Figuring it out as I go

He was not the only one affected by his imprisonment. Lucienne, his right hand, his confidante, his…friend, had been the only one to retain any faith in him throughout his long absence. She alone watched as the other residents of the Dreaming fled, staying behind and bearing witness to the crumbling and decay of everything around her. Hers was the first friendly face he saw upon freeing himself, the calm that helped him to believe that the immense damage to both himself and his realm was reparable. That he has once more placed her in a position to worry about him is yet another wrong he has committed in a long string of them this evening.

“You left the realm so suddenly; we were worried that something terrible had happened.” She takes stock of him now, eyes cataloguing what surely would amount to shell shock in a human. “Are you all right?”

No, he desperately wants to say. I have ruined my chance at happiness, at love. What is left for me in this life, if I can not have whom I love at my side?

But he says nothing of the sort. “I shall be retiring to my chambers for the rest of the day. I do not wish to be disturbed.” 

Much to his surprise, his voice holds steady as he speaks, yet his words, ringing as hollow to hear as they feel to say, do nothing to reassure Lucienne. The crease between her brows deepens as she stares up at him. “Do you…want to talk about what happened?” 

Were this a normal situation, she never would have broached such impropriety as her ruler sharing his troubles with her. But it is clear that, while she does not know what has happened, something has happened, something so awful that it has left him reeling. Though she deserves to know, he cannot bring himself to speak about what has truly occurred. For once, Morpheus is grateful for Matthew’s inability to keep any secrets, for the raven will almost certainly recount what he knows upon Morpheus’s departure.

He can meet her eyes no longer, and instead fixes his own straight ahead down the corridor. “Tomorrow, I shall resume my duties. In the meantime, I ask that you deal with any issues that may arise.”

She watches him for a long moment before sighing, the weight of what goes unsaid behind the action. “Of course, sir.”

With a stiff nod, Morpheus swiftly departs, leaving behind his advisors without another glance. While he could use his sand to transport himself to his chambers, he chooses instead to make the long walk alone. 

Rather, he attempts to be alone. Your earlier words repeat through his mind like the tolling of a bell—he could travel to the farthest corners of the universe and be unable to escape them.

“You’ve lied to me from the moment we met! About everything.”

“I could have gotten hurt, or—or god forbid, killed! Because of you.”

“You don’t even really know me.”

“I don’t want to see you again.”

The pain of your words is blistering and unceasing, yet it is a pain that he deserves, for he knows that every word you spoke tonight was true. He did lie to you. He did put you in danger. He would not blame you if you do truly decide that you want nothing more to do with him, though such a thought is almost unbearable.

For every moment of pain at your misunderstanding of what he was doing, he knows that he has caused you the same, tenfold. In the thrilling rush of courting you, he forgot the essence of who you are: human. He remembered, of course—every time he twisted the truth to fit your understanding of the world, every slip-up when he said or did something that humans do not say or do—but he forgot how resistant humans are towards what they do not know, of the wide bevy of emotions they have to respond to any number of situations. 

Fear, he anticipated. Perturb, yes. But anger? Devastation? Never did he see those emotions as an outcome when he imagined telling you the truth of who he is; never did he want to see such emotions on you.

When he finally arrives at his chambers, the doors to the balcony are already open, awaiting him and his misery. Outside, the gray skies herald rain, which the residents of the Dreaming are surely dreading after the last time their lord was rebuffed. Yet another source of immense regret and shame: how his emotions are innately tied to the weather of his realm.

The calm, blissful days when Morpheus is simply going about his function are familiar to the Dreaming, as are the ferocious storms when he feels a bit…tempestuous. The weather, as of late, he knows, has been a source of gossip and amusement for the realm. Fresh blooms sprout from every tree, flower, and plant, painting the landscapes in a dazzling array of colors not typically seen on such flora. Rainbows frequently stretch across the sky, birdsong is the melodies of popular love ballads throughout history, and the heat of the realm has only risen as your courtship has progressed, until the temperatures after your first date would be considered a heat wave in the Waking. He is in love, and, much to his embarrassment, everybody knows it.

The rain that begins to fall puts a damper on any such lovestruck environment, but much to what is surely everyone’s surprise, it does not storm as it typically would after a rejection like he’s just experienced—the usual dark clouds, crashing thunder, sharp lightning, and floods are absent. It simply rains, heavily and unceasingly, for there is nothing for him to be mad bout. He did this to himself. His inaction, his indecision, his desire to preserve the first blooms of new love—it has all led to this. 

Morpheus sinks to his knees just past the threshold of the balcony, unable to find the strength to stand anymore, and the rain quickly drenches every inch of him. He allows the water to chill him to the bone, shaking as he thinks of your expressive eyes and the myriad ways they looked at him tonight. Shock, bewilderment, betrayal, fury. They were devoid of any of the affection or happiness he had seen within them just days before, and he shudders to think that this might be the last memory he has of you. 

Were the circumstances normal, he would have already devised a number of plans to attempt to salvage the burgeoning relationship he, mere hours ago, had with you. He is the king of dreams, after all—possibilities abound within his realm. But all he can focus on as he leans his head back and lets the rain run over his face is how empty he feels, as though you were already interwoven into the very fiber of his being, whatever makes him what he is, and has been torn thusly from him. He mourns the loss of how complete he once felt, how bright his future seemed, how close to fulfillment his hopes were. He mourns who he might have been with true love by his side forevermore.

What he would give to ensure one more chance to be in front of you, to try to make amends for what he has done, to explain his reasoning for every word he has said to you, to…apologize to you, an action so unfamiliar to him that he assumes it would be almost comical for him to try. Pieces of his power, his realm, himself—all things which he had fought for, had desperately clawed back from forces who meant to keep it for themselves upon his imprisonment, but all things that he would happily part with for the guarantee that you would simply listen to him. He does not even need you to forgive him, though that would be preferable; he simply needs you to listen.

At some point, he becomes aware of warm water interspersed on his face, in stark contrast with the cold rain, and realizes that he has begun to cry. He scowls, a lone bolt of lightning weakly sparking in the far distance. The human body he prefers to manifest as has always been susceptible to tears, despite his best efforts—though he can bend reality to his will and form creations from mere sand, he has never been able to make himself incapable of crying. The more he attempts to put a stop to it, in fact, the faster the tears come, until he is openly weeping for all that he has lost.

Hope has always been hard for him to come by, but it feels almost impossible to find any semblance of it now. He has always been drawn to those with a will as strong as his own, and it is now working against him. He has no reason to believe that you will come back to him, that you will want a life with him over the comfortable familiarity of your own human one. He can offer you everything—the universe, wonders beyond your imagination, a kingdom, his complete, undying love and fidelity—but is that something that you would even want? Does he know you? Or is it as you say, and he is instead more enamoured with the fact that he has a soulmate than that it is you who is his soulmate?

He thinks of all of the ways that humans believe they know one another, seen through the lenses of their dreams. Their favorite things: music, films, books, colors, and foods are just the start. To know a human is to know the mundane, such as birthdays and important figures in their lives, as well as the intricate, like experiences that have made them who they are, their core tenets and ideals. 

To his chagrin, Morpheus realizes that he does not know any of this about you. He could, of course: all he needs to do is tap into the stores of knowledge he holds within him, your dreams surely containing all of these answers. But he refuses to violate your trust once more, to use his powers to gain an advantage he has no right to take.

Your courtship has been a relatively short one, but what he does know of you, he already loves dearly. Your curious mind, always asking questions and always sparking with possibilities. Your passion, which drives and fuels you. Your presence and companionship, which have made him feel at home in a Waking that has always been foreign to him. 

Perhaps this was the Fates’ grand plan all along, the way to finally get back at him for the business with Circe that they have never truly gotten over. Let him find his soulmate, let his soulmate be within his grasp, and let the Dreamlord’s own hubris bring about his ruin, for this is what he does. He ruins every relationship he has, every bit of happiness that comes his way, never seeming to learn from his many mistakes. All three of the Ladies must surely be getting immense enjoyment from this.

This is what he gets for allowing himself to want, to…desire. Heartbreak and ruin, to a level never previously experienced. No matter. If you want him to stay away from you, then stay away he shall. Instead, he will throw himself into his work once more and embody his function. Let this be a reminder of how the Endless have no need for human emotions. His siblings have managed to do just fine without love, and he shall, as well.

At least, that is what he aspires to. 

•••

As promised, Morpheus resumes his duties the next day.

By ‘resumes his duties,’ of course, he really means haunting the halls of his home like a ghost before making it as far as his throne room, where he locks himself away to collapse onto his throne and stare at the vast universe of the ceiling above him while wondering how he got here. The stars twinkle above him, galaxies twisting and turning and reflecting his own inner turmoil. Despite his best efforts (which, admittedly, are not very driven at this moment), he cannot stop thinking of you, of what you might be doing or feeling or saying right now.

Though he would never wish misery upon you, he thinks that it would bring him some comfort to know that you share in his devastation. That you did not break things off due to a lack of feelings, but rather due to too many. To know that you are also mourning what might be lost would be a bittersweet comfort to him, one that is equal parts heartwrenching as it is reassuring. As it stands, he is alone in his anguish, left to wonder and imagine.

“Dream? Are you all right?” That question again, only from a new source now, draws him out of his thoughts and back to full awareness. 

It takes him a moment to realize that his location has changed, against his will. He looks up slowly, taking note of the water, and the fog, and the mirrors—and his sister, standing before him and watching him cautiously, her hook glinting from where she nervously fidgets with it.

“Forgive me, sister,” he apologizes, abashed at inadvertently trespassing in Despair’s realm.

“For what? No one ever comes to visit. I’m glad you’re here.” She seems to realize what she’s said, how it may sound, and grimaces. “I mean, I’m sorry you’re here. I’m sorry…about your soulmate.”

“You know,” he gathers. Does everybody? In the same way that, as his sibling said, ‘word got out’ about his having a soulmate, has it now trickled out that he has been rejected? 

Laugh at the once-mighty Dream King, how far he has fallen once more. In his wounded state, he can only assume that is what Despair is here for—to report back on his anguish to her twin so that they may both find some merriment from it.

She nods. “You are not the only one hurting, my brother. This is a place where people go to be…miserable. And grieve. And hit bottom.”

Morpheus bristles at the assumption that he has ‘hit bottom’ (if anyone besides one of his siblings were to even wonder such a thing, he would send nightmares of the worst variety their way before they could even finish the thought) before realizing that he has, in fact, hit bottom. There’s something else in her words that captures his attention, though: the implication that someone else is feeling this level of pain. And while she could simply be referring to one of the millions of other lost souls despairing right now, he knows that she, much like every member of his family, chooses her words extremely carefully.

“Do you want to see for yourself?” Despair asks, gesturing towards a mirror and confirming his theory.

He should say no. You had extracted this promise from him, after all—that he leave you alone, until and unless you call. He is a being of his word, and yet—

Your voice rings clearly through the mirror, and all he can focus on is how tired and upset you sound, the tears you try to stifle as you talk to somebody unknown to him. If he were to simply glance out of the corner of his eye, he would surely see you, as miserable as he. Do you regret last night’s occurrences? Who are you seeking comfort from? What have you told them of him?

Do you miss him?

The temptation to look is almost too strong for him to fight against, and he has to force himself to close his eyes tightly and shake his head. “Cease this torture, my sister.”

“Sorry.” She makes a wiping movement with her hand, and the mirror goes blissfully, heartwrenchingly quiet. “Some people do get something from looking in the mirrors. Comfort, closure, more pain. I always like to offer it to those who make it this far into my realm.”

“Do many traverse this path?” he asks, largely unfamiliar with the inner workings of Despair’s realm and seeking any bit of distraction that he can get.

She presses her lips together, hesitant to speak. “Only those who are experiencing true despair.”

Ah, of course. “And that is why I am here?”

She nods. “You need a place to go to mope.”

“I do not mope,” he snaps halfheartedly.

Despair looks down at him, eyebrow raised. “Then what do you call this? Sulking? Brooding?”

“Despondency,” he supplies.

“Same thing,” she retorts lightly, before hesitating once more. Morpheus watches his sister, curious as to her next move. 

Through no fault of her own and almost solely due to her proximity to her twin, Despair is the sibling Morpheus knows the least about, though that also may be in part due to her predecessor’s unfortunate demise—so long ago now that it’s difficult for him to conjure the first Despair’s face in his mind. He is familiar with the act of despairing, of course, but as to what his sister truly does, her motivations and thought processes, he is blind. Finally, she moves until she comes to perch on the arm of his throne, waiting until he makes eye contact with her to continue. 

“You cannot stay here, you know.”

His brow furrows in confusion. “Yes, I have my own realm to attend to.”

“No, I mean, you cannot stay here, in despair. I have never known you to go down without a fight, my brother.”

Belatedly, he realizes that his sister intends to comfort him. Truly, the world as he once knew it is no longer. “I have been instructed to stay away until—”

Despair rolls her eyes. “You’re called for, yes, my realm had a front row seat to how last night went down. But why are you acting as though the connection has already been severed, like you were told that your soulmate did not love you at all?”

Though vulnerability chafes at him, he can feel the need to…talk overtaking him like a wave of water against a poorly constructed dam. “When I…attempted to confess my love plainly, I was very quickly and emphatically rebuffed.”

Her sudden cough suspiciously sounds as though it could be covering a laugh, and Morpheus attempts to glower at her. “Were the words ‘I do not love you’ or anything similar uttered, though?”

“No,” he says, though he would argue that the sob you were unable to hold back as he attempted to proclaim his own love for you said more than words could.

“Humans are scared of everything, both good and bad. It is an evolutionary, primal response to keep them always aware of potential threats. Think of how many fear-inducing situations your soulmate was put through last night.”

He does, though it is easy to envision the way in which you were hunted like prey through your campus’s library to avoid being captured and harmed. To picture what it must be like, to learn that every single story of myth, legend, and fiction that you have grown up with is entirely real. To conceive of the shock that you must have experienced when discovering that there are forces far older and more powerful than anything you can imagine, forces that have fated you to a being nearly as old and powerful as said forces.

It finally clicks for him, and Despair, picking up on just that, lays a hand on his shoulder.

“There is no reason for you to be here, Dream, for this is nowhere close to the end of your story. Humans lash out when they’re scared—they get upset, they run, they say things they do not mean. But eventually, the fear abates. Eventually, they must face what it is that has made them run in the first place. Especially when they are running from a soulmate.”

“You are advising patience,” Morpheus surmises. “Matthew said much the same.”

“He is smarter than you give him credit for, and he understands his own species far better than you ever will.” Morpheus is unsure whether his sister is referring to his understanding of humans or the Endless, and the ambiguity makes his lips twitch upwards ever so slightly—a movement that does not go unnoticed. “Rarely have I seen soulmates remain indefinitely in my realm, and I have no reason to believe that you will be any different.”

“You truly believe so?” It is a question entirely unlike Morpheus to ask, and it’s one that he almost does not verbalize. Be it the circumstances he currently finds himself in, or his physical location bringing to the surface such…emotions, he cannot stop it from escaping him.

For once, Despair’s face does not mirror the derision or disdain of their twin’s. Rather, shades of Death’s concern, of her caring nature, flit across Despair’s features. “Oh, Dream. You must know I wouldn’t lie to you, not about this!”

Though he wishes to come up with a rebuttal to this statement, he knows that, when it comes to truly serious matters, Despair does not lie. Not like…

“You will tell no one of this,” Morpheus says sternly.

This time, it is Despair’s lips that quirk into a smile. “And there’s that famous fight of yours. Leave this place, my brother. There is still hope for you, yet.”

He reaches his hand up slowly until it falls on top of Despair’s, still sitting on his shoulder, and squeezes gently. He has learned much in this sojourn to his sister’s realm, and he is grateful for it. Patience, for one, and to remember that you are human, first and foremost. But he has also realized that traits he has always associated with Despair—conniving, cruel, deceitful—should, perhaps, be more so attributed to her twin.

This is the closest he will come to thanking her—the humiliation of thanking Desire for warning him, months ago, under the streetlights outside of the New Inn, still fresh in his mind—but he does not need to use words. Despair nods, squeezing his hand as well before standing up and wandering away from him, through the fog and the mirrors, until he’s left with only the bitter taste of melancholy in the back of his throat. Then, he’s gone as well.

Back to the Dreaming, and back to the fight.

•••

There are shades of you in every corner of the Dreaming, though this is not new. From the moment Morpheus learned the truth of what was to be your relationship, you became his muse, even when he was not consciously aware of it (especially when he was not consciously aware of it). The brightness of your smile has lit the moonlit paths lovers have strolled through, and your laugh carries in the wind that ruffles the hair of dreamers cruising idyllic coastlines. The color of your eyes features prominently in the color palettes of dreams, no matter how out of place it may seem. Newly created dreams are a little more fiery, newly created nightmares a little kinder. You are everywhere he turns; you are everything—to him, that is, which means that you are everything to the Dreaming.

He cannot outrun you, nor does he want to. Though it hurts to be reminded of you everywhere he goes, it is a necessary ache, like the ache of his unused muscles after 106 long years of captivity. The rain, too, has slowed from a downpour to a drizzle, and though the clouds remain ever-present, faint rays of sunlight are attempting to burst through. A reminder that not all hope is lost, that there is still something worth fighting for.

If he thought that the wait to touch you—to kiss you—for the first time was arduous, this separation is a true test of his patience. Thankfully, he has his work to turn to and has finally resumed some semblance of his responsibilities, much to the relief of his overwhelmed staff. Mervyn required his approval on plans for a new wing of the palace (a new wing that was entirely unrelated to the assumption that you would eventually join him in the Dreaming and presumably require your own space), Nuala wanted to know which of the many (many, many) flowers on the grounds she could prune, and Lucienne…

Lucienne has suddenly come into the possession of an extraordinary amount of administrative papers that require his attention, so many that Morpheus is starting to wonder if she is, perhaps, procuring ‘busy work’ for him.

Regardless of her motives, it is a relief to have so many distractions. He knows that he cannot sit around aimlessly while waiting for you—knows that he will drive himself mad by doing so—and sinking back into his work, his duty, is comfortable. Familiar, in a time when he is experiencing a wide variety of unfamiliarity. To have such banal tasks as reviewing new library intakes and surveying a nightmare who swears he is ready to be on his own in the Dreaming is welcome. 

Though as Morpheus finishes a letter to Faerie advising Queen Titania of the borderline treasonous actions of one of her own (he was, after all, extremely careful in not making any promises to Puck before scaring him off), he becomes aware of another familiarity, this one unwelcome: the question of where his raven had gone off to. Matthew was allowed to go where he pleased, of course. He simply had a special talent for being annoyingly present when unwanted, and scarce when needed.

“Matthew?” Morpheus calls expectantly, melting the wax and pouring it onto the folded parchment to await his official seal.

Silence remains his companion, and he looks up from his desk to be met by an empty study. Curious. His emissary typically arrives within moments when summoned.

“Matthew?” he tries again. When a minute passes and he’s still alone, Morpheus begins to grow concerned. There is no reason why Matthew should not have responded, barring injury or imprisonment.

Memories of Jessamy form before he can stop them from rising to the forefront of his mind, and he closes his eyes as though to block them out. The Order is defeated, the Magdalene Grimoire no more. There is no threat to himself, nor to his newest raven. Still, that does not stop him from tapping into the mental link that he has always shared with his ravens, searching for Matthew through the far reaches of the universe.

It does not take nearly that long for Morpheus to locate Matthew’s presence, inexplicably in the Waking. He has not been sent on any errand that would take him out of the palace, let alone to another realm, which means Matthew has left on a personal journey. While he is not forbidden from doing so, it is highly unusual, and Morpheus, finding himself in an investigative mood, peers through the raven’s eyes to determine what has led him away from home.

Almost immediately, Morpheus regrets ever doing so. Matthew perches on a street lamp, watching as a couple kisses passionately in a dingy alley. Only, it is not any random couple. No, it is you, kissing the mortal man who has fancied you for months. He holds you just as Morpheus once did, and you’re just as receptive as you were that night at the British Museum, what feels like another lifetime ago.

It is an awful scene to bear witness to, and yet, Morpheus finds that he cannot look away. This is his punishment for how he lied to you, how he hurt you—his soulmate, kissing a man so unworthy of you that the match is almost laughable, while he is unable to do anything but watch.

Matthew finally senses his lord in his mind and turns away from the scene. But it is too late, the damage irreparably done, and the seal stamp clatters off of the desk and onto the floor as Morpheus loses his grip on it before his hand goes instead to his chest, where it feels as though some being far more powerful and terrible than he has just physically ripped out what would be his heart, were he human.

The pain in his chest is immense, but it does nothing to drown out what he has seen, what he has learned. You have made up your mind, then. You would rather have a comfortable, mortal life, with a comfortable, mortal partner, as opposed to the love of a soulmate—a love that wars are fought over, a love that spurs into creation deals with fae and demons, a love that has been written and composed and spoken and dreamed about for as long as there have been beings with the capacity to love. Perhaps this is why soulmate pairings between a mortal and an Other are so rare. Mortals must simply not have the capacity to understand and appreciate a soulmate bond, driving to ruin the god or fae or spirit or Endless unlucky enough to be on the other side.

Matthew comes crashing back into the Dreaming, landing on Morpheus’s desk and squawking at whatever his face must be conveying right now. “Oh no, you weren’t supposed to see any of that! Just let me explain, from a human perspective, what—”

“Leave me, Matthew,” Morpheus interrupts, his voice coming out as barely more than a whisper.

Matthew, impudent as ever, shakes his head. “But—we talked, and I think there are a lot of confusing emotions being felt by your soulmate, and if I could just—”

“LEAVE.” The command shakes the room, the lights snuffed out in one blow as Morpheus temporarily loses his grip on corporeality. 

The room elongates, then narrows, as shadows begin to writhe and take on a mind of their own. Voices—of the damned, of the brokenhearted, of the hopeless—cry out from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. A choked noise of fright, akin to a human squeak, escapes Matthew as he looks into the pinpoints of light that are now Morpheus’s eyes. Distantly, he is aware that Matthew has never seen this version of him—Nightmare, as opposed to Dream, is who scares the raven off, who watches as he hurriedly takes off from the desk and through the door that has manifested and opened specifically for him. The slamming of the door corresponds with a heavy boom of thunder, the rain that had very nearly abated suddenly pouring down in sheets as the wind outside begins to howl fiercely.

Alone again, Morpheus collapses backwards, gasping at the sharp ache in his chest and massaging his sternum in a futile attempt to soothe it. His initial, wounded response is to blame you for all of this. How dare you do this to him? How dare you make him fall hopelessly in love with you without any effort on your part? How dare you be human, and react as humans do, and not understand important universal concepts that are unfamiliar to humans?

Under all of his rage, there remains an insidious voice that whispers how this is all Morpheus’s fault. How dare he hurt you? How dare he get his hopes up? How dare he never learn his lesson, chasing after love when it is very clearly never meant for him?

The image of you kissing that pathetic mortal is an image that will be burned into his memory for as long as he lives—those unworthy hands on your waist, your lips, which Morpheus wrongly assumed were now his and his alone to kiss, on another man’s. Does Morpheus truly mean so little to you? Are humans so unaffected by the forces of fate that they can move on from soulmates so easily, in a matter of days?

Morpheus wishes he were the same. Thousands of beings would trip over themselves to bed any one of the Endless and, in a moment of insanity, he almost begins to formulate a mental list. But alas, he is not human. Every part of himself belongs to you, and has for months. He will forever be yours, even though you want him no longer.

Those early fears—that he would be doomed to watch you from afar as you go through life without him before inevitably taking his sister’s hand to the Sunless Lands, where he cannot follow—resurface. This is now his reality, his destiny. He will have to live a life without you, and what a sorry excuse of a life is that, without his true love?

The storm that proceeds to ravage the Dreaming for the rest of the evening will go down in the recorded history of the realm, with very few denizens alive to have remembered the last storm of this ferocity. Tornadoes spawn out of blizzards that blanket deserts. Wetlands dry up before flooding again. The lightning that cracks unceasingly against the sky rivals Zeus’s most vengeful outbursts at his strongest. A storm just as fierce rages within the Dreamlord, once again alone and on an island of his own making.

An island that he is condemned to never, ever leave.

•••

The storm eventually comes to an end, as storms are wont to do. Rage cannot persist indefinitely, not at that force. Morpheus has not made a conscious decision to do so—indeed, the lack of storm, of wind and thunder and rain, is what pulls him back to awareness. He does not know how much time has passed, only that it is now daylight, when before, it was night. Across the realm, he can sense his people beginning the efforts to clean up the devastation he has wrought. Downed trees must be cleared, excess rain must be mopped up, broken structures must be put back together. He knows that he should feel terrible about this—distantly, he does—but all he can truly feel right now is pain.

His head aches—though that is simply the prevailing ache at the moment, for a quick inventory of himself reveals that his whole body aches, stemming from the epicenter that is his chest. It is a splintering pain, one that seems as though there is no start or end, and it makes it difficult to think clearly. He is both hot and cold, and cannot recall ever not having control of such aspects of himself as body temperature. There’s a weakness, too, that has overcome him, too weak to even fathom moving from where he is slumped over in his chair.

But move he must, for something is clearly not right. Morpheus has been weak before—after battling the Old Gods, after escaping Fawney Rig—but never like this. Never before has he felt so empty, yet so overwrought with sensation. Never before has he been unable to wrest back control of himself, to once more become Dream of the Endless after a period of emotional instability. He needs answers; he needs…help.

Morpheus means to stand, to check himself over, to make himself look presentable before journeying to the library. But right now, with the disconnect between his mind and his body, his powers focus solely on reaching the library, and he travels there between one blink and the next before he is ready. As a result, he lands harshly on the ground, his weary legs unable to keep him upright. He groans—groans!—at the pain, and his three closest advisors gasp at the sight of him.

“My lord!”

“What is—”

“Holy shit, boss, are you okay?”

“I do not believe so,” he says shakily, the first words he has spoken since commanding Matthew to leave. Even his voice, hoarse as though he has been screaming for hours without reprieve, is affected by the mysterious ailment that has befallen him.

Morpheus staggers to a kneeling position as he takes in the sight before him: the library seems, for the most part, unscathed from the storms, save for a nearby hole in the ceiling that was presumably created from the branches now lying scattered on the floor around him. Books are knocked off of their shelves, and leaves and other foliage cover them, but the room seems spared of any water damage. Good. The last thing he wants is for this wealth of knowledge to be ruined due to his actions.

“—Sir, are you listening?” Lucienne comes into focus as Morpheus blinks, and he realizes that she has been talking to him without his knowing.

“I…am sorry, Lucienne, I must not have heard you.”

Lucienne’s eyes widen at the apology, so uncharacteristically and freely given. “I asked what your symptoms are.”

He explains them as best he can, though how does one put into words such a distinct and pervasive sense of wrongness? For that is at the forefront of his so-called symptoms: now that he has seen you seek comfort in the arms of another, he is unmoored, like a ghost ship drifting aimlessly through the oceans without purpose. Lucienne listens intently, brow furrowed, though she seems to already have ideas about what has befallen him before he has finished speaking.

“I have a couple of ideas, but let me consult some texts before I say anything more.” Lucienne rises hurriedly, disappearing down the shelves with a last command of, “Nuala, Matthew, stay with Lord Morpheus!”

Nuala hesitantly kneels in front of him, Matthew right beside her. She searches his face for something—though he is unsure what that something is, she seems to find it after a moment.

“Forgive me, my lord.” She reaches up a hand and rests the back of it against Morpheus’s forehead, then his cheek. It is cool against his heated skin, a much-needed balm, one that only lasts for a moment after she removes her hand. “I believe you have a fever,” she says in shock.

Immediately, he is shooting the notion down. “That is ridiculous. Endless do not get…fevers.”

“So you manifested the temperature, then?” Matthew interjects.

“No,” he admits. 

The pain chooses this moment to spike in his chest, and his hand again goes to press against it in the hopes that he will get some relief. Nuala watches this action closely, her face going pale almost immediately.

“Lucienne!” she calls, panic tinting her tone. “I believe I know what the issue is!”

The librarian takes a few minutes to return, either deep in research or so deep within the library that she has not heard Nuala. In the meantime, tremors begin to wrack Morpheus; from exertion or illness, he is unsure. The instability has forced him to shift so that he is leaning against a bookshelf, legs splayed out in front of him in a very un-kingly manner. Nuala and Matthew keep watch over him, the latter uncharacteristically quiet. When she does reappear, holding three books in her arms, her face is grim, even as she attempts a reassuring smile.

On some level, he already knows what is afflicting him. 

“Based on cursory research,” Lucienne begins, shifting nervously on her feet, “I believe that you may have—”

“Bond sickness,” Morpheus finishes. “I believe so, as well.” 

He has always had a morbid curiosity, and after the initial group research on soulmates and modern courting, he brought the books back with him to his chambers for more in-depth reading. Naturally, he took great interest in the bond sickness chapters, perhaps because he never envisioned it as a possibility for himself; not when he had already passed the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of your mortality.

Bond sickness was sudden and brutal, the result of a soulmate attempting to break the bond—be it through another romance, an act of magic, or, in rare cases, physical harm. That you are unaware of the full extent of a soulmate bond matters not to whatever magic binds two parties together: you kissed another, you were romanced by another, and that was enough to bring about this illness. In the cases of bond sickness he read about, both parties suffered as a result of the actions of one. Are you feeling ill too, then? Or has the same humanity that has allowed you to move on so easily also made it so you are not affected by this sickness?

“W—what can we do?” Matthew asks, the only one unfamiliar with the specifics of bond sickness. "There’s a cure, right? There’s always a cure to these sorts of things.”

Nuala swallows harshly. “There is no cure, beyond…”

“Beyond what?” Morpheus asks, not having reached the topic of cures in his personal research.

“Reconciliation. The bond sickness cases I have seen end in either reconciliation or death.”

“Oh, well that’s easy!” Matthew is unexpectedly relieved and looks at Morpheus as though the solution is simple. “Just go to the Waking and make up with your soulmate!”

If only. “I made a promise, Matthew, to stay away until I was summoned,” Morpheus reminds him. “I do not break my promises, especially not towards those I love.” Especially not after all of the lies he told you, all of your trust that he has now lost.

“But…did you not hear Nuala? You’re going to die if you don’t.”

Would that be so bad? To embrace whatever waits for him, waits for the Endless after they die? He has, after all, lived what would be considered a long and fulfilling life by most standards. “If that is my fate, then so be it.”

Matthew rears back as though struck. “No! No, screw this!” His voice is choked with tears as he looks around to see if anybody else is as upset as he is. Beside him, Lucienne, who kneels now next to Nuala, closes her eyes tightly and tilts her head towards the other side of the room so that her face remains hidden. “Dreams don’t die; you don’t die! I talked to your soulmate, okay? And nobody’s fallen out of love with anybody! There’s been a lot to learn in a short amount of time, and some confusing emotions to deal with, but you just need to get together and hear each other out!”

“I will not go until I am called for, Matthew. That is final.” With these words, he has signed his own death warrant, and he can practically hear the sound of wings getting closer, of scissors opening and closing in anticipation of cutting a long string.

“Fuck!” Matthew curses bitterly, flapping his own wings and racing out the doors of the library. 

“Matthew!” Nuala wipes the tears that have been silently falling down her face, unable to look at Morpheus as she stands and follows him.

Then, it is just he and Lucienne. Who his reign started with, and who, it seems, it ends with. The significance is not lost on either of them, and she holds her head high as she looks at him, refusing to cry. “You are being serious, then? You would rather die than break a promise?”

“I would rather die than break this promise,” he clarifies.

Lucienne’s mouth twitches, and she forces her gaze downward, holding back from saying something she will seemingly regret. It takes her a few moments to compose herself, and when she looks at him again, her eyes shine behind her glasses. “Then might I help you back to your rooms? So that you might be…comfortable?”

“That would be much appreciated, Lucienne.”

She hesitates even as she helps him stand (propriety, in what is now the last days of his life, has gone out the window), like she was expecting him to find some fight within him yet. But any fire, any drive, is now snuffed out.

Let him die, let him take his sister’s hand. He cares no longer to inhabit a universe without you by his side.

•••

Tags: @universallyrascaldreamercookie @lucidlonging @omg-hellgirl @darkened-writer @totallysocially @hopingtoclearmedschool @lucycarlisleswife @adrestlyd @imagineslendk @ultimatreality @the-garbage-central @dilfsandtherapy @saltyluminaryvoid @naty-1001 @megscabinetofcurios @saturnssrings @deniixlovezelda @marsmallow433 @thecraziestcrayon @tendersolstice @kpopgirlbtssvt @last-but-not-the-least

He was not the only one affected by his imprisonment. Lucienne, his right hand, his confidante, his…friend, had been the only one to retain any faith in him throughout his long absence. She alone watched as the other residents of the Dreaming fled, staying behind and bearing witness to the crumbling and decay of everything around her. Hers was the first friendly face he saw upon freeing himself, the calm that helped him to believe that the immense damage to both himself and his realm was reparable. That he has once more placed her in a position to worry about him is yet another wrong he has committed in a long string of them this evening.

“You left the realm so suddenly; we were worried that something terrible had happened.” She takes stock of him now, eyes cataloguing what surely would amount to shell shock in a human. “Are you all right?”

No, he desperately wants to say. I have ruined my chance at happiness, at love. What is left for me in this life, if I can not have whom I love at my side?

But he says nothing of the sort. “I shall be retiring to my chambers for the rest of the day. I do not wish to be disturbed.” 

Much to his surprise, his voice holds steady as he speaks, yet his words, ringing as hollow to hear as they feel to say, do nothing to reassure Lucienne. The crease between her brows deepens as she stares up at him. “Do you…want to talk about what happened?” 

Were this a normal situation, she never would have broached such impropriety as her ruler sharing his troubles with her. But it is clear that, while she does not know what has happened, something has happened, something so awful that it has left him reeling. Though she deserves to know, he cannot bring himself to speak about what has truly occurred. For once, Morpheus is grateful for Matthew’s inability to keep any secrets, for the raven will almost certainly recount what he knows upon Morpheus’s departure.

He can meet her eyes no longer, and instead fixes his own straight ahead down the corridor. “Tomorrow, I shall resume my duties. In the meantime, I ask that you deal with any issues that may arise.”

She watches him for a long moment before sighing, the weight of what goes unsaid behind the action. “Of course, sir.”

With a stiff nod, Morpheus swiftly departs, leaving behind his advisors without another glance. While he could use his sand to transport himself to his chambers, he chooses instead to make the long walk alone. 

Rather, he attempts to be alone. Your earlier words repeat through his mind like the tolling of a bell—he could travel to the farthest corners of the universe and be unable to escape them.

“You’ve lied to me from the moment we met! About everything.”

“I could have gotten hurt, or—or god forbid, killed! Because of you.”

“You don’t even really know me.”

“I don’t want to see you again.”

The pain of your words is blistering and unceasing, yet it is a pain that he deserves, for he knows that every word you spoke tonight was true. He did lie to you. He did put you in danger. He would not blame you if you do truly decide that you want nothing more to do with him, though such a thought is almost unbearable.

For every moment of pain at your misunderstanding of what he was doing, he knows that he has caused you the same, tenfold. In the thrilling rush of courting you, he forgot the essence of who you are: human. He remembered, of course—every time he twisted the truth to fit your understanding of the world, every slip-up when he said or did something that humans do not say or do—but he forgot how resistant humans are towards what they do not know, of the wide bevy of emotions they have to respond to any number of situations. 

Fear, he anticipated. Perturb, yes. But anger? Devastation? Never did he see those emotions as an outcome when he imagined telling you the truth of who he is; never did he want to see such emotions on you.

When he finally arrives at his chambers, the doors to the balcony are already open, awaiting him and his misery. Outside, the gray skies herald rain, which the residents of the Dreaming are surely dreading after the last time their lord was rebuffed. Yet another source of immense regret and shame: how his emotions are innately tied to the weather of his realm.

The calm, blissful days when Morpheus is simply going about his function are familiar to the Dreaming, as are the ferocious storms when he feels a bit…tempestuous. The weather, as of late, he knows, has been a source of gossip and amusement for the realm. Fresh blooms sprout from every tree, flower, and plant, painting the landscapes in a dazzling array of colors not typically seen on such flora. Rainbows frequently stretch across the sky, birdsong is the melodies of popular love ballads throughout history, and the heat of the realm has only risen as your courtship has progressed, until the temperatures after your first date would be considered a heat wave in the Waking. He is in love, and, much to his embarrassment, everybody knows it.

The rain that begins to fall puts a damper on any such lovestruck environment, but much to what is surely everyone’s surprise, it does not storm as it typically would after a rejection like he’s just experienced—the usual dark clouds, crashing thunder, sharp lightning, and floods are absent. It simply rains, heavily and unceasingly, for there is nothing for him to be mad bout. He did this to himself. His inaction, his indecision, his desire to preserve the first blooms of new love—it has all led to this. 

Morpheus sinks to his knees just past the threshold of the balcony, unable to find the strength to stand anymore, and the rain quickly drenches every inch of him. He allows the water to chill him to the bone, shaking as he thinks of your expressive eyes and the myriad ways they looked at him tonight. Shock, bewilderment, betrayal, fury. They were devoid of any of the affection or happiness he had seen within them just days before, and he shudders to think that this might be the last memory he has of you. 

Were the circumstances normal, he would have already devised a number of plans to attempt to salvage the burgeoning relationship he, mere hours ago, had with you. He is the king of dreams, after all—possibilities abound within his realm. But all he can focus on as he leans his head back and lets the rain run over his face is how empty he feels, as though you were already interwoven into the very fiber of his being, whatever makes him what he is, and has been torn thusly from him. He mourns the loss of how complete he once felt, how bright his future seemed, how close to fulfillment his hopes were. He mourns who he might have been with true love by his side forevermore.

What he would give to ensure one more chance to be in front of you, to try to make amends for what he has done, to explain his reasoning for every word he has said to you, to…apologize to you, an action so unfamiliar to him that he assumes it would be almost comical for him to try. Pieces of his power, his realm, himself—all things which he had fought for, had desperately clawed back from forces who meant to keep it for themselves upon his imprisonment, but all things that he would happily part with for the guarantee that you would simply listen to him. He does not even need you to forgive him, though that would be preferable; he simply needs you to listen.

At some point, he becomes aware of warm water interspersed on his face, in stark contrast with the cold rain, and realizes that he has begun to cry. He scowls, a lone bolt of lightning weakly sparking in the far distance. The human body he prefers to manifest as has always been susceptible to tears, despite his best efforts—though he can bend reality to his will and form creations from mere sand, he has never been able to make himself incapable of crying. The more he attempts to put a stop to it, in fact, the faster the tears come, until he is openly weeping for all that he has lost.

Hope has always been hard for him to come by, but it feels almost impossible to find any semblance of it now. He has always been drawn to those with a will as strong as his own, and it is now working against him. He has no reason to believe that you will come back to him, that you will want a life with him over the comfortable familiarity of your own human one. He can offer you everything—the universe, wonders beyond your imagination, a kingdom, his complete, undying love and fidelity—but is that something that you would even want? Does he know you? Or is it as you say, and he is instead more enamoured with the fact that he has a soulmate than that it is you who is his soulmate?

He thinks of all of the ways that humans believe they know one another, seen through the lenses of their dreams. Their favorite things: music, films, books, colors, and foods are just the start. To know a human is to know the mundane, such as birthdays and important figures in their lives, as well as the intricate, like experiences that have made them who they are, their core tenets and ideals. 

To his chagrin, Morpheus realizes that he does not know any of this about you. He could, of course: all he needs to do is tap into the stores of knowledge he holds within him, your dreams surely containing all of these answers. But he refuses to violate your trust once more, to use his powers to gain an advantage he has no right to take.

Your courtship has been a relatively short one, but what he does know of you, he already loves dearly. Your curious mind, always asking questions and always sparking with possibilities. Your passion, which drives and fuels you. Your presence and companionship, which have made him feel at home in a Waking that has always been foreign to him. 

Perhaps this was the Fates’ grand plan all along, the way to finally get back at him for the business with Circe that they have never truly gotten over. Let him find his soulmate, let his soulmate be within his grasp, and let the Dreamlord’s own hubris bring about his ruin, for this is what he does. He ruins every relationship he has, every bit of happiness that comes his way, never seeming to learn from his many mistakes. All three of the Ladies must surely be getting immense enjoyment from this.

This is what he gets for allowing himself to want, to…desire. Heartbreak and ruin, to a level never previously experienced. No matter. If you want him to stay away from you, then stay away he shall. Instead, he will throw himself into his work once more and embody his function. Let this be a reminder of how the Endless have no need for human emotions. His siblings have managed to do just fine without love, and he shall, as well.

At least, that is what he aspires to. 

•••

As promised, Morpheus resumes his duties the next day.

By ‘resumes his duties,’ of course, he really means haunting the halls of his home like a ghost before making it as far as his throne room, where he locks himself away to collapse onto his throne and stare at the vast universe of the ceiling above him while wondering how he got here. The stars twinkle above him, galaxies twisting and turning and reflecting his own inner turmoil. Despite his best efforts (which, admittedly, are not very driven at this moment), he cannot stop thinking of you, of what you might be doing or feeling or saying right now.

Though he would never wish misery upon you, he thinks that it would bring him some comfort to know that you share in his devastation. That you did not break things off due to a lack of feelings, but rather due to too many. To know that you are also mourning what might be lost would be a bittersweet comfort to him, one that is equal parts heartwrenching as it is reassuring. As it stands, he is alone in his anguish, left to wonder and imagine.

“Dream? Are you all right?” That question again, only from a new source now, draws him out of his thoughts and back to full awareness. 

It takes him a moment to realize that his location has changed, against his will. He looks up slowly, taking note of the water, and the fog, and the mirrors—and his sister, standing before him and watching him cautiously, her hook glinting from where she nervously fidgets with it.

“Forgive me, sister,” he apologizes, abashed at inadvertently trespassing in Despair’s realm.

“For what? No one ever comes to visit. I’m glad you’re here.” She seems to realize what she’s said, how it may sound, and grimaces. “I mean, I’m sorry you’re here. I’m sorry…about your soulmate.”

“You know,” he gathers. Does everybody? In the same way that, as his sibling said, ‘word got out’ about his having a soulmate, has it now trickled out that he has been rejected? 

Laugh at the once-mighty Dream King, how far he has fallen once more. In his wounded state, he can only assume that is what Despair is here for—to report back on his anguish to her twin so that they may both find some merriment from it.

She nods. “You are not the only one hurting, my brother. This is a place where people go to be…miserable. And grieve. And hit bottom.”

Morpheus bristles at the assumption that he has ‘hit bottom’ (if anyone besides one of his siblings were to even wonder such a thing, he would send nightmares of the worst variety their way before they could even finish the thought) before realizing that he has, in fact, hit bottom. There’s something else in her words that captures his attention, though: the implication that someone else is feeling this level of pain. And while she could simply be referring to one of the millions of other lost souls despairing right now, he knows that she, much like every member of his family, chooses her words extremely carefully.

“Do you want to see for yourself?” Despair asks, gesturing towards a mirror and confirming his theory.

He should say no. You had extracted this promise from him, after all—that he leave you alone, until and unless you call. He is a being of his word, and yet—

Your voice rings clearly through the mirror, and all he can focus on is how tired and upset you sound, the tears you try to stifle as you talk to somebody unknown to him. If he were to simply glance out of the corner of his eye, he would surely see you, as miserable as he. Do you regret last night’s occurrences? Who are you seeking comfort from? What have you told them of him?

Do you miss him?

The temptation to look is almost too strong for him to fight against, and he has to force himself to close his eyes tightly and shake his head. “Cease this torture, my sister.”

“Sorry.” She makes a wiping movement with her hand, and the mirror goes blissfully, heartwrenchingly quiet. “Some people do get something from looking in the mirrors. Comfort, closure, more pain. I always like to offer it to those who make it this far into my realm.”

“Do many traverse this path?” he asks, largely unfamiliar with the inner workings of Despair’s realm and seeking any bit of distraction that he can get.

She presses her lips together, hesitant to speak. “Only those who are experiencing true despair.”

Ah, of course. “And that is why I am here?”

She nods. “You need a place to go to mope.”

“I do not mope,” he snaps halfheartedly.

Despair looks down at him, eyebrow raised. “Then what do you call this? Sulking? Brooding?”

“Despondency,” he supplies.

“Same thing,” she retorts lightly, before hesitating once more. Morpheus watches his sister, curious as to her next move. 

Through no fault of her own and almost solely due to her proximity to her twin, Despair is the sibling Morpheus knows the least about, though that also may be in part due to her predecessor’s unfortunate demise—so long ago now that it’s difficult for him to conjure the first Despair’s face in his mind. He is familiar with the act of despairing, of course, but as to what his sister truly does, her motivations and thought processes, he is blind. Finally, she moves until she comes to perch on the arm of his throne, waiting until he makes eye contact with her to continue. 

“You cannot stay here, you know.”

His brow furrows in confusion. “Yes, I have my own realm to attend to.”

“No, I mean, you cannot stay here, in despair. I have never known you to go down without a fight, my brother.”

Belatedly, he realizes that his sister intends to comfort him. Truly, the world as he once knew it is no longer. “I have been instructed to stay away until—”

Despair rolls her eyes. “You’re called for, yes, my realm had a front row seat to how last night went down. But why are you acting as though the connection has already been severed, like you were told that your soulmate did not love you at all?”

Though vulnerability chafes at him, he can feel the need to…talk overtaking him like a wave of water against a poorly constructed dam. “When I…attempted to confess my love plainly, I was very quickly and emphatically rebuffed.”

Her sudden cough suspiciously sounds as though it could be covering a laugh, and Morpheus attempts to glower at her. “Were the words ‘I do not love you’ or anything similar uttered, though?”

“No,” he says, though he would argue that the sob you were unable to hold back as he attempted to proclaim his own love for you said more than words could.

“Humans are scared of everything, both good and bad. It is an evolutionary, primal response to keep them always aware of potential threats. Think of how many fear-inducing situations your soulmate was put through last night.”

He does, though it is easy to envision the way in which you were hunted like prey through your campus’s library to avoid being captured and harmed. To picture what it must be like, to learn that every single story of myth, legend, and fiction that you have grown up with is entirely real. To conceive of the shock that you must have experienced when discovering that there are forces far older and more powerful than anything you can imagine, forces that have fated you to a being nearly as old and powerful as said forces.

It finally clicks for him, and Despair, picking up on just that, lays a hand on his shoulder.

“There is no reason for you to be here, Dream, for this is nowhere close to the end of your story. Humans lash out when they’re scared—they get upset, they run, they say things they do not mean. But eventually, the fear abates. Eventually, they must face what it is that has made them run in the first place. Especially when they are running from a soulmate.”

“You are advising patience,” Morpheus surmises. “Matthew said much the same.”

“He is smarter than you give him credit for, and he understands his own species far better than you ever will.” Morpheus is unsure whether his sister is referring to his understanding of humans or the Endless, and the ambiguity makes his lips twitch upwards ever so slightly—a movement that does not go unnoticed. “Rarely have I seen soulmates remain indefinitely in my realm, and I have no reason to believe that you will be any different.”

“You truly believe so?” It is a question entirely unlike Morpheus to ask, and it’s one that he almost does not verbalize. Be it the circumstances he currently finds himself in, or his physical location bringing to the surface such…emotions, he cannot stop it from escaping him.

For once, Despair’s face does not mirror the derision or disdain of their twin’s. Rather, shades of Death’s concern, of her caring nature, flit across Despair’s features. “Oh, Dream. You must know I wouldn’t lie to you, not about this!”

Though he wishes to come up with a rebuttal to this statement, he knows that, when it comes to truly serious matters, Despair does not lie. Not like…

“You will tell no one of this,” Morpheus says sternly.

This time, it is Despair’s lips that quirk into a smile. “And there’s that famous fight of yours. Leave this place, my brother. There is still hope for you, yet.”

He reaches his hand up slowly until it falls on top of Despair’s, still sitting on his shoulder, and squeezes gently. He has learned much in this sojourn to his sister’s realm, and he is grateful for it. Patience, for one, and to remember that you are human, first and foremost. But he has also realized that traits he has always associated with Despair—conniving, cruel, deceitful—should, perhaps, be more so attributed to her twin.

This is the closest he will come to thanking her—the humiliation of thanking Desire for warning him, months ago, under the streetlights outside of the New Inn, still fresh in his mind—but he does not need to use words. Despair nods, squeezing his hand as well before standing up and wandering away from him, through the fog and the mirrors, until he’s left with only the bitter taste of melancholy in the back of his throat. Then, he’s gone as well.

Back to the Dreaming, and back to the fight.

•••

There are shades of you in every corner of the Dreaming, though this is not new. From the moment Morpheus learned the truth of what was to be your relationship, you became his muse, even when he was not consciously aware of it (especially when he was not consciously aware of it). The brightness of your smile has lit the moonlit paths lovers have strolled through, and your laugh carries in the wind that ruffles the hair of dreamers cruising idyllic coastlines. The color of your eyes features prominently in the color palettes of dreams, no matter how out of place it may seem. Newly created dreams are a little more fiery, newly created nightmares a little kinder. You are everywhere he turns; you are everything—to him, that is, which means that you are everything to the Dreaming.

He cannot outrun you, nor does he want to. Though it hurts to be reminded of you everywhere he goes, it is a necessary ache, like the ache of his unused muscles after 106 long years of captivity. The rain, too, has slowed from a downpour to a drizzle, and though the clouds remain ever-present, faint rays of sunlight are attempting to burst through. A reminder that not all hope is lost, that there is still something worth fighting for.

If he thought that the wait to touch you—to kiss you—for the first time was arduous, this separation is a true test of his patience. Thankfully, he has his work to turn to and has finally resumed some semblance of his responsibilities, much to the relief of his overwhelmed staff. Mervyn required his approval on plans for a new wing of the palace (a new wing that was entirely unrelated to the assumption that you would eventually join him in the Dreaming and presumably require your own space), Nuala wanted to know which of the many (many, many) flowers on the grounds she could prune, and Lucienne…

Lucienne has suddenly come into the possession of an extraordinary amount of administrative papers that require his attention, so many that Morpheus is starting to wonder if she is, perhaps, procuring ‘busy work’ for him.

Regardless of her motives, it is a relief to have so many distractions. He knows that he cannot sit around aimlessly while waiting for you—knows that he will drive himself mad by doing so—and sinking back into his work, his duty, is comfortable. Familiar, in a time when he is experiencing a wide variety of unfamiliarity. To have such banal tasks as reviewing new library intakes and surveying a nightmare who swears he is ready to be on his own in the Dreaming is welcome. 

Though as Morpheus finishes a letter to Faerie advising Queen Titania of the borderline treasonous actions of one of her own (he was, after all, extremely careful in not making any promises to Puck before scaring him off), he becomes aware of another familiarity, this one unwelcome: the question of where his raven had gone off to. Matthew was allowed to go where he pleased, of course. He simply had a special talent for being annoyingly present when unwanted, and scarce when needed.

“Matthew?” Morpheus calls expectantly, melting the wax and pouring it onto the folded parchment to await his official seal.

Silence remains his companion, and he looks up from his desk to be met by an empty study. Curious. His emissary typically arrives within moments when summoned.

“Matthew?” he tries again. When a minute passes and he’s still alone, Morpheus begins to grow concerned. There is no reason why Matthew should not have responded, barring injury or imprisonment.

Memories of Jessamy form before he can stop them from rising to the forefront of his mind, and he closes his eyes as though to block them out. The Order is defeated, the Magdalene Grimoire no more. There is no threat to himself, nor to his newest raven. Still, that does not stop him from tapping into the mental link that he has always shared with his ravens, searching for Matthew through the far reaches of the universe.

It does not take nearly that long for Morpheus to locate Matthew’s presence, inexplicably in the Waking. He has not been sent on any errand that would take him out of the palace, let alone to another realm, which means Matthew has left on a personal journey. While he is not forbidden from doing so, it is highly unusual, and Morpheus, finding himself in an investigative mood, peers through the raven’s eyes to determine what has led him away from home.

Almost immediately, Morpheus regrets ever doing so. Matthew perches on a street lamp, watching as a couple kisses passionately in a dingy alley. Only, it is not any random couple. No, it is you, kissing the mortal man who has fancied you for months. He holds you just as Morpheus once did, and you’re just as receptive as you were that night at the British Museum, what feels like another lifetime ago.

It is an awful scene to bear witness to, and yet, Morpheus finds that he cannot look away. This is his punishment for how he lied to you, how he hurt you—his soulmate, kissing a man so unworthy of you that the match is almost laughable, while he is unable to do anything but watch.

Matthew finally senses his lord in his mind and turns away from the scene. But it is too late, the damage irreparably done, and the seal stamp clatters off of the desk and onto the floor as Morpheus loses his grip on it before his hand goes instead to his chest, where it feels as though some being far more powerful and terrible than he has just physically ripped out what would be his heart, were he human.

The pain in his chest is immense, but it does nothing to drown out what he has seen, what he has learned. You have made up your mind, then. You would rather have a comfortable, mortal life, with a comfortable, mortal partner, as opposed to the love of a soulmate—a love that wars are fought over, a love that spurs into creation deals with fae and demons, a love that has been written and composed and spoken and dreamed about for as long as there have been beings with the capacity to love. Perhaps this is why soulmate pairings between a mortal and an Other are so rare. Mortals must simply not have the capacity to understand and appreciate a soulmate bond, driving to ruin the god or fae or spirit or Endless unlucky enough to be on the other side.

Matthew comes crashing back into the Dreaming, landing on Morpheus’s desk and squawking at whatever his face must be conveying right now. “Oh no, you weren’t supposed to see any of that! Just let me explain, from a human perspective, what—”

“Leave me, Matthew,” Morpheus interrupts, his voice coming out as barely more than a whisper.

Matthew, impudent as ever, shakes his head. “But—we talked, and I think there are a lot of confusing emotions being felt by your soulmate, and if I could just—”

“LEAVE.” The command shakes the room, the lights snuffed out in one blow as Morpheus temporarily loses his grip on corporeality. 

The room elongates, then narrows, as shadows begin to writhe and take on a mind of their own. Voices—of the damned, of the brokenhearted, of the hopeless—cry out from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. A choked noise of fright, akin to a human squeak, escapes Matthew as he looks into the pinpoints of light that are now Morpheus’s eyes. Distantly, he is aware that Matthew has never seen this version of him—Nightmare, as opposed to Dream, is who scares the raven off, who watches as he hurriedly takes off from the desk and through the door that has manifested and opened specifically for him. The slamming of the door corresponds with a heavy boom of thunder, the rain that had very nearly abated suddenly pouring down in sheets as the wind outside begins to howl fiercely.

Alone again, Morpheus collapses backwards, gasping at the sharp ache in his chest and massaging his sternum in a futile attempt to soothe it. His initial, wounded response is to blame you for all of this. How dare you do this to him? How dare you make him fall hopelessly in love with you without any effort on your part? How dare you be human, and react as humans do, and not understand important universal concepts that are unfamiliar to humans?

Under all of his rage, there remains an insidious voice that whispers how this is all Morpheus’s fault. How dare he hurt you? How dare he get his hopes up? How dare he never learn his lesson, chasing after love when it is very clearly never meant for him?

The image of you kissing that pathetic mortal is an image that will be burned into his memory for as long as he lives—those unworthy hands on your waist, your lips, which Morpheus wrongly assumed were now his and his alone to kiss, on another man’s. Does Morpheus truly mean so little to you? Are humans so unaffected by the forces of fate that they can move on from soulmates so easily, in a matter of days?

Morpheus wishes he were the same. Thousands of beings would trip over themselves to bed any one of the Endless and, in a moment of insanity, he almost begins to formulate a mental list. But alas, he is not human. Every part of himself belongs to you, and has for months. He will forever be yours, even though you want him no longer.

Those early fears—that he would be doomed to watch you from afar as you go through life without him before inevitably taking his sister’s hand to the Sunless Lands, where he cannot follow—resurface. This is now his reality, his destiny. He will have to live a life without you, and what a sorry excuse of a life is that, without his true love?

The storm that proceeds to ravage the Dreaming for the rest of the evening will go down in the recorded history of the realm, with very few denizens alive to have remembered the last storm of this ferocity. Tornadoes spawn out of blizzards that blanket deserts. Wetlands dry up before flooding again. The lightning that cracks unceasingly against the sky rivals Zeus’s most vengeful outbursts at his strongest. A storm just as fierce rages within the Dreamlord, once again alone and on an island of his own making.

An island that he is condemned to never, ever leave.

•••

The storm eventually comes to an end, as storms are wont to do. Rage cannot persist indefinitely, not at that force. Morpheus has not made a conscious decision to do so—indeed, the lack of storm, of wind and thunder and rain, is what pulls him back to awareness. He does not know how much time has passed, only that it is now daylight, when before, it was night. Across the realm, he can sense his people beginning the efforts to clean up the devastation he has wrought. Downed trees must be cleared, excess rain must be mopped up, broken structures must be put back together. He knows that he should feel terrible about this—distantly, he does—but all he can truly feel right now is pain.

His head aches—though that is simply the prevailing ache at the moment, for a quick inventory of himself reveals that his whole body aches, stemming from the epicenter that is his chest. It is a splintering pain, one that seems as though there is no start or end, and it makes it difficult to think clearly. He is both hot and cold, and cannot recall ever not having control of such aspects of himself as body temperature. There’s a weakness, too, that has overcome him, too weak to even fathom moving from where he is slumped over in his chair.

But move he must, for something is clearly not right. Morpheus has been weak before—after battling the Old Gods, after escaping Fawney Rig—but never like this. Never before has he felt so empty, yet so overwrought with sensation. Never before has he been unable to wrest back control of himself, to once more become Dream of the Endless after a period of emotional instability. He needs answers; he needs…help.

Morpheus means to stand, to check himself over, to make himself look presentable before journeying to the library. But right now, with the disconnect between his mind and his body, his powers focus solely on reaching the library, and he travels there between one blink and the next before he is ready. As a result, he lands harshly on the ground, his weary legs unable to keep him upright. He groans—groans!—at the pain, and his three closest advisors gasp at the sight of him.

“My lord!”

“What is—”

“Holy shit, boss, are you okay?”

“I do not believe so,” he says shakily, the first words he has spoken since commanding Matthew to leave. Even his voice, hoarse as though he has been screaming for hours without reprieve, is affected by the mysterious ailment that has befallen him.

Morpheus staggers to a kneeling position as he takes in the sight before him: the library seems, for the most part, unscathed from the storms, save for a nearby hole in the ceiling that was presumably created from the branches now lying scattered on the floor around him. Books are knocked off of their shelves, and leaves and other foliage cover them, but the room seems spared of any water damage. Good. The last thing he wants is for this wealth of knowledge to be ruined due to his actions.

“—Sir, are you listening?” Lucienne comes into focus as Morpheus blinks, and he realizes that she has been talking to him without his knowing.

“I…am sorry, Lucienne, I must not have heard you.”

Lucienne’s eyes widen at the apology, so uncharacteristically and freely given. “I asked what your symptoms are.”

He explains them as best he can, though how does one put into words such a distinct and pervasive sense of wrongness? For that is at the forefront of his so-called symptoms: now that he has seen you seek comfort in the arms of another, he is unmoored, like a ghost ship drifting aimlessly through the oceans without purpose. Lucienne listens intently, brow furrowed, though she seems to already have ideas about what has befallen him before he has finished speaking.

“I have a couple of ideas, but let me consult some texts before I say anything more.” Lucienne rises hurriedly, disappearing down the shelves with a last command of, “Nuala, Matthew, stay with Lord Morpheus!”

Nuala hesitantly kneels in front of him, Matthew right beside her. She searches his face for something—though he is unsure what that something is, she seems to find it after a moment.

“Forgive me, my lord.” She reaches up a hand and rests the back of it against Morpheus’s forehead, then his cheek. It is cool against his heated skin, a much-needed balm, one that only lasts for a moment after she removes her hand. “I believe you have a fever,” she says in shock.

Immediately, he is shooting the notion down. “That is ridiculous. Endless do not get…fevers.”

“So you manifested the temperature, then?” Matthew interjects.

“No,” he admits. 

The pain chooses this moment to spike in his chest, and his hand again goes to press against it in the hopes that he will get some relief. Nuala watches this action closely, her face going pale almost immediately.

“Lucienne!” she calls, panic tinting her tone. “I believe I know what the issue is!”

The librarian takes a few minutes to return, either deep in research or so deep within the library that she has not heard Nuala. In the meantime, tremors begin to wrack Morpheus; from exertion or illness, he is unsure. The instability has forced him to shift so that he is leaning against a bookshelf, legs splayed out in front of him in a very un-kingly manner. Nuala and Matthew keep watch over him, the latter uncharacteristically quiet. When she does reappear, holding three books in her arms, her face is grim, even as she attempts a reassuring smile.

On some level, he already knows what is afflicting him. 

“Based on cursory research,” Lucienne begins, shifting nervously on her feet, “I believe that you may have—”

“Bond sickness,” Morpheus finishes. “I believe so, as well.” 

He has always had a morbid curiosity, and after the initial group research on soulmates and modern courting, he brought the books back with him to his chambers for more in-depth reading. Naturally, he took great interest in the bond sickness chapters, perhaps because he never envisioned it as a possibility for himself; not when he had already passed the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of your mortality.

Bond sickness was sudden and brutal, the result of a soulmate attempting to break the bond—be it through another romance, an act of magic, or, in rare cases, physical harm. That you are unaware of the full extent of a soulmate bond matters not to whatever magic binds two parties together: you kissed another, you were romanced by another, and that was enough to bring about this illness. In the cases of bond sickness he read about, both parties suffered as a result of the actions of one. Are you feeling ill too, then? Or has the same humanity that has allowed you to move on so easily also made it so you are not affected by this sickness?

“W—what can we do?” Matthew asks, the only one unfamiliar with the specifics of bond sickness. "There’s a cure, right? There’s always a cure to these sorts of things.”

Nuala swallows harshly. “There is no cure, beyond…”

“Beyond what?” Morpheus asks, not having reached the topic of cures in his personal research.

“Reconciliation. The bond sickness cases I have seen end in either reconciliation or death.”

“Oh, well that’s easy!” Matthew is unexpectedly relieved and looks at Morpheus as though the solution is simple. “Just go to the Waking and make up with your soulmate!”

If only. “I made a promise, Matthew, to stay away until I was summoned,” Morpheus reminds him. “I do not break my promises, especially not towards those I love.” Especially not after all of the lies he told you, all of your trust that he has now lost.

“But…did you not hear Nuala? You’re going to die if you don’t.”

Would that be so bad? To embrace whatever waits for him, waits for the Endless after they die? He has, after all, lived what would be considered a long and fulfilling life by most standards. “If that is my fate, then so be it.”

Matthew rears back as though struck. “No! No, screw this!” His voice is choked with tears as he looks around to see if anybody else is as upset as he is. Beside him, Lucienne, who kneels now next to Nuala, closes her eyes tightly and tilts her head towards the other side of the room so that her face remains hidden. “Dreams don’t die; you don’t die! I talked to your soulmate, okay? And nobody’s fallen out of love with anybody! There’s been a lot to learn in a short amount of time, and some confusing emotions to deal with, but you just need to get together and hear each other out!”

“I will not go until I am called for, Matthew. That is final.” With these words, he has signed his own death warrant, and he can practically hear the sound of wings getting closer, of scissors opening and closing in anticipation of cutting a long string.

“Fuck!” Matthew curses bitterly, flapping his own wings and racing out the doors of the library. 

“Matthew!” Nuala wipes the tears that have been silently falling down her face, unable to look at Morpheus as she stands and follows him.

Then, it is just he and Lucienne. Who his reign started with, and who, it seems, it ends with. The significance is not lost on either of them, and she holds her head high as she looks at him, refusing to cry. “You are being serious, then? You would rather die than break a promise?”

“I would rather die than break this promise,” he clarifies.

Lucienne’s mouth twitches, and she forces her gaze downward, holding back from saying something she will seemingly regret. It takes her a few moments to compose herself, and when she looks at him again, her eyes shine behind her glasses. “Then might I help you back to your rooms? So that you might be…comfortable?”

“That would be much appreciated, Lucienne.”

She hesitates even as she helps him stand (propriety, in what is now the last days of his life, has gone out the window), like she was expecting him to find some fight within him yet. But any fire, any drive, is now snuffed out.

Let him die, let him take his sister’s hand. He cares no longer to inhabit a universe without you by his side.

•••

Tags: @universallyrascaldreamercookie @lucidlonging @omg-hellgirl @darkened-writer @totallysocially @hopingtoclearmedschool @lucycarlisleswife @adrestlyd @imagineslendk @ultimatreality @the-garbage-central @dilfsandtherapy @saltyluminaryvoid @naty-1001 @megscabinetofcurios @saturnssrings @deniixlovezelda @marsmallow433 @thecraziestcrayon @tendersolstice @kpopgirlbtssvt @last-but-not-the-least

He was not the only one affected by his imprisonment. Lucienne, his right hand, his confidante, his…friend, had been the only one to retain any faith in him throughout his long absence. She alone watched as the other residents of the Dreaming fled, staying behind and bearing witness to the crumbling and decay of everything around her. Hers was the first friendly face he saw upon freeing himself, the calm that helped him to believe that the immense damage to both himself and his realm was reparable. That he has once more placed her in a position to worry about him is yet another wrong he has committed in a long string of them this evening.

“You left the realm so suddenly; we were worried that something terrible had happened.” She takes stock of him now, eyes cataloguing what surely would amount to shell shock in a human. “Are you all right?”

No, he desperately wants to say. I have ruined my chance at happiness, at love. What is left for me in this life, if I can not have whom I love at my side?

But he says nothing of the sort. “I shall be retiring to my chambers for the rest of the day. I do not wish to be disturbed.” 

Much to his surprise, his voice holds steady as he speaks, yet his words, ringing as hollow to hear as they feel to say, do nothing to reassure Lucienne. The crease between her brows deepens as she stares up at him. “Do you…want to talk about what happened?” 

Were this a normal situation, she never would have broached such impropriety as her ruler sharing his troubles with her. But it is clear that, while she does not know what has happened, something has happened, something so awful that it has left him reeling. Though she deserves to know, he cannot bring himself to speak about what has truly occurred. For once, Morpheus is grateful for Matthew’s inability to keep any secrets, for the raven will almost certainly recount what he knows upon Morpheus’s departure.

He can meet her eyes no longer, and instead fixes his own straight ahead down the corridor. “Tomorrow, I shall resume my duties. In the meantime, I ask that you deal with any issues that may arise.”

She watches him for a long moment before sighing, the weight of what goes unsaid behind the action. “Of course, sir.”

With a stiff nod, Morpheus swiftly departs, leaving behind his advisors without another glance. While he could use his sand to transport himself to his chambers, he chooses instead to make the long walk alone. 

Rather, he attempts to be alone. Your earlier words repeat through his mind like the tolling of a bell—he could travel to the farthest corners of the universe and be unable to escape them.

“You’ve lied to me from the moment we met! About everything.”

“I could have gotten hurt, or—or god forbid, killed! Because of you.”

“You don’t even really know me.”

“I don’t want to see you again.”

The pain of your words is blistering and unceasing, yet it is a pain that he deserves, for he knows that every word you spoke tonight was true. He did lie to you. He did put you in danger. He would not blame you if you do truly decide that you want nothing more to do with him, though such a thought is almost unbearable.

For every moment of pain at your misunderstanding of what he was doing, he knows that he has caused you the same, tenfold. In the thrilling rush of courting you, he forgot the essence of who you are: human. He remembered, of course—every time he twisted the truth to fit your understanding of the world, every slip-up when he said or did something that humans do not say or do—but he forgot how resistant humans are towards what they do not know, of the wide bevy of emotions they have to respond to any number of situations. 

Fear, he anticipated. Perturb, yes. But anger? Devastation? Never did he see those emotions as an outcome when he imagined telling you the truth of who he is; never did he want to see such emotions on you.

When he finally arrives at his chambers, the doors to the balcony are already open, awaiting him and his misery. Outside, the gray skies herald rain, which the residents of the Dreaming are surely dreading after the last time their lord was rebuffed. Yet another source of immense regret and shame: how his emotions are innately tied to the weather of his realm.

The calm, blissful days when Morpheus is simply going about his function are familiar to the Dreaming, as are the ferocious storms when he feels a bit…tempestuous. The weather, as of late, he knows, has been a source of gossip and amusement for the realm. Fresh blooms sprout from every tree, flower, and plant, painting the landscapes in a dazzling array of colors not typically seen on such flora. Rainbows frequently stretch across the sky, birdsong is the melodies of popular love ballads throughout history, and the heat of the realm has only risen as your courtship has progressed, until the temperatures after your first date would be considered a heat wave in the Waking. He is in love, and, much to his embarrassment, everybody knows it.

The rain that begins to fall puts a damper on any such lovestruck environment, but much to what is surely everyone’s surprise, it does not storm as it typically would after a rejection like he’s just experienced—the usual dark clouds, crashing thunder, sharp lightning, and floods are absent. It simply rains, heavily and unceasingly, for there is nothing for him to be mad bout. He did this to himself. His inaction, his indecision, his desire to preserve the first blooms of new love—it has all led to this. 

Morpheus sinks to his knees just past the threshold of the balcony, unable to find the strength to stand anymore, and the rain quickly drenches every inch of him. He allows the water to chill him to the bone, shaking as he thinks of your expressive eyes and the myriad ways they looked at him tonight. Shock, bewilderment, betrayal, fury. They were devoid of any of the affection or happiness he had seen within them just days before, and he shudders to think that this might be the last memory he has of you. 

Were the circumstances normal, he would have already devised a number of plans to attempt to salvage the burgeoning relationship he, mere hours ago, had with you. He is the king of dreams, after all—possibilities abound within his realm. But all he can focus on as he leans his head back and lets the rain run over his face is how empty he feels, as though you were already interwoven into the very fiber of his being, whatever makes him what he is, and has been torn thusly from him. He mourns the loss of how complete he once felt, how bright his future seemed, how close to fulfillment his hopes were. He mourns who he might have been with true love by his side forevermore.

What he would give to ensure one more chance to be in front of you, to try to make amends for what he has done, to explain his reasoning for every word he has said to you, to…apologize to you, an action so unfamiliar to him that he assumes it would be almost comical for him to try. Pieces of his power, his realm, himself—all things which he had fought for, had desperately clawed back from forces who meant to keep it for themselves upon his imprisonment, but all things that he would happily part with for the guarantee that you would simply listen to him. He does not even need you to forgive him, though that would be preferable; he simply needs you to listen.

At some point, he becomes aware of warm water interspersed on his face, in stark contrast with the cold rain, and realizes that he has begun to cry. He scowls, a lone bolt of lightning weakly sparking in the far distance. The human body he prefers to manifest as has always been susceptible to tears, despite his best efforts—though he can bend reality to his will and form creations from mere sand, he has never been able to make himself incapable of crying. The more he attempts to put a stop to it, in fact, the faster the tears come, until he is openly weeping for all that he has lost.

Hope has always been hard for him to come by, but it feels almost impossible to find any semblance of it now. He has always been drawn to those with a will as strong as his own, and it is now working against him. He has no reason to believe that you will come back to him, that you will want a life with him over the comfortable familiarity of your own human one. He can offer you everything—the universe, wonders beyond your imagination, a kingdom, his complete, undying love and fidelity—but is that something that you would even want? Does he know you? Or is it as you say, and he is instead more enamoured with the fact that he has a soulmate than that it is you who is his soulmate?

He thinks of all of the ways that humans believe they know one another, seen through the lenses of their dreams. Their favorite things: music, films, books, colors, and foods are just the start. To know a human is to know the mundane, such as birthdays and important figures in their lives, as well as the intricate, like experiences that have made them who they are, their core tenets and ideals. 

To his chagrin, Morpheus realizes that he does not know any of this about you. He could, of course: all he needs to do is tap into the stores of knowledge he holds within him, your dreams surely containing all of these answers. But he refuses to violate your trust once more, to use his powers to gain an advantage he has no right to take.

Your courtship has been a relatively short one, but what he does know of you, he already loves dearly. Your curious mind, always asking questions and always sparking with possibilities. Your passion, which drives and fuels you. Your presence and companionship, which have made him feel at home in a Waking that has always been foreign to him. 

Perhaps this was the Fates’ grand plan all along, the way to finally get back at him for the business with Circe that they have never truly gotten over. Let him find his soulmate, let his soulmate be within his grasp, and let the Dreamlord’s own hubris bring about his ruin, for this is what he does. He ruins every relationship he has, every bit of happiness that comes his way, never seeming to learn from his many mistakes. All three of the Ladies must surely be getting immense enjoyment from this.

This is what he gets for allowing himself to want, to…desire. Heartbreak and ruin, to a level never previously experienced. No matter. If you want him to stay away from you, then stay away he shall. Instead, he will throw himself into his work once more and embody his function. Let this be a reminder of how the Endless have no need for human emotions. His siblings have managed to do just fine without love, and he shall, as well.

At least, that is what he aspires to. 

•••

As promised, Morpheus resumes his duties the next day.

By ‘resumes his duties,’ of course, he really means haunting the halls of his home like a ghost before making it as far as his throne room, where he locks himself away to collapse onto his throne and stare at the vast universe of the ceiling above him while wondering how he got here. The stars twinkle above him, galaxies twisting and turning and reflecting his own inner turmoil. Despite his best efforts (which, admittedly, are not very driven at this moment), he cannot stop thinking of you, of what you might be doing or feeling or saying right now.

Though he would never wish misery upon you, he thinks that it would bring him some comfort to know that you share in his devastation. That you did not break things off due to a lack of feelings, but rather due to too many. To know that you are also mourning what might be lost would be a bittersweet comfort to him, one that is equal parts heartwrenching as it is reassuring. As it stands, he is alone in his anguish, left to wonder and imagine.

“Dream? Are you all right?” That question again, only from a new source now, draws him out of his thoughts and back to full awareness. 

It takes him a moment to realize that his location has changed, against his will. He looks up slowly, taking note of the water, and the fog, and the mirrors—and his sister, standing before him and watching him cautiously, her hook glinting from where she nervously fidgets with it.

“Forgive me, sister,” he apologizes, abashed at inadvertently trespassing in Despair’s realm.

“For what? No one ever comes to visit. I’m glad you’re here.” She seems to realize what she’s said, how it may sound, and grimaces. “I mean, I’m sorry you’re here. I’m sorry…about your soulmate.”

“You know,” he gathers. Does everybody? In the same way that, as his sibling said, ‘word got out’ about his having a soulmate, has it now trickled out that he has been rejected? 

Laugh at the once-mighty Dream King, how far he has fallen once more. In his wounded state, he can only assume that is what Despair is here for—to report back on his anguish to her twin so that they may both find some merriment from it.

She nods. “You are not the only one hurting, my brother. This is a place where people go to be…miserable. And grieve. And hit bottom.”

Morpheus bristles at the assumption that he has ‘hit bottom’ (if anyone besides one of his siblings were to even wonder such a thing, he would send nightmares of the worst variety their way before they could even finish the thought) before realizing that he has, in fact, hit bottom. There’s something else in her words that captures his attention, though: the implication that someone else is feeling this level of pain. And while she could simply be referring to one of the millions of other lost souls despairing right now, he knows that she, much like every member of his family, chooses her words extremely carefully.

“Do you want to see for yourself?” Despair asks, gesturing towards a mirror and confirming his theory.

He should say no. You had extracted this promise from him, after all—that he leave you alone, until and unless you call. He is a being of his word, and yet—

Your voice rings clearly through the mirror, and all he can focus on is how tired and upset you sound, the tears you try to stifle as you talk to somebody unknown to him. If he were to simply glance out of the corner of his eye, he would surely see you, as miserable as he. Do you regret last night’s occurrences? Who are you seeking comfort from? What have you told them of him?

Do you miss him?

The temptation to look is almost too strong for him to fight against, and he has to force himself to close his eyes tightly and shake his head. “Cease this torture, my sister.”

“Sorry.” She makes a wiping movement with her hand, and the mirror goes blissfully, heartwrenchingly quiet. “Some people do get something from looking in the mirrors. Comfort, closure, more pain. I always like to offer it to those who make it this far into my realm.”

“Do many traverse this path?” he asks, largely unfamiliar with the inner workings of Despair’s realm and seeking any bit of distraction that he can get.

She presses her lips together, hesitant to speak. “Only those who are experiencing true despair.”

Ah, of course. “And that is why I am here?”

She nods. “You need a place to go to mope.”

“I do not mope,” he snaps halfheartedly.

Despair looks down at him, eyebrow raised. “Then what do you call this? Sulking? Brooding?”

“Despondency,” he supplies.

“Same thing,” she retorts lightly, before hesitating once more. Morpheus watches his sister, curious as to her next move. 

Through no fault of her own and almost solely due to her proximity to her twin, Despair is the sibling Morpheus knows the least about, though that also may be in part due to her predecessor’s unfortunate demise—so long ago now that it’s difficult for him to conjure the first Despair’s face in his mind. He is familiar with the act of despairing, of course, but as to what his sister truly does, her motivations and thought processes, he is blind. Finally, she moves until she comes to perch on the arm of his throne, waiting until he makes eye contact with her to continue. 

“You cannot stay here, you know.”

His brow furrows in confusion. “Yes, I have my own realm to attend to.”

“No, I mean, you cannot stay here, in despair. I have never known you to go down without a fight, my brother.”

Belatedly, he realizes that his sister intends to comfort him. Truly, the world as he once knew it is no longer. “I have been instructed to stay away until—”

Despair rolls her eyes. “You’re called for, yes, my realm had a front row seat to how last night went down. But why are you acting as though the connection has already been severed, like you were told that your soulmate did not love you at all?”

Though vulnerability chafes at him, he can feel the need to…talk overtaking him like a wave of water against a poorly constructed dam. “When I…attempted to confess my love plainly, I was very quickly and emphatically rebuffed.”

Her sudden cough suspiciously sounds as though it could be covering a laugh, and Morpheus attempts to glower at her. “Were the words ‘I do not love you’ or anything similar uttered, though?”

“No,” he says, though he would argue that the sob you were unable to hold back as he attempted to proclaim his own love for you said more than words could.

“Humans are scared of everything, both good and bad. It is an evolutionary, primal response to keep them always aware of potential threats. Think of how many fear-inducing situations your soulmate was put through last night.”

He does, though it is easy to envision the way in which you were hunted like prey through your campus’s library to avoid being captured and harmed. To picture what it must be like, to learn that every single story of myth, legend, and fiction that you have grown up with is entirely real. To conceive of the shock that you must have experienced when discovering that there are forces far older and more powerful than anything you can imagine, forces that have fated you to a being nearly as old and powerful as said forces.

It finally clicks for him, and Despair, picking up on just that, lays a hand on his shoulder.

“There is no reason for you to be here, Dream, for this is nowhere close to the end of your story. Humans lash out when they’re scared—they get upset, they run, they say things they do not mean. But eventually, the fear abates. Eventually, they must face what it is that has made them run in the first place. Especially when they are running from a soulmate.”

“You are advising patience,” Morpheus surmises. “Matthew said much the same.”

“He is smarter than you give him credit for, and he understands his own species far better than you ever will.” Morpheus is unsure whether his sister is referring to his understanding of humans or the Endless, and the ambiguity makes his lips twitch upwards ever so slightly—a movement that does not go unnoticed. “Rarely have I seen soulmates remain indefinitely in my realm, and I have no reason to believe that you will be any different.”

“You truly believe so?” It is a question entirely unlike Morpheus to ask, and it’s one that he almost does not verbalize. Be it the circumstances he currently finds himself in, or his physical location bringing to the surface such…emotions, he cannot stop it from escaping him.

For once, Despair’s face does not mirror the derision or disdain of their twin’s. Rather, shades of Death’s concern, of her caring nature, flit across Despair’s features. “Oh, Dream. You must know I wouldn’t lie to you, not about this!”

Though he wishes to come up with a rebuttal to this statement, he knows that, when it comes to truly serious matters, Despair does not lie. Not like…

“You will tell no one of this,” Morpheus says sternly.

This time, it is Despair’s lips that quirk into a smile. “And there’s that famous fight of yours. Leave this place, my brother. There is still hope for you, yet.”

He reaches his hand up slowly until it falls on top of Despair’s, still sitting on his shoulder, and squeezes gently. He has learned much in this sojourn to his sister’s realm, and he is grateful for it. Patience, for one, and to remember that you are human, first and foremost. But he has also realized that traits he has always associated with Despair—conniving, cruel, deceitful—should, perhaps, be more so attributed to her twin.

This is the closest he will come to thanking her—the humiliation of thanking Desire for warning him, months ago, under the streetlights outside of the New Inn, still fresh in his mind—but he does not need to use words. Despair nods, squeezing his hand as well before standing up and wandering away from him, through the fog and the mirrors, until he’s left with only the bitter taste of melancholy in the back of his throat. Then, he’s gone as well.

Back to the Dreaming, and back to the fight.

•••

There are shades of you in every corner of the Dreaming, though this is not new. From the moment Morpheus learned the truth of what was to be your relationship, you became his muse, even when he was not consciously aware of it (especially when he was not consciously aware of it). The brightness of your smile has lit the moonlit paths lovers have strolled through, and your laugh carries in the wind that ruffles the hair of dreamers cruising idyllic coastlines. The color of your eyes features prominently in the color palettes of dreams, no matter how out of place it may seem. Newly created dreams are a little more fiery, newly created nightmares a little kinder. You are everywhere he turns; you are everything—to him, that is, which means that you are everything to the Dreaming.

He cannot outrun you, nor does he want to. Though it hurts to be reminded of you everywhere he goes, it is a necessary ache, like the ache of his unused muscles after 106 long years of captivity. The rain, too, has slowed from a downpour to a drizzle, and though the clouds remain ever-present, faint rays of sunlight are attempting to burst through. A reminder that not all hope is lost, that there is still something worth fighting for.

If he thought that the wait to touch you—to kiss you—for the first time was arduous, this separation is a true test of his patience. Thankfully, he has his work to turn to and has finally resumed some semblance of his responsibilities, much to the relief of his overwhelmed staff. Mervyn required his approval on plans for a new wing of the palace (a new wing that was entirely unrelated to the assumption that you would eventually join him in the Dreaming and presumably require your own space), Nuala wanted to know which of the many (many, many) flowers on the grounds she could prune, and Lucienne…

Lucienne has suddenly come into the possession of an extraordinary amount of administrative papers that require his attention, so many that Morpheus is starting to wonder if she is, perhaps, procuring ‘busy work’ for him.

Regardless of her motives, it is a relief to have so many distractions. He knows that he cannot sit around aimlessly while waiting for you—knows that he will drive himself mad by doing so—and sinking back into his work, his duty, is comfortable. Familiar, in a time when he is experiencing a wide variety of unfamiliarity. To have such banal tasks as reviewing new library intakes and surveying a nightmare who swears he is ready to be on his own in the Dreaming is welcome. 

Though as Morpheus finishes a letter to Faerie advising Queen Titania of the borderline treasonous actions of one of her own (he was, after all, extremely careful in not making any promises to Puck before scaring him off), he becomes aware of another familiarity, this one unwelcome: the question of where his raven had gone off to. Matthew was allowed to go where he pleased, of course. He simply had a special talent for being annoyingly present when unwanted, and scarce when needed.

“Matthew?” Morpheus calls expectantly, melting the wax and pouring it onto the folded parchment to await his official seal.

Silence remains his companion, and he looks up from his desk to be met by an empty study. Curious. His emissary typically arrives within moments when summoned.

“Matthew?” he tries again. When a minute passes and he’s still alone, Morpheus begins to grow concerned. There is no reason why Matthew should not have responded, barring injury or imprisonment.

Memories of Jessamy form before he can stop them from rising to the forefront of his mind, and he closes his eyes as though to block them out. The Order is defeated, the Magdalene Grimoire no more. There is no threat to himself, nor to his newest raven. Still, that does not stop him from tapping into the mental link that he has always shared with his ravens, searching for Matthew through the far reaches of the universe.

It does not take nearly that long for Morpheus to locate Matthew’s presence, inexplicably in the Waking. He has not been sent on any errand that would take him out of the palace, let alone to another realm, which means Matthew has left on a personal journey. While he is not forbidden from doing so, it is highly unusual, and Morpheus, finding himself in an investigative mood, peers through the raven’s eyes to determine what has led him away from home.

Almost immediately, Morpheus regrets ever doing so. Matthew perches on a street lamp, watching as a couple kisses passionately in a dingy alley. Only, it is not any random couple. No, it is you, kissing the mortal man who has fancied you for months. He holds you just as Morpheus once did, and you’re just as receptive as you were that night at the British Museum, what feels like another lifetime ago.

It is an awful scene to bear witness to, and yet, Morpheus finds that he cannot look away. This is his punishment for how he lied to you, how he hurt you—his soulmate, kissing a man so unworthy of you that the match is almost laughable, while he is unable to do anything but watch.

Matthew finally senses his lord in his mind and turns away from the scene. But it is too late, the damage irreparably done, and the seal stamp clatters off of the desk and onto the floor as Morpheus loses his grip on it before his hand goes instead to his chest, where it feels as though some being far more powerful and terrible than he has just physically ripped out what would be his heart, were he human.

The pain in his chest is immense, but it does nothing to drown out what he has seen, what he has learned. You have made up your mind, then. You would rather have a comfortable, mortal life, with a comfortable, mortal partner, as opposed to the love of a soulmate—a love that wars are fought over, a love that spurs into creation deals with fae and demons, a love that has been written and composed and spoken and dreamed about for as long as there have been beings with the capacity to love. Perhaps this is why soulmate pairings between a mortal and an Other are so rare. Mortals must simply not have the capacity to understand and appreciate a soulmate bond, driving to ruin the god or fae or spirit or Endless unlucky enough to be on the other side.

Matthew comes crashing back into the Dreaming, landing on Morpheus’s desk and squawking at whatever his face must be conveying right now. “Oh no, you weren’t supposed to see any of that! Just let me explain, from a human perspective, what—”

“Leave me, Matthew,” Morpheus interrupts, his voice coming out as barely more than a whisper.

Matthew, impudent as ever, shakes his head. “But—we talked, and I think there are a lot of confusing emotions being felt by your soulmate, and if I could just—”

“LEAVE.” The command shakes the room, the lights snuffed out in one blow as Morpheus temporarily loses his grip on corporeality. 

The room elongates, then narrows, as shadows begin to writhe and take on a mind of their own. Voices—of the damned, of the brokenhearted, of the hopeless—cry out from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. A choked noise of fright, akin to a human squeak, escapes Matthew as he looks into the pinpoints of light that are now Morpheus’s eyes. Distantly, he is aware that Matthew has never seen this version of him—Nightmare, as opposed to Dream, is who scares the raven off, who watches as he hurriedly takes off from the desk and through the door that has manifested and opened specifically for him. The slamming of the door corresponds with a heavy boom of thunder, the rain that had very nearly abated suddenly pouring down in sheets as the wind outside begins to howl fiercely.

Alone again, Morpheus collapses backwards, gasping at the sharp ache in his chest and massaging his sternum in a futile attempt to soothe it. His initial, wounded response is to blame you for all of this. How dare you do this to him? How dare you make him fall hopelessly in love with you without any effort on your part? How dare you be human, and react as humans do, and not understand important universal concepts that are unfamiliar to humans?

Under all of his rage, there remains an insidious voice that whispers how this is all Morpheus’s fault. How dare he hurt you? How dare he get his hopes up? How dare he never learn his lesson, chasing after love when it is very clearly never meant for him?

The image of you kissing that pathetic mortal is an image that will be burned into his memory for as long as he lives—those unworthy hands on your waist, your lips, which Morpheus wrongly assumed were now his and his alone to kiss, on another man’s. Does Morpheus truly mean so little to you? Are humans so unaffected by the forces of fate that they can move on from soulmates so easily, in a matter of days?

Morpheus wishes he were the same. Thousands of beings would trip over themselves to bed any one of the Endless and, in a moment of insanity, he almost begins to formulate a mental list. But alas, he is not human. Every part of himself belongs to you, and has for months. He will forever be yours, even though you want him no longer.

Those early fears—that he would be doomed to watch you from afar as you go through life without him before inevitably taking his sister’s hand to the Sunless Lands, where he cannot follow—resurface. This is now his reality, his destiny. He will have to live a life without you, and what a sorry excuse of a life is that, without his true love?

The storm that proceeds to ravage the Dreaming for the rest of the evening will go down in the recorded history of the realm, with very few denizens alive to have remembered the last storm of this ferocity. Tornadoes spawn out of blizzards that blanket deserts. Wetlands dry up before flooding again. The lightning that cracks unceasingly against the sky rivals Zeus’s most vengeful outbursts at his strongest. A storm just as fierce rages within the Dreamlord, once again alone and on an island of his own making.

An island that he is condemned to never, ever leave.

•••

The storm eventually comes to an end, as storms are wont to do. Rage cannot persist indefinitely, not at that force. Morpheus has not made a conscious decision to do so—indeed, the lack of storm, of wind and thunder and rain, is what pulls him back to awareness. He does not know how much time has passed, only that it is now daylight, when before, it was night. Across the realm, he can sense his people beginning the efforts to clean up the devastation he has wrought. Downed trees must be cleared, excess rain must be mopped up, broken structures must be put back together. He knows that he should feel terrible about this—distantly, he does—but all he can truly feel right now is pain.

His head aches—though that is simply the prevailing ache at the moment, for a quick inventory of himself reveals that his whole body aches, stemming from the epicenter that is his chest. It is a splintering pain, one that seems as though there is no start or end, and it makes it difficult to think clearly. He is both hot and cold, and cannot recall ever not having control of such aspects of himself as body temperature. There’s a weakness, too, that has overcome him, too weak to even fathom moving from where he is slumped over in his chair.

But move he must, for something is clearly not right. Morpheus has been weak before—after battling the Old Gods, after escaping Fawney Rig—but never like this. Never before has he felt so empty, yet so overwrought with sensation. Never before has he been unable to wrest back control of himself, to once more become Dream of the Endless after a period of emotional instability. He needs answers; he needs…help.

Morpheus means to stand, to check himself over, to make himself look presentable before journeying to the library. But right now, with the disconnect between his mind and his body, his powers focus solely on reaching the library, and he travels there between one blink and the next before he is ready. As a result, he lands harshly on the ground, his weary legs unable to keep him upright. He groans—groans!—at the pain, and his three closest advisors gasp at the sight of him.

“My lord!”

“What is—”

“Holy shit, boss, are you okay?”

“I do not believe so,” he says shakily, the first words he has spoken since commanding Matthew to leave. Even his voice, hoarse as though he has been screaming for hours without reprieve, is affected by the mysterious ailment that has befallen him.

Morpheus staggers to a kneeling position as he takes in the sight before him: the library seems, for the most part, unscathed from the storms, save for a nearby hole in the ceiling that was presumably created from the branches now lying scattered on the floor around him. Books are knocked off of their shelves, and leaves and other foliage cover them, but the room seems spared of any water damage. Good. The last thing he wants is for this wealth of knowledge to be ruined due to his actions.

“—Sir, are you listening?” Lucienne comes into focus as Morpheus blinks, and he realizes that she has been talking to him without his knowing.

“I…am sorry, Lucienne, I must not have heard you.”

Lucienne’s eyes widen at the apology, so uncharacteristically and freely given. “I asked what your symptoms are.”

He explains them as best he can, though how does one put into words such a distinct and pervasive sense of wrongness? For that is at the forefront of his so-called symptoms: now that he has seen you seek comfort in the arms of another, he is unmoored, like a ghost ship drifting aimlessly through the oceans without purpose. Lucienne listens intently, brow furrowed, though she seems to already have ideas about what has befallen him before he has finished speaking.

“I have a couple of ideas, but let me consult some texts before I say anything more.” Lucienne rises hurriedly, disappearing down the shelves with a last command of, “Nuala, Matthew, stay with Lord Morpheus!”

Nuala hesitantly kneels in front of him, Matthew right beside her. She searches his face for something—though he is unsure what that something is, she seems to find it after a moment.

“Forgive me, my lord.” She reaches up a hand and rests the back of it against Morpheus’s forehead, then his cheek. It is cool against his heated skin, a much-needed balm, one that only lasts for a moment after she removes her hand. “I believe you have a fever,” she says in shock.

Immediately, he is shooting the notion down. “That is ridiculous. Endless do not get…fevers.”

“So you manifested the temperature, then?” Matthew interjects.

“No,” he admits. 

The pain chooses this moment to spike in his chest, and his hand again goes to press against it in the hopes that he will get some relief. Nuala watches this action closely, her face going pale almost immediately.

“Lucienne!” she calls, panic tinting her tone. “I believe I know what the issue is!”

The librarian takes a few minutes to return, either deep in research or so deep within the library that she has not heard Nuala. In the meantime, tremors begin to wrack Morpheus; from exertion or illness, he is unsure. The instability has forced him to shift so that he is leaning against a bookshelf, legs splayed out in front of him in a very un-kingly manner. Nuala and Matthew keep watch over him, the latter uncharacteristically quiet. When she does reappear, holding three books in her arms, her face is grim, even as she attempts a reassuring smile.

On some level, he already knows what is afflicting him. 

“Based on cursory research,” Lucienne begins, shifting nervously on her feet, “I believe that you may have—”

“Bond sickness,” Morpheus finishes. “I believe so, as well.” 

He has always had a morbid curiosity, and after the initial group research on soulmates and modern courting, he brought the books back with him to his chambers for more in-depth reading. Naturally, he took great interest in the bond sickness chapters, perhaps because he never envisioned it as a possibility for himself; not when he had already passed the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of your mortality.

Bond sickness was sudden and brutal, the result of a soulmate attempting to break the bond—be it through another romance, an act of magic, or, in rare cases, physical harm. That you are unaware of the full extent of a soulmate bond matters not to whatever magic binds two parties together: you kissed another, you were romanced by another, and that was enough to bring about this illness. In the cases of bond sickness he read about, both parties suffered as a result of the actions of one. Are you feeling ill too, then? Or has the same humanity that has allowed you to move on so easily also made it so you are not affected by this sickness?

“W—what can we do?” Matthew asks, the only one unfamiliar with the specifics of bond sickness. "There’s a cure, right? There’s always a cure to these sorts of things.”

Nuala swallows harshly. “There is no cure, beyond…”

“Beyond what?” Morpheus asks, not having reached the topic of cures in his personal research.

“Reconciliation. The bond sickness cases I have seen end in either reconciliation or death.”

“Oh, well that’s easy!” Matthew is unexpectedly relieved and looks at Morpheus as though the solution is simple. “Just go to the Waking and make up with your soulmate!”

If only. “I made a promise, Matthew, to stay away until I was summoned,” Morpheus reminds him. “I do not break my promises, especially not towards those I love.” Especially not after all of the lies he told you, all of your trust that he has now lost.

“But…did you not hear Nuala? You’re going to die if you don’t.”

Would that be so bad? To embrace whatever waits for him, waits for the Endless after they die? He has, after all, lived what would be considered a long and fulfilling life by most standards. “If that is my fate, then so be it.”

Matthew rears back as though struck. “No! No, screw this!” His voice is choked with tears as he looks around to see if anybody else is as upset as he is. Beside him, Lucienne, who kneels now next to Nuala, closes her eyes tightly and tilts her head towards the other side of the room so that her face remains hidden. “Dreams don’t die; you don’t die! I talked to your soulmate, okay? And nobody’s fallen out of love with anybody! There’s been a lot to learn in a short amount of time, and some confusing emotions to deal with, but you just need to get together and hear each other out!”

“I will not go until I am called for, Matthew. That is final.” With these words, he has signed his own death warrant, and he can practically hear the sound of wings getting closer, of scissors opening and closing in anticipation of cutting a long string.

“Fuck!” Matthew curses bitterly, flapping his own wings and racing out the doors of the library. 

“Matthew!” Nuala wipes the tears that have been silently falling down her face, unable to look at Morpheus as she stands and follows him.

Then, it is just he and Lucienne. Who his reign started with, and who, it seems, it ends with. The significance is not lost on either of them, and she holds her head high as she looks at him, refusing to cry. “You are being serious, then? You would rather die than break a promise?”

“I would rather die than break this promise,” he clarifies.

Lucienne’s mouth twitches, and she forces her gaze downward, holding back from saying something she will seemingly regret. It takes her a few moments to compose herself, and when she looks at him again, her eyes shine behind her glasses. “Then might I help you back to your rooms? So that you might be…comfortable?”

“That would be much appreciated, Lucienne.”

She hesitates even as she helps him stand (propriety, in what is now the last days of his life, has gone out the window), like she was expecting him to find some fight within him yet. But any fire, any drive, is now snuffed out.

Let him die, let him take his sister’s hand. He cares no longer to inhabit a universe without you by his side.

•••

Tags: @universallyrascaldreamercookie @lucidlonging @omg-hellgirl @darkened-writer @totallysocially @hopingtoclearmedschool @lucycarlisleswife @adrestlyd @imagineslendk @ultimatreality @the-garbage-central @dilfsandtherapy @saltyluminaryvoid @naty-1001 @megscabinetofcurios @saturnssrings @deniixlovezelda @marsmallow433 @thecraziestcrayon @tendersolstice @kpopgirlbtssvt @last-but-not-the-least