#dad!morpheus

If he had applied a little more sense to his reasoning at the time, he might have understood more clearly how ridiculous he was being then. To what end might she have orchestrated such a thing? What would she gain by having his child? As more and more of the dire circumstances surrounding her life outside the peace of the Dreaming are revealed to him, he's very quickly coming to the realization that by being pregnant, she is instead losing a great deal. Not gaining. No. Not anything so kind as that. 

Prior to learning of her part in crafting spells for the grimoire, Morpheus would not have even imagined her capable of something so deceptive. Simply put, he had thought differently of her then. In his eyes, she had never been the type to engage in manipulation nor the type to approach him with anything other than her usual straightforward bluntness. But now the knowledge of her betrayal tends to color his perception of her, leaving him to regard her in suspicion as he wonders what other secrets she might be keeping from him. 

And in hearing her thoughts, he had learned many of them, though none of her hidden truths had been what he might have guessed them to be. May is stricken with fear, overwhelmed and near hopeless with the way that it is consuming her. She's terrified at the prospect of having a baby given the current chaos of her life, terrified of bringing a child into a world where it will know wariness and struggle and running from those that would harm it, terrified of…

Terrified of him. 

The understanding that she views him as dangerous, as a threat, as nothing more than yet another enemy she must make herself safe from, stuns him. But then he wonders how he can blame her for such a belief given that while she carries his child, while she struggles under the weight of it, he offers her nothing more in return for this sacrifice than to heap the burden of his animosity atop her. He has driven her further and further into the throes of her anxiety when he thinks that he should instead be… assisting her in some way. That he has not been doing so is a failure on his part, a sorry dereliction that he knows he must address.

As he stands in the kitchen of the siblings' shared house, however, he attempts to rein in his wayward musings, focusing instead on the task at hand. 

That task being Viego's possible rescue. 

Granted, his concern at this moment is not for the maker. He had wanted to return immediately to the physician's office and wreak vengeance upon that loathsome creature, Viktor, who had so arrogantly dared to attack May. Morpheus would have gladly ended him during their confrontation, would have relished tearing him apart atom by atom, but May's sudden disappearance had forced him to follow her. In all honesty, he had assuredly panicked, more so when that strange hum had started up along the edges of his awareness, the one that he has come to associate with May drowning in the waters of the dreamscapes. 

He remains unsure as to how she had survived the shift and doubly unsure as to how she had broken through the surface of his sea, an aspect of his own being that she should not have been able to emerge from.  

Still, he cannot think of this now. Viego could be in danger. Not that Morpheus would typically care overly much whether or not the maker was in peril, but he had promised May to see to this, had promised even to save Viego if the situation called for it. 

And so Morpheus is intent on doing just that. 

The residence is empty, and as he glances around, he takes note of the usual orderliness of the place. Every chair, curtain, picture, and mundane knick knack is where it should be. As such, it certainly does not appear as if a struggle occurred here. He stretches his senses out, feeling past Viego's many magical shields and wards until he at last detects the signature of his power. Once that is found, it is less than nothing for Morpheus to locate him. Without wasting a moment, he shifts to an abandoned building on the outskirts of this town, and what he sees when he arrives utterly shocks him. 

There are a group of makers here, their clothes little more than tattered rags, their eyes shining with a terror that speaks of being hunted and hurt. Several of them are injured in various ways, from burns to bruises to weeping wounds that are scattered along the visible parts of their bodies. Viego is crouched before a small girl, and as Morpheus watches, he stretches one hand out towards her face as he wipes at the tears streaming down along her cheek with the pad of his thumb. 

"You're safe now, kid," the maker murmurs, his tone soothing in a way that Morpheus has never heard from him. It's odd to hear, this gentle attentiveness from one he thinks of as a monster.

"Mithrate," the child sobs before she shoves a fist against her mouth, presumably in an effort to silence herself. Mithrate is the maker word for mother, Morpheus knows, as May had taught it to him many years ago when they'd come across a whole family of her kind in the Waking. Has this child lost her mother? Has her parents died or been left behind? He cannot say. Normally, he has no difficulty feeling out through an individual's mind and parsing out at least some details of their life, but makers are different. Their mindscapes are vast, oftentimes unruly spaces where even the freshest, most traumatic events of their existence can be nearly impossible to find.

"I know, sweetling. I know." Viego's voice is low and smooth, and as the girl trembles with her sadness, he gathers her up into his arms before shushing her softly. His hand cups the back of her head as she buries her face into his shoulder, the fabric of the shirt there muffling her pitiful cries. 

The sorrowful moment is broken when Viego glances up and seems to notice at last that Morpheus is standing mere feet from him. In an instant, his previously sympathetic expression hardens into the impassiveness that Morpheus has come to expect from him. It doesn't stop the maker from carefully pulling away from the girl, from offering her a comforting smile as he takes her hand and walks her to another woman in the small group. Leaning closer to her, he relays something in hushed tones, and Morpheus thinks he hears the phrase watch over her, but he cannot be certain. 

It occurs to Morpheus then that Viego has helped these individuals escape from somewhere horrid, and in any other situation he might find such a thing commendable. In this one, however, he finds himself seething with rage. Is this how they found May? Had Viego's well-intentioned but careless actions here been responsible for the attack? 

Viego's manner when he stalks to where Morpheus waits is decidedly less pleasant than it had just been with the mourning child. He crosses his arms over his chest, looking weary and worn even as he levels an irritated glare at Morpheus. 

"What are you doing here, Dream?"

Morpheus' hands clench at his side in an effort to avoid visiting violence on the maker. Even the possibility that he might have been responsible for the risk May was put in is rage inducing to him. "Your sister," he begins roughly, "is in the Dreaming."

Viego's eyes narrow, all of him visibly tensing as if he's preparing for a fight before he walks past Morpheus.

"Not here," he relays brusquely as he gestures with two of his fingers that Morpheus should follow him, and Morpheus does as he's requested. From the fidgety state of the makers assembled here, he imagines it is not too large a leap to assume that Viego does not wish to expose them to their soon-to-be argument.  

After they've both made their way to a secluded spot between a stack of crates and a single wall of this building, Viego turns to him, worry writ plainly on his features. "What do you mean by that? What's happened? Is she okay?"

Morpheus cannot help his derisive scoff. "That is singularly amusing coming from you, given that your actions could very well have been what put her in danger this day."

Viego's jaw tightens. "My actions? My actions? The only reason she's even in harm's way at all right now is because you knocked her up and threw her out of your realm. And what the hell do you mean about her being in danger today? What happened?"

Morpheus feels that shame from earlier grow considerably, becoming more vitriolic inside of himself. Viego is… not entirely wrong. Had he not cast May from him, she would still be content to stay in the safety of the Dreaming throughout her pregnancy. But she had betrayed him, and so in this matter he knows that she is as least as responsible for their separation as he is. "Who is Viktor?"

The maker goes rigid, his shoulders bunching up as if he is readying for a physical blow. "Where did you hear that name?" he asks, his voice deepening to nothing more an emotional rasp, and it occurs to Morpheus that he sounds… frightened almost. "You need to tell me what the fuck has happened right this goddamned minute."

"Viktor is the name given to me by her would-be abductor only an hour or so ago. She is physically unharmed, but I cannot help the feeling that this utterly shortsighted undertaking of yours is what led them to her."

"It's not shortsighted, Dream. For fuck's sake, they're innocent people."

The anger that overwhelms Morpheus at that statement is nearly staggering, rising up within him so quickly that he worries he might retch with the suddenness of it. In a flash, he grabs hold of Viego's shirt, shoving him back into the wall of the warehouse behind him with so much force that cracks appear there. 

"And your sister? Our child?" he snarls. "Are they not innocent in all of this? And yet you might have condemned them to discovery by-"

Viego grasps at Morpheus' hands on him, no doubt trying to free himself from the ironclad restraint he's in. "Yeah. Let fuckin' go of me. You can stow that shit right now. I've been doing this for thousands of years, and they've never tracked us this way. Never."

"Tell me of Viktor, Viego. Who is he? What does he want with your sister?" At Viego's infuriatingly stubborn silence, Morpheus tightens his grip. "Speak. Or I will be forced to put my questions to her."

It's an empty threat, one that he would never follow through with due to the other devastatingly horrible thing he had learned from May's thoughts earlier. 

Namely that someone had cursed her by way of a memory spell. 

He's known for some time that something was affecting her remembrance of certain events, the curious dungeon nightmare having been an all too alarming testament to that, though he had not understood then why she should dream of her past and not remember anything of it in her waking hours. Today when that light had flared in her thoughts as she tried to recall who Viktor was, when her own mind had gone blank afterwards, he had understood the cause of her very specific forgetfulness in a revelatory second. And as he had, he had felt sickened to his core. 

Memory spells are intricate, malevolent things. They get inside of a victim and twine about their mind like some poisonous, invasive weed. And like a deadly weed, they have the ability to choke out anything near them, to render their host's thoughts into naught but a mess of nothingness. Sometimes even permanently, leading to an eternity of their sufferers being left as little more than a hollowed out shell.

Which is why that while Morpheus indeed requires answers as to what has happened to her, he would not press her for them. He will not risk her. He cannot risk her. And he is painfully aware that however he might wish to deny it, that sentiment is not due to the child she now carries. 

"She… doesn't know about… about him."

"By which you mean she does not remember him," Morpheus corrects in a growl. He'll have no half-answers from the maker concerning something as important as this.

Viego stops struggling, glancing away with so much heartbroken sorrow on his face that Morpheus finds his own hold of him slackening slightly. Viego does not discount his accusation, does not deny that her memories are compromised, and the implications of this render Morpheus nearly stricken. It's true. It's.... true. "Viego… What has happened to her memory?"

Mulishly, Viego's jaw clenches anew, and as he turns his attention back to Morpheus, his eyes are burning with fury. "It's none of your business. You gave up any right to that when you fucking banished her."

Morpheus' anger swells to match the maker's. "Need I remind you that she carries my child?" he hisses. "And you dare to say that I have no right to know who might bring harm to her? I will ask you only one last time, Viego. Who. Is. Viktor?"

"He's… He's the being who… assumed kingship of the Bloodless Lands," Viego supplies at last, "after… after our father was killed."

Morpheus huffs out a bitter, caustic laugh at this dissembling. Everyone in the supernatural community knows that it was Viego himself who ended Hadrius King, his own sire. "Am I to gather that you were unable to take the throne due to your part in murdering him?"

The guilt in Viego's expression is rather expected, but Morpheus still can't help the feeling that something seems... off about it.

"I was kicked out of the realm, okay? May… was left behind with… with him."

Morpheus feels as if the core of him, as if his very power itself, is twisting fearfully in response to this information. "For what purpose does he seek her now? Does he wish for her to fight in his-"

"No," Viego cuts in quickly. "It's… It's not that."

"Then explain all of this that I might better understand," he orders, the material clenched in his fist nearly disintegrating from both his power and his strength. "Elaborate, Viego."

The maker looks away again as if he cannot bear to meet Morpheus' eyes, as if he is ashamed, and an insidious wave of alarm skitters over the edges of Morpheus' awareness. What could be so horrendous that Viego is obviously troubled to even speak it aloud?

"I only know what… what I've heard as rumors. He… The… I've been told that he was trying to force a bond with her, to marry her so that his rule would be seen as more… legitimate."

Morpheus recoils, finally releasing Viego as he takes a step back from him. That vile creature seeks to… wed her? To force her into such a union? And all to solidify a claim to a throne? "Forced bonds… are impossible," he murmurs, the words tumbling from his mouth before he even has a chance to think on them. 

Viego straightens. "That didn't stop the crazy fucker from trying anyway."

Morpheus thinks he might retch, his imagination supplying him a disgusting batch of possibilities for how one might go about trying to accomplish something so heinous as forcing the twining of power, awareness, and very essences of two entities when one is unwilling. He knows, as appalling of a realization as it is, that such a thing would amount to little better than enslavement. 

"And what did these attempts… entail?" he asks in a harsh voice that he scarcely recognizes for all the panic within it, unsure as to whether or not he truly wants to hear what Viego might soon tell him. 

"That is actually none of your business. You found out what you needed to know. I gave you the who, why, and when. I abso-fucking-lutely refuse to go into the how with you."

It does not take a great leap of logic to understand in that moment that Viego likely knows exactly what was done to her, exactly what abuse was visited on her for the simple crime of who she was, and that he will share none of these details with Morpheus. "Her memory? Did he… Did he take that from her?"

"All I can tell you is that she was… really messed up afterwards, Dream."

That is a wholly unsurprising admission to Morpheus. That she had been messed up afterwards is not a fact he has any difficulty believing. She had apparently been through something horrific, through an ordeal that altered the very workings of her mind, and so Morpheus can very easily imagine that she had indeed been overwrought then. How has he never heard of this, never caught so much as a whisper of this catastrophe. Could she have even told him of it? Did she have any remembrance of these events at all? Would she have breathed a word of it to him were she able? Not for the first time that day, he feels as if he's failed her in some vague way that he doesn't understand, as if he should have done more for her despite that he hasn't the first clue of how to approach this. 

"How do we keep her safe?" Morpheus demands. This must be his concern now. His own maudlin musings aside, May is in very real peril, the kind that could see her taken or killed, and Morpheus knows that no matter what has happened in their past, he can never allow such a thing to come about in their present. 

"The same way I've always kept her safe. We'll go to ground." Viego glances towards the direction where the survivors are. "I'll get these guys to the next checkpoint and start setting up new identities for us. Our old ones are obviously compromised."

"Perhaps while you manage this, it might be prudent for her to stay with me in the Dreaming."

Viego seems to study him then, his brow furrowing as he blatantly scrutinizes Morpheus. "She's… really not going to like that."

"Have you a better suggestion?"

A look of pure defeat crosses the maker's face before he sighs. "No. I don't."

"It would be safer for her to remain there permanently. If you could persuade her to make her home in my-"

Viego holds up a hand, palm out as if to urge him to stop. "You and I both know she's not going to do that, Dream. Not anymore."

"No.... I suppose she will not." Resignation churns inside Morpheus' mind at that bleak acceptance. He knows all too well that May distrusts him, that she might always distrust him, but he knows not how to change her views regarding this belief of hers. 

"Not unless the two of you patch things up," is Viego's hesitant response, and Morpheus fixes him with a wary stare despite how shocking the words are. 

"Viego-"

"Just listen. Things are bad between you guys, but they're not so far gone that they can't be fixed."

As much as Morpheus might dislike Viego (loathe if he's being less generous) the sound of hope in the maker's voice is still bittersweet. That he thinks there is anything remaining to fix in the aftermath of the blazing inferno that destroyed May and Morpheus' relationship is strangely and foolishly optimistic of him.  After all, it matters not that Morpheus loves her still. She has betrayed him, deceived him, and in doing so set fire to what they had. Everything between them has burned away to ashes so that there is nothing left of their relationship to save. Resolutely, Morpheus tells him, "Your sister and I are finished."

Viego snorts out a laugh as if what Morpheus has spoken is an absurdly humorous lie. "Says the entity that slips into her room every night to watch her sleep."

Which… Yes, he is not incorrect regarding that. Morpheus does regularly observe her as she rests, but he has a valid reasoning for doing such a thing. "She is suffering from nightmares, and I merely wish to-"

"Yeah. I don't buy that for a second. And I don't think you do either. You loved her. You loved her more fiercely than I think anyone ever has."

"An irrelevant conclusion given that I love her no longer." The second it is out of his mouth, Morpheus knows it to be false. In truth, he worries at times that he will never free himself of the love he has for her, that he is cursed to always feel this crushing wave of sentiment for a woman that had hurt him so gravely. 

"Really? That's… You know what? Just never mind. Tell yourself whatever you want."

He does not address that, feeling incapable of even putting to words the complicated knot of emotions he has concerning May and how fervently he still cares for her. "After your task here is complete, you might come to the Dreaming. She will likely take the news of her necessary stay there more readily were it to come from you."

"Of course."

Morpheus feels himself falter. The concession he is soon to give is a difficult thing to come to terms with, one that he is regardless driven to make. He tells himself that he does not do this out of love but more out of practicality. May is quite obviously ill, worn down both emotionally and physically from the toll of the recent upsets in her life. All of which, he's painfully aware, stem from her pregnancy, a condition she neither sought out nor seems to want much to do with now. He owes her more help than the nothing he has currently supplied to her, and while this gesture will not mend things between them, it might reduce some of the strain of what she's grappling with. 

 "If you should like to visit while she resides with… in my realm, then I would not be opposed to you doing so. It would… likely lessen her fears to maintain contact with you, to know that you are hale and whole. I am aware that she worries when the two of you are separated."

"And you're… cool with that?" Viego questions in audible disbelief. It is  a fair reaction, Morpheus thinks, since he has never been exactly welcoming where Viego's occasional appearances in the realm were concerned.

"I would not have offered otherwise. I… do not wish for her to be anxious during her time in the Dreaming."

Though the truth is slightly more complex than that. In all honesty, he does not wish for her to be anxious in any place she might be, but given that Viego is staring at him as if to say see, you love her still, Morpheus is unwilling to confess this to him. Thankfully, the maker does not draw attention anew to the matter of Morpheus' feelings for May or how much this reluctant invitation smacks of the selflessness inherent in love. 

"Then… yeah. I'll, uh… I'll try and stop by every day if that's okay."

The sound of the little girl crying ratchets up again, drifting across the warehouse to reach them both where they're at, and Morpheus allows Viego a small nod as he prepares to leave. "Very well. I will return to your sister and see you shortly."

On the pier in the Dreaming Sea, May sits and stares out at the water. There's a faint blue-green glow coming from the sky here, the galaxies and stars above shining where they spin slowly, lazily amidst the darkness above her. Thick plumes of fog roll in from the sea all around, and May watches the way that the wisps of it rise and roll and undulate against the surface as she tries to muddle through her own wildly unsettled thoughts. 

She had known upon first discovering her pregnancy that she had completely and irrevocably fucked up, but the events of the day have only driven that point home to her with all the force of a goddamned sledgehammer being wielded by the Hulk. Comfortable as she tends to be with owning up to her mistakes (and she has had lots of practice with those in her very long life), the realization that the baby growing inside of her could actually be one is a bitter pill to swallow. What kind of mother can she even be given that she can glance down at where her child is growing and think: Oops, probably shouldn't have done that?

The truth is that she's always wanted kids, always wanted little ones of her own to raise with all the love she never got as a youth herself, but faced with the possibility of actually having a baby in the near future, she can't help but to wonder if maybe that was… selfish of her. It doesn't feel like a particularly good or even acceptable reason to bring a kid into this world, especially given how royally fucked everything in her life is at the moment. 

The air gets heavy behind her, the atoms there swelling with the telltale energy of a shift, and May turns back just as Morpheus materializes there. 

"Is Viego-"

"He is well," Morpheus cuts in as he walks to where she is and sits gracefully beside her, mere inches of space between them. To be completely fair, though, the pier is on the smallish side in terms of width, so she guesses she can understand the lack of distance now. He draws his knees up and rests his wrists on them, staring out at the sea just like she'd been doing only minutes before. "He will arrive soon to speak with you concerning your temporary living arrangements."

Temporary living arrangements. May's stomach twists so violently that she has to swallow down bile. Though she might occasionally do idiotic things, she is, in fact, not an idiot. And she knows all too well what Viego's probably going to tell her. "What are you talking about," she asks anyway. 

Morpheus hesitates, as if he doesn't want to say whatever he's about to, and that alarm she's feeling kicks up to eleven billion on a scale of one to ten. His voice softens fractionally as he answers, "You will need to remain in this realm for a time while your brother establishes a new residence for you both."

Tears gather in her eyes as she glances away, unwilling for him to see how truly terrified by that prospect she is. Staying here? In this place? It's not that May hates the Dreaming. Not at all. It's actually quite the opposite. Once, she had loved it here, had known peace and happiness and safety for the first time in her life within the walls surrounding this realm. But that's really the problem with being thrust back into it, isn't it? Her emotions already feel like they're being held together with the thinnest thread imaginable, and she's afraid that having this memory of what almost was, this stupid dream of hers, taken away again might just tear through that thread like the fragile, delicate thing it is.

"I… see," she murmurs just to fill the sudden awkward silence. She tries to keep her voice even, tries to force herself calm though the slight wobble she can hear in her voice is probably a dead giveaway to him of how she actually feels about this. 

"I am sorry if this is… disagreeable to you." He sounds so genuine, so soothing, that her tears start to well up faster and then fall down her face. Hastily, she wipes at them. 

"Yeah, well it's not your fault that there are makers after me," May offers with a sniff. She keeps her gaze focused on the distance in an effort to avoid him, embarrassed that he might catch sight of her crying. It's not so bad, right? It's just for a little while, and shacking up with her ex isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to her. Not that she can honestly remember what that worst thing is, but she's sure there was something. It's more like she just knows she's been through a very terrible ordeal at some point in her existence. 

"Yes… Viktor is assuredly a threat."

Confused, May looks over at him. "Who?"

Morpheus goes still, guilty like a kid that's been caught with a can of spray paint in their hands next to their parents' spray painted car. "I… No one. It is nothing you need to concern yourself with."

Viktor. Viktor, he had said. She turns the name over and over in her mind. It seems so… familiar for some reason, like she ought to know instantly who that is. 

A memory flashes in her head, something painful and violent that rips through her thoughts with all the lethal ferocity of a serrated blade coming down hard onto her. 

(Blood coating her thighs. The bite of too-tight shackles about her wrist. Her screams muffled in the suffocating fabric of the gag shoved into her mouth. A man's voice taunting her as she cries. The thought that she would gladly accept death over what was being done to her in that moment.)

"Vik… Viktor," she breathes out, a feeling of desolation taking root in her stomach and wrenching it savagely. 

A white light creeps into her thoughts, slow and steady until it flares brightly, washing away everything in its brilliant shine. She hears Morpheus inhale sharply, and when she glances at him, he seems… wrecked. There's a suspicious shine to his soft blue eyes, and he's regarding her like he wants nothing more than to reach out and embrace her. 

What the hell had they been discussing that's got him this worked up? They'd been talking about… about…. It's hard to concentrate for some reason, and it takes her several long minutes of intense focusing before she eventually remembers that they'd been on the subject of her stay here. 

May frowns, thinking that he's probably just as nervous about the idea of all this as she is, that for all his repeated invitations to come and live here, he might actually be just as put off by the idea of sharing a roof with an ex as she is. His hand twitches, and May has the strangest feeling that he wants to touch her, that he wants to take her into his arms and comfort her even. It must be instinct for him, something he's actively fighting against. It had been his habit to do that in the past, to gather her up and console her when she got too overwhelmed, and she is definitely overwhelmed right now. 

Despite that the thought of an embrace is all too tempting, May's glad that he doesn't try to offer her that kind of solace then. 

After all, she doesn't really know how she'd handle that. Hell, she doesn't even know if she could handle that in this moment. All of her feels brittle, like she's a vase made of the shoddiest, most breakable glass, sitting on the edge of a counter as the ground shakes from a fucking massive earthquake. One more tremor, and she's going to topple over, probably just to shatter into a million pieces when she hits the floor. 

"Right. I…" She scrambles for the words in her mind, for the correct thing to say that might somehow make this whole shitty situation less horrible. "Thank you for opening your home to me."

He tenses visibly. "It is not only… my home, May. We will share a child, and as such you will always have a place here."

It's only with a gargantuan effort that she doesn't scoff at him for this. He'd offered her this realm once before. When he'd proposed, he'd gotten down on one knee in front of her and promised he would love her for eternity, that he would make her his queen and that this… this splendid world would be her kingdom as well as his. That was before he'd changed his mind and thrown her out of it like trash, of course, before he'd judged her past actions and found her wanting. 

"Don't say that. Don't ever say anything like that again," she snaps, her heart beating faster and faster in a furious staccato as anger rises within her. How dare he. How dare him place that possibility in front of her like it's just the most plausible thing in any world. Doesn't he understand how pathetically hopeful it makes her? Does he really not get that it reminds her of things she's trying desperately to never ever think of? She had his love, and they were content. Her future had been beautiful, and now they're apart despite the fact that she can't even remember why that is most days. 

"It is merely the truth of the matter."

"No. The truth of the matter is that this isn't my home. I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere, Morpheus."

And that, she thinks, is much closer to honesty than whatever bullshit he'd just been trying to sell her. He'd cast her out, had flung her away from his life and this realm like she was just a speck of filthy mud on the bottom of his boots, and there's no coming back from that. For either of them.

"I understand that-"

"You don't understand anything," May interrupts, unwilling to listen to his serene calm while he lies to her about how things are now. Her body trembles with the blazing inferno of everything going on in her head. She's fucking heartbroken, heartbroken and afraid. There are literally people trying to kill her, and he's dangling the prospect of being able to leave that behind forever over her like it's the universe's juiciest steak and she's just a starved dog. 

"You are frightened," he goes on, studying her as if he's trying to figure her out, as if the idea that she's scared shitless is surprising to him or something. 

May feels the air rush out of her lungs when she recoils slightly.  "Of course I'm frightened, Morpheus. I'm powerless right now and… and I'm at your mercy. You. The same entity that cast me out like I was nothing and very clearly hates me. Add that into the fact that there are insane makers trying to fucking enslave me, and I'm…. It's not exactly an ideal spot to be in, okay?"

A normal man might leave it, might wander off and give her a minute to process the enormity of how terrifying a turn everything in her life has taken, but not Morpheus. Oh, no. The universe, in its infinite wisdom and all around assholishness, can't even allow her to have that. 

"I have told you before as I will reiterate anew: I do not hate you. It would perhaps be for the best if you disabuse yourself of that notion immediately." There's an edge of frustration to his tone, like she's being annoying by thinking his actions couldn't spell out hatred any more plainly than they do.

"Yeah, sure."

"As you well know, I do not often bother with lies."

May scoffs, and it's a bitter, hollow sound. "You're saying that to me? Me? When you've lied to me more times than I can count?"

"Of what do you speak?" His voice is low enough that it's practically little more than a growl.

"You don't do to someone that you love what you did to me. So, I know now every time you said that, every time you confessed your love for me, you were really just bullshitting."

He rears back as if she's smacked him. "You… cannot truly believe this."

"I don't just believe it, Morpheus. I know it."

Magic starts to filter in on the pier behind them, the molecules growing denser and denser as it does. Morpheus, however, does not turn his attention towards the disturbance, instead keeping his intent gaze on her, his eyes burning with some emotion that she can't name. It almost looks like regret or longing or sorrow or maybe just a mishmash of all those things together. 

And May just resolutely ignores it, getting to her feet as the blanket tumbles from her shoulders to land in a heap on the wood planks beneath her. Not far from her stands Viego, and she doesn't waste a second in going to him, in wrapping her arms around his neck so that she can cling. Viego is safe. Viego has always been safe, and the relief she has at knowing he's okay is the best thing ever amidst all the contradictory feelings currently threatening to overtake her. 

He gathers her up in one of his big bear hugs, dropping a kiss in the tangled mess of her hair. "I'm fine, sis. Dream told me what happened, though. Are you all right?"

No, she's not all right. Why does everyone seem to think she should be? Why the hell do they all keep asking her that? May disentangles from him. "Of course I am," she lies anyway. 

His answering grin is a wide one for all that she can see how fake it is, like he's putting on a mask of playfulness for her benefit. "Fibber," is his teasing accusation. 

It surprises a small laugh out of her, and she's so caught up in her happiness at the small win of Viego not being dead, in seeing that he's well, that she almost doesn't notice as Morpheus stalks past the two of them. 

"Viego," he starts, his voice rough, "I will see you on the morrow," he throws out over his shoulder, the energy of a shift amassing around him.

May frowns at Morpheus in complete confusion. "Wait… What?"

"I have invited your brother to visit you here. I thought this compromise might lessen your anxiety concerning this situation."

He had…. He had invited Viego? He hadn't even liked to do that when they were happy and in love. And now he's offering it just because... because she's stressed? It doesn't make any sense. "I… Do you mean that?"

Finally, he turns back, his eyes meeting hers, softening somehow in a gentleness that makes her breath catch. She's taken aback by how haunted his expression seems, by how much sorrow is coming off of him in great shuddering waves of sheer melancholy. 

"I would not have spoken it had I not meant it, May." 

And then he's gone, leaving her behind to stare at where he had just been, a sharp pain radiating out through her heart as if something between them has been sundered anew. She tells herself that it's not her fault, though, and that it really doesn't matter. After all, things are already broken between them beyond repair. What's one more crack in the demolished foundation that their relationship had been built on? Maybe he had loved her in the past, but right now… Right now they are very much in the present, and she has way bigger things to worry about than upsetting him. 

For some reason, however, none of her attempts to convince herself otherwise actually do much about that dull, throbbing ache in her chest, the one that reminds her curiously enough of heartbreak.

Tag list: @julesandro @cozystorynook

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

PART II: These Tender, Loving Mercies

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

PART III: When It All Falls Down

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

PART IV: The Dark of War

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Epilogue

Sometimes He's Sweet

Morpheus hates the holidays.

As excited as she seems to experience the mortal holiday, he's… less so. Much less so. With the entire collective unconscious contained within him, this time of year can be wholly overwhelming, a miasma of too much red and green, too much worry, too much loneliness, too much excitement, too many similarly themed dreams, too many similarly themed nightmares, and far far too many holiday songs. It all bleeds out from the collective unconscious into his own mind, sticks there like weeping sap to a tree until he feels half-mad with the unrelenting presence of it, with his inability to get free from its cloying trespass upon his very being.

This is just a little sweet fluff for the holiday season. It takes place between chapters 19 and 20 of "All the Precious and Fragile Things". No spoilers here if you've read that far!

The Dog Debacle (or how best to sneak a dragon into the dreaming)

Morpheus' daughter gets a new dog.

Well..... kind of.

That Familiar Feeling of Family (or how Hob Gadling ended up as an uncle to his stranger's oftentimes feral children)

It's a pretty universally known thing that families are just strange. As Hob is quickly figuring out, however, this little fact is magnified by AT LEAST a billion when the family in question is Endless.

(A lighthearted story in which Hob Gadling finds out his stranger has married, makes friends with a homicidal maniac/ruler, and manages to become an exemplary uncle to a pack of magically mischievous children. Really, now all he has to do is convince everyone to stop calling his and Dream's weekly meetups "playdates", and then his life would be practically perfect.)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

The Maker, the Muse, and the Sundered Song

In his temple, what remains of Orpheus waits in trepidation. Something is changing. Something that he knows might alter the very fabric of the world as he understands it.

Finally freed from captivity, Calliope struggles to make any meaningful changes to the laws that saw her bound and taken in the first place. When the strange woman appears on Mount Parnassus and offers help, Calliope knows she would be a fool not to accept it. Even if she thinks that she's being lied to.

Meanwhile in the peace of the Dreaming, Morpheus grapples with guilt over his son's fate. As he basks in the love of his new children, he can't help but to regret his own failings where Orpheus is concerned.

And as for May, she's really just got a job to do. And her own traumatic issues to deal with. And if it's all hella awkward because she's having to work alongside her husband's ex-wife, she'll see it done anyway. There's even the small possibility that she might eventually admit to Calliope the truth about her identity. That is if she can ever actually work up the courage to say it aloud.

Chapter 1

Nothing in This Closet but Boots and a Boy

Morpheus is wildly protective of his daughter.

That's probably bad for the boy in said daughter's closet.

AU's and Other Stuff in the Sandman 'Verse

Of Exes, Hellhounds, and Waffle Fries

Morpheus shows up to rescue the woman he probably loves (though he won't admit it) from hellhounds and ends up getting roped into helping with her family. This is one of those extras that doesn't fit into the main story, but it's fun, so I'm posting it.

The Bizarre Breeding Habits of Anthropomorphic Personifications

It's a tale as old as time.

Two idiots fall in love. Two idiots fall out of love.

Neither one of them is expecting a baby to come along and derail their unhappily ever after.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Original Fanart

I like to play around with different styles and to try new things with my artwork. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm still learning, and I am so far from being a professional that it's laughable. But I only post things that I think look decent or that I think others might enjoy.

The Lover's Argument (Morpheus x oc)

Oneiros (Morpheus in Grecian garb)

Try being the operative term here, because while he is indeed foolishly attempting it, he's also failing miserably if the puff of steamed breath that's tickling his neck is any indication. Which he guesses makes an inordinate amount of sense. Really, has he mentioned already how massive his pursuer is? 

The beast behind him lets out a loud, guttural roar, its feet causing the ground to shake as it chases after him like it's just a giant dog and he's got a half opened packet of hot dogs in his coat pocket. 

Hob idly wonders whether he'll actually die if (probably better to say when) that thing finally catches and devours him. He's never had the misfortune of being consumed before, so he's not quite sure how that will work out for him. What if there's just an arm left? Will it still be him? Will he spend his eternity as nothing more than a single discarded body part that has sentience but no way to speak? 

"Archibald! No! Bad!"

The voice, when it calls out this rather ludicrous admonishment, is definitely that of a child. A little girl if he had to guess, and when he does a quick glance around to see where she might be at (so he can hopefully save her from being eaten) he's shocked to spot her standing near his would-be killer. For a minute, Hob can't make sense of what he's seeing. The girl is in front of the reptilian monster, uncomfortably close to one of its frankly enormous nostrils, and she's pointing a finger at it, wearing the sternest expression on her youthful features that he's ever seen in his life.

The dragon crouches down, hanging its head as if in shame while the child, his possible savior, roundly chastises it. "Archie! You know better. What would Dadda say?"

She softens her scolding, though, by running one of her tiny hands along the leathery snout over its mouth, the same mouth that Hob is completely certain is filled with rows and rows of razor sharp teeth, and he isn't quite sure how to handle this. What’s the protocol here? He feels frozen as he watches the scene unfold before him, not knowing whether he should intervene and usher the girl out of harm's way or whether she’s really in any danger at all, since she seems almost as if…. as if she commands this thing? Like a young Daenerys Targaryen, except for the facts that she looks to be about five and she's clothed in a ridiculously frilly pink dress paired with shiny, immaculately black combat boots.

He's honestly… so confused. But he finds himself moving closer anyway, driven by that curiosity he’s never lost in all of his hundreds of years of living.

The girl seems to gentle towards her… pet? Can a dragon even be called a pet? He's having difficulty thinking of this nightmarish creature as anything so mundane, but even he has to admit that it’s exactly what the hellbeast appears to be regardless. 

"He won't let you… won't let you be a dragon if he… finds out about this."

The dragon, that he's just starting to process must be named Archibald or Archie, since he's heard her say it a couple times, lowers its massive head to nuzzle against the child, a puff of steam unfurling from its nostrils to ruffle her hair as it huffs like it's pouting. She soothes it then, stroking her fingers along its dark scales, the ones that seem shot through with a little sapphire when the brilliant sun from above hits them at just the right angle. 

"I know," she goes on. "I won't tell him, Archie, but no chasing the dreamers. Dadda was ad… ada…" She frowns at this as if she's struggling over the word. 

And Hob, having once had a precious son of his own who sometimes got caught up on pronouncing things, can't help but to offer a quiet, "Adamant?"

The little girl's face lights up, her ocean blue eyes widening at him in something like grateful glee. "Adamant," she repeats slowly. "That's… it."

He takes a minute to study her then, this too young dragon tamer. She's a small child, lovely in that same ethereal, unnatural way that he's always associated with his stranger. Her hair is a mess of riotous raven curls that seem to be coming loose from a single braid plaited at the back of her head, and her complexion is almost translucently pale save for the bright rosy flush on her cheeks. 

"I'm… Hob," he supplies with only a mite of hesitation.

Her smile is almost overwhelming in its joy. "Hi, Hob! I'm Aurora!"

And he opens his mouth then to ask after her parents and where they might be, to question her about the ferocious looking mythological beast that she seems to be in control of, but he isn't afforded the opportunity to do any of those things. Another voice joins them before he can, a melodic, otherworldly one that Hob knows all too well. 

It's his… stranger. 

His coat is longer here, draping down to the ground like something Hob would have worn in his goth punk days back in the eighties, but other than that he seems to have on the same black shirt, black pants, and black boots combo that Hob last saw him in. 

Hob takes a minute to gawk. He isn't ashamed to admit that his stranger is beautiful, all marble skin and high cut cheekbones, his hair a wild disarray of windblown black that sticks up at odd angles, almost as if it's the one part of his appearance that his magic can't seem to render as tame. 

"Aurora, what have I relayed to you concerning Archibald? I was told that he was in dragon form and terrorizing the wolves yet again."

"Dadda," the girl in question starts, sounding very contrite. "He won't do it… anymore."

His stranger's face tightens in what Hob thinks is supposed to be a severe expression, though it's clear he's not quite getting there in his daughter's bubbly presence. 

Wait.

Waaaaaait a minute.

What?

What did....

His… daughter? She'd said Dadda, hadn't she? Hadn’t she…. referred to his stranger by that title? His stranger? His stubborn, broody, took-a-century-to-admit-that-Hob-was-even-his-friend stranger? For a moment, Hob feels like he needs to sit, like he might pass out between the running for his life not ten minutes prior and the revelation that this child could belong…. to…. to Dream. 

Not that Hob ever really calls him that. He’d only gotten the name a few years ago when they'd last met, and while it had been a nice piece of information to have (and long overdue in his humble and frustrated opinion) he’d spent over six hundred years referring to his stranger as just that. And he honestly doesn’t see this habit of his changing anytime soon.

"I believe that is what I was promised when last he engaged in such unruliness," Dream goes on, seemingly oblivious to the panic attack that Hob is having. Truthfully, that shocks Hob not at all.

"He's still a… a baby, Dadda."

And yeah. Hob’s not wrong. She'd assuredly called him Dadda, had just said it again even. 

"Be that as it may, he is not permitted to wreak havoc on the realm or its inhabitants. No matter his age, starshine."

At last, Hob seems to find his voice, and he uses it to let out a small, barely there, "Dadda?"

He flushes a little with embarrassment as soon as the word is out of his mouth, because it sounds… not great. It's definitely not what he imagined himself saying at his next meeting with his oldest friend. But his stranger only goes stock still, his shoulders tensing as he glances towards Hob, his eyes narrowing in something that Hob thinks might actually be confusion.

Which… is all too completely understandable. Although, Hob will confess that he's never thought that his mopey stranger would ever be capable of looking as thoroughly perplexed as he does right this moment.

"Hob Gadling?" Dream questions.

"Is that… Is that your daughter?"

"It is," he allows slowly. "This is Aurora."

And while he introduces them, albeit awkwardly, Hob thinks he detects a fair amount of fatherly pride in the way that Dream puts one elegant, long fingered hand on the girl's shoulder to pull her against his side, in the way that his rather harsh, angular features soften as he smiles down at her. Seeing this, he supposes, might make him happy in any other situation, and it's a nice thing that his rather… er, reserved (i.e. cold, distant, and emotionally repressed, though Hob would never say it aloud) stranger is obviously comfortable enough with him to show it. 

But… this isn't any other situation. This is a rather… big piece of news that Hob's just been walloped over the head with.

“You have a child?” Hob blurts out, his brain processing this revelation so sporadically that it’s almost humiliating. 

Dream's brow furrows. “I believe that I only just conveyed as much to you. Are you…. quite well?”

“I’m sorry. A daughter? I can’t…." Hob struggles to articulate his thoughts, an utterly unsurprising complication given that he's relatively certain that this has to all be some strange fever dream. "Why didn’t you tell me about her the last time we met?”

Dream narrows his eyes again before glancing down at the girl. “Starshine, go and assist Archibald in returning to his dog form.”

Dog form? Dog form? That fire-breathing beast becomes a dog? For some reason, he's picturing Cerberus, with its three terrifying heads and the blood of those unlucky dead who try to escape the Underworld dripping from each of their corresponding fang-toothed maws. Hob wonders idly if the aneurysm he's sure to have soon is going to kill him.

“But Dadda….”

“No. He is forbidden from being a dragon for at least a week. Especially since I now see that he has been chasing the dreamers despite my explicit directive not to do so.”

Pointedly, he looks towards Hob, who in turn swings his gaze to his young, temporarily forgotten, savior. Her eyes have gone wide and pleading, and Hob feels his stomach lurch in guilt. 

"I was… just walking about, old friend."

And that wanker, that enigmatic tosspot (who hadn't even bothered to tell him he had a child) only raises an eyebrow in an expression of such incredulity that Hob knows he's trying to call bullshit without actually speaking the words. "Walking?" 

"Yes. Briskly."

That eyebrow goes somehow higher up on Dream's forehead. "By which you mean you were running."

Hob shakes his head. He's done some shady things in his very long life, but even he's not heartless enough to separate a girl from her… er, pet. "No. Not at all. Just… strolling. Vigorously."

And for some reason, Dream seems amused by this, as if he is aware that Hob is lying and it's humorous to him. “Very well. Three days then, Aurora.”

She claps gleefully (like she's just won something grand) before wandering out of earshot to presumably tend to her dragon/dog, and Morpheus grants Hob a small smile when she's gone. "You need not have lied on that vile monstrosity's behalf, Hob Gadling."

"I didn't-"

"You indeed did. This is my realm. I know all that transpires within its borders."

There's a loud pop from where the girl and the dragon are, and when Hob swings his gaze over towards them, he sees a great quantity of smoke clearing rapidly away. 

"Obviously not, or else you'd know it was on your daughter's behalf that I stretched the truth a bit," Hob snarks back.

Aurora steps out of the cloud before plopping down on the ground, followed immediately by a small, fluffy… thing that comes running out from behind her, yapping loudly. Hob winces, thinking that he almost prefers that menacing roar from earlier to the high-pitched noise it's making now.  

"You utterly discarded the truth in this case, friend."

Hob crosses his arms over his chest in a defensive gesture. He can admit to feeling a little… well, hurt that Dream obviously hadn't bothered to inform him of his child, and despite that being referred to as a friend by this brooding pillock does make him slightly less upset, he's still angry. 

"Pets are important to children. I didn't want to see her lose one to your temper."

Little Aurora pulls a sketchbook and a container of pencils from the bag that Hob is absolutely positive she hadn't had with her before. Humming, she munches happily on something that Hob thinks might be crackers, and he is suddenly aware of the fact that someone must have taken the time to pack these for her. Hob, to preserve what little bit of his sanity he has remaining, is going to assume that it was this child's mother who'd done so since he can't for the life of him imagine this eternal god-like entity before him puttering around a kitchen and preparing snacks like a normal bloke. That might be more unbelievable than the dragon as far as Hob's concerned.

"Ah. I see," Dream tells him, and it sounds almost as if he's trying to be… kind? "Let me set your mind at ease then, Hob Gadling. Even were I willing to hurt my daughter and do away with that ghastly creature, my wife would never allow such a thing. So, you need not worry over the matter."

Hob feels himself go rigid. Did he just say….. "Wait a minute? Wife?"

"You are soon to wake, Hob."

"Oh, no, no, no," Hob protests, putting his hands up, palm out, towards Dream. "You need to explain to me what you mean by wife."

It's no use, though. Between one blink and the next, Hob is lurching from his sleep, the image of his stranger smirking at him still fresh in his mind. His breathing is heavy, and he's soaked through with sweat, enough so that he knows he's going to have to change the sheets today. Wearily, he scrubs a tired hand over his face, and he tells himself that all of that must have been some strange fever dream, after all. 

Reaching out for the bottle of water he keeps by his bed, Hob is alarmed to see a piece of paper folded and tucked there. He snatches it up, opening the thick parchment to reveal an array of hearts drawn and colored in what he thinks might be twenty different shades of crayon. The message at the bottom is done in a messy, childish scrawl, and it reads:

Deer Mr. Hob. It wuz nise to sea u. Visit agin turmeric, pleeze. 

And Hob Gadling, who'd once won immortality just with the questionable skill of being able to run his mouth, finds that in this case, he can only stare blankly at the invitation in complete silence.

The relief he'd felt at finding her had given him only a moment of solace, a brief flicker of the sensation before the mess of emotional turmoil roiling in his mind had swiftly transformed into indignation. How. Dare. She. How dare she engage in such a foolish stunt. How dare she endanger herself and their child by way of such astounding recklessness. Makers are hunted regularly and mercilessly by witches and gods and all manner of supernatural creatures, and any who had happened upon her in her current weakened state would have surely made short work of capturing her. 

In the underground area where he'd finally located her, Morpheus stalks to her vehicle as she gets out of it, her face wan and weary in fatigue, all of her as worn out as she herself has been these days past.  

"No… I was driving. I don't answer when I'm driving. You know that….. No…. I just had some stuff to take care of…. I'm keeping a low profile. No…. Stop it. I wasn't followed…. Yes…. " she says into the phone held against her ear. "You did what? Why… Why would you do that?" She pauses, and he notices that there's a bottle of water in her hand that she takes a seemingly reluctant drink of, grimacing in disgust at the taste. "No, Viego. I don't know how to get a hold of him right this moment. He doesn't exactly carry a phone or-" 

"There is no need to seek me out," he cuts in roughly. "I am here." 

His sudden appearance startles her, and she recoils a little at the sight of him, the hand holding her water coming up to rest over her heart as if to soothe the too-rapid beat of that organ. 

"Viego," she relays over the phone, her voice shaking slightly. "I'm going to have to call you back. Morpheus is… Yeah…. Don't worry about summoning him again. No, I'm looking at him right now." 

He glowers her way, his hands clenched tight at his side as he works to calm himself. "You might inform him that I will be personally bringing you home this-" 

"We'll be back in a bit. No…. I've got errands to run. Don't worry about it. Bye." She presses a button on her device and slides it into the small bag hanging from her shoulder, clearly careful in her attempt at ignoring him as he fumes before her. 

"Not in a bit, as you say. We will be leaving immediately for-" 

"Can't. Won't. Not gonna happen." 

He seethes, his anger ratcheting up at her apparent nonchalance over the gravity of her folly. "Are you aware of the danger inherent in being outside of the warding protecting you?" 

"Look, I left Viego a voicemail letting him know about all this. I'm sorry if he roped you into something that you shouldn't have even had to stress about." 

"You cannot be oblivious enough to think that is why I am infuriated," he growls. "Both Viego and myself have been scouring this city for the better part of an hour, terrified you had been taken by some enemy that meant you harm. And your response to worrying us so dramatically is that you had errands you need attend? There is no excuse for removing yourself from the warding, especially in light of the fact that it is the only thing keeping you safe in your condition." 

With great effort, he attempts to settle his raging temper, aware as he is that it would do this world no favors were he to lose control of his powers while in it. 

"Worrying you so dramatically? I mean, dramatically is definitely a word I'd use with how you're acting," May snarks before taking another sip of her water.  

"And what precisely is the meaning of that?" 

"Just that this is ridiculous. I'm a grown woman. I'll go where I want and do what I want, and you are both welcome to take that suffocating overprotectiveness that you're holding over my face like a pillow and shove it up your-" 

"Do not," he snaps. "Now, gather your things. I am returning you to your brother." 

"I am not a package that you can just hand off back and forth. And I am absolutely not going anywhere with you until I'm done. I have something I have to take care of in about-" She checks her watch. "Thirty minutes. There's a diner near here if you want to get coffee while you wait for me to finish, but I am not leaving." 

He clenches his jaw hard enough that he would break teeth were he human. "What aim could be so important that you would foolishly risk being captured to accomplish it?" 

"It's none of your-" 

"If you finish that sentence with the word business, I will grab hold of you this moment and shift you. I've no patience for your recalcitrance this day." 

May scoffs derisively. "You not having patience? Wooow. Color me shocked." 

"Tell me what you deemed so necessary that it justified this… imprudence," he hisses, ignoring her sarcastic remark as to his composure.

Oh, no no no no no. Don't throw up. Do not throw up. You've got to keep your water down for just another hour. You can do it, but not… not if you're going to keep fighting. So fuckin' de-escalate this mess and stop being stubborn. It's for the baby. You can absolutely swallow your pride for the baby's sake, damn it.  

He frowns at her, thoroughly confused at these words of hers flitting across his awareness. She is not speaking them aloud, and yet he hears them clearly in his mind, a rather puzzling occurrence given that he's never really been able to read her thoughts, never been able to peek past her mental shields and figure out what's going on in her head. He wonders if the dwindling disappearance of her magic is the cause of this, the usual walls around her mind possibly fading as her powers are and allowing him the capability to read her as easily as she might peruse a book. 

The color drains from her complexion as what he assumes is nausea overcomes her, and she draws in a few deep breaths, seemingly steadying herself before she gestures vaguely towards a concrete wall of this strange, cavernous area they're both in, the one that smells of fossil fuels and is full of nothing but stationary vehicles. He thinks it's known as a parking garage, but he's never truly been in one before, so he is unsure as to whether or not that is precisely what this darkened, poorly lit monstrosity is. "I'm… going there. Okay? I'm… I'm visiting a doctor." 

His eyes narrow as he glances first where she has indicated and then back at her. "That is naught but a wall." 

She rolls her eyes at him as if what he's said is absurdly exasperating to her. "There's a building on the other side of the street from here with a doctor in it. I'm going there." 

"You have found a suitable healer?" 

She fidgets in front of him, playing with the label on the bottle still in her hand. "No. I'm… I'm going to a regular human doctor." 

He's taken aback by this, wholly surprised as he moves closer to her. "A human doctor?"

Her fidgeting increases, the movements getting more pronounced. "Yeah… because I'm… well, pregnant. And Tammy was right." 

"Tammy? Who is Tammy? And what use will a mortal physician be in your case? Need I remind you that you are no human."

She rolls her eyes again and scoffs as if he's the one who's said something nonsensical. "Whaaaat? Are you sure? Well damn, I guess that totally explains the being alive for thousands of years and not aging thing. I just thought it was my kick ass moisturizer keeping me all young looking." 

"May-" 

Her arms cross over her chest, and it makes her appear… smaller somehow, fragile. "A human doctor is kind of all there is," she admits with a heavy sigh, a thread of defeat woven into her confession.  

His mouth turns down at her words, his brows knitting together as he considers this, grasping for some sort of understanding. "I fail to see-" 

"I'm sure you do, but… please don't argue with me on this. Whatever opinions you might have about me getting checked out by this guy today, the fact remains that he's got a hell of a lot more answers than I do right now, and I… I need answers." 

She looks away when she says this, avoiding his gaze as a barely there blush lights up what he can see of her face in its sideways profile. An unexpected shame curls in his stomach as he considers the situation before him. She's worried, obviously so, and yet she feels compelled to plead with him on this matter, to ask that he leave her be as she attempts to seek help for herself. The fact that part of this is his doing, that her current suffering is a direct result of the child he'd put inside of her, makes him feel… lowly, as if he should hate himself for adding to the burden of what she carries now when he knows he should be doing what he can to lighten it.  

"Very well. If it will… assist you, then I've nothing to say except that I… should like to accompany you."  

Shock takes over her expression as she at last turns back to him. "Wait. What?" 

"I said that I should like to accompany you. If you will permit me, of course." 

Her eyes narrow at him, scrutinizing his face as if searching for any sign that he is lying. "Are you… sure?" 

No, he is assuredly not certain of this course, but telling her so would do neither of them any favors. "I would scarcely have offered were I not." 

"But… why?" She seems perplexed that he should wish to be with her while doing this, uncomprehending of the possibility that he might desire to help her. 

"I dislike the idea of you being unattended while you are so…" Weakened, he wants to say, powerless and fragile and ill. He does not speak those things, however, since he feels that to call her any of them might reignite the ever-present tension inherent in their new dynamic. "Indisposed." 

She blows out a breath that's half laugh, half frustration. "I'm not a Victorian debutante. It's perfectly fine for me to be alone." 

Alone. That word. It coils in his belly like a poisonous snake, sinking its venomous fangs into the vulnerable flesh of his insides. She had offered to raise their child alone. By herself. Without him even having knowledge of its existence. Not for the first time, he wishes he could reach back through the millennia and pluck that infernal grimoire from the very fabric of the universe, undoing all of its horrid history so that May would never have thought to lie to him about it. A child would have been a happy occurrence for them if not for the dark, thunderous cloud of her betrayal hanging over their tattered relationship.

Still, there is no place for his anger, for his sorrow in the reality of his… of May seeking medical attention for herself. "Nonetheless, I would prefer to escort you." 

May studies him warily, clearly unsure of this seeming capitulation from him. "You… can tag along if you want. I mean… she's your kid too, so if you want to be there, I won't stop you." 

"She?" 

Her apprehension melts away in an instant, a loving smile blossoming on her face as one of her hands settles atop where their child grows, and the sight of this makes his heartbeat speed up, makes that manifested organ thud rapidly in his chest. Throughout his many eons of existence, she is the only one who has ever been able to affect it so, the only one who's ever caused such… mortal reactions within the boundaries of this flesh form of his.  

"Yeah," she answers quietly, a joy in her tone that reminds him of the softest parts of the universe. The silken smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips. The hazy twinkle of a galaxy above him. The muted shine of a sun in the wake of spring storms. The feel of a new babe in his arms, tender and trusting. "She. I've… got a feeling it's a girl." 

A daughter. A little girl with May's lovely eyes and her beautiful smile. The dream of it is enchanting, captivating enough that he has to forcibly pull himself from its hold, but the want it causes within him lingers on the edges of his thoughts. If things weren't so strained between them, then he would tell her how greatly he wishes for such a thing, how now that the vision of it is in his mind, he can scarcely see their infant as anything except a daughter. But… he cannot give voice to these sentiments, not with his feelings so uncharacteristically flayed and raw, and that is assuredly what they are at this moment. "You cannot know the child's… gender at this stage." 

May sighs and brushes past him, walking towards a door on their right marked Stairwell B. It is instinct for him to match his pace to hers, to keep by her side as she wearily begins the arduous trip up and out of the garage. She's been faint for weeks, and he's very aware that her collapses seem to have no set pattern, no real warning before they occur. It puts him on alert for the risk of another, especially given the fearsome nature of these stairs were she to fall unconscious and tumble down them. And so he means to stay close out of caution, ready to catch her should the need arise. 

"Probably not," she tells him somewhat breathlessly, and he fights the urge to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way. He knows better, though. Whatever tentative peace they're trying to create between themselves would be utterly demolished if he were to engage in such an act. "But… it's just a feeling. I can't really explain it." 

As they emerge from the garage, the sun is blindingly bright, and he glances at May where she's wincing from the shine of it. There's a nervousness radiating from her, an anxiety so great that it almost seems like he's experiencing it as his own.  

"Will you be disappointed if it is not a girl?" he questions in an effort to take her mind off her disquiet.  

At the crosswalk where they're waiting for the light to change, she looks towards him, a thoughtful expression on her face. "I just… want her to be healthy. Everything else is kinda… secondary to that." 

He mulls over this while they continue walking. Is she fearful that the child might not be well? Does she think that her sickness is affecting it in some way? He would ask, but he knows that she will not grant him the truth of the matter, not now. In their new relationship, she seems unwilling to show any sort of vulnerability before him, unwilling to do anything that might be indicative of a need where he's concerned. 

It makes him think of those decades before their union had ended, of those years when they'd depended on one another, when she'd never hesitated to show him the most fragile parts of herself, when he'd never hesitated to reveal his own shortcomings. Together, they had each closed the gaps in the other, had strengthened their varying frailties and softened their harsh angles by dint of their love and respect and hope. But now… that is no longer the case. Now, things are shattered between them, the pieces of what they once shared set aflame by her betrayal and allowed to burn until only ashes remain of their once-great love. 

On arriving at the building she had pointed at earlier, he steps forward to pull open the door for her, and she pauses, seemingly stunned by this meager consideration from him. Something vicious inside of him twists, and that sorrow he'd sworn to ignore earlier comes rearing back with a vengeance.  

Calm down, you actual idiot, she thinks, and it's louder in his mind this time than it was the last. He doesn't mean anything by it, doesn't care about you or what you're going through. It's just a habit for him. Stop reminiscing on how he used to do this. Stop thinking about how things used to be. Just smile and walk in before he notices you freaking out, for fuck's sake.  

And then she does. A threadbare smile tugs her lips up before she steps inside the cool air of the medical facility, a chill taking over her that almost has him stripping off his jacket to drape about her shoulders. Given her mental diatribe regarding his merely opening the door for her, however, he doesn't think that covering her with his coat would be well received. 

Across the rather large room they find themselves in, there's a counter set at the opposite corner, its front marked with a sign that reads Check In. The receptionist sitting behind it is an older woman who raises an eyebrow at May and Morpheus when they approach.  

"Can I help you?" she questions in a way that makes him think she'd rather not actually help them at all.  

May gives a gracious smile. "Yes. I'm Doctor Martin's eleven o'clock." 

The woman, whom Morpheus is growing to dislike more and more with every second they stand there, gives May an unimpressed once-over before turning her attention to a computer in front of her. "Michaela Westin?" 

Morpheus glances down at May. It's a new name for her, one of a dozen he's heard her take over the century he's truly known her for, but it surprises him still. That she has assumed another false identity is not strange, a necessary evil she'd once called it, but that she should choose to do so even with those she might trust with her health is jarring. Was it simply Viego's paranoia that drove her to do such a thing? Or something else? Something more to do with their quick escape from their previous home? Matthew had told him that their journey to the new location had been an unpleasant one, that May had been sickly for the entirety of it and that Viego had apologized for being unable to stop and allow her rest. Granted, the older maker has always been meticulous when it came to his sister's safety, even during those many years that she had resided in the Dreaming, but... today had been different. Viego had been off. Not for the first time, Morpheus wonders if there is some specific danger that he is not being told of, if May and her brother are purposely keeping yet another secret from him.  

After all, it is not as if she's never done it before. 

"I found you. You're here for an appointment and an eight week scan. Is that right?" 

"Yeah. I drank all the water I needed to, and I'm… good to go." 

"It says here that you're… self pay. We'll need to verify your payment information."  

"Of course." May rummages around in her purse, bringing her wallet out and sliding a black card emblazoned with the words American Express towards the receptionist, who picks it up and eyes it doubtfully. 

"This is yours? No offense, hun, but I'm going to need your ID." 

May's all politeness, all sweetness despite the woman's obvious rudeness. "No problem," she says as she hands another card over, this one with her picture on the front of it.  

And the woman, whom he can glean is named Karen Talbot, seems just as unimpressed by this as she had by May's appearance. Morpheus feels anger swell up inside of him for this foul creature's disrespect. He very rarely cares for what mortals think of him, but he can see from Karen's thoughts that her opinion of May is a low thing, one full of prejudice and assumption. Unwed and with child, a morally unacceptable state by her small-minded reckoning. Never mind that May is kind and loving and his… Well, his nothing now, he supposes. She does not belong to him any longer, can be called nothing else in regards to him save for being referred to as the mother of his child.  

He'd like to pretend he doesn't understand why that realization drives a spike of pain through his heart, but he cannot. It would be too large of a lie for him to swallow.  

The receptionist casts a discourteous, dubious look at him. "And are you a… party to this?" She gestures towards May. "Maybe an… acquaintance of hers?" 

May seeks to intercede, clearly trying to save him from having to interact with this loathsome female. "Oh, no. He's-" 

"Her husband," Morpheus supplies before he can stop himself. He's not given to lying usually, not one to truly waste his time with falsehoods, and yet in these circumstances he almost feels it necessary.  

"She indicated she was single on the intake forms," Karen argues, and in that instant he begins crafting his most terrifying punishment for her, begins envisioning what horror he will visit on her when he dooms her to an eternity of never ending sleep with his most savage Nightmares.  

"An oversight clearly excused by her condition, I assure you," he practically growls in response. It is a petty thing, perhaps, to allow some of his power into the words, to touch this woman's mind with a hint of the nightmarish hell he's capable of inflicting upon her, but he relishes it all the same. The receptionist pales, and he takes a sort of perverse pleasure in that as well.  

"Sorry for that. I'm his wife. Pregnancy brain is absolutely real and absolutely horrible," May interjects, her voice an octave higher than usual in something that Morpheus would call panic. "Should we just wait over here then? That would… probably be best."  

The receptionist is staring at Morpheus with wide, terrified eyes as she shakily holds out a clipboard with a stack of papers atop it. "I… um… I need him to fill out the… the forms." 

"Right. The forms," May answers, far too quickly as she snatches a pen from the cup of them on the desk. "We'll get those taken care of and back to you in a jiffy." 

And then she's grabbing hold of Morpheus' sleeve and tugging him impatiently to a set of chairs at the farthest end of the room.  

"Don't do that," she hisses when they've sat down. "The poor woman looked like she was going to have a heart attack." 

"Poor woman? She should consider herself fortunate that you intervened, else she would have been thrust into the most abhorrent, cruel fate I was capable of rendering unto a mortal. Do you know what she was thinking of you? Do you have any idea how grievously she was judging you?" he hisses right back. 

"Even without my magic, I was picking up on it. Okay? But you don't need to worry about that. I'm a big girl. I can handle someone not approving of my life choices."  

He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He doesn't care, her thoughts ring out in his mind. He's just got a vested interest in the baby, and you're housing the baby, so get a hold of yourself.  

"I could not stand idly by while she spoke to you so disrespectfully." 

The sound she makes is one of immense irritation. "Well, you defended my honor and now there's a stack of paperwork for me to fill out, so thanks for that." 

He doesn't know what she expects him to say to that, as he's certainly not going to apologize. But… then he remembers that he had been trying to lighten the load of her stress, and a sense of misgiving washes over him. 

"You need not manage this on my behalf." He reaches out decisively to pluck the clipboard from her lap. "I am more than capable of this task."

"Hey!" she whisper-protests. "Don't… Just let me do it. It's-" 

"I will see to this. It is not up for discussion." 

May purses her lips and then puts her hands up, palm out, in a gesture of surrender. "Okay. Fine. Have it your way." 

Christ on a potato, he's really rocking that surly, toddler temper tantrum energy now, she thinks.  

Morpheus gives her a side-eyed glare for that comment, despite that she had not actually spoken it aloud, before he starts on the forms. It only takes him a few minutes to realize that he might… be on unsteady footing regarding this specific undertaking. Of course, he refuses to accept her assistance or admit anything resembling defeat, so he forges ahead with what he'd set out to do.  

She tries several more times to help him in poring over the frankly obscene number of redundant questions he's required to answer, but he only waves her attempts away. And for a time she seems to settle, though he knows that she is merely taking a different approach as he can feel her eyes on him still, watching while he ticks away at the multitude of boxes. She says nothing, staying silent until he comes to the form titled Medical History.  

May chokes out a muted laugh and reaches over to tap the page where he'd just written I am no more tense than usual, certainly not enough to warrant use of the word hyper beside one of the boxes.  

"Yeah. Cross that out," May instructs him blithely. "Hypertension is a condition where mortals have high blood pressure, which… you don't even have blood if you don't want to." 

As he strikes an angry line through the sentence, he cannot help his scowl. "This is irritatingly tedious."

She shrugs as if his ire is of no real concern to her. "I offered to do it for you." 

"This entire outing is an exercise in futility, wholly pointless considering that this mortal doctor will likely be unable to assist you in any meaningful way." 

Her face falls, a sudden melancholy coming over her that brings him up short. "Just… don't start that." 

Her thoughts this time are very loud, and he ponders over the curious phenomenon anew. Typically, he has to actively seek the mental workings of another out. He's not used to having such things projected into his awareness, and hers seem to be growing in intensity and volume with every occurrence. I'm such an idiot. Of fucking course he couldn't just stow his crap and let me get help. Never mind that I think I'm actually dying or something. Even that isn't important enough to get him to cool it.   

Dying? Is she truly fearful that her… her illness is so dire? 

His shoulders drop from where they'd been unconsciously tensed, and he blinks several times as he scrutinizes her more closely. She's a gaunt thing, he realizes then, from the dark smudges under her eyes to the unnatural pallor of her skin. Her lips are dry and cracked in places, one particular spot on the lower one especially red as if she is so dehydrated that the skin there is breaking apart and bleeding. 

In that moment, he feels vile, loathsome, like nothing less than the most revolting sort of pond scum, like his treatment of her in this instance is even more contemptible than the receptionist's had been. Despite their past and his upset over it, May is currently grappling with something he cannot understand, rendered weak and weary from the weight of his seed growing inside of her. She is uncharacteristically afraid, he can see now, drained of her magic and suffering from what he'd unintentionally done to her by getting her with child in the first place.  

And all he has offered her in return for this burden she's carrying is his petulant sullenness, his mean-spirited pessimism. 

"I… apologize," he murmurs before he can even stop to consider what he's saying, "if I've given you cause to feel you must argue with me on this matter. It… was not my intention." 

Her expression gentles, and her eyes well with tears that she hastily wipes at. "It's… I get it. This… isn't what you're used to." 

"Nonetheless, it is… no excuse for my churlishness." 

She nods, and his heart wrenches uncomfortably with how very bereft she seems as she does so. "It's… okay." 

His eyes narrow as he considers this acceptance from her. How very easily she forgives him. How quickly she dismisses his faults in having behaved so abhorrently towards her.  

How different things might have been between them if only he were capable of doing the same.  

He must not think of that, must not imagine what could have been. That part of their relationship is done, the path of it obliterated and lost so that only mere echoes of it remain, but he knows that they can learn to do better by one another going forward. With the both of them preparing to parent a child together, they truly have no other choice in the matter. 

"And how shall I answer this?" he asks as he points randomly at a word on the checklist of mortal maladies before him. It is an olive branch of sorts, a gesture meant to demonstrate to her that he is willing to listen. 

Suspiciously, her eyes flick up at him before she turns them down to where he's indicated. 

"Heart disease? I'm pretty sure you know you don't have that." A barely there smile tugs her lips up, and it is a sad thing to behold, like the drooping petals of a wilting flower trying to bloom. "You could probably just answer no to everything. It's… what I did." 

"Very well." 

"And… whatever you do, don't put down how many actual glasses of wine you can consume in a day when it gets to that part." 

He frowns at her, his mind working to make sense of what she's just told him. "I assume… it would be a tell that I am not… normal then," he guesses. 

Her eyes sparkle faintly with an unexpected mirth, a sort of teasing shine to them that is still dulled somehow. "Big yes. Biggest yes ever." 

"I see." 

When he's finished, May cautiously takes the forms from his hand to look over everything, and he surrenders the papers to her without dissent. A month ago, such an act on her part would have infuriated him, but he's… regretful. The self-hatred he feels in the wake of his actions is churning inside of him violently, forcing him to an apologetic tentativeness. And May has always had a far better sense of the norms in this realm than he, a truth he had recognized very early in their relationship when they made their occasional trips into the Waking. He supposes that she would be the best to ensure his answers are satisfactory.  

After she's scanned it all twice, she goes to stand, and he stays her with a hand on her arm. 

"What is it? I'm just heading over there to hand this to the receptionist."

"Sit," he orders roughly before gentling his tone. "I shall do so in your stead." 

May hesitates. "You're not going to do anything else to… anyone, are you?" 

It takes him a minute before he understands her meaning. The receptionist. She's worried for the receptionist. It is only with great control that he keeps his expression from darkening in remembrance. That woman had been abysmally rude to May, had treated her as if she were less than, as if she were something low and offensive, and all May is concerned with is making sure he doesn't exact retribution on the human. He struggles to reconcile her kindness, her goodness, with the fact that she had assuredly composed spells for that infernal grimoire, had written the very one that ensnared him even.  

"I will… merely deliver these documents and then return to you. No… further defense of your honor, as you call it." 

"Morpheus-" 

"You have my word."

That seems to assuage her fear as she huffs out a resigned sigh before passing him the clipboard, and he rises to his feet, stalking to where Karen is still watching him with wide eyes, her whole demeanor like that of a rat with a hungry hawk swooping overhead. 

Good. 

"The… n-nurse should… should take her back in a… in a minute," Karen informs him as she holds out May's cards for him between her trembling fingers. 

Morpheus glares as he bites his tongue on saying what he wishes to, which is that she is a poor example of humanity given to ignorance and the most foolish of the moral mires inherent in her society. But he… refuses to speak such truths given that by doing so he would only serve to further distress his… to further distress May, and he does not wish to see any more troubled than she already is.  

"Very well," he grants instead, even as he idly wonders if it would be a violation of his oath to May were he to send this woman a particularly foul nightmare when next she slept. Something, perhaps, that might assist her in loosening her hold on her hateful prejudices.  

"Thank you, Karen." May says, startling him as she appears at his side, taking her cards from the woman to slide them back inside her bag. "Did I hear you say the nurse would come get me soon?" 

Karen, however, won't look away from Morpheus, and any other time he might take a sense of pride in her obvious fear. Now, however, he's too busy peering down at May in confusion. Had she not trusted him to do this? Had she believed that he would disregard his vow to her on leaving the mortal woman be?  

Why does the thought of her so thoroughly doubting him… hurt? 

He has no time to question her on any of this, though, as the door closest to him opens and another human steps out of it, a clipboard held in her hand as well. 

"Michaela Westin?"  

"That's me. I'm here. Hi." May smiles brightly, a veneer of polite cheer on her features that Morpheus thinks is but a mask. He's noticed her doing that often in the past few weeks, smiling as if she means it despite the air of hopelessness around her most of the time.  

"Hello there! I'm Annabeth. Let's get you back into a room, sweetheart, and then I'll get some more information from you before we get started." 

As May steps past him, it's instinct for him to rest his hand on the small of her back, to guide her so that she's walking slightly in front of him as they both cross this threshold.  

He follows her into the inner sanctum of the physician's office, trailing after the nurse as she leads them through the labyrinthine mess of hallways and doors before ushering them into a room, a sterile, clinically white space with a large window and a rather tall bed pushed up against the farthest wall. There's a chair off to one corner and May directs him to it, shoving her bag into his stomach as she demurely asks, "Will you hold this for me, love muffin?" 

Love… muffin? Love muffin? What a preposterous way to refer to him. The unmitigated cheek of this foolhardy female. It is only with a herculean effort that he manages to bite back his waspish response as he settles into the seat, glowering at her while he adjusts her bag in his hold. 

But then… the nurse has her step on a scale, writing down May's weight with a worried frown that makes Morpheus instantly forget his annoyance at her insolent epithet for him. 

"Why don't you hop up on the table for me, and I'll get some more vitals."

A strange panic is overwhelming him, but May seems calm, so he tries to placate himself as well, using her reactions a a guidepost for his own. When May's sitting on the bed, the nurse puts an odd device around the uppermost part of her arm, a cuff of some sort with a tube and a humming machine attached to it. 

And May remains relaxed. 

"It'll get tight, sugar," the nurse warns, and Morpheus tries to distract himself as she presses a button on the device. He studies this nurse, this Annabeth. She is… kinder than the receptionist had been, her mind drastically more pleasant, and he can read from it that she thinks May appears… sickly, more sickly than she should perhaps be. It's not quite fear she has, though, but more pity, a genuine compassionate urge to tend to May which Morpheus finds that he wholeheartedly approves.  

May winces, and suddenly Morpheus can take no more. He moves to rise, to go to her, to put an immediate end to this madness where she is being poked and prodded before him, but she stops him with a pointed glare. "I'm fine, dear. They're just checking my blood pressure."

Annabeth looks between May and Morpheus, her eyebrows raising in puzzlement before she seems to comprehend something that makes her laugh. "Oh, I get it. Protective husband is an overprotective daddy."

It's the wrong thing to say. 

The blood visibly drains from May's face, and Morpheus feels himself stiffen in shock. Their eyes meet, his and hers, and he can see the sadness there, the clear pain of what could have been. "He's… um… definitely going to be an overprotective dad," May replies, all of her quiet. Broken.

Annabeth, seemingly oblivious to this exchange, goes on with her task of scribbling things down on her clipboard. "Aw, don't fret about it, sweetie. The good ones get that way sometimes. I've had four myself, and my husband wouldn't even let me have my mornin' coffee because he was afraid the babies would come out with three heads or somethin'. It was frustratin' at the time, but in hindsight it was kinda darlin' of him."

Morpheus tears his eyes away from the woman he had once sought to marry, gathers himself as best as he can, and asks hoarsely, "I have read that women in such a state should not partake of caffeine."

Annabeth grins and wags a finger in his direction. "Now you don't start on her if she wants a cup or two. A little won't hurt anybody, even that tiny one of yours. And she sure looks like she could use a pick me up. Don't make it so she's gotta start keepin' a coffee machine and all the necessary fixins in her car like I had to."

May's unexpected laugh is beautiful, wholly melodic. "Your husband caused you to have to stealth brew coffee in your car?"

"Well, I'm fairly certain I'm eighty-seven percent caffeine, so I needed it like most people gotta have oxygen."

The smile May gives is genuine, her usual expression of enjoyment at having someone to converse with, and it strikes Morpheus that perhaps she is… lonely. "You're kind of making me want some coffee now, Annabeth."

"Good luck gettin' it past Mr. Overprotective over there."

To hear May laugh again loosens something in his chest, something that's had a ruthless hold of him since he'd feared she had been taken earlier. He tries to speak, to say anything, but his words are stuck in his throat as emotion swells within him. He loathes that he loves her, that he cares for her still despite that he should not. 

"All righty. Any other symptoms you want me to put in your chart for the doctor, sweetie?" Annabeth questions, and the sound of the nurse's voice snaps him out of his thoughts. "It says on your form that you've been gettin' sick."

May's easy contentment falters, her face falling. "I… Yes."

"How often, would you say?  

May casts a hesitant glance at Morpheus before turning her attention back to Annabeth. "Almost… every hour."

"You been keepin' anything down at all?" the nurse asks with a frown, her brows furrowed in concern as she scrutinizes May anew. 

May begins fidgeting again, something that she only engages in when she's especially nervous, and he feels his heart sink with dread. "Um… no. I don't think so."

Nothing at all? He had known that she was suffering from morning sickness, but to be retaining no nourishment cannot be safe for her or their child. Alarm floods him as the nurse moves to a cabinet and begins rummaging around in it. 

"Lord Mercy, that sounds horrid," she says as she pulls her hand free with a large rectangle of fabric clutched between her fingers. "I'm gonna need you to get undressed from the waist down and put this over your lap. We'll try to do the ultrasound abdominally at first, but if we can't get a good picture we'll switch to the transvaginal." She points to two buttons on the wall. "Press this green one when you're ready, and Dr. Martin will have a look at you and the baby, see if he can't figure out something to help you with that nausea."

Help. Yes… May needs help. For the first time since he'd began this little excursion with her, Morpheus thinks he finally understands why she'd felt desperate enough to seek any healer out, even one mortal and ill-suited to treat her.

"That sounds great," May breathes out, a relief in her tone that cuts at Morpheus. He'd been ready to stop her today, had been so aggravated at what he perceived to be a ridiculous folly that he'd threatened to forcibly shift her home. 

Annabeth grabs her papers and exits the room, leaving a heavy silence in her wake.

May undoes the top button of her pants before she at last spares him a glance. "Can you… look away? Maybe turn around or…"

He wants to remind her that he's seen her naked body more times than this planet they're on has had stars crash into its surface, but she seems unnerved again, altogether stressed by how he might respond to this request of hers. 

"If you wish, I could wait outside." 

May shakes her head. "No, that's fine. Just turn around. If I send you out of the room, they'll assume we're fighting or something." 

Dutifully, he faces away from her. "Ah, yes. It is important they do not see through the lie." 

"Hey, that's not on me," she tells him over the shuffling sounds she's making. "You told them we were married. I was perfectly fine with them thinking I liked to sleep around or that we'd just gotten blackout drunk one night in Vegas and knocked boots without a condom." 

He hadn't been fine with it, however. No matter her apparent acceptance of such a thing, the thought of her being viewed, being treated as less than had grated on him. "It doesn't… bother you? That they might… judge you so harshly for something they know nothing of?" 

"Nope. Believe it or not, humans are pretty cool about that stuff these days. Well, most of them. The bitchy receptionist was a fluke." 

"May-" 

She huffs out a short laugh. "Sorry. Sorry. I know. You don't like that word." 

His forehead creases."No, that is not… what I was intending to speak to you of. Please feel free to apply whatever colorful language you would like concerning that foul creature who greeted us upon entering." 

"Wow. She really did piss you off, huh?" 

He can hear the noise of paper crinkling behind him, and he wonders what exactly she's doing back there. "She angered me greatly. Her… attitude towards you was… unacceptable." 

The sounds stop as she responds, "There are always going to be people who think badly of you here. You… get used to it after a while." 

He can't help his scoff. "Is that meant to convince me that her behavior wasn't insulting?" 

"Nope. It's just… It is what it is. There's no point in letting it upset you… Also, you can turn around now if you want." 

She's sitting on the table, that mask of false cheer back on her face, the rectangle of fabric spread out over her bare lap, and without the benefit of a thick sweater on her, he can see exactly why the nurse had seemed uneasy when she'd taken May's weight. She's assuredly gotten thinner, likely a side effect of being unable to properly partake of  any nourishment. Panic twists his stomach into a knot. 

"Why… did you not inform me of how ill you were?" His voice is ragged with emotion, with the great well of battling sentiments inside of him. 

The mask slides off of her features, and she glances down guiltily at the floor, twiddling her fingers in a restlessness that speaks to her trepidation. "It just… wasn't something that I really could work into a conversation, you know? Or something I even thought you'd care about. Like, what was I supposed to say? Oh I know you hate me and all but by the way, I'm really sick." 

It's the second time she's mentioned him hating her, and despite the fact that he wishes he did, he's all too aware that he seems incapable of such a feeling where she's concerned. "Regardless of what you might assume, I do not… hate you." 

Her thoughts, when they filter through his mind, are devastating, wrenching his heart with all the vengeful viciousness of their separation. But you do. I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. You might not want to admit it out loud, but you… you hate me. And I… hate me a little too. If only I could…. If only…. Never mind. It doesn't matter.  

He opens his mouth to address this, to deny it, but he falters, his words stuck on the tip of his tongue. After all, what might he say to correct this belief of hers? What could he honestly give her that would change her mind? How can he adequately explain his feelings when he doesn't even understand them himself? 

"You wanna press the button for me? So… I don't have to get up and all." 

Dejectedly, he reaches out to do just that, but... something gives him pause. There's an odd smell in the air, an acrid hint of ozone and burning leaves, all melded with the iron tang of blood. His power flares at the scent, a warning shooting through his awareness like a bolt of lightning striking a tree.  

Outside the room they're in, it's gone eerily silent. Deathly so, he would almost say, and when he expands his perception to get a read on who or what is near them, he's met with a disturbing blankness, one he's only ever known during the time he was trapped in that binding circle at Fawney Rig, the time all those decades ago that he was made powerless by Roderick Burgess.  

And in that moment, Morpheus knows two things with utter surety. The first is that he was indeed correct when he'd surmised earlier that May was in danger outside Viego's wards, that she had been reckless to leave them on her own. Obviously, something or someone has been tracking her, lying in wait for the opportunity they might have were she to be free of the ward's protections. The second thing he knows, and perhaps the part that most worries him, is that whatever or whomever has been on her trail is in this building with them. Right now.

NEXT CHAPTER

Tag List for BBHAP: @julesandro

May narrows her eyes at him, thoroughly unimpressed. "Excuse me?" 

He glances back at her, likely sees that she's wearing her you're being a jackass and I hope you're ashamed face, and huffs out a long-suffering sigh as if she's the one being unreasonable. He looks up at the ceiling for a split second, essentially rolling his eyes though she knows he'd deny it if she were to call him on it, before he stalks to the chair she'd set her clothes on. He snatches up the neatly folded pile, thrusting her pants and underwear at her with a tense moue of aggravation, and May blanches ever so slightly. She doesn't mean to, but it reminds her of how he'd appeared during that last giant fight of theirs, that final one of their actual romantic relationship where she'd ended up both banished and broken-hearted.  

As if he notices it, he gentles fractionally and sets the bundle tentatively beside her atop the tall bed she's sitting on.  

"Please dress," he asks, his tone almost polite. "It is imperative that we make haste." 

And then he fixes his gaze on the wall opposite her to give her a minute of privacy as she scoots off the table, slides on her underwear, and starts shimmying into her jeans. She doesn't quite know what's caused this change in his demeanor, but he's holding himself stiff where he's facing the door, the line of his shoulders rigid as if he's waiting for an attack. Just the sight of him like this, clearly freaked out about something, is enough to make fear roil in her gut, more nauseating to her than even the constant morning sickness is.  

"Okay. I've got everything back on. Want to tell me what the hell this is?" 

"You have been followed. There is a dark magic covering the entirety of this building," he answers as he studies her face, his eyes boring into her as he delivers this awful news.  

Shit. Dizziness washes over her, and she reaches a hand out to the wall in an effort to steady herself. Shit, shit, shit. Makers. It's got to be makers. There's nothing else that would hunt her so quickly, nothing else that would be able to blanket a whole fucking building in a spell like that. She thinks on where the nearest escape route would be, grateful in that moment that Viego's been a stickler about her knowing all the ways to get out of a place since humans first started carving extra doorways in their mud-brick huts. "We've got to get to an exit. There's one down the hallway and to the left." 

"I thought to simply shift us," he counters with a confused frown. 

"No… The spell that they're using, it's like a magical net. One made for makers. It probably won't do anything to you, but I can only walk through it on foot. It's to… to stop us from freeing ourselves quickly when they corner us. Any makers that have ever tried to use their magic and shift through those things have ended up torn into a million pieces. And we don't regenerate from that." 

He recoils, obviously stunned. "Are you… aware of who hunts you then?" 

"It's… my... own kind. Wars need soldiers, Morpheus, and… and most of us don't want to fight. They send out seekers who… who find us and force us to…" She swallows thickly past the lump forming in her throat as she tries to calm herself down. She doesn't want to admit this to him, doesn't want to give him one more reason to look down on her. "They force us to either enlist or die." 

In an instant, anger tautens his features as he glares at her, his eyes fading into obsidian pools as a scowl twists his mouth. "And you did not think to inform me of this?" he hisses.  

Her fear fades away like a bit of smoke from the end of a freshly-extinguished candle, and it's replaced with a rage that's directed entirely at him. Jesus on a Dorito, but this bastard can rile her up like nothing and no one else. 

"It wasn't an issue before," she snaps caustically. "It hasn't been an issue until right this moment, so here I am telling you about it right this moment. See how that works?" 

"Knowledge that you are under threat right this moment, as you say, does us little good at this juncture, whereas an advanced warning might have allowed me to have an alternative plan in place for just such an occurrence." 

"Alternative plan? From you? Mr Act-First-and-Think-Later? We both know how that conversation would have went. You would have fussed, then pouted, then fussed some more, then gotten all caveman-" 

"Caveman?" he cuts in incredulously. "You would dare to call me such a thing?" 

"Puh-lease. Your caveman name would be Morpheus of the Moods, and you'd wear a black loincloth. You know, now that I think about it, your helmet even looks a little bit like a beating club. I mean if you held it from the bottom, you could maybe use it for that and-" 

He steps closer, getting all up in her space. "Perhaps you should be grateful that I am, in fact, not given to such physical violence else you would be no more."  

May can't help her derisive scoff. "Like your words don't hurt me too? The way that you speak to me is-"

"I merely speak to you as if you are the female who foolishly ventured outside of the wards that were protecting you and-" 

"Anytime you feel like it, you can stop acting like I just slipped out for an ice cream cone, you actual jerk. I went for medical attention. Because I was sick. Worryingly sick. And I know you couldn't care less if I were to keel over dead, but I am carrying your child, so maybe you could… I don't know? Care about that?" 

"If I did not care in some capacity, I would not be here." 

A door slams loudly outside, and both Morpheus and May turn their heads towards the sound. There's a muted growl that reverberates through to them from another room before a high-pitched scream breaks the stillness of the area beyond, filling the silence with someone else's pain.  

May's breath stutters in her lungs, her grief a biting, vicious thing within her. There are… people out there. Innocent people. And they're being hurt or killed. She doesn't know what exactly she can really do to help them, but she's sure she has to do something. As if he's reading her thoughts, though, Morpheus steps in front of her, solid and immoveable as he effectively blocks her way.  

"I forbid such a thing," he tells her, yet again acting as if he has any right to stop her from doing anything at all.  

"Morpheus, let me go and-" 

"No." He shakes his head in refusal. "It would be a foolish endeavor at the least and a likely deadly one at the worst. I will not allow it." 

"There are humans out there." 

"Yes," he drawls, as if that doesn't really matter to him. 

"And they're being murdered," she explains slowly, like he's a particularly dense student and she's a weary, completely frustrated teacher.

"Yes." 

He really doesn't seem to get why that's a bad thing. Fucking monosyllabic monster. "And I intend to go and help them." 

He raises an eyebrow and opens his mouth to speak, closes it, and then opens it again to let out an annoyingly simple, "No." 

She rolls her eyes at him. "Not to sound like a five year old, but you're not the boss of me." 

"As you've made infuriatingly clear on many occasions." 

"Yeah? Maybe you should take a second to reflect on the reason as to why I keep having to make it infuriatingly clear." She goes to dart around him. "Now if you'll excuse me-" 

She loathes how much faster he is than her, as evidenced by how easily and quickly he's right back in her path, preventing her from leaving all over again. "No." 

"Are you serious with this?" she demands waspishly. 

"Need I remind you that you are currently powerless and with child. Our child," he supplies through gritted teeth. "I will not stand idly by while you run headfirst into danger." 

"Then what do you suggest we do? Just leave all those people to rot?" 

"If it ensures your survival, then yes."

For fuck's sake, if he says yes or no to her one more time in this conversation, she's going to hit him. "You sound like Desire, just so you know. Callous and cruel. I can really see the family resemblance right now." 

His eyes flare, the smoldering fire of a million galaxies within them burned to ash in his stare. His hands clench into fists at his side, like he's fighting the urge to snatch her up to him and shake her in a temper.  

"My sibling would leave you here to your fate were they in my place," he snarls, and the sheer fury in his tone equally pisses her off, terrifies her, and… kind of turns her on all at once. "And while I appreciate your attempt to shame me into protecting those mortals caught in this unfortunate happenstance, it will not prove successful. My responsibility is to you and the child you carry. No other." 

"I was just making an observation, not trying to shame you into anything," she says smoothly, even though it's a complete lie. She'd totally been trying to manipulate him into helping her. "But while we're on the subject of your siblings, Death would be absolutely disappointed in you for this." 

If looks could kill, she'd be nothing but a smoking pile of gooey remains where she stands. "My answer remains no." 

"Fine." 

He peers down at her, seemingly wary at her agreement. "And you will cease this bothersome persuasion at once." 

"Fine." She won't in reality, but he doesn't need to know that. If he's going to accuse her of being a liar as often as he does, then he has nobody to blame but himself when she plays the part.

He frowns, his forehead creasing in confusion. "You will engage in no foolishness once we step outside of this room."

Of course she will. There will be lots of what he deems foolishness when they leave here, and May's not even sorry for telling him any differently. "Fiiiiine." 

He purses his lips at her in a sign of displeasure. The monosyllabic moody bastard must not like the single word treatment either, which is good for her. Knowing that she's upsetting him almost draws a smile from her despite the shitstorm they're still in the middle of.  

"You are the single most contrary creature I've ever had the misfortune of knowing," he bites out, taking a hold of her arm as he begins forcibly pulling her to the door. Outraged, she struggles to wrest her limb from his, trying to yank away for all the good that it doesn't do her since his grip is as unyielding as iron shackles. 

"Cut it out," she growls. "If you'll remember, I don't like manhandling unless it's in a sexual context, so kindly fucking release me immediately." 

When he turns to glower at her, his gaze is still burning, still fiercely intense, but not in the way it had been earlier. With a start, she realizes that she might recognize that look, all wrath and lust and need told in the nightmare abyss of obsidian eyes. And despite that she's not sure that's really what it is, desire ignites within her, sending an unexpectedly heady rush of want thrumming through her veins with so much force that it's dizzying. She can see one of the veins running across his neck as its beat speeds up, and when he swallows, she can't help but to follow the movement of his Adam's apple as it bobs with the action.  

May squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head a little as if to clear it. What the hell is wrong with her? Pregnancy hormones aside, this is not the place for her ill-timed lust to be jumping up and down, screaming woo-hoo, and urging her to just do it, bitch. They're kind of under attack, and she really really needs to be focusing on that.  

"The… exit is to the left?" he questions, and his voice is oddly hoarse as if he's just as overwhelmed as she is by their strangely heated exchange, by the sudden change in tone of their argument from anger into arousal. Which is frankly ridiculous of her to even consider, since he's the one that decided they wouldn't be having sex anymore and all. 

"Y-Yeah."

"Very well.… We will…" He swallows again, and May forces herself not to stare at the column of his throat as he does so. "We will go."  

His hold on her arm gentles, becoming almost soft as their eyes meet. She draws in a shaky gulp of air, thinking for one wild moment that he means to kiss her, that he means to push her up against the wall and start something they very much shouldn't be engaging in here. Or anywhere, really, since they're broken up and everything.  

And then the door swings open.  

Morpheus doesn't waste a second in facing the threat and tugging her roughly behind him so that he's standing between her and whatever the hell is trying to get to her. May peeks out from around his shoulder, and she's surprised to see… well, a normal enough looking guy standing there. He's in black jeans and a black t-shirt, wearing a leather bomber jacket and boots to complete his ensemble. There's a mop of riotous, golden curls atop his head, and his lips curve into an almost charming smile.  

She'd call him handsome if not for the heavy darkness she can feel coming from him, if not for the way that the magic of him sets her teeth on edge. May doesn't like to judge. Not really. But given that he's exuding a creepy, sexual predator vibe and he's probably came to end her life, she doesn't think it makes her a bad person to refer to him as Asshole A in her head. 

"Apologies," he greets in a deep voice that irrationally makes her want to punch him. "Am I interrupting something? We've been listening to your entertaining domestic for some time."

Which, ouch. Embarrassing. And awkward as anything to know that someone else had been standing outside the room as they'd bickered like an old, married couple.

Four others take a place flanking this brand new adversary, the movement so seamless that May thinks it seems kind of choreographed, like they're all part of some ghoulish flash mob that's gonna bust into a dance number any second now. 

But Asshole A's performing arts goons aren't just people or makers. Oh, no. Things couldn't be that easy for them since the universe is obviously a salty bitch that hates May with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Instead, these jerks are fierce warriors of a lost race, the kind of mythical creatures that many have forgotten even once existed, and obscenely expensive to hire if one has need of their services.  

"Dragons," May warns, pointing at the mob squad from Hell.  

"I am aware," Morpheus answers flippantly, as if it's no big deal to him that those four things near Asshole A could shift form into giant, fire-breathing beasts at any minute. Which, knowing what she does of his power, she supposes he probably isn't actually fazed by it at all. 

Hellhounds come padding up at the rear of the scouting party, and she's reminded of clown cars at the circus. How many unnerving things can one smarmy bastard fit into a doorway? She can't help but to think this guy is flexing his little collection of horrors in front of them, which is almost hilariously out of touch given that Morpheus is the literal King of Nightmares. 

Nonetheless, the hellhounds start closing the distance, making May more than a bit freaked out. Iridescent drool dribbles from their mouths, their snouts red-tinged with blood, and Morpheus pulls her more surely to him.  

"I see the rumors are true," Asshole A says, a feral grin tilting his lips up. "Our princess is clearly in whelp." 

May grimaces a little at that descriptor. Who actually calls it that anymore? Not that it truly matters, she supposes, because this jerk is about to get flattened for his arrogance. In front her her, Morpheus is deadly calm, deadly still, and from where she's pressed against his back, she can feel how tightly his muscles are coiled.  "Whom do I have the displeasure of addressing?" he demands icily.

Asshole A inclines his head slightly in a sort of mocking bow. "I am Viktor. Of the Bloodless Lands. But there is no need for you to introduce yourself, Dream of the Endless." 

And May hates his voice, hates the amused way he's regarding them as if being on the other end of Morpheus' fury is funny or something.  

"Why is it that you are hunting this woman?" Morpheus inquires, the sound of his words all honeyed threat, its timber smooth with the promise of lethality, and May recognizes it well as the tone he uses before readying himself to aim some good old-fashioned annihilation at an enemy.

Viktor raises one douchey eyebrow at the two of them. "Why is it that you stand in defense of her? Is it your child she carries, Dream of the Endless? Does that hybrid filth in her womb belong to you?"  

Honestly, May is pissed, which is a wholly understandable reaction in her humble opinion. She's about two seconds away from metaphorically stepping out of her imaginary high heels and taking off her damn nonexistent earrings to kick this fucker in the face. Hybrid filth? He did not just say that about her baby.  

But then of course, because all evil bastards have to have a freaky animal minion or two, another one of the hellhounds growls and snarls as it starts approaching them, its sharpened nails clicking ominously on the floor as it prowls closer.  

And while May might be furious, might be angry enough to visit physical violence on this jerk, she's really really not suicidal. And she'd have to be to even consider crossing paths with that thing, since it would assuredly make ribbons of her squishy, magic-less body in a matter of seconds. Instead of becoming a squeaky toy for the universe's most hideous canine, she tucks herself closer to her Endless ex and tugs on the sleeve of his coat. "Morpheus-" 

He holds out a hand, the gesture being his version of I've got this and kindly cease the words coming out of your mouth thing that irritates me to no end, and May doesn't need to be told twice as she shuts right up so he can concentrate. She's under no delusions that if one of them is going to drop the savage beasts inching nearer and nearer to them, then it's definitely going to be him.  

"Now that is impressive," Asshole A- sorry Viktor - observes almost… conversationally, like him and Morpheus are just two buddies sharing a pint at a local pub. "How ever have you trained her to follow your command? When last she was in my keeping, I could not stop her bothersome screams for the life of me. Even when I had her gagged, she still always managed to make an abundance of disagreeable noise." 

"Wait. What?" she protests. "I don't even know you." And she's a hundred percent sure of that. Because she'd absolutely remember this guy, this grinning jackass, if she'd ever had the misfortune of meeting him prior to this showdown. 

"You do not recall our time together, my little princess? It is a strange thing to forget, no?" 

My little princess. The words rip through her mind for some reason, tearing at it like a tornado might snatch up a house and smash it apart in its winds. My little princess. That voice. Why the hell is it suddenly so vaguely familiar?  

Her thoughts still, and there's a bright, glaring white cast over everything in her memory. May shakes her head, wondering what she'd been thinking about. Maybe… something about the bastard in front of her? Maybe something to do with the hellhounds? Maybe something about the way that Morpheus is urging her back behind the shelter of him so insistently.  

"Interesting," Viktor murmurs as his eyes rake over the small sliver of her left visible despite the shield that Morpheus has made of his body. His gaze on her makes her feel dirty for some reason. "I wonder what he did to accomplish such a thing." 

Accomplish what? And who? What the fuck is this guy talking about? She resolves herself not to pay too much attention to it, though. Evil villains have to do their evil monologues she guesses, and this guy seems like he's just trying to rile her up even more than she already is. Besides, Morpheus doesn't seem very curious about it either, so it must not be that important.  

"We will leave this place, Viktor of the Bloodless Lands. It is best that you do not attempt to hinder our departure." 

"Of course, Dream of the Endless," Asshole A- sorry, Viktor- allows with as much magnanimity as a king. "You are free to leave whenever you desire. But the traitorous whore must stay in my custody, I'm afraid." 

It's a declaration of war, a slap in the face with a white fucking glove, and May knows then that they're going to fight. Morpheus wastes no time in reacting as the hellhounds give a great bellow that withers off into a whine before they fall over and into unconsciousness, hopefully having the worst nightmares possible in their comatose state. The atoms in the air get heavy, dense with the weight of his power, and May's ears ring with it. Shadows roll through the area like thick plumes of sentient black smoke, creeping closer to Morpheus where they slowly unfurl as if to defend him, an army answering to the summons of its master.  

And as the wisps of it touch her skin, May is stricken with terror.  

It's like every nightmare she's ever had is hitting her all at once. In her mind's eye, she's falling from a tall cliff, her heart racing as the ground rushes faster and faster towards her, and May squeezes her eyes shut, trying to will the images away, trying to stem the flow of panic  overcoming her. It doesn't work, however, and instead the bad dreams seem to come faster, more intensely. 

(She's walking through what looks like a hallway, its walls made of spongy red flesh that thumps rhythmically, pulsating with the heartbeat of whatever creature's gullet she's ended up in. Digestive juices start to trickle in at her feat, the glistening liquid sizzling as it burns through her shoes, as it burns through the skin of her heels and toes. It hurts, the acid melting her where she stands, and when she glances up at the dull roar of gushing that she hears, she sees a great wave of the goop flowing towards her. She spins to run, to get away, but she ends up slipping instead, falling face first into a caustic puddle that dissolves part of her nose….)

Makers magic crackles in the air, cerulean blue and luminous where it stretches out through Morpheus' shadows, tearing at them in the way that lightning would split a pitch black sky.

(A beast, lethal and strong with leathery, wide-spanned wings and rippling ebony fur, tackles her to the ground with enough physical force to knock the air from her lungs. It stinks of death and rotting meat as it tears into her throat, grinning from atop her as its razor-fanged maw drips rivulets of blood from the pointed tips of its teeth.  

"My little princess," it croons, its stifling breath foul on her face. She screams, and it sinks its claws into the meat of her cheek, dragging them across it in the blink of an eye as it easily shreds the flesh down to her jawbone…. )

She clenches the fabric of Morpheus' coat, holding onto him as if to anchor herself despite that the energy he's exuding burns hot like fire against her palm and fingertips.

(She's in a dungeon, trapped there. Her frail, bird-thin body aches and throbs with pain. She glances down at herself, taking in the blood coating her thighs, the bruises covering her, and the arm hanging limply at her side. Everything on her hurts in some way or another, makes her feel hollow and dirty. Defiled.  

"She put up a fight," one of her jailers jokes, and fury swells within May, a need for vengeance, for wrath, rising inside of her so swiftly that she almost dry heaves what little food she has in her stomach right then and there. "Ol' Viktor must like that kind of thing, though, mustn't he? I cannae tell ya how many corpses I've dragged from tha' chamber o' his."  

Her other captor sighs as if his coworker is especially irritating. "That's not it, Raelish. Not with her, anyway. He's got to solidify his rule, hasn't he? And what better way to do that than bonding himself with an heir to the throne."  

Realization dawns like a blast wave cresting a hill after a sun's explosion, and she begins to tremble in her apprehension, in the dread of what her future might hold….)

It's too much. The pressure of power, of the nightmares, is suffocating, overcoming her as she leans her forehead against Morpheus' back. He goes rigid at the touch, and May knows then and there that she would beg him, plead with him to make the torrent of terror stop if only she had words, if only she could voice anything at all. But she can't speak, can't even utter a sound as the fear of everything in her head swallows up her ability to think, to breathe.  

A fresh bout of dizziness hits her, and her knees buckle at its onslaught as she tightens her grip on Morpheus in a determined attempt to keep herself upright. She can't pass out. Not now. This would be the worst time and place for that, and May refuses to let her body overrule her common sense on this matter. A whistling shriek whirs right by her head, the well-aimed blast of a battle spell coming so close to her that it mutes her hearing into a low roar. Her vision starts to waver in and out, and May finds that she hates herself for this weakness, for this feebleness that makes her feel like nothing but a liability. 

Not that she has long to ruminate on this self-loathing, however, because between one heartbeat and the next, she's crumpling to the ground in a dead faint. 

And when she falls unconscious, she's thrust into her dreams. Or more appropriately, her nightmares.  

She's in a desert, the sun blaring down  and a pile of kindling arranged around her. Orange and yellow flames spread out over her body, climbing up her ankles and legs and torso until they're scorching along her shoulders. She opens her mouth to scream, to make any noise she can, but it's useless. Her throat is so very dry, the smoke choking her as it rises from the blazing inferno that's currently consuming her physical form.  

She almost cries in relief when the door appears.  

It's smaller than she remembers, and the ornate carving around its frame seems somewhat faded, but May still thinks it's the loveliest thing she's ever seen in her life. It's a chance to get out of this, to escape. However, it's not pulling her at the moment like it usually does, as if it's too weakened to do such a thing, and it gives her pause.  

She hesitates, because she doesn't know what will happen if she goes through it. Will the dark magic cast over her in the Waking register this as a shift through realms? Will it shatter her if she flees this way? Can she really afford to care as agony creeps over her awareness like the heat of the fire burning her alive? 

May takes the chance. She reaches out and grasps the handle, twisting it open as water rushes over her. It's cool on her skin, washing away the remnants of the nightmare as May steps through to the other side and finds herself in the sea. Adrenaline propels her to kick her legs out and swim for the surface, hopeless though she knows it will be. If Morpheus doesn't come and get her, if he doesn't rescue her, then she's assuredly going to drown.  

The light filtering in through the dark waves above her gets brighter, fuller despite that May isn't overly optimistic of it meaning anything. Maybe she's just able to get closer to the top now from practice or something, because fuck knows she's spent enough of her time trying to free herself from this watery grave in the past month or so. And that's why she's as shocked as anyone when her head emerges from the water and she's drawing in large gasps of breath, filling her lungs with it like a desperate woman.  

She floats amidst the expanse of rippling waves, thoroughly confused as to how she'd made it out of there before she feels Morpheus' solid arm wrap around her waist and tug her into his warmth.  

"How?" he asks, his voice rough, his expression wary as he pulls her the six or so feet to where the steps for the pier manifest on command. He appears anxious to get her out of there, so anxious that he hasn't yet bothered to dry his hair or mend the small bruise on his angular cheek. He must have been hit with one of those maker's spells, and while it probably didn't do him any damage whatsoever, May is all too aware of how much those damn things sting.  

"I don't… I don't know." It's the truth. She has no idea why she'd been able to swim to the surface today, but something tells her that it might not be anything good.  

Her legs feel like jello when she tries to get them underneath her, and Morpheus allows her to lean on him as she walks, slow and steady to the beautiful structure of wood only feet above them.  

"Permit me to carry you," he suggests, and May stubbornly shakes her head. She's already proven herself enough of a burden today without Morpheus having to pick her up, without him having to lift her into his arms like a bridegroom might a new bride before readying to cross the threshold of their home together for the first time.  

"No… I've got this. I'm… I'm fine." 

But she's not fine. She'd have to be an idiot to be fine. May falls to her knees on the wood planks at the top of the stairs, and Morpheus surprisingly goes down beside her, albeit much more gracefully than she had.  

Even more shocking is that he circles her in his arms, refusing to release her from this mimicry of their past, when it was second nature for him to tenderly embrace her. May wants to be strong, wants to pull away from the solace he's offering, but she can't. Instead, she curls up against him as her body shakes with the chill, her fingertips and toes tingling painfully from it, and Morpheus responds by tightening his hold of her. 

"Shhh," he urges as if to soothe her, and she very distantly realizes that she's crying, letting out big hiccuping sobs into the fabric of his shirt where her face is pressed against his chest. "You are safe." 

And damn does she want to believe him. She doesn't think she's ever wanted to believe anything so much in her entire life, even though she can't place much credence in his words at the moment. She knows the truth. His comfort is just a lie, one of many he's given her. The idea of safety isn't possible, more fairytale for her than it could ever be fact. She'll never be free from the threat of those bastards coming for her, never be free from having to spend her days running like an animal. And she's going to bring a child into that? She's going to curse a kid by dropping it into a situation where it's always at risk, where it always knows fear, always knows the unsettling truth of how one day, suspicion might be the only thing that will keep it alive.

She'll have to teach it that suspicion, have to teach it to walk into places and make escape plans, to watch everyone around them for signs that they might be out to trap them. She'll have to teach it to be afraid. 

May thinks at that moment that she's… she's a monster.  

How could she be stupid enough to let herself get knocked up? And by Morpheus at that? He doesn't care for her beyond the unfortunate circumstance of her being pregnant. And she's the moron who's going to have a baby with him? What the actual fuck had she been thinking? 

In a daze of self-denigration, May untangles herself from him, sniffling as she firmly orders herself to stop crying. All of her feels numb now in a way that has nothing to do with the freezing cold water he'd just helped her out of.  

Morpheus regards her strangely, his eyes narrowed in scrutiny, and May can't stand the sight of him in the moment, all falsely concerned and caring. She's horrified and regretful and so damned ashamed of herself for what she's done. Being a semi-intelligent, mostly mature entity, she's all too aware of the fact that she's fled from one enemy only to end up on the doorstep of another, only to end up in his arms even. And she shouldn't do that, shouldn't let herself forget for even a second that Morpheus could be just as much of a danger as those assholes hunting her. 

"I can't do this. I need… I need to get back to Viego." 

He appears reluctant to grant her this, appears as if he will haul her back into his embrace despite the distance she's attempting to make. "Very well," he says at last with a small nod. "I must ensure that he is not under attack, and then if you still wish it, I will return you to him."   

Her heart stutters in apprehension at the thought of Viego being cornered by that scouting party, at the thought of him fighting them off on his own. He's powerful, sure, but he would also be horrendously outnumbered. Her stomach swoops alarmingly. "Please don't… don't leave him alone," she pleads, despising the meek smallness of her voice. "If he… If he's caught in it, please don't let him… die." 

Morpheus hesitates for only a minute. "I will see to his safety," he finally grants like a king who's answering a petition by bestowing a great boon, his tone so very gentle that May's eyes fill with tears anew. "As you… ask of me." 

"Thank you." And she means it, sure as she is that he doesn't have to do a thing for her, that he's probably just trying to calm her down now for the sake of his baby in her belly.  

"Allow me to take you to the palace while you wait for me to manage this task," he requests. "It is… cold here, and you are chilled through." 

She doesn't want to go there, doesn't want to be around her almost-home and all the bittersweet memories of it. Not today. Not with the way her emotions already feel flayed and raw. She crosses her arms over her chest, forcing herself not to shiver. "I'll just… stay here if that's okay. I don't… really feel up to the… to visiting your home." 

He doesn't look angry, doesn't look upset. If she had to describe him as anything in the moment, it would be almost… sad. Slightly defeated even. But that would be ridiculous of her, wouldn't it? After all, he'd been the one to toss her out in the first place, the one to sever ties with her and declare them over. 

His power brushes over her, and while she almost flinches at the feel of it, she's left blessedly dry, blessedly uninjured in its wake. There's a thick blanket that he's obviously manifested around her shoulders, a cozy thing that she wants to burrow into as she drifts off to sleep. He takes a handful of the material in each hand and pulls it closer together, wrapping her more surely in its warmth. "If you will not go to the palace, then please keep this on. It will… prevent you from freezing." 

"I mean, I've already burned alive today, so there would be a certain symmetry to becoming a popsicle after that, I guess," she murmurs, a poor attempt to tease that falls flat if his frowning, sorrowful expression is any indication. "I won't… take it off," she agrees, the least she can give him in return since he's going to possibly help Viego on her behalf. 

Seemingly satisfied with her capitulation, he casts one more worried frown at her before he shifts away, disappearing to presumably check on her brother. And when he's gone, May buries her face in her hands and tries not to think about how she would give anything to know the peace, the easy contentment that she'd had mere months ago. 

She forces even the thoughts of it away, though, because in reality she's never going to have that again, and it's really best if she just goes ahead and accepts it. 

NEXT CHAPTER

Tag List: @julesandro @cozystorynook

Outside the gates of the realm earlier, there had been a spike of energy (pulsing starlight bright) that she had thought was the Dream Lord returned at last to his home. Worried for him and what could have kept him away for so long, she'd rushed out to reach the Endless, to assist him in whatever way she could. 

When she gets to where the light was, though, he’s not there. Nothing is, and she barely has a moment to confusedly consider the emptiness before something is grabbing her tightly from behind. So surreal is the occurrence that she cannot process the cold jut of armor against her back, cannot brace herself for the blow as she's hit across the head with something hard, cannot make sense of her attack even as her vision blurs and then goes dark. 

When she awakens, she's no longer near her home, instead confined to the darkness of a dungeon where her tormentors try and wring information from her through pain and hurt and atrocity that she doesn't think she will ever heal from. Not really.   She'd grown used to the gentle peace of the Dreaming, where none of its denizens within knew injury or hunger or need under the meticulous care of Lord Morpheus, and so the razor sharp survival of her imprisonment here is like nothing she's known. It makes her miss home with a sorrow that pits inside of her belly like the hunger from the starvation she endures regularly now.

Time in this realm, wherever hell this is, has a much more steady cadence. Its beat is reliable, fast for all that her captors and the pain they inflict makes it feel as if it thrums agonizingly slowly here. 

And then one day, everything abruptly changes.That they've dragged her out of her small cell is strange, a variance to the pattern of their usual violent treatment that puts her on instant alert. Trepidation curls viciously in her stomach as her captors start their long journey with her, forcing her to stumble along beside them despite that her legs seem ill suited to carrying her. While they make their bawdy, threatening jokes at her expense, the time around them crawls, going far more slowly than the furious staccato of her heart. She is a creature of the Dreaming, and yet she feels as if she is being carried further and further into a hellish horror that makes the nightmares of her own realm seem but child's play. 

The room she ends up in has tall, gold columns, light filtering through the high windows on either side of it, and a dangerous looking male sitting on a throne of iron. Lucienne can only catch a furtive glance, but she sees a crown atop his head of crackling power, crimson and snapping violently where it hums with energy. He's glaring at the figure on the bottom of the steps as they fling Lucienne down before them, and Lucienne chances the minute to lift her gaze and sneak a longer look at this newcomer, only to be caught off guard by the strange blue she can see shining from this woman's eyes, something in them glowing as if it should not exist, a cerulean manifestation of great magic shimmering amongst the dreariness of this reality. There's a gentle power that emanates from her as well that's peculiar to feel here of all places, but it strangely soothes some part of the librarian that she didn't even know needed soothing. 

The woman seems to notice her inquisitive stare but she does not smile at Lucienne. Instead, she simply tilts her head in a nod that speaks of acknowledgement. 

"I thank you, Hadrius of the Adirae." Her voice is like the sweetest song despite the words twisting Lucienne's gut in apprehension. She doesn't know this female, can't fathom what she might want of Lucienne, but she's suddenly very worried that it's not for anything good. She knows well enough how the beauty of immortals tends to mask the darkness festering inside of them. And for a moment, she balances the dichotomy of relief at being away from this place and its torture against the very real fear of the raw power she senses coming from this unknown entity. What will this woman do to her? What could she want from her? Is Lucienne exchanging one nightmarish existence for another? Possibly one even worse? Though, in truth she doesn’t believe she can imagine anything more horrible than what she's already been subjected to, anything that might... damage her as this ordeal surely has. 

"Follow me," she tells Lucienne, and the librarian scrambles to her feet to do just that. The woman does not say anything else to her then, but she does walk a little slower as if to allow Lucienne to catch up, and that sliver of possible consideration sparks something like hope within her. Perhaps this new terror of Lucienne's is simply panic, a completely understandable malady to be suffering from in her opinion. This could all be fine, she thinks, despite that there's a voice in her head telling her otherwise. When they're outside the castle and settled squarely in the desolate, eerily empty town that Lucienne is quite certain must be deserted, the woman lightly rests a hand on the librarian's arm, seemingly taking care to avoid the worst of the bruises there, before she summons her magic to shift them from the realm. 

When they arrive, Lucienne expects a grand entrance, a palace, a fantastical place the likes that magic wielders tend to keep, but they absurdly enough land before a rather ordinary looking house. It strikes her as something that might appear the Waking, with its white siding and large front porch. Trees sprawl around it lazily, leafed limbs drooping to the ground, colorful flowers blooming vibrant on the bushes around the perimeter of the house and fence. Lucienne glances around confusedly as the woman leads her up the stairs, inside the home, and to a kitchen. An exceedingly normal kitchen, she thinks. Light here filters in through the windows where shelves of herbs and plants soak up the sun. Another whole wall of the space is crammed with books, their leather spines carefully organized and obviously kept free of dust. Mouth-watering soup boils on the stove, and the scent of fresh bread pleasantly permeates the air, making her stomach twist in want for food. 

"You can call me May," the woman supplies while she carefully helps Lucienne to a chair to sit, and even in the whirl of thoughts and emotions rushing through her mind, Lucienne has the distinct impression that May isn't this entity's true name. She recognizes, however, that she's really in no position to argue anyone over lying about such a thing at the moment, especially not this creature of power before her. "You're safe now."

Safe. That word. She wonders if she'll ever feel safe again, if she's even capable of doing so anymore. Having information might help her, given that there's a sort of protection in understanding the details of what exactly is happening around her, a protection that she sorely needs in this present situation to anchor her amidst the roiling storm of her own fear. Lucienne has a million questions on the tip of her tongue, waiting for her to voice them, and yet she doesn't speak. She's honestly not even sure if she can right now.

"Apologies it took so long. I didn't realize that they had you at first. When I was finally made aware, I had to wait overly long for an audience with that broveshne ."

Lucienne, despite all her knowledge, doesn't know what that word broveshne means, but May says it as if she would like to stab Hadrius with it, and it makes the librarian irrationally pleased.

The woman- May- goes on, "I thought we could change into something more comfortable, maybe wash up, and then eat? It's been a while since I was held captive, but I definitely recall the starving as being one of the worst parts."

Lucienne still doesn't speak, and her silence seems to trouble May, who crouches before her as one might a skittish animal, like she’s trying to make herself look as non threatening as possible. "You're really safe, sweetling. This isn’t a trick. We'll get you healed up, and then we'll go and fix the Dreaming until we can find the Dream King."

"The Dreaming?" Lucienne finally croaks a response out as if she's repeating a deity's name, reverent despite that her throat burns with the words, and May frowns at this.

May stands at once to pour a glass of water and then stoops before Lucienne again to offer it as she cautions, "Drink it slowly."

The coolness of the water in her mouth feels like the best comfort in the universe. It reminds her of her library, the smell of paper and ink, the creak of leather when she first opens a new tome, the crackle of the library fireplaces on colder days, the light shining in through thick-paned windows, and the plushness of the chairs dotted throughout its sections for reading. She gulps greedily of it until May tilts the glass away from her.

"I'm sorry," she says with a wince, "but you really will get sick if you drink it too quickly."

"I…. understand." Lucienne's voice is still rough, but it feels easier to speak, less painful, and for that she's grateful. How long had it been since she'd had water? Since she'd had anything on her raw throat save for screams? May hands her the glass back, and Lucienne focuses on taking small sips, not wanting this magnificent gift to be taken from her anew.  

"I hope you like vegetable soup." May smiles at her and gets back to her feet from where she'd been sitting on her haunches in front of Lucienne. "I didn't know what you'd prefer, but most everyone will eat that, so I thought it the better choice."

"Vegetable soup is... fine." 

"I know you have more questions, but lets get the filth of that place off of us, and then we'll eat and talk. I'll answer anything you ask then." 

But Lucienne doesn't believe her. Not really. She wishes she could, despite that she's sure there has to be a catch in this exchange. What does this woman want of her? Why is she being so polite? So kind? It makes no sense, and to someone as logic oriented as Lucienne, that is horribly unsettling.

Nonetheless, she does as her rescuer suggests, and an hour later, they're both sitting at this odd woman's simple wood table, steaming bowls of soup and fresh bread and butter before them. Lucienne has to admit, she does feel better to have the stink of that place off of her. May had given her a pair of pants and a loose night shirt that feels as if it's made of the softest cotton lawn, and she smells of the lavender from the soap in her bath, with which she'd scrubbed the blood off of herself until she'd worried she might accidentally remove skin as she did so. 

"Eat slowly," May warns, her voice threaded through with what Lucienne thinks is more kindness, a puzzling thing to hear even if May has been nothing but considerate to her so far. "The food will make you sicker than the water if you go too quickly."

The woman sounds not unlike she's giving advice from experience. She had said "since I was held captive" earlier, hadn't she? Lucienne stores that particular curiosity away for later, saving the question since it's not important, and she's expecting to have to wheedle and bargain for what she actually needs to know. When dealing with immortal creatures of magic, it's not unusual to have to barter a bit for answers.

"You know of the Dreaming?" Lucienne asks, preparing herself for a roundabout, useless reply the likes of which the Fates might provide.

May nods, surprisingly direct in her response as she blows at a spoonful of her soup to cool it off. "We came across a group of nightmares that were preying on humans. I couldn't figure out why your ruler was allowing them to roam free. He's usually much stricter with his creations, as I'm sure you're aware."

Ah, yes. Lucienne is aware of that. The Corinthian. Lord Morpheus had left to bring him back from the Waking, and he had not returned. As far as Lucienne knows, he still hasn't done so. "There were stray nightmares? And you... thought to inform him of this?"

"Not... quite. I honestly thought only to tell him to get them back in line, to curb their bloodlust or something." May, rather nonchalantly for an entity that's just admitted she'd wanted to chastise Dream of the Endless like he was no more than an errant, misbehaving child however long ago, takes a bite of her soup and gestures towards Lucienne's own as if she should do the same. "I went to the Dreaming to request an audience, but he wasn't there. It felt... strange, abandoned, as if he hadn't been there for a while. I even tried to summon him in all the old ways, but I couldn't get an answer." She huffs out a sigh. "I went to Destiny of the Endless after that and basically harassed him until he very begrudgingly told me that Dream was imprisoned by mortals and there I discovered your plight."  

"How did you secure my release?" Memories flood Lucienne's mind then, recollections of pain, of torture and torment. Hadrius and his interrogation, his joy at seeing her cry, at hearing her scream, runs through her thoughts with all the force of a physical blow. Her fingers unconsciously brush over the branding mark that they'd burned into the back of her other hand, tracing the raised edges of it as she's done for years since being abducted from her home. It had been a soothing gesture then, one of the only things she'd been able to do in her efforts to ground herself in that hell.

Now, however, May narrows her eyes on the injury as if she's only now noticing it, and Lucienne is bewildered to see an expression of pity cross her features. 

"I have compromising information on him," May supplies. "I very politely informed him that I was an emissary from the Dreaming, and that if he didn't hand you over I'd tell everyone what I knew." A faint smile turns her lips up. "Believe me, he doesn't want that to happen."

And May says it as if it was the easiest thing in all the worlds, as if decades of torture and pain and fear were as easy to end as a bit of blackmail and the word please. 

"I had planned to get you healthy again, and once you're mended, I'll take you back to the Dreaming," she goes on. "I've already got my brother and his contacts looking into where your lord might be."

"He's been imprisoned?" Lucienne queries, her mind working more slowly than it should to parse out all that May is telling her freely, no persuasion or manipulation or cleverness needed. It's a drastic but welcome change from the usual immortals she deals with, and she is oddly grateful for it. 

May nods again as she pushes Lucienne's bowl closer to her in what the librarian thinks is a more insistent gesture that she should eat. "By humans at that. I'm sure that's going to put him in a most charming mood when we finally get him out," she adds dryly, and Lucienne can't help the tiny smile she gives in return.

"And then?"

The woman huffs out a faint laugh, like she's amused. "Well, I suppose then he can finally take care of that nightmare problem, can't he? Goodness knows I'm getting tired of listening to my brother complain about having to do it."

Lucienne can't help her relief at this answer, at the effortless trust she seems to have for this entity. It might make her foolish, but for the first time in a long time, she feels hope swell in her heart for some reason, hope for the future, hope that maybe, just maybe, things might eventually be fine after all. 

PRESENT DAY...

"My lord…." Lucienne's voice is hesitant, an oddity in and of itself. 

Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, glances up at her from the leather-bound register he'd been going through and frowns. The dappled light filtering in from the windows behind him does little to mitigate the gloominess of his throne room, but he can easily see that his librarian is standing rigid in her usual place, her spine stiffened in a way that he thinks reminds him all too much of fear. As he studies her from where he sits, he takes note of her creased forehead, of her furrowed brow, of the vein in her neck that thumps furiously, far faster than it should. It is a strange thing to see her so clearly shaken, and he decides immediately that he does not care for it.

"We must… speak." Her words are halting, as if it takes some great feat of strength to force them from her mouth, and she looks so unsure of herself that he knows she must have something either important or catastrophic to tell him. Perhaps both. Carefully, he closes his book and places it on the pile he had been reading from, gathering from his librarian's apparent apprehension that she might require his full attention for whatever has happened. With an unusual feeling of alarm, he walks slowly down the steps of the tall dais until he's but a few paces from her.  

"Very well," he grants, still regarding her curiously.

"Viego has been trying to contact you," is her reply, and he thinks he now understands why exactly she had seemed so reticent to begin this conversation. 

Morpheus feels his face darken in warning, his whole body going taut with anger at the mention of this. That Viego, May's brother, has been trying to contact him is not unknown to the Endless. He's felt the pull from the summoning several times and resolutely ignored it.  "Do not concern yourself with the makers," he growls out, and what he means is do not speak to me of anything to do with her, with my once betrothed.

Lucienne, however, only draws in a sharp breath, regret written plainly on her face. "I fear I must, my lord."

He's surprised, which seems a paltry descriptor for the magnitude of sheer shock that wells up within him. His librarian has always been unfailingly loyal, even in her early days when she was a wild raven that grappled with leaving her mortal life behind. To see her now disobeying him for that deceiver of a female sets his teeth on edge. Had his betrayer truly infected everything in his realm so thoroughly? Would the damage she wrought ever be completely purged from this place? He knows that Lucienne had been overly attached to her for some reason that he never did and still does not understand, but her first duty remains to him and the Dreaming. 

Without waiting for a word from him, she continues on. "When you were first taken and bound by Roderick Burgess, I was captured by Hadrius of the Adirae," Lucienne admits with the slightest tremble in her tone, her eyes downcast as she relays this to him. 

Morpheus stiffens in confusion, the words so unexpected that he's momentarily unable to parse what she's just said. How has he never heard of this? That his own librarian was taken by that monster and he had not known is wholly startling.

"Hadrius?" he repeats, almost hoping that perhaps he's misunderstood her. Morpheus will confess that he does not know much of that malevolent being, save that which he imagines everyone else does. Hadrius currently resides in a realm utterly destroyed by his own violent brutality, and he has existed for eons, possibly even longer than the Endless themselves have. But beyond that and the rumors which circulate every now and then, he is an enigma lost to time, a puzzle on the outskirts of reality that few have been brave enough to try and solve. 

Lucienne nods and finally looks back up at him, a latent terror present in her expression that Morpheus has never seen from her before. "Some of his men abducted me outside the gates during your absence. They…. questioned me on various aspects of the Dreaming and details regarding its function, seeking secrets and information that I could not give them."

They had sought details of the Dreaming? Whatever for? Surely they could not be fool enough to step foot in his realm? Not with his power returned to him in full as it is now. He decides that he will mull over that later, however, believing it irrelevant to what Lucienne seems to be trying to tell him. He turns his attention to her anew, thinking over her words as he does.

The way she had said questioned tightens his chest in both pity and concern. He's heard gossip of the savagery displayed by that mysterious entity called Hadrius, heard the tales of him torturing his wife to death and burning his own children alive after a cruel imprisonment in the dungeons. He doesn't need her to tell him that her interrogation was likely painful, likely horrendous.

"You were hurt," he breathes out instead of voicing this, a fury rising in him at the thought of one of his own being treated thusly. He has a responsibility to them, he knows, and he fights the sudden urge to seek her captors out and violently rend them with his shadows for their trespass.

Lucienne nods again, and he thinks he sees a shine in her eyes, an uncharacteristic sheen of tears that threaten to collect and fall. "I was treated…. harshly. Over a decade into my captivity, she..."

Decade? While he had languished in Roderick Burgess' binding circle, she had been held and suffered likely unspeakable torment for over a decade? He thinks he should comfort her, should console her in some way. His hand twitches with the unfamiliar, nearly absurd impulse to rest on her shoulder, but she seems as if she's holding herself together by sheer willpower, and he fears that such a gesture, especially coming from him, might shatter the brittleness of her in this moment. "Yes? Go on."

"May... came and rescued me. She helped to heal me."

That name. Her name. It cuts through him with all the bite of a serrated blade. 

"Why was I not told?" he demands sharply, fury coursing through him at both the mention of her and the audacity of that rat Hadrius for daring to abscond with, to hurt, his librarian. 

"She wanted to, but I was…. uncomfortable with sharing such knowledge. She agreed that she would stay silent, and I could speak about it in my own time, when I was…. ready."

And while he is loathe to admit it, that seems something May would do if he's entirely honest, offering her unassuming help to Lucienne as she'd done for him. In a bittersweet way, he remembers how she had pestered him with her presence after he'd retrieved his tools from their scattered places in the Waking (likely knowing that he had to hate being alone after so much time spent in the complete isolation of that glass sphere). He remembers how she had taken to laying gentle hands on his arm (as if to give him the touch that he craved but didn't have the words to ask for). He remembers how she'd dragged him to the Waking to show him the kindness and goodness of the humans (to remind him not to narrow the entire world of their kind down to the hurt of his imprisonment and the evil of Roderick Burgess). He remembers her listening quietly as he'd told her everything he could one night while she'd pressed naked against him in the afterglow of their lovemaking, her hands stroking his chest, reaching for his hand, pressing kisses against the knuckles as she'd sought to calm him, to let him know that she was there for him. He remembers the way that he'd felt her love and had real hope for the first time in millennia that perhaps there was something more for him outside an existence merely lived for the sake of his function.

How utterly foolish he had been then. To believe he could ever be allowed to keep such happiness for his own when so often his history had demonstrated the exact opposite. Even now, the sting of his past idiocy burns his pride.

"And are you ready?" he questions, gentling his voice as he wills the memories of her away, unwilling to think overly about the taint of her deception on them at present. He focuses instead on Lucienne, his advisor, though he has never called her that to her face, never acknowledged her role in any formal capacity. 

Her eyes burn at him, an odd intensity in them. "No, sir, but…. I must."

"You need not, Lucienne. I am quite willing to wait as long as you require until you are comfortable discussing this," he offers, still mindful to keep his tone low and soothing. 

"Sir…. when we finally arrived back here, after she had nursed me back to health, the realm was already in decay. She…. put her magic into the Dreaming to keep it alive for the subjects. And then she threw herself into finding you, and finally…. into bringing you back here."

In an instant, his compassionate calm is no more. His jaw clenches so hard he'd break teeth were he a human. He hates being reminded of her rescue of him, no doubt an elaborate plot of one of his siblings. Desire, most likely. "I'm aware of both her efforts in the Dreaming and that she freed me, Lucienne. What point are you trying to make? That I owe her?"

"To remind you of all she has done for this realm. Her brother has been trying to contact you because she is in trouble. It's-"

"None of my concern," Morpheus bites out, finishing for her. 

His librarian is clearly taken aback by his refusal. "But we… we have located her, and-" she tries again.

"You have been working with him? Against my express wishes to avoid involvement?" His interruption is one of shock. He had known that she was friendly with May, but to risk his wrath is uncharacteristically reckless of her.

"She is bound, sir, in a perfect copy of the binding circle that you were trapped in," Lucienne finally tells him, the admission spilling from her in a rush.

For a few moments, he's silent as he processes this.

"She is bound with her own spell?" he asks at last, intending the words to come out cruel, but instead his heart twists at the reality of her being bound as he had been, captive to the same nightmare she had saved him from, no matter her actual motives for freeing him.

"I remain convinced that this has little to do with me," he decides, something in him tugging unpleasantly at the thought of her in such danger, "but I will contact her brother immediately and assist however I am able."

He assumes this will assuage Lucienne, but the librarian only seems to grow tenser at his offer of help. 

"Sir… she's held in the same binding circle that held you. The binding circle of an Endless," she repeats more slowly, as if there's something that she's trying to relay to him, but she can't quite muster up the words to speak it. 

He frowns at her, not understanding what she could possibly be getting at, but the idea of that specific spell holding her is passing strange now that he thinks on it. His once betrothed is many things, but an Endless is assuredly not one of them.

"She's held by it because she carries a part of you inside of her, a part that is subject to the binding of an Endless."

It takes him several long moments to comprehend what she's conceivably telling him, and even then he's sure that he's misunderstood. He has to have misunderstood, because the alternative is nothing less than appalling. "You cannot mean that she is…" he trails off in something like horror.

"With child," Lucienne finishes for him, her words short and simple despite the enormity of their meaning and all the many ramifications inherent in them. "Yes."

Morpheus sits heavily on a step, feeling strangely as if his legs might give out from beneath him. Doubt, shock, dread, rage, and disbelief are but a few of the many emotions roiling through his mind. How could this have came to be? Neither his kind nor hers are given to accidental procreation, and they had taken steps to avoid such a thing. Now, however, he's learning that he'd likely left her with child, that he'd nearly... 

His eyes squeeze shut for a moment, unwilling as he is to think on that. They had certainly not parted well, their relationship set aflame by her misdeeds and left as naught but ashes in the end. His love for her had been absolute, fierce, and with it his heart had been thoroughly broken. He’d thought that he had suffered all the pain he could from their fallout, but to know that she is currently trapped, his child growing inside of her, cuts at him in an all new way, something unfamiliar but gut-wrenching all the same. 

Outside the palace it darkens. Thunder rolls loudly, and a bolt of lightning splits the sky of the Dreaming before a torrential downpour starts, all of this a sudden manifestation of his turmoil.

"How… long....?" He's unable to organize his thoughts, but his librarian's face softens as she seems to take mercy on him and starts answering the questions he cannot form or give voice to in the wake of this news.

"She's been held for six months at least, and…. we feared her dead for some of that time. Only recently Matthew was able to find her while he searched the Waking, and it...  became very clear what had happened to her."

Feared her dead? They had thought her dead and never bothered to tell him? He is unsure as to why the possibility of that twists inside of him so sharply, why the possibility of her lifeless makes him feel almost ill.

"Is he... with her now?" 

Lucienne nods in response, hesitation clear in the way she falteringly informs him, "Sir… it is…. You might not wish to witness what... what he is in this... exact moment."

"Matthew," Morpheus calls, never taking his eyes off of Lucienne, something like betrayal churning in his gut alongside his newfound fear for the female he had once offered to make his wife, his queen. Fear for her and... fear for the child she carries. His... His child.

"Hiya boss," the raven greets, his tone sounding unnaturally nervous and the reply delivered far too quickly for Morpheus to think he had not been waiting for this very summons. 

"Show me," he commands tersely before he enters Matthew's mind, and he finds that he is wholly unprepared for the image that awaits him there.  

(May is in the circle, completely stripped and nude as he had been when he was imprisoned, and he's... alarmed... by her state. She's a gaunt thing, all of her unnaturally bone thin in what he believes to be... starvation? Despite the large swell of her stomach where a child obviously rests, her ribs are plainly visible, the knots of her spine protruding far more than they should where she's curled on her side, and he knows with a sickening dread that withholding sustenance must have indeed been one of the tools of torture that her tormentors used on her. She appears ill, near death he'd even say, and Morpheus feels as if he could tear a world apart from the sheer wrathful anger that rises up in him with this horrific understanding.

Beside her, drawn in that same haunting gold that he'd looked upon for decades, is a duplicate of the binding spell that holds her. 

"Call him." Her human captor snarls out his order, but May simply ignores him, staring off into the distance as if she's finally given up, her hopelessness a heartbreaking thing to see. Even through the thin slit of the window where the thick, black covering on it has peeled back very slightly, he thinks he can almost feel her despair as if it is his own. At Morpheus' bidding, his raven moves closer, and he observes with Matthew's eyes the presence of six long, ugly gashes that travel from her neck to the base of her back, all of them still sluggishly weeping blood. Rage, vengeful and all-consuming, takes hold of him then. What had been done to her? What terror had this monster dared to inflict on a woman weakened with child? 

"Call him, and we'll let you go." The mortal tries to bargain, but May seems... suddenly animated at this. Sitting up slowly, tentatively as if she's in a great deal of pain, she flicks angry eyes up at him, a fury swirling in their depths that he's never seen from her before, that he didn't even know she was capable of. Her expression almost distracts him from the dark bruising on her cheek, the jagged cut above her left eye.

"It's not happening. No matter how many times you ask," she answers, glaring at her jailer.

"Then you'll die." May flinches when he says this. "You're not as sturdy as he is, are you? He lasted for thirty years and seemed like he could have gone on longer, but you….you're dying now." He grins sadistically at that, leaning closer to her after he brandishes a knife, a very familiar, very cursed knife. Morpheus remembers it being brutally pulled out of her back once, remembers the look on Roderick Burgess' face when he'd yanked it from her flesh while May had been in the process of rescuing Morpheus several decades ago. "I wonder if Dream of the Endless would come for his bastard sooner than you? If I were to cut it out, would that summon him here? If I were to make it cry? Make it scream?"

She draws in a trembling breath at the sight of the cursed blade before seemingly forcing herself steady again.

"He won't come for either of us," she tells him, her voice almost desolate in its quiet. "You've picked very poor bait, Alexander Burgess, and the stain of what you're doing will see you in Hell when Death arrives for you."

Alexander Burgess chuckles, a depraved sound that has her tensing as if waiting for a blow, as if she has received many blows from this mortal and can't help but to instinctively fear more. Instead, her captor brings the knife down hard right outside the circle, plunging it deep into something that Morpheus cannot quite make out, though May jerks away from the threatening gesture. She moves as far away from her abductor as she's seemingly able to, her body near enough to the golden sigils of the binding that she hisses when her hand gets to close. "Very well. I think next time I'll put it in your stomach. That thing's death might not make him come, but it might make you cooperate."

After he's left, the gate of the basement creaking and then slamming loudly behind him, May stares as if she's on alert for him to return and... and hurt her anew. Several minutes pass before shakily, she cradles the swell of her belly where the child grows, brushing trembling fingers there as if she's trying to soothe the baby, as if she's trying to reassure herself that its still there and safe. Her eyes well with tears, and she gives a small, almost silent sob that rends his heart to hear.) 

Morpheus breaks off the connection, breathing raggedly. The ground outside trembles turbulently, the shudders of it stretching through the entirety of the realm. His stomach lurches, his panic an unfamiliar beast snapping violently inside of his very being while his shadows, the most nightmarish aspect of his power, chitter excitedly, ready to exact retribution for Alexander Burgess' offense, ready to savagely assist him in the undertaking he is soon to begin. Around him, a tense silence hangs heavy over the throne room as he forcibly gathers himself. 

"Where is Viego Westin?" he demands of Lucienne when he finally calms the impossible, too-fast beat of his manifested heart. "I must speak with her brother immediately."

As a general rule, Viego Westin doesn't like to get involved with the Endless. 

That's a completely fair stance, he thinks, given that him and his sister have survived for a hell of a long time on Earth by avoiding unnecessary attention, and those Endless bastards always seem to draw tons of that. Not that they can help it, really. They're concepts made flesh, the massive power of that jarring even to those who can't sense the magic behind it as he can. 

When it had came to the Dreaming and its ruler, Viego had very much wanted to avoid getting mixed up in that too. After all, what did it have to do with him if some Endless was trapped in a binding circle? It's not like any of them would actually lift so much as an eyebrow to help him or May if the situation were reversed, but his sister, stubborn to a frustrating fault, had overruled him. In the countless millennia they've lived and coexisted and survived together, he's learned well the valuable lesson of choosing what battles to pick with her, and at the time it had honestly seemed harmless enough. Their checklist went: keep realm alive, rescue Emo Endless, and celebrate with something alcoholic.

Of course, now, in hindsight he wishes he had chosen to pick that particular battle. 

Because the aftermath of it has… well, gone to absolute shit doesn't seem a strong enough way to describe how sideways it's all gone. 

He'd known after her first decade in the Dreaming that May had went and fallen in love with that mopey bastard Dream. Granted, she hadn't actually told him that, not then and not for about seventy years after that, but Viego isn't an idiot. And he'd have to have been not to notice the tender, loving glances that Dream and May would share (okay… fine), or the way that Dream would sneak her away to somewhere hidden just so he could brush a kiss against her hand (which… sickly sweet enough to be nauseating but mostly tolerable), or the fact that Viego could smell the Endless on May sometimes (uncomfortably disgusting at the absolute least) in probably the clearest sign possible that the two of them had been doing the old devil's tango. Viego isn't a prude, not by any stretch of any imagination, but knowing that Dream had been defiling his sister had required a great deal of effort on his part to keep his mouth shut and his magic calmed and his temper firmly suppressed. Honestly, his first thought when May had at last told him they were to bond had been fucking finally.

Then she showed up eight months ago, and he felt all that restraint disappear, gone as an urge grew within him to march straight into the Dreaming and beat Dream bloody, Endless or no. His sister, worn and pale as a corpse at his front door, was hurt and exiled and terribly, terribly broken. 

Oh, and pregnant. She was that too. Pregnant and unbonded , a death sentence for their kind, the very death sentence that had ended up destroying their own mother. 

("You didn't even bond with him?" Viego breathed out incredulously when she revealed her pregnancy, stunned disbelief in his eyes at her uncharacteristic stupidity. She knew better. "May…. what in the hell were you thinking?"

"I was an idiot," May answered him, self-loathing clear in her tone, her eyes shining with tears as Viego led her to their kitchen table and ushered her into a seat there. "I thought…. I thought he actually loved me."

Fear twisting in his gut, Viego considered this. He'd had his fair share of arguments with sexual partners over the centuries, and May had never really done the serious thing with anyone before. He entertained the idea that perhaps she just didn't understand how such fights worked. "Maybe he does still. Maybe this is just a lover's spat-"

"He's banished me. I can't even get in touch with him to tell him about the baby," she informed him as she ran a shaking hand over the swell of her belly. "He wouldn't even listen… didn't even give me a chance to… I don't even... don't even know if I could have told him, if I could have explained it..." 

Viego studied her then, and worry crept over him at how very off she sounded in her distress, how very... fragile she appeared in her grief. "Explain what, sis?"

She was silent for several minutes, her jaw clenching, her eyes watering even more as she stared over at a row of cabinets along the farthest wall, seemingly scrutinizing the knots and divots in the glossy wood grain of them. 

And then as if a spell was broken, May snapped. "About the stupid book," she bit out as she got to her feet and began pacing. "About that stupid grimoire and that stupid spell."

Viego frowned in confusion and felt utterly unable to make sense of what exactly she was telling him. "He's mad about that? You were a child. Did you tell him that you were a child?"

"Are you listening? He didn't even let me try. He just banished me because I had lied, because... I couldn't admit to him what I had done, what had been done to me. He didn't even let me say goodbye… to.... oh... Lucienne." At that name, May seemed to realize the totality of her loss, seemed to realize that she would not see her friends again. She sunk to the ground, stricken anew while she held herself tightly, and Viego knew that she was mourning those that she had been forever cut off from. His sister had always gotten too attached, after all, and he was under no delusions that she hadn't went and done the same thing this time as well.

But Viego was a hundred percent sure then that he would do anything, give or take or kill whatever the universe required, to never hear that broken, desperate sobbing come from his sister again. She was a hollowed out thing, her heart fractured before his very eyes, and Viego did not hesitate to wrap his arms around her. 

"Shh," he soothed as best he could, keeping silent on her trauma. Comfort wasn't really his thing. In truth, Viego had always been more hard edges than anything else, even before he had been shaped and molded as a killer, as a being who enjoyed the destruction at the end of everything. With his sister in his hold, he struggled to remember real genuine softness, the kind she needed as she broke apart in his arms. The solace of it was the least she deserved from him. 

He remembered the innocent, smiling girl she once was, when they were but children and the stain of power (or what some beings would do for said power) hadn't yet caused them any harm. She'd told him then that kindness wasn't weakness, and even as a youth he'd thought her foolish for it. It would be such a short time for him to be proven right, for the both of them to discover that kindness might not be a weakness, but it was definitely a luxury. One that was best left to happy moments and situations where they weren't being beaten and tortured and slowly starved to death in a dank dungeon. 

Too much like their mother, May had still tried to be kind anyway even there in that hellhole, even as a mere child suffering brutally under the order of those who should have seen to her safety. There had been other magic users in that place, chained up and drained, hurt severely, and his sister- willful and loving and stubborn to a fault- had tried to keep them as comfortable as she could, whispering stories and humming little tunes and asking about their lives. She'd tried to give them hope enough to make the inevitable dying as peaceful as it could be. 

May had comforted him too, more than even she could ever know. She'd treated his wounds as best she was able and held his hands (the only part of him he could bear to have touched) while he almost bled out in the aftermath of one of the guards deciding he had liked the look of an attractive boy, which Viego very much had been. He had found out the next time it happened (guards chatting idly by while that sadistic fuck tore him apart from the inside out again) that they'd been hurting her like that too, that she hadn't said a thing to him about it, and he had wondered why. Had she been protecting him? Sparing him? When they'd finally thrown him back in his cell, bleeding and burning in shame, he had let his little sister hold him and sob against his broken body, giving him all the solace she had left to give because he'd finally understood then that giving peace helped her find her own in some way. 

The damage of that time, Viego knew as he held his sobbing sister in the circle of his arms, was carved deep into their very souls, impossible to ever completely ignore. Even sweet, loving May had ended up changed before they'd gotten free of that place, but Viego tried not to think of that for the moment. Instead, he focused on her clinging to him all those thousands of years ago in their mutual pain and fear, used the memory as a guidepost of sorts to remember kindness when all of him thrummed with the need to find Dream of the Endless and unmake him for this offense. 

On the tiled floor of his kitchen, he tautened his hold around her, the hard swell of her belly between them as he brought his hand up to the back of her head, stroking her hair carefully as if she were frail enough that he might accidentally turn her to dust with just his embrace. 

"Shh, sis. We'll muddle through. We always have," he offered soothingly, "and you'll be a mother. Imagine that. You've always wanted children."

The truth, though he found himself unable to speak it aloud, was that she might not live long enough for that. Makers like her needed a bond to survive bearing. The lack of one had been the very thing that killed their own mother in the end, so Viego knew that May was probably aware of just how much danger she was in, of just how much danger Dream had left her in. His anger rose inside of him, and he quickly squashed it back down, choosing to focus instead on that dim, barely-there love inside of him as he wielded it clumsily to give her… well, hope. 

The Endless, he knew, could be handled later. Or so he thought.)

His sister was with him for almost a month, and he'd known her so well before, the countless millennia making every beat of her heart as familiar to him as his own, that the new changes had been… difficult for him, for them both. May had been many things in their many long years of sharing a home but never… pregnant . She slept a ton and vomited almost constantly and cried sometimes for no real reason that he could actually understand. They fussed and bickered as siblings of any age tend to do, worked together to come up with a solution to her bond dilemma, and then with that finished and behind them, they thought to settle in for the little one to arrive.  

Until May woke one morning, put off by the lack of decent food in his house. The baby growing inside of her made her equally nauseous and hungry in sporadic turns like a light flickering on and off after a toddler has figured out how fun it can be to flip the wall switch, and Viego learned very quickly that he should keep his mouth shut no matter what horrendous concoction she consumed in an attempt to appease the baby she was busy growing. She told him around lunch time that she was going on a supply run, gave him a quick hug, grabbed her keys, and then….

And then never returned. 

Frantically, he searched. Despite his disdain of the Endless fucker who'd shattered his little sister's heart, Viego wasn't too proud to beg. And beg he certainly had. As soon as the pulse of May's life disappeared from the edge of his awareness (an occurrence that hadn't even happened once during her near century in the Dreaming), Viego swallowed whatever pride he might have had left and started summoning the King of Dreams. He tried with blood and fire and burning his damn name in the old ways, but the bastard refused to answer. It was the librarian who finally reached out to him, none other than the Lucienne that May had been so heartbroken over losing, and he wasted no time in telling her what had happened, relieved when she seemed appropriately anxious about the news. She sent him rarer magical texts from the Dreaming library with a multitude of locating rituals that he cast to no avail, and eventually Lucienne, more worried than Viego would have expected given who her boss was, made the call to send a raven out to search for May. 

Weeks later, when the raven shows up at his window, Viego feels as if he might weep with relief at the prospect of news. He rushes to undo the latch and let the little guy in, but he doesn’t get the chance before something... changes. A heaviness filters through the air as his senses start to alarmingly burn. The magic of his house seems to swell and twist uncomfortably, bursting with a loud pop in his magic sense that only recedes with the arrival of none other than the Endless he most wants to punch in the face. 

"Fucking finally," he bites out at Dream, hiding his astonishment at his appearance. With how callously he had discarded May, Viego hadn't thought the Dream King cared enough to actually get involved in this. "You took your time showing up, didn't you?"

"I know where she is being held," Dream tells him stiffly, an expression of cold impassivity on his pasty face as he blatantly ignores the crude barbs in Viegos' words.  

Rage drains from Viego, and determined resolution takes its place. If the brooding bastard is going to provide him information, Viego can stow his own shit until later. 

"Where?" Viego demands roughly, grabbing a dirty duffel off of his table as he starts to rummage around and pack it with things they might need. He's never been a boy scout (since they were after his time by thousand upon thousand of years and all), but he knows the value in being prepared, especially given that May could be hurt. Two knives, a regular first aid kit, a magical first aid kit, three waters, and a couple of protein bars all make their way into the bag.  

"Fawney Rig."

That damn place? Viego stops from his packing, a blanket still clutched in his hand, and stares at Dream. His gut contorts in apprehension as he asks, "What the hell is she doing there?"

 He just knows that he's not going to like any answer that comes out of Dream's mouth.

"Her captors," the Endless supplies tonelessly, "are attempting to lure me into another binding circle."

"Of course," Viego scoffs derisively. "You ever notice that a lot of her suffering these days has to do with you?" There's a caustic spite that's painfully clear in his tone as he finally shoves the blanket into the bag and roughly zips it shut.

Those words get a reaction. Dream's marble countenance tightens as he glares at Viego, but he does not meet the scorn with an actual answer. Viego thinks that him not defending himself is a tell in and of itself. "Will we require subterfuge to enter as you and she did last time?" the Endless questions, his voice even enough despite that Viego can sense he's anything but truly calm. 

Viego's own fury, always a carefully tended magical fire, expands and rises to the surface. The heat of it blazes just under his skin, ready and willing to destroy, to kill, to see all of May's captors in flame. His darkness chitters in glee, in anticipation. "No," he growls. "We'll blast our way in."

The Dream King nods in concurrence, his sand already rippling through the reality of where they're at, and there's a low thrum of violence from the Endless. Which is... good, in Viego's humble opinion. They don't really know what they're walking into, either of them, and there's no telling how much rending they'll have to do to secure May's freedom. A pissed off anthropomorphic personification might be just the thing to sway any fight in their favor. Viego slings the bag over his shoulder and grits his teeth before the power swells and bursts, chucking them out before the nightmare that is Fawney Rig.