Chapter Text
Prologue: Dreaming of Dreams
One moment, he is Dream of the Endless, and the next… he… he doesn’t know. He knows he is Dream, he knows he is Endless, but neither of those words – those statements mean anything to him. He just knows them, and he doesn’t understand why. None of this, he understands.
Dream pulls his knees to his chest – he knows he should not be this small. He knows like this he shouldn’t be alone, but he feels as though he wants to be (he doesn’t, he doesn’t want to be alone anymore, but… it was expected of him). Dream pushes his nose against his knees, uncaring of the blood, a slight tremor starting in his shoulders. He doesn’t know anything, he decides – just that he doesn’t want to be here.
He wants anything but that; he is desperate for it. His entire body resonates with it. He doesn’t want to be here, he doesn’t want to be alone, and he just wants someone to make this better.
……………….
A few hours prior
Dream refuses.
It could be one hundred years, two hundred, a thousand, but he would not give Roderick Burgess what the man desired. It was not his function, and even if it was, Dream would refuse. Instead, he accepts his current abode as what it is – a prison of glass and empty thoughts. The Dreaming, his constant companion – all of it were wisps. Jessamy was…
Out of everything that happened to Dream, that was… Jessamy dying… that was what near drove him over the edge. Not to comply, no. He would never, but… but he had near lost himself to one of his sibling’s realms – Delirium (a brief moment of madness), Despair (for Jessamy’s death was a reminder of everything he had lost and more), Death (if only he could end the mortals so easily).
Had he slipped into his siblings’ realms – he could have asked for help. They would have… he recalls asking for help a long time ago against the Gods of Old, and Desire being the only one to answer (and not in any helpful way, in Morpheus’s opinion), but… had he been in their realms, perhaps, they could have heard him. He could have tried.
Near seven decades trapped – his meeting with Hob Gadling missed (he tries not to think on that too long) -, and he feels… alone… weak… He’d spend another seventy years, another seven hundred – he didn’t care. He wouldn’t give Roderick or now his conniving son anything. But… it didn’t change how Dream felt.
Which was exhausted. Seven decades – no realm, no Jessamy, no siblings -, and Dream finds himself fraying at the edges. Not enough to be remade, though he shudders to think that as a possibility, but enough that he worries the cracks will start to show to his captors. He wonders how long until he forgets why he’s refusing (he won’t, he swears he will not) – because for a mind like an Endless, he should not, but the memories of Fiddler’s Green, his throne room, his library… they were… they were hazy. How long until he forgets himself? He was the Dreaming, and
That was gone beyond his reach.
He won’t ever stop refusing – he settles on that. But – Dream drops his head now.
Outside the sphere, the guards continue their card game. The rest of the world – Dream’s current world – unchanged. It wouldn’t be long, the Endless supposes, until Roderick came back downstairs. Roderick, who unfortunately lived – far longer than any mortal should… likely in response to what he had taken from Dream – his effects. For one brief moment, however, Roderick had almost died nonetheless.
Sadly (or perhaps not), that was something Dream had half-wished had actually happened – Alexander and Roderick had come to blows and it was… so close. The boy almost killed the father, but much to Dream’s irritation, it had not come to pass. No, instead Roderick had beat the boy to near death in response, before leaving…
Had it – Death would have been here (even briefly). He could have… he doesn’t know if he would have – could have in this state - asked for help, honestly, but the thought that he could have… it was an opportunity that slipped by – so brief, so short that even thinking on it hurts now.
Not that the Endless understands the pain. He did not need to breath, eat, any of those mortal functions – though trapped as he was, his body was weakening. He was starving, he was suffocating, but the pain of losing that small glimmer of hope – that possible escape – that’s what plagues him – hurts him – the most, even now.
Seven decades, and no one had come for him otherwise. No one was going to, and Dream…
He drops his head to his knees; it’s a subtle, small movement, but one that does trigger the guards to pause their game briefly. It wasn’t often for them that the thing in the sphere moved, and when it did, they couldn’t help their curiosity. The creature (as it couldn’t be a man) was odd, unsettling, and undying from what they could see. Smartly, they were wary of it (him).
However, it’s not long before the guards return to their idle chatter, ignoring the Endless once more. An action that Morpheus prefers. He hates… he doesn’t want to be here (he doesn’t want to be alone), but he does not want their attention, their anything – just as he doesn’t want…
That’s when Roderick makes his way down, and if Dream could breath, he would let out a heavy breath. Things in the last decade had been… difficult.
Ever since Alexander came near dying, both men had become… different – or perhaps more of themselves, he supposes. They were crueler, darker, quicker to anger, and Alexander – the boy was no longer a boy – a stark mirror image of his sociopathic father. As if that would make Roderick love him as he loved Randall (it did not).
“Hello Dream Lord,” Roderick says, as he does every time. He stands in front of the sphere, a book in hand.
Seventy years, and Roderick had nothing besides an expanded life and that… Roderick leans heavily on his cane – he was not aging as he once was, but he was not young either. He scowls. What was the point of eternal life if his body continued to break down, and now… now he was being told within a year’s time, he would be bound to a wheelchair – a vile thought, and one he suspects his son is looking forward to. Alexander would be down here next, in a few hours, to try his own hand and magic (finally the boy had learned), but Roderick had an idea.
One last one, he supposes before he can no longer take the steps. If the Endless would not (could not) bring back his actual son, then he will have one remade. The Endless was a creature of fantasy and shape. Roderick was certain it could be done, and he had little care for the stress or outcome it may cause the Endless. As long as it worked.
And after years of searching, he had found another book – one that would hopefully help to accomplish that, and then Alexander could have his turn. Roderick didn’t know what the boy asked the Endless for – nor did he care (Alexander wanted… more… he wanted power… power to show his father that he was the better son – a much more dangerous thought, fantasy in the Endless’s opinion). But for now, Roderick opens the book.
From where Dream sits, he cannot entirely tell what the grimoire is, and after seventy years of other spells and enchantments thrown his way, he finds little care for whatever this one might be. Even trapped as he was, he was still Endless. There was little they could truly do to him (besides cut him off from everything and everyone… make him feel… something). He pays the man little mind, continuing to stare at the glint of the glass. It would be over soon.
It would…
For the first time in seventy years, Dream feels the need to breath – to gasp. Whatever Roderick’s reading – it pounds into his head, into his being, and it’s enough to send Dream to his hands and knees. Jaw clenched, he tries to fight it (he doesn’t know what), tries to do something, but it bends around him, bends through him – spearing him deeply, and the words (he doesn’t hear them) but they keep coming. Dream shakes his head, doing what he can to try and remove them from his mind – words… he was the prince of stories. He should understand the words, but with the high pitched whine in his head, he heard none of it.
Instead, he could only hear the beating of his heart (heart?), a desperate choke for breath (lungs?), and a deep painful hunger gnawing at his insides. Dream falls to his side, arms wrapped protectively around his center.
“Do you wish for me to stop Dream Lord?” Roderick says, though Morpheus hears none of it. He can’t over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. “Yes? No? Answer me!” When he continues to be ignored, Roderick starts again – bending the very fabric of reality to his beck and call.
He cares little for consequences, and in another realm, far away, Destiny stares worriedly at his book, at the pages tearing themselves into pieces… only one word repeated over and over – Dream.
………………..
And like that……
………………..
The glass shatters. Roderick goes flying, his head bouncing pathetically against the stone, and the guards topple over the table with their game, and Dream…
Dream finds himself sitting alone in the center of the chaos – in clothes far too large, with a name. Only a name… and nothing else.
One moment, he is Dream of the Endless, and the next… he… he doesn’t know. He knows he is Dream, he knows he is Endless, but neither of those words – those statements mean anything to him. He just knows them, and he doesn’t understand why. None of this, he understands.
Dream sits curled up in the center of the ruins, trembling under the pain – there is glass embedded in his palm, in his feet. He hurts. Everything hurts, and Dream finds his eyes heating. He wants… he wants someone here – anyone here…
The word doesn’t even come to him – what word… he doesn’t even know that… he was… Dream doesn’t know… he just wants –
“Oh, look at you sweet Dream,” Desire cooes stepping into the room with their usual flare. They had been utterly content to stay in their realm, browsing through humanity’s wants and whims with ease and slight boredom… when they had felt it – something resonating deep within their own heart.
A desperate desire so wanting that it had pulled them to their feet before they even realized it was Dream.
Of course, they had known about… his confinement – they had been quite amused by it even. But this – this may take the cake, they decide.
They had almost ignored the call, content to let their big brother suffer longer… but now they’re glad they didn’t.
After all – Dream… was not exactly the big brother anymore, and they grin, coming near to the runes but not crossing them. They crouch down, fingers brushing against rounded cheeks.
“I suppose I should call you little Dream now,” they say, and they wait for the glare, the haughty remark, but instead, they find the tear-filled eyes of Dream staring back… a Dream that had taken the form of a two-year-old.
What they don’t expect further is the confusion, the furrowed brow, and how he opens his mouth to speak only to stumble, as if he can’t find the words.
“Desire?” Dream says – he thinks… yes, this is Desire… Desire was… small – no not small, younger. They were younger, but… he doesn’t know. He doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to be here.
Desire sits back slightly – surprised by the questioning tone – but no more than the next words out of their big (little) brother’s mouth –
“Wanna go home. Pwease.”
Quick Notes: I haven’t decided what I want to do with this. It’s one shot at the moment, just for fun. I have Death Dealer and Essence to finish first, but I needed a break. So, I wrote this. If there’s interest, I may continue it… we shall see. If I do, it's very much another family fic with a bit more of a presence of Night and Time. I may also delete it. I don't know. I just felt like writing then posting it. Shrug