“You intend harm?”

“No.”

His reply is immediate, almost cold in its offense.

But then he adds, “Harm is a mortal simplification. I intend understanding.”

Lucienne has served him too long not to know how dangerous that word becomes in his hands.

“And if she does not wish to be understood by you?”

Dream’s gaze drifts past her again, toward some point no library wall contains.

“She has already begun to answer.”

Lucienne says nothing for several moments.

When she finally speaks, it is quieter.

“Then I fear,” she says, “that you have mistaken response for invitation.”

That lands.

Not as a wound. Not quite. But as a fact placed where it cannot be ignored.

The air in the aisle cools.

Dream’s expression empties into something older than irritation.

“You presume much.”

“I observe much.”

It is an insolence only Lucienne could survive.

The window beside him darkens, its drifting dream-fragments replaced for one second by the image of a human bedroom: a lamp turned on crooked, a woman sitting rigid in bed, staring at a place beside her that no longer bears weight.

Then the image dissolves.

Lucienne sees that he saw it too.

“My lord,” she says carefully, “do not go too far into this.”

He looks at her at last with the full weight of his attention.

And there it is: the truth, black and gleaming.

Too far is already behind him.

“She has been seen,” he says.

Lucienne feels, in that moment, a deep and ancient unease.

Because there is reverence in his tone.

And there is hunger.

“She is mortal,” Lucienne says.

“Yes.”

“As are all things that break.”

He says nothing.

But the library knows. The books know. The Dreaming itself, in its strange vast sentience, has already begun to understand that its king’s gaze has fixed upon a single fragile life in the waking world and, in doing so, has changed the pressure of the realm.

Lucienne lowers her head slightly.

Not surrender. Only acknowledgment that warnings have failed to become barriers.

“Then I will watch the damage.”

Dream’s voice, when it comes, is quieter than before.

“So will I.”

—

Morning arrives with the exhausted cruelty of all mornings that follow no real sleep.

The mirror in the bathroom offers you a face that still belongs to you, which feels like an accomplishment. Pale, but not alarming. Eyes a little too bright from being awake too long. Mouth set flat. Hair tied back with more force than the task requires.

You lean closer to inspect the skin at your throat, hating yourself for doing it.

Nothing visible.

Only tenderness.

The kind that could be caused by posture, poor sleep, stress, teeth grinding, tension held in the body until the body begins inventing punishments of its own.

You hold on to that explanation because it is the most survivable one available.

At work, the fluorescent light is merciless.

Your inbox is full. Someone has added a follow-up meeting you did not agree to. Your manager messages to ask if you need more time on a deliverable and you reply no almost before the message finishes loading because the thought of being handled gently by management this week feels unbearable.

You are halfway through revising a deck when your laptop screen goes black for a second.

Not off.

Only dark enough to turn reflective.

In the black glass you see your own face, small and strained.

And standing behind your chair, a tall figure in darkness, one hand resting on the backrest as though he has every right to occupy the intimate geography of your space.

You twist around so fast your knee hits the underside of the desk.

No one.

A coworker two rows over glances up at the noise and then back to her monitor.

Your breath comes shallow.

You turn back to the laptop.

The presentation is there. Slides. Charts. Comments in the margins. A calendar notification pulsing discreetly in one corner. Perfectly normal.

Except for the text box on slide twelve.

You are certain— absolutely certain— that it had read Q2 content priorities before.

Now it reads:

Open the correct door.

Your stomach drops so hard it feels like missing a step in darkness.

You blink.

The text changes back.

Q2 content priorities.

You close the laptop.

Not gently.

The snap of it echoes louder than it should in the office.

Someone asks if you are all right and you nod without looking at them, because if you meet a human face just now you think you might begin screaming and be unable to explain why.

The rest of the morning drags itself forward one task at a time.

By lunch, your nerves feel skinned.

He finds you in the corridor outside the break room, coffee in one hand, concern again plain in the lines around his mouth.

“Hey.”

You stop because continuing would require pretending not to have heard him.

“Hey.”

His eyes search your face. “You look like you haven’t slept.”

You nearly laugh.

Instead you say, “I haven’t, really.”

“That bad?”

You hate the genuine sympathy in the question. Hate how close it brings you to the edge of admitting something irreversible. That you are frightened in ways language is not built to make respectable.

“Just weird dreams.”

He shifts the coffee cup to his other hand.

“Do you want me to bring you one? Tea? Water?”

The offer is so harmless that your chest hurts.

“No. Thanks.”

He hesitates. “Look, I know yesterday might have been too soon, and if it was, that’s okay. I wasn’t trying to—”

“I know.”

Your voice softens despite yourself.

“I know you weren’t.”

Something in his face loosens.

For one dangerous second, standing in a bland office corridor with carpet that smells faintly of cleaning products and old air, you feel the possibility of being anchored by something ordinary. A person who asks, waits, accepts. A life that continues in human scale. Coffee. Kindness. Small invitations. The narrow room of mortal comfort.

Then the overhead lights dim.

Not off.

Only lowering by a shade, all at once, as if a cloud has passed over the building despite the fact that there are no windows here and no reason light should behave like weather.

He looks up.

“So weird,” he murmurs.

Your skin has already gone cold.

The dimness lasts three seconds.

Four.

Then the lights return to normal brightness.

A coworker emerges from the break room behind him and squints upward. “Are they doing maintenance again?”

“Maybe,” he says, still glancing at the ceiling.

You know, with a certainty that makes you feel briefly ill, that the lights did not flicker because of faulty wiring.

They reacted.

To what, you no longer have the luxury of misunderstanding.

You look past him, down the corridor toward the darkened glass panel at the far end.

For a heartbeat, a figure stands reflected there.

Watching.

You take one involuntary step back.

He notices immediately.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

The word comes too quickly, too sharp.

You see him register it. See him decide not to push.

“All right,” he says quietly.

The mercy of that nearly undoes you more than pressure would have.

You go back to your desk and sit very still for several minutes with your hands folded in your lap, not trusting them not to shake if you ask them to do anything useful.

By the time evening comes, you are past tired.

You are thinned.

The city outside the office windows is already sinking into wet dark when you finally leave. Rain again, fine and cold. People drifting home in packs. Brake lights smearing red across the pavement.

You walk without your umbrella.

At some point, almost without deciding to, you stop in front of a church you do not belong to.

Its doors are closed. Stone dark with weather. A weak gold light burning somewhere within. You stand at the bottom of the steps looking up at it and think not of faith, but of structures built expressly to contain what people fear and adore in equal measure.

Then, because you are exhausted enough to become reckless, you say under your breath into the rain:

“If this is a dream, then show yourself.”

The city does not pause.

No thunder answers. No choir of angels collapses from the clouds. A taxi splashes through a shallow gutter and keeps going. Somewhere nearby a pedestrian signal clicks over to green.

You almost smile at yourself.

Then every bell in the church begins to ring.

Not a scheduled peel. Not music. One violent collective shudder of sound, as if every clapper has been dragged through bronze by the same invisible hand.

You flinch so hard you nearly lose your footing on the wet stone.

The bells stop.

Silence rushes in behind them.

On the church doors, in the rain-dark reflection of the streetlamp, you see him.

Tall.

Still.

Near enough that if you turned he would be standing on the same step.

Your entire body locks.

You do not turn.

You cannot.

Because the reflection is clear enough to destroy the final excuse you have been nursing like a wound.

Not grief. Not nerves. Not lack of sleep.

Him.

His face is pale in the warped gold light. Beautiful in the pitiless way old things sometimes are. Not inviting. Not kind. Merely exact. His coat falls dark around him as if shadow prefers his shape to any other available use. He is watching you with an intensity so complete it feels less like being looked at and more like being entered by sight.

Rain should break the image.

It does not.

Your voice, when it comes, is barely there.

“What do you want?”

In the reflection, his mouth moves.

The voice does not come from the church steps.

It comes from inside your own head, low and measured and impossible to mistake.

You continue to ask the smallest question.

Your breath catches.

People pass behind you. Through you. Around you. No one slows. No one notices a woman standing rigid before a church in the rain while something ancient speaks into the architecture of her mind.

You force yourself to whisper, “Leave me alone.”

The reflection’s eyes darken.

You no longer believe that is what you desire.

Terror and anger surge together, hot enough to make you turn at last.

The church steps behind you are empty.

Only rain. Stone. A discarded flyer plastered wet against the railing.

When you look back at the doors, the reflection is gone.

You do not remember the walk home afterward.

Only fragments. The press of the train. The metallic smell of the carriage. The sensation, once, of someone standing too close behind you until you spun around and found only a woman with grocery bags looking startled by your sudden movement.

By the time you reach your apartment, you are shaking.

Inside, you do not turn on all the lights. Only the lamp by the couch. The kitchen overhead. The small one near the bookshelf. Islands of brightness. Enough to keep the corners from gathering too much authority.

You sit without taking off your coat.

The apartment feels different tonight.

Not watched.

Prepared.

You look at the hallway. At the dark entrance to the bathroom. At your bedroom door, half-open in a way you do not remember leaving it.

Your phone buzzes.

A message from him.

Got home okay?

You stare at the screen for a long moment.

There is something almost heartbreaking in the normalcy of it. A human check-in. A small tether flung across the evening. The kind of thing that, three days ago, would have registered as mildly nice and nothing more.

Now it feels like evidence from another reality.

Your thumbs hover over the keyboard.

Before you can type, the message disappears.

Not deleted.

Not replaced.

The entire thread blanks for one second.

Then returns.

Only the text now reads:

You mistake safety for nearness.

Your blood turns to ice.

You drop the phone onto the couch as if it has burned you.

It lands face up.

The screen changes.

Got home okay?

Exactly as before.

Your own pulse roars in your ears.

You do not touch the phone again.

Later— much later, though the clock seems suddenly untrustworthy as a concept— you stand in the bathroom with both hands braced against the sink, staring at your reflection.

Your face is pale. Eyes too large. Hair still damp at the temples from rain.

Behind you, in the mirror, the doorway to the hall is visible.

Empty.

You close your eyes.

Open them.

He is there.

Not in the room.

Only in the mirror.

Standing in the doorway behind you with one hand against the frame, as if he has been there the entire time and only just chosen the correct angle from which to become legible.

A sound escapes you before you can stop it.

You whirl around.

The hallway is empty.

When you turn back to the mirror, he remains.

Not moving.

Watching.

The lamp above the sink gives a soft electrical hum. Water drips once from the tap you did not fully close. Your own ragged breathing fills the room.

In the mirror, he inclines his head slightly.

The gesture is almost courteous.

The horror of it is enough to make your vision blur.

“You are not real,” you whisper.

His mouth moves.

Reality is a discipline mortals impose upon what they can bear.

The voice arrives in you like a thought you did not think.

You stumble back hard enough to hit the wall.

When you blink, the mirror holds only your own reflection again.

You do not sleep that night because you are no longer certain sleep belongs to you.

But exhaustion is a tyrant.

Near dawn, sitting upright on the couch with every light still on and the television muted before you because moving images without sound felt marginally better than the apartment’s attentive silence, you drift.

Not fully.

Enough.

Enough for the dream to take hold.

—

This time there is no corridor.

You are standing in your own apartment.

Only wrong.

The dimensions stretched slightly out of human proportion. The ceiling too high. The corners deeper than they should be. Your furniture all present, but arranged with the unnerving precision of a memory curated by someone who loves control more than accuracy.

The lamps are lit, yet the room is darker than in waking life.

And he is seated in your chair.

One ankle crossed over the other. Hands resting lightly on the chair’s arms as though it was made for him long before it was ever yours. He fills the room without theatrics, without spectacle, by the simple intolerable fact of choosing to remain in it.

You stop at once.

No panic this time.

Not because you are calm.

Because the fear has gone too deep to remain frantic. It has become something colder. More exact.

“You.”

His gaze lifts to you with that same terrible patience.

“Yes.”

Your throat works around the next question.

“What are you?”

The faintest shadow crosses his face. Not offense. Assessment.

Then he rises.

The dream-room contracts in response, or perhaps your body simply begins to understand how little space remains to you when he stands.

“I am Dream,” he says.

The title enters the room like weather.

Not a name. A principle. An office older than your species and no more interested in explanation than the sea would be.

Of all the possible answers, it is the one that steals language from you most completely.

Because some primitive part of the mind knows what to do with monster, man, ghost, intruder.

Dream is something else.

Your mouth has gone dry.

“This isn’t possible.”

“And yet.”

There is that phrase again. That infuriating compression of all human objection into a single unanswerable fact.

He takes one step closer.

You hold your ground only because the dream seems to understand that running would now be theatre.

“Why me?”

At last, a question that matters.

His eyes remain fixed on yours.

“Because you answered.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

The certainty in him is crushing.

“You stood at the grave and did not look away from emptiness when it looked back. You entered sleep already braced for violence and still continued into it. You called into silence and expected no reply.”

Each word feels less like conversation and more like the setting of stones.

“You have been approaching this threshold for longer than you know.”

Your hands curl at your sides.

“I don’t want this.”

“No,” he says softly. “You want smaller things. Manageable things. Mortal things. Coffee in warm rooms. Sympathy without understanding. Kindness without consequence.”

The cruelty of accuracy in that nearly makes you flinch.

“And what do you want?” you ask.

For the first time, something open and dark moves across his expression.

Not softness.

Revelation.

“To know,” he says, “what remains of a mortal when every false shelter is removed.”

The room seems to lower around the words.

You stare at him.

“That’s monstrous.”

His gaze does not shift.

“Yes.”

He says it without shame.

Without hesitation.

The simple agreement is more frightening than denial would have been.

Something in your chest hardens.

“Then leave.”

He comes nearer.

Not touching. Not yet. Only reducing the space in which your body can continue to pretend distance is the same thing as control.

“You continue,” he says, “to speak as though refusal ends observation.”

Your pulse is rapid enough to feel sickening.

“Will you hurt me?”

At that, his expression stills into something almost grave.

“What you call hurt,” he says, “is often merely revelation entering through unwilling flesh.”

You hate the answer instantly because it contains no mercy and no lie.

“You’re insane.”

“I am not human.”

The correction is so coldly clean it strips the insult of any force.

Behind him, the apartment walls begin to shift.

Your hallway elongates into impossible darkness. The coat rack by the door turns skeletal and thin. The living room window opens not onto the city but onto black sea under a starless sky.

You back away one step at last.

He notices.

Of course he notices.

A quiet satisfaction enters the line of his mouth, not because you fear him— fear is expected, uninteresting— but because at last you are no longer diluting what he is with mortal comparisons.

“Good,” he says.

The word chills you.

“You begin to understand.”

“I understand that you’re in my head.”

“In your head?” A small pause. Almost wonderingly contemptuous. “No.”

He lifts one hand.

Not toward you.

Toward the room.

And the dream apartment opens like a wound.

The walls peel back soundlessly into darkness. The floor beneath you becomes black stone veined in silver. The ceiling vanishes. In its place: stars too numerous and too near, hanging above vast impossible towers in the distance.

The Dreaming.

You know it without being told.

Not because your mind comprehends it, but because every frightened instinct in you recognizes that this place is not generated by your own sleeping brain. It exists independently. Terribly.

The chair he occupied is gone.

The couch. The lamps. The television. All peeled away like paper scenery.

You stand on a terrace of pale stone overlooking an endless kingdom of architecture, surf, library spires, and darkness arranged by will.

And he stands before it as though before his own reflection.

“This,” he says, “is mine.”

Wind moves through the black water below. The sound of it is not oceanic. It is collective. Millions of dreams turning over in the minds of sleeping mortals.

You cannot breathe properly.

“This is impossible.”

“And yet.”

Again.

Always again.

Your eyes sting.

Whether from fear or the sheer pressure of a place too vast for your mind to host, you do not know.

He turns from the kingdom back to you.

There is no humanity in him here. No need to mimic it beyond the shape he wears. He is beautiful in the way cathedrals can be beautiful to things that are willing to die in them.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Because,” he says, “you continue to imagine yourself hunted by hallucination.”

His gaze moves over your face with measured, merciless precision.

“You are not mad.”

Relief flares so sharply it almost hurts.

Then dies at once when he continues.

“You are chosen.”

The word lands like a chain.

“No.”

It is the strongest thing you have said to him yet.

He studies you with renewed interest.

“No?” he repeats.

“No.”

You hear the breathlessness in your own voice. The fear. The fury under it.

“I didn’t choose this. I didn’t ask for you. I don’t belong here.”

At that, something in him darkens.

Not temper.

A deeper form of attention.

“Belonging,” he says, “is not always voluntary.”

The wind rises.

Behind him, far down in the black kingdom, something vast shifts through the sea like a thought too old for language.

Your body reacts before your mind does. A step backward. Another.

He follows with one measured step of his own.

You are suddenly, acutely aware of the drop beyond the terrace edge.

The kingdom below. The surf. The impossible distance.

You stop.

He does too.

His eyes lower briefly to your throat, where your pulse jumps in plain sight, then rise back to your face.

“Do not look to lesser men for rescue,” he says.

The change in subject is so abrupt it takes a second to land.

Then it does.

The coworker. The café. The corridor. The warm human hand over yours for a fraction of a second before the light went out.

Your anger returns with enough force to steady you.

“That is none of your business.”

He says nothing.

It is somehow worse than if he had smiled.

“He is nothing to you,” you continue, because fear has already ruined caution and there is a savage relief in pressing where he is least likely to permit it. “You don’t know him.”

“I know enough.”

“Do you?”

The challenge slips out before you can stop it.

For one suspended heartbeat the terrace itself seems to listen.

His gaze sharpens into something so focused it feels like a blade finding the seam in armour.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I know he saw your grief and mistook it for access. I know he offered you warmth because mortals are vain enough to believe warmth entitles them to depth. I know you let his nearness stand because some frightened part of you still hopes the ordinary may protect you from what has already entered your life.”

The words strike one after another, precise as blows.

“He is kind,” you snap.

Dream’s expression becomes terrible in its stillness.

“As are many things before they feed.”

The answer is so disproportionate to the man in question that it should almost be absurd.

Instead it reveals something colder than jealousy.

Contempt.

Not for the coworker himself, but for the scale of him. For mortality’s presumptions. For the thought that a human gesture could intervene where Dream has fixed his attention.

“You don’t get to decide that,” you say.

His eyes hold yours.

“I do not decide what he is,” he says. “I decide what reaches you.”

The cold in your body becomes something else then.

Not only fear.

Recognition of danger with structure. Of a mind that has already crossed into entitlement and built itself a palace there.

You whisper, “You are not protecting me.”

“No.”

There is no lie in him now at all.

The wind across the terrace goes sharp.

“I am not.”

The honesty is worse than any pretence of care could have been.

“Then what are you doing?”

At that, something in his gaze deepens until it becomes almost unreadable.

“Claiming the truth of what I have seen.”

You stare at him, and for the first time in all of this— more than the grave, more than the mirror, more than the dip in the mattress, more than the bells and the phone and the corridor of doors— you understand with perfect clarity that he is not visiting your life.

He is entering it as a sovereign enters disputed land.

Your voice comes thin.

“I won’t let you.”

A pause.

Then Dream says, very softly, “You have overestimated permission.”

The terrace begins to dissolve beneath your feet.

Not collapse. Unmake.

Stone losing conviction. Stars dragging into streaks. The black sea below pulling upward like ink through water.

He remains still at the center of it.

Always still.

“Sleep,” he says.

The command is low and calm and absolute enough that your body obeys before your mind can resist. The kingdom tilts. Darkness floods in at the edges.

You lunge toward waking with all the force of an animal tearing at a trap.

And open your eyes to your own apartment.

Dawn.

Grey light. Television still muted. Lamps still on. Your neck twisted painfully from sleeping upright on the couch. The coat you never removed folded awkwardly beneath one shoulder.

Your phone lies face up on the coffee table.

There is one new message.

From an unknown number.

No text. Only an image attachment.

Your fingers are numb as you open it.

It is your church.

Rain-dark doors. Gold streetlight. Empty steps.

In the reflection on the doors, a woman stands motionless in front of them.

And behind her, tall and dark and perfectly clear, stands a figure watching over her shoulder.

The timestamp reads 22:54.

Your hands begin to shake so hard you nearly drop the phone.

You look up at once, though there is no one there to catch.

The apartment is still.

Attentive.

You look back at the screen.

The message thread is gone.

Not deleted.

Gone as though it never existed.

For a long moment you sit frozen on the couch while dawn drags itself slowly across the room, touching the ordinary things one by one—the mug in the sink, the folded throw over the armchair, the books on the shelf, the shoes by the door— and making them visible without making them safe.

At some point, without deciding to, you whisper into the room:

“What are you going to do to me?”

Nothing answers.

But somewhere far beyond your waking senses, in a kingdom of black sea and impossible towers, Dream of the Endless stands at the edge of his realm and considers the mortal woman who has finally stopped mistaking him for a symptom.

Lucienne watches from the library steps and says nothing.

Because the Dreaming has already begun to bend around the shape of his attention.

Because in the waking world you are still small, still human, still trying to measure threat with the blunt instruments of reason.

And because both she and he understand something you do not yet know how to name:

The next boundary to fall will not be between dream and waking.

It will be inside you.

The next chapter will be tomorrow!

----------------- 📌 Angst Series Tag List: @justmasblack @dreamyhopes @thememoryofadream @misswings1864 @ciaramydeara @lovelynyah

-----------------

MY OTHER Angst / Jealousy / Emotional Sandman Fanfics:

A Night to Remember

When You Call Another Name

The Day Death Sat Beside You (a spin-off chapter of Bound in Eternity)

The Letter on the Throne

Where Dreams Can No Longer Follow

----------------- PLEASE ENGAGE IF YOU LIKE IT! Your comments, thoughts, and reactions mean everything. This story truly lives only when someone else falls into it with me. ---------------- CHECK MY OTHER SANDMAN FANFIC

[fandoms-are-my-friends-1321]

Well, It's Time for More Morpheus Fanfics

I made a list similar to this when the first season came out, but now with more content to work with, I am opening up the floor for ideas! I have three right now that I am thinking about, but if anyone has other ideas that they want to request, please feel free to suggest them! Some of these gifs are also not mine since I pulled them from google!

A fanfic based on the song Your Idol from K-Pop Demon Hunters where the reader is a demon similar to the ones in the movie that Morpheus tasked with performing during the events in Season 2, Episode 2. Morpheus, as much as he tries to resist, feels tempted by the readers song

One where the reader is like Hermes (specifically Epic the Musical) who has accepted the challenge of trying to make Morpheus smile with their flirty antics

And a final option where Morpheus catches the reader reading Pride and Prejudice, and when the reader compares him to one of the characters, he is not too pleased about it (but in a somewhat loving way)

[fatecantstopme]

could make an imagine where reader fem is a goddess or an immortal being who is caught and imprisoned along with morpheus and after a century spent in that bubble with the infinite being and keeping each other company, she created affection for the same however free now she she doesn't know if dream wants her by his side, since now he has responsibility and a kingdom to rebuild, and she has a lost century to chase.🤗🤗

A/N: Okay, I love this idea...hope you do too! 💜

My Hope

Pairing: Morpheus x immortal!reader

Summary: Reader is an immortal who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was captured alongside Morpheus when Roderick Burgess cast his spell to imprison death. The two form a bond during their century of captivity, but what happens after they're free?

Warnings: Angst (obvi), and definitely a fluffy ending. Discussions of captivity and Jessamy's death.

You were walking down a dark road at night, completely alone, with not a single concern for your safety. You often took walks late at night to ease your mind and help you sleep. You had lived far longer than any of your human companions could ever dream, but such a life took its toll on you. The loneliness had begun to creep in after a lifetime of losing everyone you had ever loved, again and again, with no end in sight.

You were nothing special, not a goddess or a powerful being of any kind. You were once mortal, but you had been granted a gift long ago by a woman you had befriended, the only woman who had managed to live as long as you. You had known her as Teleute, though others would call her Death.

You had been sick, dying, and Teleute had come to you in the moments preceding what should have been your death. She was your friend and you knew her well, but in that moment, you saw her for what she was. Unlike many of the people she had guided in her Endless life, you were not afraid, not of her, nor of the Sunless Lands. Although it was her duty, Teleute could not bring herself to watch your life come to a close. Instead, she gifted you immortality, the chance to live endless lives, the opportunity to spread your warmth and compassion to countless others in the coming centuries.

It was a gift you did not waste, nor did you wish to return it, but it had become a heavy burden at times like these. Moments when you laid to rest someone you had loved, whether it be friend or lover, it hurt all the same.

This particular evening, you wandered the dark streets, plagued by memories of those you had lost, sleep a distant dream. Just up ahead, you heard voices, one sounded frightened, but it was the other that caught your attention. The voice was impossibly deep, and it carried with it an authority you felt deep in your bones. The voice reminded you of black velvet, thick and luxuriously laid across your skin, warming you from the outside in.

As you neared the source of the voices, you suddenly felt a strange pull, and the world around you disappeared. You landed with a painful thud on a cold concrete floor, in a place you did not recognize. When your eyes fluttered open, you saw several people standing around you, and a cloaked figure lying on the floor beside you. You watched in horror as they removed each item of clothing from the figure, including a helmet of sorts, a leather pouch, and what appeared to be a ruby necklace. When all was stripped away, the figure of a man laid bare before you.

Though you did not know him, anger rippled through you at the cruel and careless treatment shown to him. "Who are you?" you angrily demanded of the man you deemed to be in charge.

"I am Roderick Burgess, the Magus, and I have captured Death."

You let out a hoarse laugh. "I do not know who this man is, but I can assure you he is not Death, nor, for the record, am I."

The man, Burgess, did not look convinced. "My spell brought you both to me, so if you are not Death, then who are you?"

You shrugged. "No one of consequence, at least not to you. So it seems your spells may need a bit of work."

He leaned in closer to you, careful to avoid the circle that surrounded you, a circle, you quickly realized, that was a boundary spell. "Perhaps some time alone in the darkness will soften you a bit. I have demands that one or both you must meet if you wish to see the light of day again." He paused, then gestured towards his acolytes. "But first, you will be stripped of your belongings, much like your friend."

To your horror, several men grabbed at your clothing and quickly rid you of it, down to nothing but your slip. You shivered in the cold, most of your skin bare for everyone to see, feeling the flames of rage settle into your bones. "You will pay for this disgrace, Roderick Burgess, of that, I promise you."

He did not seem bothered by your words, instead letting out a barked laugh as he walked away, his acolytes trailing behind him.

Your anger dissipated slightly when the spectators had left, turning instead to concern for the being laying next to you. You had nothing to cover him with, though you desperately wished for even a scrap of cloth you could share with him. He had to be cold, lying bare against in the concrete floor. "Are you alright?" you asked softly.

The man did not respond, but you could see the rise and fall of his chest, assuring you he was alive. "My name is (Y/N)," you said gently, just in case he could hear you. "I do not know why we are here, nor where exactly here is, but I will not leave you. I offer you what protection I can and I offer the promise of my companionship for as long as we are bound to this place."

While the man did not respond, you had a distinct feeling he could hear every word you said. His tense form seemed to relax slightly as you spoke, the obvious pain in his muscles seeming to fade away little by little.

Hours passed, how many, you did not know, but the man beside you never stirred, never woke. What you were unaware of was what was happening just above your heads, in the office of Roderick Burgess...

**********

"He is Dream of the Endless," The Corinthian said.

"And what of the woman?" Burgess asked.

Corinthian looked confused. "What woman?"

"I captured a woman with him. She will not tell me who she is."

"Was she wearing an ankh necklace?"

"No."

"Hmm...then I am unsure of who she is. My apologies. But I would recommend placing her in the same cell as Dream, to be safe."

"Cell?"

Corinthian sighed. He was surprised that a man as dense as Burgess had managed to capture an Endless, but pleased nonetheless. "Yes, a cell. An orb of sorts. Do exactly as I say and he will never escape."

**********

Down in the dungeon, you watched as men built a giant glass sphere, a sphere you assumed was intended for you and your companion, a companion who still had not woken. Much to your dismay, and perhaps your annoyance, you were correct in your assumption.

Your companion was unceremoniously tossed into this sphere upon its completion and though you fought with all your strength, you were tossed in along with him. You sat at the edge of the sphere, legs pulled up to your chest, desperately attempting to cover as much of yourself as you could with the tiny slip dress you wore. Your companion was curled up in the other corner, pain evident in his features, and you felt the rage build up in you again.

"You're a monster," you said to Burgess as he entered the room.

He laughed. "Perhaps, but if you give me what I want, I will free you."

"It does not matter what you wish for, I cannot give it."

"The you had better hope your friend can, or you will die in this glass cage, here in my dungeon."

You did not speak, choosing instead to level a steely glare at the man who had imprisoned you. Something in your gaze clearly frightened him, and he quickly left the dungeon, but not before ordering two of his men to stay behind and watch you.

You chose to ignore the men who stared at you, clearly trying to get a sneak peak at your body beneath the thin slip you wore. You instead turned your attention to the man beside you, whispering words of encouragement in his direction. You were worried about him, fearing the worst, but his chest still rose and fell rhythmically, at least for the moment.

**********

You were unsure how much time had passed when the man beside you finally stirred. You felt his presence more strongly than you had before, as if his soul had just now returned to his body. He was slow to move, as if each movement caused him pain, and your heart ached for him.

"Are you alright?" you asked gently, voice a soft murmur.

His gaze turned to you and you inhaled sharply. His eyes were deep pools of blue, but there was a distinct ethereal quality about them that took your breath away. You might have been nothing special, but there was certainly something special about the being beside you.

He did not speak, at least not audibly, but you heard a gentle voice inside your head, a voice you instantly recognized. "I am weak, but alive, thanks to your kindness."

It was the voice you had heard the night you were captured, the one that you felt inexplicably drawn to. "My name is (Y/N)," you whispered.

"I am Dream of the Endless," his voice replied in your head.

Hearing his name brought back memories, memories of your dear friend. "I know your sister, Teleute."

Surprise lit up his features and he eyed you closely. His voice was hesitant as he spoke in your mind, "You know of Death?"

You nodded. "She has been my friend for centuries. I live only because she allowed it."

Realization crossed his face, remembering his sister describing the woman she had gifted immortality to. He had never met her, but he felt as though he knew her simply through Death's stories. He did not know how to relay that information to you without verbal words in his current state. He was barely strong enough to speak short sentences within your mind.

As if you understood what he was thinking, you placed a gentle hand against his and whispered, "Rest now, we can speak later."

He appreciated your kindness, but also the warmth of your hand against his. He nodded and leaned back against the cold glass, eyes closing again.

You felt instinctively protective of Dream, in part because of your connection with Death, but also because much like Death had spoken to Dream of you, she had also told you about him. He was every bit as she had described him, though smaller and more fragile than you had expected. You realized it was likely because everything had been taken from him, things he relied upon for strength and power. You knew there was not much you could do for him in the way of protection, but you silently vowed that you would do everything in your power to ensure you both got out of this alive.

**********

The years passed by, Dream never speaking a word aloud, Burgess never backing down from his demands, and you refusing to give Burgess the satisfaction of your emotional reactions. You were as silent as the Endless beside you, but when Burgess left, you would speak softly to the dream lord, and he would reply in your head.

As time passed, he grew strong enough to speak long, slow sentences in your mind, telling you of his home, The Dreaming, and of the dream folk who resided there. He spoke of Lucienne, his librarian, and of Jessamy, his beloved Raven.

There were moments, when he spoke, that is eyes seemed to glow with starlight. It was a beautiful sight, but it never lasted more than a moment, the realization of his predicament always dampening any glimmer of hope he held in his soul.

Unbeknownst to you, he had found hope in you. You were like a light in the darkness, keeping him from falling into complete despair. Your soft words and your gentle reassurances were enough to keep him going despite the hell you both remained in.

One morning, much to your surprise, and to his, you heard the sound of wings flapping outside the sphere. When you looked up, you saw a beautiful raven with a patch of white on her chest and you knew instantly this was Jessamy, Dream's beloved raven companion.

Dream's face lit up for the first time in years. You saw the hope in his eyes and the pure delight at seeing his friend. Jessamy frantically pecked against the glass, desperately trying to break it and set her master free.

As the glass began to crack, you heard a loud gunshot ring out and the beautiful bird fell to the floor, bloody and broken.

You felt Dream's pain and your heart broke for him, and for his sweet raven. When your eyes fell on the man--no, boy--who had committed this heinous act, you felt a venomous rage build up within you.

As the boy's father yelled at him and demanded he clean up the mess he'd made, you sat silent beside the dream lord, like two statues refusing to show emotion.

When the boy and his father left, leaving the two of you alone with your guards, you turned to Dream, expression soft and sad. "Dream?" you asked gently.

He turned to look at you, eyes haunted and filled with unshed tears.

You did not ask for his permission, you simply wrapped him in a hug and held him close. He would not cry, you knew, but you would not let him mourn alone.

After several minutes, the dream lord laid down beside you and placed his head in your lap. Your fingers ran through his soft hair, soothing him as he closed his eyes and tried to rid himself of the painful image forever burned in his mind.

**********

It had been 50 years since the two of you had been imprisoned when things began to change between you both. Your companionship had long-since turned to friendship, but now was blossoming into something more. Every time you spoke or looked his way, Dream felt a warmth in his chest he hadn't felt in centuries. And you relished in the sound of his voice resonating in your mind, and in the way his eyes held your gaze, unspoken emotions swimming deep within them.

You had told him of your life, the good and the bad, and you had spent most of the last 50 years wide awake, whether you wanted to or not. Dream had noticed this several years prior and asked you if you wished to sleep. At the time, your answer had been no, you had not wished to relive your life's worst moments, but now, after the passage of so much time, you were exhausted. Your mind had been foggy for ages, a fog Dream was painfully aware of every time he spoke words into your mind.

"Perhaps I can gift you a peaceful sleep? One lacking in any dreams at all," he spoke softly in your mind.

His words barely registered at all and you said nothing. Dream felt a deep worry in his heart and he reached out again. When you still did not reply, he reached a hand out and placed it against your arm, rousing you from your trance-like state.

You turned your head to look at him and he once again asked you if you would like to sleep. This time, you nodded your head and he closed his eyes, taking a moment to gather what little strength he had. He could not do much in his current state, but he was determined to give you this.

You slowly closed your eyes and drifted off into a silent, dreamless sleep, a gift from the lord of dreams himself. Your body went limp and you slumped against his shoulder, breath deepening as you relaxed into a peaceful slumber.

Dream's body tensed at first at the feeling of your head against his shoulder, but he soon relaxed, enjoying the feeling of your body so close to his.

You slept for days, a deep, restful sleep you had not realized you were so desperately in need of. When you finally awoke, you found yourself cradled against Dream's chest, the gentle beating of his heart soothing your worried mind.

You did not wish to alert him to your waking, but he felt it all the same. He was, after all, the god of sleep. "Did you sleep well?" he asked in your mind, a mind that was much sharper and clearer than it had been in years.

"I did, yes," you lifted your head and looked up into his eyes, surprised at the deep emotion you saw within them. If you had not known better, you would have described those beautiful pools as affectionate, even loving. "Thank you," you whispered.

"It was my pleasure."

**********

Another 50 years passed and by this point, you were starting to lose hope that you would ever escape. Your only pleasure was the companionship you had gained over the last century. The dream lord was unlike any being you had ever met and you'd found yourself falling in love with him, despite the terrible situation you were in.

You had not said a word to him, nor would you, at least not while in captivity. You did not want him to think you cared for him only because he was all there was. Now that you knew him, truly knew him, you knew that was exactly the way he would think.

On this particular day, Alex and his husband, Paul, had come to visit you one last time. As they left, Paul broke the boundary spell that had held you both for a century. He turned and gave you a look of acknowledgment before leaving the dungeon for the final time.

Your eyes met Dream's in a hopeful glance and he inclined his head slightly to acknowledge you. He knew what you were asking without speaking and he answered without words.

You watched as the scene unfolded before you. You did not know what images Dream had placed into the guard's mind, all you knew was that the glass was broken and you were finally free.

Dream took your hand and you felt the power in his veins that had been missing for a century. He was suddenly clothed, his long cloak returning to him. He turned to you and placed a soft kiss against your forehead as you stood there in the dungeon, bullets flying around you. You felt warm clothes cover your body and your eyes locked onto the dream lord's face. You knew what he was doing, and you did not fault him for it.

When he was finished, his eyes fluttered open and he pulled you in close, holding you tightly before you both disappeared, leaving the waking world entirely.

You landed in what felt like soft sand, but you could not figure out where you were. There was a breeze and the sound of waves, but you could not feel Dream's body any more.

You heard the sound of a voice you did not know and then you heard the warmth of Dream's voice covering you like waves on the beach. "Dream?" you called out.

"I am here," he said softly, reaching down to help you to your feet.

Your eyes adjusted to your new surroundings, seeing light for the first time in a century. You looked around, taking in what really did appear to be a beach, and a giant walled...city? Memories came flooding back to you and you realized this was Dream's home. "The Dreaming," you said in awe.

Dream smiled at you warmly. "Welcome, (Y/N), to my realm."

Your eyes landed on a woman you knew instantly, though you had never met. "You must be Lucienne," you said warmly.

The librarian looked surprised. "You know me?"

You looked up at Dream. "We had some time to talk..."

He winced slightly, but nodded his agreement. He began to walk towards the massive gates, you following behind him, and Lucienne just behind you.

"Sir?" Lucienne called.

Dream turned to her. "What is it, Lucienne?"

"The Dreaming sir, it is not as you left it."

"What do you mean?"

She gestured to the gates. "See for yourself."

The gates opened as if they sensed their master. When you saw what laid beyond them, you gasped in surprise.

Dream turned to Lucienne and whispered, "Who did this?"

Lucienne explained that The Dreaming had simply deteriorated over the century he had been gone...and that most of the dream folk had long since left.

Your heart immediately went out to Dream, the pain on his face evident as he took in the remains of his home. You stepped forward and slipped your hand into his, a gentle reassurance as well as a reminder that you were there for him, whatever he needed.

Although he did not speak, he was incredibly thankful to have you by his side, to give him strength when all seemed hopeless. But to you, the outside observer, all you could see was cold sorrow, none of the warmth that he had shown you over the years.

"I must gather my tools and rebuild," he said simply, a fierce determination lacing his voice. He pulled away from you and began to walk towards what remained of his palace, a king on his way to a broken throne.

You turned to look at Lucienne, seeking some sort of guidance, or perhaps comfort, in her eyes. What you saw was a piercing sadness, not just for The Dreaming, or for Dream himself, but for you. In her eyes, you saw her view of Dream, the cold, distant ruler of a dying realm.

You looked at Dream's retreating form and you saw it too, for the first time in a century, you saw the coldness that Dream showed the rest of the world. You had hoped that your years together in captivity, and the love that had seemingly grown between you, would form an everlasting bond between the two of you. It seemed, at least from your view, that perhaps you had misjudged the dream lord, and a deep sadness settled into your soul, unlike any you had yet faced.

**********

Dream seemed to forget about you as he went about trying to collect his tools so he could return to his former strength and rebuild his realm.

The more effort he put into his search, the more distant he became. Until a time in which you decided that you could not live this way, a mere shadow of the past living in a cold, unwelcoming present. So you left The Dreaming, returning once again to the waking world, in search of the hope you had once found in the lord of dreams.

Dream noticed your absence immediately and sought Lucienne for explanation. "Where is she?" he asked when he found the librarian conducting her census.

"Where is who, my lord?"

"(Y/N)."

Lucienne was surprised at the tone of hurt in her master's voice as he spoke your name. "Well, my lord, I believe she returned to the waking world."

"Why? Is The Dreaming not to her liking? I am doing my best to restore it, but I do not have my ruby as of yet and I feel I cannot complete my tasks until I have it."

"No, my lord, it is not The Dreaming she took issue with."

Dream looked confused and he shook his head passionately. "Then what could have possibly driven her away?"

Lucienne was quiet, afraid to upset her master further.

"Please, Lucienne, if you know something, speak."

"Sir, you have been very busy, both with the rebuilding of the kingdom and the search for your tools." She paused. "Perhaps you have been a bit too busy."

His look was pure annoyance...the audacity of her to think that he would have ever forgotten about you... Realization dawned on his face and his expression softened tremendously. "I have neglected her in my haste to repair the damage caused by my absence."

Lucienne nodded slowly, allowing Dream to come to his own conclusions.

"She was by my side through every moment of the last century, every painful part of it, she was there like a guiding light, the brightest soul I have ever encountered. How could I have let her feel this way? As if she is unimportant to me."

Lucienne knew better than to answer his question. It was not really meant for her anyway. "Perhaps, my lord, you should seek her out in the waking world?"

He knew the search for his ruby should take priority, but his heart ached at your absence. He did not wish to return to a realm without you in it, regardless of the presence of all his tools. "I believe you are right, Lucienne. I must find her."

Lucienne was slightly surprised that he admitted she was right, but she could not help but feel joy that he wished to seek you out.

"Can you, I mean, in my absence will you--?" Dream could not seem to find the words he wanted.

Lucienne smiled. "Of course, my lord."

He knew she would understand, as she always did. He pulled a small handful of sand from his pouch and disappeared into the waking world, desperate to find the hope he had lost.

**********

It felt good to be in the waking world, to be free to do whatever you wished. You loved the way the sunlight felt against your skin, the breeze in your hair...all the things you had missed in your century of captivity. None of it, however, could fill the emptiness in your heart, emptiness only a certain Endless could fill.

You were sitting on a park bench, enjoying the beautiful summer day, when you noticed someone sit down beside you. You did not need to turn your head to know who it was. "Teleute," you said warmly. "It has been far too long."

"Indeed it has. How are you, (Y/N)?"

You turned to look at your friend, her expression telling you she knew exactly how you were doing. "I spent the last century in captivity, Death. How do you think I am?"

Death winced at your tone and you sighed, feeling bad for snapping at her. She did not deserve such venom...she was not the Endless you were upset with. "My apologies, Teleute."

Death waved off your apology. "Unnecessary. I understand why you would be upset. You have every right to be."

"In all honesty, it is not the captivity that has me in this mood."

"Ahh," Death said as she sat back against the bench. "The moodiest of all the Endless got to you too?"

Your head whipped towards her, surprise evident in your expression. "Excuse me?"

Death smiled. "My dear brother, Dream. I assume he is the cause of your mood?"

"How do you know...?"

"Oh, please, (Y/N). You should know by now...I know everything."

You shook your head. "I think that is unlikely, Teleute, even for you. You know, Burgess was looking for you when he captured us."

Death nodded, looking somewhat uncomfortable. "I know."

"I will not ask you why you did not help us. I think that is something I already know. I also understand why Burgess was able to capture Dream, but why me? What did I have to do with it? I'm not an Endless."

"It is nothing more than a theory, but I believe that is entirely my fault. When I saved your life, granted you immortality, I left a piece of my soul with you. That small piece of me lives within you, and I believe is what caused you to be snared by his spell."

You allowed yourself a moment to absorb her words. Her theory made sense, but it did not provide you much comfort. "100 years is a long time, even for an immortal," you began softly. "I cannot even begin to imagine how terrible it would have been to spend those years alone. While I would give anything for Dream to have never experienced such agony, I am glad to have been there with him."

Death laid her hand on yours. "I am sure he feels the same way."

You gave her a look that clearly voiced your disagreement. "If he felt the same way, do you think I would be moping on this park bench in the middle of London?"

Death chuckled. "My brother is moody at the best of times, and downright sullen at the worst. It may take him a moment or two to realize he cannot be that way with you, but I do think he will come to that realization. You are good for him, and I think, perhaps, he could be good for you." As if sensing something, Death stood suddenly. "I must go, (Y/N)."

You stood and gave her a hug. "Do not be a stranger, Teleute."

"Never," she said with a smile. "Do not give up on him. He is a pain in the behind, but his love is worth it. I promise." With that, Death disappeared as if she had never been there at all.

You sat back down on the bench, mulling over your friend's words. You desperately wanted to believe her, but if she was right, then where was Dream now?

As if you had personally summoned him, the dream lord himself appeared on the bench beside you, jolting you out of your thoughts. "Good lord!" you yelped.

He winced. "My apologies, I did not intend to startle you."

"Well then do not magically appear beside people without warning, Dream." You placed a hand over your heart and slowly calmed your breathing. "If I were a mortal, you could have given me a heart attack."

"Thankfully, you are not."

You turned to look at him and were surprised to find a sadness in his eyes. A sadness that mimicked your own. "How did you find me?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Do you truly think there is anywhere you could go where I would not feel you?"

Your lips parted in surprise and words failed you. "I--uh--well, I--"

He turned his body to face you, tentatively reaching out to take your hand in his. "I wish to know why you left."

"You were a bit preoccupied with more important things than me, Dream."

"Nothing is more important than you. Not me, nor my tools, nor even my realm. You are the part of me I have always sought, without even realizing it. You are the light to my darkness, the other half of my soul that I have yearned for throughout all of space and time. You are the hope that saved me in the darkest moments of my life, and for that I will treasure you always."

If you had a hard time speaking before, you were completely mute now, as if words were utterly foreign to you. You simply stared at the man in front of you in stunned silence. A silence so long, he began to worry.

"(Y/N)?" he asked softly. "Have I upset you?"

"Gods, no," you said quickly, recovering from your moment of muteness. You took both of his hands in yours and gave them a loving squeeze. "You simply took me by surprise, Dream."

"Will you call me by my name?" he asked softly, eyes filled with hope.

You looked confused. "Is Dream not your name?"

"It is, but much in the way you know Death as Teleute, I wish you to know me by my name."

"What name would that be?"

"Morpheus," he replied.

"I should have known that," you said with a chuckle. "Morpheus. Hmm, I quite like it."

He blushed slightly. "Thank you. I enjoy hearing you say it."

"Then I will have to remember to say it often," you paused dramatically before leaning forward and whispering, "Morpheus."

His body shuddered involuntarily and you grinned. He gave you a warning look, but you were much too happy to care.

"May I ask you something?" he asked suddenly.

"Of course."

"Is there any way, any world, any universe, in which you might feel the same?"

If Morpheus did not know you, you would worry he might think you were a bumbling idiot. You were once again stunned to silence by the dream lord's words...as if there was a universe in which you did not feel the same.

"First, stop saying things that render me speechless," you insisted. "Second, do you really need to ask? I would walk through Hellfire for you, Morpheus. There is not a battle I would not fight, nor a danger I would not face, if it meant protecting you. You are my heart, in every meaning of the word."

Now it was his turn to be speechless. Though he was much quicker to recover than you. "I am undeserving of such adoration, beloved, but I shall do everything in my power to earn it."

You smiled and gently touched his cheek. "You already have, my love. You already have."

[littledollll]

Dream absolutely loves his chubby partner. He’ll be super clingy and always looking for excuses to touch and grope you all over. Super big on kissing your tummy and thighs and will definitely sleep with his arms over your belly and give you little squeezes whenever he holds you, if you allow him. Adores giving head and would die to have you on his lap 24/7.

[melancholypancakes]

We literally need a Hades & Persephone AU fanfic of Morpheus and Y/n

I cannot stress this enough, if anybody wrote a fanfic (that’s not “Dark! Morpheus” or “Yandere”) please link it to me :) 

For now, here is my little idea of it (nobody has to write like this but you can). 

Y/n is the daughter of M/n, a water Nymph who was the lover of Desire of the Endless and when Y/n was of age. 

She was helping her mother gather flowers, and herbs and planting seeds in the ground. 

Now, Y/n was half a nymph and half an endless, so her mother did her best to raise her and to at least show her how to control her powers. 

As Y/n was the daughter of Desire, she was beautiful but had Desires not of lust but of love and romance. 

Y/n truly loved her mother, despite never meeting her father. M/n....was overbearing, overprotective, manipulative, and psycho. 

Y/n would say, “Crazy” she knows her mother just didn’t want her to end up like she did or just like her father. 

In this one, Y/n falls for Morpheus as he falls for her, love at first sight and it was inspired by the many versions of Persephone and Hades. 

Where Persephone ventures into the underworld on her own and falls in love with Hades. 

Y/n is also into brooding gothic men (as we all are for Morpheus) 

{...}

Soon, Y/n wanders too close to the clouds, too close to the “other” realm. The dreaming. 

Y/n never had seen a more beautiful place than the dreaming, she wander through the mountains, village, and castle. 

Little did she know, someone was watching afar. The King of this realm was enchanted by her beauty, her smile, and her kindness when she was interacting with his creations. 

Morpheus had felt his face grow red and his beating cold heart filled with a familiar warmth he hadn’t felt in a very, very, very long time. 

This girl was lucid dreaming, he could sense it as he followed her more. he wanted to know why she was here and how she knew she was dreaming but he never got the chance as she was waking up. 

The more she lucid dreams, the more she noticed there was someone watching her, and when she caught him. 

She was intimidated by how handsome he was, she nearly giggled and blushed. 

“Who are you? why are you following me?” she asked as she tried not to show how nervous she was. 

“I am Morpheus, the King of the dreaming...I did not mean to startle you...I was only observing why you are here and aware of your dreams.” He explained. 

Oh, so he wasn’t a stalker and he is a king? 

This was another realm? 

These were questions in her mind, “Oh, I see My name is Y/n, Daughter of M/n it is an honor to meet you, Lord Morpheus” she says as she bows to show respect. 

“There is no need for that. You’re a guest and please...call me Dream.” He says as if it was the first time he has ever told anyone that. 

The Nymph smiled at him warmly, making his heart flutter as she blushed looking down at her feet. 

During her time in the dreaming, Morpheus showed Y/n around and she got to see how beautiful the dreaming realm truly was. 

She was amazed by Morpheus’s kingdom, “it’s so beautiful...” she whispered. Morpheus looked at her with glossy eyes and whisper back “Thank you...”

After Y/n woke up she couldn’t wait to go back to the dreaming realm and she was cheerier than usual which didn’t go unnoticed by her mother.

As days, weeks, and soon months passed, Her mother started to get suspicious this was more than getting a “goodnight sleep”. 

M/n found out what really made her daughter happier than usual...

It was spring, Y/n would hear someone calling her name and she look back just to see someone in the shadows. 

Y/n walked toward this person, and she saw a familiar person Morpheus...

His wild raven hair, a long black robe, a skin tone pale, skinny, and star eyes. 

She was wondering how could he be more beautiful, was she having a crush? 

She felt butterflies when she’s around him and blushes when he’s looking at her. 

Morpheus had felt the same, his heart would beat every time she was near, his cheek would be red when she smiles at him and when she talks he can’t help but smile. 

he was smitten by her just as she was with him. 

Morpheus really wanted to see the girl again, She wanted to see him too as she was falling hard for the King. 

Little did she know, her mother was watching. 

She was in utter shock to see her talking so casually to an endless but not just any Endless. 

Oneiros, Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, Lord of Dreams and Nightmares, and King of the Dreaming. 

She was furious, this entity was after her daughter, her innocent child and she couldn’t allow Y/n to be near someone so dangerous. 

“Y/n! Get over here! you stay away from my daughter!” She screamed as she ran to Y/n and forcefully snatch her daughter. 

“Mother?! what are you-” She tried to say but was cut off by her mother pushing herself and her daughter away from The Endless. 

Y/n tried to push away from her mother and reach her hand to Morpheus but they were too far away. 

Once out of reach, M/n examines her daughter, “Did he hurt you?” she says worriedly. 

“What?! no! Mother what is going on I was just talking to-” she tries to say but was cut off by her mother once again. 

“Talking to an Endless?! Y/n do you have any idea who you were talking to?! He could’ve killed you!” M/n exclaimed. 

Y/n was concerned about what her mother meant, Morpheus wouldn’t hurt her, if he truly could he would at the first chance he got. 

“He’s not like that mother! We were only talking! Besides, he’s really sweet.” Y/n says as she smiles. 

“Sweet?...”SWEET?!” Her mother screamed as she grew angrier, “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ENDLESS BEING “SWEET”! M/n screamed as Y/n could only stare in shock. 

“That’s it. You are to stay far away from Oneiros and never speak to him again! I mean it Y/n!” M/n said as she forbid her from ever seeing and talking to Morpheus again. 

“What! But Mother you can’t-” Y/n exclaimed in shock as her mother would forbid her from speaking to the Endless she had fallen for. 

“Oh, yes I can and I will and you know why? Because I am your mother and what I say goes!” she exclaims as Y/n looks at her sadly. 

her mother may have forbidden her from seeing Morpheus in the waking realm but in the Dreaming, she couldn’t. 

And like a rebellious young woman such as herself, she just did that.

One night Y/n went to sleep, she ventures out into the clouds again, walking through the Dreaming realm as she walked along the path to look for the King. 

When Y/n spots him, she was so happy and ran up to him as he notices her, and she jumps into his arms happily. 

Although Morpheus never showed it, he was very happy to see Y/n. “I’m so sorry for how my mother acted, she is usually sweet...I was worried I wouldn’t see you again!” She exclaims as she looks up at him. 

Morpheus felt warm by her words, as Y/n spend longer in the dreaming her physical body asleep. 

Y/n didn’t mind she wasn’t going to wake up as long as she was with Morpheus, but her mother was growing sick worried that her daughter may never wake up again. 

She knew Dream of the endless had something to do with this. 

In the Dreaming realm, Morpheus and Y/n were sitting in fiddler’s Green when he suddenly asked her. 

“Would you...like to live here?” 

She was shocked, to say the least, but smiled as she didn’t even know she could, “I would love to Dream!” she exclaims. 

Morpheus gave her a shy smile as he stood up and led his hand to her and she took it and stood up with him. 

Morpheus leads her to a tree with fruits in it, Peaches. 

Morpheus pick the fruit and gave it to her, “If you eat this, you will remain here with me for eternity...You will be my wife.” he said slowly making sure she truly wanted this. 

Y/n nodded, as she took the peach gently and ate half it.

So, M/n demanded Desire of the endless, her ex-lover and father of their child go rescue their daughter Y/n from the dreaming realm. 

Desire never truly cared about his lovers nor his children but if it got Morpheus upset.

It was worth it.

so, he agreed and went to the dreaming to get Y/n but she simply refused to say, “I actually love it here, It’s beautiful and Morpheus is really good to me! I’m actually pretty happy being his wife and him as my husband.” She exclaims happily. 

“You don’t want to go? Really?” Desire was genuinely shocked his own offspring wanted to spend time with their brother. 

Y/n was true, she loved Morpheus and wanted to be with him as his wife, she really loved him. 

So, Desire just gave up at that point. He could care less and he could kill her but he didn’t feel like doing that so he would come up with a different plan to ruin Morpheus. 

As for M/n, He could care less. Y/n was happy anyways and when M/n found out she was frustrated and angry so she decided to ruin everything for mankind and not help preserve the plants and flowers. 

It causes the plants to never grow again and the water would soon be dry. 

That was really bad for humanity and the gods got worried, so Hermes rushed to the dreaming realm to tell Morpheus and Y/n immediately. 

Morpheus and Y/n realized that was really bad. So, Y/n rushed back to the waking realm to snap her mom out of it. 

M/n was overbearing as usual and hadn’t seen her daughter in months, so Y/n made a deal with Death of the Endless to spend six months in the Dreaming realm and the other six months in the waking realm with her mother. 

Morpheus and M/n’s mother knew of this and were okay with it since this was a better solution and M/n wouldn’t be fighting over Y/n but still hated the Endless beings.  

During the first 6 months of the year, M/n would be depressed and not let the plants and flowers along with the water grow or purify. 

While Morpheus and Y/n were lovesick with each other and enjoying their married life and ruling the Dreaming together as the King and Queen. 

When the other half of the six months came around, M/n was overjoyed to be with her daughter again, the plants, and flowers grew and the water was pure once more. 

Y/n and M/n would plant flowers, plants and pick out flowers, and soon would swim in the lakes...

[inactivepingguin]

When Dreams Despair

|| Ch. II || The Regent

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Dream of the Endless x F!Reader

Word Count: 16.2k

Warnings: Cursing, mentions of death and pain.

Notes:

I *know* that I'm uploading this later than I said I would, but to be fair, I thought I'd only have to edit 4k words since this chapter was originally only 4k.

The word count ended up being 16k.

I poured my heart and soul into this one, and it's the longest I've ever written for a single chapter. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did while writing! As always, please tell me what you think!

Summary:

Y/N has had a very long day.

Morpheus, too.

But what's important is, by the end of it, they're both where they needed to be. Even if it means that Y/N gets a headache or two.

"Alex Burgess is dead."

Johanna’s voice pierced through the phone's speaker, clear as day even in the midst of the bustling inn. 

The New Inn had always been a popular place in town, and yet Y/N rarely saw it become so busy so fast. Customers flooded in quickly; there were a lot of familiar faces, but also a number of new ones.

Their dissonant voices pestered her.

She had attempted to tune them out, but her phone’s sharp ringing had made her jump in her seat, breaking through the mental barrier she set between herself and the loud voices of the strangers around her. 

However, as Johanna delivered the news, she was finally able to deafen the noise, her ears suddenly feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.

The air became thick, and time seemed sluggish as the clock hanging on the wall ticked unnaturally slow. Y/N’s thoughts began to blur and all she could hear was her shallow breathing as her heart began to beat faster. 

Ever since she could remember, a low, quiet humming would appear in the back of her mind at seemingly random times. 

But there were moments like these where the peculiar sound was at its peak, buzzing in her head like bees stuck in their hive. 

The phone began to slip from her hand, making Y/N flinch as she fumbled to get a proper grip before it landed on the table. She was able to catch it mid-air, the adrenaline waking her up from her daze. 

“Do you want me to check it out?”

“Uh, n-no.” Y/N sat straighter, running a hand down her face. “There’s no need for that,” she scrambled. “I wouldn’t want to take you away from your job.”

“This is my job, Y/N.”

“And I’m not your client,” she replied, more stern this time. “Besides, it seems a bit insensitive to investigate the house of the recently deceased.”

"Y/N I—”

"—have to go now, I'm with Amelia," Y/N interrupted before ending the call.

After more than two decades, she was content to leave the dream be, and investigating the Burgesses would be doing the opposite. 

She was finally able to help the caged man, changing the trajectory of the nightmare he was in. It felt foolish of her to ever fear doing so earlier in her life. 

Of course, it was not like she never wanted to, she was simply unable to.

It was her childhood nightmare, haunting her for the longest time, and it would certainly be difficult to face.

The dream was only a story, one that was over because Amelia had asked her to make it so.

The story was over . It was done.

There was nothing more to dwell on.

Amelia had been sitting next to Y/N when Johanna called, and she was left picking at her food since, waiting for their conversation to end. 

She only wanted to see her favourite babysitter again, and after compromising with Maurice to bring her along as she went to work at the Inn, Amelia looked forward to spending time with Y/N.

She was not yet finished with her school assignments, and so she was only allowed to go on the condition that she would finish them there, while being able to talk to Y/N during her breaks.  

Amelia was restless, a small frown on her face, disappointed that what was left of her break was taken over by a phone call. She tapped her fork on her plate, her legs bouncing up and down, sighing. 

Next to her, Y/N smiled pitifully, knowing how much the little girl looked forward to her trip at The New Inn. “Thanks, Amy.” She leaned towards her, giving Amy a genuine grin. 

Y/N propped her elbow up on the table, resting her chin on her hand as she took a sip of her tea, a silent apology twinkling in her eyes, hoping that Amelia would understand. 

Amelia whipped her head towards her, gleaming now that she finally had her attention. She cringed when Y/N ruffled her hair.

“Thank you for helping me save him,” Y/N said proudly, compelled to express her gratitude regardless of her struggles with grasping recent events. 

Y/N was grateful and considered herself indebted to Amelia, if not for helping her free the man, then for changing the course of a long-time nightmare that, until then, had not ceased to loom over her sleeping and waking hours. 

She had chased the man for most of her life in search of the reason for his frequent appearances in her dreams; however, no matter how desperate her longing was for understanding his existence, there were never any answers, because she had always been helpless, only being allowed to see his anguish rather than break the circle and the glass—something she had been wanting to do for  years. 

Amelia had changed that, though. 

But she has yet to understand how.

The little girl squealed, jumping off of her seat to hug her, but not quite reaching due to the height difference of the stool Y/N sat on. "You saved him!" She cheered. "I knew it!"

Y/N stood from her seat, crouching down to Amelia’s level and opening her arms for the welcomed embrace. 

“Is that him?” the redhead asked, pointing at something over Y/N’s shoulder. 

There was a moment of silence. Y/N knew what Amelia was referring to, she felt its presence everywhere like a pair of eyes following her around, especially now that it was at the Inn. 

It was the painting she hung hours ago. Many stopped to view it, most of them taking pictures of the new decor.

And for a moment, one fleeting moment, their irises seemed to twinkle with the stars that covered the night sky, entering a quiet haze of admiration. 

Not for its beauty, but for its muse. 

Y/N cleared her throat, pulling away and offering her hand to Amelia. “Yes, that’s him.”

Amelia gladly took her hand, and they walked until they stopped in front of the painting. She was lifted up into Y/N’s arms, now getting an eye-level view of the man that she had only heard the story of. 

She awed, enthralled by the image, her eyes shining with delight.

Y/N finished the painting the night she returned from her visit to Johanna’s, immersing herself within it until just hours later, she was making her way to the Inn at the brink of dusk, holding the wrapped canvas protectively. 

Though it was barely morning, she had invited her father, wanting him to be the first to see. He had only ever heard of her dreams and it would be the first time he would see it through the eyes of his daughter.   

He had seen her work before, as many had as well. She illustrated hers and others’ books; many of her readers could pick out her art from a mile away. 

When the dreams became unrelenting, however, it stunted Y/N’s work. He could no longer consult her for new decor at the Inn, and he stopped seeing her sketch the little things that sparked her interest. 

Though none ever saw the light of day, if he knew of them, he would be awed at the heaps of half-finished paintings kept within the confines of her room. They only ever gathered dust, covered in spare cloth or blankets. 

For one particular painting, though, the one she carried to the Inn at the brink of daylight, there was no doubt in Y/N’s mind that she wanted her father to see it. 

After all, it was painted for the Inn. It would find its home there—with the approval of her father, of course.  

It would undoubtedly be easy to acquire, as he had always wanted to display one of her paintings in the Inn. He hid behind the excuse that it would be good for business, as Y/N was a household name when it came to children’s books—he would never admit that it was solely so he could show off his daughter. 

When Y/N showed him the painting, his eyes brightened, so much so that she swore it contested the brightest star in the galaxy. 

He was overjoyed to see that his daughter was once again making art, and he took a moment to himself to take in each brush stroke, going over the intricacies and each minute detail.

And upon further observation, it was clear to him that he found it incredibly familiar. There was something about it that reminded him of something— someone.

But he shook it off. Y/N  had simply told him too much of her dream, he knew the details all too well after years of hearing it be told; it could very well be his dream, too. 

For her comfort, though, he would never say that deep within his mind, the part of it that held his memories from the centuries he had lived, something told him to look closer . 

This was about his daughter, he could wait to assess the painting later when she was gone.

“Amelia!”

Y/N was snapped out of her thoughts by Maurice, calling her daughter from the back room. 

“Break’s over, darling, you need to finish your homework.”

Maurice approached them with open arms, gesturing for Y/N to pass Amelia over to her. 

“Thank you for taking care of her as always, Y/N,” Maurice said, carrying her daughter in her arms as she smiled warmly, looking over to the little study corner they had set up for Amelia. "Thank you for giving her a place to study as well."

“But I want to talk to Y/N more!” Amelia whined, crossing her arms as she faced her mother, pouting. She gave her best puppy eyes, but Maurice stood firm, not wanting for her to develop a habit of extending break times. 

Amelia wrapped her arms around her mother, placing her chin on her shoulder in defeat. 

Y/N rubbed a hand up and down Amelia’s back to console her. "If you finish all your homework today, I promise I'll tell you the most fantastic bedtime story when I get the chance, okay?" She offered, feeling a pang in her heart at Amelia’s displeasure. After all, had she not been on the phone with Johanna, they would have gotten more time to talk, which was what Amelia came there for in the first place. 

Begrudgingly, Amelia kept silent, only nodding her head and nuzzling her face in the crook of Maurice’s shoulder. Maurice cooed, rocking her daughter gently as Amelia sniffled.

She gave Y/N an apologetic smile, mouthing a small ‘thank you’ before going back to their table.

Y/N took another glance at her painting, delighted that she no longer feared what it represented—but an inexplicable feeling lingered. 

Since her return from the Dreaming, she had been feeling out of touch. Her mind would wander to places she had only been to in her dreams, causing her to make small mistakes throughout the day. 

Though she no longer worried about nightmares that came during her slumber, it was quite unexpected for her to drift off in the morning, getting stuck in her own daydreams at the most inconvenient times. 

And there was no doubt that others felt the same when viewing the painting. Most would pass by with lingering stares, some would look from afar.

But for whatever reason, even the most distracted person passing by the Inn, if ever the painting would catch their eye, they would enter only to admire it. 

Y/N decided that she would no longer keep parts of him locked up; deep down, she and everyone who took even a single glance at him inside of that painting knew that Lord Morpheus had come back.

And so have their dreams. 

In a place so dark and solitary, the Dream Lord would never be alone; everyone who entered the Inn would know of the torment he was put through, most would understand that it was not his fault—nor was it his decision—to leave them. 

Through one of the windows, Y/N noticed the leaves falling from the nearby trees. Her eyes strained, trying to ascertain why she was suddenly drawn to them. 

Her brows furrowed—the leaves were falling slowly. 

It was quite windy that day; the trees should have been shaking in the breeze instead of the unnatural swaying that Y/N had noticed. The bushes below did not rustle, and instead danced sluggishly back and forth as if someone had taken a video and played it in slow motion. 

She walked closer to the door, raising one of her hands to pinch her arm.

This only happened in her dreams, and though she usually knew when she was not in the waking world, she hoped that this was an exception. 

She looked around, observing the people around the Inn—had they noticed what was going on outside? 

Y/N quickly found that the answer was no, as they were all behaving as normally as they had before she peered through the windows.

The employees were serving meals, some preparing drinks. Amelia was determined to finish her homework, speedily scribbling through the pages of her textbook with Maurice right next to her, ready to help her should she need it. 

No one noticed Y/N's puzzled expression, and she wondered if it was all somehow part of an elaborate, hyper-realistic dream.

Driven to find some answers, she approached the door, cautiously opening it and stepping through to the other side to search for the cause of the disturbance.

Instead of trees and grass, she saw pillars and the tall, familiar set of stairs that lead to a throne; one she knew very well.

The palace was no longer broken, not a single piece of stone out of place. The cracks on the walls that she had come to know in her many visits to the Dreaming had disappeared.

But regardless of its beauty, the light that shone through the windows was not as bright, and the colours that gave the room life—even in its worn-down form—were faded.

It reminded her of a photograph, capturing only the mere image of something but never quite encapsulating the essence and the spirit of its subject.

Though Y/N marveled, captivated by the mended palace she had only hoped to see, it was unsuccessful in deceiving her.

The Dreaming was her second home, and she knew whenever she stepped into its warm embrace.

"Y/N Gadling" A woman spoke. 

Y/N tore her gaze away from the palace, her eyes landing on the woman standing a few feet ahead of her. 

She had brown skin, curly black hair and dark, piercing eyes. She was not malicious, no, Y/N could tell, but the air around her was unsettling, enclosing you in its hold, warning you to tread lightly. 

She was not alone, however. She stood between two other women, one that looked older, and another one—the oldest one—who had wavy, salt and pepper hair.

The Fates eyed her, assessing the girl before them, their curious eyes wielding more power than any human could comprehend. They knew, of course they knew, and it was up to her to raise three important questions—three that would have everlasting effects upon the events that would take place in the near future.

“The Daydream,” the Mother added, keeping the same regal stature as her sister-selves.  

Y/N looked at them carefully; Greek mythology was something she had taken an interest in as a writer, and she had an inkling of who they might be. One would certainly remember The Three, as they held a crucial role in the entire sequence of the universe. 

“His regent,” the Crone called. 

She adjusted her bearing, squaring her shoulders as she held her hands behind her back, holding her head high. “The Fates. I’ve heard of you—stories, mostly.”

The Three smirked, giving each other knowing looks at Y/N’s commanding posture; she no longer looked inferior to them, and held herself with pride rather than the child-like curiosity that lingered in her gaze when she stepped into the faux throne room. 

Y/N knew the falseness of the ground she stood upon, and though she had not entered the Dreaming, any place that looked as such she would stand on with the utmost respect. 

The Fates were, in fact, more powerful than she could ever imagine. However, fake or not, they would fail to look down upon her in her own home.

“It has begun,” The Maiden spoke. 

Y/N’s eyebrows gave the slightest twitch, looking at the other two beings and waiting for their turn to speak.

“Careful where you tread, our dear Daydream,” The Crone said, her voice dark and low, vibrating through the air—though in the form of an ordinary elderly woman, her warning could turn the heads of the most powerful beings.

 "The power you hold does not go unnoticed. Many will seek you now," The Mother continued. Her voice was warmer, but nevertheless vehement. 

The Hecate talked in riddles, most of which hard to decipher; Y/N would have to make the most out of her three questions if she wanted to understand. 

“For me to have received such a visit, I would have to be something other than the person I think myself to be,” Y/N replied, The Three listening intently, seemingly waiting for a slip of the tongue. 

“I know not what I am, but you refer to me as his regent. Who might that be?” Y/N asked, her voice unwavering despite her internal disarray. She kept her mouth shut as an active effort to try and keep the questions at bay.

She held no control over the circumstance The Fates had forced her into. However, as long as she remained cautious of each word she spoke, it would influence the answers she would get. 

Decrypting them would be the challenge, but she could already think of one Johanna Constantine to help her with that. 

Behind her back, Y/N’s hands were balled into fists. Her composure did not falter, but in the back of her mind was a tsunami of questions she would not be ready for in the waking world.

She hid her nerves quite nicely from The Three, and to a great extent, to  herself as well. 

"He is not a person, my dear. He is the monarch of the realm you have sought shelter in for many years," The Maiden responded. 

"He is the ruler of dreams," The Mother continued. "But you have known him to be your dream."

Y/N remembered flashes of the man in the sphere. Were they referring to him? Had she been dreaming of the King of Dreams for a long time? Was it really the Sandman?

The oldest stepped forward. "And the one that came long before you."

Much to Y/N’s displeasure, with only a few words, The Crone had muddled the clues she was piecing together. They spoke of the man she knew from her sleep, surely—at least, from what she could gather, The Three should have been referring to him.

However, she knew not of his past. The Sandman would have existed aeons before herself, and though it should be overt information, The Fates felt it important to let her know in person. 

Why? In what world would their fates be attached to one another? What did his past have to do with her present?

"You call me ‘daydream’, as my father does. What is the significance of this?" Y/N asked, hoping to have asked the right question to gain further knowledge. She fiddled with her fingers behind her back, anxious that she might have wasted one of her chances. 

"There is no more significance, my dear," The Mother replied.

Y/N held her breath.

"There is only power," The Maiden continued.

Y/N’s hands shook, balled tightly behind her back, her nails digging into her palms. Her face began to show disdain, her eyebrows shaping into an obvious frown as their cryptic ways began to frustrate her. 

She only searched for answers, and though she had not expected The Fates to be of much help, it still upset her that they only seemed to aggravate her questions. 

"And there is only you." The Crone added. 

Y/N exhaled, releasing the breath she did not realise she was holding, and relaxed her hands, clasping them together gently—still behind her back—instead of squeezing so tight that she reduced bloodflow. 

"You are an intelligent one, dear. Your words have not been wasted,” The Crone reassured, though she kept her words simple and esoteric.

"Certainly better than her predecessor," The Maiden quipped as the other two repressed their laughter, only allowing their snickers to be heard. Regardless of their quiet amusement, their voices still seemed to echo inside of the palace replica. 

 Y/N smirked, however bemused by their antics. "One does not get a visit from The Three often. It would be a shame to squander the questions I have been gifted."

Though the Hecate had their purpose, it seemed as though they were not one to deny small conversations, and Y/N hoped to take advantage as she was only left with her final question.

"You speak of gifts. Very fitting for one of your kind," The Mother commented.

"When dreams despair, the sleeping shall receive a daydream as a gift from Death,” The Crone spoke, each word purposeful and carefully crafted into a phrase that lingered in the air—one whose meaning was obvious to all but the person it was intended for. 

"And they have.” The Mother looked at her other self, sending a knowing glance, their eyes speaking a million different things that they may never say aloud. 

"But what is a gift, if not wanted?" The youngest asked.

“And what becomes of it when it is not?" The eldest finished.

Y/N lowered her chin slightly, her eyes pointed, stern and peremptory towards The Three. There was a low rumbling that shook the ground below them, one that challenged the pillars that held the palace up proudly. 

A smirk graced their faces, indifferent to the trembling stones and structures that surrounded them. 

Y/N had many questions, and yet she only had one left to ask. 

She inhaled, closing her eyes and lifting her chin, then opened her eyes once more and exhaled, staring at the Hecate with volition that bled into the atmosphere around them. 

The shaking stopped.

It was not her home, and yet the false palace remained obedient under her mere presence.

“What has begun?” She asked, keeping her composure steady and her words clear; she dug her nails into her palm once again.

Light flashed through the windows, thunder roaring all around them. The Three did not waver, but their smirks turned into grins, glancing at the windows for a moment before returning their gaze onto Y/N.

Their eyes darkened as they all held their hands together in front of them, tilting their chin up proudly; The Three’s power grew, the air growing thick as they replied.

“The end,” they yelled, their voices echoing and tonitruous before the entire palace turned to one great flash of light, momentarily blinding Y/N.

She shielded her eyes with her arm, then it was over, when the blinding light had gone, she put her arm back down, finding that the view in front of her was different.

“Excuse me?” 

Y/N flinched, quickly turning around to face whoever had tapped her shoulder. It was a woman, shorter than her, looking curiously as Y/N regained her composure.

She wiped the baffled expression off of her face, replacing it with an apprehensive smile, waiting for the woman to continue speaking. 

“Are you okay? You’ve been standing there a while,” she asked, concerned, before chuckling shyly. “And you’re, uhm, kind of blocking the door.” 

Y/N laughed, nervous, clearing her throat and blinking rapidly, trying to get rid of the haze and the feeling of dust in her eyes. 

“I-I’m fine. It’s just been a weird day. Thank you for asking, though,” she replied, grateful for the kindness the woman had shown. If she was blocking the door, the stranger could have easily pushed her to the side. 

The woman, though, was now preoccupied with something else. She was looking directly into Y/N’s eyes, studying them carefully. Y/N awkwardly shuffled her feet to try and get away from the prying gaze. 

“I…I think there’s something in your eyes, miss…” the woman trailed off, mesmerized by the lights that twinkled within Y/N’s irises. 

Y/N looked at the ground, tearing herself away from her curious stare as she waved her off. “It’s, uhm, I have allergies,” she sniffled, quite forcefully, rubbing her nose and her eyes, the skin appearing red from the irritation. “I’ll be fine.”

Before the woman could voice more of her concerns, Y/N had already given her thanks, walking away briskly while muttering something about allergens being in the drinks. The stranger watched her leave, reluctantly telling her to get help if she gets sicker. 

* * *

Y/N’s knee bounced up and down as she sat alone on a park bench, tightly clutching her phone in her hands. She had long lost track of time, pondering over the strange circumstances that she seemed unable to escape. 

She spent a while trying to decipher what The Fates had said to her, which was surely the hardest to do seeing as she was only given pieces of information she did not know how to connect.

There had been many moments in her life where she was left completely dumbfounded and she thought that maybe, there was nothing left in the universe that could leave her as shocked and confused and afraid.

One of those moments was finding out about her father’s long, long life, and how he would outlive her for—well, forever. She thought that it was as much as her human mind could comprehend, choosing to accept it rather than to question it.

After all, she had seen him get hurt to the point where it was considered fatal, but he would always come out of it just fine. 

She guessed that, maybe, when someone has lived for centuries, they have the tendency to get quite reckless over time, something she had repeatedly scolded her father for. 

Point is, her perception of human reality had long been warped. However, it was never to the extent where a supposedly mythological being found it rather important to transport her to another realm in the middle of the day—in public, no less.

Not to mention leaving her physical body blocking the door to a busy establishment, susceptible to any and all outside forces without a care in the world about the harm it could have brought her. 

She stared at her feet, her hands starting to switch between picking at her phone case or relentlessly tapping the screen with fingernails she had bitten too short that her nailbeds began to sting.

It was a kind of pain that she hoped would wake her up. She was too uncertain of the world, too unsure of whether or not she was stuck in a dream.

After all, she was only human. Mortal? Possibly. But human, of course. 

Y/N flinched as a soccer ball hit her knee and landed by her feet. 

Curious, she picked it up, looking around and scanning the park for the owner. A young boy, no more than seven years old, came into view, jogging towards her.

“Is this yours?” Y/N asked, a warm smile gracing her face as she gestured to the ball in her hand. 

The boy stopped running, standing just a few feet away from her, his eyes going wide and his mouth agape as he called out for his mother, his eyes never leaving Y/N.

Alarmed, Y/N stayed frozen in her seat, resting the ball on her lap as she watched his mother run towards them both. She stammered, trying to explain that she did not mean any harm to her child, but the boy beat her to it.

“She’s the girl from my dream! The one with the rocketship!” he beamed as he excitedly pointed to Y/N. “She’s real! She’s real!”

Of course.

Y/N began tapping her fingers on the ball, feeling her chest constrict as she heard the hum once more, creeping to the surface of her mind like an oncoming storm—the distant thunder growing louder and louder. 

Raymond and the Rocketship.

Raymond Campbell.

“I’m Raymond!” The boy extended a hand for her to shake, then pulled it back. “But you know that already!” he giggled. “You remember, right?” 

How could she forget? 

He was the little boy in her first best-selling story book, the one she sloppily wrote down on her notebook a long time ago in the middle of the night, after yet another adventure-filled dream. 

He was a beloved character brought to life by the words she typed on her laptop, illustrated on the pages of Amelia’s favourite story book—her very first one written by Y/N. 

The book that sat proudly in the middle of Amelia’s bedroom shelf, ready to be reread whenever she pleased.

Raymond seemed to grow apprehensive when she gave him no response, tugging at his mother’s shirt. “She remembers me, right?” he asked, his voice losing its enthusiasm and lowering down to a shaky whimper. 

Blinking away her stupor, she smiled at Raymond, hoping to create a convincing facade. “Of course I remember!”

She looked at Raymond’s mom, who looked at her apologetically and was intending to stop her son from further bothering a stranger at the park.

However, Y/N subtly shook her head to let her know that she was more than willing to play along.

The mother smiled in return, relieved to see how she was kind enough to entertain her son, blissfully unaware of the trepidation clouding Y/N’s brain. 

Y/N offered her hand for Raymond to shake and he happily accepted. “I’m Y/N.” She extended the gesture to his mother as well, who gave her a grateful smile in return, silently thanking her for being kind to her son. 

“I’m Amanda,” the mother replied, placing both her hands on Ray’s shoulders. “I hope he wasn’t being too bothersome.”

“Oh, he could never!” Y/N replied, kneeling down to Raymond's eye level before handing the ball over to him. “Raymond here is a good friend, aren’t you, Ray?”

The little boy nodded, taking the ball with glee, “Do you actually have a spaceship?” he asked, narrowing his eyes from suspicion.

Y/N gasped, splaying her hand over her chest, feigning offence. “Why—of course I do! Who do you take me for? An imposter?” she accused, playfully pouting at Raymond who laughed and began to jump up and down.

“I want to see it!” He turned to his mother, his eyes wide and pleading. “Can we see it, please!”

Y/N exaggerated a huff and pointed towards the sky. “The ship is up there right now, so sadly, I can’t show it to you even if I wanted to.” She smiled apologetically and placed a gentle hand on Raymond’s arm. “I lent it to a good friend of mine. I’m sorry,” she pouted.

Raymond’s shoulders slumped and his jumping seized, bowing his head in discouragement. “Aw! When can I see it, then??” he asked, hopeful.

“Hmm.” Y/N squinted, removing her arm on his shoulder to place a finger on her chin as if she was deep in thought. “Do you follow your bedtime?” She eyed Raymond carefully, who now seemed to be interested in everything around them but her, so she turned to look at Amanda who only laughed in response.

“Him?" Amanda asked. “Never.” She earned a glare from her son, but she only chuckled as she ruffled his hair. “I’m only telling the truth, honey.”

Y/N sighed, giving Raymond a stern look. “That’s not very healthy, is it?”

The little boy shuffled his feet, shaking his head no. 

“Tell you what,” Y/N began. “Whenever we go to bed, we go to a place called The Dreaming. If you follow your bedtime, you’ll get there even faster; you’ll see the rocket there,” she smiled. “When it’s available, of course.”

“But it wouldn’t be real!” he argued, a deep frown on his face as he fidgeted with his fingers. 

“Says who?” She defended. “If it weren’t real, then I wouldn’t be here, would I?” She raised her eyebrow at Raymond as she waved her hands around and gestured to herself. “Right?”

Raymond gasped. “Woah,” he whispered, his eyes glazing over with wonderment and curiosity when he saw the stars that seemed to twinkle within the depths of her eyes.

Only for a moment, though. They disappeared as soon as he saw them.

Thinking that he had only been reacting to her, Y/N simply laughed and stood up, placing both of her hands on her hips. “Your dreams are just as real as you, me, and your mom, right now. Never forget that.”

She clapped her hands once and sighed. “Anyway, unfortunately I do need to be somewhere, I have to prepare for that rocketship’s landing when my friend gets back. Is that okay, Ray?” 

“As long as you promise that I can see it again next time?” He asked, holding out his pinky finger. “Pinky promise?”

Y/N held her hand out, hooking her pinky around his without a second thought. “Promise.”

Before Raymond could respond, he was called by his dad standing several feet away, gesturing for him to come over. He let her finger go, smiling widely and waving goodbye, running to his dad. “Bye Y/N! Remember your promise!”

She laughed, waving back. “I will!”

Y/N turned towards Raymond’s mother, who had her hands clasped in front of her. She wore a thick white coat, her hair was blonde and she had thin-rimmed glasses on. “Thank you,” Amanda said, smiling gratefully. 

She waved her off. “It’s no problem, he seems like a good kid.”

“Still, it was kind of you to play along like that.” The mother laughed. “He genuinely thinks you look like someone from his dream. Lucky coincidence, don’t you think? It made him really happy.”

Y/N cleared her throat, smiling as she tried to hide her nerves. “Yeah, it is. I go here a lot, though, so if you’ve been here before, maybe he’s seen me around and his brain just imagined someone who looks like me?”

Though it was not a lie—she did often visit the park—Y/N could not help but feel a pang of guilt for having lied to Amanda. 

Raymond could very well never see that rocket ship again, and his mother would have to explain that the kind lady he thought was the same one in his dream was only being nice, playing along to make him happy. 

Y/N, however, would have to keep the truth to herself, having no choice but to hide it from Amanda. After all, how could one describe The Dreaming? How could she ever explain it to her without seeming quite delusional?

Her dreams, no matter how frequent, could never truly be called her own. Some were, but she would eventually venture outside of its barriers, unknowingly travelling from one person’s sleeping mind to the next, accompanying them in their own little adventures, helping them grow and even defeat their own nightmares—nightmares she had come to know and love, sometimes seeing them around the Dreaming, too, if they ever decided to come visit. 

They were only characters to her, though. She would write them down  in some of her books, never knowing that those were indeed the physical forms of nightmares that she had come across and even befriended. 

One simply becomes accustomed to their own creativity…most of the time. In Y/N’s case, however, a major component of accepting her “vivid imagination” was an unimaginable amount of denial.

She had to turn away from the truth in favor of lying to herself that her mind was merely creating vivid fantasies.

“This is our first time here, actually,” Amanda responded, keeping an eye on Raymond, who was joyfully playing soccer with his father. Her expression held fondness for the two, cherishing their happy faces as they relished in their game. 

“Oh, I guess it is quite the coincidence, then,” Y/N chuckled, internally cursing herself for her presumption. “Anyway, I really do have to go, miss.” She held out her hand once more. “It was nice meeting you!”

Amanda held her hand in both of hers, smiling warmly. “Likewise, Y/N. You were so lovely with Ray.”

They said their goodbyes, and once again, Y/N was alone, walking aimlessly away from the park. She rubbed her eyes once, annoyed by the dust she could feel in her eyes.

There was no moment of rest for her—the park only made her all the more confused. It took her a mere moment to decide that she needed help, as she would never be able to settle these strange affairs on her own.

While meeting Raymond had not gone as badly as she would have expected, it was not supposed to happen in the first place. Not when he was only supposed to be a fictional character.

She groaned in irritation, swiftly unlocking her phone to dial Johanna’s number while trying to blink the itchiness in her eyes away.

The phone rang, and Y/N picked at the fabric of her shirt, grinding her teeth as she silently cursed Johanna for failing to answer the phone immediately.

She rubbed the back of her neck, her chest tightening as she swallowed the lump that began to form in her throat.

“Hello?”

“Jo!” She shouted. “I spoke with The Three—as in, The  Three. The Hecate, The Kindly Ones—

“Wait, wait, hold on—”

“No! Jo, I saw The Fates—” She gulped, lowering her voice down to a whisper. “And I saw Raymond.”

“Who’s Raymond?”

“Raymond and the Rocketship.”

Y/N kept walking, her eyes to the floor and distracted by her thoughts. 

“Come over. Let’s talk about it over some tea, yeah? Make sure to keep your eyes open for anything strange; call me if you're in any sort of danger. Got it?”

Y/N nodded to herself, thanking Johanna before she gladly took the offer and hung up, looking forward to a warm drink to calm her slightly shaking hands. 

Johanna had never been the most sociable, let alone hospitable, keeping her distance from most to avoid having them in the way, for better or for worse. 

And Y/N had known to be cautious, especially around people who provoked the supernatural. Her father had enough stories, and he was intent that she learned from them.

However, she somehow managed to remain friends with the demon hunter, visiting from time to time just to check in or talk at least once a month, even if only through a phone call.

It never went unnoticed by the occultist, developing a soft spot for Y/N as time went on. 

Johanna Constantine had never been the best at friendship—or any kind of relationship, really—but if there was anything she could assist Y/N with, it was surely the kind that involved otherworldly affairs. 

Y/N pocketed her phone, eyes scanning the crowd of people in the streets. It was a nice reminder from Johanna; assuming that her day would continue the way it had been going, there was a high probability that she may encounter something else—or someone else—as unexpected as her last four—two?—visitors. 

Ironically for her, the day was nice—the sun wasn’t too hot and the wind blew just enough for the temperature to be comfortable. The streets were bustling with people, some hurried off to work, some were ready to head on home, and some were simply taking a stroll out to take advantage of the weather.

“I want some chips.”

Y/N jumped, anxiously looking around her with a hand up to the side of her head. The voice sounded as though it was right against her ear, loud and high-pitched like the voice of a child. 

She spotted a little girl, dressed in a bright pink coat and dark jeans, holding her mother’s hand as she jumped up with glee, pointing to a bag of chips displayed on the top shelf of a shop window. 

“Mum look! Can I have some?” The little girl asked.

Y/N frowned. The girl had the same voice as the one she just heard, only this time, she could actually see who was speaking. 

“Please let her say yes.”

“Shit,” Y/N cursed, flinching as she covered both of her ears out of instinct when she heard another voice. The volume had not been the problem, but it was the proximity. Was there actually a person talking to her? She would have felt their breath against her skin from how close it sounded. 

“I wonder what I’ll get for my birthday.”

Y/N turned around, her eyes rapidly scanning the people that passed by. She chewed the inside of her cheek and focused on her breathing, closing her eyes for a few seconds, waiting to hear more voices. 

But there were none, and she exhaled in relief, letting go of her ears as she gathered herself before continuing her walk to Johanna’s house.

“Fuck, the deadline’s tomorrow.”

“One more day, just one more day.”

“Why isn’t he here yet?”

“Would they like this? No, probably not.”

Y/N’s head began to spin and her eyes began to water. The voices were getting louder, overlapping as they increased in numbers. She stopped walking, holding her head in her hands, crouching down and groaning in pain. 

Though she was outside, she could feel walls beginning to close around her, the air stale and unmoving.

Y/N searched the crowd, desperate to find who the voices belonged to, but there was no one. Most were not talking, minding their own business as they passed by. Some conversed with others; however, she could no longer make out what the voices were saying, there were too many, and they were all equally as loud.

She wiped the tears that fell down her face, balling her hands into fists as she stood up, ignoring the nausea and reaching for her phone to call Johanna.

That was, until she bumped into someone; she fell backwards and dropped her phone on the ground, hearing a small shatter. She cursed, immediately looking for her phone without checking to see who she had run into.

“Are you alright, miss?”

Y/N whipped her head around, looking up to see a woman who offered a helping hand. When she did not respond, only stared, the woman crouched down and retrieved her phone, examining it before returning it to her.

“The screen’s a little cracked, but other than that, I think it’s okay.”  

Apprehensively, she took the phone from the woman’s hand, checking to see the damage. There was a big crack from the top corner of the screen all the way to the bottom with small lines branching off of it. Fortunately for her, only the screen protector had been broken, and it would work as normal—she could still call Johanna. 

“How about you?” The woman asked, standing up and offering her hand once more. “Are you okay?”

Y/N took her hand this time, holding it tightly before pulling herself up; she found her footing and dusted herself off. She opened her mouth to say her thanks, but it was then that she noticed the silence. 

The voices had gone, and so did the pain. 

She could feel the air moving again and inhaled deeply, relishing in the relief her lungs felt as the heaviness in her chest vanished. 

Patient as ever, the stranger only observed her with a kind smile, one that Y/N awkwardly returned as she let go of her hand. 

The woman wore an all-black attire, her black, curly hair complementing her dark skin. She wore a tank top with thin straps and a necklace that Y/N recognized as an ankh . 

“I’m quite alright, thank you,” she lied, then clenched her jaw tightly, her eyes looking everywhere as if waiting for something else to happen—mainly, for the voices to return.

Though she felt calmer, her brain still ran a hundred miles per hour, wondering what had even caused her to stop hearing voices in her head. Was it the woman? Will she turn out to be another strange encounter for her to tell Johanna? Or was it something else?

Her body was stiff, shoulders tense and breathing still shallow. She cleared her throat, about to excuse herself—

“You don’t look alright.” Death, though many think of her as an entity to be feared, gently placed a hand on Y/N’s shoulder, hoping to ease some of the tension. It was rather blunt to say that to someone who, in her eyes, certainly was not alright, but she managed to say so without a hint of condescension.

Humans were strange; she understood their need to hide true feelings, especially to a stranger—but she was not really a stranger, was she?

Death was a familiar concept to everyone who ever lived, and thus, every one knew who was waiting at the end of their Earthly lives. At one point or another, a human will encounter Death, whether it is their time or the loss of a loved one—she will always be there, and she always has.

But she was not only Death—she was also Life. She only sought to help a human in need,  to ease their life’s stressors if only for a little bit. 

However, it would be wrong of her to deny that the woman she faced piqued her interest from the moment she bumped into her. 

Although she did it quite often, she had not meant to be visible to anyone. She was merely fulfilling her purpose, when she ran into a woman who was not even supposed to see her.

Of course she meant to ask, maybe she was not human—but as she learned during her interminable existence, especially while on Earth, there was a time and a place.

“It’s been…an eventful day,” Y/N sighed, her voice wavering. The tension on her shoulders eased and she was able to breathe deeply again.

“It happens to the best of us, don’t worry about it,” Death sympathised, her eyes warm and understanding, looking at Y/N without a hint of judgement.

The woman’s expression faltered for a moment, then turned into confusion. “Pardon me for asking—but you aren’t dead, are you?”

Y/N froze, her eyes widened and flickered to the ankh. “No, I’m not dead,” she answered, gulping. “Pardon me for asking, but are you ?”

A part of her felt ridiculous for asking such a question, but assuming her day would go on as it had been for the past few hours, it would not be an impossible concept. 

She almost wished that the woman would say yes—maybe it would convince her that she had finally gone mad, because if so, she could find some semblance of sanity. It would be easier to accept that she was merely insane than to force her mind into believing things such as other realms and the existence of The Fates.

The dark-haired woman squinted her eyes as if deep in thought, before going back to her normal, kind smile. “No, I’m just joking with you,” she laughed, positioning herself beside Y/N and looping her arm around hers, giving her a moment to pull away if she wanted.

Instead, Y/N seemed to relax at her touch.

“Walk with me?” Death asked, and Y/N cleared her throat in response before nodding silently, looking straight ahead, refusing to look at the woman beside her.

Death was a very perceptive being—she considered it a requirement as her job was to accompany people to the Sunless Lands. She was curious to know more about the clearly anxious woman who she—quite impossibly—ran into. 

However, similarly to when she would show herself to the recently deceased, precautions had to be taken. 

She would not want to distress anyone who had just passed, but especially not someone who was still alive. Whatever Death would tell her, she would carry with her for the rest of her life until they meet again at the end of it.

“So, where are you off to?” 

“A friend’s” Y/N answered stiffly. Still busying herself with watching her surroundings, and she made sure to cover as much area as she could. As Johanna had told her, she was to keep an eye out for any possible danger—who was she to ignore the expert?

Death hummed, seeing that Y/N’s attention was being given to everything else but their conversation. “You can talk to me.” She shrugged, waiting for Y/N to look her way. “I’m a complete stranger to you. You won’t lose anything.”

The Endless wanted to know more about her, curious as to how she could perceive beings such as herself, when humans are not inherently capable of doing so. 

Y/N chuckled, looking at the floor as they continued to walk aimlessly. “I don’t think you have much time for that.”

The stranger had been kind to her so far, and there was truly no harm in telling her about the day she had, but there was always a chance she would be labelled as a liar, or completely out of her wits. 

It was certainly the least of her worries, though.

Death nodded, “You’re right, I do have somewhere to be.” She thought for a moment, wanting to say the right words to make use of the little time she had to get sufficient information. “Tell me the important bits, then. The most ridiculous part of your day.” She grinned; although she hoped to get some answers, she was also genuinely interested in her well-being.

She might not be able to offer any solutions to her problems, but she could always lend a hand here and there in the form of comfort and reassurance. Death had learned that sometimes, all you need is the right person at the right time, ready to listen and accompany you, if only for a little while. 

Y/N chewed her bottom lip, thinking of how she could possibly recapitulate her recent experiences without sounding completely insane. Though she thought it unlikely for her to get ridiculed—since the stranger had been understanding so far—she did not want to bother the poor woman with her bizarre and unbelievable stories.

“Well…” She trailed off. “I met three women today—technically three—and they told me some rather peculiar things. They had been incredibly cryptic, and I’m still trying to figure out what they meant.”

She paused for a moment, picking at her fingernails as she pondered over what she would say next. “Then I met this little boy—he said he saw me in his dream. When he described it, I remember having the same one. He was in it, too. And then I began to hear voices in my head—but they stopped when you came. My dad’s immortal, too, but I don’t know if that has anything to do with today. Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did,” she rambled, nervously laughing at the end. She tore her gaze away from the pavement and to the stranger beside her, trying to gauge her reaction.

She considered telling her about the man but quickly decided against it. He has not been a part of her day—not completely—but he has always been the most peculiar part of her life. 

It would take a while to explain, and she did not want to take more of the woman’s time, nor did she want to take her kindness for granted.

Death looked away for a moment, a frown growing on her face. There was something deeply familiar with her stories, and she was disappointed to have only obtained more questions instead of answers. 

She had a purpose to fulfill and people to attend to, she knew that the answers she sought would have to wait. If the girl beside her was something more than human, their paths would surely cross again. 

Her eldest brother had a plan, as he did for most, and she would not interfere. She would not expose her true nature, not when she felt it was the wrong time.

Maybe she could pay him a visit next, though she was certain that she would not get very far if she were to question him. 

“Humans are so strange,” Death spoke, unlinking their arms, stopping their pace beneath the shade of a nearby tree. “You will go through some of the strangest things and carry it with such strength and elegance.”

“Humans?” Y/N asked. “You refer to humans as if you aren’t one yourself,” she chuckled. There was something so otherworldly about the strange woman, she stared at her with such kind eyes—an attribute she could not recall seeing on anyone else except for one.

Whenever she looked into her eyes, it brought her back to when she looked into the man’s eyes. 

Hers were welcoming, holding unconditional warmth for all those she would encounter, while his were filled with sorrow.

They were vastly different, yet they both gave the same feeling of something ethereal and incomprehensible.

The closest person she knew who had similar eyes was her father, but his were distinct. Unlike the other two, she could describe what she saw in the depth of her father’s irises. 

They were old—the eyes of a man who had lived longer than he should have. His eyes were wise and full of memories she would never truly know, and he may never truly speak of.

Death gently took one of Y/N’s hands and held it in both of her own. “Whatever had happened to you, I’m sure it means something. My brother isn’t so careless, and neither are The Three.” She glanced at someone behind Y/N, seeing the soul she was to visit next, and concluded that her time with Y/N was up.

Y/N’s eyebrows furrowed, looking over her shoulder to see what the woman was looking at.

“I wish you the best in your adventures, Y/N—hopefully we bump into each other again soon.”

Alarmed by the sudden farewell, Y/N turned her head back to the woman, but she was no longer there. 

Her hand remained extended, as if someone was still holding it, but there was nothing there. The woman had disappeared, and her heart sank, ready to hear the voices once more.

But her mind stayed quiet as she looked around, trying to find where the kind stranger had gone off to.

She brought her hand back down, and a part of her sought a reason to panic. She was certain that she had been with someone, their arms were even looped together as they were walking.

There was no unease, though, and she continued to stroll through the familiar streets of her town as if it was a normal day. 

And thankfully, she was not very far from Johanna’s house. 

Y/N’s hand—the one that the strange woman held—opened and closed at her side. She fidgeted with her fingers, rubbing it on her pants or holding her hands together, trying to get rid of the tingly feeling. 

Eventually, the sensation crawled up her wrist, to her elbow, and then to her shoulder until she was subtly scratching her entire arm. 

Her eyes were distant, and her mind was clouded and blurry. Due to this, her arm was merely a nuisance to her instead of being a source of concern, nor did she notice that the sensation started after the woman held her hand.

In her haze, Y/N also failed to recall her name leaving Death’s lips before she vanished. She held an empty expression, not having felt so in tune yet so out of touch with reality. 

She missed most of the glances that went her way, the people taking a second look just to see her eyes again as they sparkled under the sun, conspicuous even in the daylight. The children that would nudge their companions, pointing at her reflection as she passed by store windows, went unnoticed as well.

On every reflective surface, she appeared the same; she wore a dark coat, one that billowed unnaturally in the wind, moving in a slow but elegant dance as she walked by. Whenever her coat would move a certain way, one could catch a glimpse of the galaxy it held within the inner layer of the fabric. Everything about her attire was black, her feet clad in the same Doc Marten boots she wore in her dreams.

Yet those were only in her reflections; she did not own a single piece of that outfit.

Eventually, the weird static she could feel on her arm dissipated.

Unbeknownst to her, there were small, almost unnoticeable white lines that developed on her fingers, crawling up her palm like cracks on damaged pavement.

The light was bright, but exposed only enough for them to show a subtle glow, much like the sand in Amelia’s room.

Y/N’s grasp on reality seemed to have been warped, as if she was swimming in deep waters. The atmosphere felt thick but not suffocating, her vision tinted by some form of film that made her incapable of fully grasping the realm she walked on. She could feel the wind along her skin and every wisp of hair that touched her forehead, moving ever so gently in the soft breeze; she could hear every breath she took and how the oxygen entered her lungs like taking your first few breaths after you have just gotten out of the water. 

Before she knew it, she was knocking on Johanna’s door, waiting to be let in. Johanna’s muffled voice could be heard, rushed, yelling for Y/N to give her a moment.     

* * *

“Hey.” Johanna poked her head out of the door, slightly out of breath. “Sorry, change of plans. I’m kind of in the middle of something, so if you could just give me a moment—”

Her eyes grew wide but she caught herself, forcing her composure to return. Her eyes narrowed, studying the obvious difference in the way Y/N held herself.

It was the eyes again, though, that had caught her attention.

Because Y/N’s eyes had actually changed. Johanna was seeing her friend stand in front of her with glowing eyes that contained the depth of space instead of seeing it in her reflection. 

“Nevermind,” Johanna mumbled. “Get inside, but don’t go near the living room. You’ll know why when you see it.” She decided that for the sake of them both, because of Y/N’s strange demeanor, she would bring her into the safety of her home.

It might not be as safe as the average household, especially with what her living room contained, but it was better than leaving Y/N exposed outside.

But whether or not she was in danger or was the danger, Johanna was yet to decide. 

Y/N nodded silently before walking into the house, offering Johanna only a slight smile before frowning.

She had been to her house before, she was accustomed to all of the strange objects littered around it, but as she entered, there was an immediate shift in the air—one that felt familiar and strange at the same time.

Usually, the artifacts that Johanna would take home had an effect on the general feeling of the house. Sometimes there was a dark cloud looming around the rooms or—as most people would be—she would become anxious when in the presence of something demonic and supernatural.

Out of respect, Y/N generally never asked about the artifacts and she was normally none the wiser about the happenings inside of the Constantine household. 

If it involved Johanna’s work, she left the subject alone, knowing that it was much preferred by the occultist to be that way. 

The Constantines had their fair share of tragic stories. Getting involved with any of them was a risk on its own, and Y/N did not want to be in the way of Johanna in fear that it might result in calamity.

Johanna Constantine has suffered great loss. Y/N was not interested in being one of them.

Not only for her sake, but largely for Johanna’s. 

Cautiously, Y/N walked into the house, keeping herself alert for any unusual creatures or objects. There was an itch at the back of her mind that called to her, but she could not quite get a hold of the thought.

Something was inside of Johanna’s home, something she knew of but could not quite recall.

But as she reached the living room, her eyes immediately landed on a very familiar binding circle drawn onto the floor. 

It was smaller, less intricate than the one she saw in her dreams, and the symbols were different

What interested her the most, though, was the humanoid shadow trapped inside of the circle.

Y/N squeezed her eyes shut, feeling her grip on reality loosen. She inhaled deeply, hoping to regain some semblance of control when her mind seemingly drifted away from—

“It’s a demon,” Johanna mumbled. She was behind Y/N, careful to keep a close eye. There was a supposed demon in their midst, and yet she had a gut feeling that her starry-eyed friend might be more powerful than the creature she had in her living room. 

Johanna cleared her throat, shifting her feet as she looked at the shadow. “I think it’s a demon, anyway,” she admitted. “I’m actually not sure. I caught it wandering about my house. I tried sending it back to Hell but it wouldn’t work.”

Upon Y/N’s entrance, the unknown being warped into a more solid, humanoid form. Their skin was made up of grey and black nebulae patterns that seemed to absorb light, their eyes now dimming into a dark maroon than the previous bright red. They had no hair, but instead, a faint, smokey grey hue resembling flames emitted from the top of their head. 

The creature put their hand up to the invisible barrier, making it ripple in waves that spread throughout the unseeable dome, the light that bent around it being the only indication it even existed. 

“I am no demon,” they grumbled. The words echoed around the room, unnaturally low yet still present—the floor and the walls seemed to vibrate with every intonation. 

Y/N walked closer, and Johanna took one instinctive step towards her, prepared to pull her away if anything were to happen. 

“You belong in the Dreaming…” Y/N spoke, unsure of her words, but choosing the next ones carefully. “A nightmare.”

The creature’s eyes widened and Y/N gently placed her hand over theirs through the barrier, creating a black shadow that surrounded their hands, emitting off of their nearly-touching palms as dark wisps of smoke. 

“I’ve seen your kind before in the realm of dreams. Is that not where you reside?”  She questioned gently, keeping in mind the possibility that they may be one of the residents that went rogue when their world started to crumble. 

No harm would come to the creature, and though she sounded sure of herself, an inkling of desperation could be heard from the resolution in her voice and the persistence in her stare, almost as if purposely showing her dismay.

“You know of us—you wear his clothing,” the being responded, glancing at the windows then back to Y/N. “Your image wears his clothing.” There was wonderment in their voice, but they were not there to study her—the creature was there for the same reason Y/N was.

They wanted answers, too, but Y/N could not give them what she was also still seeking.

She dropped her hand, the wisps of shadow disappearing. “Go back home, Nightmare,” she ordered, noting how the creature’s expression seemed to drop at the mention of their lost home. “One such as you mustn't wander the waking world so carelessly.”

There was a part of her that wondered if she had gone too far. She did not know their whole story, and it was not an easy feat to see your once prosperous world decaying.

However, she also knew that their loyalties should have been to the Kingdom—the Dreaming—instead of losing trust in their monarch.

Lucienne stayed, and it was all Y/N needed to know that there was still hope.  The librarian’s determination to see their Lord return was enough for Y/N to decide that there was no abandoning the Dreaming—not until Lucienne’s belief lasts. 

“I could say the same for you.” The creature had tilted their chin up, as if to challenge the woman in front of them. “Do you not possess powers in which only our Lord wields?” They paused, looking over Y/N’s shoulder to gaze at Johanna.

“There have been stories about a regent,” they spoke, tearing their eyes away from the occultist’s narrowed ones and back to the woman in front. “If I may ask, am I right to assume that I have found the regent in question?”

“I’m not anyone’s regent,” Y/N answered. “Go back to the Dreaming. I know not who you speak of—I barely know your realm’s true nature, and I do not wish it to interfere with the waking world’s inhabitants.” 

Putting her foot forward, Y/N broke the circle, feeling Johanna’s tight grip on her elbow. “We’re safe, Jo,” Y/N reassured, but the hold on her arm had not changed. 

The creature stepped over the lines, free to do anything they desired in the waking world. They turned to the window, staring into the eyes of Y/N’s reflection. “You will find that the waking world is not your only realm, my lady.” 

With on more words left to say, the Nightmare turned itself into a cloud of black smoke, floating high into the air before completely disappearing. 

Johanna roughly pulled Y/N back to face her. “What the fuck was that?” she glared. “Why did you let it out? You don’t know what it’s going to—”

Y/N shook her head, calmly pushing Johanna’s hand away and holding it in hers. “They won’t do anything, I know that much. They came here for me, and if they do what I told them to do, they’ll just go back to the Dreaming.”

Pulling her hand away, Johanna ran it through her hair while her other hand rested on her hip. “And you know that how?”

“That was a Nightmare, Jo, not a demon. That’s why you couldn’t send them to Hell.”

Y/N told no lie when she mentioned her previous knowledge of the Nightmare. There were many like the one they had just encountered—she was familiar with their kind and knew that most of them were not malicious. 

They had their duties, something they lost when their monarch vanished. Now they simply wandered wherever they wanted and acted how they chose to, but it did not necessarily change them into creatures of malevolence.

“Is that why you’ve been acting weird since last night?” Johanna questioned, both of her hands now on  her hips, her eyes boring into Y/N’s. “So the Dreaming exists? You’re sure of that now?” 

Y/N shook her head, breathing deeply and trying to digest Johanna’s words. Whatever had clouded her mind was starting to wear off, and though she was not completely herself, she was starting to feel the panic rise up in her chest when she remembered why she came there in the first place. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s why I’m here. You’re the only one I can think of who can help.” She gave Johanna a tight-lipped smile, wanting to make the tension vanish, hoping to see the usual level-headedness from her friend. 

Johanna stayed silent to take a few deep breaths, regaining as much of her composure she was capable of. She could remember all of her other so-called adventures and encounters with the supernatural—but none were as strange as this.

If everything Y/N said over the phone were true, she was faced with someone who acted as a magnet for the things she was paid to get rid of. Johanna felt helpless; deep within her mind, something told her that this was not something she could help with.

She was only human, one with many limitations—she feared that this may be one of them. 

“Sit.” She pointed to the sofa. “I’ll make tea; then you better explain what’s been going on with you,” she sighed, walking towards the kitchen to prepare their cups. 

Instead of sitting down, though, Y/N browsed through Johanna’s collection of books that she obtained through the years. They were all strewn around the house, so inevitably, she decided to do a bit of cleaning up while she was at it.

She knew better than to clean excessively, though. As she had tried once before, but Johanna simply liked the chaos of her messy home. 

Y/N flipped some books around, making sure that the titles were visible. Sometimes she would wipe the dust off the covers—she even tried to alphabetize them before she had gotten a stern look from Johanna.

“Do you have any books on the Fates?” 

Holding two cups, Johanna went to sit on the couch, placing their tea on the coffee table as she waited for Y/N to join her, which she was very happy to.

Y/N took a sip of her tea. “I think they were the ones who talked to me earlier.”

“I have books, but tell me what happened first.”

Clearing her throat, Y/N tapped her short nails on the cup. “They were cryptic. I haven’t made sense of it all just yet, but I was hoping you could help.”

“Did you ask them why they were there?”

“No,” Y/N scoffed. “I couldn’t be that direct. I’ve read about them, Jo. I wasn’t planning on wasting my questions.”

“Just making sure,” Johanna responded, taking a sip of her own drink. “Tell me what they said. I can’t promise anything, though. They obviously sought you out—what’s so important about you that the Three-in-One came for a visit?”

Y/N mulled over their conversation; it was practically impossible to explain just how dreadful it was. While she succeeded in remaining level-headed during her time with The Fates, her mind had not been clear, especially with the events that transpired before and after.

“They kept calling me ‘Daydream’” was the only response Y/N could muster, deciding that she would take it one topic at a time when it became too difficult for her to try and tell the story as a whole.

“Like your nickname?”

“Yes,” Y/N nodded. “The other one called me ‘his regent’. That has to mean something, right? The nightmare called me the same name, and my father had been referring to me as ‘Daydream’ for most of my childhood.”

“ His regent. Any ideas on who you’re a supposed ‘regent’ of?” This was certainly a curious case for Johanna, especially because it was happening to a friend. Her mind was reeling with questions—ones that she was unsure she would ever get answered, but she had to try anyway. 

“The ruler of dreams, apparently.”

Johanna choked on her tea, covering her mouth as she tried to keep her coughs at bay. “The Sandman,” she stifled, clearing her throat. “You mentioned him last night.”

If this case was certainly related to the Endless,  Johanna Constantine was mystified; it was obvious to Y/N that she had finally caught the attention of the occultist. 

Not that Johanna had not already been paying attention, but she seemed to take the situation more seriously now that an all-powerful being could possibly be involved. 

Y/N L/N, a friend she made by chance, could be the Regent of an Endless. She was drinking tea with a ruler of an entire realm.

“Oh…” Y/N trailed off, her eyebrows furrowing in deep thought. “I guess I did, didn’t I?” 

She had not noticed the slight gap in her memory. She could remember Amelia and how she told her the story, but after that—after she had woken up from her latest dream—the events were indistinct.

Whenever she did try to remember, she did not feel as if it were her own memories. They felt almost stolen, like peering into another’s mind; watching from their point of view and waiting for them to make their next move.

There was a buzz inside of her mind—silent, barely there, but its effects were ever so present. Her ears would become muted and clogged, her senses detaching themselves from reality.

It was definitely her, there was no doubting it. Had she been possessed, it would feel a little more aggressive than that—at least that’s what she thought, she had never actually been possessed before.

She concluded that maybe she had been distracted that night, and more questions appeared in her mind, fueled by the need to remember .

Ironically, though, these instances were not uncommon for her, as she could recall several moments where she often felt that she had lost some of her memories. However, that night at Johanna’s was the worst of it. 

Y/N wanted to be able to look back and say that her actions were her own, and that whatever had been hiding inside of her brain for the past thirty years would finally come to surface.

Her dreams, her father, her abilities—they had all been normal to her.

Sure, she could eventually come to admit that, like her father, she was no ordinary human. 

But what then? What could she be? Had she been anything else other than normal, her father would have told her a long time ago. He was no liar, and he has said before that it would not do them any good if he hid his true identity from his own daughter.

To be fair, though, he only said that once she noticed how no matter the wounds or illnesses he faced, he never seemed to mind the fatality.

The dangers that came with being something other than human—other than a human mortal —were immeasurable, and he decided to come clean.

Eventually.

Johanna waited patiently, giving Y/N time to think. She could remember how dissociated she looked that night, and it would not surprise her if she was having trouble remembering.

Her eyes had been distant, and her mind was obviously elsewhere. It was tough to get through to her; Johanna figured that Y/N might have only needed the company—of course, until later on when she noticed the difference in her entire demeanor and the very distinct reflection in the window. 

Y/N cleared her throat, keeping her eyes away from Johanna’s as she took another sip of her drink. “He’s only a story. Nothing more.” She shook her head, holding the cup down on her lap, keeping her focus on the tinted liquid inside. 

“And so are the Fates, and every other creature I’ve encountered,” Johanna contested, tilting her head to try and get into Y/N’s eyesight, hoping to have her attention. “They’re all stories, we just don’t know which ones are true.”

Johanna was being kind, having rid her words of any snark or sarcastic undertones; something Y/N silently appreciated. Her friend spoke softly, making conversation instead of arguing with her about the facts. 

Of course she knew that they all began with stories. Some might have been invented by some aspiring writer—a story that some mistook for real events.

There were other stories, though, that came from long-forgotten origins that were yet to be disproved or even discovered.

Deciding that she was not prepared to answer Johanna, she continued with her retelling of the Fates’ visit, praying to catch Johanna’s attention enough to ignore that she had changed the subject.

“They said that the end has begun, and left after that,” she mumbled, gulping down the rest of her tea.

The demon hunter scoffed, putting her drink down on the coffee table and crossed her arms. “The end as in…what? The apocalypse?”

“If it were the end of the world, why would they tell me that?”

Johanna clicked her tongue. “So they're talking about your end, then?” 

“Maybe,” she answered honestly. There was no point in lying, but she was tempted. 

Johanna had never been considered the nicest person, and most people she got into a relationship with would leave her. That was, if Johanna had not already beaten them to it.

Y/N did not want the same fate to befall their friendship. 

“Maybe you’re like your dad,” Johanna shrugged. “It could run in the family, you know?” she joked, laughing despite the harsh truth that lay behind her words. 

Both of them knew her father had had children before her, and a number of them faced an untimely death.

Regardless, Y/N snickered along with her, entertaining the possibility that maybe the blood of an immortal could be passed down—her half siblings may have just simply been unlucky enough not to receive it. 

“One thing stuck with me, though.” Y/N paused, chewing on her lip as she tried to recall the exact words that were said to her. “ When  dreams despair, the sleeping shall receive a daydream as a gift from Death.”

“What the fuck does that mean? Do they mean that you’re the gift? The daydream?”

“If I am, why?” Y/N asked. “And I'm supposed to do something?”

There was silence for a few moments as Johanna picked at her nails. “If you want to live, probably,” she mumbled. 

“All jokes aside,” Johanna continued, holding her hands together to stop herself from fidgeting. “If you’re just like the rest of us, the Fates would not have had a reason to talk to you. I think it means that it involves other people, not just you. Powerful beings like them always have a reason, and they would not have had one if you were normal.”

She leaned back against the sofa, swinging her arms over the backrest. “You’ve always been weird, Y/N. Admit it—”

“I’m not—”

“You are!” Johanna insisted, putting her arm back to her side and leaning forward. “The sooner you admit that, the faster we can get to dealing with it.”

Y/N shook her head, to which Johanna groaned in annoyance. “Maybe we don’t. Maybe it’ll all go away tomorrow. This is probably just…a mistake. Or a hallucination.” 

“Y/N,” Johanna sighed. “Hell exists, demons exist. Cursed objects, runes, witchcraft—they’re real. There is more than one realm. The Fates, they—”

“No.” Y/N stood up, moving to collect her things. It was ironic—she had asked Johanna for help without ever thinking that she might not be ready for it.

“Y/N look at yourself!” Johanna snapped, grabbing her by the shoulders before she turned Y/N around, holding her in place so she stood right in front of the window. 

Finally, Y/N came face to face with herself, the one she only saw in the waters of the Dreaming. Someone who had been following her for a long time—the figure in the glass, in every mirror she faced. 

It had always been there, but she had been too blind to see it, choosing to see her human form instead of the reflection she was always meant to have. 

She could see herself— really see herself. The same white eyes she saw in the water, the dark clothing, how her cheeks looked more sunken.

“ This.” Johanna tapped on the window, making a loud thud as her hand hit the glass. “Isn’t normal! And you have to stop pretending like it is!” She walked in front of Y/N, looking intently at her eyes. 

Y/N stared blankly into the window, her eyes trained on the figure in the glass.

“Gods, demons, devils, Fates—they all exist, Y/N. We both know that. Your father is immortal for heaven’s sake!” Johanna’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears, her voice composed, yet it gave the slightest quiver before ending in a low whisper. “Listen to me unless you want to end up like Astra.”

Y/N tore her gaze away from the window and to Johanna, her trance broken by the mention of the late girl’s name. 

“The Fates warned you, the end has begun,” Johanna reiterated, her hands falling back down to her sides. “Whatever the hell that means.” She turned around for a moment, wiping her eyes and facing Y/N once more, stoic as ever. 

“Okay,” Y/N mumbled weakly, unsure of what she had just agreed to. She looked over Johanna’s shoulder, her strange reflection looking back at her. 

And slowly, she stalked towards the window, her arms outstretched as she attempted to reach out, not quite sure of her next actions. The closer she got, the lesser her grasp on reality.

The air became thick, and with it, her reflection glitched, changing to the one she had always known and then changing back to the version she saw in the Dreaming. 

Eventually, it started to look like broken glass. Some fragments of her figure looked human, some looking otherworldly.

"I could say the same for you. Do you not possess powers in which only our Lord wields?" she recalled what the Nightmare said. 

Maybe there was some truth to that, and maybe all that was left to do was finally accept it. 

She stepped closer, and her fingers brushed against the glass.

The window cracked, the deafening sound echoing across the room, making both of them flinch. It webbed outwards, the cracks becoming bigger and bigger the longer her touch remained on the glass.

Slow shattering could be heard, the crunching getting louder as the damage grew.

Y/N stepped away, her fingers no longer touching the window. 

“Y/N, your hand,” Johanna pointed out, looking at her with uncertainty. The one that made contact with the window was cracked as well, similar to the glass pane. 

The damage started with her fingers, the cracks webbing higher and higher as white light emitted from underneath her skin. She stared at it in horror, watching it grow brighter to blinding degrees.

That was when Y/N realized that it burned , feeling the unbearable heat brought upon by the light that seeped from her skin, her shock subsiding the more she looked at the sight before her. 

The light beseeched for escape, pushing against her and testing the limits of her human body to see when it would break. She screamed, falling to her knees as she grasped her arms tightly, as if trying to close the cracks that were beginning to climb up from her hand.

“Y/N, I need you to tell me what’s going on,” Johanna spoke with urgency, hoping that her voice could be heard through Y/N’s cries of pain.

Wind began to howl inside of the living room, circulating Y/N as the pain became more unbearable. 

Johanna was unfazed, knowing that the strange disturbance could only be coming from one person. She put her arm up to shield her eyes, her hair billowing as she slowly walked closer to the girl hunched over on the floor. 

The house shook; books fell from their places, their pages ripped apart and scattered by the violent winds. Gadgets, documents, trinkets and more began to crash onto the floor, the smaller fragments carried in the air as they flew away.

“Y/N! You need to tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it, okay?” She yelled, hoping to get Y/N's attention without adding to her distress. 

When she failed to get an answer, she knelt on to the floor, close enough to Y/N but never enough to touch. The wind was most dangerous near her, and though Johanna tried, it would not be possible to cross such a threshold without being swept away.

She tried to reach out, hoping to touch Y/N’s arm to pull her away from the storm—but it was scorching, like fire crawling up her hand, prickling and irritating her skin.

If she got closer, the light would incinerate her.

There had to be a reason, though, right? The recent events proved that Y/N was not an average human, she was something else. Something they had yet to figure out. 

Johanna’s mind was going into overdrive, fumbling through her brain for a solution, attempting to connect the dots. 

The light was only getting brighter, the cracks on Y/N’s skin wider by the second, and the room—though wrecked by a whirlwind—was increasingly getting hotter.

The dreams, her father, the Fates —Johanna’s eyes widened as she recalled the creature that trespassed her home only minutes ago. “Y/N look at me— listen to me!” she yelled, desperate trying to get her attention. 

It was far-fetched, even by her standards, because of the lack of evidence she could rely on. There was no proof or promise of accuracy, but it was her only theory.

Johanna Constantine did not want to lose another friend. 

“The nightmare said that this isn’t your only world.” Her voice held steady, never taking her eyes off of Y/N. 

This time, she got a response. Y/N forced herself to look at Johanna, tears falling down her face and brimming the edges of her eyes, choking out a sob as she held her arm tighter against her chest.

The wind grew stronger and she curled into herself, the cracks and the glow radiating from them reaching her neck and jaw.

Horrified, Johanna continued, feeling her own tears threatening to fall. “They said that the end has begun, but it’s only begun—this isn’t the end, not yet— not fucking yet.” Hoping that her loud, albeit wavering voice, could be heard through all the chaos, she continued. “Follow them, follow the nightmare. Go to your world—wherever that is!”

Y/N screamed louder as the cracks crawled higher, reaching the side of her head as Johanna shielded her eyes from the now blinding light that emitted from them.

For a moment, Johanna felt the light cover the entirety of her living room; there was a force like an explosion and she was thrown to the nearest wall before painfully hitting the ground with a thud and a groan. 

As fast as she could, Johanna got to her feet, her eyes trailing to where Y/N once was, only to find that there was nothing but an empty space, her destroyed living room being the only proof that everything had even happened.

She would wait for Y/N to return—if she was still alive to do so. Johanna hoped she was right, and that Y/N was safe. 

Until then, she would avoid going by the Inn for a little while. She knew that Y/N’s father deserved to be informed that he might have just lost his daughter—but then again, when had she ever been good at those conversations?

If she ever had to deliver such news, she would have someone else do it. It would be a kindness to both him and herself.

Neither of them would have to face the woman who could not save his daughter. 

“Shit,” she muttered. “You better come back soon, you arse.”

* * *

“Before we go, my Lord—I feel there is something you should know.” 

Turning back to face Lucienne, Morpheus awaited the news. His realm, in his absence, had decayed and collapsed. There was nothing Lucienne could say that would make matters worse.

They were just about to leave the ruins of the palace, concluding that if the Dreaming was to return to its previous self, they would have to pay Cain, Abel, and Gregory a visit.

“There was a child—one who frequented the palace long after you had gone.” 

Morpheus’ eyes narrowed, standing straighter if it were even possible. The Heart of the Dreaming was not easily accessible to humans; a child, no matter their ability to lucid dream, should not have been able to come into his Kingdom unwelcomed. 

Unless of course the child was a Vortex, in which case he would have a bigger problem on his hands. 

Lucienne cleared her throat before continuing. “The last I saw of her, she had already grown up. And in the years she spent here almost every night, she…” Lucienne paused, not knowing the right words to say. “...helped sustain the realm. She—”

“That is not possible,” Morpheus interrupted. 

What had given this child the right to enter his realm, roam its lands and interact with its inhabitants, taking advantage of his absence to welcome herself in the heart of the Dreaming?

But most importantly, what had given her the ability to sustain it? Clearly Lucienne would not feel the need to inform him if this had only been a lost human, finding themselves in a place in which they had not intended to be.

“But it is, my Lord,” the librarian responded, walking a few steps closer to Morpheus, but still remaining a good distance away. “I had not seen her in more than a decade, but shortly before your return, she came back with powers I had not seen since your capture. She was able to mend the throne room in mere seconds.”

“You mean to tell me that this… trespasser was capable of altering my realm?” 

Lucienne bowed her head. Lord Morpheus was clearly angered, but she did not wish for Y/N to be the subject of his wrath, not when she had only ever been a gift to the Dreaming and its inhabitants. 

“Yes, my Lord,” she gulped. “But her actions held no malice—”

“She had no authority to do such things. I must find her when I am in possession of my tools. A creature with such disrespect for the Kingdom in which she does not belong must be punished.”

Instinctively, Lucienne took one more step toward Morpheus, one word escaping her lips before she could stop herself. “No.”

The King of Dreams was taken aback. He had not known his librarian to have such audacity, and it rendered him momentarily speechless.

“No?”

“With all due respect, Dream Lord, she was never a creature of harm. She was human. One who held much love for the Dreaming.” The librarian tilted her chin up, willing herself to stand her ground against Morpheus.

Her last interaction with Y/N did not go very well, but it did not take away all she had done for their realm. 

Y/N, to much of the Dreaming’s inhabitants, represented hope that they had not seen in decades. 

“Your siblings may not have come to your aid, but she did, regardless of her ignorance about who you are. She wore your clothing, she resembled your power. I believe you must go to her, but I implore you not to punish her for simply caring about our home.”

Lucienne’s description of the girl sparked a memory in Morpheus’ mind, his anger being wiped off his almost-expressionless face, replaced with one of curiosity and recognition. 

In the years of his capture, he had only seen one woman who wore the same clothing as he—one who held the cosmos in her eyes.

The woman who was the sole reason for his escape.

He must find her.

“And what is this human’s name, Lucienne?”

“Y/N.”

***

There was only silence. 

Darkness enveloped Y/N’s being as she floated aimlessly somewhere void of any life or matter. There was no burning, and there was no light. Only quiet and eerie solitude 

She was conscious, but she could not move, she could not scream, and she could not breathe. Y/N could only think, and in the blackness, she was unsure whether or not she could even see. Was she blind? Or were her eyes simply closed?

Fresh air entered her lungs and she inhaled deeply, not able to control her breathing as she finally felt herself get thrust into existence. She coughed, choking on the oxygen reviving her body.

She opened her eyes, realizing that she was lying on her back. Still clutching her hand to her chest, she sat up, beginning to hyperventilate as she assessed where she landed herself in this time.

Judging by the sky, she was no longer in Johanna’s residence.

She had spent quite a while in the void between realms, having floated in nothingness for hours before she arrived at the destination she was meant for. It had absorbed the light that escaped her, healing the cracks that took over half of her body.

Around her, Y/N could see the very familiar plane of the Dreaming. She sat on the wooden pier, the fog no longer as thick as the last time she visited. 

“Ma’am?” a voice called, and the figure of Lucienne cautiously approached her from several feet away.

Y/N’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears. Her body was wracked with silent sobs, hiccuping frequently as she tried to swallow her cries, her breathing getting worse as her now-healed hand became pale with how tightly she gripped her arm. 

Lucienne had just seen the Dream Lord leave to begin his search for his tools, and she was on her way to get him a raven despite his disapproval, when she heard a thump near the edge of the pier. 

Aside from Morpheus, there was only one who dressed so similarly. 

It was apparent to Lucienne that Y/N had come back, but by the looks of it, her usual enthusiasm upon arriving was no longer present. 

“Ma’am?” Lucienne asked once more, softer, as she kneeled beside Y/N and placed a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder. 

As Y/N looked into Lucienne’s eyes, she began to understand what the librarian was so afraid of when they last met; she remembered her reflection in Johanna’s window.

How did she look as she sat there, weeping from the pain and uncertainty of who or what she might be? Was she still the same Y/N that belonged to the human realm? Or has she embodied her form in the glass?

She brought her knees up to her chest, curling into herself as she tried to even her breathing, unable to respond to Lucienne. 

A part of her hoped that Lucienne did not fear her anymore, but another part wanted to tell her to stay away. 

Y/N saw how the light burnt Johanna, how it caused her pain, and it was the kind of hurt she wanted away from the Dreaming. 

“What happened, ma’am? Are you okay?”

When Y/N kept quiet, Lucienne gingerly moved her hand to hold the one Y/N was keeping tightly against her chest. There was a look of sincere kindness on her face as she patiently waited for her to speak. 

Y/N had not known it then, but Lucienne would have waited days if it meant letting her talk when she was ready. 

She choked back a sob. Y/N, though she never knew Lucienne to be cruel, expected her to run from her considering their last encounter. Then, she was considered a threat. 

And now, Y/N believed she still was. 

Lucienne softly squeezed her hand. “You are in the Dreaming, ma’am. You know nothing will harm you here.”

Not then, at least. Lucienne did not know what would become of her once the Dream Lord came back, but until then, she spoke true. 

And if Morpheus wished to punish her, he would have to answer to the rest of the Dreaming’s inhabitants. 

Y/N only seemed to cry louder, and just when Lucienne was ready to sit with her for however long she needed, Y/N wrapped her arms around the librarian, embracing her with as much strength as she could muster. 

Hesitantly at first, Lucienne reciprocated,

As Y/N attempted to utter her next words, Lucienne wrapped her arms a little tighter around the weeping girl.

It seemed that it was all she needed to be able to admit what she could not for the longest time. 

“I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

It was then that Lucienne realized that though Y/N was all grown, despite all the years that had passed, Y/N was truly just a human unfortunate enough to have been given powers she was never made to understand. 

This version of her, the one who had exerted such control over a realm not her own, was still as innocent as the little girl who wandered the halls of the palace years ago.

Notes:

Aaaaand we're done for this chapter! What did you guys think? I would love to know.

Like last time, I'll *try* to upload again in two weeks. But of course, if the word count ends up being 16k again, it's going to take longer.