Chapter Text
Human research regarding the impacts of prolonged solitary confinement began nearly a century before Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares stormed out of the White Horse. His veins had burned with an emotion he didn't wish to name. If he had cared to examine it, he would have found it familiar. Then again, perhaps that is why he did not.
During the years between that disastrous meeting and the one before it, an American penitentiary had discovered how wounding isolation could be. Years later, the United Nations would declare solitary confinement lasting longer than 15 days to be considered torture. Dream knew none of these things as he sat inside his prison of glass and cadmium paint.
He did not know, but he learned them. Intimately.
Hallucinations swirl around him on occasion, often indistinguishable from the cult members who whisper just outside of the binding circle. Sometimes he recognizes the forms they take - his siblings, most frequently, but sometimes others he has known and lost over the eons. Whether they are real is of no concern to him. They do not help, so they are meaningless.
Sometimes, Hob's words from a century long passed echo around him: "Do you know how hungry a man can get if he doesn’t die, but he doesn’t eat?"
By now, he is far too familiar. After these many years, the ache in his gut has faded into the background. It joined the burning of his lungs as the air grew stale and used. His throat once felt as if it were full of knives, but he hardly notices how parched he is these days. It isn't as if he speaks.
Like Hob, he is sustained beyond the limits of his mortal body. It cannot fuel itself with food, water, or air, so it uses his magic instead and he feels the weariness down to his soul. For as long as his magic can sustain him - a length of time which would see this cursed mansion crumble to dust ten times over - his body will remain whole and hale. Still, without his tools and within the binding circle, his power is limited severely enough that the sensations become constant.
Time marches on all the same. Estranged as they are, Dream still feels the ever-present press of his father's dominion.
Ten years after his capture, in the month that England had decided a few centuries ago to call April, his captors finally pry tears from him. It isn't even the monstrous man he has come to know as Roderick Burgess, the Magus, who lands that blow to Dream’s pride. No, that honor belongs to Alexander Burgess, who carries away the mangled corpse of Dream’s beloved raven with gentle hands. As if he has not done this himself.
The tears do not stop falling for some time. He mourns Jessamy, mourns his freedom, and does so in silence. Most of all, he mourns the flickering flame of hope that his raven had inspired in him. It withers, gutters, and leaves him even emptier than before.
He barely graces the mortals with a glance for the next four years. A blink of an eye for one as old as him, at least in relative terms, but he must still live each second in the Waking World like any other being. Time passes no differently here, even for one of Time's children. In this glass ball each day feels like an eternity and they may as well be for all he marks their passing. He has long lost count by the morning that Roger Burgess storms into his prison cell.
The woman, Ethel Cripps, was not permitted to visit often. Roger accompanied her the first time, showing off his catch like one would a piece of fine art. After that, most of her visits were made alone, but he spotted the true intention easily enough. It would seem that Roger Burgess was not above using his own mistress in an attempt to seduce his prisoner.
Eventually Ethel's visits grew fewer and Dream missed her only for the brief entertainment she provided. Now, with the Magus beating on the glass with his cane, he appreciates and loathes her in equal measure for what she's done. Finally, someone has stripped Roger Burgess of his ill-gotten gifts, and the man's helpless fury makes something cruel twist in Dream's chest. At the same time, his tools are now scattered to the Waking World, subject only to the whims of Destiny.
It is as Roger Burgess collapses to the floor, blood pooling beneath his head, that Dream feels hope flicker anew. If the man truly is dead then his sister will come to collect the soul. She will see Dream and while she may be unable to interfere herself, she could tell someone. Someone who could free him from this place.
Yet the basement remains empty. The last petty act of Roger Burgess is that he does not truly die until after he has been carried to the main floor of the house.
Still, Dream holds out hope for the boy. Alexander Burgess killed Jessamy, yes, but he also said once that he would let Dream free if he could. Now there is no one to stop him. They are mere inches from some sort of contact, not freedom, not touch, but the closest thing to a connection that Dream has had in years, when Alex shakes himself free of the shock. He needs to think , he says. It's an excuse, yet it is enough to keep the little flame of hope alive.
At least, for a while.
Alex visits frequently in the time that follows, but that connection they nearly made through the glass never returns. He doesn't always ask questions, just spouts soliloquies about the risks, or about right and wrong. Sometimes he just rambles about the stresses of handling his father's estate, how much he hates his father, or even his bloody love life.
This indecision lasts for days, or perhaps for years. What does it matter? When Alex finally makes up his mind, he brings his dear Paul with him. In a way, their budding love makes it that much worse. New relationships so often hold the purest of dreams, yet he feels nothing but the numbness of the binding circle around him and the pain in every cell of his body.
Alex tries to bargain. It is more reasonable than his father’s demands, but still far too much to ask. To keep Paul safe from Dream's fury, that would be easy enough. Paul had no hand in this. But Alexander Burgess is no innocent, not anymore. Not with Jessamy's blood dripping from his hands and spattered against the glass.
Dream says nothing.
Paul visits early on with pleas and bargains of his own. All to save his love. They're tempting, but with the barrier around him intact, Dream cannot so much as brush against those dreams of the future. He remains silent.
As the years pass, one fact remains: he cannot forgive Alexander Burgess. Perhaps he could have if the man ever apologized, ever showed true remorse, but it never happens. Instead Alex grows bitter. Occasionally he curses his captive instead of pleading with him. Dream never gives him more than a cold glare in return.
It is an odd tension. Though Dream is undoubtedly the true prisoner, Alexander becomes a prisoner himself, in a way. He cannot be free of this living burden without risking his life. For as long as he lives, he will have to do so with the knowledge that a being very much capable of emotion lives trapped in his basement. Alexander is not, at his core, a bad person, and so he suffers with this knowledge.
The visits grow fewer. Both Alex and Paul age slower than most humans would, but they cannot escape the march of time for long. Alexander Burgess slowly shrivels into a wrinkled old man, an echo of the Magus he hated. Watching it happen brings Dream the closest thing to satisfaction that he can find within his bindings. This small shred of control is all that keeps him going.
Though time grows muddled without a way to mark its passing, Dream is occasionally able to reorient himself by the dates on the newspapers the guards read, or even by their conversations. It is not an exact method, but it is enough that he knows when the year is 1989. He counts their guard shifts that year, though the numbers slip and slide from his memory enough that he has to adjust his count a few times when they speak of holidays. For the first time in decades, he tracks the days with desperation.
The first of June comes and goes with no fanfare.
Dream stops counting.
“I'm sorry, Hob. I hate to leave you waiting,” he whispers to the air, though no sound escapes his lips.
"Do you? You certainly didn't mind leaving last time," the disembodied voice of Hob whispers.
“I shouldn't have left. I wish I hadn’t,” Dream sighs wordlessly because after all of these decades he has had long enough to come to terms with the truth.
"Why did you?"
He considers this for a moment and closes his eyes against the shameful tears that well up there. It does nothing to stop them from escaping down his cheeks.
“I was scared,” he admits, voice weak even within his own mind.
"Scared of what?"
“That you may be right.”
The voice that is not truly Hob has no response to that. It does a much crueler thing instead and leaves him to his own thoughts.
Dream can admit it now, trapped in this ball with nothing but memories and echoes: Hob was right and it gutted him to hear the words spoken aloud. Yet Dream is a proud being. More proud than he should be, and that is yet another thing he will only admit in the torturous privacy of his prison. Were he not trapped here, he cannot be certain that he wouldn't miss their appointment simply to spite the man for reading him so perfectly.
Inside of the glass prison he cannot escape the truth: he longs for Hob's company. Now especially, but before as well. How many times had he caught himself wondering what Hob would have thought of some strange new twist of the world? After all, so much happens in a century that they can't discuss nearly half of it in one night.
Hob will think himself abandoned. After the way they parted, Hob will believe that he had been wrong. The thought is crushing and mortifying all at once. Will the man ever forgive him? Is this the line he will draw, will he even want to see Dream when - not if, when, that is a point on which he remains firm - he escapes this wretched basement?
The very thought is too much to bear.
Hob becomes a frequent visitor in Dream's hallucinations, both in voice and body. Some days he spits venom at his old once-friend and declares this punishment just. Other times Dream thinks Hob has arrived to free him, only to realize that he is staring at a mere figment of a breaking mind.
His favorite are the moments where his thoughts grow muddled enough that he can feel Hob's rough hands on his bare skin. It is not erotic. Nothing here could be, nor would he be comfortable considering Hob in that way at this point in their… friendship. He supposed he should admit it now. Still, the feeling of Hob's work-worn hands rubbing rhythmically over his back is the closest thing to comfort that Dream has.
Hob is not the only one who visits. Perhaps inspired by the stirring emotions Dream had tried to crush so many centuries ago, the voices of loves long since passed come to him. The pain it causes is just as terrible as the ache in his unused muscles, the burn in his chest from lack of oxygen, or even the spikes of hunger that remind him how little power he has to feed upon.
"Would he stay if he knew what you truly are? You haven't even told him your name," Killala reminds him, voice bathed in the glow of her sun.
"He knows nothing of your cruelty," Nada points out coldly and he shivers at the chill she brings with her. "Though perhaps this abandonment has given him a glimpse."
"Why would this time be any different than before? We have all turned from you," Calliope asks, her sadness as sharp as her anger.
"Or you have turned from us," Alianora reminds him with judgment in her voice. "How long before you grow bored of him?"
"Are you certain he truly cares for you, even as a friend?" Thessaly asks, unaffected and practical. "Or is he simply lonely in this ever-changing world as well?"
He does not grant responses to the ghosts of his past. They are far from the only beings he has cared for, but no others have wounded him quite so deeply. Was it fear of this that led him to push Hob away so completely? Perhaps, but that is not a reality he is ready to face.
It makes no difference to the promise he makes himself. If - when - he is free, he will find Hob Gadling, introduce himself properly, and apologize. First for missing the meeting, then for leaving the last so early and in such a fit of undeserved rage. Fantasies of this reunion and hopeful reconciliation occupy many of Dream's days as he awaits a chance to escape.
Of course, when Paul finally grants him the mercy of a smudged circle, there are many other things to be done. His tools are scattered, after all, and retrieving them is of vital importance. Exhausted though he may be, he cannot spare more than a few hours of rest before beginning his work.
In the end, he is left with his power and kingdom restored. The Dreaming is still not as he left it, but it is once again full of life. Lucienne has become invaluable in his absence, even finding him a new raven despite his protests.
Matthew is unexpectedly dedicated to his new-found position. He is far less formal than even Jessamy was, and Jessamy was by all accounts over-familiar with her king. All the same, Dream can find no anger beyond a mild annoyance for the raven's stubborn aid.
Just before dawn casts its light on Buffalo, Matthew finally returns to the Dreaming with orders to report their success to Lucienne. Dream leaves the city to recover on its own. In a swirl of sand, he finds himself back in London.
Death finds him feeding stale bread to the birds.