Chapter Text
After so long spent trying to restore the Dreaming to its former glory, Morpheus’s beloved realm seemed finally to be back in order. No tremors or cracks rocked the landscape from a vortex threatening to destroy the universe, no rogue nightmares attempted to usurp their ruler, and no wayward dreams abandoned their posts to walk the Waking. No, his days and weeks had settled into something familiar, something normal, which, perhaps, should have been the first sign that something was about to happen: after all, one can never be bored when one is Endless.
But hindsight, as the mortals say, is 20/20.
It is when he is in his throne room, sitting on the steps and conducting research on modern fears experienced by large swaths of the Waking’s population to gather inspiration for new nightmares (the fear of plague never truly went out of style, though the newer fear of nuclear apocalypse is certainly intriguing) that Morpheus feels it, though he is at first unsure what it is he is feeling. For a moment, he simply feels that something is…off. Within himself or his realm, he is unsure. Then, there is a sharp tug at his chest, and he is awash in feelings that are not his own.
Feelings of determination, of indignation, are vastly overpowered by abject panic and terror. It is a sharp departure from his own stagnant, content emotions, and it takes Morpheus a moment to wrest back control over himself. Unsteadily, he leans back against the cool stone and rubs a hand against his sternum, taking note of the residual pain that lingers. Just as he begins to wonder how and why such an instance occurred, the answer strikes him: those strong emotions could only belong to you, and they’re currently being experienced while you’re in what is supposed to be the safety of his realm.
Though he does not consciously keep track of your whereabouts—in fact, he attempts to make a concerted effort to avoid knowing where you are and what you are doing, all too knowledgable of the fact that he could very easily abuse such power in a moment of weakness—he is always passingly aware of your presence in the Dreaming, much like a mortal is always passingly aware of the fact that they are breathing. It is not something one consciously thinks about; rather, it is something one simply knows.
And now, he knows that you are frightened, far more than one should be when having a typical nightmare.
For the first time since he gave in to proximity, to want, and entered your dream on the night you met, he uses his power to determine your location; an action that takes a mere moment. To his surprise, he finds himself standing on a dock in the rockiest, most tumultuous part of the Sea of Dreams, watching as you desperately fight against violent waves that draw you back into the hold of the frigid water the moment you breach the surface.
While the scene is distressing to witness, he knows what you do not: that nothing in the Dreaming will harm you. What he does not know is how you ended up here, where so few dreamers dare to tread. Your fear spikes once more, a palpable lightning strike to his chest, and all questions are forgotten in favor of removing you from such a fear-inducing situation. The dock expands in a blink to be mere inches from where you are struggling, and he takes a firm hold of your hand when it appears again, pulling you easily from the water.
You immediately roll to your side, instinct taking over as you violently cough up the water that you had inhaled in your attempts to swim. He feels helpless simply watching you, and dries the water from your person with barely a thought, so that by the time you sit up and go to wipe the water from your face, there is nothing for you to worry about. Only, you appear slightly worried at not finding any water obscuring your vision, and stare at your clothes, now dry as well, curiously before noticing him, your bewilderment only increasing at the sight.
He is not quite sure what to expect of your reaction to seeing him—everything about you, down to your mere existence, has been a surprise. Naturally, your defeated groan falls in line with those standards.
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” you lament.
He attempts to hide a smile at your reaction. “Like what?”
“You know.” He does not, and it takes you a moment to figure out how to say what you mean, your hand gesturing between both parties in the meantime. “I save you from being hopelessly lost on campus. You save me from embarrassing myself in a crowded building. Apparently, you just saved me from drowning.”
“You would not have drowned,” he assures you.
Fear, this time most assuredly his own, rushes through him as your eyes narrow in apparent displeasure, though he knows not the cause for your action—he merely spoke the truth. “Did you not see the way that I was actively drowning? Like, unable to breathe or get out of the water? That’s the literal definition of drowning,” you argue.
“It may have felt that way, but things are often not as they appear here. I can promise you that you are completely safe.”
Morpheus follows you as you stand, a hand held out ever so slightly before he is conscious of doing so, waiting in case you require his assistance. For a long moment, you study him, and he longs to know exactly what it is you are cataloging about him.
“Why would they do that?” you ask finally. He does not know what you mean, and you elaborate when you realize this. “Those women, why would they push me into the water?”
The dock begins to feel less steady under his feet as he immediately becomes wary of your words. “Which women?”
“You didn’t see them?”
When he shakes his head, you sigh, and he mourns the disappointment he has apparently caused you.
“I don’t know. Three women, like a grandma, mom, and daughter.”
The Fates. It is not surprising that they were in the Dreaming—provided they do no harm, the Ladies move freely through the realms, as is their right, no matter how much of an intrusion the ruler of said realm feels it may be—nor is it surprising that they, it seems, were involved in Morpheus finding you. It is, however, disheartening that they have chosen to go after you, rather than him.
“Did they say anything?” he presses.
“Yeah. It was all really cryptic; about paths I know of and the ones that I don’t, and that I’ve been ignoring their gifts? It didn’t really make sense to me.”
It may have seemed cryptic to you, who has never dealt with anything like this in your mortal life, but for Morpheus, who has spent eons dealing with all manner of powerful beings, the Fates’ actions are as clear as crystal. They are not happy with the way that you and Morpheus have handled the situation you have found yourselves in, and have intervened to ensure it receives the outcome they have planned. The Ladies correctly assumed that by putting you in danger within the Dreaming, he would have no choice but to come to your aid.
“That would explain how you ended up here, though I know not why they pushed you into a tempestuous ocean reserved for those who are plagued by indecision,” he admits.
Tentatively, you raise your hand. “Guilty as charged.”
Your reaction piques his curiosity. “Really?”
When you laugh, the sound holds none of its usual warmth. “You have no idea the day that I’ve had.”
“Tell me of it, then,” he urges.
“You don’t actually want to hear about my day,” you say dubiously, clearly not believing him.
“I assure you, I do.”
To prove it as such, he changes your location to one of his favorite spots in the Dreaming: his personal garden, of which few know the existence. He watches as you eagerly take in the new and wondrous sights you’ve found yourself surrounded by, your awed reaction pleasing him greatly.
“Where are we? How did we get here?” you ask.
“This is my personal garden. I thought…that you would be more comfortable here.” He chooses his words carefully, answering only a small part of your question while stroking a leaf on the vine next to him to feign nonchalance as he does so.
“But where? I know for certain that I fell asleep in my living room. This shouldn’t be possible.”
Once again, he is faced with the conundrum that has plagued him for almost as long as he has known the truth of what your relationship will be. The thought of telling you the truth is extremely tempting, but now—when you are clearly facing problems of your own, problems that he is hoping you will confide to him—is, unfortunately, not the time. He does not want to lie to you, but decides once more that careful wordsmithing will have to do for now.
“Do you trust me?” he asks finally.
“I shouldn’t,” you respond almost immediately. “We don’t know each other well enough for that.”
“But do you?”
He certainly hopes that you do, and your nod confirms it.
“Then please trust me that I will give you the answers you seek in due time.”
“What do you consider ‘due time’?” you ask.
“Would you like to sit?” he offers instead, sweeping an arm out in the direction of the stone bench next to you.
You take a seat, but it is clear that you are not pleased with his obfuscation. “Are you going to join me?”
“If you would like me to.”
When you reach out to pat the empty space on the bench next to you, he joins you. You remain silent for a spell, and he finds himself, not for the first time, wishing that he could know what it is you are thinking about. Are you considering what to divulge? Are you weighing whether to talk to him at all? He will take whatever it is you choose to give him, even if it is the most concise of explanations, and remain patient as you decide.
His patience pays off in ways he could only dare to hope when you decide to confide in him. It has been many ages since somebody had last seen Morpheus as somebody worth sharing vulnerabilities with—long enough that he forgot how honorable being a confidant is. You divulge the problem you are facing, along with your worries: that you will fail, that you will disappoint those in your life, that you will make an incorrect decision and find yourself regretting it. He knows all of this already, of course; your dreams and nightmares are vast, vibrant, and almost impossible to ignore, even if you were not his soulmate. But to hear it straight from you provides more clarity than a direct peek behind the curtain ever could.
Morpheus has never been a being for whom conversation comes easily. He frequently says things that, to him, sound logical and sensible, but that end up coming across as blunt or rude, unintentionally offending whoever he is speaking with. Talking to you, however, carries none of the awkwardness that it typically does with any other. His responses require hardly any second thought, any worries as to whether what he is saying is something useful or worthwhile, or if it is going to cause emotional wounds. You are the other half of him; of course, he knows how to speak to whom he has longed to do so for thousands upon thousands of years.
Even better, you take his words to heart. You listen to his words, see the value in what he is saying, and allow him to comfort you (something that, in your dejected state, is sorely needed—it is hard to see how sad you look, to hear the defeat in your voice). For a being not typically seen as good at conversation, Morpheus is feeling quite accomplished.
As the conversation continues and the amount of time you spend in one another’s presence lengthens, the magnetic pull that Morpheus feels every time he is near you only increases, until even you seem to feel it. Your bodies move closer together, both of you unable to resist the pull until your knee begins to brush against his. He stares for a moment at your clasped hands sitting in your lap, at the way that you pick at the skin around your nails without even realizing you are doing so, and thinks about how easy it would be to reach over and take them in his own. Are your hands warm or cold? Are they calloused or smooth? He did not get the chance to find out when he pulled you from the Sea, and now, he longs for nothing more.
“Do you believe in fate?” you ask suddenly, drawing him out of his thoughts.
What a question to ask one such as he—what a question to ask him, who has been completely at the mercy of fate since the moment you winked at him in the New Inn. A tempting urge comes to mind—to take you in his arms right here, to show you exactly what fate has in store for you. “You are my fate,” he wants to say, the words on the tip of his tongue. “I love you so wholly and completely that it both terrifies and thrills me, and if I had a heart, it would surely beat only for you.”
Regrettably, he must hold himself to his earlier decision. “I have no choice but to.”
“I didn’t think I did before tonight, but now…” You trail off, shaking your head just slightly. “There’s a lot that you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
“There is much that I wish to tell you, though I know not how.”
“Like where we are?” You circle back to your original question.
“Among much else.” A flash of black catches his eye as Matthew appears out of the bushes behind you, raising his wings and making it clear that Morpheus’s presence is needed. “I have indulged for far longer than I should have, and I must return to my responsibilities.”
It is a shame that your time together is coming to an end so soon. He wishes to make certain that your mortal mind will remember something from this encounter—mortals rarely remember what happens in their dreams, and though he has the power to grant such memories to remain with a dreamer, he knows that he has already overindulged and acted unwisely. Then, a thought comes to him of something that he has longed to do since the last time that you met. A longing to touch you, truly and intentionally, and an action that would have seemed out of place in the modern setting you found yourselves in. But here, in his realm of hopes and fantasies?
If the Fates want him to act, then act he shall.
“Are you calling me a distraction?” you tease, your laughter falling to the wayside when Morpheus holds a hand out towards you.
This move is a gamble, and he waits with bated breath to see how you will respond. Finally, you place your hand in his, the sensation of your skin against his just as addicting as he remembers—a sense memory he has replayed time and time again in the preceding weeks. He relishes the trust that you continue to display towards him, squeezing your hand ever so slightly and running his thumb along the skin of your knuckles. Your breath, already coming out in stuttered gasps, gets caught in your throat when he raises your hand to his lips and gently kisses the back of it, eyes locked on your own, widened in shock, the entire time.
You slowly pull your hand away from him when he releases you, covering it with your other and holding it close to your chest—holding his kiss close to your heart, he realizes with joy.
“Sleep well, and worry not about what troubles you,” he assures you. “We will meet again, and when we do, I trust that you will feel more clarity and confidence in the path that you are meant to take.” He does not merely trust—he knows that it will be so.
You open your mouth, clearly intending to speak, but he ends your dream before you have the opportunity to do so, watching as your form disappears in front of him. Then, and only then, does he let out a stuttered breath of his own to mirror your earlier one.
Morpheus sighs quietly, deeply, eyelids fluttering closed. If he had the time, he would focus on committing every minute detail of your interaction to his endless memory. As it stands, however, a brief moment of contemplation is the largest crack in his composure that he will allow when knowing that there are eyes on him, and he instead opens his own and turns them once more to the foliage opposite him.
“Yes, Matthew?” he calls.
Matthew reappears from the bush guiltily, flying over to take your place on the bench.
“I’m so sorry, boss,” Matthew apologizes, genuinely regretful of having to interrupt. “But we’ve got a situation out front. The guardians have captured an intruder.”
“An intruder?” Morpheus asks, the rosy haze of romance dissipating in an instant.
“That’s all that I know. I was just told that there was an intruder and I needed to come find you.”
Are the Fates still unsatisfied after throwing you into the Sea and letting you believe that you were going to drown? Perhaps, but the Ladies know how to present themselves officially to the monarch of a realm according to the respective laws and customs, and allowing themselves to be captured is not that. Left with no choice but to find out for himself, Morpheus stands. “Let us see to this…intruder, then.”
The intruder, dangling from the wyvern’s mouth and giggling madly, is, as it turns out, not an intruder at all. Morpheus appears next to Lucienne, who is staring up at the sight with a furrowed brow—furrowed in annoyance or confusion, he is unsure.
“Is that…” Lucienne starts.
“The lady Delirium, yes,” Morpheus confirms, staring up as well.
Hearing her name, his younger sister waves at the trio below with a large grin. “Hello, Dream!”
“You may release her, Wyvern,” Morpheus commands his guardian, who gently lowers the youngest of the Endless down to the ground and attempts to apologize—attempts that are quickly rebuffed as Delirium assures him that she enjoyed ‘the swingy bits’ and…kisses him on the snout in parting.
“I always thought that I ought to have a pet,” Delirium notes, skipping down the steps. She looks well, Morpheus notes, her tan trench coat covering a fairly normal ensemble and nothing otherworldly growing out of any pockets.
“The wyvern is not a pet.”
“What about your blackbird?”
“Raven,” he corrects. “This is Matthew.”
“I remember Matthew!” She crouches down beside the raven, the two arguing about whether Matthew actually had met her as he and Lucienne share a glance.
“Has she ever done anything like this before? Just showing up out of the blue?” Lucienne asks quietly. “I can’t recall.”
“No. For all of her…unpredictability, Delirium typically understands the dynamics of our family well.”
Until now, it seems.
“Why are you here, my sister?” Morpheus asks Delirium, hoping to bring her attention back to what must be the matter at hand.
“I came to see you!” she says cheerfully, sitting down next to Matthew. “I mean, to talk, not just see.”
“You have a gallery for that,” he reminds her gently, to which her response is to rock back and forth on the stairs with a pout on her face. Such antics he would typically find to be irritating, but today, they are…mildly charming.
“I know. But if I called and you said no, that would mean you wouldn’t talk to me. And last time I called, you said no. And the time before that. So I thought that if I just showed up, then maybe…”
He should turn her away, or, at the very least, he should insist that she contact him the proper way and wait for him to grant her admittance to his realm. But as he looks at her, mismatched eyes sparkling with hope, and feels Lucienne looking expectantly at him…he cannot find it in himself to do either.
Love has made him soft, he muses as he sits at the opposite end of a long table laden with candles, waiting patiently for his sister to decide what non sequitur to begin with.
“I came to see you yesterday, but you were gone,” Delirium starts, holding her hand over one of the candles’ flames.
He raises a brow, confused by her words (though that is a common feeling when she speaks). “I did not leave the Dreaming yesterday.” He had not left the Dreaming in a number of days, in fact.
She looks at him in confusion. “What day was it raining terribly, then? You must have been in a very bad mood that day, for it to have been raining that much.”
The last time the Dreaming saw that amount of rain—indeed, any real amount of rain—was the night that Nada had left the Dreaming, the night that he first met you.
“I was worried, you know,” Delirium continues, not at all concerned that Morpheus has not yet formed an answer. When he tilts his head, she continues. “To visit. You’re always so scary. But now…” She studies him, a grin on her face. “Dream, you’re smiling.”
Is he? A quick check of his muscles reassures him that his face remains impassive. “I am not.”
“Not on the outside, silly! On the inside.”
On some level, he very likely is. The emotional high of his interaction with you has yet to truly wear off, the electric thrum of touching you, of kissing a part of you, still buzzing under his skin. Delirium reads him remarkably well—always has. Being seen in such a way, especially when one does not want to be, makes him uncomfortable, and he attempts to steer the conversation. “Why did you try to come here that day?”
“What day?” she asks, and Morpheus sighs patiently.
“The day that you originally came to see me.”
“I was thinking about things,” she begins. “About why everything feels so wrong. It all keeps moving, and it won’t stop, and I just want it to stop. And when it doesn’t, I think, ‘what if it gets worse?’ And then I try to remember a time when it didn’t feel this way. And then I remembered, it was when he was here.”
Immediately, Morpheus knows the he to which Delirium is referring. “Our brother.”
She stares into the flames, tears brimming at her eyeliner-darkened waterlines. “I would go and see him, and no matter how bad things got, he would make it okay. But now he’s gone, and everything is broken.”
“What do you mean?”
“Destruction’s realm is still there. Things are still being destructed. But nobody’s in charge of it. It’s out of control. I mean, look what happened when you left your realm.”
He bristles at the ease with which she says such a thing, as though he were not captured and held prisoner for over a century. “I did not leave my realm by choice.”
“No, I know. He left because he wanted to. That was so long ago. What if he’s embarrassed to come back? Or what if he’s been captured the way you were? Or what if he’s sick, or has amnesia—”
“He left. He chose to leave us.”
Part of Morpheus wishes to be far more callous when discussing his brother’s actions. Much anger has been harbored over the abandonment of Destruction’s realm—the abandonment of his family. Yet, as those words hang on the tip of his tongue, he cannot bring himself to say them.
He’s always believed Destruction’s choice to be going against what had been written for him in the Book—after all, the Endless were created to be their functions. The thought of leaving one’s function, yet continuing on as a living being, was simply unheard of. But now? After finding out firsthand how quickly one’s fate could shift and bring about something that had heretofore seemed impossible for their kind?
Perhaps it was meant for Destruction to leave his function and the family, just as it was meant for Morpheus to find you.
“We must respect that,” he says, “and we must honor his wishes.”
The dam breaks, and tears fall down Delirium’s red-rouged cheeks. “I miss him,” she cries brokenly.
Morpheus stands from his seat, crossing the room so that he may kneel patiently in front of his sister. “I know that you do.”
“I wish I could talk to him. Find him, yell at him, bring him back.” Her tears slow, and she looks up from the table to meet his gaze. “I came here that day because I wanted you to search for him with me, so that I wouldn’t get lost while searching for him—you know how easily I get distracted—and then we could do all of the yelling and talking together. But…things will happen if you leave to search with me. Destruction leads to destruction. And I cannot do that to you now, not when you’ve finally found what you’ve always longed for.”
Naturally, Delirium has also found out about his new life update. At this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if Destruction, in his self-imposed exile, had managed to learn the news as well. His sister has started trying to clean her face with her hands, and Morpheus produces a handkerchief from his robes, which she takes with quiet thanks.
“We met, you know,” Delirium says as she wipes away her remaining tears.
“Who?” Morpheus asks, even though he already knows the answer.
She says your name, confirming his suspicions. “I didn’t go on purpose or anything! I was already on the university’s campus—college students really do love their hallucinogens—and when I noticed that it was your mortal sitting there, well, I had to go and say hello.”
Morpheus wrinkles his nose at her phrasing. “My soulmate,” he starts, meaning to kindly warn Delirium away from any more interactions with you. Not because he believes that she will do anything malicious, but because she cannot keep a secret for the life of her, and he would prefer that you not find out the truth of your relationship from his sister.
“—Is very nice! Very, very nice. Kind, too.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “Delirium—”
“You were just together, weren’t you?” She gasps, shades of her former self coloring her face. “Were you on a date?”
“No, we were not.” Much to his chagrin.
“And the Fates are quite upset about that?” she asks, having, once more, seen things that others can not.
Morpheus stands and shakes his head ever so slightly to clear it—the sensation of talking to Delirium for an extended time can often end up disorienting. “I do not want to discuss this with you, my sister.”
“I think you do!” she insists, standing up as well. “I think you’ve been waiting for someone to come along and ask you about this situation, and for that someone to be truly interested in hearing about it.”
Once more, she has read him like few can, seeing through any sort of wall that he could even attempt to put up, and he allows her a slight smile. “If you are feeling better, I would see you back to your own realm.”
She rolls her eyes even as she smiles, knowing that Morpheus has reached his limit on emotional vulnerability and allowing him to show her out of the room and towards his gallery. “Yes, yes, of course, you’re busy, I’m busy, we both have functions to get back to. You know what you need to do, though, right?”
There are innumerable possibilities for what Delirium could believe he needs to do, and he does not know where to begin (though he has an idea of what it might be). “What?”
“You need to go to the Waking and ask your soulmate on a date, Dream. Oh, it would be so romantic! And you were once quite good at that type of thing.”
He looks at her quizzically as they enter the gallery.
“Don’t look at me like I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know loads about romance! Love makes everybody go a little crazy.”
“I will take your words under advisement,” he says patiently.
She claps her hands together in excitement as the veil between their realms cracks like glass. He could just let her go, wishing her well and not seeing her again until the next family meeting. Yet, something in him hesitates at that plan. Her suffering, her sadness, has always cut deeper than the rest of his siblings’ various woes, though he knows they all feel the same about her—whether that be due to her very nature or because she is the youngest, he is unsure.
“Little sister,” he calls, Delirium turning to look back at him right before she enters her realm. “I know that we do not share the same relationship that you and Destruction had. But…you are always welcome in my realm. Provided you follow the proper protocols for visiting, of course,” he tacks on.
She stares at him in awe, a smile slowly growing on her face. “You really mean it?”
“I do not—!” He is cut off by Delirium rushing at him and throwing her arms around him, pulling him in for a hug. His arms hang uselessly at his sides for a moment—physical affection has never really been ‘his thing’—before slowly wrapping them around her. “I do not make it a habit of saying things that I do not mean.”
“You’re a good big brother, you know,” she says as she pulls away from him, schooling her face into something mockingly serious. “When you’re not being so scary.”
He cannot help but smile when he realizes that she’s imitating him (and rather well, at that), and it remains firmly in place long after Delirium has returned to her realm as he thinks over her advice. A date. He does not know that he has ever actually dated before—though the grand excursions to various fantastical corners of the universe could, perhaps, be considered dates at the most basic level, which is a romantic outing wherein two beings get to know one another.
But what the mortals consider dating? That, he has assuredly never done, and it is, unfortunately, this that he must quickly become familiar with if he wants to finally take the next step and declare his intentions with you.
More research is surely required.