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Dream did not weep when he killed the Corinthian. Though something in him died and mourning sat like a stone within his chest, he did not weep.
Dream did not weep when his son fell. Though tears stung his eyes and the taste of grief lay heavy on his tongue, he did not weep.
Dream did not weep when the stars went mad and a child died defending him. Though horror and despair engulfed him, he did not weep.
All things ended. All things died. Even things he had created, even things that he willed to exist forever more, even things he wished with all his heart to outlive him. Nothing was without end. Even Endless. But the curse of it all was to know that he would outlive all he came to hold dear. Except, of course, his family and the other beings like that that existed within the folds of space time, untouched and untouchable. When the end came it would be for all of them at once. Perhaps it was a comfort knowing that he would not have time to grieve.
At the end of all things, it would just be them. Unless...
Unless.
Dream was not unfamiliar with love. He had seen it in dreams more times than there were stars in the sky and while his romances were all doomed, he had had them. Some had even been happy for a time. But after he ruined another life, well, he had thought he had grown out of such things. Let him be the artist to create the sets upon which minds fell in love. There was no need for anything else. No need for more.
What was the point? Anything he could love outside of his family would die and whither and rot in the blink of an eye. He adored his sister, he adored each incarnation and iteration of her that would ever exist. He would never begrudge her, never hate her, the entropy of the universe was not her fault. And yet...
“Look I've seen death.”
If he'd known the path hearing those words would lead him down, would he still have stopped? Still have listened? The words had surprised him, he’d glanced to his sister and seen the same curiosity alright in her eyes.
“Death is... stupid.”
How they'd looked at each other then, amusement, confusion, curiosity, intrigue. So many things all at once. Did she know? Did his sister know what she set into motion when she said those words.
“I could grant him his wish.”
Nothing happened all at once. Though it may feel like it in the moment, should you look close enough you see that each act is etched upon its own shard of time. So it was that for the first time in millennia, Dream fell in love. Grain by grain, second by infinitesimal fragment of a second, over centuries.
It was curiosity that drove him first to peek into the immortal man's dreams. What filled a human’s mind when the final sentence of death was lifted from them? He never pried, never stared, just the occasional glimpse every decade or so.
The initial looks were disappointing. What was he to expect of a human? Dreams of comfort, dreams of love, dreams of adventure. When did it change? When exactly did it shift? Even Dream wasn’t sure.
At some point the curiosity became a fondness though he failed to recognise it. He saw the deathless man in better focus, clearer detail, he saw a shrewd man. A man who resisted cynicism in all its forms and insisted on viewing the world with utter delight in all its forms. As Dream stole into his sleeping mind, he found that the world was never more beautiful than when viewed through the eyes of Hob Gadling.
Even in grief, even in despair, Hob was in love with life. With the world. With humanity.
There was a security in knowing that no matter what was ripped from Dream, from the world, from the universe, some things would stay the same. There would be a table in a pub with an Endless on one side and an Immortal on the other. It was dependable. It was even comforting. He would never recognise that, let alone admit it to anyone. But it was a comfort. It was a relief, a break in the endless melancholy play he saw stretch out in front of him for all time. One constant amid it all.
One thing he could hang his hopes upon. One cure to the loneliness that carved through the core of him.
He didn't know when he fell in love. How could he know? It had grown unseen, untended, beneath the canopy of his pride. Wild and free it grew. Oh some part of him knew it was there. Sprouting beside it was fear. Fear that he knew would consume him if he tried to acknowledge either. His pride shielded him, protected him, and slaughtered him as it was shattered.
Often battered prides and bruised egos are seen as the better outcome to physical injury. For one such as Dream, however, the utter destruction of his monumental pride was a greater torture than one a human like Roderick Burgess could ever have intentionally devised. Without it Dream was naked, vulnerable and weak to the things that had hidden within him for so long. The things he continued to push away with rage and vengeance and quests.
It was only in the quiet that the truth came. After the world was saved and safe, when he stood alone in his acts of creation. Truth crept in. Nothing happened all at once but sometimes it rather felt like it.
He loved Hob Gadling. The one person who could hope to survive him, how could he not? He had loved Hob Gadling for centuries.
And in there right beside it was the fear. Not fear, a dreaded certainty. That his feelings would have to remain buried deep inside because how could one such as Hob Gadling, bright eyed with wonder, ever love someone like him? Hob was in love with life and who was he to dare hope he could ever compete?
The realisation was a gut punch and was quickly joined in that quiet by the pent up grief of a century. All the things he been pushing down flared up and threatened to consume him.
He did not weep. He wondered if he even knew how. Instead, he walked.
*
Hob Gadling wept when his son died. He wept when his beloved Eleanor and their unborn child had died. He wept when his parents died. He wept when his friends died, when the things he loved were ripped away from him, when the things he desperately wanted fell from his grasping fingers. He wept as the world changed around him and in his grief he found joy. Though he mourned the passing of lovely things, so too did he leap headfirst into what the future had to offer.
Part of him sometimes wondered, if he'd known where this would lead, would he still have said those things? Every time he knew the answer. Yes, a thousand times yes. If he'd known he'd have written a bleeding song to bellow from the rooftops. He would have hired a writer to craft him a play and he would have performed it every day as loudly and flamboyantly as possible. Whatever his lovely stranger had seen in him that day, he would have screamed it.
The world was not an easy place but it was a rewarding one if you knew what to do. If you leapt at the opportunities presented the world, this life, embraced you with the eager arms of a lover. There was so much out there. So much to do and so much to see. Though inaction was punished and all things refused to last forever, how could he ever truly despair when he had so much?
Still, he wondered if he would be able to seize life so eagerly without his anchor? His lovely stranger who was the only constant in the ever changing world. His lovely stranger with those earnest, thoughtful eyes. His lovely stranger who did not lie even while he remained vague, who was mysterious and intriguing and beautiful in all ways.
He had not believed his stranger when first they met. Still the exquisite stranger had graced his thoughts repeatedly in the years that followed. First with the idle curiosities he gave towards any beautiful creature that caught his fancy, especially those that deigned to talk to someone as unremarkable as him. Then with rising suspicion as the conversation proved more than nonsense and the next thing he knew, he was sitting looking at that lovely face again.
Not a devil, perhaps an angel. It would make sense. An angel that had descended from on high to bless him. What he didn't understand was why but he didn't dwell too much on it.
Still his lovely stranger graced his thoughts more often. He daydreamed of perhaps saving the stranger from some great threat, proving his worth once and for all. He daydreamed of knowing the stranger beyond that lovely face.
For all his evasiveness with words, the Stranger’s actions called out the world more loudly than perhaps intended. Through the years, Hob saw him for what he was. Kind and sad, lonely and utterly in love with humanity. Though he walked apart from it, Hob saw it in every word, every action. No person was beneath his notice, no person beneath his care.
It was in 1589 when, in a moment of pure jealousy, he realised that he thought of the stranger as his. Part of him wondered if the trials that came next were a punishment for that. A punishment for daring to even imagine that he could compete with all of humanity for the Stranger's affections. It was silly. A defence mechanism to look for something to blame for his misfortune beyond bad luck and his own grief.
Still he thought of his Stranger and anticipated each meeting with an eagerness that refused to diminish with time. The world was wonderful and changing but there was a single constant that continued to anchor him. His lovely stranger. The daydreams continued and grew more daring in his desires. Though he knew they could never come true, he indulged in the thoughts never the less. Was it so wrong for a man to dream?
It was in 1789 when he leapt, unnecessarily, to his stranger’s defence that he realised the gulf between them. This being was more than human, more than angel, more than he could ever hope to touch. And yet he gave a few hours every century to Hob? He still dreamed but any bitterness faded. To know one such as that, to love one such as that was blessing enough. Who was he to demand more? He was content with what he had.
Or so he thought.
Had he meant to push? Was it so much to ask his Stranger to acknowledge the obvious fondness between them? Apparently the answer was an astounding yes. Of course, as he'd always thought.
Who was he to compete with humanity?
Even when his mistakes proved to not be wholly wrong, he kept the thought in the back of his mind. Throughout their belated meeting, he kept the knowledge tucked somewhere he would not forget it.
Though he loved the Stranger with a love forged by centuries, there was no way the Stranger could ever love him back. There was a grief in that but also, in some ways, a comfort.
*
It was raining when the knock at his door came. Hob glanced at the clock wondering who the hell could be coming round at six in the bloody evening? Late courier? He didn't think he'd ordered anything.
Dubiously, he peered through the peephole. He blinked. He blinked again. No, that was definitely who he thought it was. A hundred questions burst into his mind, most variations on ‘what the fuck?’
“Well now you're very early,” he said, opening the door. It had been only a handful of weeks since their belated meeting. On the street, the Stranger stood all in black and soaked to the bone. Once again Hob was struck by how beautifully lonely the Stranger was.
The Stranger looked away and opened his mouth before closing it. Moments passed then the Stanger finally said, “I didn't know where else to go.” There was a rawness to his voice that Hob had never heard before. An edge that seemed to be on the verge of tears.
Opening the door wider, Hob beckoned. “Come in.”
There was a forgotten radio playing somewhere in the kitchen but Hob barely heard it as the Stranger discarded his sodden coat and sat tentatively on the edge of the sofa. What could have happened? What could have shaken his Stranger like this?
He waited.
At last, the Stranger said, “I had to kill two people.”
Oh.
Frowning, Hob rubbed his fingers across old knuckle scars. How many people had he himself killed in his long life with all its soldering?
“Did they deserve it?” he asked.
“No. One was my fault, I should have done more, been more. Maybe then he wouldn't have-" He broke off, breach catching in his throat. “It was my fault.”
“And the other?”
“She deserved it no more than a star deserves to detonate. Though, it was the lesser of two horrors and she was willing.”
What horrors had his stranger seen? What things could have changed him like this? At their last meeting, his Stranger had been softer but as evasive as ever.
Was now the time to push his luck again?
Fully prepared for another storm out, Hob reached across the space between them and took his Stranger’s hand. The beautiful eyes widened in shock but he didn't pull away.
Hob took a deep breath. “What happened to you?” A pause. “Can I help?”
And it was like a dam broke somewhere inside his Stranger. Tears spilled across the Stanger's cheeks and as Hob pulled him into an embrace, his Stranger wept. They sat there for some time, as darkness fell upon them, enshrouded them. And in that darkness, head against Hob’s chest, the Stranger spoke.
He said his name was Dream. He told Hob a story that went back millennia, of all the things he had seen, all the things he had done. He laid his soul bare in that dark room. When he was done, there was silence and Hob still had not let him go.
“Do you hate me?” Dream whispered.
“Nah,” Hob said. “Life's too long for hate.” Dare he try another push? He'd gone this far, could he back out now? Dare he? “You're the King of Dreams, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then surely you should know.”
Heavy, gentle silence. “Know what?”
“Just how long I've loved you.”
Though he couldn't see Dream's face in the dark, he felt the hands tighten in surprise, could imagine those eyes looking at him in disbelief. Dream pushed away from him and yeah, he’d fucked it up again, now Dream was going to leave and- Hands gently caressed Hob's face and he felt the soft warmth of Dream’s breath across his skin.
“What are you doing?” Hob asked.
“I don't know,” Dream replied.
In the dark, Dream kissed him. Hob decided that he rather loved every second of the last seven hundred and thirty years as each one had led up to this.
Perhaps when the stars of the universe blinked out, the two of them would be all that remained. The two constants of each other's long lives. Perhaps he could be content with that.