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The Endless see things differently from mortals. They have to. Infinite time and infinite lives before them; each a measureless entity overseeing their aspect of existence. Theirs is a ceaseless purpose, one that cannot be defined by human language.
And there are simply so many humans, and all the other forms of life they exist for and because of. So many people - so many dreams, so many desires, so much death. So many hurts to which the Endless bear witness. No human could withstand what the Endless see; they could not bear a fraction of it.
If time was a river, Dream stands upon its banks. Close enough to see, to know where his work is needed, and perfectly positioned to do his job. He stands over them - not as a ruler, king though he is in his own realm, but as a shield and a beacon both. Nightmares need space to teach and dreams need room to grow; he balances them both and shows humanity the way to hope. He cares, of course he cares. His work could not be done right by someone who did not care. But he cannot care in the way that a human does, for to invest himself utterly in the hopes and fears of every single life that crossed the universe would destroy him.
He is above it all because he must be. He does not feel as they do.
And then he spends more than a hundred years trapped in a prison formed threefold of glass, another man's greed, and his own rage.
Cut off from the Dreaming, from so much of himself. Limited, wounded to his core. The worst of what is stolen from him is not what a human would lack - air, water, food. He does not need such things when his form is merely a manifestation of something very different. What he has been robbed of is his power and the greater part of himself, and its absence is a wound that does not heal but screams, ever exposed, like a gaping injury raw against the elements.
And yet.
And yet, caged in a human form, it manifests in detestably human ways. He feels hungry, the sort of hunger no food would be enough to sate. It claws at him, constant and gnawing. He feels, sometimes, like he is choking, as if it is lack of air that ails him. The fury and humiliation, those would be his own in any form, and they burn so deep that he thinks they may leave scars that not even freedom would heal, but beneath... beneath it all, he comes to recognise something horribly, desperately human.
He is lonely.
Lonely for companionship, for a friendly face, for the smile of someone truly glad to see him. He wants someone to talk to, someone to care that he's here.
It's a foolish impulse. A humiliating one. It is not the purview of the Endless, not something he needs. It is only another manifestation of his weakness in this prison.
It takes another year in his imprisonment for Dream to admit to himself that this feeling predates Burgess. There is a reason he has been close to Lucienne, a reason he is accompanied by a raven (not again, never again, when grief and rage and agony are still so raw), a reason he walks sometimes with Death.
And there is a reason why he was so unbearably angry when Hob Gadling told him the truth.
It is a human impulse. An anthropomorphic representation of the collective unconscious does not need to be lonely because he is not human.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
Freed, decades later, and reunited with his tools, his sister tells him that she can bear her purpose because she is with humanity as she does it, because she is not alone.
It has never before occurred to him that Death, too, may have been lonely.
Alone, yes, but lonely - she is no more human than he is. But to have been affected by it, to conclude that she was not alone at all but rather found companionship in each human as she bestowed her gift means that she did, in between, feel the absence of that companionship keenly enough to seek it out.
He considers this as his feet guide him towards the tavern where he has met Hob Gadling over the centuries. The sensations of hunger, thirst and breathlessness that haunted him in the cage are no longer with him, for his needs have been attended by the return of his power, the connection to the Dreaming and the rebuilding of his realm. There is much still to do, but he is restored.
And yet he grieves. There is sorrow in him for the baby given so little time, for the man who thought only of his wife, for the woman who had suffered so much. It is the way of things, he knows this as only his siblings do, and no amount of sadness or pleading would change it. Perhaps there is an imagined world that could be kinder - and Dream can imagine an infinite number of worlds - but this is how things are, the immutable fact that all that lives will someday die.
(Barring, perhaps, the odd exception.)
It feels rather human, this grief.
And perhaps it is rather human that he is glad to find Hob inside the New Inn, that he is able to to sit and speak with a friend, that this is not a thing he has lost.
And human, too that he pauses and gives thought when Hob finishes a story about the last hundred and thirty years and says, "I missed this, you know."
Dream considers the man before him. Dream himself is ancient beyond mortal reckoning, and time is different for him, but not so different that the years pass by unnoticed, even when he is free. He has to be aware of the passage of human life to fulfil his purpose.
Hob is young, compared to that, but only compared to that. He has lived a long time, loved a wife and lost her, and lost his children too. Dream has grieved his own lost loves, his child, and in thousands of years he has never forgotten. Though he has never spoken of them in detail, Hob must also have lost many friends.
Dream has rarely had friends, and never outside the Dreaming. He thinks of what it would be to lose Hob, if the man ever did decide to ask for the touch of Death's hand.
The thought slices cold into the heart of him.
And he sees the connection that Hob had made by 1889.
"You are lonely," he says.
Hob flinches. The look on his face is something a touch too close to panic for Dream's peace of mind, but it is not undeserved. These are, after all, an echo of the words that sent Dream away so angrily on their last meeting. It is probably unfair that he should wield them now himself, but he has no intention of leaving this time.
Before the man can speak - perhaps, if he is to continue this streak of self-honesty, because he is afraid of what Hob might say - Dream explains himself. "I missed this too, Hob."
"Oh." Hob blinks at him. There is something on the verge of joy in his eyes, but he does not quite let the matter go, like a man determined to test whether a wound has stopped bleeding by poking at it. "So I was right, then?"
Dream finds himself amused by this, rather than any irritation at ceding the defeat. "I suppose you were."
Hob scrutinises him. He has sharp eyes, this man; perhaps anyone would who had lived so long, but Hob had the same curiosity in him when first they met. It is, after all, what has carried him this far.
"What changed?" he asks. He looks a little wary of his own daring, but his fingers twitch where they are twisted together beside his glass, like he was thinking of moving his hand.
Words twist and coil within Dream's throat. Honesty seems suddenly such a raw and courageous thing. "I came to know myself better, perhaps."
From the slight frown on Hob's face, this is an insufficient answer. It's not that Dream doesn't want to tell him, exactly, but his strength to do so falters.
Still, there are other truths more easily offered.
"My name," he says softly, "is Dream."
He doesn't know what to expect. There are precious few humans he's ever spoken to as much as Hob, and of them, the rare souls to whom he has revealed his identity are usually already aware of the deeper realities of their own world. Hob has knowledge of the supernatural, to some extent, but he's had no cause to consider anything like what the Endless are.
And yet there is something thoughtful in the way Hob looks at him without replying. Dream can almost see the thoughts racing behind his eyes; Hob's lips shape the name silently with a weight that seems to recognise that it is name and title both.
"It would seem strange to people these days if I told them my name was Hob Gadling," Hob says at length, his eyes never straying from Dream's. "Though there was a time and place where that name entirely belonged. I think your name is like that, isn't it?"
Dream, quite without meaning to, finds himself smiling, small but bright and true. "You are a wise man, Hob."
Hob shakes his head with a wry twist to his mouth. "I'm wiser than I was," he allows.
"You are right. Yes. I am one of seven, one of the Endless. You do not know my siblings, though you will have been to some of their realms. One, you have chosen to avoid entirely, though very few are able to do so."
Hob frowns over this, until his face blanches and then his eyes widen. There is a touch of fear there, but wonder too.
"Is this the Grim Reaper or something? Are you related to the Grim Reaper?"
"She prefers to be known as Death."
"Right," Hob says faintly, sinking back in his chair. "Yeah, no, sure. I guess I would prefer that too. Blimey. Death. Death's your big sister."
Dream tilts his head. "How did you know she was older?"
"I could tell," he says, which is maddeningly ambiguous, but Hob waves it away. "What's your gig, then? If Death's name is literal... You're in charge of everyone's dreams?"
"And nightmares."
"The sand," Hob says, and groans loudly. "The Sandman. It was bloody sand. I spent ages trying to puzzle that one out."
"What do you mean?"
"I thought it was dust, or lint or something."
"You thought my sand, one of the great and powerful tools of the Dreaming, was a bag of lint?"
"All of this is a lot easier to understand when you actually talk to me, you know."
Dream pauses, then diplomatically chooses to contain the rest of his indignation.
Hob leans back in his seat. Released at last from their confinement in each other's grasp, his hands rove to scrub at his face, to clench through his hair until it lies in a wild mess. Gratifyingly - though Dream cannot pinpoint why it should affect him either way - he doesn't look troubled by these discoveries, only stunned. Indeed, as Dream watches, Hob's face grows more animated and bright.
"Does this mean you're prepared to answer questions now? Because I have so many questions. Did I make a deal with Death without realising it? Did you make a deal with Death about me? What does it mean to be in charge of dreams, exactly? Do you take requests? Because there are a few things I'd quite like to dream about, actually, I can write you a list-"
And as Hob launches into a detailed outline of the many things he would care to dream of, Dream himself settles back in his chair, feeling oddly tolerant and even indulgent. He has no intention of doing any of this, of course, but it charms him how enthusiastically Hob asks for it, and how unquestioningly he embraces Dream's identity despite the way it must require him to restructure his understanding of reality.
And if Dream makes a mental note or two from Hob's ridiculous list, that is no one's business but his own.
At length, their conversation falters, and Hob looks at him with a certain darkness overshadowing the amusement in his eyes. "Is that why you were gone so long?" he says softly. "Your responsibilities? As... god of dreams?"
It has, Dream realises, grown strangely late without him noticing. Odd, that he should fail to observe the falling of night. The room has grown quiet, the volume of the music lowered and all the other tables emptied. The staff are cleaning tables and clearing glasses, though they leave a wide berth around the only remaining occupants. The pub must have closed a little while ago, and still here the two of them remain.
It is easier, somehow, to face the question with the lights lowered and the other people gone. If it had been posed while there was a chance of another soul overhearing, Dream would not have considered answering.
It occurs to him that Hob knows this. He is not sure how he feels about being thus understood, about someone knowing something he had not intended to tell. Perhaps this is what it is to have a friend, to be seen so clearly.
Still, he considers whether to speak. Hob will remain curious if he does not answer, but he will not press. Dream, in his turn, knows this of him. Hob has had a long time to regret the consequences of his last attempt to draw unwilling answers from Dream, and will not repeat the error for fear of what might happen.
Something in that sits poorly with Dream, that he should inspire anything like fear in someone he claims as a friend. And more, besides, he finds a part of him that still wants to talk of it. To see if speaking of it to someone who does not yet know, but may perhaps care, will alleviate any of the weight.
"I am not a god, Hob," he says, soft and quiet in his turn. "I am of the Endless. It is not the same thing." It is also not the point, and he is stalling; Hob knows it too, for all that he also looks ravenous for any information about who and what Dream is.
Dream does not need to breathe, and yet he draws air into his lungs and looses it slowly. It does not quite touch the strange feeling with in him, a certain fluttering in the chest that might, if he were human, be nerves.
"I know what you must have thought after what I said when we last parted," he says slowly. "In truth, I cannot say for sure what I would have done in 1989 if the choice had been mine to make."
Hob does not seem bothered by the admission; he focuses, instead, on the implication Dream has offered him. "It wasn't your decision?"
"No. The choice was taken from me. Along with many other things."
Friendship is meant to ease burdens, Dream is sure of this. It is, certainly, easier to rule his kingdom with Lucienne's aid, and his ravens have always been a comfort to him. Why, then, in trying to confess a truth to Hob, do the words seem to stick in his throat? Is it because he is so accustomed to Lucienne and his ravens always knowing things before he might say them, or because he does not know how Hob will react? It cannot be because he is still affected by what happened to him. The mere idea is anathema, and yet still it lingers, along with the memory of glass and metal and the darkness of human ambition.
Beneath the table, Hob's leg shifts and presses against his, ankle to ankle. It is, perhaps, the first time they have ever touched. For a moment Dream stiffens, sharply aware of that point of warmth, which seems to burn even through two layers of fabric.
Hob says nothing of it, and indeed says nothing at all. He watches and waits, and Dream realises that the touch is a silent offer of support, one that does not demand or constrain, but offers the weighty surety that he is not alone.
It -
- helps.
"We are powerful, the Endless, in ways that humanity cannot grasp," he says, factual not prideful, though he knows it might sound otherwise. "But we are not limitless. There are powers that can influence us, even in the hands of humans. Powers that can hold us against our will."
It is Hob's turn to stiffen. It is like something in his spine turns to steel, and a light seems to bank behind his eyes. "Do you mean you were captured? Held prisoner?"
"Yes. For a hundred and five years."
A hollow feeling has taken up residence within him. Or perhaps it has been there all along, and he has exposed it as if removing a field dressing from a battle wound, like Hob is the physician who can heal it. A ridiculous notion, for he is quite well and even if he were not, what human could help him, what being could, who could heal what runs in a great faultline through the core of him; he should not have come here -
Hob's leg is still pressed against his. Dream is halfway to rising when he remembers that point of heat, and he sees that Hob has leaned forward in tandem with his own movement. Dream has braced his hands on the table to push away, without really thinking of it, and now one of Hob's hands brushes against his own. It is not a grip, nothing that would have kept Dream there against his will even if he were human, but it is another touch, another point of contact. This one, without cloth between them, feels even warmer, like the breath of a star.
It does not confine him or bind him in place, but Dream stops. Stays.
Presses his own finger back against Hob's, without knowing why.
"Did they hurt you?" Hob's voice is a rasp, and his eyes are blazing. Dream doesn't know what to make of it.
"I am not hurt."
It is not precisely an answer to the question Hob asked. Hob's face tightens. Anger, but not at Dream.
For him.
In the void within Dream's core, something is born. He doesn't know what it is, but it is warm.
"Who?" Hob says hoarsely. "Where?"
"It doesn't matter now."
"They're dead?"
"Some. Those who live have been punished."
"Good." Hob's vindictive satisfaction is startling in its force, and in its existence. Dream knows his friend has not traditionally been a man of peace, and it is not the first time he has shown willingness to enact violence on Dream's behalf, but there is something else to this. A promise, knowingly and sincerely given, that Hob would have settled this score if Dream had not already done so.
Friendship, he learns with some surprise, is a fiercely loyal thing.
"Over a century." The rage ebbs, and Hob sounds heartbroken. Aching. "I can't imagine."
"It was dark." The words emerge without conscious intent. "Cold. Breathless. They were always watching me, and yet I was alone."
"Not now," Hob says, fast and firm. "Not again, unless you wish it."
Oh. That spark within the chasm grows a little bigger.
Hob, still watching him fervently, continues, "We don't need to wait a hundred years each time, you know. We've already broken the pattern, after all."
Is this what humanity is? This fragility within him, this weakness he wants to consider pathetic, beneath him, except that it brings with it a sweet joy that he does not want to deprive himself of? It does feel fragile, exposed in a way he did not feel even naked behind glass in Burgess's basement. Fragile, exposed - and yet also made whole in a way he did not realise he was broken.
There is worry in Hob's face. Alongside it, held back, impotent anger. Care, too, even affection, from which the rest is born. And, binding it all together, the one thing Dream perhaps knows more intimately than anything else: hope.
Dream is himself, as he declared in hell, hope. He brings it to humanity, helps them dream of what can be. It is something entirely new to deliver upon the promise of that hope.
"No, I don't suppose we need to wait quite that long."
The smile that spreads across Hob's face is like the dawning sun. Slow, but building into something so bright Dream finds himself looking away, somehow abashed, though within a moment his eyes are drawn back there again.
"Do we need to plan ahead like this, still?" Hob asks eagerly. "Or is there a way I can contact you?"
"I will ask Matthew to look in on you. You can ask him, though I will not often be able to spare him."
Hob blinks. "Who's Matthew?"
"My raven," Dream says, and enjoys the way that Hob's expression scrunches like this explains nothing at all.
"Okay, we're going to circle back to that," Hob says slowly. "But if he won't often be around, how can I find you?"
"In the Dreaming," Dream replies. "You can ask for me there."
"In... dreams? I don't have any control over what I dream about, how could I possibly do that?"
"I will leave you a door," he says. It is an offer he has made precious few times before, though Hob cannot know the weight of it. "You can seek me that way. And if in the waking world you ever have urgent need - urgent need only, Hob - then write the name Morpheus and speak it aloud, or burn the page it is written upon. I will hear you."
"Morpheus?"
Dream stands. He is glad that he came, but he has given more of himself tonight than he has ever shared so quickly, and he feels the powerful need to retreat. He needs some space to think before he itches out of this damnably human skin that has formed where he has only ever been a being of thought and purpose and power.
"You are not the only one whose name changes with the years, Robert," Dream says, and he knows the softness that is in his eyes as he looks at his companion. "Farewell, my friend, until we meet again."
"'Til then, Dream," Hob says, and is still smiling at him when Dream turns away. "Stay safe," he adds, so softly that Dream is not sure he was meant to hear it at all.
The touch of Hob's finger against his still burns as he slips out into the night. It is a painless heat, startling but... tolerable. He would not prevent it from happening again.
And the emptiness inside is slightly less than it was, a bit more full of that warmth that seems to battle the dark. Feeling a little less fractured than before, Dream returns to the Dreaming.
It is perhaps a week since he parted ways with Rose Walker, since he began to allow for change in what dreams and nightmares could be, when a letter reaches him in the Dreaming.
As a concept, this is patently absurd. As a diversion, it is pleasantly amusing, and he is aware he is being in some way gently teased. The letter is needlessly ornate and archaic to the point of exaggeration, all parchment and flowing calligraphy and sealed with wax. Lucienne delivers it to him with a smile, and refuses to reveal how she came by it.
Dream does not know the handwriting, but he knows the sender. Hob has found the door, and a few tricks of his own along with it. Dream cannot find it in himself to be surprised. No mortal has any more power within the Dreaming than another, but Hob has known this place far longer than most. He has learned some of its ways, even if he doesn't realise what he knows.
The letter is an invitation. In lieu of the next seventy years, Hob proposes a date a few days from now to meet. The location he gives is not in London, for once, but a pub by the bank of a river in Sussex. Dream knows of it, in the same way that he knows of all places, but he cannot fathom its significance.
He has much to do, many duties he cannot neglect. He has only very recently seen Hob, comparatively. It is not an occasion of importance. He will, of course, not go.
So Dream tells himself, even as he makes arrangements for Lucienne to once again look after the Dreaming for a time, and is distracted and relentlessly watchful of which day it is in the mortal realm.
And on the date in question, he finds himself walking along a quiet country road.
The welcome he receives is startlingly warm.
"My friend, you came!" Hob cries, standing from the sunny table he's occupying outside the pub. He grips Dream briefly on the shoulder when he draws near, a gesture of greeting that is firm but careful, and Dream finds again that he minds it less than he might have expected.
In the face of Hob's genuine delight Dream finds himself relaxing, the weight of recent events once again easing as they sit down together. Hob is keen to buy food and drink, as he always is when they meet, and Dream allows him to order him a glass of water alongside whatever Hob wants for himself. It is a concession he's not made before, but the glass feels satisfyingly cool between his hands, the water unnecessary but not unpleasant on his tongue.
"Why here?" Dream asks after a while. It is quiet; it is a weekday afternoon, and there are some voices coming from inside the pub, and vehicles and walkers occasionally pass by, but often it is just them and the birds in the trees. He can hear the river, hidden not far away.
"Oh, I felt like I needed a holiday," Hob says. "The kids are on half term, I figured I could use a breather. Good to get out of the city sometimes, you know. It's nice to be where things are a little more like they used to be. Minus the fleas and constant smell of shit."
None of that requires Dream's presence, he notes, and cannot help but wonder if there is something more to it when Hob is trying to sneak glances at him that are less subtle than he might think; the looks are edged with a trace of concern.
Dream does not call him on it, but in the silence, Hob eventually sighs.
"I would have come for you. If I'd known."
The memory stirs again, but it is harder to be lost in it here, where the sun is warm and Hob is so determined a protector.
Dream almost smiles. "What could you have done?"
"Something. Anything." Hob looks frustrated, resolute. "I'm sorry I didn't."
"You could not have known. And... it is well you did not. My - she tried..." His voice breaks. There are some hurts he cannot speak of. "You could have come to harm there, and I would not have wished it." The mere thought is intolerable.
"I'd have risked it, though, and gladly. If you're ever in trouble, and have a way of getting word to me - I'd help you, I swear it."
It is impossible, as Hob leans across the table, hands clenched into fists, to find him any less than sincere. What human has ever offered him so much? What being at all, come to that, who has not been in some way bound to him, has offered him such loyalty so freely?
"I believe you," he says, and finds the words come out strangely uneven. "And I am grateful for it. Thank you, my friend." This time it is him that moves his hand, fingers brushing briefly against Hob's.
Touch is another human concern, when Dream's manifested form is so small a part of him.
Perhaps humanity has its comforts as well as its costs.
Hob beams at him. He drains his drink, then slaps his hands down on the table and stands in the same motion. "Let's go for a walk."
Dream, bemused, raises his eyebrows. "Why?"
"Because, my friend, we can."
They walk. Hob leads him out into the trees, then down to the river. It is wide and shallow, the water swift and clear as it flows over stones. There are no other people there, though they startle a squirrel and are watched by several pigeons as they go.
"Here," Hob says, suddenly stopping. It seems an arbitrary spot to Dream, though a pleasant one; they are in dappled sunlight beneath the trees along the bank, and the river bed is only a small step down from the soil.
Hob immediately toes off his shoes and socks. He's wearing shorts, apparently for exactly this reason, because he leaps without any further warning into the river. The splash reaches to Dream's trousers, though the water doesn't go deeper than Hob's calves even when he wades out to the middle.
"Well?" Hob says, turning back to him with a grin.
He is reminded of Death on the bridge those weeks ago, talking about connection, grounding herself to the earth. He doubts Hob would put it in the same terms, but he reads the same offer here.
It is such a peaceful place. He understands Hob's reasons for liking London, where life is loud and ever-changing, but there is something in this place that calls to Dream. Perhaps it reminds him of home, for there are many lands like this within the Dreaming. It is not so verdant and beautiful as Fiddler's Green, but the soft light and burbling water recalls that tranquil place. And there is a sharpness here lacking to the Dreaming, a focus and clarity that is not in the nature of dreams.
And Hob has come here, and felt it worth inviting Dream; there must be something in it that calls to him too. A little slice of the world that still looks how it once did, where there can be earth beneath his fingers and fresh wind against his face.
"Come on, my friend," Hob says, and there is something steady and patient about the way he smiles at Dream. It gives the impression that he does not mind waiting, and would wait much longer without begrudging it. "It's the little things that make humans feel alive, you know."
Dream stands upon the bank, and looks into the river.
He does not jump in. He's not sure he could bear to.
But he bends and undoes his shoelaces, freeing the bows and loosening them hole by hole. He eases off the boots, tugs away the socks, and sets them neatly down on the grass.
Hob, beaming, spreads his arms in welcome or invitation or celebration.
Dream steps into the shallows of the river, and feels smooth stones beneath his feet. The water is cold against his skin, a burst of sensation that startles him.
It is different from the Dreaming. Tangible in a way his realm is not.
His body is not real, not in the sense that a human would use the term. It's a manifestation only, and only of a limited facet of himself. Parts of Dream are elsewhere even now, alongside the billions of souls currently within the Dreaming.
And yet, for a moment in time, one part of the collective unconscious of humanity is entirely, impossibly, awake.
Entirely content in the company of his friend, Dream smiles.
How brilliant it is, he thinks, to be alive.
To be, perhaps, just the tiniest bit human.